Over at Eclectic Orthodoxy, Al Kimel has been going through David Bentley Hart’s That All Shall Be Saved, offering summarizing reflections on various sections. His most recent post is on the part of Hart’s book that puts forward arguments for universal salvation in the New Testament — and in tandem with this, arguments against the idea of eternal damnation. The bulk of Al’s post covers issues around the translation of several passages in the New Testament which have traditionally been taken to support the idea of eternal damnation. First he discusses 2 Thessalonians 1.5–10, in both a “traditional” translation and in Hart’s own, and then several verses in the Matthean parable of the sheep and goats: Matthew 25.41 and 25.46.
The main point of contention centers around the use of the adjective αἰώνιος (aiōnios) in these verses, and its meaning and translation. I covered this, along with 2 Thessalonians 1.5–10 in particular, pretty extensively in a post some days ago; so if anyone wants a little bit more background on these, they might want to take a quick look at that. In any case, Kimel summarizes that
Hart believes that “aionion punishment” need not signify duration of punishment but may intimate the kind of punishment the wicked will suffer (specifically, punishment proper to the final aeon). . . . Similarly, “aionion life” need not be speaking of duration but of the life that belongs to the Kingdom. Its intended meaning, in other words, is qualitative rather than quantitative: it points to the age to come
After this, he quotes various arguments and observation Hart makes in support of his interpretation and translation: for example, that
the adjective aiōnios, unlike the adjective ἀΐδιος (aïdios) or adverb ἀεί (aei), never clearly means “eternal” or “everlasting” in any incontrovertible sense, nor does the noun aiōn simply mean “eternity” in the way that the noun ἀϊδιότης (aïdiotēs) does; neither does aiōnios mean “endless,” as ἀτέλευτος (atelevtos) or ἀτελεύτητος (atelevtētos) does (Hart, The New Testament, 538)
Drawing on this and other things, Al then continues
Supporters of eternal perdition may feel that Hart is exploiting a lexical loophole to advance his universalist agenda; but the objection also works the other way, with perhaps even greater plausibility. Whereas Origen and Gregory recognized the polysemy of aionios, and therefore refused to interpret the word in eschatological contexts as meaning “eternal,” other theologians had no problem importing their infernalist commitments back into Scripture itself. The 19th century scholar J. W. Hanson notes that when the Emperor Justinian wrote to the patriarch of Constantinople in 543/544 to convene a local synod to condemn the teachings of Origen, he stated: “The holy church of Christ teaches an endless aiónios (ATELEUTETOS aiónios) life to the righteous, and endless (ateleutetos) punishment to the wicked.” Hanson comments: “Aiónios was not enough in his judgement to denote endless duration, and he employed ateleutetos. This demonstrates that even as late as A. D. 540 aiónios meant limited duration, and required an added word to impart to it the force of endless duration.”
In the comment section of Al’s post, I offered just some brief critical comments on several of the claims made therein — and by extension, some of Hart’s own claims. Re: the word ἀτελεύτητος, and its meaning and usage (or lack thereof) in relation to Origen and other things, I noted that Origen himself actually does use ἀτελεύτητος to describe afterlife punishments, parallel/synonymous with αἰώνιος in Selecta in Ezechielem 7.26. Re: the understanding of αἰώνιος in Origen and Gregory of Nyssa, and that they “refused to interpret the word in eschatological contexts as meaning ‘eternal,'” I clarified that neither
ever addresses the meaning of adjectival αἰώνιος itself anywhere, as far as I’m aware. At most we can make inferences/guess about how they understood it when they employ it, when they do; but as far as I’m aware they don’t actually discuss it explicitly.
[Correction:] Actually, looking back to my analysis of Origen’s use of αἰώνιος and related issues, I found that this wasn’t 100% accurate, and that Origen does address this in a roundabout way in the Commentary on Romans, 6.5.9. Here Origen comments on the phrase ζωὴ αἰώνιος in Romans 6:22-23 by noting that the word αἰών is used in scripture several different ways — though here conflating adjectival αἰώνιος and nominal αἰών, which can be hasty. He provides two scriptural examples of different usage of αἰών: in the provision on permanent slavery in Exodus 21:5-6, and in a poetic statement about the earth/world at the beginning of Ecclesiastes. In both passages that Origen cites, αἰών isn’t used alone, but as part of stock adverbial clauses. (The original underlying Hebrew clauses in question signified perpetuity, and were translated with εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα in the Septuagint.)
However, again, not only has Origen shifted from the adjective to nominal uses, but he also doesn’t attempt to account for the force of the broader adverbial clause itself, but rather only isolates αἰών alone from it. Regarding the former passage from Exodus, Origen writes that the span of time to which a person is subject to permanent slavery is delimited to “the period of a man’s life.” For the latter passage from Ecclesiastes, translated in NRSVue as “a generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever,” Origen argues that this endurance actually only refers to “the time period of the present age” (praesentis saeculi tempus). He ends by noting that since eternal life comes by way of Christ, and since 1 Thessalonians 4:17 says that Christians will “always” (πάντοτε) be with him, consequently “in the same way that our always being with the Lord has no end, so also we must believe that eternal life also has no end” — though one might rightly wonder why anyone would be led to think eternal life wouldn’t be endless in the first place. In any case, several other patristic writers will also discuss the various meanings of αἰών similarly to how Origen does, citing the same passages; though to my memory they also never do so in the context of the interpretation of αἰώνιος itself, in relation to eschatological punishment. [End of edit.]
Regarding Kimel’s quotation of Hart, in which he contrasted αἰώνιος and ἀΐδιος/ἀεί, and suggested that αἰώνιος “never clearly means ‘eternal’ or ‘everlasting’ in any incontrovertible sense” in the way that these other terms do, I wrote that
Not only is αἰώνιος demonstrably used synonymously to things like (adverbial) ἀεί on dozens and dozens of occasions — even in the Septuagint itself, as I’ve exhaustively catalogued (https://i.imgur.com/IJGfA8k.png) — but elsewhere Ramelli and Konstan themselves understand it to denote permanence on any number of occasions.
(I usually speak of the “permanence” often inherent in αἰώνιος, where others might more frequently use a colloquial “eternal” or “everlasting.” In any case, I’ve covered all these various nuances in meaning and translation for αἰώνιος in my work-in-progress lexical entry for the term — including a section on true eternality.)
Obviously my main interest in my original response comment was to address some of Kimel’s characterizations, as well as some of the specific claims and wording of Hart when applicable.
The first reply to my comment came from someone actually quoting Hart from a private email exchange. I don’t know what the original query of the email was, but they said they had gotten permission to post Hart’s response — which read
you don’t need to go far in reading the Greek literature of Greco-Roman Judaism, Christianity, and paganism to figure out that none of the adjectival forms is used with a precise consistent meaning. Sometimes they’re used hyperbolically and sometimes intentionally vaguely. There are times when “apeiros” for example, means “infinite”, but it sometimes just means “innumerable” or “indefinite” (as in Origen’s use in De Principiis, which Rufinus renders as “innumerabilis”). “Atelevton” literally means “endless” but is often used to mean “very very long” or “indefinite” while “aionios” literally means “over an age” or “for a long period” but can be used to mean “eternal”…
Hart continued by emphasizing the parallel between this and modern hyperbolic uses of “endless” and “forever,” and then sort of summed this up by stating that “being literal-minded here is pointless.”
Now, generally as for the issue of potential hyperbolic usage, I’d say there’s room for agreement. In fact, in my own lexical entry for αἰώνιος — in the subsection for its meaning as “constant or repeated in terms of frequency and not strictly used for longer durations” — I had written
As with several other uses, this also might seem to be the type of denotation that’s particularly susceptible to hyperbolic usage, such as being engaged in constant or never-ending toil (compare the use of ἀίδιος in Hesiod, Shield 310, οἳ ἀίδιον εἶχον πόνον; and perhaps ἀδιάλειπτος ὀδύνη in Romans 9.2); but in truth there are few instances where hyperbole is obvious.
As seen at the end, though, I suggested that it’s rather hard to detect any obvious hyperbole in most uses of αἰώνιος. Repeatedly throughout Greek literature, it appears to be used with a genuine expectation that the phenomenon in question would last as long as it could possibly last.[1]
In another sense, though, this all seems to be somewhat self-defeating for what Hart had originally suggested in The New Testament, 538. If, as he now suggests in the private email exchange, words like αἰώνιος, ἀεί/ἀίδιος, and ἀτέλευτος/ἀτελεύτητος are actually similar if not identical in their being able to signify the same types of duration — all similarly used hyperbolically on occasion, etc. — then the very basis for Hart’s original sharp distinction between them is diminished; or certainly the common claim that if a New Testament author had truly wanted to point to the everlastingness of something, they would have have used another term besides αἰώνιος. In other words, I don’t see how this new statement isn’t plainly contradictory — in spirit if not letter — to the already-quoted
the adjective aiōnios, unlike the adjective ἀΐδιος (aïdios) or adverb ἀεί (aei), never clearly means “eternal” or “everlasting” in any incontrovertible sense, nor does the noun aiōn simply mean “eternity” in the way that the noun ἀϊδιότης (aïdiotēs) does; neither does aiōnios mean “endless,” as ἀτέλευτος (atelevtos) or ἀτελεύτητος (atelevtētos) does
Instead, there is no base immutable or “incontrovertible” sense that some of these words have but that the others don’t.
What struck me the most about Hart’s reply, however, was him saying that “being literal-minded here is pointless” in practically the same breath that he said “’aionios’ literally means ‘over an age’ or ‘for a long period.'” I’ve long been critical of the etymological reduction of αἰώνιος in relation to “age”; and I made an admittedly slightly snarky comment in reply to this, intimating that this seemed hypocritical, and that much of Hart’s entire approach to, say, eschatological punishment in the New Testament is distilled through the lens of an overly literal and “etymologizing” parsing of αἰώνιος. Specifically, I said that
so much of this argument about the “horizon of two ages” is understood by Hart to be precisely found and reflected in the morphological components of the word: punishment, etc., taking place “aionios” as “in the (eschatological) Age,” and not durationally at all (and certainly not permanently).
I also noted that
A corollary to this is that most Biblical scholars think that the New Testament authors (and others) conceived of the eschatological age as the true end of history. They wouldn’t have conceived of anything lying “beyond” this at all.
Yet I’m pretty sure it was precisely the overly literal interpretation of phrases like εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα καὶ ἐπέκεινα (LXX Micah 4.5; cf. LXX Exodus 15.18 too) by those like Origen that led to this idea [of something, e.g. restoration, “beyond” the eschatological era to come] in the first place — an idea that Hart seems to perpetuate with varying degree of cognizance.
There were a few more replies of less relevance after this, seemingly plagued by miscommunication and mistaken assumptions. But the crux centered around the relationship between the “two ages doctrine” in the New Testament and αἰώνιος as a potential signifer of this. The first instructive reply after this read
…Hart’s translation “of the Age” is intentionally vague. As he says, he sees aionios as perhaps referring to the last age or to the divine aeon above or as meaning for a long time or eternity. He actually doesn’t decide on one meaning–that’s why he doesn’t render it “of the Age to come.”
As for Mark 10:30 and Luke 18:30, it’s pretty clear that it would be hard to write those verses without there being some explicit lexical connection between the aion to come and the aionios life it brings.
In response, I mentioned a number of problems with understanding αἰώνιος in Mark 10.30 as a signifier of the eschatological era; but in the interest of space, I’ll just leave it to anyone to read in full here, and also my follow-up here.
Which brings us to Hart’s own reply to these comments, which I’m posting in full. (Note that I’m “SF,” and that Hart was also responding to a comment by the person who had originally relayed his email.)
Thanks, but SF is not going to get your point. He’s arguing tautologously, you’re arguing conceptually. Either one thinks the NT idiom of “ages” inflects “aionios” and suggests a particular reference or one doesn’t. So who cares?
I will confirm one point you made. If SF had read my notes to my translation with care, he would have seen that I do not claim that “aionios” in the New Testament is a clear reference to the olam ha-ba, but only that such an association is in keeping with the two ages language in the synoptics and Paul. Neither was my translation meant—again, as should be clear from my notes—to suggest that the only reading on offer was a reference to the coming age. I take “of the Age” to be open to numerous readings: for an age, for the totality of chronos that the aeon comprises, eternal or indeterminately long, of the Age to Come, of the divine aeon of the superlunary or supercelestial realms, of the Age Above as opposed to the Age of the Cosmos, and so on. And, as I also said, I wanted a phrase that would preserve the echo and seeming association between the language of the two ages and the adjective (understood as a rendering of an Aramaic idiom).
I do not, incidentally, think that aionios means the same thing in John as in the synoptics. I also think there are Pauline uses that fit neither model.
But, again, who cares? SF’s argument is that this has not been the way of dealing with intertestamental or NT texts, which is a tautology. I agree with a handful of NT scholars whose arguments are speculative and based on their own understandings of the intertestamental, NT, and late antique rabbinic texts. No one can win an argument between prejudice and speculation.
There are a number of things to address here. First, I’m not sure I even fully understand several of the comments Hart made in this, which seem to almost express an interpretive agnosticism/defeatism (“who cares?”); nor what we means when he describes my view as prejudice (?!) and his as speculative. Second, it’s unusual that Hart accuses me of having not read his book carefully, and as such that I have the mistaken impression that he believes “that ‘aionios’ in the New Testament is a clear reference to the olam ha-ba” (the eschatological “era to come”), instead of that “only that such an association is in keeping with the two ages language in the synoptics and Paul.”
In fact, my main concern — as expressed clearly throughout my comments on Eclectic Orthodoxy, and especially in my main post linked earlier — is that some of Hart’s translation choices seem to push the reader precisely into the perception that αἰώνιος signifies the eschatological era to come, where I offer arguments that this isn’t warranted at all. Again, Hart currently protests “I do not claim that ‘aionios’ in the New Testament is a clear reference to the olam ha-ba.” Now, if Hart had originally said that it seems absolutely certain, for instance, that the words aiōn and aiōnios are frequently used in the New Testament as some kind of reference to the ‘olam ha-ba, it’d probably be exceedingly difficult for him to continue to maintain these two claims simultaneously. And seeing how I actually just quoted Hart verbatim (cf. “it seems absolutely certain…” in That All Shall Be Saved, 126), well… I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether he simply has a faulty memory or is grossly equivocating.
In any case, as stated earlier, I think using any language of “age” at all when describing or translating αἰώνιος is misleading. Instead, the semantic domain(s) of αἰώνιος should be primarily understood in relation to permanence, things lasting “as long as possible,” and occasionally endurance more generally.[2]
When Hart offers his list of what all he thinks αἰώνιος can suggest, the very multivalence that Hart claims to accept here doesn’t actually seem to be very multivalent at all — most of which is still seemingly centered around the concept of a rather specific “age” or “aeon.” Again, among the main suggested meanings he listed were “for an age, for the totality of chronos that the aeon comprises, eternal or indeterminately long, of the Age to Come, of the divine aeon of the superlunary or supercelestial realms, of the Age Above as opposed to the Age of the Cosmos.” I hesitate to say that an overemphasis on an age/Age or aeon (in tandem with confident assertions about the true “literal” meaning of αἰών in relation to this) is also fairly clearly expressed by Hart elsewhere, too:
Certainly the noun αἰών, aiōn (or aeon), from which it [sc. αἰώνιος] is derived, did come during the classical and late antique periods to refer on occasion to a period of endless or at least indeterminate duration; but that was never its most literal acceptation. Throughout the whole of ancient and late antique Greek literature, an “aeon” was most properly an “age,” which is simply to say a “substantial period of time” or an “extended interval.” At first, it was typically used to indicate the lifespan of a single person, though sometimes it could be used of a considerably shorter period (even, as it happens, a single year). It came over time to mean something like a discrete epoch, or a time far in the past, or an age far off in the future. (That All Shall Be Saved, 121)
Further, beyond the confines of Judaism and early Christianity, he also goes on to suggest that even Platonic philosophical use of αἰών might also be understood in much the same sense as in the late Jewish notion of the procession of the cosmic ages:
…for Platonic tradition as a whole, it may very well be the case that the aeon above is thought to persist only so long as the present world-cycle endures, and that at the end of the Platonic Year, when the stars begin their great rotation anew, one heavenly Age will succeed another. (122)
(This seems to me to be along much the same lines as the suggestion of Ilaria Ramelli re: the use of αἰών in Stoicism — which Heleen Keizer criticizes harshly in her review of Ramelli’s Terms for Eternity: cf. The Studia Philonica Annual 23 [2011], 205.)
This of course isn’t to deny the idea of the multivalence of αἰώνιος. In my own lexical entry for the term, I reached as far as I could to delineate a number of different categories and descriptors of its use: perpetual, endless, permanent; pertaining to the longest amount of time possible for something to last; colloquially eternal as everlasting or permanent, or more properly eternal in a fuller or technical sense; used in relation to things of a kind of lasting and/or permanent ultimacy; permanent in effect or terminal; permanent so as to suggest immutability; used to suggest something which will be of permanently/continuously enduring benefit or significance (as e.g. used in connection with a gift or new state of affairs); continuing uninterrupted from the past into the future, invariable; pertaining to time immemorial (especially as a Septuagintalism); constant or repeated in terms of frequency.
The biggest difference is that there’s been no truly viable argument that it acquires the particular nuance of denoting the eschatological αἰών in early Jewish and Christian usage — even when it’s used in proximity to an explicit mention of the eschatological αἰών, such as in Mark 10.30.[3]
In any case, when we look at the appendix of Hart’s New Testament translation (which I’ve in fact read carefully a number of times since its publication), he writes that
I have generally rendered aiōnios as “of” or “in” either “that Age” (ekeinos aiōn) or “the Age,” using the unqualified noun alone to suggest a long, if indeterminate, duration, but using the uppercase letter to suggest something of its eschatological or otherworldly resonance. (543)
As he says, his capitalization is specifically meant to convey “something” of an “eschatological or otherworldly resonance.” However, although one might think that this is a fairly distinct and idiosyncratic resonance, Hart doesn’t offer this capitalization only sparingly for αἰώνιος throughout his New Testament translation, but ubiquitously. (In fact, I’m not sure if he ever renders αἰώνιος with a non-capitalized “age.”) Similarly, needless to say, whenever he renders αἰώνιος as “Age” modified by a demonstrative pronoun like “that,” this clearly points in the direction of a specific era — though this doesn’t stop Hart from indeed rendering such for the anarthrous ζωὴ αἰώνιος in Mark 10.30 (“the life of that Age”); nor in Matthew 25.46, where’s no potential αἰών antecedent at all (“And these will go to the chastening of that Age, but the just to the life of that Age”)! And I find it impossible, for example, to read his translation of “…who will pay the just reparation of ruin in the Age” in 2 Thessalonians 1.9 as anything other than a reference to what happens in the eschatological Age.
As I’ve repeatedly emphasized, “age” is no more “neutral” or “literal” a meaning of αἰών in general than some of the other senses in which αἰών is used, such as its archaic use for life force, or even physical material like marrow, in Homer. To the extent that the particular meaning of αἰών from which adjectival αἰώνιος is derived can be inferred from the broader attested usage of αἰώνιος (and in turn related back to a use of αἰών itself), this is clearly found in αἰών’s specific well-attested sense of signifying a totality of time and/or perpetuity. This makes adjectival αἰώνιος more or less exactly parallel with Latin aeternus, which is derived from aevum in much the same way αἰώνιος is from αἰών, and similarly doesn’t relate to aevum as any sort of specific era: cf. phrases like in aevum, signifying perpetuity. As such, there really is no succinct way to describe αἰώνιος “literally”; and even employing the Latinized transliteration “aeon” here can clearly mislead, such as in translating αἰώνιος a la “of an aeon” — and perhaps even when Hart describes αἰώνιος in relation to “the totality of chronos that the aeon comprises” (in light of the potentially misleading sense of “the aeon”).
The same holds for εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, too: an adverbial clause that’s for all intents and purposes semantically identical to adjectival αἰώνιος. Although most well-known as a Septuagintalism, this is nothing other than a twist on the well-known ancient Greek accusative of time τὸν αἰῶνα, which ubiquitously signifies permanence and perpetuity. In light of this, Hart’s attempt to deal with εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα in the New Testament falters in much the same way as his approach to αἰώνιος. At first, it might seem that Hart could pick up warrant for understanding εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα in line with a more particular “age”/aeon by fixating on the definite article in ὁ αἰών. Yet broader Greek usage of the articular adverbial accusative τὸν αἰῶνα — which, semantically, perfectly mirrors the Septuagintal εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, although both forms are attested within and beyond the LXX — clearly establishes that the inflected ὁ plays no semantic role in limiting or delineating “a” or “the” αἰών in any more specific way. It is abstract and idiomatic to the core, whether in τὸν αἰῶνα or εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα; and we only see an actual defined era in phrases like ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι τῷ ἐρχομένῳ. Hart’s common parsing of ὁ αἰών as “the Age,” therefore, is nothing more than a red herring that comes from his misguided principle to “scrupulously” treat (all) articular items as definite. This would mislead even when we encounter phrases like ὁ πᾶς / πᾶς ὁ αἰών.
Again, in terms of a “literal” translation of εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, we’re in much the same boat as with αἰώνιος. Any translation or interpretation along the lines of “until the age” seems to yield a semantically meaningless phrase, unless by this one understands this to mean something like “until the dawn of the eschatological era” — which, again, it precisely doesn’t ever signify.[5] Even “through the age” clearly fails to capture the intended import, especially in instances like 1 Corinthians 8:13: a text Hart predictably fails to render properly, translating “if a food causes my brother to falter, I will eat no flesh at all, throughout the age” (334). Contrast NRSVue and all other mainstream translations: “if food is a cause of their falling, I will never again eat meat.” Much the same meaninglessness is found in Hart’s translation of αἰώνιος itself in Jude 6, where he presumably understands the temporal direction here as backwards-looking: “…provide an example by undergoing the just requital of fire from the Age.”
However, there may be more options available to us if we wanted to translate εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα in English by similarly using a preposition + abstract noun: the phrase “unto eternity” isn’t entirely unknown in modern English, and seems to express much the same idea semantically; or better, “in perpetuity.” But of course “forever” is by far the most common and fitting translation, whether understood colloquially as “permanently” or as something more in line with actual eternality. (Or “as long as possible,” in even more dynamic language.)
Finally, as for Hart’s mention of αἰώνιος in the Gospel of John: it’s true there are several places in this gospel where the concept of ζωὴ αἰώνιος seems to be employed in unique ways. However, the focal point of its (re-)interpretation doesn’t seem to pertain to any sense of αἰών in relation to the eschatological age, or even particularly to αἰώνιος at all, but instead seems to be centered around “life” itself. I’ve also covered this in my lexical entry (subsection Idiosyncratic or special interpretations of αἰώνιος?):
It’s sometimes thought that the Gospel of John has an idiosyncratic conception of αἰώνιος, based on its creative use of “αἰώνιος life,” etc. However, not only is ζωὴ αἰώνιος clearly associated with immortality at several points throughout the gospel (3.16; 6.47–50), but to the extent that it has an idiosyncratic conception of ζωὴ αἰώνιος elsewhere, it appears that ζωή is the focal point of meaning and reinterpretation — or the compound phrase as a whole, as somewhat semi-“fossilized” —, but not αἰώνιος itself. By the time of the Gospel of John, the concept of everlasting life had, of course, become ubiquitous in early Judaism and Christianity. When this particular gospel creatively reinterprets this, it appears in various capacities: 1) as something like a metonym for salvation (compare also Mark 10.17 with Acts 16.30); 2) where acceptance of Christ, under various metaphors, e.g. as food or drink, yields everlasting life as that state enduring beyond all transitory phenomena (John 4.14; 6.27; and again cf. John 3.16; 6.47–50); 3) on one occasion as something synonymous with the “conditions” for salvation, in the sense of these conditions leading to salvation and life (John 17.3); or 4) perhaps even as a metonym for the afterlife itself insofar as everlasting life is attained within it (cf. perhaps John 12.25 vis-à-vis other instances where the concept of eternal life in the age to come, or even just the eschatological age itself, seems to be metonymically referred to as the “life to come” as a quasi–spatio-temporal event: Apology of Aristides 16; John Chrysostom, Commentary on Psalm 49.6).
Notes
[1] One can argue that there are a number of instances in which it was naive of people to think that something described as αἰώνιος might last forever: the Levitical priesthood, etc. But that’s of course different from saying that they didn’t in fact think so.
[2] See part of my full treatment here.
[3] Needless to say, if elsewhere one were to tempted to describe αἰώνιος using any sort of language of “for a period of time” — perhaps even if it’s acknowledged that this might be a substantial one — this seems to risk conflating it with πρόσκαιρος: a term with which αἰώνιος is actually very commonly contrasted in both religious and secular literature.
[4] In terms of adverbial phrases, however, there are obviously those like “in perpetuity” or “in eternity” — though, again, to my knowledge never definite.
[5] I covered εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα and other phrases in a bit more detail in my previous post. This would also be self-evidently absurd in instances like 1 Corinthians 8.13.
Semitica 
