Eternal life vs. eternal punishment: A response to TurretinFan
Posted on June 26, 2012 by David Smart
In a recent post at TurretinFan’s blog he credits Adam Blauser with saying that “in Matthew 25:46, the ‘result’ meaning very clearly cannot be sustained.” And why is that? Because eternal punishment is “put in parallel with ‘eternal life’.” And since we know that “living is something that will be done eternally,” obviously punishment, as its parallel, will be “done for all of eternity.” TurretinFan heartily concurs, saying that with these two things in parallel “we are given an unmistakable clue that the ‘event’ or ‘manner’ sense is intended,” and that the exegetical burden rests upon Chris Date “to argue that the context favors a result interpretation, not an event/process/manner interpretation.”
But I am not convinced that either Blauser or TurretinFan have made a solid enough case to say that the result meaning “very clearly cannot be sustained” or that our clue in this passage is “unmistakable.” I submit that the result sense not only can be sustained but also that it should be.
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