Those thousands were pre-disposed to believe what they had been taught from childhood about the Bible. They were hardly critical of accepted dogma like Hell which was not closely examined at nascent Christianity, although many Church fathers never bought into it, and until the last few centuries by those without an ax to grind.
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Originally Posted by
jlisenbe
Sorry, but you'll need a lot more than just an "Athos says so"
That's your usual ad hominem argument. Why not deal with the argument itself instead of shooting the messenger.
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There is still the context of those passages to deal with. Mt. 25, for instance, describes this place without attaching a name to it.
“Then He will also say to those on His left, ‘Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels...46 These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Matthew 25. The relevant portion is “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, the righteous to eternal life”.
The Greek word aionios is used in this verse to signify everlasting and is also used in this verse to signify an age – a period of time. The correct reading is “And these will go away to an age (a period of time) of punishment, and the righteous to eternal life.”
Why the two different uses of the same word? The word aionios has two meanings – eternal and an age (a limited period of time). The mistranslated verse first appears in the 5th century in Jerome's Latin Vulgate. The mistranslation has been copied ever since in the KJV and other Bibles.
When it (aion) was translated into Latin Vulgate, aion became aeternam which means 'eternal'. The first written record of the idea of an eternal Hell comes from Tertullian, who wrote in Latin. It was Tertullian's writings, plus Augustine's views and writings on eternal Hell which overwhelmed the other views of a temporary Hell. Up until the Reformation Augustine's view of Hell as eternal was not questioned.
The following is for dwashbur to examine in case he shows up for this discussion.
About the word aion as having connotations of "age" or "temporal",
Aion, transliterated aeon, is a period of longer or shorter duration, having a beginning and an end, and complete in itself. Aristotle (peri ouranou, i. 9,15) says: "The period which includes the whole time of one's life is called the aeon of each one." Hence it often means the life of a man, as in Homer, where one's life (aion) is said to leave him or to consume away (Iliad v. 685; Odyssey v. 160). It is not, however, limited to human life; it signifies any period in the course of events, as the period or age before Christ; the period of the millennium; the mythological period before the beginnings of history.
The adjective aionios in like manner carries the idea of time. Neither the noun nor the adjective, in themselves, carry the sense of endless or everlasting. They may acquire that sense by their connotation, as, on the other hand, aidios, which means everlasting, has its meaning limited to a given point of time in Jude 6. Aionios means enduring through or pertaining to a period of time. Both the noun and the adjective are applied to limited periods
Words which are habitually applied to things temporal or material cannot carry in themselves the sense of endlessness. Even when applied to God, we are not forced to render aionios everlasting. Of course the life of God is endless; but the question is whether, in describing God as aionios, it was intended to describe the duration of his being, or whether some different and larger idea was not contemplated.
If one believes in the idea of eternal Hell, one must either let go of the idea that it is God's wish and desires to save all beings, or accept the idea that God wants to, but will not successfully accomplish his will and satisfy his own desire in this matter.
Finally, the verse in question (Matthew 25:46) is incorrectly thought to prove an endless punishment for evil doers. The faulty logic goes like this, “Since the same adjective (aionios) is used to describe both life and punishment, if eternal punishment isn’t forever, then eternal life also isn’t forever. But if eternal life is forever, then eternal punishment must also be forever.”
This argument is lacking. It's as illogical as saying that, “If the adjective ‘tall’ is used to describe both basket ball players and sky scrapers then they must both be the same size. Either the basket ball player is thousands of feet tall, or the sky scraper is only 6-7 feet tall.” The fault with such logic is clear.
