The reason it is important to study punishment in the Bible is that annihilationists assume that punishment, regarding eternal judgment, must mean nonexistence. But, is that how the concept is used in the Bible? The only way to find out is to look at how God uses the word. So, I did a study where I looked at every verse found in the New American Standard Bible that has, in English, the “punish” in its different forms in the New Testament: punish, punishing, punished, punishment, etc. There were 144 instances.
Doing a study in English is not the same as doing that in Greek, which is what the New Testament was written in. I have done far more in-depth research on the usages of the words for punish in the following studies.
- Word study on kolasis, punish
- Word study on epitimia, punishment
- Word study on word-study paideuo, punish
- Word study on timoreo, punish
- Word study on timoria, punish
The results of my English usage study are below. I have listed the verses in such a way that if you put your mouse over any one of them, you can see it and check it for yourself and compare it with my categorization. I sought to be objective during this process. Different verses could have been categorized in multiple areas, but I decided to assign each verse to only one category. You may disagree with some of my placements. That’s okay. As I said, my goal was to get a general feel for how God uses the word punishment compared to what we think it means.
Analysis: Table 1
Punishment is categorized in four main ways.
- Experienced for a period of time
- Death or physical destruction
- Duration and Nature not specified
- Figurative Usage
In Table 1 below, I categorized the verses into those four main categories. I let the verses dictate the categories. In other words, I began reading the scriptures and saw that the first one, Gen. 4:13, was where Cain said his punishment was too great to bear. So, he would experience his punishment for a period of time. The next occurrence was in verse was Gen. 19:15 was about Sodom and Gomorrah where the exact nature of the punishment was not specified but contextually it was the death of people and/or physical destruction of the city that people experienced the punishment of God. They saw the fire, they experienced, the pain, and they entered into death. But, of course, such death is part of the subject of this section, and the question as to its nature, conscious, unconscious, or nonexistence, is under investigation. Nevertheless, by examining every verse, I found four main categories.
- Duration and nature not specified, approximately 55 verses, or 44%
- Experienced for a period of time, approximately 37 verses, or 30%
- Death or physical destruction, approximately 27 verses, or 21%
- Figurative usage, approximately 6 verses, or 5%
Now, these numbers are approximate because sometimes the word ‘punish’ would occur more than once in a verse, and other times, more than one verse was needed for context to clarify what the punishment was. Nevertheless, here is what I found.
| Table 1 | |||
| Experienced for a period of time Approx. 37 verses or 44% |
Death or physical destruction Approx. 27 verses, or 21% |
Duration and Nature not specified Approx. 55 verses, or 44% |
Figurative Usage Approx. 6 verses or 5% |
|
|
|
|
Conclusion
So, the majority of usages of punishment are unspecified in regard to the specific meaning as it relates to the experience of punishment. The next largest usage is where people experience punishment for a period of time. The third most common usage was of physical death. So, when the annihilationists say that punishment means non existence, then we have to ask if it really does.
Return to Annihilationism Page
