Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 35:138 (Apr 1878)
Article: Christ’s Words On The Duration Of Future Punishment
Author: Cephas Kent

BSac 35:138 (April 1878) p. 290

Christ’s Words On The Duration Of Future Punishment

Rev. Cephas Kent

[Prefatory Note. — The design of this Essay is to furnish aid in determining the proper signification of those words in the New Testament which are chiefly employed in teaching the doctrine of future retribution. The Great Teacher uttered these words. What do they mean? In order satisfactorily to answer this question, their use must be examined. To facilitate this, a table of references has been prepared, pointing out all the places in the New Testament where the words are found. The completeness of this list brings to the careful student of the English Bible, as well as to those acquainted with the original language, the great means of forming an independent opinion as to the teachings of Scripture in the use of these words.

But further, these words are understood to derive much of their significance from a Hebrew word of like import in the Old Testament. It is therefore claimed that the Greek words in question cannot be fully explained without a faithful comparison with the corresponding word in Hebrew. To answer this claim, and as preliminary to the discussion, the use of this Hebrew word has been examined, and a list of references made out marking all the places in the Old Testament in which the word occurs.

These lists together are a complete concordance of these words. In them the reader has before him, or within easy reach, the entire basis of the argument on the subject in question, so far as it depends on the use of these words.

The result brought out in this Essay derives its force from the fulness of the references and from the facility thus furnished to any patient investigator to detect and point out any fallacy that may be thought to be discovered, and to satisfy his own mind in respect to the just weight of the argument.]

Eternal Punishment. — עוֹּלָּם, Αἰών, Αἰώνιος.

The question whether our Saviour taught the doctrine of eternal punishment is to be determined by appeal to his verbal utterances on the subject, and to the general outlook of his instructions. If these do not help us to give a clear,

BSac 35:138 (April 1878) p. 291

definite, and unhesitating answer, it must remain in doubt till a new revelation is given us.

Were the seventeen hundred and eighty-two years which have passed since the last of the Gospels was written to be dropped out of existence, or buried in utter oblivion, leaving us the Bible as we now have it, the proper means of ascertaining the truth on the subject before us would be precisely what they are now. For, since the co...