I wonder sometimes about the concept of Eternity, as mentioned in The Bible. That we will spend Eternity in Heaven, or Eternity in Hell. How do we know that Eternity means what we think it means? I have a friend who is a linguist. He speaks 5 languages fluently, and can read about 10 others. He also has materials on countless other languages. He's also an Atheist, and therefore has no political agenda as far as The Bible is concerned. I asked him about the concept of Eternity, and how it could have been translated. He said that in the original language, it might not mean everlasting and unending. He said that, in the original language and context, it could just mean "Incalculably long, but finite, amount of time." The Bible clearly says that to God a day is like 1,000 years, and 1,000 years is like a day. So, how do we know that our concept of Eternity is what was originally meant?
I just thought that a group of immortal, eternal versers might be interested in this notion.
I don't know whether a group of immortal eternal versers would necessarily be interested in the concept of eternal and how it differs from everlasting, nor whether a group of players who play such characters would have such an interest. I have such an interest, but that derives from my interest in theology, not gaming.
Your friend's translation is a paraphrase; the ordinary phrasing in Greek is "into the ages" or sometimes "into the ages of the ages". The phrasing in the popular John 3:16 is ????? ????????? (I don't know whether the Greek fonts will work here, but it's worth a try), where ????? means life and ????????? is the tricky word. Etymologically it is derived from the concept of ages, but scholars generally agree that it means eternal or perpetual first of all, even as one says eternal (of quality rather than of time), and then after that the definitions unending, everlasting, and finally for all time. So your linguist friend is certainly correct that the word could mean nothing more than a very, very long time, but the experts say that it means "forever", at minimum, and possibly something more.
What could be more than forever?
Somewhere among the ancient theologians there is an expression that literally says that God "lisps" to men. It means that when God explains things to us, He uses the equivalent of baby-talk, the way a parent would talk to an infant. This may be one of those situations. See, Immanuel Kant demonstrated that it is not really possible for time to be eternal; in fact, the very words in the beginning which open the Bible tell us that there was a beginning, possibly that there was a first instant of time. The problem we have with this, though, is that for us time is the medium in which things change.
- Ron Edwards has said that game mechanics are the equivalent of time within the game world: they are the measure by which things change. This is a fairly good analogy in both directions. Without time, we would not have change, because change inherently means that something was one way before and another after, and before and after are temporal concepts, requiring time to move from one to the other.
What I want you to consider is the notion that eternity refers to some existence outside time. We might use the word timelessness. However, timelessness implies something static, something unchanging and unchangeable. Eternity is timeless in the sense that it is without time as we know it; yet it has something like time in which there can be life and growth and change. It is what Multiverser calls the deep supernatural; it is the realm in which God is. It is to that which the promises point, attempting to express in what is ultimately metaphor that transition from time to eternity, from mortal temporal existence to immortal atemporal existence. It is not a simple "forever" as in one minute after another to infinity, but an escape from the constrictions of time itself.
I should footnote here that while this rather easily explains eternal life, it is not as easy to explain eternal punishment. There has been a significant debate in the twentieth century even among conservative theologians concerning whether eternal punishment is that everlasting pain we envision. What, exactly, is eternal death? Put in the terms in which it is discussed, is eternal punishment everlasting in its duration or everlasting in its effect? It may be that those consigned to eternal punishment cease to exist, either immediately or gradually. Put in very philosophical terms, anyone who separates himself from his ground of being must ultimately cease to be. It must be remembered that the New Testament images of both heaven and hell are metaphors, trying to give us the image of what it would be like, and that Jesus often taught using hyperbole. He speaks of the wicked being consigned to Gehenna, which was actually the name of the garbage dump outside Jerusalem, where the fires were always burning the worms were busily decomposing the garbage. He speaks of being shut out in the darkness. In the same way that His call for followers to hate their families is intended as a contrast--not that we should hate our families, but that in comparison with our love for God the affection we have for our families should seem like hatred--He may be telling us that by comparison missing heaven is like being eternally tortured. The debate is not settled, and indeed cannot be settled based on an exegetical approach. It was not seriously considered in the ancient church because 1) they did not really have a concept of timeless eternity and 2) Platonist influence gave them a belief in an immortal soul that already had an everlasting existence, and so it was simply a matter of whether your soul would be in heaven or hell for an everlasting period of time. Neither of those concepts are necessarily so (nor biblical), and so the question remains open.
In any case, that's the way eternity is seen by a lot of scholars at present, and it makes the most sense in a lot of ways, such as God's ability to know the end from the beginning.
I hope this helps.
--M. J. Young
What the notion that I got was that Atheists like to say that God can't possibly be all-loving and still sentence people to unending punishment for the crime of not believing for a mere 60-70 years worth of life. That does seem to fly in the face of the concept of an all-loving and all-merciful God. This got me thinking, what if Eternity doesn't mean what we think it means? So, I asked Steven what he thought of this notion, if he had any idea of what the original translation might have been. For someone who is a linguist and a devout Atheist, he has a very good knowledge of the Bible, for the simple fact that it is the single most translated text known to man. He has Bibles in many languages. His interest is purely in the translations used. I asked him about the translation of Eternity, just out of curiosity, and he said that, in the original language, it might just have meant "Very long time" So, the people sentenced to an Eternity of torment might just get released one day to try again. It was an idea that I found interesting. And it also gives a small glimmer of hope to Atheists.
I think I'd put it a different way.Atheists like to say that God can't possibly be all-loving and still sentence people to unending punishment for the crime of not believing for a mere 60-70 years worth of life. That does seem to fly in the face of the concept of an all-loving and all-merciful God.
Interestingly, before the word "Christian" was used Christians were called "followers of the way". "The way", then, is the concept of the gospel. Also interestingly, they found this "way" in the Old Testament.
This is a problem that Christians have. We somehow think that the Pharisees were right, that they understood the Law correctly as the way of earning your way into God's favor, and that because they abused this God got rid of it and changed how He did things. Actually (as my new book shows--Harry, have you had the opportunity to read it yet?), what the Christians of the first century believed was that the Pharisees misunderstood the Old Testament completely, and that it was never supposed to be about pleasing God by keeping the Law. That's exactly backwards: keeping the Law was supposed to be a way of thanking God and celebrating His acceptance of those who trusted Him. From the beginning it was always about trusting God and in essence becoming friends with Him, never about doing the right things to be good people.
So your atheist's objection is that God is going to punish people for not doing the right thing, or not believing the right thing; but I'm going to turn it around. God has extended an invitation to anyone who wants to be His friend to trust Him. He has gone out of His way to show His concern for us, suffering and dying to say how much He loves us. You've got however many years you've got to make up your mind as to whether you want to trust God or not, whether you want to be His friend or not. The athiest is choosing "not"; he does not believe what God has said about Himself nor what others who claim to have met Him say about Him. He discounts whatever evidence there is. How much of that is because he would rather not believe not even he can know with certainty.
So you've received a party invitation. The party starts the moment you die. If you've accepted the invitatation, the limo will take you to the party; if not, you don't have a ride. But then, if you've never met the host and you don't trust Him, you probably don't want to go to His party anyway, and it would be crueler to force you to go to the party than to let you stay where you are, even if where you are is a very uncomfortable and unhappy place.
--M. J. Young