Reading the Bible in Widescreen

Posted on October 16, 2012 by Richard

Definitely a first world problem — you want to watch a movie and the only DVD available is in the dreaded full-screen edition — the version that chops off the edges of the film to make it fit into a square TV shape. Anathema to a film connoisseur, but perhaps favored by one preferring their television to lack black swatches on top and bottom, what is really at stake here? Two of the main problems are when one cuts the sides off the original film, the number of characters one sees is potentially reduced and this exaggerates the significance of what is left on the screen.

Does something similar happen when we read the Bible? Recently I was leading a discussion for a group of about a dozen Bible students. I had them read out loud in turns, starting at the beginning of Colossians and continuing through chapter three. I then gave them three key words, which if I was to do this again I would add a fourth, so I’ll include it here:

Corporate – having to do with a larger group of people than just one’s self, namely those one is in relationship with, an entire congregation, or the larger Church

Bodily – having to do with the physical and sensory world of bodies, not just the “soul”

Cosmic – having to do with the entire creation beyond humans – animate and inanimate

Eschatological – understood in the broadest sense of anything having to do with God’s big future for the world in which he will restore all things and make all wrong things right (cf. Rev. 21:1ff)

I instructed the students, that as we read, anyone should simply shout out the word when they heard something spoken that related to one of these words. You may have already noticed what all these words have in common: they all focus on issues that are larger than the individual person and their internal spiritual life. As we read, the chorus of outbursts was at times incessant. We could hardly get through a single verse without one (often more than one) of these words blurted out. Sometimes it was readily obvious. Other times I gave some brief instruction to see how a certain concept was eschatological, corporate, etc. (see for example, “Christ in Y’all the Hope of Glory“).

Beside being a rollicking and hilarious fun time, there was for many, a big “Ah ha!” They were seeing how often the Bible addresses these issues. They were “reading the Bible in widescreen.” Young believers are often told that their faith is all about “you and Jesus,” or that the Bible is essentially a “love letter” from God to them. While I understand the well-intent, the difficulty with all this is the degree of disappointment we set people up for when they actually begin to read the Bible. One only needs to read a few pages of the Gospels or a Pauline letter (no less 1 Kings!) to realize that what they are reading is not immediately about them individually. It does not sound like anything approximating a “love letter.” They are left with the daunting task of reinterpreting everything they read as being about “me and Jesus,” which often ends in discouragement because, I imagine, they intuitively sense how much of a stretch this is. Tragically, many conclude that the problem either lies with them — they are too stupid, too dull, too unspiritual, too immature — or with the Bible — it is boring, confusing, irrelevant.

There is another possibility. It could be rather than the problem lying essentially within ourselves or with the Bible, the difficulty lies in the lens through which we look at the Bible. Often our ability to understand others has much to do with our set of expectations regarding what is being said and predictions about what will be said. If I am convinced that a friend of mine is talking about one thing, while in reality they are talking about something significantly (or even subtly) different, I will be notably confused. The problem is not  with my own stupidity nor with them. Rather, the “mental overlay” I am placing on what they are saying creates a degree of incongruity that is difficult to reconcile. The issue is not so much that I do not understand what the other is saying, as much as what they are actually saying does not fit well with what I expect them to be saying.

In similar fashion, when we read the Bible in “fullscreen” rather than “widescreen,” we distort the message of Scripture by chopping off the larger context of corporate, bodily, cosmic and eschatological life. The result is — surprise! — an exaggerated emphasis on one’s self. In our obsessively narcissistic culture, we should not be amazed that our reading of Scripture is twisted in this way. However, when we widen our lens, and rediscover the corporate, bodily, cosmic, and eschatological dimensions of the Gospel concerning what God has done in and through the incarnation, life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, we find, as the Psalmist, that we are “brought out into a broad and spacious place” (Ps. 18:19). We breathe freely in the wide open world which God created and loves. We emerge from the cramped and anxious confines of our individual and isolated self. We rejoice in bodily, relational, and earthly life as central, rather than hostile, to God’s good intentions for us. We discover God’s love afresh, not exclusively for our individual selves, but precisely for the individual as integrated within the entire creation which God in his love will reconcile, redeem, and restore — drawing us out of the despair and brokenness of our present age into the unending and exhilarating feast of eternal life.

 

**For the widescreen/full-screen analogy I am indebted to Beverly Gaventa’s article “The Cosmic Power of Sin in Paul’s Letter to the Romans,” in the July 2004 installment of the journal Interpretation.

Related Posts

Posted in Bible | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Understanding (the Bible) is an End in Itself

Posted on October 4, 2012 by Richard

Picture this scene and imagine how many millions of times it has happened – after an extended conversation between a married couple, one of them with shoulders dropping and the pitch of their voice falling says, “but you’re not listening to me.” Without batting an eye, a retort is heard, “I certainly have, I’ve presented numerous practical and workable solutions to your problem.” The other responds with a hopelessly resigned shrug, “but you’re not listening to me…”

I have heard it said that understanding the Bible is not an end in itself, as if you don’t apply or experience the things in the Bible, it is pointless. However, in relationships, understanding what the other is saying is indeed an end in itself, and is not merely functional. Ask people about the quality of their marriage when a person only listens to their spouse for some other end, perhaps to solve their problem or to get some kind of “intimate experience,” rather than primarily to understand them as an end in itself. The problem in these relationships is that understanding is seen as only a means to an end rather than also possessing its own immense inherent value. The consequences of such an approach to the relationship are frequently disastrous.

What is at stake here in the process of listening and understanding is the ability to know and be known. When hearing another, we can opt to be primarily in problem-solving mode — I will listen in order to solve your problem — or I will listen to solve my problem. When listening is only functional towards some other concrete end, it demeans the value of the person speaking simply to be known. Understanding for its own sake is to know another. To be sure, there are times to be functional. But when understanding, namely knowing the other person, is constantly crowded out by a flood of other intentions, we may sense that the person speaking is being devalued by the one listening — that they are not worthy of being known.

Likewise, in our relationship with God, understanding God is an end in itself. If we believe that the Bible is indeed the Word of God, and by it God is talking to us, then we must pursue understanding it as an end in itself, as understanding it is to understand God. Furthermore, in the absence of such a pursuit, we must conclude that our relationship with God suffers the same state as the marriage described earlier.

To say pursuing understanding the Bible is pointless without applying it, is like saying a husband listening to his wife is pointless unless he solves her problems. Additionally, to say understanding the Bible is meaningless apart from experiencing it, is analogous to saying that understanding one’s wife is pointless unless you also have “an experience” afterwards. All of this, especially with the language of “pointless” or “meaningless,” communicates that the process of understanding and knowing God is of minimal, if any, significance.

My concern with such ideas is that they may represent a subtle denigration and devaluation of the Scriptures and their significance in the life of the people of God. Though perhaps that is not the intent of people who say them, it nevertheless seems to have that effect on people. They also introduce a false dichotomy between the Scripture and experience which is not present in the Bible and the early church (not even in John 5:37-40!). It seems inescapable to me that this will result in negative consequences in peoples’ relationships with God.

We need a new vision of what the Scriptures are to us and to the Church that can overcome our discouragement and confusion when dealing with them. If our life experience tells us anything, it is that the process of communication and understanding others can indeed be challenging. This is normal. Therefore we can forgo villanizing ourselves for struggling with understanding the Bible. We can also be free from the compulsions to subtly devalue the Scripture in order to relieve us of such discouragement. It is normal for people to read books, take classes, join small groups and get counseling primarily to enhance communication in their most important relationships. This is all very normal.

The Bible is the Word of God. This means God is not just speaking to us through the Bible, but in the words of the Scripture itself we are hearing God speak. This hearing occurs whether we “experience” it or not. If we believe that the Bible is thus the Word of God, by seeking to understand it we have the ability to radically improve the quality of our relationship with God. And this process of understanding God through the Scripture is a most beautiful and precious end in itself.

Related Posts

Posted in Bible | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

Finding Your Calling in an Age of Anxiety

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Richard

In an age anxiously obsessed with “personal faith,” “personal calling,” and “personal vision,” the letter to the Ephesians points us in a curiously different direction. At the beginning of chapter four, Paul urges believers to “walk in a manner worthy of their calling” (v. 1) — in other words, to live in a way that corresponds to the glorious Gospel he has explicated in the previous chapters. Conventional wisdom might suggest that living as faithful followers of Christ would entail a vibrant personal faith, a strong sense of personal calling, and an expansive personal vision. The text rather directs us beyond ourselves to our interpersonal relationship with other Christians, that we must live “with all humility and gentleness, with long-suffering, bearing with one another in love” (v. 2). Then as he continues his description of faithfulness to God he calls us “to make every effort to preserve the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace” (v. 3). The phrase “make every effort” strikes me. It could alternately be translated “proceed quickly, hurry, be zealous, be eager, be conscientious or take pains.” This eagerness, conscientiousness, zeal and effort is to be directed towards the promotion and preservation of unity amongst Christians. As the previous chapters make clear, this does not only refer to relationships in individual congregations, but to the major divisions that separate Christians. The specific issue in this book is the division between Jew and Gentile (cf. Eph. 2:11ff.; 3:6). In our day, however, Paul’s burden can and must be brought to bear on all kinds of divisions relating to gender, ethnic, cultural, socio-economic, theological, and denominational divisions, as other biblical texts show Paul was already beginning to do (cf. Gal. 3:28; 1 Cor. 12:13). Paul here expresses that a manner of life that is faithful to Christ would “make every effort” to overcome these divisions and experience a loving unity with Christians that are different from ourselves.

My question is, do we really believe that to be faithful to Christ and the Gospel, we must make every effort towards unity? “Making every effort” is somewhat extreme. It’s not something you do once a year at a big event or think about every so often. To “make every effort” means it is one of our highest priorities, a concern that is regularly and consistently on our hearts and minds. It is something we earnestly desire, pray for, and work for. Are we content to see other Christians that are different from us and dismiss them because of their “deficiencies” (translate: the ways they express their Christianity differently than us)? Or are we content to see other Christians as a threat to us and our ways rather than seeing them as key to our experience of the fullness of Christ? When we understand what Paul is saying, we see Christian unity not as a luxury, not as something that might be nice, but as an absolute essential.

Perhaps our difficulty with unity lies in a different conception of Christianity. Paul grounds his appeal to unity and love in a beautiful, almost poetic statement:

One body and one spirit;
Just as you all were called in one hope of your calling.
One Lord
One faith
One baptism
One God and Father of all
Who is over all, and through all, and in all. (Ephesians 4:4-6)

Where we often talk about a “personal faith” unique to each person, Paul speaks of the Church having “one faith.” We fret over individual callings while Paul speaks of the Church’s one calling. We ground our faithfulness to Christ on having a personal vision for our lives. Paul directs us to faithful living by giving us a common vision for the one Church. While the personal dimensions are important, when they become paramount to the minimization or exclusion of the corporate nature of the Church, its faith, and its calling, our understanding and expression of Christianity is twisted and distorted. Every personal expression of faith, calling, vision, and gifting finds its meaning, significance, and goal within the larger context of the oneness of the Church, rather than vice versa.

While much, much more could be said about this, it at least alerts us that the common attitude of passion for one’s own gifting, vision, and calling, alongside a bitter, critical, or simply indifferent attitude towards “the Church” is thoroughly non-Pauline and entirely discordant with any form of Christianity the apostles would have recognized. It beckons us first and foremost to cultivate a love, vision, and passion for the singular faith and calling of the unified Church whom Christ loved and gave himself for. When our passion is primarily for the splendor and glory of the Church, rather than the expression of our own gifts and callings, we know we are on the right track and are aligned with Christ’s own priorities (cf. Eph. 5:26-27). When this happens, our personal experience of faith, vision, and calling will acquire a beauty, depth, richness, and stability we may have never previously known.

Related Posts

Posted in Ecclesiology (Church), Paul | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

Why Greek Matters (Part 6): Christ in Y’all, the Hope of Glory

Posted on May 3, 2012 by Richard

I am not from Texas. I am not remotely from anywhere in the South. I am a Yankee to the core. Nevertheless, I believe one of the primary deficiencies of my version of the English language is the lack of a word like “y’all.”

The Greek language (like many languages) has (at least) two forms of the word “you,” a singular form and a plural form (akin to y’all). However, you would never know this reading an English Bible. The following verses (plus scores others) all use a plural form of “you”, but from the standard English translation you would never have any idea:

Matt. 5:13 - You (y’all) are the salt of the earth…You (y’all) are  the light of the world.

Matt. 7:2 – “For in the way you (y’all) judge, you (y’all) will be judged; and by your (y’all’s) standard of measure, it will be measured to you.

Rom. 12:2 – (y’all) do not be conformed to this world, but (y’all) be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you (y’all) may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and  acceptable and perfect.

1Cor. 1:4    I thank  my God always concerning you (y’all) for the grace of God which was given you (y’all) in Christ Jesus…even as  the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed  in you (y’all), so that you (y’all) are not lacking in any gift…

1Cor. 3:16    Do you (y’all) not know that  you are a (singular) temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in you (y’all)?

This “plural you” has significant implications for how we interpret verses on almost every page of the Bible. For example, in Romans 12, is Paul’s goal that each individual would be able to personally prove what is the will of God for their individual life? Or is this discernment process something that “y’all” do together in community? Are you individually the salt of the earth and the light of the world, or are the people of God collectively the salt and light?

Luke 17:21 is an oft quoted verse in which the KJV, NKJV and the NIV read, “the kingdom of God is within you.” This is frequently interpreted as the Amplified Bible has in its gloss “the Kingdom of God is within you [in your hearts]…” Is the Kingdom of God in our hearts? This idea was strongly promoted in the nineteenth century as classical theological liberalism approached its height. It is precisely what Adolf von Harnack says in What is Christianity?:

“The kingdom of God comes by coming to the individual, by entering into his soul and laying hold of it. True, the kingdom of God is the rule of God; but it is the rule of the holy God in the hearts of individuals…From this point of view everything that is dramatic in the external and historical sense has vanished; and gone, too, are all the external hopes for the future.” [Adolf von Harnack, What is Christianity? Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1956, 56]

Ironically, when evangelical Christians talk about the Kingdom of God being “in their hearts,” they are in essence spouting off, not Christian orthodoxy, not something a first-century Jewish man credibly could have said, but essential classical theological liberalism, the same theological liberalism which is ready to dispense with the deity of Jesus, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, the second coming of Jesus, the new creation of all things, etc. In Harnack’s mind, the notion of the Kingdom being “internal” was very much related to the way he jettisoned “all the external hopes for the future,” i.e., the New Creation of Heaven and Earth.

Because the “you” is plural, Jesus’ saying would be better translated (as the NRSV, TNIV and NASB do), “the Kingdom of God is in your midst.” The Kingdom is not a “spiritual” principle, but the demonstrable intervention of God in time and space to restore and renew life on earth. Thus the purpose of the saying is not to describe an “internal” reality of the Kingdom, but rather, the demonstration and experience of the Kingdom of God in the shared life and experience of God’s people in the public world.

A related verse is Colossians 1:27, which is often translated, “Christ in you, the  hope of glory.” I’m sure it won’t surprise you to hear that the “you” in this verse is also plural, although you would never know it from your English Bible. Paul is not saying that “Christ-living-inside-of-you” is the hope of glory. While of course he would not deny the reality of Christ dwelling inside the believer, this is not the point of the verse. Rather, it is Christ in the midst of the Church, the experience of the Messiah in forming a redeemed and redemptive community of self-giving love, forgiveness, reconciliation, healing, restoration and renewal, that is the hope of glory, namely, the sign in the present that gives us expectation for the fresh work of grace God will accomplish when he makes all things new at the end. The presence of Christ in the community of the redeemed is even now the present experience and advance pledge of the restoration of all things which fills our hearts with confidence and eager expectation of its certain consummation.

Related Posts

Posted in Gospels, Paul | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

Why Greek Matters (Part 5) – Closing Your Bowels and the Meaning of Love (1 John 3:17)

Posted on April 28, 2012 by Richard

1224946_23739067

I’m unsure if you’ll believe me, but I am not preparing to launch into a discussion on bodily processes, but rather, New Testament Greek and the New Testament concept of love. I have often heard sincere Christian people define love as something like “acting to promote the well-being of others.” I can understand, both the perspective that would see this definition as initially odd, as well as those who would affirm it in reaction to sentimentalized or exclusively eroticized understandings of love. However, I would contend it is impossible to define love as “acting to promote the well-being of others.” This may be something we include in our understanding of love, or indeed make part of the core – but this in itself cannot occupy the place of primacy. As an illustration, the person working at a restaurant who washes their hands prior to preparing your food is certainly “acting to promote your well-being,” but one would be hard pressed to further assert that they were “loving” you. Like illustrations could be multiplied ad nauseum, demonstrating there must be something more fundamental to love than “beneficial action” that in fact constitutes it as love.

I think the one of the clearest Biblical portrayals of such is in 1 John 3:17. The NRSV for this verse reads:

How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?

The NASB is a little closer when it says:

But  whoever has the world’s goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him,  how does the love of God abide in him?

The TNIV is closer still (though in a less literal fashion):

If any one of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you?

The underlined phrase in each verse is literally the expression “closes their bowels from them” (κλείσῃ τὰ σπλάγχνα αὐτοῦ ἀπ᾿ αὐτοῦ // kleisē ta splanxna autou ap autou). The Greek work splanxnon (σπλάγχνον) literally means “intestines” or “bowels” and was understood as the seat of the passions and strong emotions.[1] Here John brings together what cannot be separated – action to alleviate the suffering and needs of others, which is motivated by a deep-felt concern. One apart from the other is not love. John is adamant – if one shut’s their bowels from another, if they fail to have deep and powerful feelings that motivate acts of service and kindness, “how does the love of God remain in them?” Failure to have compassion is a failure of love that cannot be compensated even with more action. Obviously, this is challenging, for we know it is impossible to turn on powerful emotions at will. However, let us not create a “theology of barrenness,” which seeks to justify our condition and surely falls short of God’s own nature and his expressed intentions for us. Does God act for us in a beneficial but detached manner? Is this the highest modality we could envisage for humanity? Rather, let us seek to know the Love of God. We love because he first loved us. Let us open our hearts rather than close them. Let us devote ourselves to consider, meditate on and receive the Love of God, and that as it remains in us, find ourselves transformed as people who love others from the depths of our affections.

[1] Stephen Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John (Dallas: Word, 1984), 197

Related Posts

Posted in John (Gospel and Epistles) | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Why Greek Matters (Part 4) – The Lamb is Worthy (Revelation 5)

Posted on April 16, 2012 by Richard

1148008_33799222

Jesus is worthy to take the scroll and open its seals (Rev. 5:9). Jesus is worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing (Rev. 5:12). What is the relationship between these two ascriptions of worthiness? Why precisely is Jesus worthy? In Revelation 4 and 5 we see a dramatic scene of the heavenly temple in which God’s limitless beauty is being lauded with unceasing adoration.

Chapter five centers around a scroll sealed with seven seals. What is the scroll? What are its written content? In light of observations that:

1) The scroll is not actually open until all the seals are broken

2) The seals sequentially release the judgments described in the following chapters (6-18)

3) The seventh seal seems to contain within itself the seven trumpets

4) The seventh trumpet seems to contain within itself the seven bowls

Therefore, it appears that the scroll is not open until all the judgments in the Revelation 6-18 are completed. Thus, the content of the scroll itself cannot be the judgments in chs. 6-18, but rather has to do with the restoration and renewal of the earth described in Revelation 20-22. The scroll is God’s plan to fully redeem and restore his creation.

The question at hand in Revelation 5 is “who is worthy to take the scroll and open its seals?” Someone who is “worthy” is needed to execute and oversee the removal of the seals, i.e,  the judgments that will remove all wickedness from the earth. Someone with a unique expertise is needed and strangely enough, God himself, the one seated on the throne, does not seem to be able to do it. What we learn as the passage proceeds is that the Lamb (meaning Jesus) is worthy and his unique qualification is he was slain. This entails at least three aspects:

1) The crucifixion – Jesus entered into the experience of human pain and felt first hand the plight of our god-forsaken fallen existence (Mk. 15:34). He knows and understands the human condition and the human frame. He truly and fully is sympathetic towards us in every way because he became like us in every way (Heb. 2:17; 4:15). He can be trusted to administrate the cleansing of the earth in ways that are neither arbitrary nor insensitive.

2) The resurrection – this aspect is often missed – but how is a Lamb that was slain standing? Dead animals don’t stand up – only living ones do. Furthermore, you don’t talk to or praise dead beings – only living ones. Therefore, since the Lamb is standing and he is being praised, the implication is that he is alive and has been raised from the dead, as confessed elsewhere in the NT and previously in this book (Rev. 1:18). This is additionally asserted by saying the “Lamb has overcome” – i.e., overcome Sin and Death. As the Messiah, has fought the decisive battle and overcome the enemies of humanity. He is qualified to execute the judgments and unfold the plan of God’s redemption because he is the Lord of Life, the steward of the earth’s true restoration as the one who has already partaken of its resurrection life.

3) The restoration of humanity – He was slain in order to “redeem for God” people from all nations in order to be “a kingdom of priests” who will “reign on the earth.” Biblically speaking, “redeem” refers to the Exodus, where God “redeemed his people with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm.” (cf. Ex. 6:6, 15:13; Deut. 7:8; 9:26; 13:5; 15:15; 21:8; 24:18; 1 Chr. 17:21; Neh. 1:10; Isa. 51:10; 63:9). Through his death and resurrection, Jesus has enacted the great “New Exodus” from the pharaoh of history – Death itself. This redemption however, was not to wisp us off to heaven, but so we might “reign on earth,” in restoration of God’s original intent for humans to rule the earth (Gen. 1:27ff). As Jesus administrates the judgments in Revelation 6-18, we know that He is the one who is redeeming and restoring humanity’s creational purpose, rather than destroying it.

With that as an introduction, my observation from the Greek text is the ascription that Jesus is worthy to take the scroll (5:9) and that he is worthy to receive glory and honor, etc. (5:12) are in parallel. Both use exactly the same word in the exact same form, labein, which can mean either to take or receive.  Jesus is worthy to take (labein) the scroll and he is worthy to receive (labein) the praise. This observation could mean a lot of things, but it at least means that we are intended to understand that the taking of the scroll, the execution of the judgments and the restoration of the earth has an explicit connection to his receiving all of the praise and glory.

I occasionally hear expressions like “I praise Jesus because he is worthy,” or the like. I understand and appreciate the sentiment, but the Bible itself does not stop there. The reason we worship Jesus is not simply “he is worthy,” end of sentence. The Bible tells us why he is worthy and hence gives a substantive reason for our praise. We should take great care lest “I’m praising him because he is worthy” subtly becomes “I’m praising him for no reason I’m aware of or can articulate.” The ensuing result would undoubtedly be an increasingly lifeless and insipid worship maintained only by sheer mechanical force of will. The very power and impetus behind our worship is the blazing revelation of what God in and through Messiah has accomplished by his death, resurrection and inaugural restoration of the human race, as well as the full renewal of the earth he will accomplish when the events of the Book of Revelation fully unfold. Praise is not a duty, but the spontaneous eruption of our hearts when we encounter what we love and delight in, when we are overwhelmed with gratitude and awe. As we become enthralled with the substantive reasons of Jesus’ worthiness, namely his mighty acts of redemption and love exemplified in the cross, resurrection, restoration of creation, and even the eschatological judgments, worship will be an instinctual reflex – an unfettered and unforced surge of affection and adulation to the one we truly know to be worthy.

Related Posts

Posted in Revelation | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments

Why Greek Matters (Part 3) – Into the Age – The Meaning of “Eternity” in the New Testament

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Richard

Medieval Clock

The word eternity never occurs in the New Testament. Neither does the word forever.

This is the third part in a series attempting to show some of the difference it makes in reading or studying the New Testament using Greek rather than only English. Since I teach NT Greek, I am often asked regarding the purpose or benefits of learning Greek to study the Bible. Unfortunately there is no magic in Greek which suddenly makes the Bible unlock its secrets. Instead, there are a lot of small differences and nuances that reading the Greek text makes, which add to a considerable cumulative whole. The present series hopes to identify and illuminate just a few of these. This ideally will encourage those currently or considering studying Greek to persevere in their aims. It also should be of help to those who do not know Greek to simply understand a little more what is going on “under the hood” of their English Bible.

Rather than the words “eternity” or “forever”, what occurs is the Greek word aiōn (αἰών), which literally means “age.” This is not age in the sense of how old someone is, but age in the sense of “a long period of time.” Aiōn is from where we get our modern English word “eon.” Two phrases in Greek, “into the age” (eis ton aiōna, εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα) or “into the ages of ages” (eis tous aiōnas tōn aiōnōn, εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων) are almost always translated as “forever” or “forever and ever” in English Bibles. The adjectival form of aiōn (aiōnios, αἰώνιος) is usually translated as “eternal.”

Granted, when aiōn is used in these ways the sense of limitless duration is often implied. The question at hand however, is how does the meaning transfer or change when brought into English? In ancient Greek usage, aiōn was used to speak of a person’s life, their lifetime, a generation, an “age,” or length of time in the past. It was not until Plato (ca. 429-347 BC) that it began to mean “eternity,” which for him was a “timeless, ideal eternity, in which there are no days or months or years” (TDNT I, 198). Does aiōn in the New Testament mean eternity, or furthermore mean something akin to Plato’s definition of timeless eternity? Obviously, since nearly all English Bibles translate eis ton aiōna as “forever” the answer to the former and often latter is assumed yes. What the English Bibles don’t show, is that these and many other passages also use the word “aiōn:”

Matt. 12:32 “Whoever  speaks a word against the Son of Man, it shall be forgiven him; but whoever  speaks against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, either in this age or in the age to come.

Matt. 13:22 “And the one on whom seed was sown among the thorns, this is the man who hears the word, and the worry of the  world (lit., “age,” aiōn) and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, and it becomes unfruitful.

Matt. 13:39 and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the  end of the age; and the reapers are angels. 40 “So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the  end of the age.

Mark 10:30 but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in  the present age, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and farms, along with persecutions; and in the age (aiōn) to come, eternal (aiōnios) life.

Rom. 12:2 And do not be conformed to this  world (“age,” aiōn), but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may   prove what the will of God is, that which is good and  acceptable and perfect.

Eph. 2:2 in which you formerly walked according to the  course of this world (“age”, aiōn), according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.

Furthermore, the sheer fact that we frequently see the word aiōn appear in the plural indicates to us that a strict concept of eternity is not possible, for to speak of “eternities” is illogical. If eternity is limitless, there cannot be two or more “eternities” in the future.

Without wanting to oversimplify the issue, it seems to me like the word aiōn in the New Testament generally means what it literally means: “age.” In a Jewish context, this would refer to the “two-age eschatology” which had been significantly developed in the intertestimental period (though derived from the canonical Hebrew Scriptures). The present “age” is characterized by unrighteousness, suffering, disorder, injustice, etc. However, they believed God would intervene and enact a “coming age,” in which justice, life, peace and joy would prevail as God vindicates his afflicted people. This “age to come” would be inaugurated by the resurrection of the dead and the advent of renewed bodily existence. This gives a completely different picture “aiōn” than the too-often quasi-Platonized concepts we read into “eternity.”

Thus “eternal life” is not simply floating off into an ethereal realm of whimsical timeless, formless existence. It does not even mostly refer to the limitless duration of it (though it certainly implies that). Rather, “eternal life” is the “life of the age,” that is, the life of the “age to come” (TDNT I, 206). Eternal life is participation in the restoration of all things when God redeems and re-creates the earth and all that is in it, in full righteousness, justice, peace and prosperity. Eternal life is the undoing of Sin and Death’s every effect, and is further the consummation of God’s intent for his creation to experience the heights of joy ordained for our physical, bodily, sensory, emotional, relational, communal, and cultural existence on earth.

This highlights how radical it is when Jesus tells his followers that they presently possess eternal life (Jn. 3:36; 5:24; 6:47). He is not simply telling them they will live a long time. Neither is he telling them they will certainly get into heaven. He is telling them that the “life of the age to come” has somehow burst forth in the midst of the present and is the shared possession of all those who believe in Him. The eschatological restoration has begun in, among and through those who have given their full allegiance to Jesus, the Lord of the new world.

Related Posts

Posted in Eschatology (Last Things), Gospels, John (Gospel and Epistles), Soteriology (Salvation) | Tagged , , | 6 Comments