The previous post ended with the question, “What is an eon?” Before answering it (by putting more of Sellers’s spadework in front of you), let me address a question you may be asking (if you’re a Bible-believing Christian, that is): who cares whether the meaning of olam should control that of aion?
You might not care if you belong to a church whose doctrines presuppose the veracity of traditional translations of key words. For upon that presupposed veracity hangs your confidence in the doctrines. Anything that undermines the former threatens the latter, which are nonnegotiable for you.
If your church membership is a dogmatic commitment—socially determined and psychologically reinforced in ways that have nothing to do with the meanings of Hebrew and Greek words—then those meanings don’t matter. You can skip these posts.
Still, however, I’d ask you to reflect on what you mean when you say the Bible is true in all that it affirms, teaches, or implies. (Of course, if you don’t say that, then we would need to have a different conversation before proceeding.)
But if you belong to a church that at least pays lip service to that principle—whether it’s a parish of the Roman Catholic Church or a Baptist storefront—then it does matter what olam and aion, nephesh and psyche, qahal and ekklesia mean. (There are many other examples.)
You may not say, however, at least not integrally, that you believe both in the inspiration of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures God and in doctrines that are rooted in mistranslations thereof. That unstable conjunction only reveals your fidelity, not to the Scriptures as the Word of God, but rather to the organization. In America, that choice may be constitutionally protected, but that won’t relieve the cognitive dissonance it expresses.
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“The word aion,” Sellers wrote, “is used in the New Testament in the following ways:
Singular, as in Matthew 13:39, which should read “the harvest is the consummation of the eon”
Plural, as in Ephesians 2:7 which should read “that among the eons to come”
Double singular, as in Hebrews 1:8 which should read, “Thy throne O God, is for the eon of the eon”
Singular with plural, as in Ephesians 3:21 which should read “to Whom be glory for all the generations of the eon of the eons”
Double plural, as in Galatians 1:5 which should read, “to whom be glory for the eons of the eons.
. . . In order to understand passages such as these, we need to find the true significance of this word [that] . . . will fit into all these occurrences. Such a meaning will have to come from the Bible itself based upon the usage of this word by the Holy Spirit. (“The Problem of Aion,” Seed & Bread 126; hereafter, SB126)[1]
“Eons of the eons.” What could that possibly mean?
When we read of “King of kings” in the Bible it gives us no trouble. . . . This is also true of “Lord of lords,” and “holy of holies.”. . . However, when we come upon the phrase “eon of the eons,” we . . . cannot understand this phrase unless we know what an eon is. The difficulty is still greater when we come upon “the eons of the eons.”
Sellers describes his methodology:
Applying the Principle of Divine Interchange we can say with assurance that aion and olam are exact equivalents. And since olam is found 418 times in the Old Testament, it could well be that many clues as to the meaning of both of these words may be found in these occurrences. Thus we have 536 passages or sentences to work with, and if the meaning of these words cannot be found in this multitude of divine usages, then we may as well give up and admit that there is no way of ever knowing the true meaning of either of these expressions. (“Olam and Aion,” SB127)
Again:
Over forty years ago [i.e., in the 1930s] with the help of The Englishman’s Hebrew Concordance I carefully marked every passage in the Old Testament where olam (עוֹלָם) is found. I wrote in the word, linking it up with the word or words that were used in translating it. I did this in order to be reminded every time I read, studied, taught, or used these passages in any manner that the word olam was in it and that it may provide some clue that could lead to an understanding of this word. . . .
Through the years my conviction grew that the word “perpetual” seemed to express the sense of olam in many passages. . . . However, this did not fit in numerous occurrences, so I decided that “perpetual” was an extended, developed, or enlarged meaning of the basic idea contained in olam. Then as I meditated on “perpetual,” I realized that this word always conveys the idea of ever-moving, going on and on, without stopping, ever-flowing. Furthermore, the idea of flowing might be the very essence of the word olam. (SB127)
For Sellers, Bible study was the mining of meanings, especially the meanings of words that are found many times in Scripture and bracketing of traditional meanings.
. . . I was coming to see that there is in the Bible a stupendous revelation of truth concerning which I had collected many bits and pieces, but these had never coalesced into a definite body of truth. As these began to merge, I realized that they made up a great general truth that permeates the Word of God, yet it is one that has been sorely neglected and only partially understood. It is a revelation that has to do with God’s character, something He has revealed about Himself, that He is a flow-er, and this can probably be best called, “the truth of the ever-flowing God.”
So what?, you might ask. Here’s what:
The God revealed in the Bible is set forth as a giving God. Therefore, He is the Giver, the ever-giving one, Who gives to all life and breath, Who if He ever stopped giving for a second, all things in existence would cease to be (Acts 17:25). Our God is a loving God, the ever-loving One, therefore He is the Lover. Our God is a saving God. Therefore, He is a Savior, the ever-saving One, Who stands in perpetuity as Savior of the world, the Savior of mankind, your Savior and my Savior.
. . . But greater and more important than all these is the fact that our God is a flowing God, therefore, He is the Flow-er, the ever-flowing God, of such nature that if He ceased to flow He would cease to be God. Thus, it is not strange that Abraham, after he straightened out certain difficulties with Abimelech over a well of water (Genesis 21:25-33), called upon the name of the Lord, the olam God, the ever-flowing God, Who was far more important than any well of water. (In Hebrew, a language deficient in adjectives, nouns in the construct state are often used as adjectives.)
Sellers knew his conjecture had to withstand the test of comprehensiveness. “This still had to be tested in every occurrence to make sure that there was no occurrence that flatly contradicted it. This was a long but very pleasant task that even yet is not finished.” Sellers was aware that “the basic idea that sets forth the essence of a word is never a complete definition that can be used as a translation. It is actually ‘the thread that runs so true,’ to borrow from Jesse Stuart the line which he immortalized in his pleasant book under the same title.”
It is of eschatological interest to note that olam “is also the descriptive name of a future period of time, one that is called this because of its characteristics, even as a certain season of the year is called ‘Spring’ because of that which characterizes it. For example, in Exodus 15:18 we read: ‘Jehovah shall govern for the olam and beyond.’ Again in Psalm 45:6 we read: “Thy throne O God is for (in regard to) the olam and beyond.”
To be sure, the essential meaning of olam is not “a period of time,” but it may refer to certain periods of time characterized by “flow,” divine or otherwise. “The Biblical revelation concerning the Kingdom of God is that it is a condition produced upon this earth by blessings that flow out from God. This is seen in Psalm 46:4 where we are told: ‘There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the most High.’”
This passage is part of a great prophecy. It is related to a time when God will speak from Heaven (46:6), cause wars to cease to the end of the earth (46:9) and exalt Himself among the nations and in the earth. This is all produced by God Himself, coming to the earth as a great river, dividing into many streams, carrying its manifold blessings to the ends of the earth. This river is an olam (flow-er) producing many lesser olams (outflowing streams), all of which produces upon Earth a time which is properly called by the designation of that which produced and characterizes it, the olam. (My emphasis.—A.F.)
In support of this Sellers adduced Psalm 36:7-9; Isaiah 32:13-15; 33:20, 21; Isaiah 44:3; 45:8; 66:12; and Amos 5:24. The last passage poetically connects God’s Kingdom or government to the flow of judgments: “But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream.”
The idea of God as the Outflowing One is “woven throughout all” the pages of the Old Testament. It is “the thread that runs so true through every occurrence of the word olam and continues on through the word aion. . . . Note this in Psalm 9:7 where we are literally told: ‘Jehovah shall sit as a King outflowing.’ Compare this with all the monarchs who sit as kings inflowing, who receive but never give. Consider also Psalm 29:10: ‘Jehovah sits upon the flood; yea, Jehovah sits as King outflowing.’ And since olam is found in the plural in Psalm 145:13, I understand this to be telling us: ‘Your kingdom (government) is a kingdom (government) of many outflowings.”(SB127)
An eon is not a period of time, but neither is it “eternal” in the sense of “timeless” or “atemporal.” The eonian life Christ offers is not a timeless state! Drink the water He offers, a well of water springing up into eonian life, and you’ll never thirst again. (John 4:13-14).
Sellers mined other ore from olam/aion, which we’ll display in the next post.
To be continued.
Note
[1] Seed and Bread was Sellers’s series of four-page leaflets that set forth his research. He produced 196 of them in late 1970’s and early 1980s. They are freely available online at seedandbread.org. In this post I cited SB126. Clicking on its link at seedandbread.org will download the pdf of that issue.
Links to previous posts on Otis Q. Sellers
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- Discovering Otis Q. Sellers: an autobiographical vignette
- Otis Q. Sellers: Maverick Workman (2 Tim 2:15)
- Getting to know Otis Q. Sellers, subversive heir to the Bible conference movement
- Otis Q. Sellers in New York, 1978
- Sellers’s Eschatology: Some Distinctives
- The day Otis Q. Sellers received Christ: November 23, 1919
- God’s Next Move? The Second Coming, not of Christ, but of His Spirit
- From (mostly) Jewish “ekklesiai” to anti-Jewish “churches” in 80 years: Dean Stanley’s questions