When discussing the question of universal salvation, the immediate response is appeal to our Lord’s teaching on hell. For defenders of the traditional construal of hell, it is simply clear and plain that Jesus taught that hell is eternal, everlasting, endless, interminable. Certainly that is how almost all the English translations render the various texts. The classic text is Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats (Matt 25:31-46). The parable concludes with these words (Matt 25:46):
And these will depart into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (RSV)
These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life. (NASB)
Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life. (NIV)
And these shall go away to punishment age-during, but the righteous to life age-during. (YLT)
And these shall be coming away into chastening eonian, yet the just into life eonian (CLNT)
The key word here is aiónios (genitive plural: aionion), which is the adjectival form of aion (age). Most translations render the word "eternal: “eternal punishment” and “eternal life.” Young’s Literal Translation, on the other hand, gives us a more literal rendering: “punishment age-during” and “life age-during.” The Concordant Literal New Testament delivers an even more literal rendering, leaving us the problem of figuring out what “eonian” means. The American Heritage Dictionary offers this definition of “eonian”: “of, relating to, or constituting an eon.”
What does the word aiónios mean? Ilaria Ramelli and David Konstant take a comprehensive look at how the word is used in the Greco-Latin secular literature, the Septuagint, New Testament, and early Church Fathers and contrast it with the word aidios (also translated “eternal,” everlasting") in their book Terms for Eternity (also see their article “Terms for Eternity”). Regarding New Testament usage they conclude:
In the New Testament, then, aidios, which is used far less often than aiónios, would appear to denote absolute eternity in reference to God; in connection with the chains of the fallen angels, on the other hand, it seems to indicate the continuity of their chastisement throughout the entire duration of this world—and perhaps too from before the creation of the world and time itself, that is, eternally a parte ante. As for aiónios, it has a much wider range of meanings, often closely related. It perhaps signifies "eternity" in the strict sense—without beginning or end—in reference to God or his three Persons or to what pertains to God, such as his glory or his kingdom; or it may mean "perpetual"—in the sense of "without end," "permanent," "uninterrupted"—in reference, for example, to the new covenant mentioned by Christ. Far the most common expression is zoe aiónios, which, we have argued, indicates life in the future aion, in contrast to the present <kairos (or chronos, "time," or kosmos, "this world," often used in a negative sense), and which is expressly connected with Christ, faith, hope (for the future), the resurrection in the world to come, and above all to grace in numerous passages, especially Pauline, where grace is said to justify, and Johannine, where it is connected with love or agape: for John, God himself is agape, and the aiónios life is directly identified with Jesus. This life, which is the goal or finality of the Gospel, is the true life, and is often designated simply by zoe tout court; and it coincides with salvation. The adjective aiónios is associated too with other nouns (e.g., glory, salvation), always with reference to life in the next world. Although one may infer that life in the world to come is eternal in the sense of unending, it appears that this is not the primary connotation of aiónios in these contexts, but is rather the idea of a new life or aion.
On the other hand, aiónios is also applied to punishment in the world to come, particularly in the expressions pur aiónios: aidios is never employed either for fire or for other forms of future punishment or harm of human beings, and on one occasion (in 4 Macc) olethros aiónios is contrasted specifically with bios aidios. We have suggested that the chains in which the evil angels are bound are called aidia, in one of the two occurrences of the term in the New Testament, because they last for the entire duration of this world until the final Judgment—that is, throughout or across the aiones. With so rare a use and difficult a context, we do not seek to make a strong case. We may observe, however, that whereas the angels live in the dimension of the aidiotes, human beings dwell in that of the aiones, the ages and the generations that succeed upon one another. Human beings are not eternal, and indeed aidios never refers to humans in the Bible, except in respect to their future life, that is their life in the future aion, which will be eternal (not a parte ante, but a parte post), since it will be a participation in the very life of God. (pp. 69-70)
On an <a href="https://forum.evangelicaluniversalist.com/t/terms-for-eternity-aionios-aidios-talk-part-2/1392/1 forum Konstan was asked to provide a short summary of his and Ramelli’s research on aiónios:
Ancient Greek had two words that are common translated as “eternal”: aidios and aiónios. The latter of these terms is an adjective clearly deriving from the noun aion, from which we get the English “eon”: it is an old word, appearing already in Homer, where it refers normally to a lifetime, or else some definite period of time. It never suggests an infinite stretch of time, and in later writers it continues to mean, almost always, either a lifetime or some particular period of time.
What, then, about the adjective aiónios? Here is where problems arise, since the adjective seems first to occur in Plato, and Plato adapts it to a very special sense. Plato had the idea that time was a moving image of eternity, with the implication that eternity itself does not move or change: it is not an infinite length of time, but a state of timelessness (think of what time must have been like before God created the universe). This is quite different from the common meaning of aidios, which the presocratic philosophers had already used to express precisely an infinite stretch of time, with no beginning and no end; and this is what aidios continued to mean.
So, we have two adjectives in use: one of them clearly means “infinite,” when applied to time; but the other does not, and what is more, it is connected with a common noun – aion – that means simply a lifetime, with no suggestion of eternity. aiónios remains relatively rare in classical Greek, and then we come to the Septuagint, or the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, where it occurs very frequently (aidios, by contrast, only appears twice, and those in parts originally written in Greek). Now, aiónios here can refer to things that are very old (as we say in English, “old as the hills”), but by no means eternal – what in this world is eternal? This is a very common usage, based on the Hebrew term. But it can also be used in reference to the world to come, and here we face the fundamental issue.
If one speaks of the next life, or something that happens in the next life, as aiónios, does it mean simply the next era or eon, or does it carry the further implication of “eternal”? Many of the passages in the Septuagint seem to indicate that the meaning is “of that eon” – and after all, it is a very long, but still finite period of time, that elapses between our death and judgment day and the resurrection, and this could be called an era. What is more, there is some reason to think that, after the resurrection, time itself will come to an end. So, saying that punishment in the afterlife is aiónios may just mean “for that eon” or epoch, and not forever.
We argued that this sense was understood by many (or most) of the Church Fathers, and that when they used aiónios of punishment in the afterlife, they were not necessarily implying that punishment would be eternal. Of course, one can only show this by careful examination of specific passages in context, and this is what we tried to do in our book. Very often, the evidence is ambiguous; for example, when God is described as aiónios, it is very difficult to be sure whether the word means “of the other world” or simply “eternal,” since God is both. We hope readers will decide for themselves, on the basis of the evidence we collected and the interpretations we offered.
Aiónios is perhaps best rendered “age-long,” that which pertains to an age. Strong’s Concordance) supports this meaning: “age-long, and therefore: practically eternal, unending; partaking of the character of that which lasts for an age, as contrasted with that which is brief and fleeting.” Given its breadth of meaning, the meaning of aiónios must be determined by context. What is crucial to observe is that the word need not signify eternal, as English-speakers understand the word “eternal”: it does not necessarily signify endless time or timeless existence.
In Matt 25:46 Jesus thus speaks of “aiónion punishment” (punishment pertaining to the eon to come) and “aiónion life” (life pertaining to the eon to come). Given that the life given to us in Jesus Christ is eternal in the strong sense, does this not mean that punishment of Gehenna is also eternal in the strong sense? This seems plausible given the parallelism, but the inference does not necessarily obtain. Aiónios/aiónion is an adjective: it modifies the noun to which it is connected. The life of the age to come is eternal because the life of Christ in which believers share is eternal; but we cannot make this assumption about the punishment of the age to come. Jesus is not addressing the question of duration. He is qualifying the punishment as that punishment that belongs to the future age. Whether this punishment is just a long time that eventually comes to an end or is everlasting cannot be determined by the adjective alone.
