“Eon as Indefinite Duration” (in three parts)
From the early times of church history the words aiõn and aiõnios (“eon” and “eonian” in the Concordant Version) have been the subject of much controversy. This is because the question of their meaning is central to the issue of “eternal punishment.” Scriptural usage alone is authoritative. Yet how can scriptural usage truly be determined? Scholars are correct when they stress that meaning must be determined by context; yet they err when, failing to distinguish special usage from essential meaning, they claim that word meaning may well be plural and is to be determined by “the context,” or, more accurately, by the presuppositions which they bring to the context. These articles present much important information concerning this long-disputed subject.
“Concerning Aiõn and Aiõnios”The most commonly used Greek-English lexicons used today by Christians are those by Thayer (1886) and by Arndt and Gingrich (1957). The definitions given for the noun, aiõn, and the adjective, aiõnios, are widely accepted as authoritative and determinative for the teaching of everlasting punishment. This brief study suggests the need for a more thorough consideration of the issues related to these important terms.
“The Divine Calendar”
As in the affairs of daily life, we need the kindly offices of a calendar to tell us the day or week or month or year, so, God has given us a calendar in order that we may locate ourselves in His grand affairs with which we are identified and in which we take an active interest. We work a week and rest. So God does, too, when He restores the earth. For legal business we divide the year into twelve months. He, too, administers the cycles of earths affairs in twelve economies. Still longer periods we group in five and its multiples, ten or twenty-five or a hundred. So He has given us five eons or ages. In order to group these grand arrangements at a glance, we have prepared a chart synchronizing the various Divine activities.
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