![]() ![]() For, from the idea of aeonian life, there is no reason to suppose the notion of duration excluded. ![]() But the presence of the idea of eternal in these passages does not impair the fact that aion and aionios are, in their natural and obvious connotation, the usual New Testament words for expressing the idea of eternal, and this holds strikingly true of the Septuagint usage also. ![]() In Romans 1:20 the word aidios is used of Divine action and rendered in the King James Version "eternal" (the Revised Version (British and American) "everlasting"), the only other place in the New Testament where the word occurs being Jude 1:6, where the rendering is "everlasting," which accords with classical usage. The aionios of 2 Corinthians 4:18 must be eternal, in a temporal use or reference, else the antithesis would be gone. This is the usual method of expressing eternity in the Septuagint also. In the New Testament, aion is found combined with prepositions in nearly three score and ten instances, where the idea of unlimited duration appears to be meant. To Aristotle, in speaking of the world, aion is the ultimate principle which, in itself, sums up all existence. By Plato, in his Timaeus, aion was used of the eternal Being, whose counterpart, in the sense-world, is Time. Thus aion may be said to mean the subtle informing spirit of the world or cosmos-the totality of things. The word aion primarily signifies time, in the sense of age or generation it also comes to denote all that exists under time-conditions and, finally, superimposed upon the temporal is an ethical use, relative to the world's course. In the New Testament, aion and aionios are often used with the meaning "eternal," in the predominant sense of futurity. Both the Hebrew and the Greek terms signify the world itself, as it moves in time. Only, the Hebrew term primarily signified unlimited time, and only in a secondary sense represented a definite or specific period. The Hebrew `olam has, for its proper New Testament equivalent, aion, as signifying either time of particular duration, or the unending duration of time in general. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word `olam is used for "eternity," sometimes in the sense of unlimited duration, sometimes in the sense of a cycle or an age, and sometimes, in later Hebrew, in the signification of world. The word "eternal" is of very varying import, both in the Scriptures and out of them. International Standard Bible Encyclopedia ETERNAL ![]()
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