Romans 5:18 and 2 Thessalonians 1:9: The Matter Is Not Obvious, Despite Claims Otherwise
Suppose you are a Christian who believes that every proposition the Bible teaches is true. You also believe that Romans 5:18 and 2 Thessalonians 1:9 contain propositions taught concerning salvation and thus that both verses are true.
You have an interesting problem. Prima facie, these verses contain contradictory claims and therefore cannot both be true. But perhaps there is a solution: to avoid the contradiction, you can interpret one verse in a way that renders it logically consistent with the other.
Here are the verses. Most scholars hold that Paul (or an authorized amanuensis) wrote both:
“Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people.” (Romans 5:18, NIV)
“They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” (2 Thessalonians 1:9, NIV)
A straightforward reading of Romans 5:18 indicates that all human persons who need saving (i.e., all merely human persons) are saved on the basis of Christ’s righteous act. Yet a plain reading of 2 Thessalonians 1:9 indicates that some human persons who need salvation will not be saved. In the former verse, Paul seems to teach salvation for “all people.” The Greek ‘pantas’ means “all” or “every.” In the latter verse, Paul seems to teach that some – namely, “they” (i.e., the ones who have afflicted and oppressed the Thessalonian recipients of Paul’s letter and those who have refused to recognize and obey God’s authority) – will be punished and separated from God forever.
Now, it can’t be the case that all are saved and that some aren’t. That’s a contradiction. What attempts have scholars made to render these verses consistent? Here are two options:
1. Romans 5:18 does not refer to absolutely every human person across history, but rather only to some people from every category of person, or perhaps to everyone from only one category.
These interpretations seem strained. For one reason, the correlative conjunctions “just as …” and “so also …” indicate that Romans 5:18 contains a parallelism. “Just as” all people have been condemned, “so also” all will be saved. It is uncontroversial that the first “all” is a universal quantification; “all” refers to every merely human person. To maintain the parallelism, the second “all” requires the same universal quantification. For another reason, if Paul meant “all” in a limited sense, such as “all from group x and none from any other group” or “some from all groups,” he likely would have made such limits evident somewhere in the context of the passage. But he didn’t.
2. 2 Thessalonians 1:9 does not teach an absolutely everlasting punishment. The Greek word translated as “everlasting” is ‘aiónios,’ which can mean “absolutely everlasting” or “literally forever,” but can also mean “lasting throughout an age” or “lasting for a long but finite period of time.” The word itself means “age-long” or “lasting for an era, eon, or time-span.” (The English word ‘eon’ comes from the Greek ‘aión.’) On this interpretation, in 2 Thessalonians 1:9, ‘aiónios’ means “lasting for a finite age” and does not mean “absolutely forever.”
According to the second option, Romans 5:18 teaches that, ultimately, every single human person who needs salvation will be saved, but that some will experience a post-mortem, finitely age-long, perhaps quite severe punishment (though proportionate, assuming that the punishment should fit the crime) before receiving salvation.
I am not taking a position here on which option (if any) is better. But I am claiming that, so far as I can see, the matter is not obvious – though some unfairly claim otherwise. Rather, the matter is difficult, given the apparent contradiction and the need for compatible interpretation. One must do some intellectual work to iron out the apparent inconsistency, which indicates that that matter is nonobvious.
To formulate a responsible position, one needs to think carefully, recognize the surface-level inconsistency, consider the original Greek, develop plausible interpretations of the verses which avoid the inconsistency, consider what the author probably meant given the context of the passage, inquire into what a loving and just God would do, reflect on human free will and on the human condition in general, check other relevant Biblical passages, etc.
The challenge is not easy nor is the answer obvious.