Eternal

Eternal - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

ETER'NAL, a. [L. oeternus, composed of oevum and ternus, oeviternus, Varro. The origin of the last component part of the word is not obvious. It occurs in diuturnus, and seems to denote continuance.]

1. Without beginning or end of existence.

The eternal God is thy refuge. Deu 33.

2. Without beginning of existence.

To know whether there is any real being, whose duration has been eternal.

3. Without end of existence or duration; everlasting; endless; immortal.

That they may obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory. 2 Tim 2.

What shall I do, that I may have eternal life? Mat 19.

Suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. Jude 7.

4. Perpetual; ceaseless; continued without intermission.

And fires eternal in thy temple shine.

5. Unchangeable; existing at all times without change; as eternal truth.

ETER'NAL, n. An appellation of God.

Eternity - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

ETER'NITY, n. [L. oeternitas.] Duration or continuance without beginning or end.

By repeating the idea of any length of duration, with the endless addition of number, we come by the idea of eternity.

The high and lofty one who inhabiteth eternity. Isa 57.

We speak of eternal duration preceding the present time. God has existed from eternity. We also speak of endless or everlasting duration in future, and dating from present time or the present state of things. Some men doubt the eternity of future punishment, though they have less difficulty in admitting the eternity of future rewards.

Everlasting - (Easton's Bible Dictionary)

Eternal, applied to God (Gen. 21:33; Deut. 33:27; Ps. 41:13; 90:2). We also read of the "everlasting hills" (Gen. 49:26); an "everlasting priesthood" (Ex. 40:15; Num. 25:13). (See [196]ETERNAL.)

Everlasting - (Webster's 1828 Dictionary)

EVERL`ASTING, a. [ever and lasting.] Lasting or enduring for ever; eternal; existing or continuing without end; immortal.

The everlasting God, or Jehovah. Gen 21.

Everlasting fire; everlasting punishment. Mat 18:25.

1. Perpetual; continuing indefinitely, or during the present state of things.

I will give thee, and thy seed after thee, the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession. Gen 17.

The everlasting hills or mountains. Genesis. Habakkuk.

2. In popular usage, endless; continual; unintermitted; as, the family is disturbed with everlasting disputes.

EVERL`ASTING, n. Eternity; eternal duration, past and future.

From everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. Psa 90.

1. A plant, the Gnaphalium; also, the Xeranthenum.

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 three score and ten instances, where the idea of unlimited duration appears to be meant. This is the usual method of expressing eternity in the Septuagint also. The aionios of 2Co 4:18 must be eternal, in a temporal use or reference, else the antithesis would be gone.

3. Aidios:

In Ro 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 Heb 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" (Joh 14:19). Therefore said Augustine, "Join thyself to the eternal God, and thou wilt be eternal."

See ETERNITY.

James Lindsay

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

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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 (Ge 21:33; De 33:27), though Isa 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 Ps 90:2, and of His kingdom as "an everlasting kingdom" (Da 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 Isa 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 Ac 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

ev-er-last'-ing (olam, `adh; aidios, aionios):

"Everlasting," in strictness, is that which endures forever; either that which has no beginning and will have no end (in which sense it is applicable to God only), or that which, having a beginning, will have no end, but henceforth will exist forever (thus of beings created for immortality; see IMMORTALITY). Figuratively also the term is applied to objects of impressive stability and long duration, as mountains, hills (eg. Ge 49:26; Hab 3:6).

Of the terms indicated as rendered by this word, `olam in the Old Testament and aionios in the New Testament, literally, "age-long," generally bear the full sense of "eternal" (always as applied to God, His mercy, His covenant, His kingdom and to the eternal life of believers). Hence, in the Revised Version (British and American) the rendering "everlasting" in the King James Version is, in the New Testament, uniformly changed to "eternal" (eg. Mt 18:8; 25:41,46; Lu 16:9; 18:30; Joh 3:16,36, etc.; Ac 13:46; Ro 6:22; 16:26; Ga 6:8; Heb 13:20). In the Old Testament the rendering "everlasting" is usually retained in the Revised Version (British and American), and sometimes takes the place of other words or phrases, as "lasting" (De 33:15), "ever," "forever" (1Ch 16:36; Ne 9:5), "perpetual" (Hab 3:6; Jer 50:5), "of old" (Hab 3:6 margin). In Ps 100:5; 119:144, on the other hand, the Revised Version (British and American) changes the word to "for ever." In much the larger number of places `olam is translated "ever" or "for ever."

The word `adh, in the two cases in which it is translated "everlasting" in the King James Version (more frequently "for ever"), is in the Revised Version (British and American), in Isa 9:6, retained, with margin, "Father of Eternity," and in Hab 3:6 is changed into "eternal." Another word, qedhem, with the meaning "ancient time," is rendered "everlasting" in Hab 1:12 ("Art not thou from everlasting?"). With the same meaning it occurs in De 33:27, "The eternal God is thy dwelling-place."

The word which strictly answers to "everlasting" in the New Testament is aidios (Ro 1:20; Jude 1:6), rendered by the King James Version in the former passages "eternal," but correctly by the Revised Version (British and American) in both passages, "everlasting." The sense of the word "everlasting," in application to future punishment, is considered in the article PUNISHMENT, EVERLASTING.

The term "everlasting" or "eternal," applied to God, describes Him as filling, or enduring through, all the "ages" of time. It is only thus that we can symbolically represent eternity. In reality, however, the eternity of God is not simply His filling of ever-flowing "ages," but rather that aspect of His being in which He is above time; for which time (the succession-form of existence) does not exist; to which the terms past, present and future do not apply. Yet, while God is not in time (rather holds time in Himself), time-sequence, as the form of existence of the world, is a reality for God.

See ETERNAL; ETERNITY.

James Orr

Definition

The terms “everlasting” and “eternal” have very similar meanings and refer to something that will always exist or that lasts forever.

• The term “eternity” refers to a state of being that has no beginning or end. It can also refer to life that never ends.
• After this present life on earth, humans will spend eternity either in heaven with God or in hell apart from God.
• The terms “eternal life” and “everlasting life” are used in the New Testament to refer to living forever with God in heaven.

The term “forever” refers to never-ending time.

• The phrase “forever and ever” has the idea of time that never ends and expresses what eternity or eternal life is like. It emphasizes that something will always happen or exist. It refers to time that never ends.
• God said that David’s throne would last “forever.” This is referred to the fact that David’s descendant Jesus will reign as king forever.

Translation Suggestions

• Other ways to translate “eternal” or “everlasting” could include “unending” or “never stopping” or “always continuing.”
• The terms “eternal life” and “everlasting life” could also be translated as “life that never ends” or “life that continues without stopping” or “the raising up of our bodies to live forever.”
• Depending on the context, different ways to translate “eternity” could include “existing outside of time” or “unending life” or “life in heaven.”
• Also consider how this word is translated in a Bible translation in a local or national language. (See: How to Translate Unknowns)

• “Forever” could also be translated by “always” or “never ending.”
• The phrase “will last forever” could also be translated as “always exist” or “will never stop” or “will always continue.”
• The emphatic phrase “forever and ever” could also be translated as “for always and always” or “not ever ending” or “which never, ever ends.”
• David’s throne lasting forever could be translated as “David’s descendant will reign forever” or “a descendant of David will always be reigning.”

(See also: David, reign, life)

Bible References

• Genesis 17:8
• Genesis 48:4
• Exodus 15:17
• 2 Samuel 3:28-30
• 1 Kings 2:32-33
• Job 4:20-21
• Psalms 21:4
• Isaiah 9:6-7
• Isaiah 40:27-28
• Daniel 7:18
• Luke 18:18
• Acts 13:46
• Romans 5:21
• Hebrews 6:19-20
• Hebrews 10:11-14
• 1 John 1:2
• 1 John 5:12
• Revelation 1:4-6
• Revelation 22:3-5

Examples from the Bible stories

• __27:1 One day, an expert in the Jewish law came to Jesus to test him, saying, “Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life__?”
• __28:1 One day, a rich young ruler came up to Jesus and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to have eternal life?” Jesus said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only One who is good, and that is God. But if you want to have eternal life__, obey God’s laws.”
• __28:10 Jesus answered, “Everyone who has left houses, brothers, sisters, father, mother, children, or property for my name’s sake, will receive 100 times more and will also receive eternal life__.”

Word Data

• Strong’s: H3117, H4481, H5331, H5703, H5705, H5769, H5865, H5957, H6924, G01260, G01650, G01660, G13360