The Evangelical Universalist Forum

polycarp and iraneus talk of everlasing hell

I would submit rather that in most applications of the word, that is the case. But I agree that we have a tendency to call things permanent when we only mean enduring, such as in your bronchial condition. When it becomes obvious that the entity or condition is not in fact permanent, we don’t usually continue calling it permanent as though it used to be permanent but now isn’t or won’t be later. (Enduring, maybe.) This indicates that we actually have a higher idea of permanency, our occasional rhetorical indiscretion notwithstanding. :wink:

This is aside from the observation that in every example you gave, including from the LXX, the condition or entity turned out to be specially given by God. (Including the imprisonment of Jonah in your latest example; an imprisonment poetically equivalent, in Jewish analogical imagery, to being in the lowest possible hell, for those non-universalists following along with our discussion. :sunglasses: )