"And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." - Matt. 25:46
Had penal retribution been intended [in this passage], Matthew could have used the applicable Greek word, timoreo/timoria...Instead, he chose the restorative term kolasis, usually [over]translated as punishment, but which actually carries a connotation of corrective discipline or chastisement.
The Greek word for punish and punishment appears just three times in the NT...Our common version translates two Greek words, timoreo, and kalazo, "chastise," with the same English word, "punish." Chastizing carries the idea of correcting with a view to amendment of one's mistakes, while punishment is penal action. These two words were defined by Aristotle in his Rhet. 1, 10, 17, as, "kolasis is corrective, timoria alone is the satisfaction of the inflictor." Archbishop Trench states in his synonyms of the N.T.: "timoria indicates the vindictive character of punishment; kolasis indicates punishment as it has reference to correcting and bettering the offender.
If so, then the goats of Matthew 25 are not dismissed to eternal, retributive torment. Rather, we have something more like Malachi's refiner's fire, which by implication, finds its terminus when the subject's "pruning" -- the root meaning of kolasis -- is complete.*
*Bradley Jersak, Her Gates Will Never Be Shut: Hope, Hell, and the New Jerusalem [Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2009], 30.
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