The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Rom 6:23 Revisited

So be it.

There is no consensus on the interpretation of eonian(aionion) as “eternal”. Not in the early church, not in modern times, not even in the 1000 years of the dark ages of Inquisitions, Crusades & burning free thinkers at the stake. The consensus has always been that the term refers to duration, either endless or of a finite period that has an end.

Considering, then, that the Greek word aionios has a range of meanings, biased men should not have rendered the word in Mt.25:46 by their theological opinions as “everlasting”. Thus they did not translate the word, but interpreted it. OTOH the versions with age-lasting, eonian & the like gave faithful translations & left the interpreting up to the readers as to what specific meaning within the “range of meanings” the word holds in any specific context. What biased scholars after the Douay & KJV traditions of the dark ages “church” have done is change the words of Scriptures to their own opinions, which is shameful.

“Add not to His words, lest He reason with thee, And thou hast been found false.”(Prov.30:6)

“After all, not only Walvoord, Buis, and Inge, but all intelligent students acknowledge that olam and aiõn sometimes refer to limited duration. Here is my point: The supposed special reference or usage of a word is not the province of the translator but of the interpreter. Since these authors themselves plainly indicate that the usage of a word is a matter of interpretation, it follows (1) that it is not a matter of translation, and (2) that it is wrong for any translation effectually to decide that which must necessarily remain a matter of interpretation concerning these words in question. Therefore, olam and aiõn should never be translated by the thought of “endlessness,” but only by that of indefinite duration (as in the anglicized transliteration “eon” which appears in the Concordant Version).”

concordant.org/expositions/the-e … art-three/

tentmaker.org/books/hope_beyond_hell.pdf

Jeremiah 8:8 "How can you say, ‘We are wise, And the law of the LORD is with us’? But behold, the lying pen of the scribes Has made it into a lie. 9 “The wise men are put to shame, They are dismayed and caught; Behold, they have rejected the word of the LORD…”

Student: What is a theological cemetery?
MASTER: An institution of higher learning, approved of men.
Student: What’s buried there?
Master: The truth of God.

1 Timothy 4:1 “Now the spirit is saying explicitly, that in subsequent eras some will be withdrawing from the faith, giving heed to deceiving spirits and the teachings of demons, 2 in the hypocrisy of false expressions, their own conscience having been cauterized;”
10 For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, specially of those that believe. 11 These things command and teach.

Whether or not God works through scholarly consensus is a wide question. Scholarly consensus often leads to suppression of understanding and various orthodox tombs for the distribution of “God in a box” systematic theological systems… Orthodoxy claims supremacy and justifies its existence over the other “orthodoxies”.

“Scribes, lawyers, Pharisees…” Jesus indicts the co-conspirators against wisdom, truth and humility.

“Who has known the mind of the Lord and who has been His counselor…”

If we trust that scholarly consensus was achieved through true scholarly investigation then when clear evidence arises that some part of the scholarship was in error… the very trust we leaned upon before must guide us in changing our conclusions as the evidence warrants, because it is not the conclusion we trust, but THE EVIDENCE FOR THAT CONCLUSION. If we trust a conclusion simply because someone else did and are not intimate with the evidence ourselves, we are simply following the path of thousands of orthodox religionists before us. The Roman Catholics murdered many thousands of believers for rejecting their scholarly consensus. Luther advocated for executing heretics at one point and Calvin did as well- very scholarly men but very deceived, and willing to sin to preserve their orthodoxy.

How do sheol, gehenna and tartarus all become “hell”? A failure of scholarly consensus? Or a manipulation of scholarship to preserve orthodoxy?

How does aion become “forever” or “everlasting”? I am ok with “eternal” because eternal does not mean “everlasting” so much as “pertaining to the eternal realm”- which is very similar to “olam”- the Hebrew word in which aion is rooted, which is not expressly “age” and includes the concept of worlds and realms in various times.

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The scriptures never speak of eternal or endless death. In fact death will be abolished (1 Cor.15:22-28).

If something so horrific as endless death or annihilation were meant, God had words He could have used to express it, but didn’t. Such as “endless”, “no end”, “eternal”(aidios). Since He never chose to use such words, He didn’t teach endless annihilation or torments.

For the outcome of those things is death. (Rom.6:21b, NASB)
Those things result in death! (Rom.6:21b, NIV)

Even though you experienced the end (or result or outcome) spoken of as death in Romans 6:21, that result for you did not cause you to be endlessly annihilated, did it? And neither will it for anyone else. For all will eventually be saved:

Rom 5:18 Consequently, then, as it was through one offense for all mankind for condemnation, thus also it is through one just act for all mankind for life’s justifying.

Rom 5:19 For even as, through the disobedience of the one man, the many were constituted sinners, thus also, through the obedience of the One, the many shall be constituted just."

From: http://www.theos.org/forum/

Everyone has sinned, so every fallen human being receives the wages of sin, which is death. Does that, then, mean by “death” that everyone is annihilated forever? Obviously not.

Scripture knows nothing of any endless death, but says that death will be abolished (1 Cor.15:26).

“Just as surely as the abolition of slavery entails freedom for those formerly enslaved, the abolition of death entails life for those formerly dead.”

I am puzzled by the above statement.

In what was does image resemble image ?

Nothing puzzling about it. You quoted something written nearly two years ago. The forum software and icons were different on the previous forum. Additionally, I do not recall when Davo used a picture of Alf, but it might have been after, likely. In fact, I do remember that Davo did not always have Alf as his custom icon.

Essentially, you displayed their current icons, not what they were two years ago.

Thank you for pointing that out, Gabe. I truly wasn’t aware that the avatars were different two years ago.