Jason said: “Taking the texts at purely face value, the sin is demonstrably not hopeless…”
My response: “However, Jason, your lack of certainty in interpreting the verse about there being an “eternal sin” takes away any claim to there being a “face value”. The word aionios having never been translated with any degree of certainty takes away any claims to a superior interpretation to Aaron37!”
Don’t be smug, you don’t have absolute certainty either 
Roof
… but Jesus does and he is the one who said it. I trust Jesus!
Perhaps there is no ‘certainty’ by human standards that will suffice to quell the angst. You know?
One lays their life on the ‘hopeful - hopeless’ scale and develops a paradigm - a way of understanding their existence. ‘Religion’ may get in the way of development - but, who knows?
‘To the pure, all things are pure, but to those who are corrupted and do not believe, nothing is pure.’ That’s pretty much straight out of Plato but used by Paul. ‘Sin’ as a concept, is almost meaningless. Dostoyevsky tried to put a finger on it in Crime and Punishment but no one listens to him, or Paul, or Plato or Christ, for that matter. Everyone is a Judge or, at least, a cop.
As things get tough, fascism will rise, until Christianity nearly disappears in the blame-game. Stand up for what you wish.
We all agree he said it, but what did He mean by what He said?
You can be pretty certain about your honesty in approaching the matter, I think.
I think I have given you enough biblical evidence to know that, roof. I think you know deep down in your heart but your reachin for anything but what Jesus meant
It seems that most religious folk base their interpretations of the scriptures on the acceptance of others, then subsequently call their basis truth in order to avoid trials and testing.
What a surprise it will be when their sand castles collapse into ruin!
I’d consider paying Jason to answer this one! How could he conceivably reply? The word aionios is very hard to translate and is the source of much controversy. Until this word is dealt with how could there be any certainty?
You aren’t an infallible interpreter except by your own claim to be so. Your self as your witness is a pretty weak leg to stand on! DOH!!!
Insofar as only taking the text at face value goes, that’s quite true! Keeping in mind that, strictly speaking, it’s impossible to take the term “eonian” at merely face value. (Well, it’s possible, as “age-ish”, but that meaning would be instantly refuted by GosMatt’s report of how Jesus related the warning, as I noted already.)
I think I have made it pretty clear elsewhere, however, that, like practically everyone else (A37 included), I don’t just take the text at mere face value. I read it in terms of both local and extended contexts, including interpreting the two halves of the verse in light of a principle which renders the warning of punishment subsistent to the victorious prediction of forgiveness for all sins. (As I shortly put it, in terms of Romans: I interpret the saying in light of grace hyperexceeding the excesses of sin, instead of sin hyperexceeding the excesses of grace. GosMark’s way of reporting the saying especially invites such an interpretation.)
What I was saying at that time where you quoted me, though, was that Peter’s own example positively shows that taking the texts at as close to face value as they can get, does not involve hopelessness. Hopelessness has to be read into the texts, and not from any immediately near contexts either. There is absolutely nothing about a “settled condition of the soul” in any of the three Synoptic accounts, for example, much less a hopelessly settled condition of the soul. Considering that I have constantly argued that the sin against the Holy Spirit is a continuing impenitence, however, it ought to be clear that I of all people do not consider the sin against the HS to be only an isolated act. Taking any of the verse sets at mere face value, however, the sin would seem to be a particular isolated act–which is one reason why I keep bringing up the pointlessness of appeal to its supposed mere face value: it doesn’t say what most evangelizers of hopelessness want it to say in that regard either. (Calvs sure aren’t thinking of the sin against the Holy Spirit being a particular isolated act; and most although not all Arminians are thinking one way or another of something like A37’s “settled condition”. On the other hand, those Arm positions could also be said to involve a final particular act leading to the soul’s finally and hopelessly settled condition, such as going one step too far in “grieving the Holy Spirit”. But then it isn’t the settled condition in itself which results in the hopelessness; the hopelessly settled condition is the result of a final particular, and in that sense ‘isolated’, act.)
This reading-in of the position is what I have consistently argued since back when I replied to Matt Slick’s brief paper on the Markan version of the saying–where I also concluded by pointing out both that this is not necessarily faulty procedure for the non-universalists. It only means that those texts cannot be used in themselves as positive and explicit testimony vs. universalism; which is how they are usually deployed (including by A37 every time he has brought them up. Despite rather blatantly reading the hopelessness into the texts, too, not out of them. This is aside from his relatively recent attempt to try to infer the hopelessness out of the texts themselves without superior reference to outside contexts, which I’ll have to address separately as soon as I find it again.)
Meanwhile, even though I personally feel quite certain on a case built by exegetical context that “eonian” is best interpreted in the NT as referring to a quality of having come from God’s own essential reality (not even counting Plato’s deployment of the concept or subsequent philosophers, of whom the most pertinent for NT studies would probably be the Jewish Philo), I have always stressed that such an interpretation neutralizes the term, or at most (and maybe most properly) invites us to ground our interpretations of connected doctrinal meanings on the character and characteristics of God (which in the long or the short run we’re most likely to be doing anyway.) That doesn’t mean other contexts in the vicinity might not be deployed for understanding the meaning of the phrases which use “eonian” as an adjective–theoretically that might even be in favor of one or another kind of non-universalism.
The principle rebuttal from the universalist (or even another kind of non-universalist, the annihilationist) concerning “eonian” is (or anyway should be, I would say) only against a too simplistic appeal to “eonian” by non-universalists. The moment they recognize and admit that sometimes the adjective can and does refer to objects which, themselves, are clearly not “eonian” in the simplistic sense they want judgment, ruination, fire etc. to mean, that’s as far as I have to press the rebuttal. If they rightly retort that context should be appealed to, to settle what “eonian” is supposed to mean in this or that circumstance, I have exactly no objections: by all means, let’s go to the contextual arguments! But even a successful non-universalist argument there would NOT provide grounds for simplistically appealing to the meaning of “eonian” in itself against this or that Kath soteriology.
Jason,
Thanks for the response. Theoretically the non-univ could indeed refer to the mere presence of aionios as providing a refutation of universalism if they could show that in Matthew 25 it did indeed mean “unending”. And there are certainly many verses in which the term aion and its cognates refer to that which is unending.
R
Many indeed, but not all. Which is why we have to go to context instead of simply appealing to the mere presence of {aionios}.
It should also be kept mind, that the only reason we can tell that many of its uses involve something that is unending (and most of the time that’s {zoe aionios}, eonian life), is due to context (and sometimes quite extended context, not even immediate context!) rather than to the mere face-value meaning of the term: exactly no one anywhere believes “ageish” life means that that life is restricted to one particular age, to give the most obvious example.
(Even Mormons don’t think that the eonian God of Rom 16:26 is the god only of one particular age, to give another extremely pertinent but less-well-known example. Nevertheless, neither does anyone think that the “eonian times” of verse 25 just previous are unending times, since they clearly have already ended with the coming of Jesus Christ and the authority to preach the secret that was previously hushed in those times: a secret that I would say is connected directly to that reference to the “eonian God”.)
We have to appeal to context even to get the notion that “ageish” (as the term would most literally be translated in English) can-and-often-does describe something that has no end (in this or any other age, most pertinently eonian life). In other words, we have to go beyond the “mere presence” of the term, even to get some idea of what non-universalists want to argue from the supposed “mere presence” of the term elsewhere.
In principle, and I would say in practice, that insta-kills the tactic of trying to appeal to its mere presence anywhere, for or against an idea. We’ll have to settle for the term having multiple possible meanings; or else, for the term having (at least within the composition timeframe and idea-setting of the canonical NT) a universally applicable meaning (such as the one I tend to argue for) which fits the textual and contextual uses–which “unending”, simply by itself, will certainly not do.
To put the matter succinctly: any attempt at deploying a universal meaning of “eonian” in any NT text, will have to feasibly work for Rom 16:25 and 26. A simple meaning of “unending” would work fine for 26, but absolutely not for 25. A face-value meaning of “ageish” would work well enough for 25, but absolutely not for 26. A meaning of something like “coming from God’s own authoritative essence”, or “of very God” (to put it a bit simply in classical phrasing), would work well enough for 25, since those times and indeed the hushing of the secret during those times, come from God and His authority; whereas, while a unitarian (and maybe even a modalist) might have trouble with this meaning applying to verse 26, a trinitarian, especially a positive aseitist, certainly would not!–the phrase could practically be translated “very God of very God”! But there might be difficulties for that notion in other uses of eonian, perhaps.
(In fairness, I should mention that there are ways for unitarians and modalists to press the notion of “very God of very God” within their own theologies, too. Whether and to what extent that would fit with other contexts in and around the end of Romans, not even counting anywhere else, is a whole other huge debate. )
Could the verse mean unendingly into the past? Also, the word
“aionios” is not the only word used to describe punishment. Is “ages of ages” (or whatever it says) a term for unendingness?
My opinion is that it cannot be endless punishment, for several reasons. For example (in my opinion), the clearly stated promise that all people will be reconciled to God in Christ *rules out *the possibility that it should be translated “endless”.
“As in Adam all die, even so, in Christ shall all be make alive.”
“God has shut up all in disobedience, so that He may have mercy upon all.”
“Where sin abounded, grace abounded all the more.”
“The last enemy that will be destroyed is death.”
“All things have been subjected to Him … but we do not yet see the all things subjected”
“…making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.”
Sonia
Good points Sonia,
They just go to show that if you limit these texts by applying the punishment texts you get ET but if you limit the punishment texts by these texts you get UR.
Just seeing your quote concerning locking all up in disobedience struck me. God could not show his mercy if everyone was perfectly good; therefore, in order to demonstrate mercy to all, he had to contrive an existence where all are locked up in disobedience first.
I agree, Jeff. I think the idea that God never really intended for humanity to experience sin and evil overlooks the fact that we are creatures dependent on contrast in order to enjoy and appreciate all that God has in store for us. We are estranged so that we can be reconciled, lost so that we can be found, afflicted so that we can be healed, enslaved so that we can be set free, etc. By experiencing the negative first and the positive later, we are given the capacity to experience a joy not attainable otherwise.
So you would just leave those questions about “ages of ages” and “aionios” uninterpreted?
No-- I wouldn’t say we should just ‘leave’ it–but I don’t personally have a definitive and unquestionable answer to the question. All I have are theories–but my point was only that, in my opinion, understanding the phrase and word to mean ‘without end’ is ruled out by other passages.
I find it irrational to use a questionably interpreted word to diminish or negate the meaning of passages that seem to be very clear. Peter tells us that Paul writes “some things which are difficult to understand” which others distort as they also do to the rest of scripture. As in anything it’s best to start with the easily understood, then work on learning the rest.
Sonia