It is Wrong to Define Aionios Based on the Meaning of Aion (part 2 of What Does Aionios mean?)

Having explained the positive case for aionios meaning “eternal” in part 1, let’s now look at a popular argument Universalists put forward to defend aionios meaning “lasting for an age”. I plan to look at other Universalist arguments in future posts.

Note:  The numbering system for the outline here continues from part 1.

2.  Universalist Argument: The adjective aionios comes from noun aion and therefore must mean “lasting for an age”

This is a popular argument among some Universalists.  I’ve come across it in many settings. At the bottom of this post I include a section with examples of this argument. To be fair to Universalists, some of them recognize that this is a flawed argument and they avoid it. But because this argument is fairly common in discussions with Universalists, I feel it is important to respond to it. To those unfamiliar with how words are defined or who haven’t looked carefully at the linguistic data in the New Testament, this argument can sound pretty reasonable. Although it is a common argument, it is wrong. In fact, as I’ll attempt to explain, it is doubly wrong.

2.1 This Universalist argument is wrong because you cannot simply determine the meaning of an adjective from a noun it is derived from.

Etymology does not determine meaning.

It is true that the adjective aionios is derived from the noun aion. It is also true that a basic meaning of

aion is an “age,” and sometimes it refers to an age of limited duration.  However, this does not mean that aionios means “lasting for an age of limited duration”.

It is common for adjectives to be formed from nouns.  Not all adjectives are formed this way, but some are.  There is, of course, always some type of relationship between the meaning of the noun and the meaning of the adjective which comes from the noun.  However, the relationship in meaning might be very close and obvious, or it may be distant and vague.  Looking at some examples in English will clarify what I mean:

Example #1 beauty → beautiful

Here the relationship is very close.  If something possesses beauty, it is beautiful.

Example #2: sun → sunny

Here the relationship is fairly obvious.  A sunny day is a day when the sun is brightly shining.  Yet, even with this example care is needed.  The sun is hot, but you can have a sunny day in the middle of winter, or on top of an arctic mountain.

Example #3:  time → timely

If you didn’t already know the meaning of “timely”, I’m not sure you could correctly guess it with confidence just based on the fact that it is an adjective which comes from “time”.  Reasonably it might mean a number of things like:  something which takes a long time, something which happens all the time, or something which happens at a predictable time.  The actualy meaning, “done or occurring at a useful or favorable time” is not immediately obvious based on the noun it comes from.

Example #4:  fish → fishy

The actual meaning of “fishy” is very far removed from the noun “fish”. If something is “fishy” that does not mean it is wet, or swims well, or has scales.  It can mean that is smells like a fish.  Or, more commonly, it means that something is suspicious.

Try evaluating these examples yourself.  There is always some relationship between the noun and the adjective, but the nature of the relationship varies quite a bit so that the meaning of the adjective simply cannot be reliably predicted just by knowing the meaning of the noun it comes from:

fortune → fortunate

fire → fiery

Orwell → Orwellian

arctic (n) → arctic (adj)

Italy → Italian (adj)

human →humane

The above examples are easy for us to understand because both the adjective and the noun are familiar to us.  There is another example of an English adjective which is even more enlightening.  Some Universalists reject the idea of an adjective meaning “eternal” (aionios) coming from the noun for “age” (aion).  Yet the English adjective “eternal” itself derives from a Latin noun which meant “age”!

The fact that an adjective comes from the noun for “age” certainly does not prove it will mean “eternal”.  But the above example shows that this is a possibility. 

For those of us who grew up speaking English, English examples are easy to understand. It turns out that these examples are part of a broad principle in linguistics which applies to any language. Attempting to derive the meaning of an adjective from the noun it came from is a special case of the etymological fallacy.  The etymological fallacy basically consists of claiming that a word’s current meaning is the same as the meaning it had in the past, or the same as the meaning of words it was derived from. This error has also been called “the root fallacy” or “the root word fallacy”. A word’s meaning is not determined by its origin, but rather by its usage. We determined the meaning of aionios based on its usage in the New Testament in part 1.

2.2  Even if You Derived the Meaning of Aionios from the Meaning of Aion in the New Testament, the Most Likely Meaning would Still Be Eternal!

Now, let’s turn to how aion is used in the New Testament. The basic meaning does seem to be “an age”.  The New Testament mainly thinks in terms of two ages:  this age and the age to come.

Luke 18:29 "Truly I tell you," Jesus said to them, "no one who has left home or wife or brothers or sisters or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God

 30 will fail to receive many times as much in this age, and in the age to come eternal life."

This age refers to the time period we are now living in until Jesus returns.  The age to come refers to the eternal age where those who are saved will live with God in the New Heavens and the New Earth. The New Testament also frequently uses the word aion or its plural in phrases which mean “forever”.  Here are some examples:

ESV Lk. 1:33  and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever (eis tous aionas, literally “into the age”, a idiomatic way of saying “forever”), and of his kingdom there will be no end."

Because the verse clarifies that it is speaking of a reign where “there will be no end”, it leaves us with no doubt that the translators are correct to interpret the phrase eis tous aionas to mean “forever”.

Here is another clear example:

ESV Rom. 11:36  For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever (eis tous aionas, literally “into the age”, a idiomatic way of saying “forever”) . Amen.

Of course God’s glory is forever, and “forever” fits the context extremely well.

In addition to phrases where aion is used to mean “forever”, if combined with a negative it can mean “not ever” or “never”.  Here is an example:

ESV Jn. 11:26  and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?"

The single English word “never” translates ou mē . . . eis ton aiona. Literally, the phrase reads “no not . . . into the age”.  Jesus is not saying that those who believe in Him will not die for a limited age.  He is saying that those who believe in Him will not die for all eternity.  In this type of phrase meaning “never”, the word age is referring to an eternal age.

Of the 122 uses of aion in the New Testament, by my count about 70% of them are referring to an age which is eternal.  Thus, even if one was going to make the etymological fallacy of simply looking at the noun aion in order to guess the meaning of the adjective aionios, “eternal” would be the best guess.  But this is not based on merely statistical usage.  If you look at the type of things described as aionios they much better match the type of things found in an eternal age than the types of things found in this current, evil, limited age that we live in.

2.3 A More Nuanced Universalist Form of this Argument

Some Universalists do not argue that aionios means specifically “for a limited age”.  They argue that the meaning is simply “pertaining to an age” and that the more precise meaning is determined by the context.  This argument continues to make the error of deriving the meaning of an adjective directly and simply from the noun it comes from.  However, here the error is mainly one of vagueness.

It would be like saying that fortunately means pertaining to fortune or that humane means pertaining to human or that fishy means pertaining to fish.  Such definitions are so vague as to not really be definitions at all.  When an adjective is formed from a noun, of course there is some type of relationship between the two.  But the adjective takes on its own distinct meaning and does not merely mean pertaing to X. The meaning is determined by examing the actual usage of the word in sentences.  When this is done, we see that the meaning of aionios, when looking towards the future, is eternal.

2.4  Examples of the Etymological Fallacy Related to Aionios:

When I mentioned that I planned to address the Universalist argument I’ve been addressing here in part 2, a couple of Universalists claimed that this is not a common Universalist argument.  I think it is, and I’m giving a few examples to demonstrate this.

Example #1, from the website:  http://www.mercifultruth.com/eternity.html

The word aion - as will be discussed later - means "age," as in the English word "eon" which is a time span having both a beginning and an end. Bible translators indeed rendered the word aion into "age" several times in scripture as seen later in this study. In English we don't have an equivalent adjective for "eon" as being "eonian." But the Greek does have an adjective: aionios, which, means "pertaining to aion" or "pertaining to age(s)."

Example #2: From another article on Mercifultruth (http://www.mercifultruth.com/eternity-detailedstudy.html):

Aionios is "aion" + "ios." Aion means age. The suffix -ios means pertaining to or relating to. So, aion-ios properly means "pertaining to aion" or more simply "relating to an age."

Example #3:  From a book featured on the Tentmaker website.  The book is The Greek Word Aion-Aionios Translated Everlasting – Eternal in the Holy Bible Shown to Denote Limited Duration by Rev. John Wesley Hansom, A. M. and the link is:  http://www.tentmaker.org/books/Aion_lim.html)

 In all the above authors extending more than six hundred years, the word [aionios] is never found. Of course it must mean the same as the noun that is its source. It having clearly appeared that the noun is uniformly used to denote limited duration, and never to signify eternity, it is equally apparent that the adjective must mean the same.

Ironically, the author of the above paragraph understood the etymological fallacy and in the same book explains this problem:

  We are aware that nothing is more unsafe and treacherous than the guidance of etymology. An ounce of usage is worth a pound of it. Etymology is theory, usage is fact. For instance, our common word prevent is compounded of præ and venio, to come or go before, and once it had that meaning, but it has long since lost it in common usage, in which it now means to hinder. Suppose two thousand years hence some one should endeavor to prove that in the year 1875 the word prevent meant to go before. He could establish his position by the etymology of the word, but he would be wholly wrong, as would appear by universal usage in our current literature.

Example #4:  From another book featured on the Tentmaker website, Mercy and Judgment by Canon F.W. Farrar.  The link is:  http://www.tentmaker.org/books/mercyandjudgment/mercy_and_judgment_ch13.html

Since aion meant "an age," aionios means properly "belonging to an age," or "age long";

Example #5: This one comes from  https://godsplanforall.com/free-online-book/part-ii/chapter-17-translations-of-owlam-aion-and-aionios/

The Greek word aionios occurs 71 times in the New Testament. Aionios is the adjective of the noun aion, and therefore, the grammatical rule demands that aionios must also have the same two meanings as aion. 

Example # 6: Despite the examples above, I feel that the argument that aionios comes from aion and therefore does not mean “eternal” is mainly a “popular level argument” rather than a careful academic argument.  This type of argument pops us frequently on discussion forums when Universalism is discussed.  Here are some examples from ChristianForums.com

Since aionios is the word in the NT that is translated "eternal" it must be mistranslated, because it is the adjective of the noun aion which means "age" and the adjective cannot be of greater value than the noun from which it comes. (https://www.christianforums.com/threads/aion-aionios-aiodios-what-is-the-difference.2751204/)

Since aion means eon or age (like in the Great Commission) then aionion couldn's possibly have a meaning besides "of the age" (https://www.christianforums.com/threads/the-greek-word-aionion.148227/)

Aionion is the adjective form of the noun Aion. Since the noun Aion is an Eon of limited duration the adjective Aionion must pertain to the Eons of time to make sense. Since grammar rules mandate that an adjective cannot take on a greater force than its noun form, it is evident that Aionion cannot possibly mean Eternal, Everlasting or Forever. The only way the adjective Aionion could mean Eternal, Everlasting and Forever would be if the noun Aion [Eon] was of infinite duration and it clearly is not. (https://www.christianforums.com/threads/aionion-is-not-eternal-everlasting-or-forever.1993511/)

2.5  Conclusion

In part 2 of this series on the meaning of aionios we have examined one Universalist argument against aionios meaning “eternal”.  This popular argument commits the etymological fallacy by insisting that since aion means “an age”, aionios means “lasting for an age” (or something similar).  Not only is it wrong to determine the meaning of an adjective from the noun it comes from, we also saw that even IF one used that method, based on data from the New Testament, the most likely meaning of aionios would still be “eternal”.

Let’s remember why this is important.  If all the widely used English Bible translations are correct in translating aionios as “eternal” or “everlasting”, then the following two verses are fatal to belief in Universalism:

CSB Matthew 25:46 "And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life."

CSB 2 Thessalonians 1:9 These will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the Lord's presence and from His glorious strength

In part 3 I intend to look at arguments about the meaning of aionios based on data from the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint (LXX).

Hebrews 13:16 And do not forget to do good and to share with others . . .