The last (and largest) paragraph of that comment was devoted entirely to demonstrating that {aioniôs} can mean two superficially similar but ultimately different things in close topical context. There wouldn’t have been any point for me to do that if I wasn’t arguing that Matt 25:46 could be a third example of that in the Bible, with one “eonian” (life) really meaning eternal and the other “eonian” (for punishment) only meaning something that lasts a long time but which comes to an end eventually. “While it is reasonable to expect two similar terms in parallel comparisons to mean the same thing, context does sometimes indicate otherwise,” etc. (Educated universalists are well aware of the classical critique there going back at least as far as Augustine; we usually learned it before becoming universalists. {wry g})
I assume you read that paragraph, too, before asking. So, did you have a specific problem with it? Why did you think I wasn’t setting up the grammatic possibility (to be determined by narrative and thematic contexts, which I already briefly discussed) for the same term to mean everlasting in regard to one noun but not everlasting in regard to the other?
To be more precise, the term typically means “lasting” (literally it would be age-ish if we had an adjective for age in English), and has a wide range of meaning within that basic concept, from the never-beginning and never-ending eternality of God which transcends all time and space, to three days and nights in the belly of the sea dragon for Jonah.
In other Greek texts outside the NT, the term is used by philosophers to refer to God or to that which comes uniquely from God; and while that doesn’t always quite fit the OT Greek translation usage (although usually it does), I have yet to find an instance in the NT where the adjective couldn’t mean that. (Even Rom 16 can be talking about “God uniquely from God”, which would fit a number of Christologies and certainly comports well with ortho-trin. It might even be where the creedal phrase “very God of very God” comes from, but I haven’t checked that out yet.)
On that theory, Matt 25 would be talking about the life and the punishment (and the fire reserved for the devil and his angels) coming uniquely from God, which is an important detail I don’t think any Christian theologian would deny. But it’s neutral to the question of whether the punishment is hopeless.
Some universalists take the term to apply merely to the first of the next ages to come, typically meaning the millennium reign (or not if they don’t believe in that); and I’ve seen some interesting ways to make that still work under orthodox two-natures trinitarian Christology; but I think an ECT or anni proponent could go with that interpretation as well if the ages, and the ages of ages (which are both phrases rather more common in the NT than “eonian”), are regarded as one never-ending Great Age/Day of the Lord (which is certainly a viable scriptural concept).
In any case, unless annihilation is true the eonian life given to those loyal to God cannot simply mean life that continues on forever, because the spiritual life of the impenitent wicked in hades (whether asleep or not) along with the physical life of the resurrected wicked keeps going on forever, too (whether ECT or Univ is true). So obviously the concept must mean more than that.
You certainly did! I wonder if anyone will respond …
Well done.
