ruin, destruction, loss: the wrecking or wasting of something, and in most of the New Testament the final doom of the ungodly
At its root this is an ordinary word for something being wrecked, wasted, or lost. Before the New Testament it named the ruin of an estate, the destruction of an army, or the loss of goods in a business deal. That plain sense still surfaces when the disciples grumble that expensive perfume has been poured out and thrown away.
But Jewish writers, and then the New Testament authors, loaded the word with far heavier freight. It became the standard name for the doom that overtakes the wicked, the exact opposite of being saved and of eternal life. When Paul, Peter, the writer of Hebrews, and John set it against salvation, they mean a final, irreversible undoing of a person, not just the loss of a possession.
The senses below run along that line, from a wasted commodity, to ruin pronounced on a person here and now, to the final destruction of the ungodly, to the Hebrew style label "son of destruction" that brands someone as belonging to that doom. What the word does not tell you, on its own, is exactly what that final destruction consists of, and that gap is where a long theological debate lives.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether this word, in its final-judgment uses, implies the ungodly cease to exist (annihilation) or is compatible with unending conscious torment. Scholars broadly agree the word's lexical sense is ruin or destruction, so the disagreement is over the mode of that destruction, which most now grant the word itself does not settle.
- minorityThe word's plain sense points to real, final destruction, and in these contexts most naturally means the ungodly are destroyed and cease to exist.; Edward Fudge, The Fire That Consumes, 3rd ed. (Cascade, 2011); John Stott, in Essentials: A Liberal-Evangelical Dialogue (1988)
- majorityThe word means ruin or perdition and need not mean ceasing to exist; the final state is unending conscious punishment, fixed by other passages rather than by this word.; Robert Peterson, Hell on Trial (P&R, 1995); G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, NIGTC (Eerdmans, 1999)
- contestedThe noun by itself is genuinely undetermined about the mode of destruction: it names the ruinous outcome, not its manner.; BDAG, s.v. ἀπώλεια; Moisés Silva, NIDNTTE, s.v. ἀπόλλυμι