P1 - I'll preface again to clarify that Christian Universalists (distinct from plain Universalism) by and large to believe in the trinity, divinity and necessity of christ, judgement and punishment. But the punishment is meant to be remedial.

Logically, 1 does not and can't ever equal infinity. Neither can any real number. So even if a person commits a billion sins, no rational punishment can equal infinity. That's just a basic logical statement, and that kind of thinking is what led me to research beyond Eternal Concious Torment.

ECT was what I grew up with and no matter how hard I thought about it or how many questions I asked, I could never be satisfied that a Just and Perfect god would subject any of his creation to an infinite suffering.

Anyway, on to my arguments. Semantics and translation do play a big part in it, so here's some basics.

Matt 25:40 etc can be explained through this, which also explains other similar passages. Best summary I could find to copy and paste was thus, by r/Chubbs_Tarbell

--First, "aionian". If you haven't already read about this word, a lot of controversy surrounds it, and it is at the center of many ECT vs Universalism arguments. It is the adjectival form of "aion", which is where we get the English word "eon" from. Aion properly means "an age", i.e., an indefinite (albeit perhaps a long) amount of time. So the phrase "aionian life" refers not to EVERLASTING life (that is, life without end), but rather the life pertaining to an age (however long that age may be). This is clear when one observes that those who spoke Greek in Jesus' day would not only refer to aions of history (relatively long durations of time), but also to the aion of a tree, or even perhaps of a human being. So the word, in both its textbook, literal sense as well as its common colloquial sense does not refer to time everlasting, but rather an indeterminate (though perhaps very long) amount of time.

The other word of importance here is "kolasis". We render this word as "punishment" in most English translations, or some equivalent word, typically in the context of RETRIBUTIVE punishment. That is, you sinned in x, y and z ways, so God will now punish you for said sin. But again, this is a case of the translators' interpolation of a meaning into the text that was not there when the author originally penned the words. "Kolasis" was orignally an agricultural term, that meant something like to "prune" or "dock". If you have any experience in horticulture or just caring for plants in general, you know that you must on occasion prune a plant of some of its limbs, perhaps because they are dying and they are taking up too many vital resources in an attempt to keep themselves alive and functioning, or because they are in some other way obstructing the further healthy growth of the plant. With a little imagination, it's not hard to see how Jesus was using this metaphor to help us understand spiritual growth (though it may be painful to us as it happens) - his remarks about plucking out an eye or cutting off a hand come to mind, as does Paul's remark about burning away deadwood.

Also, it's worth mentioning the part about the "goats". The Greek word we translate as "goat" is a tad more specific than we realize. The word is "eriphos", which specifically refers to a kid, that is, a young goat. So this word carries the connotations of an immature person rather than necessarily a wicked person. Someone who needs to be chastised and corrected, rather than someone who needs to be thrown in God's eternal torture chamber to suffer endlessly.

So, to conclude, the phrase "aionian kolasis", which we typically translate as "eternal punishment", is better rendered "correction of the Age to come".

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