The Justice of Eternal Punishment

They are opposing the laws that were given and the laws that are intended. We see this happening to us as well, in the way we instruct children, desiring to lead them up by way of knowledge so that they might practice this; but they do not always practice it as they were taught.

Rather, there are times when many sons, having been raised by doctors who were also fathers, do not use medicine properly, bringing disease-causing things instead of healthy ones to those who are suffering; and it is not the medicine, nor the one who trained it, who is the cause. For he did not teach so that they might act in this way. For they act not as they learned to act.

Again, we instruct certain laws so that they might establish the righteous and avoid injustice. But some of them, approaching the laws badly, do the opposite. And we blame neither the law nor the lawgiver. For if they themselves were the cause of injustice, they would not have punished the unjust. For this also is part of their will: that the unjust should be punished. And God punishes the devil, and those who have transgressed the laws set by God. For He says to certain evil ones: 'Go into the eternal fire, prepared for the devil and his angels' (Matt 25:41).

Therefore, let those who oppose these things know that they fight against themselves. For if the devil were essentially evil and a stranger to the good God, being able to be his equal in strength, he would not have prepared a punishment for himself, nor would he be able to be cast into the punishment; but He says that fire is prepared for the devil. And this must be said: If the good God is unchangeable, as...

If it indeed exists, and always possesses the same power, not to be strong one way and then another; yet after much harm and much loss, it was destined to hand over the devil to the eternal fire. Why did he not do this from the beginning, when he returned to him and took part in him? For then, rather, punishment was being decreed against him as for a greater transgression. Now indeed he harms men; but then, against them, he harmed the divinity, as they think.

For law and righteous indignation are more appropriate against those daring against the king than against those who are subjects. For if these things are so thought, they will attribute either ignorance to God then, regarding how he will punish and obstruct evil, or weakness. But neither of these applies to the good God; so the enemy would not have returned against him unprovoked. Rather, having become to be good, he kept the power of virtue incomplete, but led the readiness of evil into activity; for which reason he is also worthy of punishment, and appropriately, after much punishment, was cast down.

If they were to bring forward that also, which was said by John the Baptist to those coming to baptism with hypocrisy: 'O generation of vipers, who showed you to flee from the coming wrath? Therefore make fruit worthy of repentance, and do not think to yourselves that we have Abraham as father. For God is able from these stones to raise children to Abraham. Already the axe lies at the root of the trees. Every tree therefore not producing good fruit is cut down, and into fire' (Matthew 3:7-10).