Yesterday I shared a long post covering the mistranslation of “Gehenna” into “Hell”, and explaining the history of Gehenna as well as some proof texts that are misused to defend eternal torment. Today, I will focus in on the word mistranslated “eternal”, and show why verses which speak of “eternal punishment” are also mistranslations. Enjoy!
The Greek word “aionios” is the word translated “eternal” every time you see it in the New Testament, including where it talks about “eternal fire” and “eternal punishment”. This word “aionios” does not mean never-ending. The Greeks had a word which signified “endless” (“aidios”) but that word was not employed for these matters.
Dr. J.W. Hansen, in his short book Aion-Aionios, mentions Aristotle’s use of the word aidios saying,
“[Aristotle] says: ‘aion sunekes kai aidios,’ ‘an eternal (aidios) aion ‘pertaining to God.’ The fact that Aristotle found it necessary to add aidios to aion to ascribe eternity to God demonstrates that he found no sense of eternity in the word aion, and utterly discards the idea that he held the word to mean endless duration.” (p. 22)
The word “aionios” is the adjective form of aion which is where we get our word “eon”, which means an age most of the time but also means “an unknown period”. It is equal to the Hebrew word “olam”, which can mean “age”, or can communicate something more poetic like if one were to say something is “into the horizon.” “Olam” is used for hills (“the everlasting hills”), ages (“from everlasting to everlasting” literally “from age to age”), and judgments on Israel in the Old Testament that had a beginning and an end.
G. Campbell Morgan, a now deceased yet renowned Bible expositor, makes the following remarkable observation concerning “aionios”:
“Let me say to Bible students that we must be very careful how we use the word eternity. We have fallen into great error in our constant use of that word. There is no word in the whole book of God corresponding with our eternal, which, as commonly used among us, means absolutely without end.”
• “It must be admitted that the Greek word which is rendered ‘eternal’ does not, in itself, involve endlessness, but rather, duration, whether through an age or succession of ages, and that it is therefore applied in the New Testament to periods of time that have had both a beginning and ending.” (Elliots Commentary on the Whole Bible)
• “The adjective ‘aionios’ in like manner carries the idea of time. Neither the noun nor the adjective in themselves carries the sense of ‘endless’ or ‘everlasting.’ Aionios means enduring through or pertaining to a period of time.” (Dr. Marvin Vincent, Word Studies of the New Testament)
• “Since aion meant ‘age,’ aionios means, properly, ‘belonging to an age,’ or ‘age-long,’ and anyone who asserts that it must mean ‘endless’ defends a position which even Augustine practically abandoned twelve centuries ago. Even if aion always meant ‘eternity,’ which is not the case in classic or Hellenistic Greek, aionios could still mean only ‘belonging to eternity’ and not ‘lasting through it.'” (Dr. Farrars book, Mercy and Judgment)
• “Since, as we have seen, the noun aion refers to a period of time it appears, very improbable that the derived adjective aionios would indicate infinite duration, nor have we found any evidence in Greek writing to show that such a concept was expressed by this term.” (Time and Eternity by G. T. Stevenson)
• “The Bible has no expression for endlessness. All the Biblical terms imply or denote long periods.” (Professor Herman Oldhausen, German Lutheran theologian)
• “The Hebrew was destitute of any single word to express endless duration. The pure idea of eternity is not found in any of the ancient languages.” (Professor Knappe of Halle)
Professor J.I. Packer admits, “Granted that, as is rightly urged, ‘eternal’ (aionios) in the New Testament means ‘belonging to the age to come’ rather than expressing any directly chronological notion [as in endlessness].”
Professor N.T. Wright agrees and says the following:
“Aionios relates to the Greek ‘aion’, which often roughly translates the Hebrew ‘olam’. Some Jews thought of there being two ‘ages’ – ha olam ha-zeh, the present age, and ha olam ha-ba, the age to come. Aionian punishment and the like would be the punishment in the age to come.”
“Eternal life” and “eternal punishment” could more properly be translated “life of the age to come” and “punishment of the age to come”, not denoting endlessness. The “life of the age to come” does not end, and this is not signified by the word “aionios”, but because it is the divine life of the resurrection where death no longer reigns and we exist for what we were purposed, not to mention that other Scriptures talk about us being given immortality. The “punishment of the age to come” does end, because God’s justice is restorative, punishment is not what any creature is purposed for, and God’s will is for all to be reconciled and have life.
If it is confusing to you that “Aionios” is used for a life that doesn’t end and for a punishment that does end, then let me provide an easy example. If I say “I will eat cake tomorrow” and “I will die tomorrow”, I have used the word “tomorrow” both for something that will be temporary as well as for something that will be permanent. “Tomorrow” does not describe something temporary or permanent, but merely a future time when something will happen.
The fact that Bibles should correctly read “punishment of the age to come” and “fire of the age to come” instead of “eternal punishment/fire” opens up a variety of possibilities, even ones that St. Gregory of Nyssa entertained, which was that this punishment was curative.
What about where it says of the beast and the false prophet: “The smoke of their torment rises forever and ever”? The original Greek word is:
“aionas ton aionon.”
“Aion” is where we get our word “eon” and it means essentially the same thing: an age. “Ton” does not mean “and” but rather “of” or “belonging to”. So a proper translation of this is “The smoke of their torment rises unto the age of the ages.” This makes sense when you realize that forever and ever doesn’t even make sense. Forever and then another ever? Forever plus some more ever? “Forever and ever” to us has become a way to emphasize a things eternality, but in the Greek such a concept did not exist and its redundancy would have been considered ridiculous.
“Perhaps the most significant example of this for our purposes is Isaiah 34:9-10, for it closely parallels the two passages in Revelation. In this passage Isaiah says that the fire that shall consume Edom shall burn ‘night and day’ and ‘shall not be quenched.’ Its smoke ‘shall go up forever’ and no one shall pass through this land again ‘forever and ever.’ Obviously, this is symbolic, for the fire and smoke of Edom’s judgment isn’t still ascending today. If this is true of Isaiah, we should be less inclined to interpret similar expressions in the book of Revelation literally.” – Greg Boyd
Nowhere in Scripture does it declare that the consequence of sin has to do with some legal punishment over some eternal length of time, namely never-ending, but everywhere it says that the consequence of sin is an ontological corruption leading to death. A death that God triumphs over in Christ, who, as the second Adam, is as consequentially universal in scope as the first Adam.
By Jacob M. Wright
Breathings 