EternityEternalTheISBE
The
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Eternity
then Eternal
|
ETERNITY
e-tur'-ni-ti (olam; Greek
equivalent, aion): \Contents\ 1. Contrast with
Time 2. In the Old Testament 3. In the New Testament 4. The Eternal
"Now" 5. Defect of This View 6. Philosophical Views 7. Time
Conceptions Inadequate 8. All Succession Present in One Act to Divine
Consciousness 9. Yet Connection between Eternity and Time 10. The Religious
Attitude to Eternity \LITERATURE\ 1. Contrast with
Time: Eternity is best
conceived, not in the merely negative form of the non-temporal,
or immeasurable time, but positively, as the mode of the timeless
self-existence of the Absolute Ground of the universe. The flux of time grows
first intelligible to us, only when we take in the thought of God as
eternal--exalted above time. Timeless existence--being or entity without
change--is what we here mean by eternity, and not mere everlastingness or
permanence through time. God, in His internal being, is raised above time; in
His eternal absoluteness, He is throned above
temporal development, and knows, as the Scriptures say, no changeableness.
The conception of eternity, as without beginning or ending, leaves us with
but a negation badly in need of filling out with reality. Eternity is not a
mere negative idea; to make of eternity merely a blank and irrelevant
negation of temporality would not satisfy any proper theory of being; it
functions as the positive relation to time of that eternal God, who is King
of all the eons. 2. In the Old
Testament: In the Old
Testament, God's eternity is only negatively expressed, as implying merely
indefinitely extended time (Genesis 21:33; Deuteronomy 33:27),
though Isaiah
40:28 takes more absolute form. Better is the view of eternity,
objectively considered, as a mode of being of God in relation to Himself. For
He was eternal, while as yet the world and time were
not. But even in the New Testament, the negative form of expression prevails.
3. In the New
Testament: Time, with its
succession of events, helps to fill out such idea as we can form of the
eternal, conceived as an endless progress. But, as finite beings, we can form
no positive idea of eternity. Time is less contradictory of eternity, than
helpful in revealing what we know of it. Plato, in his Timaeus,
says that time is the "moving image of eternity," and we may allow
that it is its type or revelation. Not as the annulment of time, though it
might be held to be in itself exclusive of time, is eternity to be taken, but
rather as the ground of its reality. 4. The Eternal
"Now": Eternity might,
no doubt, be taken as just time no longer measured by the succession of
events, as in the finite universe. But, on a strict view, there is something
absurd in an eternity that includes time, and an eternity apart from time is
a vain and impossible conception. Eternity, as a discharge from all time
limits, is purely negative, though not without importance. Eternity,
absolutely taken, must be pronounced incommensurable with time; as Aquinas said, non sunt mensurae unius generis. Eternity, that is to say, would lose its
character as eternal in the very entering into relations with the changeful
or becoming. Eternity, as in God, has, since the time of Augustine and the
Middle Ages, been frequently conceived as an eternal Now. The Schoolmen were
wont to adopt as a maxim that "in eternity is one only instant always
present and persistent." This is but a way of describing eternity in a
manner characteristic of succession in time; but eternal Deity, rather than
an eternal Now, is a conception far more full of meaning for us. 5. Defect of
This View: To speak of
God's eternity as an eternal Now--a present in the time-sense--involves a
contradiction. For the eternal existence is no more described by the notion
of a present than by a past or a future. Such a Now or present presupposes a
not-now, and raises afresh the old time-troubles, in
relation to eternity. Time is certainly not the form of God's life, His eternity
meaning freedom from time. Hence, it was extremely troublesome to theology of
the Middle Ages to have a God who was not in time at all, supposed to create
the world at a particular moment in time. 6. Philosophical
Views: Spinoza, in
later times, made the eternity of God consist in His infinite--which, to
Spinoza, meant His necessary-- existence. For contingent or durational
existence would not, in Spinoza's view, be eternal, though it lasted always.
The illusoriness or unreality of time, in respect of man's spiritual life, is
not always very firmly grasped. This wavering or uncertain hold of the
illusiveness of time, or of higher reality as timeless, is still very
prevalent; even so strong- souled a poet as
Browning projects the shadow of time into eternity, with rarely a definite
conception of the higher life as an eternal and timeless essence; and
although Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer may have held to such a timeless view,
it has by no means become a generally adopted doctrine so far, either of
theologians or of philosophers. If time be so taken as unreal, then eternity
must not be thought of as future, as is done by Dr. Ellis McTaggart
and some other metaphysicians today. For nothing could, in that case, be
properly future, and eternity could not be said to begin, as is often done in
everyday life. The importance
of the eternity conception is seen in the fact that neo-Kantian and
neo-Hegelian thinkers alike have shown a general tendency to regard
time-conceptions as unfit, in metaphysics, for the ultimate explanation of
the universe. 7.
Time-Conceptions Inadequate: Eternity, one
may surely hold, must span or include, for God's eternal consciousness, the
whole of what happens in time, with all of past, present or future, that lies within the temporal succession. But we
are by no means entitled to say, as does Royce, that such wholeness or
totality of the temporal constitutes the eternal, for the eternal belongs to
quite another order, that, namely, of timeless reality. Eternity is not to be
defined in terms of time at all. For God is to us the supra-temporal ens perfectissimum, but One
whose timeless self-sufficiency and impassable aloofness are not such as to
keep Him from being strength and helper of our temporal striving. Our metaphysical
convictions must not here be of barren and unfruitful sort for ethical
results and purposes. 8. All
Succession Present in One Act to Divine Consciousness: Eternity is, in
our view, the form of an eternal existence, to which, in the unity of a single
insight, the infinite series of varying aspects or processes are,
together-wise, as a totum simul,
present. But this, as we have already shown, does not imply that the eternal
order is nowise different, essentially, from the temporal; time is not to be
treated as a segment of eternity, nor eternity regarded as interminable
duration; the eternal cannot pass over into the temporal; for, an eternal
Being, who should think all things as present, and yet view the time-series
as a succession, must be a rather self- contradictory conception. For the
Absolute Consciousness, time does not exist; the future cannot, for it, be
thought of as beginning to be, nor the past as
having ceased to be. 9. Yet
Connection Between Eternity and Time: After all that
has been said, however, eternity and time are not to be thought of as without
connection. For the temporal presupposes the eternal, which is, in fact, its
positive ground and its perpetual possibility. These things are so, if only
for the reason that the Divine mode of existence does not contradict or
exclude the human mode of existence. The continuity of the latter--of the
temporal--has its guaranty in the eternal. The unconditioned eternity of God
brings into harmony with itself the limitations and conditions of the
temporal. For time is purely relative, which eternity is not. No distinctions
of before and after are admissible in the eternity conception, hence, we have
no right to speak of time as a portion of eternity. Thus, while we maintain
the essential difference between eternity and time, we at the same time
affirm what may perhaps be called the affinity between them. The metaphysics
of eternity and its time-relations continue to be matter of proverbial
difficulty, and both orders--the eternal and the temporal--had better be
treated as concrete, and not left merely to abstract reflection. Our idea of
the eternal will best be developed, in this concrete fashion, by the growth
of our God-idea, as we more completely apprehend God, as actualized for us in
His incarnate Son. 10. The
Religious Attitude to Eternity: Thus, then, it
is eternity, not as immeasurable time, but rather as a mode of being of the
immutable God, who is yet progressively revealing Himself in time, which we
have here set forth. This is not to say that the religious consciousness has
not its own need of the conception of God as being "from everlasting to
everlasting," as in Psalms 90:2, and
of His kingdom as "an everlasting kingdom" (Daniel 4:3). Nor
is it to make us suppose that the absolute and self-existent God, who so
transcends all time-dependence, is thereby removed far from us, while, on the
contrary, His very greatness makes Him the more able to draw near unto us, in
all the plenitude of His being. Hence, it is so truly spoken in Isaiah 57:15,
"Thus saith the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy: I dwell in the
high and holy place, with him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit,
to revive the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the
contrite." Hence, also the profound truthfulness of sayings like that in
Acts 17:27,28, "He is not far from each one of us: for in
him we live, and move, and have our being." After all that has been
said, our best knowledge of eternity, as it exists in God, is not developed
in any metaphysical fashion, but after the positive and timeless modes of the
spiritual life--the modes of trust and love. \LITERATURE.\ H. Cremer, Lexicon of New Testament Greek, English edition,
1880; G. B. Winer, Grammar of New Testament Greek,
3rd edition, 1882; R. C. French, Synonyms of the New Testament, 9th edition,
1880; E. H. Plumptre, The Spirits in Prison, 3rd
edition, 1885; J. Orr, Christian View of God and the World, lst edition, 1893; I. A. Dorner,
System of Christian Doctrine, English edition, 1885; J. H. Stirling, Philosophy and Theology, 1890; J. Lindsay,
Studies in European Philosophy, 1909; The Fundamental Problems of
Metaphysics, 1910. James Lindsay |
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The
International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
|
ETERNAL -
e-tur'-nal (`olam; aionios, from aion): The word
"eternal" is of very varying import, both in the Scriptures and out
of them. 1. `Olam: 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 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. Only, the Hebrew term primarily signified unlimited time,
and only in a secondary sense represented a definite or specific period. Both
the Hebrew and the Greek terms signify the world itself, as it moves in time.
2. Aion, Aionios: In the New
Testament, aion and aionios
are often used with the meaning "eternal," in the predominant sense
of futurity. 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. Thus aion
may be said to mean the subtle informing spirit of the world or cosmos--the
totality of things. By Plato, in his Timaeus, aion was used of the eternal Being, whose counterpart, in
the sense-world, is Time. To Aristotle, in speaking of the world, aion is the ultimate principle which, in itself, sums up
all existence.. In the New Testament, aion is found combined with prepositions in nearly 3. Aidios: 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.
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. For, from the idea of aeonian
life, there is no reason to suppose the notion of duration excluded. The word
aionios is sometimes used in the futurist
signification, but often also, in the New Testament, it is concerned rather
with the quality, than with the quantity or duration, of life. By the
continual attachment of aionios to life, in this
conception of the spiritual or Divine life in man, the aeonian
conception was saved from becoming sterile. 4. Enlargement
of Idea: In the use of aion and aionios there is
evidenced a certain enlarging or advancing import till they come so to
express the high and complex fact of the Divine life in man. In Greek, aiones signifies ages, or periods or dispensations. The aiones of Hebrews 1:2, and
11:3, is, however, to be taken as used in the concrete sense of "the
worlds," and not "the ages," the world so taken meaning the
totality of things in their course or flow. 5. Eternal Life:
Our Lord
decisively set the element of time in abeyance, and took His stand upon the
fact and quality of life--life endless by its own nature. Of that eternal
life He is Himself the guarantee--"Because I live, ye shall live
also" (John
14:19). Therefore said Augustine, "Join thyself to the eternal God,
and thou wilt be eternal." See ETERNITY.
James Lindsay |
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