“Of all the arguments on this question, the one which appears to me the most absolutely and hopelessly futile, is the one in which so many seem to rest with entire content; viz. that "eternal or aeonian life" must mean endless life, and therefore that “aeonian chastisement” must mean “endless chastisement.”
This battered and aged argument, . . . if it had possessed a particle of cogency, would not have been set aside as entirely valueless by such minds as those of Origen and the two Gregories in ancient days, nor by multitudes in the days of St. Augustine and St. Jerome, nor by the most brilliant thinker among the schoolmen, nor by many of our greatest living divines . . . .
No proposition is capable of more simple proof than that aeonian is not a synonym of endless. It only means, or can mean, in its
primary sense, pertaining to an
aeon, and therefore “indefinite,” since an
aeon may be either long or short; and in its
secondary sense “spiritual,” “pertaining to the unseen world,”
“an attribute of that which is above and beyond time,” an attribute expressive not of duration but of quality. Can such an explanation of the word be denied by any competent or thoughtful reader of
John 5:39; 6:54; 17:3;
1 John 5:13,20? Would not the introduction of the word “endless” into those Divine utterances be an unspeakable degradation of their meaning? And as for the argument that the redeemed would thus lose their promised bliss, it is at once so unscriptural and so selfish that, after what Mr. Cox and others have said of it, one may hope that no one will ever be able to use it again without a blush. I cannot here diverge into a discussion with Bishop Wordsworth and Canon Ryle, whose sermons need some
adversaria rather longer than I can here devote to them; but as they both dwell on the fact that people who spoke Greek interpreted
aionios to mean endless, I reply that some of the greatest masters of Greek, both in classical times and among the Fathers, saw quite clearly that, though the word
might connote endlessness by being attributively added to endless things, it had in itself no such meaning. I cannot conceive how any candid mind can deny the force of these considerations. If even Origenists would freely speak of future punishment as
aionios but never as
ateleutetos [without end] –– if, as even these papers have shown, Plato uses the word as the
antithesis of endlessness –– if St. Gregory of Nyssa uses it as the epithet of “an interval”–– if, as though to leave this Augustinian argument without the faintest shadow of a foundation, there are absolutely two passages of Scripture (Hab.3:6 and Rom.16:25,26) where the very word occurs in two consecutive clauses, and is, in the second of the two clauses, applied to God, and yet is, in the first of the two clauses, applied to things which are temporary or terminated
–– what shall be said of disputants who still enlist the controversial services of a phantom which has been so often laid in the tomb from which it ought never again to emerge? How is it that not one out of the scores of writers who have animadverted on my book have so much as noticed the very remarkable fact to which I have called attention, that those who followed Origen in holding out a possible hope beyond the grave
founded their argument for the terminability of torments on the acknowledged sense of this very word, and on the fact that other words and phrases which
do unmistakably mean endless are used of the duration of good, but are
never used of the duration of evil?” -F.W. Farrar
In His book “God’s Methods with Man” the Rev. G. Campbell Morgan says this about the word “eternal”: “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.
The strongest Scripture word used with reference to the existence of God, is–“unto the ages of the ages,” which does not literally mean eternally. Let us remember however that the self-same word, which is thus used in connection with the existence of God, is also applied to the loss of the human soul. Men have divided the Church, separated from each other, and persecuted one another, upon a thought conveyed by an English word which has no equivalent in the Bible.” -G. Campbell Morgan
