Why do we talk about time and eternity when the Bible doesn't?
I don't know, but I suspect it is another case of trying to simplify what the Bible says, to make it accessible. The trouble is that this leads to all sorts of problems!
The popular view of eternity is a kind of sea of timelessness, in which God has created time and space. How many times have I sung that "I'll be there" ... "when the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more, and the morning breaks, eternal, bright and fair".
Two specific words are routinely used in the Bible - olam in the OT, and aeon in the NT. These have been consistently translated in most major versions, in many places, into that troublesome word 'eternity'.
There has been much contention and disputing over the precise meaning of these words, but the nearest synonym in English, is certainly not 'eternity' with it's shades of never-ending, but simply the word 'age'.
Those disputes have appealed to the changing understanding of early Hebrew, to the correlation of words via the Septuagint, to the worldviews of Jesus’ contempories, but it remains evident that these words and associated phrases (into the age, from the age, etc) remain enigmatic.
The words olam and aeon are describing something beyond time, and to translate them as ‘endless’, or ‘without end’, simply expresses them in terms of time.
We cannot even vaguely imagine, let alone grasp, what existence outside time would be like. This is why some prefer to translate the phrase 'eis ton aeona' as 'never ending' because it is easy to understand.
But a large number of Bible references use olam (Hebrew) and aeon (Greek) in phrases which demonstrate that they do not always (and maybe not ever) mean 'never ending'.
To begin with, olam (singular) or olamim (plural) occurs 448 times in the Old Testament. For example, in Genesis, the rainbow was a sign of a covenant 'berith olam'. Clearly the rainbow was not without beginning, and dependent as it is, on rain and sunshine, it will not be without end.
Again in Genesis, we are told the Nephilim were around in those pre-flood days and had been from 'olam'. Obviously not from eternity, but maybe from ancient times, or some such.
The book of Exodus instructs slaveowners that slaves were bound to their masters 'le olam' - that is, until they died at some future unknown date. In Numbers, the trumpet's sound is referred to as 'olam'. The twelve stones taken out of the Jordan river, were set up as a memorial 'ad olam'. Samuel was taken by his mother Hannah, to live at Shiloh, 'ad olam'. In Proverbs, the instruction is to avoid removing the 'olam' landmarks.
All these things, the slaves, the trumpets, the Jordan stones, Samuel's Shiloh home, and the landmarks are all long gone. None of them eternal. Moreover, there are scores and scores of Old Testament verses where the word 'olam' denotes not eternal but more probably 'ancient' or 'an unknown time'.
It is true that there are many places where the word 'everlasting' makes sense, but then so would a whole range of other words! But in places which cry out for the word 'everlasting', for example ...
... the word olam is not used. Instead it is the words 'en qeS' that are used - because they precisely mean 'no end!'
Some have tried to suggest that when olam is used in the plural 'olamim', then eternity is intended. However, the same problem arises.
King Solomon said he had built a house for God to live in 'olamim'. But he must have known it would not last forever! It was, after all, made of wood and stone! Having said that, it did last about 500 years, which was a tremendous tribute to old Solomon, but still it falls rather short of 'eternity'!
King David says in ...
Obviously his memory, even poetically, can only have stretched back to ancient times. He is certainly not claiming to be able to consider past eternity!
There is a handful of places where the expression 'from olam to olam' is used. Again these cannot be expressed as 'from eternity to eternity' nor 'from everlasting to everlasting'. For example, Jeremiah urges the Jews to change their ways, so that God will cause them to live in the land 'from olam to olam'. Clearly they had not been in the land from eternity past, nor it turned out would stay in the land for eternity future. The expression 'from age to age' is probably the best that can be done.
All that we have said about olam, can similarly be said of the Greek equivalent 'aeon'. It has routinely been translated as 'everlasting' or 'eternal'. However, in some contexts, this makes no sense at all, and so it was translated as 'world' instead.
But it makes far more sense if we simply stick to the word 'age' throughout, and modern translations tend to be more consistent in this. Thus we learn that Jesus promises to be with his disciples, not until the end of the world, but until the end of the age.
Consider the verse in Ephesians 3:21 - the KJV renders this
Clearly this is misleading, since we know this world will come to an end. The NIV is not a great deal better, translating this as
It would have been more helpful to stick closer to the original, because that would not lead us to wrongly assume we understand the way the future works! "To him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations of the age of the ages. Amen"
Some people have considered that the phrase "aeon of aeons" must be a kind of super-aeon which includes all the other aeons, and therefore this super-aeon must be unending. But there is no contemporaneous use of that Greek expression, and it appears to be just a transliteration (i.e. a word for word translation) of the Hebrew. Phrases such as king of kings, lord of lords, song of songs in Hebrew indicate the importance of the king or lord or song. The idea that this super-aeon is unending is not indicated within the text.
Consider the verse in John 11:26 - the KJV has
and the NIV has
In this case, the translators simply omitted the greek phrase "eis ton aiona" altogether. If they had included it, the NIV would read "whoever lives by believing in me will never die to the age." While we can sympathise with the difficulties of translation, if the original is trying to express something difficult, then we English speakers should also be given the chance to try to figure it out!
Once the translation inconsistencies are fixed, lots of verses get more difficult to understand. This is most definitely not a bad thing. For far too long, I have been dogmatically certain of things without any proper study or consideration! And I may not be the only one!
And something surprising emerges. The Bible says a whole lot of fascinating things about the ages! Throughout the NT, there is the sense that we are in 'this age', that there will come a generation that encounters the 'end of the age', that there have been 'ages past' and there are yet more 'ages to come' in which a whole bunch of things will be very different. This is a very different picture from the popular notion of a piece of time in a pool of eternity.
God's purpose is set in the context of a number of ages. Paul says at the start of his letter to the Ephesus church ...
... and then later on describes how he, Paul, has been given the task ...
And you may be familiar with this in Hebrews 1:2 then Hebrews 11:3 in the NIV -
But now see it with the word 'ages' kept in, and a closer translation of the word katertisthai.
Now it is clear this is not limited to the creation of the universe, but the purpose of God runs in the widest context of a succession of ages.
And about that purpose, Paul says in the same letter...
The age to come - that is the next one - is contrasted everywhere with this present age. There is something about the life there, which is described as 'life of that age' (Mark 10:30). Whereas this age can weigh us down with worry and frustration (Mark 4:19), that age is characterised by glory (Matt 13:43) and power (Heb 6:5).
Jesus said this in ...
This must surely then be the principle characteristic of life in that age - the knowing of God.
But even that age to come is not the focus of Jesus teaching. Instead he teaches and demonstrates how to live in this present age. This is because we understand from a number of parables, that supremely this is an age of opportunity. We encourage children to grasp the opportunity of schooling, and young people the opportunities of further education, because we appreciate (whether actually or vicariously) the later rewards that this brings. So Jesus encourages us. The seed of this age becomes the harvest of that age. The talent of this age becomes the city of that age. To the person who makes the most of opportunities, more is given. For the person who doesn't, the window of opportunity closes, or at least shrinks! It is possible, though not conclusive, that we can gain in this age what we can never gain in the next.
We can be absolutely certain that since the Bible says there have been past aeons (plural), and aeons (plural) to come, then the word aeon cannot possibly mean eternity, if by that we mean unending time.
But why does any of this matter? Who really cares about whether aeon means an age or an unending eternity?
Well, it is always good to try to understand what the Bible is actually saying. And it matters, not least because the idea that Hell is a torture that never stops, relies on the assumption that aeon means 'an unending eternity'. By all accounts, a lot of people are going to be pretty pleased it doesn't.
