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"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life"
(Matt. 25: 46, N.I.V.).
The word used for punishment is kolasis. Moulton and Milligan's Vocabulary shows
that it was used at the time for pruning, or cutting out of dead wood. It reminds one of
Moses' frequent phrase "shall be cut off from His people". The words "everlasting" and
"eternal" translate aion and aionios, and we need to take great care here. It has been the
tendency of evangelists to oversimplify the destiny of the unsaved. Aion has the
equivalent of olam in the O.T. where the concept of everlasting seems to be almost
absent. Basically it suggests something hidden, an age of indefinite length, indefinite but
not infinite. It is used many times in the O.T. where eternal permanence was not in view,
that is a city was to be utterly destroyed and this was described as being punishment for
ever. We must remember therefore that punishment might be terminated, but the effects
could last for ever.
G. Abbot Smith in his Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament says of aion, "a
space of time, as a lifetime, generation, period of history, an indefinitely long period. In
the New Testament of an indefinitely long period, an age . . . . .".
Dr. E. W. Bullinger states ". . . . . the course of life, time of life, . . . . . space of human
life, an age. Aion always includes a reference to the life, filling time or space of time,
hence the unbounded time past and future . . . . . immeasurable time (Gen. plural of
ages)" (Critical Lexicon and Concordance).
The word indicates time stretched out so far that we cannot see the end, but it does not
necessarily mean endless. In fact it often has a defined sense of restricted time by its use
with such prepositions as before and during and also such phrases as the end of the age
(aion). There are quite a number of verses where this word cannot mean "eternity". In
Luke 1: 70 the prophets have not been speaking since eternity. The A.V. has here
"world". In John 9: 32 the A.V. uses the word "world" again, "since the world began",
but it is aion, and cannot be rendered "since eternity was it not heard that any man
opened the eyes of one born blind". Here it clearly means "within the memory of man",
or "for a very lone time". When referring to the past, the word aion cannot mean
everlasting and it is unwise to dogmatize as some do and assume it always does so when
referring to the future. Professor A. T. Robertson declares that "aionios (from aion)
means either without beginning or without end or both. It comes as near to the idea of
eternal as the Greek can put it in one word. It is a difficult idea to put into language".
Here we get another opinion by a great scholar.
With regard to olam, occasionally the word is followed by the compounds le (to), and
adh which is practically equivalent to the English beyond. But how can one have eternity
and beyond that? We are certain that aion can mean age and we note in Scripture
(Romans 16: 25; II Tim. 1: 9; Titus 1: 2) we have chronos (time) and aion together,
translated in the A.V. "before the world began"; literally it is "before the age-times".
Gal. 1: 4 reads "this present evil world" in the A.V., but literally it is "the now age", the
present evil age. In Eph. 2: 7 we read "that in the ages to come" (here the A.V. avoids
its usual rendering of aion as "world").