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. Continue reading “The “divine interchange” principle of Bible interpretation: Otis Q. Sellers on olam’s control of aion (and why it matters), Part 2”