In this post I would like to offer a brief reflection on the language we use as Christians concerning the life we have in Christ.
John 3:16 in the ESV reads, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
John 3:16 in the KJV reads, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Obviously, there are many translations and you could spend a lot of time checking them to see how each has rendered the phrase in question. I’ll save you some time, the majority of them render it closer to the ESV and say “eternal life”.
But let’s not assume majority rules. We don’t want to appeal ad populum which is, after all, a fallacy. How ought we to decide which rendering is more accurate? Well, they are both perfectly legitimate translations in one sense. The word being translated here is αἰώνιος and it can carry the idea of something being eternal, or everlasting, or indeterminable in its duration. Words don’t typically have a one-to-one meaning from one language to another. In fact, even in one’s own native tongue few words, if any, have simply one meaning. Rather, words have what we might call “semantic range.” Take the word “point” for example. Do we mean a particular place in space, a particular moment in time, or is it a command to gesture at a desired thing? How we understand a word is normally determined by its context within a sentence. The statement, “At this point there is no use trying again” obviously refers to time. The statement, “Go to that point on the field and stop” obviously refers to physical location. Finally, the statement, “Point at the cutest puppy” obviously is a command to gesture at something.
With this in mind, how should we translate αἰώνιος given its semantic range? The context of John 3:16 seems to preclude the third option of αἰώνιος meaning an indeterminable period of time. It would certainly be less moving to be told that whoever believes in the Son shall not perish but have an indeterminable time to live. It doesn’t seem like that would be the Gospel writer’s point here. So, this leaves us with the other two options. We can translate the word αἰώνιος as either “eternal” or “everlasting”. In the context, solely based on the sentence itself, either seems perfectly acceptable. But in this case it is not grammatical context which should settle the issue but theology.
Many Christian are happy to think of these two terms as mere synonyms and they are therefore not particularly concerned about which way the verse should be translated. But the difference in meaning is actually rather profound and important. Why? Because God alone is truly eternal. Anything which is truly eternal not only has no end but it also has no beginning. There was never a time when God was not. There was, however, a time when we were not. Our very creatureliness, being things which are made, means we have an absolute beginning. We cannot therefore have “eternal life” because God alone has this. He alone is the Alpha and the Omega, the one who was there before the world began.
Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. -Psalm 90:2
The difficulty we face in this discussion is due to the finitude of human language. We often wrestle with our inability to perfectly express ideas about God and our first principles of philosophy and theology because they are so much grander than we are. Indeed, to speak about God existing before time began is not even quite accurate because the word “before” denotes time.1 Rather it may be better to say that God exists apart from time. Time is actually a thing that God made “In the beginning”. Time is a product of creation and is for creatures. God has no need of time at all, but all things which God has made have a definite need of time.
Consider the biblical and classical understanding of God. He is without beginning or end (Eternal), he is omniscient (knows all things), and he is omnipresent (present fully everywhere simultaneously).2 Because of God’s unique divine nature he has absolutely no need of space, time, or matter. Why? Because God is a Spirit and does not have a body like man and he is not finite (limited) in any way. Being immaterial God does not need space to extend into. Creatures3 need space to extend into because we have mass, God has no mass and therefore needs no space to be. God knows all things perfectly and does not learn new things so he requires no time to think or reason to conclusions. God has all knowledge perfectly already. Furthermore God is omnipresent, equally and fully present in all places (and all times) simultaneously. As an infinite Spirit God is not divided as if he is only partly here and partly there, no, he is fully everywhere. He does not require time to traverse a distance from point A to point B. Nor is he bound by time so as to be stuck in the present with us.4 Creatures are bound in time, we move at a constant with time like the vertical line of a soundtrack passing through an audio file.5 But God is like the editor, outside of it, he sees it all at once. He sees the beginning, the middle, and the end as a whole. He is present to all of it at once. He may also enter into it and do whatever he pleases with it.
This is part of what it means to be eternal, to not be wedded to time for one’s existence. But you and I will always require time. We, as physical beings, both soul and body in unity, need time to traverse distances. We need time to think, to learn, and to draw conclusions. No matter how long we exist, even if we exist forever after, we will always be finite, moving in location, learning something new, and we will always have had a beginning and are therefore not eternal. Aristotle helpfully denied time as “the measure of motion.” We are moving and changing beings, by grace changing for the good, but God is changeless in his perfections. Any change in God would be away from perfection.
True eternality belongs to God alone.
It is the most fundamental difference between Creator and Creature. Everything which begins to exist must have a cause. I began, you began, the world began, God did not begin. All things that are not identical to God are things which are made by God. End of story.
It is only when these truths are clearly understood that the tremendous reality of the incarnation may have its full effect upon us. The timelessly eternal God, with no beginning or end, who is not bound by time although equally present with it all at once, who knows all things, joined the nature of the divine Son with a human nature at a point in time. From that moment in time, and forever afterwards, the Son is both God and Man.
But, again, words fail me. For I speak perspectivaly as one in time. I am like a man looking at the sun, while on a globe that is spinning and circumnavigating that great ball of fire, who says ‘the sun is setting.’ Indeed the sun is not moving at all.
When I say that God joined the divine nature of the 2nd person of the Trinity to a human nature “at a point in time” what I am really describing is how it looks to you and to me, looking back to what is past for us. For God, who is eternal and not bound by time, from his perspective he has always been united, in the Son, to a human nature. Take a moment to reflect on that.
Were it not for the incarnation, what hope would we really have of knowing the infinite God? God in all his perfections is anything but relatable to man in our weakness. But that is the mystery and glory of the incarnation! What was unreachable, unknowable, and unfathomable has drawn near to us!
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have…everlasting life. Everlasting life. Life without end to love our God, to learn about him and the things he has made, to change toward perfection. So, it is not the context of the sentence in John 3:16 but it is the consistent theology and philosophy of the Bible which demands the rendering “everlasting life” as the more accurate one.
To be clear, I am not saying that the biblical writers were wrong or erred when they used certain terms, I am saying that all human languages are finite and lack the perfect capacity to express the infinitude of God. Consider how often the apostle John uses the simile “like” when describing his apocalyptic vision. Exactness of words failed him. We largely speak about God by analogy and all analogies are imperfect. This doesn’t mean analogies are unhelpful. God stoops down to our level and communicates with us in ways we are able to grasp. As we let the canon of Scripture speak together as a unified whole we see the things which God has revealed to man, by means of analogy and finite human description, come into greater harmony and clarity.
Clearly the lack of biblical citations or reasoned arguments in favor of these doctrines means I am here assuming my readers agree with the classical attributes of God. Were I arguing against open theism or some other form of finite godism such a process theology then this article would take on a different approach.
Typically we hear the word creature and think of fuzzy bunnies or squirrels, etc. But human beings are creatures too because we are created. So, properly understood, the earth, the heavenly bodies, all things which are not God, are also creatures.
Augustine’s Confessions does a great job of talking about God’s omnipresence. This is especially true because Augustine admits his own faulty prior conceptions and he walks you through what he used to think Christians were saying and takes you along with him as he figures it our more accurately.
In The Time Machine by H. G. Wells he argues that Time is the 4th dimension that man is not able to see because he is in lock step with it. It’s in the first chapter and it’s actually really interesting.
Very good. It's a very important distinction, and you laid it out clearly and effectively. There is another layer to the onion as well. Christ also gives αιώνιος a qualitative aspect, in addition to the quantitative aspect, in John 17:3: "And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent." Here "eternal life" is not referring to duration, per se, but to covenantal and mystical communion, relationship with God (cf. 1Jn. 5:13), which true believers will enjoy in and with Christ forever.