The New Testament: A Translation

by David Bentley Hart

(Matthew 5:26; cf. Luke 12:59); the unmerciful slave is “delivered . . . to the inquisitors until he should repay everything owing” (Matthew 18:34); some wicked slaves “will be beaten with many blows” and others “beaten with few blows” (Luke 12:47, 48); “everyone will be salted with fire,” the fire in question being explicitly that of the gehenna, and salting being a common image of purification and preservation—for “salt is good” (Mark 9:49–50). It might also explain why the Greek word used for “punishment” in Matthew 25:46 is κόλασις (kolasis)—which typically refers to remedial punishment—rather than τιμωρία (timōria)—which typically refers to retributive justice (it might not, however, since by late antiquity kolasis had perhaps become somewhat less specific in connotation). And, if one regards Paul’s language as a reliable reflection of the teachings of the apostolic church, one might take 1 Corinthians 3:12–15—which distinguishes not between the saved and the “damned,” but only between those who (their works passing the test of fire) merit rewards in the Age to come and those who (their works failing that test) will instead have to be saved “as by fire”—

These are some passages that one should explain if they are to take a universalist, but not purgatorial view