Nah. The goats are burned to a frizzle, thank God, and not before time. But here’s the thing. There’s a sheep and a goat in all of us. Are you 100% sheep? Do you know any 100% goats? Most people I know are a bit of both.
As Paul (almost) said, “Who shall rescue me from this body of death, this wretched goat that I lug round day after day, pulling me here, pulling me there? Thanks be to God! Through Jesus Christ our Lord, He will throw that damned goat into the fire.”
Beautiful post Allan.
Revival, The way I understand Matt 25 is that the sheep, representing those who have lived consistently merciful lives, will go to the life of the coming age. Whereas the goats, representing those who have not lived consistently merciful lives, are heading for the correction or pruning of the coming age. As with the pruning of a plant, this is a restorative punishment, which will make them more healthy and fruitful.
So the use of aionios in this parable is not about the length of time which will be spent in either heaven or hell by sheep or goats.
If my interpretation is correct, this is good news for all of us, since virtually every human being who has ever lived, me included, is a goat, under this definition. The fact that I might have correct religious beliefs or put my faith in Jesus would not save me from being treated as a goat, because my life has not been consistently merciful. And of course in this whole series of parables, it is primarily religious people, who thought their beliefs and rituals would save them, but were in fact unmerciful, who Jesus is aiming his parables at.
The message of Jesus here is “Repent, change your ways and live consistently merciful lives.” This is not a parable about the eternal fate of believers in Christ vis a vis the eternal fate of unbelievers.
Revival, you may not agree with my interpretation of the parable, but do you accept that I am in fact being consistent in my reading of aionios in the parable, using it in the same way for both sheep and goats?
Thank you for acknowledging that! And you are exactly right - it is the context that is so critically important, which is why I started that thread that you never really engaged “why does hell/punishment have to be eternal” where I asked what other scriptures in the bible give you the indication that God will punish eternally outside of aionios? The reason that I asked outside of aionios is that it is interpreted by context, as you said above, so I challenged you to see what scriptures in the bible indicate that God punishes eternally. When I originally did that study I was completely blown away! I was of your opinion for forty years and as I read the scriptures about God and punishment I was shocked at how many scriptures say straight out that God does not punish forever (I’ve posted those scriptures to you before in a few places, but you didn’t comment on them). Getting back to your question about Matthew and eternal life/eternal punishment, I wrote this in another thread about “aionios”:
As you know, “aionion” comes from the word “aion” which means “age” in Greek. “aionion” is the adjective for the noun “aion”, In my discussion with a scholar who wrote the book on terms of eternity, he said that the Hebrew world view didn’t even grasp what we would in modern terms call “eternity”. Their word “olam”, in Hebrew means something that lasts really long. For example, I forget the address, but the O.T. talks about the “olam” mountains. We know mountains are not eternal, but they do last for a VERY long time. This is the same idea with aionios. The word is NOT specifying how long. It is saying that the object of it’s description is “lasting” (for a long time, or for an age). I gave an example on an old post about how “aionios” could be used in modern English and not specify amount of time:
That gum is delicious and lasting
That perfume smells terrible and is lasting
I smoke that brand of cigarettes. They are fragrant and lasting
I hope that rapist gets a lasting prison sentence
In the first phrase, the gum could last for a half hour and it would be a legitimate statment.
In the second phrase the perfume might need to last all day to have the same meaning.
In the third sentence, the cigarettes may need to burn 20 minutes or more to be “lasting”
In the last sentence, the prison sentence may need to be 25 years or more to be considered lasting.
In each case, the word “lasting” is modified by the noun that it is talking about. It is not saying how long something lasts. I***t is not inherent in the meaning of the word to denote a specific length of time***. So when you say that having really long life in heaven makes no sense, we’re not saying that “aionios” is saying that. It is not inherent in the word to specify ANY specific length of time When we say God’s love is lasting, we know it is forever. When we say God himself is lasting, we know the same thing because the noun “God” and what we know about him modifies the meaning of the word describing him.
That is how the scripture can use the same word to describe heaven and punishment and come up with different durations. We already know from the scripture in numerous places that God doesn’t punish in a never ending way. His love endures, but his punishments don’t. Israel was said in Jeremiah to be punished forever. That was later described as seventy years. God said his anger would NEVER go out. But it did, because he doesn’t remain angry-that’s how he describes himself in the scriptures. He does this several times in Jeremiah like I showed you a while back. I think it is more realistic to say that “olam” didn’t mean eternal since the context demands this (by the way, the Septuagint translates “olam” as “aionios” in the verse that describes the “eternal mountains”, which are obviously NOT eternal since the earth had a beginning and will have an end). Revival, can you see how you can say, “that gum lasts long” (30 minutes), and “that perfume lasts long” (12 hours) and have 2 different durations for the same word? Can you also see how you can say “heaven is lasting” (eternal), and “punishment is lasting” (for long ages) and have 2 different durations for the same word?
So when we come to aionios in the sheeps and goats passages, we have “lasting life” and “lasting punishment”. How long does the life from God last? We know from other scriptures and contexts that it is forever. Especially since he clothes us with immortality, as it says in Corinthians. How long does the punishment from God last? As long as it takes to get the person to bend their knees to him. We know that it doesn’t last forever because God doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t cast off forever. It’s interesting, and you should do your own word study on this, that the word for “punishment” here is kolasis (I think that’s a misspell, but it’s something like that), and it comes from the root word to prune. It is used for corrective punishment. There is a word for retributive punishment and that is “timoria”, which is NOT the word that God used here in the scriptures. It gives a completely different word picture in the Greek when you see that the person is being given a long period of corrective pruning. This makes sense though because it is what God always did when people were alive.
So finally, when you look at aionios in this passage you ask, would it be forever, or for a long period of time? How should it be translated? Based on what God has revealed about himself in the scriptures, a God who delights in mercy (Micah 7:18,19), who died for sinners when they were still under his wrath (Romans 5:8 etc.), who relents concerning punishment (Jonah 4:1), who does not remain angry forever (Psalm 103:9; Jeremiah 3:5; Isaiah 57:16 ff. etc), who does not cast away forever (Lamentations 3:31), who has love as an essential core to his being (1 john 4:7,8), it makes tremendous sense to see that God’s life is eternal, but his punishment is temporary. That is what he is like. That is one of the many reasons why I am a hopeful universalist. Translations are not innerrant, the originals were. There are modern translations that contradict each other and there is no perfect one. God promised “aionias kolasis” to unbelievers. I believe that with all my heart, and I equally believe that it does not mean forever and that the context of scripture as a whole demands that.
Sure Allan, we absolutely must see Yeshua as the perfect image of Yahweh. But I disagree that our own intuition is reliable or superior to the testimony of sacred writings. It is these scriptures that most clearly reveal Yeshua (who reveals Yahweh).
Do you mean annihilated when you mean frizzled? How can an Adamic nature go into a temporal correction (aiōnion kolasin) when it’s being annihilated?
Revival,
Your argument is based on the false premise that we are inconsistent with our definition of aionios. Some may be, of course, but not all are. For instance, I don’t ever translate it “eternal.” But if you really want an essay on it, first, like all words, it has a lexical range. It can pertain to a period of time (“lasting for an age” or “characteristic of an age” or “befitting an age”). That’s the primary definition we use in Scripture. Zoen aionion is "life befitting the Age to Come and kolasin aionion is “correction befitting the Age to Come” and pyros aioniou is “fire befitting the Age to Come.” None of those, of course, means “eternal” in itself, not because such a thing cannot be eternal, but precisely because no length of time is in view at all. Of particular interest is Jude’s reference to Sodom; the fire that burned it up is definitely not still burning!
Now, on the other hand, aionios can refer to things that are more or less permanent. It’s used numerous times in the Septuagint of the OT to describe things like “mountains” and “hills” that aren’t going anywhere for a while. Obviously, in these circumstances it’s not a proper “eternity” in view, either, but in this case, it does pertain to length of time, whereas in the previous circumstance, it doesn’t. Once again, the word does not actually preclude complete permanence/eternality; it simply doesn’t require it.
Aionios can, in some literature, refer to the idea of being “properly” eternal. In classical Greek it held this meaning. Plato used it to describe a timeless reality, without future or past, but among Koine speakers, that understanding is exceedingly rare, and for first-century Semitic Koine speakers, that idea would have bordered on nonsense unless applied directly to God Himself (on the other hand, for a classically trained, Gentile Church Father some centuries later, such as Jerome or Augustine, that idea would have appeared quite sensible).
To boil it all down, there is a qualitative sense of aionios that we find in most of its usages in the New Testament. Clearly zoen aionion is not about the length of life, but about the kind or quality of it–the kind of life that can only come from God, that characterizes the Age to Come, etc. On the other hand, kolasin or olethron aionion ought to be taken the same way: not about the length of time that the correction or destruction will last, but the sort of thing it is. It’s the kind of correction or destruction that can only come from God, that will mark out the Age to Come. It is the Correction of the Age.
Now, earlier you cited John 6:47, asking if it meant “everlasting life” or “life of God” or what. Let me suggest N. T. Wright’s rendering, noting also that he is not only a passive non-Universalist but has actually written against UR:
“I’m telling you the solemn truth,” Jesus went on. “Anyone who believes in me has the life of God’s coming age."
Why did he render it like that? Because, obviously, the point isn’t how long the life lasts; it’s the kind of life it is. There are other words to suggest that it lasts forever, such as “immortal”–words never applied to punishment in the New Testament (although, curiously, applied to punishment by Jews that believed in eternal torment outside of the New Testament). Scholarship is only beginning to shake centuries of tradition here. There’s a reason why Clement of Alexandria, a Koine Greek-speaking Christian of the second century, did not hear “eternal” in aionios while Jerome, a classically-educated Christian of the fourth century, did.
We ought to be grateful that none of the words that always properly means “lasting forever” is ever applied to eschatological punishment; if it were, we would have a clear-cut contradiction between the Old Testament Prophets who say in no uncertain terms that God does not punish forever and other (hypothetical) passages that say He does. As it is, we don’t have such a contradiction because none of the passages regarding eschatological punishment are required to be understood in terms of it actually persisting forever.
The Bible contains stories about Jesus. The Ramayana contains stories about Rama. It is not the testimony of the sacred writings themselves that allows me to judge between them, but my intuition of the good. Again, I do not believe God is good because the Bible says so. I believe the Bible because it reveals a good God, good as I understand goodness.
The evil in us will be destroyed utterly in God’s purifying fire. It will be painful. If evil is cancer, hell is chemotherapy.
Allan, I agree with you here. But we can’t apply this to Matthew 25 because it says that the Goats will go into correction (aiōnion kolasin), not into annihilation. If the Goats are just the evil within us, then according to this passage, this evil won’t be “destroyed utterly” but will be corrected. Evil cannot be “corrected”. It can only be destroyed. Therefore the Goats cannot be merely evil.
‘‘destruction’’ of what I would ask 
if we are to ‘‘love the sinner but hate the sin’’ does not GOD do the same 
therefore would not an understanding along those lines fit the character of GOD who IS love ,far better
I agree you cannot correct a goat if in fact you annihilate it. Do parables have to be internally consistent?
Speaking of logic, suppose Fred does good “to the least of these” on Monday through Saturday, but on Sunday he ignores them entirely, drinks beer and watches re-runs of The Simpsons. Fortunately, he dies on a Monday while he’s visiting a sick, naked, hungry person in prison. Is he a sheep or a goat? If Fred is a sheep, how come he gets away with being a goat on Sunday? If he’s a goat because his virtue is impure, then we are all goats, and all goats go into the fire for correction. If so, I cannot see the point of mentioning the sheep at all.
I’d hate to think the parable is nothing but a rather unpleasant encouragement to right living. (Be generous and kind to the poor or God will hurt you.) If it divides the world into two neat groups (the righteous and the evil-doers) it would be disappointingly simplistic.
Dirtboy
I respect your reasoning. But I have a huge problem with what you said below:
In the context of Matt 25:46 if you are going to apply the "lasting"interpretation to both the life from God and the punishment from God they must have the same duration. You cannot apply the “forever” interpretation to God’s life and not apply it to God’s punishment using the same word in context. What is alarming about this whole thing is you don’t even know how long “lasting” is. So you make up your own time limit and say “As long as it takes to get a person to bend their knees to him” God’s rewards and punishments in Rev 20:11-15 are not based upon to get a person to bend their knees to him. It’s not an altar call. It is individual judgment of how one lived their life on earth. The reward or punishment for that carries the same duration “forever”.
Why? One of the reasons is the “spirit” is the seat of life. You either have a death or sin life nature (darkness) or a God life or nature (light). The nature of your life in your spirit determines where you spend eternity. The LOF punishment was not created to change the nature in your spirit nor was it created to bring you to faith in Jesus for this change to take place.
Well I got news for you…in God’s final judgment recorded in Rev 20:11-15 every knee will bow to him in reverence. God’s reward being found recorded in the BOL “lasts” as long as His punishment for not being found recorded. Matt 25:31-46 is a picture of the same judgment in Rev 20:11-15.
Also Brothers said something interesting that caught my attention
I would like to know the same thing. Care to comment on this all you URers? 
Some do; others don’t. Brothers suggests a way of resolving the issue. I suggest a slightly different one. Both come out basically the same way. But the key point in any case is that when “all” is used in its various parallel constructions, its scope must remain constant; so, too, when aionios is used in the parallel construction in Matthew 25, its meaning would ordinarily need to remain constant, and I would assert that it does remain constant, but that constant meaning isn’t “eternal” or anything like it. I’ll refer you to my previous post on this thread to explain in further depth.
You’ve already forgotten that St. Paul applies the “forever” interpretation to God’s life but not to the times of the secret, using the same word in the very same sentence to mean two ultimately different things that are only superficially similar (yet similar enough that they can both be called “eonian” within the range of that term’s meaning).
The same is true for Habakkuk 3:6, where the prophet in even closer direct contextual comparison contrasts the “eonian” hills being shattered at the gaze of YHWH Whose ways are “eonian”. (Same word in the Greek LXX, translating the same word in Hebrew.)
The question is what the contextual argument is and whether it’s a valid argument. Answering as I’ve quoted from you, is only going back to a falsely simplistic appeal to the word necessarily meaning the same here as there in the same verse.
Also, Dirtboy referencing scriptures you ought to be perfectly well familiar with (after more than one year’s access to this forum, if not before), as setting the limit to how long the punishment will be, is not the same as him “making up his own time limit”. Those scriptures themselves indicate with the terminology they use that the bending of everyone’s knee is in true loyalty, not in grudging but still internally rebellious acquiescence.
Oh? God doesn’t have the final say in determining that? So much for any evangelism at all then (by God or by anyone else, under God or otherwise!) The death or sin life nature (darkness) in our lives determines where we spend eternity, the end! Except for any of God’s life or nature (light) He manages to sneak in at our creation perhaps, schizophrenically dividing us into spending eternity both in heaven and in hell. But God apparently has no final say in determining that either way!
Well, I’ve got news for you: the Lord God saves people from sin, and doesn’t let sin have the final word in determining who is lost or not! Even most ECT proponents believe that.
I’ve also got news for you about reverence: God doesn’t accept false reverence, and unlike what your 1611 KJV translation is apparently telling you, Rev 20:11-15 doesn’t mention people bowing the knee to Him in reverence at all, especially sinners who (as sinners) continue to rebel against God and refuse to reverence Him in their hearts (although they may hypocritically do so with outward gestures.) Nor do the subsequent chapters have even one single thing to say about impenitent sinners still outside the gates of the New Jerusalem bowing the knee to God in reverence, or even bowing the knee to God at all. It doesn’t even vaguely hint at it–although it more than hints about evangelism of impenitent sinners outside the NJ being successful. (Which is why you’re trying to get away from that being a prophecy of the future New Jerusalem. But that’s a discussion in another thread.)
For basically the same reason that ECTers generally insist that eonian means two identical things in this passage, and reject all meaning two identical things in others (like 1 Cor 15:22). Because we think the local and the overall contexts indicate so.
I have explained in much detail elsewhere why I think the narrative and thematic details of the sheep and baby-goat judgment point logically toward us expecting the two uses of “eonian” there to be ultimately different insofar as duration is concerned (although identical in meaning that both the life and the punishment come uniquely from God). Most recently in my debate with TFan a few months ago (where I did in fact directly connect it to the lake of fire judgment–and to what happens in RevJohn after the lake of fire judgment). Not least because the term there is “baby-goat”, which English translators and commentators tend to either be ignorant of, or intentionally obscure because it isn’t convenient to their interpretation of what’s going on there.
Jason,
God already did his part in the reconciliation process two thousand years ago. Now he expects people do their part by extending their faith to partake of this reconciliation. We are the ministers of this reconciliation. God works through the body of Christ for His will to be accomplished on earth. If you physically die with death life nature in your spirit you will experience eternal death recorded in Rev 20:11-15.
Romans 14:10-12
10 But why dost thou judge thy brother? or why dost thou set at nought thy brother? for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ.
11 For it is written, As I live, saith the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall confess to God.
12 So then every one of us shall give account of himself to God.
This includes believers and unbelievers at the final judgment recorded in Rev 20:11-15. Every knee will bow ( believer and unbeliever) at the throne of judgment.
John’s vision is cut off at Rev 22:5 and the evangelistic tone in Rev 22:16-17 is speaking to the church for this present time.
While I agree with both statements, I also find God continuing to do His part in the reconciliation process today. He actively accepts our repentance (instead of rejecting it, or being indifferent to it, or automatically accepting it like we’re the ones making Him react into doing so by our efforts); He empowers and leads us to repent; He exhorts us to repent and be reconciled to Him; He empowers and sends evangelists for that purpose; He leads apologists to help people believe in Him unto repentance; He baptizes us in the fire of the Holy Spirit: God Himself is still His own chief evangelist. He doesn’t only sit around like the father of the prodigal son, hopelessly hoping (up until a point) that the son will come out of the hell the son has gotten himself into–God actively seeks and saves sinners, just like God actively punishes sinners. That doesn’t stop with the cross, or St. Paul (to give perhaps the most blatant possible example) would have not received the Damascus road visitation.
Some of us even believe we will be ministers of this reconciliation until all sinners actually are reconciled, instead of giving up evangelism short of the total victory of God’s gospel! 
But that means we’re more evangelical than you are. Too evangelical, if non-universalists (of this or that sort) are right and we’re wrong.
No denial here, although if you’re trying to add a silent “only” between “God” and “works” then I’m going to strenuously disagree. I doubt you would have any point to make at all without that silent “only”, though: you seem to be trying to argue against God continuing to reconcile sinners later on the ground that God has stopped acting to reconcile sinners 2000 years ago. (i.e. God stopped acting to reconcile sinners 2000 years ago, and so doesn’t act to reconcile sinners now, much less will act to reconcile sinners later.)
I kind of expect that’s a composition glitch on your part, where you rewrote the sentence from something else and forgot to delete “life”.
If you meant to write that anyone who dies with both death nature and God’s life nature in their spirit is hopelessly lost, however, then that would be exactly the same as saying that death beats God, and that sin triumphs over grace, for no matter how much grace may exceed sin and death superexceed for not as the grace is the sin. (But hopefully you just forgot to delete “life” when rewriting the sentence.)
I think I can say with 100% assurance that you’ve been complaining ever since you got here that, in effect, we ought to set our brother at nought eventually, and are wrong for refusing to do so. Because if there is anyone who doesn’t sooner or later set their brothers at nought, it’s people who believe and trust in God’s eventual salvation of all sinners from sin. Be that as it may.
I suppose you are aware that “confess” there in Greek is a technical term for loyal praise for God’s mighty saving victories, and (where the confessor was a sinner) also for repentance from sin?
And that Paul is quoting from a place in Isaiah where the relevant term in Hebrew also means loyal and true submission to God (not secretly much less openly still defying God in impenitent sin)? In a passage where God is definitely talking about all sinners eventually coming to do that?
Because if you are–then you have no reason to be quoting this as though it is against universalism at all, and every reason to be quoting it in favor of universalism.
If you aren’t, then now you know. (Not that this is any great secret: universalists routinely appeal to this and other verses quoting from that place in Isaiah, for exactly that purpose. If you haven’t been paying attention to your own opponents enough, then that’s your fault, not ours.)
Which requires adding words to RevJohn that aren’t there, namely that this evangelization is only for the present time. But as I said, that’s another thread of discussion.
Revival, why did you respond to what Jason said that was off topic, but not reply to his response to your challenge that was ON TOPIC? You asked why a word could have 2 different meanings and he gave you scriptural examples of where that does in fact happen,** and you ignored it** (I’ll reply later to your post to me. I’d like to hear your reply to Jason’s actual argument on topic)
It’s possible Revival was answering my complaint about him accusing you of simply making up a time of when the punishment will be over, when all you had done was reference one of the occasions the NT talks of all people loyally confessing Jesus to be Lord and truly bowing the knee to Him in allegiance. One of which places (Rom 14:10-12) he tried to counter-reference himself, without understanding what was going on there (as though it was talking about people eventually bowing the knee falsely to Christ as hypocrites, and falsely confessing Christ as Lord with their lips while not in their hearts not confessing in any way that the NT uses that term, and Christ accepting this as the reverence properly due to Him!)
It does have some relation to the main topic, since his accusation was that by appealing to such promises of God’s total victory in bringing all people to loyal allegiance, you were only making up a time limit for “aion” and so changing its meaning.
Jason
Who is preaching to the people about the not-yet reconciliation in Hell/Hades right now? I’m sure there are people in hell right now and some who have been there for thousands of years would like this not-yet(reconciliation) to be extended to them. Why is God waiting for them to be resurrected unto judgment and not find them recorded in the BOL and throw them into the LOF? Why bother to do all that when He can extend the not-yet(reconciliation) in this age so the people in hell can be found recorded in the BOL? 
No glitch on my part maybe just your understanding. The “spirit” is the seat of life. You either have a death or sin life nature (darkness) or a God life nature (light). **The nature of your life in your spirit determines where you spend eternity. **The LOF punishment was not created to change the nature of your life in your spirit nor was it created to bring you to faith in Jesus for this change to take place.
No sir, that requires to read the text the way it was written. (to the church for this present time) You are the one who is adding words to RevJohn by teaching Rev 22:16-17 is extending evangelism to people in the LOF.
I agree; and saying is was “off topic” was too simplistic, but he did ignore your answer to his main complaint, which he does quite often.