These are all possible forms of judgement to which the NT may at various points refer, but can Romans 2 really be seen as referring to anything other than a final judgement of “everyone” by Christ? That is, not just Israel of AD 70 and the Roman empire of the late second century to late fifth century but “everyone” as verses 6, 9, 10 and 16 make clear. It is not the “day” when Christ will judge Jerusalem with a terrible siege and the Roman empire with a gradual decline and fall but “the day when God will judge the secrets of men (i.e. people in general will have all their thoughts and actions judged) by Jesus Christ” as verse 16 puts it.

I wonder if you have found (via N. T. Wright) a new reference point for talk of judgement (i.e. judgement within near NT history) which makes better sense of some passages in the NT than their previously understood reference point (i.e. the final judgement) and now you are trying to see how far this new reference point can go in explaining as many NT judgement passages as possible? I would say that this is worth exploring but that we mustn’t distort any of the passages just to make them fit the new reference point. I would also say that Romans 2 (at least) cannot be explained by anything other than the old reference point (as I’ve said just above) and that it is a distortion of the passage to make it refer to anything else.

However, even if this does refer to the final judgement (as I am sure it does) it may be that the “tribulation and anguish” of verse 9 refers to “the process of destruction” as you put it. But it cannot mean that people die into non-existence and the result of the final judgement is merely continuation of that non-existence. The final judgement seems worse than that for those not in Christ.

Rather than settle on the theory that the suffering coming to those not in Christ will end with complete destruction into non-existence, I prefer to leave this as a possibility along with the possibility of eternal judgement. Why? Because the teaching of Jesus and his apostles sometimes seems to indicate the latter. We can use interpretative sophistication to mitigate these indications (a la McLaren: it is only a rhetorical device) but why not take these indications literally and re-interpret the indications of destruction as merely rhetorical? For instance, it could be argued that the NT authors use images of death and destruction which are familiar to us now only as analogies to a judgement that is so terrible we can’t possibly comprehend it now. I would prefer that this was not the case because at the moment it would apply to some of the people I love the most. But I learnt long ago the folly of resolving perceived tensions in God’s word simply by picking the side I personally prefer (which N. T. Wright himself cautions against in his How Can The Bible Be Authoritative?). I’m not saying you are doing this, I’m just explaining my reluctance to pick one theory or the other.