One thing is quite certain. It cannot be
right to translate a word in some passages in one sense, and to
translate it in other passages in an antagonistic sense. The word
[Greek: aion] cannot denote a period of limitation, and also
unendingness. If it denotes the one it does not denote the other. The
one definition excludes the other. No one, in his senses, dreams of
defining a day as a period of twelve hours under one set of
circumstances, and also as being the equivalent of all time under other
circumstances. We have to determine what is the true definition of
[Greek: aion]. If it can be shown that the essential meaning of the word
is that of limited duration, then the case is very clear; the
translators were not justified in foisting into it the idea of
unendingness; and this being so, a huge superstructure of doctrine,
reared upon the mistranslation, will totter and fall, and an awful
nightmare will be lifted from the Christian religion.
An adjective qualifies its noun, and we cannot import into the adjective
more than is contained in the noun. We may speak of the race of mankind
as "humanity," and describe the existence of the race as "human life,"
but we should not be so absurd as to define "human" in that phrase as
signifying "Divine."
And yet the translators have been guilty of committing a similar error
in translating the word [Greek: aion] in the passages instanced as
"world," which is equivalent to an age, and expresses limitation; while
translating [Greek: aionios] as "everlasting" and "eternal;" both of
which terms exclude limitation.
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