A google type search re kolasis led, as it often does, to a thread on this site where Jason Pratt commented on the article re kolasis. The following is quoted from a couple posts there:
“The ForAnAnswer site is more ambiguous about the meaning of {kolasis} than they intend to be. “Punishment” and “correction” need not be mutually exclusive concepts; no one who appeals to the original pruning context of the usage in classical Greek thinks the baby goats are not being punished in Matt 25 (nor that punishment is not meant anywhere else {kolasis} or a cognate of it occurs in the NT or the LXX). The whole point to appealing to classical Greek usage is that they themselves were borrowing the meaning as a metaphor for a particular kind of punishment!”
“We know for a fact that there is at least one place directly in the NT canon where an agriculture metaphor for punishment identical to {kolasis} is used not only with hopeful intention but with a warning to people not being punished that they had better not despise the punishment of others lest they also be punished: Romans 11. God can graft branches into the vine, even if they are not natural to the vine, and graft branches out even if they are born natural to the vine; and if He grafts branches out He can graft them in again.”
“A few months ago we had a (not very apt) Arminian anti-universalist on the board who, probably following the uncredited lead of some author he had found (as was his wont) without paying enough attention, wanted to argue for hopeless punishment at Matt 25 on the ground that {kolasis} had to be used exactly the same way whenever it is used in the NT. In the process of attempting this argument and citing its usage in 1 John, he ended up denying that its occurrence in 1 John was either punishment by God or hopeless if it was punishment from God (one of the other, he couldn’t land on which). Well, okay, if you insist {kolasis} has to be used the exact same way every time…! 
”
“I’m not hardcore about this. It’s safe to say {kolasis} means punishment of some kind; and it’s valid to note the remedial usage in classical Greek as being evidence that the meaning could be the same among NT authors. Or, not: they might have changed the meaning. Similarly, subsequent post-canonical usage (where this can be clearly specified by contextual evidence) is good evidence of how those particular Christians, and so some group of Christians, were using and understanding the word, and even the scriptural references where applicable; but they might be misinterpreting it, too. Similarly, when {timoria} is used in the NT, it happens in contexts that indicate the punishment isn’t hopeless!”
“It really comes down to immediate and local narrative and thematic contexts. There is evidence in the NT, and even here in Matt 25, that {kolasis} doesn’t necessarily have to mean a hopeless punishment (I would go so far as to argue that the narrative and thematic contexts lock solidly as a Synoptic warning against expecting hopeless punishment!); and there is direct contextual evidence in both NT and LXX koine Greek that {eonian} doesn’t have to mean never-ending, even in cases where two things described as {eonian} in immediate close context are contrasted, one being only temporary after all and the other (God) being truly never-ending.”
“(Which is completely aside from the question of how much of the old pre-Platonic meaning of “eonian” for “living” or “spiritual” the LXX and the NT are importing in combination with Plato’s concept of “eonian” not of life per se but as what he understood to be God–for which there is some significant evidence, especially in the NT. I have found it is quite contextually safe to translate “eonian” as meaning “Godly” or “uniquely from God” throughout the NT. The punishment is uniquely from God, so is the life, but there is an obvious difference in that we are invited to partake of eonian life from the Living God Who Himself is the resurrection and the life! I don’t have to press this more consistent interpretation of eonian here, but I sure do note it’s an option. 
)”
Re: Kolasis- punishment or torment?
Postby JasonPratt » Tue Mar 27, 2012 6:16 am
“I guess I should add that I don’t regard either “punishment” or “torment” as being necessarily ongoing or not-ongoing. But if your friends want to appeal to the concept of torment, you can point out that the word for this in the NT is borrowed from a term for refining and testing gold. 
A concept that definitely has connections, acknowledged by everyone on all sides of the aisle, to salvation of sinners by God from their sins (including in punitive situations) in the OT and NT.”
“I should also add that charges of linguistic fallacy only hold up if the context fails the interpretative usage. We only know when meanings have changed thanks to the context in the first place. A better rebuttal to the interpretation of {kolasis} as remedial punishment via horticultural metaphor, rather than merely charging linguistic fallacy, would be to observe that most occasions when related horticultural metaphors are used for divine punishment in the NT look more hopeless than not! (But then of course if even one such metaphor is not only hopeful but directly warns against expecting the punishment to be hopeless, that would be a strong interpretative evidence that the other instances aren’t meant to show a final result but only “picture” the story up to a point. So since Romans 11 pretty clearly exists, maybe it’s better for non-universalists to simply charge “linguistic fallacy” without going into details about how identification for or against linguistic fallacy actually works. 
)”
“So for example, a charge of linguistic fallacy against interpreting the meaning of torment in Biblical Greek along its usage of refining and testing of precious metal, would be itself rebutted in proportion as there is an established Biblical usage of that concept in connection to punishment.”
