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)