Meet Tertullian: A Roman Lawyer Who Helped Shape the Concept of Eternal Damnation

What if one of Christianity’s most terrifying doctrines didn’t start with Jesus—but with a Roman lawyer?

The idea of an eternal hell—a place of conscious torment where sinners burn forever—has haunted Christian imagination for centuries. But what if that vision wasn’t what Jesus meant at all?

Enter Tertullian: a brilliant, firebrand thinker from North Africa, born around 155 AD. Trained in Roman law and steeped in the culture of retribution and public punishment, he became one of the first major Christian theologians to write in Latin.

When he converted to Christianity in his early 40s, Tertullian brought his legal mind with him—and so did his framework for justice. His interpretations of the New Testament, read through the lens of early Latin translations, would help forge what would later become the traditional doctrine of hell.

But was it what Jesus actually taught?

Here’s the problem: he worked from the New Testament while it was in the process of being translated into Latin.

The books of the New Testament were originally written in Greek. Latin was the language of the Roman Empire. As Christianity spread throughout the empire, it made sense to translate the gospels and epistles into Latin. But some things got lost in translation. Others got distorted. A common word in one language may not have a perfect match in another.

That’s usually not a major issue. But when it comes to key concepts regarding the afterlife, this becomes a huge issue.

One of the most important examples comes from the Gospel of Matthew. When translating from Greek to Latin, early translators stumbled over a tricky phrase: aiōnios kolasis. In most modern Bibles, this gets rendered as "eternal punishment."

Let’s unpack these two Greek words and examine what happened when they got translated into Latin and interpreted by theologians like Tertullian.

The Greek: Aiōnios Kolasis

Aiōnios comes from the Greek root aiōn, which is the source of the English word "eon." It refers to "an age" or "age-lasting" — a defined period of time, which could be long or short. It does not inherently mean "eternal" in the modern, infinite sense.

Here’s the linguistic problem: Latin doesn’t have a perfect equivalent for aiōnios. The translators chose the Latin word aeternus. This is where our English word "eternal" comes from. But by the time of early Latin theologians, aeternus had taken on a very strict meaning of never-ending.

The second word in the phrase is kolasis, translated as "punishment." But there are two major types of punishment:

1. Retributive punishment: inflicts pain or suffering proportionate to the crime.

2. Restorative punishment: aims to guide someone toward healing, reform, or purification.

The word kolasis comes from kolazo, which means "to prune, correct, or restrain." Think of Jesus describing the Father as the gardener who prunes unfruitful branches. In classical Greek, kolasis consistently refers to corrective discipline, not vengeance.

The Latin: Supplicium Aeternum

Now enter Tertullian. Trained as a Roman lawyer, he saw justice and punishment through the lens of Roman law. Roman punishment was intensely retributive. Think of crucifixion. It was designed not only to punish but to terrify.

So when kolasis was translated into Latin, it became supplicium. This word carries a strong connotation of retribution. It literally means "to kneel or beg for mercy" — implying a condemned criminal pleading before a merciless judge.

So in Matthew 25:46, when Jesus speaks of the fate of the goats, what he likely described as an age of restorative purification (*aiōnios kolasis*) became, in Latin:

"et abibunt hi in supplicium æternum"

"And these shall go into eternal punishment..."

For Tertullian, reading Scripture in Latin and trained in Roman legal tradition, this made perfect sense. Terms like ignis æternus (eternal fire) and poena æterna (eternal punishment) matched both the text he read and the worldview he knew.

The Immortal Soul and Eternal Fire

Tertullian also lived in the same philosophical stream as Plutarch and middle Platonism, which held that the soul is immortal. That belief created a logic for eternal hell: if souls can't die, then the wicked must live forever in misery. Tertullian actually said that the resurrected body would be made "incorruptible" — not for glory, but so that it could "repair while it burns" in fire.

So What Did Jesus Actually Teach?

The Greek phrase aiōnios kolasis is better understood as an age of restorative discipline, not endless torment. Jesus used imagery like being salted with fire (Mark 9:49), pointing to purifying, transformative processes, not vengeance.

He invited people into the kingdom—described as aiōnios zōē (ζωή), or age-lasting life—a quality of life that begins now and belongs to the age to come. The contrast in Matthew 25 isn’t between bliss and torment, but between participating in the life of the kingdom or undergoing corrective justice.

This fits with Jesus’ broader mission: “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:17) in Greek could be more faithfully rendered as an age of restorative discipline. Jesus uses the image of being salted with fire (Mark 9:49) — both salt and fire are purifying agents, not tools of vengeance.

What Could This Mean?

What if punishment is not based on vengeance and wrath?

What if it's intended to purify and restore?

Doesn't that sound more like the Father revealed in Jesus?

Now, I know this opens a can of worms that can't be contained in this article. But we owe it to ourselves to take a close look at what Jesus said—and what people like Tertullian interpreted.

What if Jesus never intended to threaten us with eternal torment, but instead to invite us into a process of refinement—one that heals rather than harms, restores rather than ruins?

If we begin to view divine justice through the lens of Jesus' life and teachings, we may find that the goal of judgment is not endless separation but ultimate reconciliation.

This doesn’t close the conversation. In fact, it opens it wider. We are left with a challenge: to listen more closely to Jesus himself—and to question where inherited interpretations may have veered from his voice.

Let that be the beginning of something deeper.