Tuesday, January 2, 2024

Alvin F. Kimel, Jr. on Matthew 25:46

  

Aiónios as Adjective: Qualitative or Quantitative?

 

In Matt 25:46 Jesus speaks of “aiónios punishment” (punishment pertaining to the aeon to come—the only place in the New Testament where the phrase occurs) and “aiónion life” (life pertaining to the aeon to come). Given that the life given to us in Jesus Christ is eternal in the strong sense, does this not mean that the punishment of Gehenna is also eternal in the strong sense? St Basil of Caesarea appears to have made this inference in his brief rules for monastics: “for if there will be at a certain moment an end of aiónios punishment, there will also surely be an end of aiónios life.” (Quoted by Ramelli and Konstan, p. 195) The argument seems initially plausible, even compelling, given the parallelism; but the inference does not necessarily obtain. Aiónios is an adjective: it modifies the noun to which it is connected. Adjectives often vary in meaning when the nouns they qualify signify different categories of things, states, or events. When we read the sentence “Jack is a tall man standing in front of a tall building,” we do not jump to the conclusion that Jack is as tall as the building. We recognize the relativity of height with respect to both. When Jesus states that the wicked are sent to aiónios punishment, we should not assume that it refers to a state of perpetual punishing or that the loss is irretrievable. Jesus is not necessarily threatening interminable suffering. He (or the evangelist) may, for example, have intended aiónios to signify indefinite duration, i.e., the duration proper to the aeon of the next world. If so, the parallelism holds, yet even still it does not entail endless punishment. Or Jesus may be referring to the divine requital (whether remedial, retributive, or annihilating) that properly belongs to the eschatological aeon. And this is the crucial lexical point: aiónios by itself does not tell us whether the fire of Gehenna is of limited, indefinite, or unlimited duration. By contrast, the life of the age to come, ζωη αιωνιος, is truly eternal, for the life of Christ is indestructible and perduring. Adjectives modify nouns, yet nouns also modify adjectives.

 

Christopher Marshall rejects the claim that the parallelism of Matt 25:46 implies eternal punishment. We may not deduce the eternality of Gehenna, he argues, from the eternality of the Kingdom:

 

The word “eternal” is used in both a qualitative and quantitative sense in the Bible. It is sometimes urged that if eternal life in Matthew 25:46 is everlasting in duration, so too must be eternal punishment. But “eternal” in both phrases may simply designate that the realities in question pertain to the future age. Furthermore, inasmuch as life, by definition, is an ongoing state, “eternal life” includes the idea of everlasting existence. But punishment is a process rather than a state, and elsewhere when “eternal” describes an act or process, it is the consequences rather than the process that are everlasting (e.g., Heb. 6:2, “eternal judgment”; Heb. 9:12, “eternal redemption”; Mark 3:29, “eternal sin”; 2 Thess. 1:9, “eternal destruction”; Jude 7, “eternal fire”). Eternal punishment is therefore something that is ultimate in significance and everlasting in effect, not duration. (Christopher Marshall, Beyond Retribution [2011], p. 186, n. 123)

 

Note how misleading the English word “eternal” can be as a translation of aiónios. If the qualitative sense is intended by the speaker, then “eternal” is an inaccurate rendering, given that the dictionary definitions of “eternal” focus on temporal perpetuity and timelessness. The point is not the duration of the eschatological age but its character and tone, purpose and telos. In common usage “eternal” does not capture this nuance. David J. Powys concurs

 

The general primacy of the qualitative sense of aiónion in N.T. usage, is universally acknowledged. Seen as such it expresses the quality of the promised Age (aión), the age of the kingdom of God. This rather than the duration of the kingdom is the primary stress within the word aiónios. Matthew 25:31-46 is packed with imagery concerning the fulfilment of the kingdom: it tells of the coming of the Son of man (v. 31), the coming of the King (v. 34) and the gathering of the nations before the throne (vv. 31, 32).

 

It is thus natural and appropriate to take ‘eternal’ (aiónios) in each of its three instances in this passage as being primarily qualitative in sense. The point is not that the fire will burn for ever, or the punishment extend for ever, or the life continue for ever, but rather that all three will serve to establish the rule of God. (David J. Powys, Hell: A Hard Look at a Hard Question [2007], p. 292)

 

Kim Papioannou offers a similar exegetical judgment: “It is therefore likely that in the New Testament the adjective αιωνια goes beyond the quantitative sense of ‘a period of time’ to imply a quality to be associated with the age to come—the age that God will set up.” (Kim Papioannou, The Geography of Hell [2013], 47) In these cases “pertaining to the age to come” would be a more accurate translation, Papioannou suggests. It should be noted that Marshall,, Powys, and Papioannou are not proponents of universal salvation.

 

Taking a somewhat different tack, Thomas Talbott has proposed that aiónios, both in Matt 25 and elsewhere I the New Testament, should be understood in a causal sense, except when it is used directly of “God”:

 

Whether God is eternal (that is, timeless, outside of time) in a 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 ‘the eternal God’ in Rom. 16;26). The judgments, gifts, and actions of God are eternal in the secondary sense that their causal source lies in the eternal character and purpose of God. One common function of an adjective, after all, is to refer back to the causal source of some action or condition. When Jude thus cited the fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah as an example of eternal life, he was not making 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’s judgment 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’s judgment upon these cities and did not consume them, it expressed God’s eternal character and eternal purpose in a special way.

 

Now even as the adjective aiónios typically referred back to God as a causal source, so it came to function as a king of eschatological term, a handy reference to the age to come. This is because the New Testament writers identified the age to come as a time when God’s presence would be fully manifested, his purposes fully realized, and his redemptive work eventually completed. So just as eternal life is a special quality of life, associated with the age to come, whose causal source lies in the eternal God himself, so eternal punishment is a special form of punishment, associated with the age to come, whose causal source lies in the eternal God himself. In that respect, the two are exactly parallel. But neither concept carries any plication of unending temporal duration; and even if it did carry such an implication, we would still have to clarify what it is that lasts forever. If the life associated with the age to come should be a form of life that continues forever, then any correction associated with that age would likewise have effects that literally endure forever. Indeed, even as eternal redemption is in no way a temporal process that takes forever to complete, neither would an eternal correction be a temporal process that takes forever to compete. (Thomas Talbott, “A Pauline Interpretation of Divine Judgment,” in Universal Salvation?, ed. Robin Parry and Christopher H. Patridge [2004], pp. 46-47)

 

Talbott’s proposal illustrates the variety of interpretive possibilities open to the exegete.

 

Now consider how Matt 25:46 reads when the word kólasis, traditionally rendered “punishment” in English translation, is given an alternative, but very possible rendering—chastisement. As seen above, Hart translates kólasis in Matt 25:46 “chastening of that Age.” God chastises not to exact vengeance (timoria) but to correct, convert, discipline, and purify. Although kólasis can be used in a retributive sense (e.g., 2 Macc 4:38), it may also signify remedial punishment. If Jesus intended kólasis to signify chastisement, then the adjective aiónion cannot mean “eternal.” Chastisement comes to an end when its correct purpose is accomplished. In the late 2nd century, Clement of Alexandria clearly distinguished between kólasis and timoria:

 

For there are partial corrections which are called chastisements [kólasis], which many of us who have been in transgression incur by falling away from the Lord’s people. But as children are chastised by their teacher, or their father, so we are by Providence. But God does not punish, for punishment [timoria] is retaliation for evil. He chastises, however, for good to those who are chastised collectively and individually. (Clement, Strom. 7.16)

 

Just as aiónios does not compel “eternity,” so kólasis need not mean “retribution,” i.e., deserved punishment or its own sake. The corrective function of Gehennic punishment was explicitly stated by Theodore of Mopsuestia:

 

Those who have here chosen fair things will receive in the world to come the pleasure of good things with praises; but the wicked who have turned aside to evil things all their life, when they are become ordered in their minds by penalties and he fear that springs from them, and choose good things, and learn how much they have sinned by having persevered in evil things, and not in good things, and by means of these things receive the knowledge of the highest doctrine of the fear of God, and become instructed to lay hold of it with a good will, will be deemed worthy of the happiness of the Divine liberality. For He would never have said, “Until thou payest the uttermost farthing,” unless  it had been possible for us to be freed from our sins through having atoned for them by paying the penalty; neither would He have said, “he shall be beaten with many stripes,” or “he shall be beaten with few stripes,” unless it were that he penalties, being meted out, according to their sins, should finally come to an end. (Theodore of Mopsuestia, fragment; quoted by Solomon of Akhlat, The Book of the Bee, chap. 60)

 

Yet even if biblical exegetes should determine, however unlikely, that kólasis in Matt 25:46 denotes the retributive infliction of suffering, this is perfectly compatible with the doctrine of universal salvation, as long as the punishment is finite and temporary.

 

I propose the following as a plausible translation of Matthew 25:46: “Then they will go away to eonion punishment, but the righteous to eonion life.” The advantage of this translation is that it leaves open legitimate interpretive possibilities and does not read into the text later dogmatic developments. (Alvin F. Kimel, Jr., “Sometimes Eternity Ain’t Forever,” in Destined for Joy: The Gospel of Universal Salvation [2022], 142-48)

 

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