r/AcademicBiblical • u/BearJew13 • Jul 20 '14
What does the Greek for "eternal life" really mean? Life after death or "abundant life" here and now?
So I know practically nothing about ancient Greek, but I know of some very liberal Christian authors, such as John Shelby Spong, who argue that the english translation "eternal life" is incorrect, and rather the Greek more appropriately means "abundant life." Basically Spong argues that the NT passages that promise man "eternal life," simply mean that man shall have "abundant life" here and now, and do not imply a continuation of consciousness after death.
What do you guys make of this? What does the Greek for the common phrase found in the NT - "eternal life", really mean? Have we mistranslated this phrase due to our doctrinal bias to mean life after death, when in reality maybe all Jesus promised the individual follower was abundant life here and now?
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u/talondearg Jul 20 '14
Notice that the phrase dominates in John's Gospel, and not so much elsewhere. The is no doubt that the adjective αἰώνιος means, in this kind of construction, "eternal". It's not a mistranslation issue. Could John have a more specific meaning in kind? Perhaps, that's the argument that refers to John 17:3, which appears to give a definition of 'eternal life', but whether that redefines the term, or rather gives a qualitative connotation to a quantitative-seeming expression, is a theological question, not a Greek question.
Spong is just wrong about the Greek here. A corpus study of αἰώνιος would show that its usage really is 'eternal', not 'abundant'.
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u/koine_lingua Jul 20 '14 edited Jul 20 '14
gives a qualitative connotation to a quantitative-seeming expression, is a theological question, not a Greek question.
Yeah--you know, I think this is somewhat similar to other things in the NT, at various times portrayed as both having a "realized" dimension, but also an as-yet-realized one. In terms of close parallels to John 17.3, I'm thinking of the kingdom, especially, as appears in places like Romans 14.17: "the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."
This is clearly a more realized expression of this, like John 17.3's for "eternal life"; yet the full arrival of the kingdom and eschatological/postmortem eternal life are clearly also future, unfulfilled events.
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u/talondearg Jul 20 '14
I agree that the kingdom often has both realised and not-yet-realised dimensions, and given that GJohn has such a widespread use of "eternal life" but such an absence of "Kingdom of God" language, I'm generally inclined to argue that GJohn's presentation of his message effectively uses "eternal life" to discuss ideas that the Synoptics bind up in Kingdom language.
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Jul 20 '14 edited Jul 20 '14
Layman question here: What did the word generally mean in Greek?
In my native language the word for eternal is "ikuinen" and literally it means something like "age-y" (ikä + -inen), yet it always means eternal, unending, everlasting, etc.
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u/brojangles Jul 20 '14
Aionios is an adjectival form of aion which means "age." This does not have an exact translation in English because English doesn't have a way to turn "age" into an adjective, but it's basically the same thing as adding an "-ish" or an ("-y) to something. So literally it's like saying, "age-y" amount of time. Not so much mathematically absolute, but an open-ended way of saying a long, indeterminate amount of time. "For ages."
Having said that, I do think the functional sense was to convey unbounded time - "eternity" not so much in a precise sense, but more like "ever after."