Jacob M. Wright on Aionios

Jacob M. Wright is a universalist.

The Greek word “aionios” is the word translated “eternal” every time you see it in the New Testament, including where it talks about “eternal fire” and “eternal punishment”. This word “aionios” does not mean never-ending. The Greeks had a word which signified “endless” but that word was not employed for these matters. The word “aionios” is the adjective form of “aion” which is where we get our word “eon”, which means an age but also can mean “an unknown period”. It’s equivalent in Hebrew is the word “olam”, which could be poetically described as going “into the horizon” as well as pertaining to that which is “hidden” or only known to God. “Olam” is used for hills (“the everlasting hills”), ages (“from everlasting to everlasting”), and judgments on Israel in the Old Testament that had a beginning and an end.

G. Campbell Morgan, a now deceased yet renowned Bible expositor, makes the following remarkable observation concerning “aionios”:

“Let me say to Bible students that we must be very careful how we use the word eternity. We have fallen into great error in our constant use of that word. There is no word in the whole book of God corresponding with our eternal, which, as commonly used among us, means absolutely without end.”

• “It must be admitted that the Greek word which is rendered ‘eternal’ does not, in itself, involve endlessness, but rather, duration, whether through an age or succession of ages, and that it is therefore applied in the New Testament to periods of time that have had both a beginning and ending.” (Elliots Commentary on the Whole Bible)

• “The adjective ‘aionios’ in like manner carries the idea of time. Neither the noun nor the adjective in themselves carries the sense of ‘endless’ or ‘everlasting.’ Aionios means enduring through or pertaining to a period of time.” (Dr. Marvin Vincent, Word Studies of the New Testament)

• “Since aion meant ‘age,’ aionios means, properly, ‘belonging to an age,’ or ‘age-long,’ and anyone who asserts that it must mean ‘endless’ defends a position which even Augustine practically abandoned twelve centuries ago. Even if aion always meant ‘eternity,’ which is not the case in classic or Hellenistic Greek, aionios could still mean only ‘belonging to eternity’ and not ‘lasting through it.'” (Dr. Farrars book, Mercy and Judgment)

• “Since, as we have seen, the noun aion refers to a period of time it appears, very improbable that the derived adjective aionios would indicate infinite duration, nor have we found any evidence in Greek writing to show that such a concept was expressed by this term.” (Time and Eternity by G. T. Stevenson)

• “The Bible has no expression for endlessness. All the Biblical terms imply or denote long periods.” (Professor Herman Oldhausen, German Lutheran theologian)

• “The Hebrew was destitute of any single word to express endless duration. The pure idea of eternity is not found in any of the ancient languages.” (Professor Knappe of Halle)

Professor J.I. Packer admits, “Granted that, as is rightly urged, ‘eternal’ (aionios) in the New Testament means ‘belonging to the age to come’ rather than expressing any directly chronological notion [as in endlessness].”

New Testament scholar N.T. Wright agrees and says the following:

“Aionios relates to the Greek ‘aion’, which often roughly translates the Hebrew ‘olam’. Some Jews thought of there being two ‘ages’ – ha olam ha-zeh, the present age, and ha olam ha-ba, the age to come. Aionios punishment and the like would be the punishment in the age to come.”

“Eternal life” and “eternal punishment” could more properly be translated “other-worldly life” and “other-worldly punishment”, not denoting endlessness, but denoting a life that has its essence in God/the age to come, and a punishment that has its essence in God/the age to come. The life obviously does not end, although this is not signified by the word “aionios”, but rather because it is the life in connection with the eternal source of life, what we were purposed for, not to mention that other Scriptures talk about death being defeated and us being given immortality.

To give an example of how the word “olam” does not mean “endless duration”, we can cite the following passages:

Genesis 49:26 mentions “the everlasting [olam] hills.” Never-ending hills? The NIV actually translates this verse correctly as “the age-old hills”. Psalm 90:2 says, “from everlasting [olam] to everlasting [olam] You are God.” If everlasting is endless duration, how can you go from one endless duration to the next endless duration? This is obviously a nonsensical idea. So that verse is better translated “From age to age You are God”. In Isaiah 42:14 says, God says, “I have kept silent for a long [olam] time.” If that means God kept silent forever, then how is it that he was speaking? Genesis 6:4 spoke of “Mighty men which were of old [olam].” Mighty men which were never-ending? 1 Samual 27:8 says, “They were the inhabitants of the land from ancient [olam] times.” Inhabitants of the land from endless eternity? Joshua 24:2 says, “From ancient [olam] times your fathers lived beyond the River.” Their fathers lived beyond the River from eternity? There is also Genesis 17:14 where it talks about circumcision being an “everlasting [olam] covenant”, and yet Paul specifically tells us that the people of God are no longer required to be circumcised.

These are just a few of the ways that “olam” was used, and never in a way that denoted “endless duration.”

What about where it says of the beast and the false prophet: “The smoke of their torment rises forever and ever”? The original Greek word is:

“aionas ton aionon.”

“Aion” is where we get our word “eon” and it means essentially the same thing: an age. “Ton” does not mean “and” but rather “of” or “belonging to”. So a proper translation of this is

“The smoke of their torment rises unto the age of the ages.”

This makes sense when you realize that forever and ever doesn’t even make sense. Forever and then another ever? Forever plus some more ever? “Forever and ever” to us has become a way to emphasize a things eternality, but in the Greek such a concept did not exist and its redundancy would have been considered ridiculous.

“Perhaps the most significant example of this for our purposes is Isaiah 34:9-10, for it closely parallels the two passages in Revelation. In this passage Isaiah says that the fire that shall consume Edom shall burn ‘night and day’ and ‘shall not be quenched.’ Its smoke ‘shall go up forever’ and no one shall pass through this land again ‘forever and ever.’ Obviously, this is symbolic, for the fire and smoke of Edom’s judgment isn’t still ascending today. If this is true of Isaiah, we should be less inclined to interpret similar expressions in the book of Revelation literally.” – Greg Boyd

Olam comes from a Hebrew verb root alam, which means to hide. Olam/aionios is broad in meaning, and its basic meaning is something hidden, indefinite, undisclosed, otherworldly, or age-lasting.

These words are completely different than our English and convey meanings of past as well as future. For instance when it says “the everlasting hills”, the word “everlasting” is a poor translation because it is not meant to convey that the hills will remain in place for all of eternity, but that the hills are age-during and go into the distance. When you’re talking about ancient hills going off into the horizon, or smoke rising “unto the ages” it can simply be a powerful statement using poetic emphasis on what is being described.

So when “olam” or “aion” describe God’s existence, it is conveying that his existence is of the hidden, other-worldly realm. While God’s existence is indeed never-ending, this is not signified by the word “olam/aionios”.

So what are we saved from if not from eternal hell in the afterlife? Nowhere in Scripture does it declare that the consequence of sin has to do with a never-ending judicial punishment of torment for a short 20 to 80 year span of sinning (depending on how long you are fortunate to live), but everywhere it says that the consequence of sin is an ontological corruption leading to a marred world at war with itself, detached from God-awareness, and resulting in injustice and suffering and finally death. This consequence of sin, which is the experiential reality of all of us, is triumphed over in Christ.

William Finck’s Summary of Hitler’s Economic Program

“…the economic plan which Adolf Hitler had for Germany insisted that the nation could recover from the post-War dilemmas and the banker-imposed depression without a usury-based currency, by manufacturing for itself everything it could, and only paying for anything it couldn’t manufacture but had to import with barter.”

“Hitler’s belief that ‘the standing of the higher classes must not be lowered but that of the lower classes must be raised’ is precisely the antithesis to Marx. Note the words of Stephen Goodson cited earlier, that ‘In Byzantium, the Roman empire of the East, interest had been officially limited to 5%, give or take, but this could only be enforced under emperors who were strong. Basil II for example, rejected interest altogether and forced wealthy landowners to financially assist poorer peasants.’ Adolf Hitler eliminated a currency based upon usury from the German economy, which effected that same thing.”

“Here we see that Hitler believed in the same concept of equality as the American founders, in their original intent, that all people are equal in the eyes of the law, but not in the absurd notions that they should be equal in class or ability, or even in opportunity.”

“Adolf Hitler was democratically elected, but his political philosophy was that a chosen leader should have full power and authority, which is certainly autocratic and in opposition to traditional democracy. But as we see here, property remained in private hands for private use for private profit, in opposition to Marxism. One difference, however, is that the state had a right to see that property was used for the benefit of the people as well as the owners, and not against the welfare of the people. In America and England until some time in the 19th century, the legislative bodies which issued corporate charters served that same function on behalf of their own respective peoples.”

“Some contend that Hitler was Marxist because of the nationalization of heavy industry. But what they do not realize is that the natural resources of the land itself belongs to the people who spilled their blood to hold it, and not to capitalist speculators.”

https://christogenea.org/podcasts/protocols-satan-part-26-new-lords-manor

Four Articles on the Taliban

Nathan J. Robinson and Noam Chomsky, “What Do We Owe Afghanistan?”, August 3, 2022.

This is a sobering article to read: how the Taliban offered to turn over Bin-Laden to the U.S. (if it provided evidence of his guilt) or a neutral nation; the decimation U.S. attacks waged on Afghan villages and the women and children in them; and how U.S. attempts to “help” Afghanistan enriched contractors rather than attending to infrastructure. This article reiterates a point Chomsky made in a podcast: that the U.S. is actually hindering cash flow to Afghanistan, thereby hindering its economy and contributing to the humanitarian crisis. To quote the article: “After the Taliban took over the country in August 2021, the United States froze $9 billion in Afghan central bank assets, which ‘functionally cut the country off from many foreign banks and left the Central Bank of Afghanistan unable to access its reserves and shore up the country’s cash flow.'”

Eric Margolis, “Like It or Not, Taliban Is Afghanistan’s True Independence Movement,” August 17, 2021.

The Taliban in the 1980’s resisted the Soviet Union, protected women from Soviet rapists, and dramatically reduced opium production. Margolis states regarding the Taliban’s opposition to the education of women: “Afghanistan’s urban education system was heavily infiltrated by the Afghan Communist Party which used female education as a way of infiltrating government. A major reason for Taliban’s hostility to female education was that it was viewed as a communist plot.”

Defense Priorities: “Debunking the Safe-Haven Myth in Afghanistan,” September 8, 2021.

Its rebuttal of the “safe-haven” myth: “True, between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban provided Al-Qaeda with safe-harbor in effort to get help consolidating control over Afghan territory. Al-Qaeda exploited the Taliban’s hospitality to pursue attacks abroad, often without sanction from Taliban leaders.”

How women fared poorly even under U.S. occupation: “the U.S. occupation brought new troubles, including the return of some kleptocratic warlords who brutalized the population before Taliban rule, now ensconced within the Afghan government with U.S. blessing. Local elites also exploited U.S. support to have rivals branded as terrorists and attacked or shipped to Guantanamo Bay…Under these various regimes, women’s rights in rural areas like Sangin remained nonexistent by western standards. What varied was how much they suffered due to war and corruption. This all aided Taliban recruitment and built support among exhausted and brutalized people. Since the end of U.S. ground operations in 2014, the Taliban took over significant portions of Helmand Province.”

Ann Coulter, “Defund the World’s Police,” September 1, 2021.

Conservative pundit Ann Coulter, who defended George W. Bush’s foreign policy throughout the 2000’s, later praises Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. Here is a poignant thought: “Miller boasts: ‘The Afghan people broadly support the country’s new constitution.’ That’s true if ‘broadly’ means ‘not at all.’ Ninety-nine percent of Afghans say they want to live under Sharia law, according to 2013 polling by Pew.”

Unz: Why Do Americans Hate Putin?, by Mike Whitney

“These are largely the issues upon which the authors decided that Putin was headed in ‘the wrong direction.’ He wouldn’t support their reckless military interventions, he wouldn’t hand Russia’s oil over to rapacious oligarchs, he wouldn’t look the other way while governments in his neighborhood were toppled by Washington one-by-one, and he wouldn’t snap a salute and click his heels when he got his marching orders from Washington. These are the reasons he is viciously attacked in the media and regarded as Washington’s blood enemy. He simply refused to be their lackey, which is why they’ve spent the last 17 years trying to destroy him.”

https://www.unz.com/mwhitney/why-do-americans-hate-putin/

Rebuttal of the “Jews Dominated Finance Because Christians Forbade Them to Own Land” Meme

“In fact, the ‘land’ cliché is far more convenient than explanatory. Indeed, it’s been directly challenged by the recent scholarship of Maristella Botticini of Bocconi University and Zvi Eckstein of Tel Aviv University, who point out that the timeline simply doesn’t jibe: Jews in Europe abandoned agrarian pursuits long before there were any landowning restrictions, and Jews in the Muslim world did so even though there never were any such restrictions. In Botticini and Eckstein’s telling, Jews who were super into being Jews were also super into traditional Jewish mandates like literacy and the education of sons. Armed with literacy and education, these Jews found they could make a lot more money away from the farm.”

“As UC Berkeley’s Professor John Efron points out, in the 1600s educated Polish Jews (doctors, especially) could own land. So in an inversion of the ‘Jews & land’ cliché, rather than becoming white-collar because they were banned from owning land, becoming white-collar allowed Jews to own land. It should be added that Jews made up a hugely disproportionate number of European doctors even during the centuries when they were prohibited from attending the continent’s medical schools (half of all Western European doctors were Jews during the Middle Ages), another flaw in the theory that Jews were pushed into occupations based on Christendom’s restrictions.”

The Jews Are Ye’s Misfortune

ECT in Josephus

James Mayuga posted the following comment on Facebook’s “Rethinking Hell” group on September 26, 2022:

I’m currently reading a physical copy of Annihilationism Not of the Bible by Nathan Dow George, first published in 1870. There’s a freely available online copy I’ll later link to. On page 78 I came across an interesting quote by Josephus on what Jews in general believed about the afterlife and eschatological punishment during his time [i.e. the 1st century].
[Links at the end of this post]

The passage from Josephus is 8 paragraphs long. A lot of it is very reminiscent of Jesus’ teaching on hell. Especially the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. So much so that I wonder if there has been some Christian interpolation as is universally recognized by scholars in the famous/infamous Testimonium Flavianum.

Paragraph 6 states:
//For all men, the just as well as the unjust, shall be brought before God the word: for to him hath the Father committed all judgment: and he, in order to fulfill the will of his Father, shall come as Judge, whom we call Christ. For Minos and Rhadamanthus are not the judges, as you Greeks do suppose, but he whom God and the Father hath glorified: Concerning Whom We Have Elsewhere Given A More Particular Account, For The Sake Of Those Who Seek After Truth. This person, exercising the righteous judgment of the Father towards all men, hath prepared a just sentence for every one, according to his works; at whose judgment-seat when all men, and angels, and demons shall stand, they will send forth one voice, and say, Just Is Thy Judgment; the rejoinder to which will bring a just sentence upon both parties, by giving justly to those that have done well an everlasting fruition; but allotting to the lovers of wicked works eternal punishment. To these belong the unquenchable fire, and that without end, and a certain fiery worm, never dying, and not destroying the body, but continuing its eruption out of the body with never-ceasing grief: neither will sleep give ease to these men, nor will the night afford them comfort; death will not free them from their punishment, nor will the interceding prayers of their kindred profit them; for the just are no longer seen by them, nor are they thought worthy of remembrance….//

Paragraph 6 has strong similarities to the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man. It states:
//……but when they have a near view of this spectacle, as of a terrible and exceeding great prospect of fire, they are struck with a fearful expectation of a future judgment, and in effect punished thereby: and not only so, but where they see the place [or choir] of the fathers and of the just, even hereby are they punished; for a chaos deep and large is fixed between them; insomuch that a just man that hath compassion upon them cannot be admitted, nor can one that is unjust, if he were bold enough to attempt it, pass over it.//

I’m reminded of Jewish convert to Christianity Alfred Edersheim’s 19th appendix to his classic book, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah (1883), titled “On Eternal Punishment, According to the Rabbis and the New Testament” where he claims that the two main schools of Jewish thought [the House of Shammai and the House of Hillel] both taught eternal conscious torment for at least some of the impenitent [namely, the extremely wicked]. Edersheim then states that given Jesus’ teaching it’s most probable that Jesus taught eternal conscious torment rather than annihilation or conditional immortality. Since Jesus didn’t preach in a historical/theological/cultural/literary vacuum and used phraseology that proponents of ECT in Jesus’ time used. I’m strongly inclined to agree with Edersheim.

Obviously we shouldn’t believe everything that Josephus relates concerning what many Jews in his time believed about hades and hell. Some of it might be superstition and the accretions of generations of Jewish speculation regarding eschatological punishments. Nevertheless, it does seem to me that the fact that Jews like Josephus used similar and identical words, phrases and expressions that the Lord Jesus used to refer to eternal conscious torment should lead to the Edersheim’s conclusion that Jesus most likely taught eternal conscious torment.

I’m wondering if anyone knows about whether scholars have determined there has been Christian interpolation in the 8 paragraphs of Josephus where he discusses hell and hades.

The Links:

An Extract Out Of Josephus’s Discourse To The Greeks Concerning Hades by Josephus
https://www.ccel.org/j/josephus/works/hades.htm

Appendix 19, On Eternal Punishment, According to the Rabbis and the New Testament by Alfred Edersheim
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/edersheim/lifetimes.xi.xviii.html

Annihilationism Not of the Bible by Nathan Dow George
https://books.google.com/books?id=Y_crAAAAYAAJ…

Also see other intertestamental literature like the book of Enoch which has statements that sometimes appear to teach CI and other times [IMO more frequently] ECT. I recently read two translations of 1st Enoch which are freely online:

http://www.textexcavation.com/enoch.html

Of the two translations, R.H. Charles’ was more literal:
http://wesley.nnu.edu/index.php?id=2126

Richard Laurence’s translation was more dynamic/free and had useful and informative translation notes:
http://www.johnpratt.com/items/docs/enoch.html

Wesley Smith on 1930’s German-Soviet Pact

“I have no particular commitment for any of the political machines in Europe. But I am interested in the race. But I know that the great heart of Christendom is just as deep in the people who occupy Germany and in the tradition and background of your faith. And is sweeping thru Germany just as it is in any other part of your race. And I know tonight, that they are the House of Judah. And I know that the Germans are a part of God’s plan. And I know that the enemy is out to destroy two heart centers of the Kingdom. They wanted to destroy Germany and they want to destroy America. Why? Because these two heart centers can keep the whole world from falling into Communist hands. And when Von Ribinkoff signed the non-aggression pact with Molotov, the agreement was that under no circumstances would any Russian equipment or troops come into Europe. And in that same agreement, no German troops would invade and cross the Danube and invade areas of Russia. But I want to bring this to your remembrance. The invasion of Finland and Poland was a violation of that pact. I want you to remember that when Germany invaded Poland because of the treatment of their nationals after the treaty of Versailles in the city of Danzig and the Corridor, that Russia had no right to invade Poland which was in Europe. I want you to know that when Russia invaded little Finland, it violated that pact.”

https://swift.christogenea.org/articles/americas-dilemma-1-14-62

The Dispossessed Majority, by Wilmot Robertson

Wilmot Robertson. The Dispossessed Majority. 1972.

Wilmot Robertson was a white nationalist and founder of Instauration magazine. This book was originally published in 1972, but the edition that I read was obviously after that, since Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton are mentioned in it.

The book is about the marginalization of the “majority” and its values in the United States. The “majority” refers to those of Northern European heritage, which includes the Anglo-Saxons and the Germans. One sign of marginalization that Robertson mentions is Reagan taking pride in his Irish heritage rather than his Anglo-Saxon ancestry. But another object of Robertson’s criticisms is a demise of an homogenous culture. Because we lack a homogenous culture, we have people with different understandings of the law trying, and failing, to co-exist. Because we lack a homogenous culture, people do not look out for one another in their neighborhoods, so people become victim to crime. Without some level of homogeneity, artists run into barriers communicating their message to their audience; yes, art is supposed to encourage us to think outside of the box, but there is such a thing as being too outside of the box! Robertson highlights other problems that he believes flow from diversity: racial quotas, judicial activism, the welfare state, etc. Robertson’s solution is for the whites to create an ethnostate, while say, people of African descent are either sent back to their country of ancestral origin or create their own communities in the U.S. In his section on foreign policy, Robertson, in part, talks about the ethnic issues of other countries, but, in his chapter on the Middle East, he discusses how the American Jewish community has influenced the U.S. to side with Israel, with disastrous results, since the Arab nations have the oil that the U.S. needs.

Some items of interest:

—-Robertson talks about one scientific view that the races developed separately from each other rather than one from another.

—-Robertson interacts with Toynbee’s answer to the question of why black Africans never developed a sophisticated civilization. Toynbee’s answer overlaps with that of J. Philippe Rushton, albeit without the genetic and evolutionary component. Essentially, Toynbee argues that black Africans never developed a civilization because their climates were hospitable, so they did not need the brain power that would be necessary to survive in harsh climates; without such brain power, they never could create and build a civilization. Robertson disagrees with Toynbee here, observing that civilizations have arisen in hospitable climates, and that some areas of Africa are far from hospitable to humans; for Robertson, hospitable climate makes a poor excuse for Africans’ failure. For Robertson, black Africans are as they are by nature, not due to their environment. Where Toynbee and Rushton would disagree is that Toynbee’s model is environmental: blacks are the way they are because of their environment, not by nature. Rushton, by contrast, would say that the environment shaped black Africans’ nature: they did not require a high IQ to survive, so they passed on low IQs to their offspring.

—-Robertson denies that Albert Einstein was the first to develop the theory of relativity. Rather, Einstein was puffed up as its originator because he could be promoted as the ideal celebrity, as least in terms of what the Jewish establishment wanted: Jewish and internationalist.

—-Another observation Robertson makes is that the Supreme Court justices on the Warren Court who supported civil liberties for the Communists were not so conscientious about the civil liberties of American Nazis or isolationists in the 1930’s.

The Twisted Logic of the Jewish ‘Historic Right’ to Israel — Zwinglius Redivivus

Our political culture insists on seeing the Jews as the direct descendants of the ancient Hebrews. But the Jews never existed as a ‘people’ – still less as a nation. Well one thing’s for sure- Sand won’t make any friends in Israel with this (not that he has any there anyway). Still, it’s a very […]

via The Twisted Logic of the Jewish ‘Historic Right’ to Israel — Zwinglius Redivivus