What is eternal, Maria? That's the question before us.
@Emun said that "only the book of Revelation speaks of a place of eternal torment" (
here), to which you replied with Matt 25:46. Why did you bring up that passage? Since it was a response to what Emun said, I thought you were offering an example of a book other than Revelation that speaks of eternal conscious torment. Hence, my question to you: "How does this prove eternal conscious torment?" (It doesn't.)
The punishment is eternal, yes, but what is the punishment? Eternal conscious torment? This text doesn't say that. So, perhaps Emun is correct?
Fundamental to defining "punishment" is how we understand the holy wrath of God in judgment against sin (e.g., Deut 32:22). Theology matters. Consistent throughout the witness of Scripture, from the OT to the NT, is the pattern of God being provoked by evil, his fierce anger being poured out and spent until the evil is consumed or destroyed. A crucially important factor of God's wrath, seen nowhere else more clearly than on the cross, is that it can be satisfied. His fierce anger against sin is not endless and out of control.
John Stott, in his profound masterpiece
The Cross of Christ, described the matter more clearly than I ever could, so I will quote him in full here:
If a fire was easy to kindle during the Palestinian dry season, it was equally difficult to put out. So it is with God's anger. Once righteously aroused, he "did not turn away from the heat of his fierce anger, which burned against Judah." Once kindled, it was not readily "quenched" (2 Kings 23:26; 22:17; 2 Chron 34:25; Jer 21:12). Instead, when Yahweh's anger "burned" against people, it "consumed" them. That is to say, as fire leads to destruction, so Yahweh's anger leads to judgment. For Yahweh is "a consuming fire" (Deut 4:24, quoted in Heb 12:29; Num 11:1; Deut 6:15; Ps 59:13; Isa 10:17; 30:27; Lam 2:3; Ezek 22:31; Zeph 1:18). The fire of his anger was "quenched," and so "subsided" or "ceased," only when the judgment was complete (e.g., Josh 7:26; Ezek 5:13; 16:42; 21:17) ...
The imagery of fire endorses what is taught by the vocabulary of provocation. There is something in God's essential moral being which is "provoked" by evil, and which is "ignited" by it, proceeding to "burn" until the evil is "consumed."
Thirdly, there is the language of satisfaction itself. A cluster of words seems to affirm the truth that God must be himself, that what is inside him must come out, and that the demands of his own nature and character must be met by appropriate action on his part. The chief word is kalah, which is used particularly by Ezekiel in relation to God's anger. It means "to be complete, at an end, finished, accomplished, spent." It occurs in a variety of contexts in the Old Testament, nearly always to indicate the "end" of something, either because it has been destroyed or because it has been finished in some other way. Time, work, and life all have an end. Tears are exhausted by weeping, water used up, and grass dried up in drought, and our physical strength is spent. So through Ezekiel Yahweh warns Judah that he is about to "accomplish" (AV), "satisfy" (RSV), or "spend" (NIV) his anger "upon" or "against" them (Ezek 5:13; 6:12; 7:8; 13:15; 20:8, 21). They have refused to listen to him and have persisted in their idolatry. So, now, at last, "the time has come, the day is near ... I am about to pour out my wrath on you and spend my anger against you" (Ezek 7:7-8). It is significant that the "pouring out" and the "spending" go together, for what is poured out cannot be gathered again and what is spent is finished. The same two images are coupled in Lamentations 4:11, "The LORD has given full vent (kalah) to his wrath; he has poured out his fierce anger." Indeed, only when Yahweh's wrath is "spent" does it "cease." The same concept of inner necessity is implied by these verbs. What exists within Yahweh must be expressed, and what is expressed must be completely "spent" or "satisfied."
Imagine the new heavens and new earth being perpetually marred by a corner of evil where sinners exist forever and God's wrath is never, ever satisfied for all eternity, where judgment is never complete.
Now imagine the new heavens and new earth forever cleansed of all sin, which was utterly consumed by God's unquenchable wrath, where there is no crying or pain in any corner of creation, where Christ vanquishes evil so fully and completely "that God may be all in all."
Which theological picture of God is most faithful to the overall witness of Scripture?
"But in the book of Revelation," one might begin to say, before realizing that he was about to prove Emun's point.
