RUIN, DESTRUCTION — from ollymi, to destroy: a total undoing rather than mere damage. ⚠ At 2 Thessalonians 1:9 it is qualified as aiōnion, 'eternal' — olethron aiōnion, 'eternal destruction' — and on that phrase readers have divided for a very long time: an unending conscious ruin, or a destruction whose EFFECT is final and irreversible (the annihilationist reading, which presses the word's sense of a thing undone). The same noun is used more mildly elsewhere — of the 'destruction of the flesh' meant to save a man at 1 Corinthians 5:5, and of the 'sudden destruction' that falls on false security at 1 Thessalonians 5:3. The library lays out the readings and does not adjudicate. → first discussed at 2 Thessalonians 1:9