Besides that, assuming one believes in universal opportunity (by which I mean, a true choice to believe/reject the gospel), than the whole "allows them to be... in hell when it's all over?" part loses it's crunch.
Well, the problem is that there is no universal opportunity, at least not in this life. I think everyone can agree on that. The good fortune of being born to Christian parents or in a country where Christianity is widespread and accepted plays a huge role into the likelihood that one will hear the gospel.
Anyway, the "jollies" part of the quote wasn't my construct, and I obviously don't agree with it.
Regarding the Greek word
aionion, I'm not terribly convinced, given that the word is not actually the Greek word for everlasting,
aiodios, and there is obviously dispute over what it signifies. The fact that even those who argue it must mean eternal life/death agree it has multiple meanings and is used to mean something different elsewhere in the Bible, whereas a word that has a clear meaning of "everlasting/eternal" was not used, strikes me as strange.
From
http://www.tentmaker.org/articles/aionole.htm:
The adjective aionios in like manner carries the idea of time. Neither the noun nor the adjective, in themselves, carry the sense of endless or everlasting. They may acquire that sense by their connotation, as, on the other hand, aidios, which means everlasting, has its meaning limited to a given point of time in Jude 6. Aionios means enduring through or pertaining to a period of time. Both the noun and the adjective are applied to limited periods. Thus the phrase eis ton aiona, habitually rendered forever, is often used of duration which is limited in the very nature of the case. See, for a few out of many instances, LXX, Exod 21:6; 29:9; 32:13; Josh. 14:9 1 Sam 8:13; Lev. 25:46; Deut. 15:17; 1 Chron. 28:4;. See also Matt. 21:19; John 13:8 1 Cor. 8:13. The same is true of aionios. Out of 150 instances in LXX, four-fifths imply limited duration. For a few instances see Gen. 48:4; Num. 10:8; 15:15; Prov. 22:28; Jonah 2:6; Hab. 3:6; Isa. 61:17.
Words which are habitually applied to things temporal or material cannot carry in themselves the sense of endlessness. Even when applied to God, we are not forced to render aionios everlasting. Of course the life of God is endless; but the question is whether, in describing God as aionios, it was intended to describe the duration of his being, or whether some different and larger idea was not contemplated. That God lives longer then men, and lives on everlastingly, and has lived everlastingly, are, no doubt, great and significant facts; yet they are not the dominant or the most impressive facts in God's relations to time. God's eternity does not stand merely or chiefly for a scale of length. It is not primarily a mathematical but a moral fact. The relations of God to time include and imply far more than the bare fact of endless continuance. They carry with them the fact that God transcends time; works on different principles and on a vaster scale than the wisdom of time provides; oversteps the conditions and the motives of time; marshals the successive aeons from a point outside of time, on lines which run out into his own measureless cycles, and for sublime moral ends which the creature of threescore and ten years cannot grasp and does not even suspect.
There is a word for everlasting if that idea is demanded. That aiodios occurs rarely in the New Testament and in LXX does not prove that its place was taken by aionios. It rather goes to show that less importance was attached to the bare idea of everlastingness than later theological thought has given it. Paul uses the word once, in Rom. 1:20, where he speaks of "the everlasting power and divinity of God." In Rom. 16:26 he speaks of the eternal God (tou aioniou theou); but that he does not mean the everlasting God is perfectly clear from the context. He has said that "the mystery" has been kept in silence in times eternal (chronois aioniois), by which he does not mean everlasting times, but the successive aeons which elapsed before Christ was proclaimed. God therefore is described as the God of the aeons, the God who pervaded and controlled those periods before the incarnation. To the same effect is the title 'o basileus ton aionon, the King of the aeons, applied to God in 1 Tim. 1:17; Rev. 15:3; compare Tob. 13:6, 10. The phrase pro chronon aionion, before eternal times (2 Tim. 1:9; concordance. 1:2), cannot mean before everlasting times. To say that God bestowed grace on men, or promised them eternal life before endless times, would be absurd. The meaning is of old, as Luke 1:70. The grace and the promise were given in time, but far back in the ages, before the times of reckoning the aeons.
Zoe aionios eternal life, which occurs 42 times in N. T., but not in LXX, is not endless life, but life pertaining to a certain age or aeon, or continuing during that aeon. I repeat, life may be endless. The life in union with Christ is endless, but the fact is not expressed by aionios. Kolasis aionios, rendered everlasting punishment (Matt. 25:46), is the punishment peculiar to an aeon other then that in which Christ is speaking. In some cases zoe aionios does not refer specifically to the life beyond time, but rather to the aeon or dispensation of Messiah which succeeds the legal dispensation. See Matt. 19:16; John 5:39. John says that zoe aionios is the present possession of those who believe on the Son of God, John 3:36; 5:24; 6:47,54. The Father's commandment is zoe aionios, John 1250; to know the only true God and Jesus Christ is zoe aionios. John 17:3.
There is no scripture to support any life after hell.
Perhaps not, but there are no Scriptures to unambiguously declare the divinity of Christ, the trinity or the rapture. These doctrines developed over time by discerning what the Scriptures pointed to. Universalists argue the Scriptures point to universal salvation ("Christ in all," "Every knee shall bow," "In Adam all died, so in Christ all will be raised," the dead branches regrafted onto the tree, etc.) and a punishment in hell, thereby requiring that punishment to be of a finite nature for the purpose of producing ultimate salvation.
There is judgement. Judgement is final.
According to whom? God pronounced judgment on Israel and sent them away into captivity for a finite period of time only to ultimately restore them to Himself. I don't think there's any scriptural support whatsoever that judgment is necessarily final. It certainly can be, but I don't see where judgment must imply finality.
I'm not sure how much we want to use the story of the rich man and Lazarus as a template for what happens after we die. After all, that story strongly indicates Lazarus got there because he was a cruel, wealthy man, i.e., it indicates the existence of a works-based salvation. Further, the story deals entirely with the present — the rich man's current state in hell, not his future one. I for one am not willing to draw many theological truths based on the absence of details from a parable.
But since we're on the subject of Jesus' teachings, I try to take my cues from Jesus' comments in Matthew 19. After saying it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God, his disciples asked him, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus replied: "With man, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."
I'm not comfortable stating definitively one way or another what will happen after we die, except to say that the Bible is far less clear on the subject than I realized before I started researching the subject. And so I keep returning to this: With God, all things are possible.
