I’ve been in the process of creating a lexicographical entry for the use of the adjective αἰώνιος (aiōnios) in ancient and koine Greek — probably to appear with a journal article on αἰώνιος in the context of eschatological punishment in late Second Temple Judaism and the New Testament that I’m preparing for submission. My entry is intended as an update to those in standard Greek lexicons like LSJ, DGE and BDAG, having come up with some more precise categorization for the use of the word that better accounts for its varied usage.

As it currently stands, I have the main body of the lexicographical entry itself, and then something like extended commentary on specific uses of the term below it. What follows is a vastly expanded version of one section of the commentary, which covers quite a bit of ground in response to recent work and proposals by Ilaria Ramelli and David Bentley Hart. If anyone wants to see a draft version of part of what I have for the main section of the entry on αἰώνιος itself, it can be found here.

The starting point of this part of the extended commentary was 4 Maccabees 10.15. I explain the particular significance of this verse (esp. for Ramelli’s hypothesis) in more detail below; but I didn’t actually quote the full verse anywhere. So here’s the Greek text, followed by a few translations, and then Ramelli’s comments:

μὰ τὸν μακάριον τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου θάνατον καὶ τὸν αἰώνιον τοῦ τυράννου ὄλεθρον καὶ τὸν ἀΐδιον τῶν εὐσεβῶν βίον οὐκ ἀρνήσομαι τὴν εὐγενῆ ἀδελφότητα No—by the blessed death of my brothers, by the eternal destruction of the tyrant, and by the everlasting life of the pious, I will not renounce our noble family ties. (NRSV) By the blessed death of my brothers, the everlasting destruction of the tyrant and the everlasting life of the pious, I will not disown our noble brotherhood. (NETS, the New English Translation of the Septuagint, 537) By the blessed death of my brothers and the eternal destruction of the tyrant and the endless life of the pious, I will not renounce the noble brotherhood. (Daniel deSilva, 4 Maccabees: Introduction and Commentary on the Greek Text in Codex Sinaiticus, 35; 37)

Ramelli’s main comments on the verse read as follows:

[I]n 4Macc 10:15, the life of the pious martyrs is described as ἀΐδιος, that is, eternal in the absolute sense. And this eternal blessed state is opposed to the destruction of the tyrant, the persecutor of the martyrs, in the world to come: τὸν αἰώνιον τοῦ τυράννου ὄλεθρον . . . Retributive punishment and destruction is described simply as αἰώνιος, that is, belonging to the αἰών to come, or “long,” but not strictly “eternal,” whereas otherworldly life, seen as a reward for the just, pious, and martyrs, is rather characterised as ἀΐδιος, which means “eternal” proper. (The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 28)

Again, I explain exactly why this verse is of such importance in more detail below; but one way that it intersects with broader issues here is that the phrase αἰώνιος ὄλεθρος in 4 Maccabees 10.15 also makes its appearance in the New Testament, in 2 Thessalonians 1.9. It’s this that puts it firmly on the radar of David Bentley Hart and his understanding of the meaning and significance of eschatologicial αἰώνιος in early Christianity more widely.

As seen above, Ilaria Ramelli detects a significant distinction between the use of αἰώνιος and ἀΐδιος in 4 Maccabees 10.15, with ἀΐδιος truly signifying eternality, but αἰώνιος as signifying a relation to the specific eschatological αἰών of late Jewish cosmic chronology. As such, she understands αἰώνιος in terms of what might be called locative temporality: viz. signifying “when” instead of “how long,” in the words of David Bentley Hart (That All Shall Be Saved, 127). 4 Maccabees 10.15 functions somewhat paradigmatically for Ramelli, setting the course for her interpretation of practically all subsequent Biblical and extrabiblical literature, where she sees the use of αἰώνιος instead of ἀΐδιος as nearly universally significant and indeed deliberate.

While discussing the intersection between exegesis and personal theological commitments would normally be out of place, the line between historical reconstruction and a systematizing theology of personal significance seems to be blurred more than usual in some of Ramelli’s reasoning and language. If, by her estimation, αἰώνιος punishment simply means punishment that pertains to the eschatological αἰών, but offers little specifics about its nature or duration within this era — much less signifying any sort of permanence or finality to this — the doors are opened for more optimistic theological interpretations here; and Ramelli explicitly adopts these at several points. In tandem with this, in much the same way that she argues that the use of ἀΐδιος in reference to eschatological punishment is deliberately curtailed (in the Septuagint, in the New Testament, and in early Christian literature more widely), she suggests that the idea of fierce retributive punishment in the eschatological era in general is also absent from much of this, too, via omission of the noun τιμωρία. With these two considerations together, then, Ramelli argues that in the New Testament, “the punishment of sinners in the world to come is therefore understood to be inflicted in their interest, which implies that it is purifying rather than retributive,” and that it “will come to an end once it has achieved its function” (The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 32).[1] David Bentley Hart similarly outlines the interpretive and theological consequences of the debate over αἰώνιος, e.g. commenting on a common early Christian interpretation wherein “the ‘aiōnios punishment’ of the age to come would end when the soul had been purified of its sins and thus prepared for union with God” (The New Testament: A Translation, 539).[2]

Right off the bat, however, there are reasons to be strongly critical of Ramelli’s interpretation. To the first point, the Maccabean literature may already distinguish remedial punishment for the righteous from retributive eschatological punishment for the wicked, e.g. further describing the eschatological torments (βάσανοι) awaiting the tyrant Antiochus as ἀκατάλυτες.[3] This same torment is elsewhere described precisely as αἰώνιος (cf. 4 Maccabees 9.9; 13.15). It’s also fairly widely recognized that the old Aristotelian distinction between a tormenting, retributive punishment of τιμωρία and a restorative κόλασις isn’t sustained in Greek literature in general; and although this is certainly the case in the Maccabean literature[4] and elsewhere in the Septuagint and deuterocanon, it’s also unlikely that this isn’t the case for the New Testament, too.[5] For that matter, just as the idea of the absence of Biblical ἀΐδιος in reference to eschatological punishment has to be modified in light of its use in precisely this context in Jude 6, so does the idea of the absence of τιμωρία in contexts of eschatological judgment and punishment, in light of its use within Hebrews 10.26–31.[6]

More specifically in relation to αἰώνιος, though, neither 4 Maccabees nor any of the Maccabean literature — nor any ancient literature whatsoever, as far as can be seen — offers any indicators that αἰώνιος is to be understood as Ramelli takes it, as signifying the eschatological era.[7] The same goes for the noun αἰών itself in the Maccabean literature, in which it’s never used to suggest a specific future era, such as the “αἰών to come.” Instead, here it’s always used in an adverbial/idiomatic formulation: in 4 Maccabees 17.18, αἰών signifies the immortal life of the righteous, with τὸν αἰῶνα functioning in its standard Attic sense as an accusative of time, signifying perpetuity; and αἰών also appears in 4 Maccabees 18.24 in the standard doxological form εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων, praising the true endlessness of God’s glory.

4 Maccabees 12.12 offers both αἰώνιος and αἰών together. Here, the syntax (…πυκνοτέρῳ καὶ αἰωνίῳ πυρὶ) makes a locative interpretation of αἰώνιος almost insurmountably improbable. Εἰς ὅλον τὸν αἰῶνα is to be understood idiomatically as suggesting perpetuity, with this exact formulation occasionally appearing elsewhere, even in secular Greek literature (though here in 4 Maccabees 12.12, it could also reflect the influence of כל העולם). Beyond this, it’s paralleled in numerous other idiomatic formulations of the same meaning from secular and Jewish Greek literature, too: εἰς ἅπαντα τὸν αἰῶνα; εἰς τὸν ἄπειρον αἰῶνα; εἰς τὸν ἅπαντα χρόνον; εἰς τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον; εἰς τὸν αἰώνιος χρόνον. (This might be further strengthened by its use in 4 Maccabees 12.12 in conjunction with a negated verb; cf. my note on Mark 3.29 below.)

To the extent that reinterpreting αἰώνιος to suggest the eschatological age opens the door for the possibility that any punishment therein might be understood as temporary, the particular use of αἰώνιος ὄλεθρος in 4 Maccabees 10.15 and elsewhere seems to militate against this — where the rebuttal that this may instead suggest a more provisional and recoverable sense of “ruin” rather than one that’s irreversible seems to press this too far. This is further supported by the use of parallel concepts and language of destruction in other Second Temple Jewish literature which isn’t easily amenable to a less severe interpretation, like in Psalms of Solomon 15; 1QS 4.12–14; and in a number of instances throughout 1 Enoch.

For those whose interests lie closer to the New Testament, perhaps most important is the connection of all these texts and traditions with 2 Thessalonians 1.8–9 — which, like 4 Maccabees 10.15, also uses ὄλεθρος αἰώνιος. So it’s worth taking a closer look at all these, and how they intersect with Ramelli and David Bentley Hart’s interpretation, too.

First off, 2 Thessalonians 1.6–9 together reads

εἴπερ δίκαιον παρὰ θεῷ ἀνταποδοῦναι τοῖς θλίβουσιν ὑμᾶς θλίψιν· καὶ ὑμῖν τοῖς θλιβομένοις ἄνεσιν μεθ’ ἡμῶν ἐν τῇ ἀποκαλύψει τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ ἀπ’ οὐρανοῦ μετ’ ἀγγέλων δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ· ἐν πυρὶ φλογός, διδόντος ἐκδίκησιν τοῖς μὴ εἰδόσιν θεὸν καὶ τοῖς μὴ ὑπακούουσιν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ· οἵτινες δίκην τίσουσιν ὄλεθρον αἰώνιον ἀπὸ προσώπου τοῦ κυρίου καὶ ἀπὸ τῆς δόξης τῆς ἰσχύος αὐτοῦ· ὅταν ἔλθῃ . . . ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ ἐκείνῃ since indeed it is just in God’s sight to repay those who afflict you with affliction, and you who are being afflicted with relief with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with the angels of his power, with flaming fire, repaying with vengeance those who do not know God and those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will pay the penalty of eternal ruin from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might, when he comes . . . on that day (Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians, 393)

Against Malherbe and virtually all other English translations, Hart translates 2 Thessalonians 1.9 as “[w]ho will pay the just reparation of ruin in the Age, coming from the face of the Lord and the glory of his might.” By his use of “in,” as well as his capitalization of “the Age,” Hart clearly understands αἰώνιος to signify the eschatological age to come. Ilaria Ramelli makes no comment on 2 Thessalonians 1.9 on its own; but again, considering her nearly universal interpretation of this, it’d be highly unusual if she didn’t understand it similarly. Further, when translating John Chrysostom’s use of the same phrase in his commentary on 2 Thessalonians, she understands αἰώνιος to signify “in the world to come” for him[8]; and her comments on the use of αἰώνιος in 2 Thessalonians 2.16 point in this direction, too:

In 2Thess 2:16, παράκλησιν αἰωνίαν is not an “eternal encouragement,” but an “encouragement for the world to come.” (The Christian Doctrine of Apokatastasis, 28)

In any case, not only is the use of ὄλεθρος αἰώνιος itself in 2 Thessalonians 1.9 easily correlated with the language from the aforementioned parallel Second Temple Jewish texts and traditions, but much of 2 Thessalonians 1.6–9 as a whole is, too. In the Community Rule (1QS) from the Dead Sea Scrolls, for example, the righteous are portrayed as ultimately enjoying “fruitful offspring with all everlasting blessings, eternal enjoyment with endless life, and a crown of glory with majestic raiment in eternal light.” In stark contrast, however, the fate of those who walk the path of deceit and darkness are described as follows:

the visitation of all those who walk in it will be for an abundance of afflictions at the hands of all the angels of destruction, for eternal destruction [שחת עולמים] by the scorching wrath of the God of revenges, for permanent terror and shame without end with the humiliation of destruction by the fire of the dark regions. And all the ages of their generations (they shall spend) in bitter weeping and harsh evils in the abysses of darkness until their destruction, without there being a remnant or a survivor for them. (1QS 4.12–14; translation by Martínez and Tigchelaar, The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition, 1.77; only slightly modified for accuracy and literalness)

The 15th chapter of the Psalms of Solomon outlines these contrasting fates similarly:

Those doing these things will never be distressed by evil; the flame of fire and anger against the unrighteous will not touch them, whenever it goes out from the Lord’s presence [ἀπὸ προσώπου κυρίου] to destroy every confidence [=ὑπόστασις] of sinners.

. . .

On the day of the Lord’s judgment sinners will perish forever, when God examines the earth at his judgment; but then, those fearing the Lord will find mercy, and they will live on in their God’s mercy, but sinners will perish for all time. (15.4-5, 12–13; translation by Robert Wright, The Psalms of Solomon, 163, 167)

Finally, this is also very closely echoed in 1 Enoch 53.2, as well:

Their hands commit lawless deeds, and everything that (the righteous) labor over, the sinners lawlessly devour. And from the presence of the Lord of Spirits the sinners will perish, and from the face of his earth they will be taken, and they will perish forever and ever. (Nickelsburg, 67)

Beyond his reinterpretation of ὄλεθρος αἰώνιος itself in 2 Thessalonians, Hart can also attempt to somewhat mitigate the significance of these broader parallels by questioning the authorship of 2 Thessalonians, and thus in some way sequestering it from the rest of the New Testament. Hart takes somewhat of a similar tack re: the harsh eschatological language of Revelation 20, appealing to the general cryptic nature of Revelation as a whole in comparison to the rest of the New Testament, or elsewhere questioning its canonicity.

Naturally, the risk here is in giving more of a theological answer to a historical and exegetical problem — where, at the very minimum, the location of these texts alongside the other earliest prized Christian writings certainly suggests a broader deposit of tradition that was important to the first century church. In even broader terms, the fact that the antithesis of everlasting salvation and destruction appears repeatedly in the eschatological literature of Second Temple Judaism[9] makes it an extremely compelling background for our interpretation of New Testament eschatology more broadly, too; and especially when the parallels consist of such specific language and ideas. Further, these same Jewish eschatological traditions almost certainly supply the background for texts and traditions in other Pauline letters whose authorship isn’t questioned (some discussed later in this post). Finally, however abstract Revelation as a whole may be, there are also some compelling parallels between its closing eschatological conceptualizations and that of 1 Corinthians 15, which might suggest that Revelation’s eschatological scheme isn’t quite as abstract or impenetrable as has been suggested by Hart and others (and, conversely, that 1 Corinthians 15 may have a much more “traditional” eschatological subtext than the one Hart sees, too).

Returning to 4 Maccabees 10.15 and the issue of αἰώνιος itself: again, Ramelli takes the distinction between αἰώνιος and ἀΐδιος in verses like this to be of paramount importance in establishing a broader principle by which the eschatological life of the righteous can be said to genuinely everlasting, but the punishment of the wicked eschatologically indeterminable; and much the same principle also appears in Hart. This was already seen in his understanding of αἰώνιος as “in the Age,” and is stated in even more general terms elsewhere:

the adjective aiōnios, unlike the adjective ἀΐδιος (aidios) or adverb ἀεί (aei), never clearly means “eternal” or “everlasting” in any incontrovertible sense, nor does the noun aiōn simply mean “eternity” in the way that the noun ἀϊδιότης (aïdiotēs) does; neither does aiōnios mean “endless,” as ἀτέλευτος (ateleutos) or ἀτελεύτητος (ateleutētos) does (New Testament, 538)

The lexicographical data, however, is incontrovertible that there’s no substantive distinction between the use of αἰώνιος to express permanence, endurance, and totalities of time (including eternality), and other terms which function more or less identically. In my lexical entry, I’ve exhaustively demonstrated the synonymy of the Septuagintal use of αἰώνιος and other similar terms in secular Greek literature and beyond. Those interested can see a draft of my section on αἰώνιος in the Septuagint here. Along with this, it’s always pertinent to note that αιωνιότητα (cf. αἰωνιότης), a parallel form to ἀϊδιότης, in fact remains the main term to express eternity in modern Greek, too.[10]

In tandem with this, Hart also wildly misrepresents usage of αἰών and αἰώνιος outside Biblical literature, as well. For example, in the postscript of his New Testament commentary addressing these terms, he writes

for both Philo of Alexandria (an older contemporary of Jesus) and Josephus (born within a decade of the crucifixion), an “aeon” is still only a limited period of time, usually a single lifetime, but perhaps as much as three generations. (The New Testament, 539; similarly repeated in That All Shall be Saved, 123)

But there are in fact numerous examples where Philo uses both nominal αἰών and adjectival αἰώνιος in line with those broad categories I’ve delineated: permanence, endurance, and totalities of time (including eternality). Many of these are conveniently collected in Heleen Keizer’s Life – Time – Entirety: A Study of ΑΙΩΝ in Greek Literature and Philosophy, the Septuagint and Philo, 205–246; and cf. also Ramelli and Konstan, Terms for Eternity, 51ff. For that matter, it’s precisely a passage by Philo using αἰών in a common expression for all time which stands as one of the starkest expressions of everlasting torment in early Jewish literature: one also using Hellenistic terminology for a punishing otherworld like χῶρος ἀσεβῶν (De Cherubim §2; cf. also Josephus, Jewish War 2.156).

Similarly, there any number of instances in Josephus, too, where αἰών is used in constructions to express all time (Antiquities 1.272; 19.170), and εἰς (τὸν) αἰῶνα and αἰώνιος to express permanence (e.g. Antiquities 4.225; 5.112); and sometimes something of both (Antiquities 7.211). Just to take a single example of the use of αἰώνιος in this sense, Ramelli and Konstan note that “[i]n Jewish War 1.650 αἰώνιος refers to the soul and its capacity of perception in the afterlife: ‘the soul is immortal [ἀθάνατόν] and its perception endures, among the goods, eternally [αἴσθησιν αἰώνιον]'”, and that had Josephus used more formal philosophical terminology here (or at least what might be thought of as such terminology), “we might expect ἀΐδιος” (Terms for Eternity, 72).

Returning to 4 Maccabees 10.15, and Ramelli’s understanding of this: as with virtually every other use of αἰώνιος in Jewish and Christian literature that she references, Ramelli offers little analysis of any individual passage to speak of, wherein her suggested interpretation might have otherwise been argued based on contextual or syntactical grounds. In instances like this, her hypothesis seems to hang solely on her observation of the differing use of αἰώνιος and ἀΐδιος in and of itself. So to take up the mantle where Ramelli fails to: as for the broader form of the “oath” in 4 Maccabees 10.15, and the use of ἀΐδιος in ἀΐδιος βίος here, it’s uncertain what influenced this, or whether more specific explanation is even required.[11] Various oath forms also use αἰών to suggest eternality: for example, in Greek versions of Daniel 12.7, the angel swears by the God “who lives (εἰς) τὸν αἰῶνα”; and this is paralleled in Revelation 10.5–6, ὤμοσεν τῷ ζῶντι εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας τῶν αἰώνων (the same form as in the doxology at 4 Maccabees 18.24).

If anything, the simplest explanation for the use of the apparent synonyms in 4 Maccabees 10.15 would suggest mundane stylistic variation, and simple avoidance of using αἰώνιος or ἀΐδιος twice in succession. Alternatively, it could be speculated that the author chose ἀΐδιος to suggest the continual endurance of life, but then αἰώνιος (modifying ὄλεθρος) in line with the category of “permanent in effect or terminal” from my lexical entry, in order to suggest the annihilating destruction of Antiochus. In this case, though, the distinction between these would still be slight in comparison to Ramelli’s suggestion, and certainly to the general idea of a “locative” αἰώνιος instead of a temporal one.

Elsewhere in Biblical literature, there seems to have been no concern about using at least αἰών and αἰώνιος in the same sentence: cf. Mark 3.29; 10.30; John 4.14. In the first and last examples, the idiomatic sense of εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα as signifying permanence is obvious and otherwise well-attested,[12] ruling out the possibility of αἰών (much less αἰώνιος) signifying a particular era here, contra both Ramelli and Hart.[13] In the middle example of Mark 10.30, ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι τῷ ἐρχομένῳ ζωὴν αἰώνιον, the eschatological era is clearly signaled by the specification of the αἰών “to come.” The occurrence of the same root in αἰώνιος here may be incidental, or more speculatively the product of wordplay (viz. polyptoton); but in any case, using this simple co-occurrence of roots to reanalyze αἰώνιος in terms of signifying the eschatological era — in a way that, again, seems to be completely unprecedented in any other ancient literature — is highly unwarranted.[14]

Beyond the general lack of attestation for this meaning, making any substantive connection between “αἰών to come” and αἰώνιος in Mark 10.30 in terms of both signifying a specific era would seem to invest the sentence with a redundancy that accords strangely with this differing terminology. Even in English translation, Hart can only capture something of a tolerable reading by rendering ζωή αἰωνία as if it were ἡ ζωή (τοῦ) αἰῶνος ἐκείνου, with his imagined “that” implicitly referring back to the previously specified “αἰών to come.”[15] This syntactically unwarranted interpretation only mitigates the redundancy on one level, though; and in any case it doesn’t change the fact that the distinct signification of everlasting life would also supply more information here, in terms of the imperishability awaiting the righteous beyond any temporary livelihood. This in effect brings us back to the Maccabean literature, too, where e.g. 4 Maccabees 15.2–3 also frames everlasting life very much in contrast to temporality (and in relation to ἀθανασία elsewhere) — as αἰώνιος does in places like 2 Corinthians 4.18–5.1, too.

Αἰώνιος had likely by the fifth century BCE entered the standard Greek lexicon; and as reflected in my extended lexicographical entry, there are no attested instances in non-interpretive literature which the adjective can be understood to evoke αἰών as an “era” in a historical periodization scheme, or otherwise. When this is appreciated alongside the fact that adjectival עוֹלָם in Hebrew and עָלַם in Aramaic already regularly signified permanence and perpetuity (and wherein αἰώνιος functioned as the adjectival equivalent of adverbial לעולם and לעלם in Greek; cf. Hart, New Testament, 542–43), seeing it as signifying the eschatological era already circumvents its well-established natural meaning for both Hellenized and Jewish audiences.

To propose not only that, upon encountering αἰώνιος, hearers and readers might have disregarded the universally received meaning of the term in Greek literature — deconstructing it to find a particular denotation of αἰών as an era, and from here understanding this to implicitly suggest the very specific future era of late Jewish eschatology —, but also that the standard modifying adjectival form itself can be easily understood and translated as something like a locative adverbial clause (e.g. seeing ἔνοχός αἰωνίου ἁμαρτήματος as “answerable for a transgression in the Age” or ὄλεθρος αἰώνιος as “ruin in the Age”), simply has too many explanatory disadvantages to be even remotely plausible; and in many senses this can be said to run against fundamental principles of lexicography and general linguistics.

Although αἰώνιος is never itself plausibly taken to be a signifier of the eschatological era of late Jewish eschatology, the concepts of everlasting life/salvation and everlasting destruction were eminently sensible in the context of the eschatology of Second Temple Judaism. As seen earlier, it appears almost impossible to deny that texts like 2 Thessalonians 1.6–9 and Revelation 20 are to be understood primarily in this context — the latter again easily correlated with similar concerns with the erasure from the eschatological “book of life” in 1 Enoch and beyond. Although any slight concessions by Hart here might be immunized by the more common sentiment that pushes texts like these to the theological periphery of the New Testament, the last place that traditions like these were found in the context of Second Temple Judaism was on the periphery. And further, to the extent that we detect similar backgrounds not just for these texts, but in texts like Philippians 3.18–20, as well as in myriad traditions in the gospels themselves — and in books like Jude and 1 and 2 Peter, and beyond — there appears to be no good grounds by which we might deny that the New Testament texts held these common eschatological assumptions and traditions among their most central theological concerns.

By way of bringing a few of the things that I’ve talked about in this post thus far together with this idea: in an earlier footnote (Note 5), I said that in the eschatological tradition of 2 Peter 2.9, the sense of torment in its use of the word κολάζω is probably particularly evident. Expanding on this, not only is 2 Peter 2.9’s language directly parallel to the clearly Enochic statement in 2 Peter 2.4, but even the language in 2.9 is closely paralleled on several occasions in 1 Enoch itself, too, in the context of the eschatological damnation of the wicked. For example, 1 Enoch 45.2 states that “sinners who have denied the name of the Lord of Spirits” are “kept for the day of affliction and tribulation” — where this descriptor is different and more severe than just “day of judgment.” Perhaps even more importantly, 1 Enoch 22.11 states that an otherworldly chasm has been created for sinners, where they are “separated for great torment, until the great day of judgment,”[16] and after this appear to undergo either annihilation or permanent torment.

Turning to 2 Peter 2.4’s “God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into Tartarus and committed them to chains of deepest darkness to be kept for the judgment,” this is parallel to and points to the exact same traditions that Jude 6 does — alluding above all to 1 Enoch 10.4–6, where the fallen watcher Asael is bound (δῆσον τὸν Ἀζαήλ), cast “into darkness” (εἰς τὸ σκότος) and covered with it, to remain permanently[17] until “the day of the great judgment” where he’s taken to the conflagration. As George Nickelsburg notes, this “is a common designation in 1 Enoch, and the fire is the normal description of eternal punishment.”[18] Jude 6 reiterates the bondage of the Watchers by describing their chains using adjectival ἀΐδιοι: the same word Josephus uses in describing the view of the Pharisees that souls are immortal, and as such those of the righteous will continue to live, but the wicked are held in everlasting bondage (εἱργμὸν ἀίδιον προτίθεσθαι, Antiquities 18.14); and similarly elsewhere, that they’re punished/tormented with everlasting torment, ἀιδίῳ τιμωρίᾳ κολάζεσθαι (Jewish War 2.164). Interestingly, Jude 7 also closely echoes what’s expressed even in Plato, Gorgias 525: the fires of Sodom and Gomorrah, still raging, πρόκεινται δεῖγμα πυρὸς αἰωνίου δίκην ὑπέχουσαι — easily correlated with Plato’s egregiously wicked, who πάθη πάσχοντας τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον (similarly τὸν ἀεὶ χρόνον τιμωρουμένους), in which they παραδείγματα ἀνηρτημένους.[19] In the eschatological traditions that they relate here, Jude and 2 Peter bring together the fate of the supernatural Watchers and their specific transgressions with that of unrighteous humanity as a whole: something already seen in 1 Enoch and elsewhere, and also clearly reflected in Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 1.10.1 and Justin, 1 Apology 52. Fascinatingly, in an allusion that’s frequently been overlooked, 1 Enoch 10.4–6 is even the exact text Jesus himself quotes when speaking of the “outer darkness” in Matthew 22.13. Perhaps even more interesting, at least for those interested in patristic reception of these traditions, in Commentary on John 28.63f. Origen explicitly addresses the Matthean texts about those consigned to the outer darkness, and whether they’re truly lost forever (εἰσαεί). Origen suggests that Biblical readers actually won’t find an easy answer here: he says that, on one hand, it’s uncertain whether their fate is irreversible, considering that εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα or εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας isn’t specified in the Biblical passage; but on the other hand he suggests that it’s also not certain that it is reversible, considering that the saying “indicates nothing regarding this one eventually being released,” either. Even leaving aside the question of whether passages like this speak toward the possibility that Origen himself could waver on universalism more than usually thought, even in Caesarea — something that serious Origenian scholars like Ronald Heine (Origen: Scholarship in the Service of the Church, 244ff.) and Mark Scott (Journey Back to God: Origen on the Problem of Evil, 140) grapple with — at the very minimum it suggests that Origen could understand terminology such as εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα and εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας (again, the standard adverbial equivalents of αἰώνιος) precisely to signify irreversible eschatological punishment. In any case, the Enochic conceptual background of the language in Matthew 22.13 is closely connected with eschatological language and traditions elsewhere throughout the gospel, too: Gehenna traditions, and particularly Matthew 25.30 — which immediately leads into the “parable” of the sheep and goats, with the clearly Enochic eschatological tradition in 25.31 (cf. also Matthew 19.28, virtually quoting 1 Enoch 62.5); and then finally our infamous verses involving αἰώνιος fire and punishment at the end of the chapter.[20]

To expand further on the previous section: in Matthew 7.13–14; 22.14–15, and Luke 13.22ff., the wide gate of destruction, along with imagery of the “outer” darkness and weeping and gnashing of teeth, is clearly framed in similar terms to various traditions of the polarity of afterlife fates, prominent in Second Temple Judaism and known throughout the wider Mediterranean world, too. As for Matthew 7.13–14 and its Jewish eschatological context, Betz even speaks of ἀπώλεια here as “a technical term referring to eschatological doom” (A Commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, 525). Further, these texts also intersect with the contemporaneous Jewish concern over the number of those who would be saved. This is seen in perhaps its most severe form in the late first century or second century apocryphal 4 Ezra[21]:

He answered me and said, “Weigh within yourself what you have thought, for he who has what is hard to get rejoices more than he who has what is plentiful. So also will be the judgment which I have promised; for I will rejoice over the few who shall be saved, because it is they who have made my glory to prevail now, and through them my name has now been honored. And I will not grieve over the multitude of those who perish; for it is they who are now like a mist, and are similar to a flame and smoke—they are set on fire and burn hotly, and are extinguished.”

. . .

“Therefore there shall not be grief at their destruction, so much as joy over those to whom salvation is assured.”

. . .

“The Most High made this world for the sake of many, but the world to come for the sake of few. But I tell you a parable, Ezra. Just as, when you ask the earth, it will tell you that it provides very much clay from which earthenware is made, but only a little dust from which gold comes; so is the course of the present world. Many have been created, but few shall be saved.” (4 Ezra 7.59–61, 131; 8.1–3, NRSV)

For my purposes here, I’m more concerned with traditions that starkly portray the polarity of fate than any specific notions of the massa damnata. By the same token though, the Hebrew Bible is already replete with instances where great multitudes were delivered to the finality of death and destruction; and these themes continue to be taken up throughout early Jewish tradition. A prominent late Second Temple tradition envisioned Noah as a herald in the decades leading up to the flood, proclaiming “repentance to all the peoples, so that all may be saved” (Sibylline Oracles 1.128–29). In this, God “waited patiently” (in fact 120 years, according to a common interpretation of Genesis 6.3); but of course in the end, only “a few, that is, eight persons, were saved” (1 Peter 3.20). In the Petrine epistles and beyond, this clearly served as a parallel for the coming eschatological peril: the earth and all humanity was once destroyed by water, and now “the present heavens and earth have been reserved for fire, being kept until the day of judgment and destruction of the godless” (2 Peter 3.7).

Similarly in 1 Corinthians 10.5–11, Paul invokes the wilderness generation and the multitudes who succumbed to the Moabite apostasy in Numbers 25, as a warning for contemporaries who might also by tempted by κακοί and πορνεία. Although Paul embellishes this with Christological midrash, he seems to otherwise accept the historicity of these events, in which “God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness” (10.5). Drawing on language from the same exodus tradition, in Philippians 2.14–16 the faithful are portrayed as righteous ones “in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation”; but even here, Paul reiterates that only in their holding fast to faith will his work not be in vain, as to be determined on the day of judgment. Philippians 3.18–19 picks up on the eschatological fate of the “enemies” of Christ, in contrast to those who will inherit heaven; and cf. also Sirach 21.9–10 here, which brings this idea of a destructive “end” back into conjunction with motifs discussed for 2 Thessalonians 1.6–9.

There are clear instances, then, both in the Hebrew Bible itself and in other prominent early Jewish traditions, where divine justice was all too eager to remove the unrighteous from existence altogether, with no indication whatsoever of their restoration. Such traditions seem to be unambiguously reflected in the New Testament, too. Similarly, passages like 1 Corinthians 6.9–10, Galatians 5.19–21, and Ephesians 5.5 stipulate classes of sinners being denied inheritance of the kingdom of heaven (unless they cease from their idolatry, sexual immortality, etc.), using terminology which closely corresponds with that from rabbinic tradition and elsewhere, where classes of people are denied any existence in the future age to come at all. Other New Testament passages using this same terminology, like Luke 20.34–35, may indicate such a sharp bifurcation between the resurrection of the righteous (Luke 14.14) and of the wicked, that the latter can’t truly be said to share in a restoration to life at all; and again see 2 Maccabees 7.14 here, mentioned in Note 3, where Antiochus is told that “for you there will be no resurrection to life” (and John 5.29 for the same antithesis). Similar to 1 Corinthians 6.9–10 and the other vice lists cited, Revelation 20.8 issues one of the starkest denials of life to those in its own list — in fact setting forth two deaths for these persons, in a fiery immolation, as also in the Aramaic targumim.[22]

Closing out this extremely cursory tour of Pauline texts that intersect with Jewish traditions of eschatological damnation and salvation, Romans 9–11 offers a bewildering variety of different traditions about the Israelite past and present, and the multitude and the “remnant.” Echoing the harsh, deterministic Hodayot from the Dead Sea Scrolls (1QH 7.15–22), the infamous 9.22 characterizes God having patiently endured those Jewish “vessels of wrath, made for destruction” — “desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power” for the sake of those preordained “vessels of mercy.” Shortly thereafter, in a passage that may in some ways may be even more problematic, Paul quotes Isaiah to the effect that despite the vast number of Israelites, the remnant “will be saved.” It’s uncertain in which senses Paul might think of this prophecy as having (only) historic significance and/or enduring significance for the present; but in any case, he seems to pick back up on this remnant in Romans 11.

In this, he correlates the dismal contemporaneous Jewish response to the Christian mission with the disobedience and indeed apostasy of those early Israelites who abandoned YHWH for Baal, leaving only a small subset “who have not bowed the knee” (11.4) — explicitly associating them with the 7,000 from 1 Kings 19 who were “left alive after Jehu’s execution of the apostate royal household and their adherents.”[23] Arland Hultgren rightly notes that this “can be taken as both judgment and promise”[24]; but in any case, Paul finally starts to broach the more practical upshot of all this in 11.11. Even in the verses that follow, though, Paul may still vacillate between more realistic/pessimistic and more hopeful views: the subtext of harsh Jewish resistance seems palpable in 11.14, when he expresses the hope that somehow (πῶς) his own efforts might “save some” of his fellow Jews (cf. 1 Corinthians 9.22); and in 11.23 he conceives of the possibility that they genuinely won’t accept Christ and thus be grafted back into the root of salvation (mirroring much the same warning to Gentiles in 11.21).

However optimistic Paul’s hopes for the awakening of Israel are at certain points, the scheme he offers was infamously characterized by Rudolf Bultmann as emerging from der spekulierenden Phantasie, and even more bitingly by Ernst Käsemann as only “the apocalyptic dream of a man who tried to do in a decade what two thousand years have not managed to do” (Romans, 307). Moreover, there are still uncertainties in what exactly this “dream” consists of, in light of debate over the meaning of καὶ οὕτως in Romans 11.26, and its relationship to earlier statements — including the specification that true “Israel” doesn’t consist of all Israelites (9.6). Incidentally, more than one scholar has charged Paul with incoherence if not plain inconsistency across Romans 9–11[25]; and if Paul can express such seemingly contradictory views within the space of just three chapters, why not the New Testament as a whole, expressing both an inherited eschatological pessimism, and perhaps occasional glimmers of a larger hope too?[26]

In light of all these things — and controverting expectations of a responsible, substantive concession that there are any number of eschatological traditions in the New Testament for which it’s possible if not probable that these functioned just like they did for the authors and audiences of the Second Temple Jewish literature that’s been mentioned throughout this post (again, 1 Enoch and various texts in the Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.) — at several places Hart seems to simply double down on his denial of this. In fact, Hart no longer speaks in terms of relative probability or even possibility at all, but certainty, when he straightforwardly proclaims that “none” of the “only three verses” in the New Testament “that seem to threaten ‘eternal punishment’ for the wicked” actually does so (The New Testament, 537).[27] At other times, Hart does hypothetically raise the possibility that imagery such as that of the outer darkness — which seems to have its specific origins in 1 Enoch, but with Greek precedent, too — may be describing a “literally perpetual state of existence after death, of which there can be no end,” before dispelling this by reiterating that “the texts do not actually say any of that” (ibid.).

But what the texts say, or what they most plausibly mean when they say something, is in many ways precisely the question. Of course, all interpreters recognize that there’s no treatise, nor even a single section in the New Testament devoted to a clear exposition of the eternality of eschatological punishment. In fact, much the same characterizes early Christian literature as a whole. But of course the exact same thing applies to the idea of a truly universal salvation in the New Testament — arguments for which can only be pieced together from fragmentary verses that occur in the midst of larger sections for which this is manifestly not the concern; and this almost certainly includes passages like Romans 5.12–21, too.[28]

Although Hart pays perfunctory lip service to the plurality of eschatological traditions in the New Testament (some he admits are probably “contradictory”), he skips over mountainous exegetical issues when he issues his standard caveat to this, insisting e.g. that “the universalist pericopes, especially in Paul, stand out as straightforward declarative statements, in the way no potentially ‘infernalist’ claim does.”[29] One suspects much the same when Hart concedes that, in contrast to this idea of “eternal conscious torment,” that of the eschatological annihilation of the wicked “appears to accord somewhat better with the large majority of scriptural metaphors” (That All Shall Be Saved, 87), and yet still tends toward the view that such imagery ultimately has a figurative referent, on both exegetical grounds and moral ones — e.g. suggesting that such an “ultimate absence” of any persons from an eschatological reconciliation would be “a measure of failure or loss forever preserved within the totality of the tale of divine victory” (ibid.).

In either case, as with the proposed distinction between τιμωρία and κόλασις, Hart speaks of these eschatological metaphors and images in a way that dissociates them from a more literal severity. And on one hand, leaving aside those instances where Hart truly does misrepresent and misinterpret things, I think general caution about the distinction between image and reality is offered not just in good faith, but prudently in any number of instances, too. It’s undeniably difficult for us to know how the Biblical authors precisely understood the images and traditions they employed — much less how the myriad theologies on display in the New Testament relate to each other. At the same time, though, in his minimizing not just the severity of New Testament eschatological traditions, but in this also the possibility of genuine eschatological tension within the New Testament here, I think Hart gives too much up in his well-intentioned caution about distorting ancient literature and its meanings, and his healthy respect for ancient modes of interpretation, in fact yielding to some of its implicit pre-critical moralizing and theologizing tendencies.

The tendency to lessen the severity of the more distributing and problematic elements of authoritative literature is in fact one with a very ancient pedigree: far preceding early Christian or Jewish interpretation itself, this is first seen among early allegorists of Hesiod and Homer. Of course, Hart is all too aware of the brutality, prejudices, and other vile conceptions of antiquity which can’t be sanitized, but only rejected in modernity. Similarly, there are presumably very few today who take Hesiodic and Homeric allegoresis seriously — though it shouldn’t escape notice that it was precisely these Hellenistic interpretive schools and trends that laid the groundwork for later Jewish and Christian allegoresis and various other types of apologetic interpretation, too.

In the search for an analogy to how Hart’s attempt to deal with the disturbing eschatological elements of the New Testament leads him astray, then, one wonders if he finds himself in much the same position that N. T. Wright and others do as it relates to those texts which proclaimed the imminent parousia. Faced with the prospect (and what was almost certainly the reality) that Jesus and his earliest followers were simply wrong about this and other culminating eschatological events taking place within the time-frame of their generation, Wright takes recourse to reading the imagery of the Olivet Discourse in the same vein in which various apocalyptic imagery functioned in the Hebrew Bible — where more mundane socio-political turmoil could be elevated to dizzying supernatural heights, in what was nevertheless simply figurative language. Interpreted as such, Wright can dispel the disturbing idea that Jesus and the early Christians were simply wrong here, seeing in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem the generational fulfillment of these predictions which otherwise appear to signify the imminent parousia/eschaton.

Hart’s equivocation about eschatological damnation is problematized by much the same thing that the apologetic interpretation of Wright and others here is. Interpreting the relevant New Testament texts in light of the streams of tradition and writing that they do, each overlooks significant influence from the mediating traditions of late Jewish eschatology that many of these concepts and languages first passed through, where in some instances these had clearly been reformulated and were often taken quite literally.[30] In Wright’s case, he does this by reading eschatological Son of Man traditions through the figurative religio-political lens of Daniel 7, or reading language of cosmic catastrophe through Isaianic traditions about the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem: backgrounds which supply much of the relevant imagery and language here, but explain little in terms of how they later came to be understood. In Hart’s case, he tends to look back at the New Testament from later in interpretive history, via those like Gregory of Nyssa. These are of course all possible modes of interpretation; but their anachronism is clearly seen in their lack of explanatory power when it comes to some of the finer points of critical New Testament interpretation.

Both Wright and Hart are correct that the image(s) may not precisely be reality. At the same time, though, for these late Second Temple Jewish traditions of eschatological damnation and their purveyors, these don’t look to be passageways to a substantially different ultimate reality beyond these. Just as Hart can recognize and admit that the eschatological fire is one that may be qualitatively different from mundane fire, and yet still burns and torments, so with these common images of eschatological punishment and destruction — ones that might not have precisely corresponded to earthly types of destruction, but which still truly envisioned the irreversible subjugation and/or erasure of the wicked: a view of the ultimate victory of God that any number of traditions in late Jewish eschatology didn’t find ethically problematic. There’s perhaps no better example of this than the exaggerated language of cosmic destruction in 1 Enoch 83.2–5, used to describe the (obviously truly globally destructive) flood:

I saw a terrible vision, and concerning it I made supplication to the Lord. I was lying down in the house of Mahalalel, my grandfather, (when) I saw in a vision. Heaven was thrown down and taken away, and it fell down upon the earth. And when it fell upon the earth, I saw how the earth was swallowed up in the great abyss. Mountains were suspended upon mountains, and hills sank down upon hills; Tall trees were cut from their roots, and were thrown away and sank into the abyss. And then speech fell into my mouth, and I lifted up (my voice) to cry out and said, “The earth has been destroyed.” (Nickelsburg, 116)

In a monograph largely concerned with critically responding to N. T. Wright’s eschatological interpretation, Edward Adams comments on this passage that “[a]lthough in its literary context, the vision is understood as a prediction of the Noachic deluge, an eschatological reference is certain,” and that “[t]he parallel with the Noachic flood rules out the possibility that the language of cosmic destruction is here metaphorical for a local political change within ongoing human history; a world-ending catastrophe, in a fully cosmic sense, is undeniably in view.”[31] (It also brings to mind the fantastic poetic line toward the beginning of Sibylline Oracles 7, also describing the flood: πλεύσει γῆ, πλεύσει δὲ ὄρη, πλεύσει δὲ καὶ αἰθήρ.)

Again, my purpose in this post isn’t to get into broader theological issues, but the analogy I’ve drawn between Hart’s approach and Wright’s reinterpretation of the imminent parousia could have broader relevance here, too, intersecting with a less traditional criticism of the universalism proposed by Hart and others. Additionally thinking back to the comments of Käsemann on Romans 11 that I quoted earlier, there may be no reasonable hope that all are saved for the simple reason that there may be no legitimately grounded Christian eschatological hopes at all, of any kind — a delayed or figurative parousia being no more plausible than an imminent one. Of course, by the same token, this would mean that there are no reasonable expectations of any sort of damnation, either; and between these two, this would obviously be alien to virtually all Christian interpreters. But doesn’t the simple act of dissociating these things from larger theological and philosophical concerns open up more room for us to understand early Christian literature and theology on its own terms, without getting tripped up on whether these truly offer a picture of justice and fairness — or even falling into that Hartian impatience with the prospect of the indeterminability of New Testament eschatology, by which he states he has “no great interest in waiting upon God, to see if in the end he will prove to be better or worse than I might have hoped” (That All Shall Be Saved, 103)? With every passing day, the proclamation of the parousia becomes an increasingly dustier artifact of ancient history; and all we can do is wait, joining the chorus of the scoffers of “the last days.”[32]

Conclusion: on αἰώνιος and eschatological damnation

In light of the myriad omissions and mischaracterizations mentioned in this post, it’s hard not to think of Hart as an ultimately unreliable guide to the historical reconstruction of early Jewish and Christian eschatology, incapable of admitting even the substantial possibility that New Testament texts which speak of those who are saved and those who are lost, or those who are consigned to αἰώνιος punishment, have a very high probability of meaning the same thing they appear to mean in other eschatological literature of the Second Temple period.

Even when we step away from Biblical literature itself, some of the prevailing conceptions of what someone like Origen thought about αἰώνιος punishment and how to interpret this are complicated when it’s recognized that, at best, Origen appears to have never straightforwardly broached this subject at all — certainly not linguistically. The same also goes for a host of other church fathers whose views on the same subject are almost never stated explicitly, either, instead only broached by other commentators in late antiquity; or, as with Ramelli, only secondarily inferred by modern interpreters, and smuggled into translations with little argument or justification. In addition to that, again, we even see much the essence of the traditionalist position when we turn to Origenian texts like Commentary on John 28.63f. (insofar as adverbial εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα can be taken to be the semantic equivalent of αἰώνιος), and the Selecta in Ezechielem 7.26, too: the latter in fact using the adjective ἀτελεύτητος to describe “endless” eschatological punishment, synonymously with αἰώνιος — precisely where Hart elsewhere distinguishes the two words, and suggests that the use of the former would be “decisive” (New Testament, 540). Together from these, then, we get a very different picture from what some of the received wisdom on this tells us. (Texts addressing the apparent eternality or irreversibility of judgment, which similarly complicate common assumptions here, are found in Diodore of Tarsus, probably Gregory of Nazianzus, and perhaps even Gregory of Nyssa himself.)

At the very minimum then, to the extent that some of the major arguments of Ramelli and Hart attempt to avoid the prospect of irrecoverable eschatological loss by a significant reinterpretation of αἰώνιος — and along with this, by significantly downplaying of the significance and parallels that the literature of Second Temple Jewish literature offers in general, in terms of its common insistence on an eschatological zero-sum game —, they’ll need to find much more reliable arguments here, or offer much better support for the arguments they’ve presented thus far.

⁂ ⁂ ⁂

Notes

[1] It’s hard not to suspect that more personal theological commitments are being brought into the picture when Ramelli simply presumes the connection between the Aristotelian gloss and New Testament philology and theology (“according to Aristotle…” — and therefore, consequently, “[i]n the NT the punishment of sinners in the world to come is therefore…”), with no attempt to parse this in light of the thorny issue of historic semantic development, or other considerations that would complicate such a direct association between the two. Similarly, sentences later, she says that the πῦρ αἰώνιον of Jude 7 cannot suggest everlasting fire, “given that the fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah did not burn eternally, but it lasted only very little” — which has something of a hint of a naive conservative intertextuality and historicizing, and in any case ignores significant developments in Jewish tradition about Sodom.

[2] Speaking of personal theological commitments, several pages prior to that, Hart also speaks of “many who are doctrinally or emotionally committed to the idea of eternal torment for the unelect” and who might “wish to believe in the everlasting torment of the reprobate” (537).

[3] 4 Maccabees 10.11. For this distinction, cf. 2 Maccabees 7.31–36; Wisdom of Solomon 11.7–13. Ramelli makes no note of 4 Maccabees 10.11. On these Maccabean texts cf. J. W. Van Henten, The Maccabean Martyrs As Saviours of the Jewish People, 138ff. DeSilva, 35, translates 4 Maccabees 10.10–11 as “[w]e, most depraved tyrant, are suffering these things on account of godly training and moral excellence, but you will endure endless torments on account of impiety and bloodlust!”; though see Henten’s comments on this. Further in terms of the likely irreversibility of the eschatological fate imagined here, in 2 Maccabees 7.14 one of the tortured brothers declares to Antiochus that “for you there will be no resurrection to life” (σοὶ ἀνάστασις εἰς ζωὴν οὐκ ἔσται). This latter verse may further be correlated with John 5.29 in the New Testament, outlining the two separate fates of humanity: οἱ τὰ ἀγαθὰ ποιήσαντες εἰς ἀνάστασιν ζωῆς, οἱ δὲ τὰ φαῦλα πράξαντες εἰς ἀνάστασιν κρίσεως.

[4] Cf. 2 Maccabees 4.38, where the killing of Andronicus is divine retributive punishment for the murder of Onias; also 4 Maccabees 8.9.

[5] In its entry on κολάζω, BDAG notes that the old Aristotelian distinction “is not reflected in gener. usage” (555). David Hart writes that κόλασις “typically refers to remedial punishment” and τιμωρία “typically refers to retributive justice” (The New Testament, 546); but even though he qualifies this by stating that “kolasis had perhaps become somewhat less specific in connotation” (547), even this is far too weak, as it’s inarguable that Greek usage rarely shows any meaningful distinction between the two, or that κόλασις is oriented toward restoration. (In addition to 2 Maccabees 4.38 and 4 Maccabees 8.9, mentioned above, I’ve cited a number of these texts throughout the second half of this post.)

Elsewhere Hart writes that “by late antiquity” κόλασις “seems to have been used by many to describe punishment of any kind” — e.g. pointing to its usage in 1 John 4.18, “where it refers not to retributive punishment, but to the suffering experienced by someone who is subject to fear because not yet perfected in charity” (53). Beyond its use in Matthew 25.46, this is the only occurrence of the noun κόλασις in the New Testament, alongside verbal κολάζω which is used twice. In any case though, all three of these uses outside of Matthew seem to clearly understand it negatively — with the sense of torment in its use in 2 Peter 2.9 probably particularly evident. And even if it doesn’t signify “retributive punishment” in 1 John 4.18, isn’t its use here in fact still antithetical to the very idea of κόλασις as an ultimately beneficial kind of correction?

As a brief theological aside, the sharp antithesis of ἀγάπη and κόλασις in 1 John 4.18 — via the simple transitive property, from the antithesis of ἀγάπη and fear, followed by the identification of fear and κόλασις — may also be hard to square with an idea celebrated elsewhere in the Eastern Orthodox tradition to which Hart belongs: Isaac the Syrian’s that, in the eschaton, sinners are scourged by the torment/correction of love. Finally, as suggested in the main body of my post, the use of κόλασις in the Septuagint and deuterocanon is also telling; perhaps particularly within Ezekiel 18.26–32 — an important text in relation to arguments about God’s sovereign/perfect will versus his permissive will, particularly vis-à-vis salvation (a subject of great interest to Hart elsewhere).

[6] See how it functions in the context of the a minore ad maius argument in 10.28–29, signifying a fate even worse than χωρὶς οἰκτιρμῶν . . . ἀποθνήσκει. For commentary on these verses in the standard modern commentaries, see Attridge, 292ff.; Koester, 451ff.; Ellingworth, 530ff. Ramelli makes no note of Hebrews 10.28–29.

[7] Based on a PDF search, I’ve estimated that she interprets and translates it this way over 500 times in Terms for Eternity alone.

[8] Terms for Eternity, 207, citing Explanations of the Psalms PG 55.453 (and On 1Cor PG 61.75 and On 2Thess PG 62.479).

[9] Cf. the opening lines of 1QM, too, alongside numerous texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls and elsewhere.

[10] Also, ἀΐδιος is simply an adjectival form of ἀεί.

[11] Also worth noting is that ἀΐδιος is in fact a dis legomenon in the Septuagint — that is, used only twice.

[12] Εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα in the Septuagint and New Testament again functions synonymously with the normal accusative τὸν αἰῶνα, signifying permanence and/or totalities of time; and when εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα is negated (cf. Psalms of Solomon 15.4, etc.), this discounts the possibility of something ever happening. Mark 3.29, using a negated εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, is paralleled in Matthew 12.32. The exact literary/historical relationship of the sayings is unclear, although the latter obviously does employ αἰών in the sense of the two eras of late Jewish world chronology. Interestingly, however, the different formulation Matthew uses is itself idiomatic, too — closely paralleled in rabbinic literature, and also virtually identical to the modern English idiom “not now, not ever.” In any case, on a syntactical level, the operative difference between the formulations in Mark 3.29 and Matthew 12.32 comes down to a lack of specified αἰών in the former (again, as the normal accusative τὸν αἰῶνα), and the different uses of εἰς and ἐν.

As it relates to the broader debate about αἰώνιος in particular, it’s also worth noting that the parallel between the Markan and Matthean language here is clearly between εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα and ἐν τούτῳ τῷ αἰῶνι [ἢ] ἐν τῷ μέλλοντι, and not between αἰώνιος and ἐν τούτῳ τῷ αἰῶνι [ἢ] ἐν τῷ μέλλοντι.

[13] Among other pertinent texts, Hart translates Mark 3.29, ὃς ἂν βλασφημήσῃ εἰς τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον οὐκ ἔχει ἄφεσιν εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα, ἀλλὰ ἔνοχός ἐστιν αἰωνίου ἁμαρτήματος, as “whoever blasphemes against the Spirit, the Holy one, has no excuse throughout the age, but is answerable for a transgression in the Age” (New Testament, 69).

[14] Speaking of co-occurrence, some of the same persons who advocate for this also distinguish two quite different senses of αἰώνιος itself in Romans 16.25–26. See my comments on Romans 16.25 in the main lexicon entry linked earlier.

[15] The New Testament, 86. Cf. similarly his translation of ἀπελεύσονται οὗτοι εἰς κόλασιν αἰώνιον οἱ δὲ δίκαιοι εἰς ζωὴν αἰώνιον in Matthew 25.46: “these will go to the chastening of that Age, but the just to the life of that Age” (53) — but here with no possible αἰών antecedent at all. (Though one layman online post suggests an antecedent in the mention of the contemporaneous αἰών all the way back in Matthew 24.3 [!].) As for the issue of redundancy, other patristic expressions of the same idea in Mark 10.30 use very similar language to this, but omit a redundant αἰών: cf. the Divine Liturgy’s χορηγῶν ἡμῖν ἐν τῷ παρόντι αἰῶνι τὴν ἐπίγνωσιν τῆς σῆς ἀληθείας, καὶ ἐν τῷ μέλλοντι ζωὴν αἰώνιον χαριζόμενος. Cf also Apology of Aristides 16, where “the way of truth τοὺς ὁδεύοντας αὐτὴν εἰς τὴν αἰώνιον χειραγωγεῖ βασιλείαν — τὴν ἐπηγγελμένην παρὰ Χριστοῦ ἐν τῇ μελλούσῃ ζωῇ.”

[16] In the Greek text, χωρίζεται εἰς τὴν μεγάλην βάσανον, μέχρι τῆς μεγάλης ἡμέρας τῆς κρίσεως.

[17] Οἰκησάτω ἐκεῖ εἰς τοὺς αἰῶνας; or alternatively εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα in MS S.

[18] 1 Enoch 1, 222. The Greek reads ἐν τῇ ἡμέρᾳ τῆς μεγάλης τῆς κρίσεως ἀπαχθήσεται εἰς τὸν ἐνπυρισμόν.

[19] Ramelli refers to this passage in CDA. 389: “In Phaed. 113E2 Plato states that those who are incurable because of the gravity of their sins are destined to Tartarus, from where they will never go out. In Gorg. 525C2 Plato, after remarking that only through suffering is it possible to get rid of evil, observes that those who committed extremely serious sins have become incurable, and their torments, which are expressly described as eternal, do not produce their purification, but are simply retributive and useful for other people, as a paradigm.”

[20] In terms of ἡτοιμασμένον in Matthew 25.46, 1 Enoch 53–54 and other passages also speak of a preparation of both the Watchers’ eschatological punishment and of human sinners.

[21] See also 7.47–48: “And now I see that the world to come will bring delight to few, but torments to many. For an evil heart has grown up in us, which has alienated us from God, and has brought us into corruption and the ways of death, and has shown us the paths of perdition and removed us far from life–and that not just a few of us but almost all who have been created!”

[22] See Martin McNamara, The New Testament and the Palestinian Targum to the Pentateuch, 117–125; and McNamara, “Targum and the New Testament: A Revisit,” esp. 422–23.

[23] Steven McKenzie, 1 Kings 16 – 2 Kings 16, 151.

[24] Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary, 401.

[25] See Heikki Räisänen, “Torn Between Two Loyalties: Romans 9–11 and Paul’s Conflicting Convictions”; Gerd Theissen, “Röm 9–11—eine Auseinandersetzung des Paulus mit Israel und sich selbst.”

[26] Bringing this back around to what was mentioned at the very beginning of this section — e.g. Matthew 7.14 and the question of the number of those saved — Allison and Davies, in their seminal commentary on Matthew, comment on this that “Matthew’s theology is unsystematic and not perfectly consistent. This is why one verse can speak of the salvation of a few, another of Jesus ransoming many” (1.700).

[27] He later speaks of Matthew 25.46 as the “sole suggestive verse” in terms of “eternal conscious torment” (547).

[28] The main theme of which, as described by Robert Jewett, “is how Christ’s life . . . defines the future destiny of believers just as Adam’s life defined the future of his descendants” (Romans, 370): addressing “we who are justified by faith” (5.1) and “who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness,” etc. Sven Hillert writes that “Paul does not argue for a belief in salvation for all individuals in Rom 5:18f., but rather draws conclusions about salvation for both Jews and Gentiles and about equality between the two groups of believers”; though it is noted that it “[i]t is possible . . . that Paul uses statements about salvation for all individuals as arguments for drawing these conclusions” (Limited and Universal Salvation: A Text-oriented and Hermeneutical Study of Two Perspectives in Paul, 105). For an elucidating parallel to Romans 5 in terms of how similar language can be understood contextually, even when its scope might seem limitless, see discussion in J. William Johnston, “Which ‘All’ Sinned? Rom 3:23-24 Reconsidered”; and see also 2 Corinthians 5.14, too.

[29] Hart, personal response — seen here.

[30] Dale Allison has covered this on any number of occasions, contra Wright and others, e.g. in his “Jesus & the Victory of Apocalyptic.”

[31] The Stars Will Fall From Heaven, 62.

[32] 2 Peter 3.3–4.