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In the context of the other ECF I quoted I doubt you can make a convincing case that Polycarp meant "age long" or some such nonsense. I have found it to be very helpful to actually read a post before trying to respond. Had you done so you might have noticed that I didn't quote passages simply because they contained the word "eternal" but chose passages where "eternal" was reinforced by other adjectives. For example,
Tertullian
"After the present age is ended he will judge his worshipers for a reward of eternal life and the godless for a fire equally perpetual and unending" (Apology 18:3 [A.D. 197]).
But the godless and those who have not turned wholly to God will be punished in fire equally unending, and they shall have from the very nature of this fire, divine as it were, a supply of incorruptibility" (ibid., 44:12–13).
Tertullian does not say anyone's punishment will be "unending", but the fire is "unending" and "divine", "a supply of incorruptibility".
Are you aware of a single English Bible translation that ever uses the word "unending" regarding punishment of any sinners?
What is the original language word Tertullian used that corresponds to the word "unending"? Did Jesus use it? Does Scripture ever use it of the punishment of the wicked? If not, why not?
Wouldn't the word for "unending" have been relatively unambiguous as compared to AION or AIONION (eon or eonian) punishment?
If aionion were understood to mean eternal, why didn't Tertullian just say aionion punishment? Why did he feel the need to describe the fire with other words, namely "equally perpetual and unending"?
Is something "perpetual" necessarily "unending"? Did Tertullian understand the basic meaning of aionion to be "perpetual" & of indefinite duration? If "perpetual" meant "unending", why add "and unending"?
"At that greatest of all spectacles, that last and eternal judgment how shall I admire, how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud monarchs groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so many magistrates liquefying in fiercer flames than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many sages philosophers blushing in red-hot fires with their deluded pupils; so many tragedians more tuneful in the expression of their own sufferings; so many dancers tripping more nimbly from anguish then ever before from applause."
“What a spectacle. . .when the world. . .and its many products, shall be consumed in one great flame! How vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my admiration? What my derision? Which sight gives me joy? As I see. . .illustrious monarchs. . . groaning in the lowest darkness, Philosophers. . .as fire consumes them! Poets trembling before the judgment-seat of. . .Christ! I shall hear the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; view play-actors. . .in the dissolving flame; behold wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the fiery billows. . .What inquisitor or priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favor of seeing and exulting in such things as these? Yet even now we in a measure have them by faith in the picturings of imagination.” [De Spectaculis, Chapter XXX, Tertullian] Quotes About Hell Fire from Christian Leaders
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