Mike,
This is in response to a comment on post #17 – The End of the World or the End of the Age. Thanks for forcing me to make sure my facts are straight. Much of what I say on the blog comes from memory while other items come from recent reading in which case I will try to supply a reference. Below is a quote from a website, not that this is any more authoritative than you or I, but what it does do is sum up the issue you’re referring to so that I don’t have to spend the time articulating it. I am a slow writer. Below that are, I believe, the more solid references.
“There are several different words in the original New Testament that are translated in the common version by this one English word, WORLD; the two principal ones are aeon and kosmos. Though both of these words are usually rendered world, yet they are really very distinct, and different in their meaning, and ought to have been rendered respectively age and world.”
With that said (by someone else) here is a chart from http://www.preteristarchive.com/ which I believe visualizes the problem for us.
Verse 38
KJV: The field is the world, the good seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the children of the wicked one;
NKJV: The field is the world, the good seed are the sons of the kingdom; but the tares are the sons of the wicked one.
Greek Word: kosmos
Verse 39
KJV: the enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are the angels.
NKJV: The enemy who sowed them is the devil, the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are the angels.
Greek Word: aeon
Verse 40
KJV: As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world.
NKJV: Therefore as the tares are gathered and burned in the fire; so will it be at the end of this world. (Source: R.C. Sproul, Last Days)
Greek Word: aeon
Notice for all you Presbyterians out there, an R.C. Sproul reference! As you can see both words are used by Jesus in the same parable. The KJV is consistent in that it translates both words to the English “world” in all three verses. The NKJV fudges a little in that it translates aeon (alternate spelling) as “age” in verse 39 but chooses “world” to translate verse 40. Whereas in the Greek, verses 39-40 share the same word, in the NKJV verses 38 and 40 share the same word. I don’t know enough about the history of the KJV much less translation methods to comment on what is the probable proper translation but the main point is that there is clearly an issue surrounding the dual use of the Greek word aeon.
I was also excited to see that the editor of the Bible I own (you know the one I attempted to read like a Harry Potter novel and underlined and all that), Spiros Zodhiates has this to say about the word,
“165. Aion; age, refers to an age or time in contr. to kosmos (2889), referring to people or space. Derived from aei (104), always, and on, being. Denotes duration or continuance of time, but with great variety. (1) Both in the sing. or pl. it signifies eternity whether past or to come (Mt. 6:13; Mk. 3:29; Lk. 1:55; Jn. 4:14; 6:51; Acts 15:18; Eph. 3:11, etc.); for ages, of ages (Rev. 1:6,18; 5:14; 10:6; 14:11; 15:7; 20:10). (2) The duration of this world (Mt. 28:20; Jn. 9:32; Acts 3:21); since the beginning of the world (Mt. 13:39, etc.). (3) Pl. hoi aiones, the ages of the world (1 Cor. 2:7; Eph. 3:9; Col. 1:26). (4) Ho aion houtos, this age, generation (Lk. 16:8; 20:34, cf. Mt. 13:22; 1 Cor. 1:20; 2:6; Gal. 1:4; Eph. 2:2; 1 Tim. 6:17; 11 Tim. 4:10; Tit. 2:12). (5) Ho aion ho erchomenos, the age, the coming one, meaning the next life (Mk. 10:30; Lk. 18:30, cf. Lk. 20:35) (6) An age or dispensation of providence (Mt. 24:3, cf. Mt. 12:32; 1 Cor. 10:11; Heb. 1:2; 6:5; 9:26). (7) Aiones, ages, in Heb. 11:3 refers to the great occurrences which took place in the universe. Aion primarily has physical meaning (time) but also ethical. Signifies time, short or long in its unbroken duration, all of which exists in the world under conditions of time, ethically, the cause and current of this world's affairs. It has acquired, like kosmos (2889), an unfavorable meaning (Lk. 16:8; 20:34; Eph. 2:2; Gal. 1:4). (New American Standard Bible Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible [AMG Publishers; Chattanooga, TN], p. 1801)”
Furthermore, and perhaps the most authoritative source of all that I can give, we have someone who actually spoke ancient Greek and lived nearer to the time period in question than we do define it for us! That is pretty rare. Aristotle says, "The period which includes the whole time of one's life is called the aeon of each one." (peri ouravou, i. 9,15). Wouldn’t it be great if he had gone on and written a whole dictionary! Wouldn’t that solve a lot of translation issues?!
If the Greek word aeon was always translated age, and the Greek word kosmos was always translated world, as I am assuming, at least for the present arguments sake they ought to be, you get a very different picture, eschatologically speaking out of the New Testament, and thus have your viewing point shifted as you look at the Old Testament. Furthermore, and not far off subject, I haven’t seen the movie Aeon Flux yet, but my wife and I both agreed that Charlize Theron was looking fine at the Golden Globes the other night, though sadly, she was not nominated for Aeon Flux.
Monday, January 23, 2006
Saturday, January 21, 2006
#17 The End of the World or the End of the Age?
Anonymous,
This is in response to you’re comment on post #15 Abortion, Politics, and Religion. You're correct in saying that due to the Latin Christian influence 'secular' came to mean "of the world." See the Oxford English Dictionary for the reference. It's Latin origin originally meant, "relating to an age or period", from saeculum, meaning "generation". I think the issue is that I've disagreed with the usual assumption of pitting the world against God.
Now in translation we are trying to discover the meaning of the original word in order to discover the best English word to use to apply it to our day. The English word ‘world’ was used to translate from the original Greek word 'aion'. In the case of 'aion', where we get our English word eon, the Oxford English dictionary, not to mention other Jewish and NT scholars, would say that this word in Greek actually meant ‘age’. Based on overwhelming scholarship and the Oxford English dictionary (since I’m discussing semantics) the translation of the Greek ‘aion’ as the English ‘world’ represents a false medieval, or at least, Post-Enlightenment dichotomy.
Translate the word ‘aion’ the way a first-century Jew would have (See N.T. Wright’s The New Testament & The People of God and his references) and you have a radically different picture of the debate, not to mention eschatology. To carry on a conversation with another certain person I have had, this is perhaps one reason why eschatology matters as much as it does. No Jew of the first century or before ever imagined that the world in the English sense of the word would ever come to an end, not the disciples, not Paul (especially as one strongly grounded in Pharisaic theology as he was). See Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God for that particular topic. When they spoke about the end of the ‘aion’ they spoke about the end of the age, meaning the age of sin, exile, Roman rule, and before God has set all things to rights. Perhaps we would say the end of this present eon.
This is prevalent in Paul’s writings as well as the writings of other first-century Jews. Creation would renewed, transformed even, not done away with as we seek to escape our physical bodies. This escape is actually a Platonic view that modern Christians, and I don’t mean in the contemporary sense of the word modern but in the philosophical sense, have adopted and has thus infiltrated our own theology. Where Paul had a theology heavily influenced and rooted in Judaism, today’s western Christian theology is heavily rooted in, and dare I say influenced by, Plato and Greek culture. The divide between physical and spiritual, material and non-material, sacred and secular is not a divide Paul or any first-century Jew would have understood, much less allowed to become an integral part of their writings (see Wright’s discussion of the ‘soma pneumatikon’ and the ‘soma psychikon’ in The Resurrection of the Son of God) as Paul writes about the difference between the future aion and the present aion in I Corinthians 15 for an example of how misleading English translation.
Now it’s at this point that any writer stops and says, “Now where the fuck was I going with this?” My basic point is this. Since the reason I used the word was to advocate for a quote by someone who said, “Abortion policy should neither be religious nor secular,” I saw a problem with the way you and others use the word secular to denote the ‘the antithesis of ‘spiritual/pneumatikon’ things’ when its original usage actually meant ‘of a particular age’. My point in taking that step is to say that no particular age is against God. In this age, this saeculum, if you will (I love saying “if you will”), we find both the people of the god of Israel and the people of other gods. We find, in Christian language, the ‘wheat’ and the ‘chaff’. The saeculum in which we live, therefore, is public and it all belongs to God. Just as every dictionary has several definitions for each word, and precisely because connotations become denotations and denotations become connotations over time, I have chosen to use the word secular in the original denotation and one of many current connotations. While one connotation is ‘of the world’ and to a modern western mindset that pits it against God, another is ‘public’ and that makes it very much God’s own dominion.
Thanks for your great comment! The only thing is now, where were you leading with that particular statement. It was a statement about the semantics I used and therefore I gave a response discussing the semantics of the word in question. Please respond again if there is more to it.
This is in response to you’re comment on post #15 Abortion, Politics, and Religion. You're correct in saying that due to the Latin Christian influence 'secular' came to mean "of the world." See the Oxford English Dictionary for the reference. It's Latin origin originally meant, "relating to an age or period", from saeculum, meaning "generation". I think the issue is that I've disagreed with the usual assumption of pitting the world against God.
Now in translation we are trying to discover the meaning of the original word in order to discover the best English word to use to apply it to our day. The English word ‘world’ was used to translate from the original Greek word 'aion'. In the case of 'aion', where we get our English word eon, the Oxford English dictionary, not to mention other Jewish and NT scholars, would say that this word in Greek actually meant ‘age’. Based on overwhelming scholarship and the Oxford English dictionary (since I’m discussing semantics) the translation of the Greek ‘aion’ as the English ‘world’ represents a false medieval, or at least, Post-Enlightenment dichotomy.
Translate the word ‘aion’ the way a first-century Jew would have (See N.T. Wright’s The New Testament & The People of God and his references) and you have a radically different picture of the debate, not to mention eschatology. To carry on a conversation with another certain person I have had, this is perhaps one reason why eschatology matters as much as it does. No Jew of the first century or before ever imagined that the world in the English sense of the word would ever come to an end, not the disciples, not Paul (especially as one strongly grounded in Pharisaic theology as he was). See Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God for that particular topic. When they spoke about the end of the ‘aion’ they spoke about the end of the age, meaning the age of sin, exile, Roman rule, and before God has set all things to rights. Perhaps we would say the end of this present eon.
This is prevalent in Paul’s writings as well as the writings of other first-century Jews. Creation would renewed, transformed even, not done away with as we seek to escape our physical bodies. This escape is actually a Platonic view that modern Christians, and I don’t mean in the contemporary sense of the word modern but in the philosophical sense, have adopted and has thus infiltrated our own theology. Where Paul had a theology heavily influenced and rooted in Judaism, today’s western Christian theology is heavily rooted in, and dare I say influenced by, Plato and Greek culture. The divide between physical and spiritual, material and non-material, sacred and secular is not a divide Paul or any first-century Jew would have understood, much less allowed to become an integral part of their writings (see Wright’s discussion of the ‘soma pneumatikon’ and the ‘soma psychikon’ in The Resurrection of the Son of God) as Paul writes about the difference between the future aion and the present aion in I Corinthians 15 for an example of how misleading English translation.
Now it’s at this point that any writer stops and says, “Now where the fuck was I going with this?” My basic point is this. Since the reason I used the word was to advocate for a quote by someone who said, “Abortion policy should neither be religious nor secular,” I saw a problem with the way you and others use the word secular to denote the ‘the antithesis of ‘spiritual/pneumatikon’ things’ when its original usage actually meant ‘of a particular age’. My point in taking that step is to say that no particular age is against God. In this age, this saeculum, if you will (I love saying “if you will”), we find both the people of the god of Israel and the people of other gods. We find, in Christian language, the ‘wheat’ and the ‘chaff’. The saeculum in which we live, therefore, is public and it all belongs to God. Just as every dictionary has several definitions for each word, and precisely because connotations become denotations and denotations become connotations over time, I have chosen to use the word secular in the original denotation and one of many current connotations. While one connotation is ‘of the world’ and to a modern western mindset that pits it against God, another is ‘public’ and that makes it very much God’s own dominion.
Thanks for your great comment! The only thing is now, where were you leading with that particular statement. It was a statement about the semantics I used and therefore I gave a response discussing the semantics of the word in question. Please respond again if there is more to it.
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
#16 Gay Marriage Article
In the words of Adam Sandler impersonating Eddie Vedder to the tune of Even Flow,
“Heeeeyo! I’m not sayin’ i’m gay but there comes a time in every man’s life when he questions his own sexualiteyoh!”
No but seriously, here’s a link to a great article I found on Christianity Today about what I see as the problem with our focus in gay marriage debate. I’m going to write on this topic in the future, but for now, here’s the first paragraph and the link.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/135/22.0.html
“While working for a conservative interest group in Iowa, I was amazed by the high number of Christian people who would turn out to oppose homosexuals politically. Yet when I presented opportunities to reach out in love to people who identify as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender), my efforts were often met with apathy and sometimes even hostility. Anger at the homosexuals' political agenda often seemed to overshadow the task of learning how to love homosexuals as Jesus would.”
“Heeeeyo! I’m not sayin’ i’m gay but there comes a time in every man’s life when he questions his own sexualiteyoh!”
No but seriously, here’s a link to a great article I found on Christianity Today about what I see as the problem with our focus in gay marriage debate. I’m going to write on this topic in the future, but for now, here’s the first paragraph and the link.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2004/135/22.0.html
“While working for a conservative interest group in Iowa, I was amazed by the high number of Christian people who would turn out to oppose homosexuals politically. Yet when I presented opportunities to reach out in love to people who identify as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender), my efforts were often met with apathy and sometimes even hostility. Anger at the homosexuals' political agenda often seemed to overshadow the task of learning how to love homosexuals as Jesus would.”
Thursday, January 05, 2006
#15 Abortion, Politics, and Religion
Well, it doesn’t seem like I’ve been following through on my commitment to write everyday, and it’s true, I haven’t. However, I’ve been out of the country for two weeks and have been working my ass off since I got back. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back into the groove soon.
Below is an excerpt I found through a surprising (in the good sense) website. It is called Democrats for Life. Check out their website at http://www.democratsforlife.org/ The point the guy is trying to make in the first paragraph is that abortion policy must be completely secular. The counter argument is that since America was founded on Christian principles, then abortion must be outlawed. I think both of these points of view are viewing in the wrong direction. Abortion policy should neither be religious or secular. Abortion policy should be whatever the voters decide it to be. Besides that, the way I define secular is not as being “against religion” but rather “public”. Religious people call their beliefs religion, while the non-religious call their beliefs opinions. The point is that both have beliefs, though they call them by different names, and to leave religion out of the equation is to leave a groups opinions or thoughts out.
Consider the following quote (from Ben Meyers blog) discussing the ideas of the secular and the religious. There are three sentences. Focus on each one, one at a time, making sure you understand one before moving onto the other. There are three key phrases in these sentences to focus on: 1) the reality of reconciliation, 2) reality as it has been remade, and 3) God's act of justifying the ungodly.
By "incursion", I think the author is probably trying to draw out a military overtone to illustrate Jesus conquering of sin and death. In other words, the cavalry didn't just arrive to save the day and then escape and run but rather confronted evil head-on. By "epoch-making" I think he is pointing to the fact that the event changed the course of the world. With "secular" defined as "against religion" we can see how religion and a secular society couldn't exist side by side for long. But didn't the Pharisees perpetuate just such a divide? Jesus' life and death were spent dissolving this himself as the quote says. This does not mean he broke down all moral boundaries and declared that good was evil and evil was good. But he did redefine, or rather refocus, what it meant to be good and what it meant to be evil when "while we were yet sinners [he] died for us." A secular society defined as being free of coercion and supporting free inquiry can instead be seen as the best friend of religion.
With that said, I have heard the argument twice in the past month from two separate people that a given practice is right because “America was founded on Christian principles”. You two know who you are if you ever get around to reading this. One discussion was regarding crosses over military gravesites, the other grew out of a conversation regarding displaying the ten commandments in a courthouse. I think this argument is flawed. The if/then argument goes like this: If a country was founded on certain religious principles, Then policy should always be guided by that. Aside from the fact that I don’t see how the then statement naturally and logically flows from the if statement, the problem I see with this argument it doesn’t stand the test when put into other, both real and hypothetical situations. For example, many Muslim nations were founded on the principles of Islam. One of these principles, especially early on, was convert or die. If that country was founded that way, should it stay that way? No, voters can and should decide what is best based on the evolved situation.
Another example is ancient Rome which was founded on the religion/belief/opinion of the ancient Greeks, namely the religion of Homer and philosophy of Plato. The message of early Christianity was hostile to the Roman empire. If the Roman empire was founded on those principles, should it remain that way? No, starting one way is not the logical prerequisite of staying that way. It rarely is in many arguments. Anyway, without further adieu, below is the quote with an interesting historical tidbit that I wasn’t aware of:
“In 1797, America made a treaty with Tripoli, declaring that "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." This reassurance to Islam was written under Washington's presidency and approved by the Senate under John Adams.
The U.S. statutes against abortion have a nonsectarian history. They were put on the books when Catholics were a politically insignificant minority. Even the Protestant clergy were not a major factor in these laws. Rather, the laws were the achievement of the American Medical Association.
From early in the 19th century, Americans - even lay people - were exposed to enough information about embryology to enable them to make a critical and ethically significant distinction between contraception and abortion: the former practice did not terminate a new human life, but the latter one did. In 1827, Von Baer determined fertilization to be the starting point of individual life. By the 1850s, medical communities were advocating legislation to protect the unborn. In 1859, the American Medical Association protested legislation which only protected the unborn after "quickening."
I never knew that about the war with the pirates in the Mediterranean. Not surprisingly, once again we see that the church was not a driving force behind the original laws against abortion. Even in our day, they are embarrassingly not at the forefront in the public sphere on issues such as AIDS, extreme poverty, fair trade, hatred, etc. The church has forgotten it’s prophetic role. I think it’s afraid it might lose its 501(c)(3) status. I say lose it. As a member of the church, I don’t want it. We need to be free to prophesy, fight injustice, and take a stand against evil wherever it is perpetrated. Sorry for the political rant. I want to come back later and follow up by writing about the crosses over graves, and ten commandments display issues.
Below is an excerpt I found through a surprising (in the good sense) website. It is called Democrats for Life. Check out their website at http://www.democratsforlife.org/ The point the guy is trying to make in the first paragraph is that abortion policy must be completely secular. The counter argument is that since America was founded on Christian principles, then abortion must be outlawed. I think both of these points of view are viewing in the wrong direction. Abortion policy should neither be religious or secular. Abortion policy should be whatever the voters decide it to be. Besides that, the way I define secular is not as being “against religion” but rather “public”. Religious people call their beliefs religion, while the non-religious call their beliefs opinions. The point is that both have beliefs, though they call them by different names, and to leave religion out of the equation is to leave a groups opinions or thoughts out.
Consider the following quote (from Ben Meyers blog) discussing the ideas of the secular and the religious. There are three sentences. Focus on each one, one at a time, making sure you understand one before moving onto the other. There are three key phrases in these sentences to focus on: 1) the reality of reconciliation, 2) reality as it has been remade, and 3) God's act of justifying the ungodly.
“It is the advent of the reality of reconciliation – much more than the simple advance of secularisation – that has dissolved, for Bonhoeffer, the old antinomy of religious and secular. In the wake of God’s epoch-making incursion in Christ, the categories ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ no longer map onto reality as it has been remade.... It is possible for Christians to embrace the dissolution of religion as a historical development finally because human religion has already been abolished prospectively but ultimately in God’s act of justifying the ungodly.”
—Philip G. Ziegler, “Dietrich Bonhoeffer – An Ethics of God’s Apocalypse?” Modern Theology 23:4 (2007), p. 589.
By "incursion", I think the author is probably trying to draw out a military overtone to illustrate Jesus conquering of sin and death. In other words, the cavalry didn't just arrive to save the day and then escape and run but rather confronted evil head-on. By "epoch-making" I think he is pointing to the fact that the event changed the course of the world. With "secular" defined as "against religion" we can see how religion and a secular society couldn't exist side by side for long. But didn't the Pharisees perpetuate just such a divide? Jesus' life and death were spent dissolving this himself as the quote says. This does not mean he broke down all moral boundaries and declared that good was evil and evil was good. But he did redefine, or rather refocus, what it meant to be good and what it meant to be evil when "while we were yet sinners [he] died for us." A secular society defined as being free of coercion and supporting free inquiry can instead be seen as the best friend of religion.
With that said, I have heard the argument twice in the past month from two separate people that a given practice is right because “America was founded on Christian principles”. You two know who you are if you ever get around to reading this. One discussion was regarding crosses over military gravesites, the other grew out of a conversation regarding displaying the ten commandments in a courthouse. I think this argument is flawed. The if/then argument goes like this: If a country was founded on certain religious principles, Then policy should always be guided by that. Aside from the fact that I don’t see how the then statement naturally and logically flows from the if statement, the problem I see with this argument it doesn’t stand the test when put into other, both real and hypothetical situations. For example, many Muslim nations were founded on the principles of Islam. One of these principles, especially early on, was convert or die. If that country was founded that way, should it stay that way? No, voters can and should decide what is best based on the evolved situation.
Another example is ancient Rome which was founded on the religion/belief/opinion of the ancient Greeks, namely the religion of Homer and philosophy of Plato. The message of early Christianity was hostile to the Roman empire. If the Roman empire was founded on those principles, should it remain that way? No, starting one way is not the logical prerequisite of staying that way. It rarely is in many arguments. Anyway, without further adieu, below is the quote with an interesting historical tidbit that I wasn’t aware of:
“In 1797, America made a treaty with Tripoli, declaring that "the government of the United States is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion." This reassurance to Islam was written under Washington's presidency and approved by the Senate under John Adams.
The U.S. statutes against abortion have a nonsectarian history. They were put on the books when Catholics were a politically insignificant minority. Even the Protestant clergy were not a major factor in these laws. Rather, the laws were the achievement of the American Medical Association.
From early in the 19th century, Americans - even lay people - were exposed to enough information about embryology to enable them to make a critical and ethically significant distinction between contraception and abortion: the former practice did not terminate a new human life, but the latter one did. In 1827, Von Baer determined fertilization to be the starting point of individual life. By the 1850s, medical communities were advocating legislation to protect the unborn. In 1859, the American Medical Association protested legislation which only protected the unborn after "quickening."
I never knew that about the war with the pirates in the Mediterranean. Not surprisingly, once again we see that the church was not a driving force behind the original laws against abortion. Even in our day, they are embarrassingly not at the forefront in the public sphere on issues such as AIDS, extreme poverty, fair trade, hatred, etc. The church has forgotten it’s prophetic role. I think it’s afraid it might lose its 501(c)(3) status. I say lose it. As a member of the church, I don’t want it. We need to be free to prophesy, fight injustice, and take a stand against evil wherever it is perpetrated. Sorry for the political rant. I want to come back later and follow up by writing about the crosses over graves, and ten commandments display issues.
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