Punishment Part III

The entire concept of eternal or everlasting punishment hinges primarily on a single verse, Matthew 25:46. When I began to write this essay on suffering, justice, law and punishment, I didn’t know it would involve an age old discussion among religions and biblical scholars on the translations of two words, “aion” and “olam”, as they relate to eternal or everlasting punishment. Lexicons acknowledge the respective cultures of both Greek and Hebrew to have a belief in an endless afterlife and used terms based on “aion” and “olam” to define it. Questions raised by these two words go to the heart, the very fiber of our Christian belief. “Aion” or “aionios” refers to time. The difficulty scholars, translators and religions have with these two words is answering whether they translate as “age”, “ages”, “age of ages”, “age-lasting”, “time”, “a period of time” or “eternity.” Eternity means an “infinite duration” in today’s English dictionaries. The Hebrew word, “olam”, means “forever.” However, if used with a person, it means a “life time” or “unto many generations.” In the Tanakh (Hebrew text), “olam” is referred to time that is “unending.”

To understand the Hebrew concept of time, one must grasp the idea that the Hebrew mind in biblical times did not think of the passage of time as a medium onto itself like the Greek mind or how western civilization views time today. To a Hebrew, the passage of time was life. God’s plan in the Hebrew mind consisted that man participated in two major ages. One major age was “temporal” in nature, and the other major age was the “age to come.” The sums of these two major ages were “ages of ages” or “everlasting”, which fails to convey the meaning to western civilization. To the western reader it means “forever and ever.” If you look at how Old Testament Hebrews viewed time, while “ages of ages” is a correct grammatical construction from the Old Testament Hebrew point of view, this means “forever and ever,” and “age to come” means “the afterlife.” A translator of Greek to English will use “forever and ever.”

The Greek form for “everlasting punishment” in Matthew 25:46 is “kolasin aionion.” Kolasin is a noun in the accusative form, singular voice, feminine gender and means “punishment, chastening, correction, to cut-off as in pruning a tree to bear more fruit.” “Aionion” is the adjective form of “aion,” in the singular form and means “pertaining to an indeterminate period of time.” Aionion” is the singular form of the adjective of the Greek noun “aion.” People unfamiliar with the Greek do not realize the endings of the same word change (inflection) to indicate mood, case and gender. Therefore, “aionion” may appear with different endings, such as “aionion”, “aioniau”, and “aionios.” The noun “aion” in Greek literature has always meant “an indeterminate period of time.”

When it comes to interpreting word meaning, context must decide. The meaning of a word must be determined from the given text. For example, some say “everlasting” does not always mean “everlasting” (forever) in the Old Testament, but in Psalm 90:2…“from everlasting to everlasting You are God”, “olam” means eternal. In this case, the limits of the long duration indicated by “olam” are set by the eternal life of God himself. Since God’s life is forever, “olam” must also mean forever in this context. Even though “olam” does not always mean “eternal”, the context here indicates “eternal.”

There are numerous figures of speech in the New Testament that are designed to emphasize both the conscious nature of hell’s punishment, and its abiding duration. The ultimate fate of the wicked will be like an “eternal fire” (Matthew 25:41). “Their worm dies not and the fire is not quenched” (Mark 9:48). “Hell is a place of outer darkness where there is weeping and the gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 25:30). A summary of all Scripture that speaks of hell indicates there is the loss or absence of all good, and the misery and torment of an evil conscience. The most terrifying aspect is the complete and deserved separation from God and from all that is pure and holy.

No one will be in hell who does not deserve or choose to be there. “God does not desire a single soul perish (2 Peter 3:9). When people choose to live alienated from God and cast their eternal welfare toward hell, God will honor their decision. Scriptures teach punishment will be proportionate to the degree of one’s guilt (Matthew 10:15, 11:20-24; Hebrews 10:29; Revelation 20:12-13). The doctrine of eternal punishment was acknowledged by the early church; endorsed by church leaders and was defended by theologians of the Middle Ages and the Reformation period. However, beginning with the eighteenth century, a new wave of clergymen within Christendom began to deny this fundamental tenet (one of the principles) of biblical doctrine, and today a significant segment of American society, almost half, no longer believes in hell. It is time Christian church leaders give more diligence to teaching the truth regarding eternal retribution.