Chapter 7 – Everlasting Prison: Matthew

I recently revised my book on hell and I’ve decided to post the updated chapters on this site. This is much more than a tour through the underworld. The Christian doctrine of hell drives us to take a closer look at Scripture, church history, and the character of God.

If you downloaded a previous Kindle version, you can get the updated version by following these steps.

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Chapter 7

I remember when I realized that different images were used for afterlife punishment in the Bible: fire, smoke, and according to 2 Peter, “blackest darkness” (2:17). Even in the same book contrasting depictions are used. Matthew refers to the wicked being thrown “into the blazing furnace” (13:42) and thrown “into the darkness” (22:13). After seeing those varied images, I heard someone ask, “How can darkness and fire be in the same place?” Since they cancel out each other, they must be earthly images of postmortem suffering. After all, what kind of fire exists after death? It can’t be fire exactly like the fire we know.

This type of thinking leads some to modify the traditional view of hell. But does that perspective need more than a mere modification? Is it correct to view hell as a prison chamber where people will suffer forever?

It’s now time to consider Matthew 25:41–46 because many believe it offers solid support for the traditional view of hell. In this passage, Jesus gives his famous teaching about the King who separates all nations into two groups—the sheep and the goats. Then he welcomes the sheep into his kingdom because they served the needy. But the goats hear these words:

 “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. . .” Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life (vv. 41, 46).

“Eternal Punishment” Versus “Eternal Life”

Since the time of Augustine (354–430), these verses referring to “eternal punishment” and “eternal life” have been used to support eternal conscious torment. Augustine argues:

If both destinies are “eternal,” then we must either understand both as long-continued but at last terminating, or both as endless. For they are correlative,—on the one hand, punishment eternal, on the other hand, life eternal. And to say in one and the same sense, life eternal shall be endless, punishment eternal shall come to an end, is the height of absurdity. Wherefore, as the eternal life of the saints shall be endless, so too the eternal punishment of those who are doomed to it shall have no end.[i]

For Augustine the parallel structure of Jesus’ assertion requires readers to understand one destiny in the same way as the other: eternal life is endless, therefore eternal punishment is endless. That argument has persuaded many. But even if one of the following points is correct, Augustine’s view may be fatally flawed.

1. Using the same word twice does not mean that word should be interpreted the same way in both places. For instance, “I love eating ice cream with the people I love” doesn’t mean we should interpret both uses of love in the same way. There’s clearly a difference between loving a person and loving ice cream. To understand the meaning of a word we must consider its usage and context.
2. The meaning of an adjective is determined by the noun it modifies. For example, the word tall in a “tall tree” and a “tall man” doesn’t mean those objects are the same height. Consequently, the word eternal in “eternal punishment” doesn’t necessarily mean the same thing as the word eternal in “eternal life” because life and punishment are different concepts.[ii]
3. The concept of consciousness, which is essential to the traditional view, is not explicitly stated in these verses. Is “eternal punishment” a conscious experience that continues forever, or a final fate, such as annihilation?
4. The Greek word aiōnios (eternal) doesn’t necessarily mean infinite duration. Aiōnios is the adjective of the Greek noun aiōn, which enters English as aeon or eon. How long is an aiōn? We don’t know. We know that Paul mentions “the coming ages” in Ephesians 2:7 so there can be more than one aiōn. David Bentley Hart writes, “Throughout the whole of ancient and late antique Greek literature, an ‘aeon’ was most properly an ‘age,’ which is simply to say a ‘substantial period of time’ or an ‘extended interval.’”[iii] Additionally, this word can refer to a specific age as in the coming age or the world to come. In this sense, it is frequently used in relation to new life in Christ, which begins in this life: “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent” (Jn 17:3). Knowing God now is aiōnios life or life of the coming age. It’s basic meaning in the Bible, then, is two-fold: (a) “age-enduring” or an indefinite period of time; and (b) “age to come” or “belonging to the world to come.”[iv] The concept of endless duration is not essential to aiōnios. Thus, Matthew’s words could be translated as, “Then they will go away to age-to-come punishment, but the righteous to age-to-come life” (25:46).[v]
5. If Matthew wanted to specify eternal duration, he could have used another Greek word—aïdios.
6. Two scholars (Ilaria Ramelli and David Konstan) who studied aiōnios and aïdios extensively conclude that many early church fathers understood aiōnios punishment as punishment “pertaining to the era to come” not punishment that continues forever.[vi]
7. When Latin became the dominant language of the church, the distinction between aiōnios and aïdios was lost because the same Latin word—aeternus—was used to translate both Greek words.[vii]
8. The Greek word used for punishment in the phrase, “Then they will go away to eternal punishment” is kolasis. Hart explains, kolasis “originally meant ‘pruning’ . .  .  of trees or other plants, then came to mean ‘confinement,’ ‘punishment,’ or ‘chastisement,’ chiefly with the connotation of ‘correction.’”[viii] This emphasis on correction along with a knowledge of aiōnios leads Hart to translate Matthew 25:46 in this way: “And these will go to the chastening of that Age, but the just to the life of that Age.”
9. Basil the Great (330–379), one of the three Cappadocian Fathers, “reported that the great majority of his fellow Eastern Christians assumed that the aiōnios kolasis, the ‘chastening of the Age’ (or, as it is usually translated in English, ‘eternal punishment’) mentioned in Matthew 25:46, would consist in only a temporary probation of the soul.”[ix]
10. Jürgen Moltmann argues that Augustine’s reasoning is based on a love of symmetry or aesthetics derived from Aristotle not on theology or biblical evidence. Hence, the most beautiful system would contain a symmetry between the two ultimate outcomes. Moltmann then quotes Christoph Blumhardt: “They say: ‘If there is no everlasting torment then there is no everlasting bliss either.’ As if good and evil could ever be on par with each other! Just because good is eternal, evil cannot possibly be eternal; because God’s salvation is eternal, wretchedness can never be eternal . . . Because salvation is God’s, everything that is not salvation comes to an end.”[x] It is important to point out that a perfect equilibrium between good and evil results in something like the dualism of Manichaeism, which is the religion Augustine followed before converting to Christianity.

In case you are still unsure of my view, I think Augustine’s argument is fatally flawed. I want to make it clear, however, that while I disagree with his doctrine of eternal conscious torment (and double predestination for that matter),[xi] I think he was right about many things and much smarter than I am.

Matthew and Revelation

Perhaps some link “Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matt 25:41) with “the devil . . . will be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Rev 20:10). Since the devil will experience perpetual torment “to the ages of the ages,” won’t the goats share the same fate? This may be the best biblical argument for the traditional view. But notice how it is constructed. A text from a highly apocalyptic book is merged with a text from a parable in the Gospels. This is not a strong foundation. Moreover, neither text says that all will have the same experience in the “eternal fire.” And many of the objections in this chapter and the previous chapter still apply.

Summary

I think Matthew 25:41–46 provides the strongest biblical support for the traditional view. But after learning more about the original language in which it was written, the strongest biblical support appears to be extremely fragile. “Eternal punishment” could be translated as “age-to-come chastisement” or “correction of the Age.”

Overall, the infernalist position lacks biblical support. Hart sums up the evidence,

The texts of the gospels simply make no obvious claim about a place or state of endless suffering; and, again, the complete absence of any such notion in the Pauline corpus (or, for that matter, in John’s gospel, or in the other New Testament epistles, or in the earliest Christian documents of the post-apostolic church, such as the Didache and the writings of the “Apostolic Fathers,” and so forth) makes the very concept nearly as historically suspect as it is morally repellant.[xii]

Rejecting the traditional view of hell does not mean that the wicked will get away with anything. Jesus repeatedly taught that a separation will occur and the unrighteous will miss out (Matt 7:21–23; 8:11–12; 13:40–42; 22:11–13). Their loss will be serious and deeply distressing. But that doesn’t mean they will experience eternal conscious torment.[xiii]

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[i] Augustine, City of God, trans. by Marcus Dods, 1871, 21:23.

[ii] David Burnfield makes the point that many who hold to the traditional view use this same logic when interpreting other verses, such as Romans 5:18: “Just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification for all people.” They commonly assert that “all” means all in the first use, but only means some in the second use. However, they don’t apply the same logic to Matthew 25:46. See David Burnfield, Patristic Universalism: An Alternative to the Traditional View of Divine Judgment (Boca Raton: Universal-Publishers, 2013), chap. 7.

[iii] David Bentley Hart, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell and Universal Salvation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019), 121.

[iv] Regarding aiōnios, Ilaria Ramelli writes, “it never means ‘eternal’ in Scripture unless it refers to God; when it refers to life, death, and other things such as ‘fire,’ it means ‘belonging to the world to come,’ ‘otherworldly,’ ‘divine.’” Ilaria L.E. Ramelli, A Larger Hope? Universal Salvation from Christian Beginnings to Julian of Norwich (Eugene: Cascade, 2019), 11.

[v] Note how aiōnios in Matthew 25:46 is rendered in the following versions: “And these shall go away to punishment age-during, but the righteous to life age-during” (Young’s Literal Translation). “And these will go to the chastening of that Age, but the just to the life of that Age.” David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation (New Haven: Yale, 2017).

[vi] Ilaria Ramelli and David Konstan, Terms for Eternity: Aiônios and Aïdios in Classical and Christian Texts (Piscataway: Gorgias Press, 2011). See also Konstan’s online comments where he summarizes Terms for Eternity: http://bit.ly/2uXRNTG.

[vii] David Burnfield, Patristic Universalism: An Alternative to the Traditional View of Divine Judgment, (Boca Raton: Universal-Publishers, 2013), chap. 7. Burnfield makes this point while referencing        Konstan and Ramelli’s work.

[viii] Hart, New Testament, Kindle, 62.

[ix] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 123.

[x] Jürgen Moltmann, The Coming of God: Christian Eschatology, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), chap III, sect. 11.

[xi] For more on double predestination, see my post, A Problem with Double Predestination: www.bible-bridge.com/double-predestination.

[xii] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 118.

[xiii] For more interaction with the biblical support for the traditional view, see Gregg, chaps. 7–8. For a definitive defense of the traditional view see Michael J. McClymond, The Devil’s Redemption: A New History and Interpretation of Christian Universalism (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018).

Les Bridgeman

After graduating from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I served as a high school Bible teacher in Asia. I enjoy traveling, writing, and playing the drums. For a deep dive into church history and the character of God, see my book Surprised by Hell.