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οὐ µόνον ἐν τῷ 5 αἰῶνι τούτῳ ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐν τῷ ἢ µέλλοντι: 22. καὶ g Matt.
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h Matt. xii. 32; Heb. vi. 5. Heb. viii. 10, x. 16; Rev. passim. 19 only.
but also in that which is to come. The statement of Christ’s absolute and un- matched supremacy is brought to its height by this last generalisation, which embraces within its sweep the totality of created objects not only as they now are, but as they may hereafter be in any possible future. The word αἰών here as elsewhere, has the idea of duyation at its foundation. It means “age,” ‘ aeon,” and as used of the world presents it, in distinction from κόσμος, in its temporal aspect, ‘this present state of things”. The Jews spoke of the period before
Messiah’s Advent as my ήν, “this age,” and of the period introduced
by that event as N2i7 odiyn, “the
coming age’, So the NT writers desig- nate the period preceding the final Return or Parousia of Christ ὃ αἰὼν οὗτος (also ὁ νῦν αἰών, τ Tim. vi. 17; 6 ἐνεστὼς αἰών, Gal. 1. 4; or simply 6 αἰών, Matt. xiv. 22), and the period beginning with the Parousia ὃ αἰὼν ὁ μέλλων (also 6 αἰὼν ἐκεῖνος, Lk. xx. 35; 6 αἰὼν 6 ἐρχό- μενος, Mk. x. 30; Lk. xviii. 30; cf. οἱ αἰῶνες ot ἐπερχόμενοι, Eph. ii. 7).
This paragraph gives simply a positive statement of the exaltation of Christ, His sovereign and unshared supremacy over all. It makes no reference to Jewish or Gnostic speculations inconsistent with this. It is different with the great sec- tion in the sister Epistle to the Colossians. There we see that such speculations were rife in at least one of the Churches of the Lycus valley. The statements in that Epistle have an unmistakable reference to theosophic notions akin to the Gnostic ideas of emanations—notions of angelic intermediaries between God and the world; against which the Apostle has to assert the exclusive relation of Christ to the whole system of things, seen and unseen, earthly and celestial, as the Creator of all, the Upholder of all, the One Being in whom resided all the forces pertaining to the maintenance and ad- ministration of things. The literature of Judaism makes it also clear that by Paul’s time the Jews had constructed a some- what elaborate system of Angelology, with theories of graduated positions and
i Luke ii. 51 al. fr.; Ps. viii. 6.
Xi. 32; Rom. xii. 2 al. fr. k John iii. 16, 35; ch. iv. 11;
l=1 Cor. xi. 3; ch. iv. 15; ver. 23; Col. i. 18, ii. 1ο,
distinctive functions. The Book of Enoch (Ixi. το) speaks of “angels of power and angels of principality”. The Book of the Secrets of Enoch (xx. 1, 3) describes the heavenly host as consisting of ten troops—lordships, principalities, powers, cherubim, seraphim, thrones, etc. In the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (Levi 3) six orders are named, of which the high- est are the θρόνοι, ἐξουσίαι, occupying the seventh heaven, while the δυνάμεις are the fifth in order and are assigned to the third heaven. The same general doctrine appears also in Ephraem Syrus (i., p. 270), who gives three great divisions of the celestial world, viz. (1) θεοί, θρόνοι, κυριότητες ; (2) ἀρχάγγελοι, ἀρχαί, ἐξ- ουσίαι; (3) ἄγγελοι, δυνάμεις, χερουβίμ, σεραφίμ. Inthe De Princip. of Origen (i., 5, 3, etc.) five orders are named, rising from the τάξις ἀγγελική to ἀρχαί, ἐξουσίαι, θρόνοι, and finally κυριότητες. But the conception of a great, graduated angelic hierarchy was elaborated most fully by the author of the remarkable book, De Coelesti Hierarchia, the so- called Dionysius the Areopagite. There we find a scheme of orders in three sets of three, descending from the highest to the lowest: Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones; Dominations, Virtues, Powers (or Author- ities) ; Principalities, Archangels, Angels. Hence the sublime description in Dante (Paradiso, canto xxxviii.) and Milton’s “Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers” (Paradise Lost, v., 601).