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46 And these will go away to aeonica retributionb , but the righteous to aeonic life.
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Notes
46 a Here and in most places, the New Testament does not use a word whose unambiguous or even primary sense is "unending" or "chronologically infinite" (such as ἀπέραντος, "aperantos"), and surely we ought to ponder why it does not. Is such a word not used, so as to avoid committing Almighty God to inflicting any punishment without any chronological endpoint? The word that is used here and in most places where translations rather misleadingly give the impression of "limitless time", "forever", is "aionios" (αἰώνιος), part of the family of words around the Greek word "aion" (αἰών). Please consider the range of senses for "aionios" that a dictionary like LSJ claims: "lasting for an age", "perpetual", "eternal", "holding an office or title for life", "worldly" [in the sense of "limited in time", not limitless like divine phenomena]. Likewise consider the range of senses claimed for "aion" by LSJ: "period of existence", "lifetime", "life", "age", "generation", "posterity", "oneʼs life, destiny, lot", "long space of time", "perpetually", "all oneʼs life long", "for ever", "eternity", "space of time [clearly defined and marked out]", "epoch".
bThe Ancient Greek term used is κόλασις (kolasis), which the Liddell Scott Jones dictionary describes as having the primary sense of "checking the growth", secondary senses being "chastisement", "correction", "retribution".