* As Lightfoot on Philip. ii. 9.
Cu. 1] THE SECOND EPISTLE TO THE THESSALONIANS. 59
It is sometimes translated world; world representing a period or a series of periods of time. See Matt. xii. 382; xiii. 40, 49; L. i. 70; 1 Cor. i. 20; ii. 6; Eph. i. 21. Similarly of aidves the worlds, the universe, the aggregate of the ages or periods, and their contents which are included in the duration of the world. 1 Cor. ii.7; x.11; Heb. i.2; ix. 26; xi. 3.
The word always carries the notion of time, and not of eternity. It always means a period of time. Otherwise it would be impossible to account for the plural, or for such qualifying expressions as this age, or the age to come. It does not mean something endless or everlasting. To deduce that meaning from its relation to de{ is absurd; for, apart from the fact that the meaning of a word is not definitely fixed by its deriva- tion, ded does not signify endless duration. When the writer of the Pastoral Epistles quotes the saying that the Cretans are always (det) liars (Tit. i. 12), he surely does not mean that the Cretans will go on lying to all eternity. See also Acts vii. 51; 2 Cor. iv. 11; vi.10; Heb. iii. 10; 1. Pet. iii. 15. “Ae/ means habitually or continually within the limit of the subject’s life. In our colloquial dialect everlastingly is used in the same way. “The boy is everlastingly tormenting me to buy him a drum.”
In the New Testament the history of the world is conceived as devel- oped through a succession of aeons. A series of such aeons precedes the introduction of a new series inaugurated by the Christian dispensation, and the end of the world and the second coming of Christ are to mark the beginning of another series. See Eph. iii. 11. Paul contemplates aeons before and after the Christian era. Eph. i. 21; ii. 7; iii. 9,21; 1 Cor. x. 11; comp. Heb. ix. 26. He includes the series of aeons in one great aeon, 6 aiwv Tév aiwvuy the aeon of the aeons (Eph. iii. 21); and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews describes the throne of God as enduring unto the acon of the aeons (Heb. i. 8). The plural is also used, aeons of the aeons, signifying all the successive periods which make up the sum total of the ages collectively. Rom. xvi. 27; Gal. i. 5; Philip. iv. 20, ete. This plural phrase is applied by Paul to God only.
The adjective aimvos in like manner carries the idea of time. Neither the noun nor the adjective, in themselves, carry the sense of endless or everlasting. They may acquire that sense by their connotation, as, on the other hand, diéuos, which means everlasting, has its meaning limited to a given point of time in Jude 6. “Accvos means enduring through or pertain- ing to a period of time. Both the noun and the adjective are applied to limited periods. Thus the phrase eis roy aidva, habitually rendered for- ever, is often used of duration which is limited in the very nature of the case. See, for a few out of many instances, LXX, Ex. xxi, 6; xxix. 9; xxxii. 13; Josh. xiv. 9; 1 Sam. viii. 18; Lev. xxv. 46; Deut. xv. 17; 1 Chron. xxviii. 4. See also Matt. xxi. 19; J. xiii. 8; 1 Cor. viii. 13. The same is true of aidvios. Out of 150 instances in LXX, four-fifths imply limited duration. For a few instances see Gen. xlvili. 4; Num. x. 8; xy. 15; Prov. xxii. 28; Jonah ii. 6; Hab ait.Gnlsaadsclosl 7,
Words which are habitually applied to things temporal or material can-
60 WORD STUDIES IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. [Cu. I.
not carry in themselves the sense of endlessness. Even when applied to God, we are not forced to render aidos everlasting. Of course the life of God is endless; but the question is whether, in describing God as aidvos, it was intended to describe the duration of his being, or whether some different and larger idea was not contemplated. That God lives longer than men, and lives on everlastingly, and has lived everlastingly, are, no doubt, great and significant facts; yet they are not the dominant or the most impressive facts in God’s relations to time. God’s eternity does not stand merely or chiefly for a scale of length. It is not primarily a mathe- matical but a moral fact. The relations of God to time include and imply far more than the bare fact of endless continuance. They carry with them the fact that God transcends time; works on different principles and on a vaster scale than the wisdom of time provides; oversteps the conditions and the motives of time; marshals the successive aeons from a point out- side of time, on lines which run out into his own measureless cycles, and for sublime moral ends which the creature of threescore and ten years cannot grasp and does not even suspect.