Now the Jews have lost their eternal excellency; Aaron and his sons have ceased from their priesthood; the Mosaic system is superseded by Christianity … all these and numerous other eternal, everlasting things—things that were to last forever, and to which the various aionian words are applied—have now ended, and if these hundreds of instances must denote limited duration why should the few times in which punishments are spoken of have any other meaning?
As Hanson notes in the preface, “The verbal pivot on which swings the question, ‘Does the Bible teach the doctrine of Endless Punishment?’ is the word Aion and its derivatives and reduplications.”
In Aion-Aionios: The Greek Word Translated Everlasting, Eternal in the Holy Bible, Shown to Denote Limited Duration, John Wesley Hanson explores biblical and historical use of the Greek word aion and its derivatives to show that it is intended to denote an indefinite period of limited duration, rather than infinite time.
The Third Edition of this public domain work was provided by Andover-Harvard Theological Library and scanned by Google Books.
