Matthew 25 is the primary\u00a0passage that most evangelical scholars have concluded supports the doctrine of an eternal hell.\u00a0Other passages have been determined as simply assumptions and through further scrutiny are admitted as shaky evidence for eternal conscious torment. So Matthew 25 seems to be the one that everyone zeros in on to “prove” the existence of an eternal hell. We will start off with this discussion by\u00a0Professor Thomas Talbott.\u00a0We will be adding to this page (soon) additional insights to the question of whether Matthew 25 supports the traditional view of eternal punishment of most of humanity (the “goats”).<\/p>\n
Here is Thomas Talbott:<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s begin with Matthew 25:46 because so many have appealed to this text in support of the following egregiously fallacious argument: If, according to Jesus, eternal life is literally unending life, then eternal punishment must also be unending torment (or at least unending separation from God). We can illustrate the fallacy in such reasoning, moreover, without entering into any controversy concerning the correct translation of the Greek \u201caionios\u201d (whether, for example, it should be translated as \u201ceternal,\u201d \u201ceverlasting,\u201d or simply \u201cage enduring\u201d). So let us simply grant, at least for the sake of argument, whichever of these translations a given person might prefer.<\/p>\n
Whatever its correct translation, \u201caionios\u201d is clearly an adjective and must therefore function like an adjective, and it is the very nature of an adjective for its meaning to vary, sometimes greatly, depending upon which noun it qualifies. For more often than not, the noun helps to determine the precise force of the adjective. As an illustration, set aside the Greek word \u201caionios\u201d for a moment and consider the English word \u201ceverlasting.\u201d I think it safe to say that the basic meaning of this English word is indeed\u00a0everlasting. So now consider how the precise force of \u201ceverlasting\u201d varies depending upon which noun it qualifies. An everlasting struggle would no doubt be a struggle without end, an unending temporal process that never comes to a point of resolution and never gets completed. But an everlasting change, or an everlasting correction, or an everlasting transformation would hardly be an unending temporal process that never gets completed; instead, it would be a temporal process of limited duration, or perhaps simply an instantaneous event, that terminates in an irreversible state. So however popular it might be, the argument that \u201caionios\u201d must have exactly the same force regardless of which noun it qualifies in Matthew 25:46 is clearly fallacious.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, even if we should translate \u201caionios\u201d with the English word \u201ceverlasting,\u201d a lot would still depend upon how we understand the relevant nouns in our text: the nouns \u201clife\u201d (zoe) and \u201cpunishment\u201d (kolasis). Now the kind of life in question, being rightly related to God, is clearly an end in itself, even as the kind of punishment in question seems just as clearly to be a means to an end. For as one New Testament scholar, William Barclay, has pointed out, \u201ckolasis\u201d \u201cwas not originally an ethical word at all. It originally meant the pruning of trees to make them grow better.\u201d Barclay also claimed that \u201cin all Greek secular literature\u00a0kolasis\u00a0is never used of anything but remedial punishment\u201d–which is probably a bit of a stretch, since the language of correction and the language of retribution often get mixed together in ordinary language. But in any event, if \u201ckolasis\u201d does signify punishment of a remedial or a corrective kind, as I think it does in Matthew 25:46, then we can reasonably think of such punishment as\u00a0everlasting\u00a0in the sense that its corrective effects literally endure forever. Or, to put it another way: An everlasting correction, whenever successfully completed, would be a temporal process of limited duration that terminates in the irreversible state of being rightly related to God. Certainly nothing in the context of Matthew 25\u00a0excludes\u00a0such an interpretation.<\/p>\n
This would not be my preferred interpretation, however, because the English word \u201ceverlasting\u201d does not accurately capture the special\u00a0religious meaning\u00a0that \u201caionios\u201d typically has in the New Testament. Here is how I expressed my own understanding of this matter in\u00a0Universal Salvation? The Current Debate, p. 46:<\/p>\n
\nThe first point I would make is that on no occasion of its use in the New Testament does \u2018aionios\u2019 refer to atemporal\u00a0process of unending duration. On a few occasions–as when Paul spoke of a \u2018mystery that was kept secret for long ages (chronios aioniois)\u00a0but is now disclosed\u2019 (Rom. 16:25-26)–the adjective does imply a lengthy period of time. But on these occasions, it could not possibly mean \u2018eternal\u2019 or \u2018everlasting\u2019. On other occasions, its use seems\u00a0roughly\u00a0Platonic in this sense: Whether God is eternal (that is, timeless, outside of time) in a purely Platonic sense or everlasting in the sense that he endures throughout all of the ages, nothing other than God is eternal in the primary sense (see the reference to \u2018the eternal God\u2019 in Rom. 16:26). The judgements, gifts, and actions of God are eternal in the secondary sense that their causal source lies in the eternal character and purpose God. One common function of an adjective, after all, is to refer back to the causal source of some action or condition. [Endnote: A selfish act, for example, is one that springs from, or has its causal source in, selfish motives.] When Jude thus cited the fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of\u00a0eternal fire, he was\u00a0not\u00a0making a statement about temporal duration at all; in no way was he implying that the fire continues burning today, or even that it continued burning for an age. He was instead giving a theological interpretation in which the fire represented God\u2019s judgement upon the two cities. So the fire was eternal not in the sense that it would burn forever without consuming the cities, but in the sense that, precisely because it was God\u2019s judgement upon these cities and did consume them, it expressed God\u2019s eternal character and eternal purpose in a special way.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nSo, even as the fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah was eternal in the sense that it expressed God\u2019s eternal character and purpose in a special way, the same is true of the fire to which Matthew 25:41 alludes. That fire is eternal in the sense that, despite the harsh sounding language, it expresses God\u2019s eternal love for us in a special, albeit especially severe, way. For as we read in Hebrews 12:29, the eternal God is also a consuming fire, one that will eventually consume all that is false within us. In no other way could God perfect all of us and express his eternal love for all of us. And similarly for eternal punishment: Like any of God\u2019s eternal actions in time, it should be interpreted theologically as a process or event that has its causal source in the eternal God himself. Or, as William Barclay put it, \u201cEternal punishment is then literally that kind of remedial punishment which it befits God to give and which only God can give\u201d (A Spiritual Biography, p. 66).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Matthew 25 is the primary\u00a0passage that most evangelical scholars have concluded supports the doctrine of an eternal hell.\u00a0Other passages have been determined as simply assumptions and through further scrutiny are…<\/p>\n