From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Nov 16 1995 - 10:57:51 EST
At 9:20 AM 11/16/95, Paul Watkins wrote:
>Is eternity eternity or something else? Please send responses directly
>to me as I am not currently subscribed. Thank you.
The question itself is theological, of course, and maybe that can't be
avoided in a discussion that really BELONGS properly to b-greek, namely
what the phrase EIS TON AIWNA, that recurs over and over again (I've always
assumed that it meant "into the age-to-come"--however one understands that,
as heavenly or earthly) and what ZWH AIWNIOS really means in John's gospel
(I've always assumed that this means an inseverable bond between the
believer, whether in or out of the space-time continuum, with God). I
really would like to avoid getting into theological controversy here, and I
am far from confident that the contextual usage of these terms in the NT
provides sufficient evidence to answer these questions definitively, but I
am curious.
And the above question is pretty ambiguous too, isn't it? I'm not sure what
Paul actually means by the second "eternity" (or by the first one, for that
matter). I would suppose that the two chief competing ideas would be
"endless duration in time" and "timelessness."
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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