by William M. Brennan, TH.D.
Abstract
This essay argues that the Augustinian doctrine of eternal punishment is internally incoherent, metaphysically unstable, and theologically unbiblical. While Augustine’s privation theory of evil successfully rejects Manichaean ontological dualism, his commitment to everlasting non-restorative punishment reintroduces a functional dualism at the level of eschatological finality. Moreover, Augustine’s prioritization of retributive justice and cosmic order over universal restoration undermines the biblical revelation of God’s fatherly love as articulated by Jesus, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount. When combined with a refutation of Anselmian infinite-penalty reasoning and a biblical account of justice as finite, purposive, and restorative, the Augustinian model collapses under its own moral and theological weight.
1. Augustine’s Privation Theory and Its Eschatological Remainder
Augustine’s definition of evil as privatio boni was developed explicitly to refute Manichaean dualism. Evil, for Augustine, has no positive ontological status; it is not a substance or principle but a lack, corruption, or disorder within the good. Everything that exists is good insofar as it exists; evil is parasitic upon being.
Yet Augustine simultaneously affirms the everlasting punishment of the damned—creatures whom God sustains eternally in a state of misery, disorder, and loss. This produces a tension that Augustine never resolves: an eternal privation of good preserved forever by divine will.
Although Augustine denies ontological dualism, he affirms what may be called eschatological duality: two everlasting final states, one of perfected participation in the good, the other of permanently unhealed privation. Evil is not co-eternal with God in origin, but it is co-eternal with the good in outcome. As such, evil is not defeated but indefinitely contained.
This amounts to a functional Manichaeanism. Not a dualism of substances, but a dualism of final realities. Evil does not rival good in power, but it rivals it in permanence. The privation that Augustine insists is metaphysically unstable is nonetheless granted eternal stasis.
2. Justice, Order, and the Non-Necessity of Eternal Non-Restoration
Augustine defends eternal punishment primarily by appeal to justice and the order of the whole (tranquillitas ordinis). The final state of the cosmos, he argues, is more ordered when justice is displayed both in mercy and in punishment.
However, this argument only succeeds if justice requires non-restoration. If justice merely permits punishment but does not demand eternal refusal to heal, then the appeal to order fails.
Indeed, if justice is understood as the restoration of right relation—as it frequently is in Scripture—then universal regeneration would produce more order, not less:
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fewer disordered wills,
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fewer privations,
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the elimination rather than preservation of misery,
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and the complete reconciliation of creation.
Once it is conceded (as Augustine himself concedes) that God could regenerate the lost without injustice, the refusal to do so cannot be justified by justice. Justice becomes permissive, not determinative. The eternal remainder of privation is therefore not demanded by justice but chosen alongside it.
At that point, eternal punishment is no longer an expression of justice’s necessity but of divine preference—raising unavoidable questions about the moral character of God.
3. Divine Fatherhood and the Sermon on the Mount
The Augustinian restriction of divine fatherhood to the redeemed is biblically unsustainable. Luke’s genealogy explicitly names Adam as “son of God” (Luke 3:38), establishing a universal creational fatherhood. Humanity stands in filial relation to God at least by origin, if not covenant.
Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount presses this fatherhood into moral clarity. In his a fortiori argument—“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father…”—Jesus authorizes moral reasoning from human parental goodness to divine goodness. God is not morally opaque; he is morally superior.
A father—or even a grandfather—who could restore a wayward child from ruin at no cost but instead chose endless abandonment would be judged morally monstrous by ordinary human standards. Jesus explicitly forbids attributing lesser goodness to God than to sinful humans.
Therefore, a theology in which God could regenerate his children but chooses instead to sustain their endless misery violates the moral logic Jesus himself establishes. The appeal to “justice” cannot override this, because justice itself must be an expression of God’s fatherly goodness, not its negation.
4. Biblical Justice as Finite, Purposive, and Complete
Scripture consistently presents divine judgment as measured, finite, and teleological. Punishment is depicted as having a goal—repentance, correction, restoration—not as endless non-closure.
The prophetic language that Israel has “paid double for her sins” is hyperbolic, but its meaning is clear: punishment has been fully borne. Justice reaches satisfaction and therefore ceases. Punishment that never ends is punishment that is never paid.
This exposes a decisive incoherence in the doctrine of eternal punishment:
How could an endless penalty ever be “paid in full”?
A punishment that never terminates can never satisfy justice. It does not restore balance; it preserves imbalance. It does not defeat sin; it eternally memorializes it. Such punishment has no telos and therefore cannot be an expression of biblical justice.
5. The Collapse of Anselmian Infinite-Penalty Reasoning
The later Anselmian argument—that sin against infinite majesty requires infinite punishment—does not rescue Augustine’s position.
If “infinite” is taken quantitatively, then punishment is never complete and justice is never satisfied. If “infinite” is taken qualitatively (as perfection or sufficiency), then endless duration is neither required nor appropriate. Perfect punishment would be complete, not interminable.
Thus the appeal to infinity either renders justice impossible or undermines the very conclusion it is meant to support.
6. Christ’s Sufficiency and the Refusal of Restoration
Augustine affirms that Christ’s atoning work is sufficient for all. He also affirms that God can effectually heal the will without violating freedom (as in the saints). Therefore, there is no metaphysical, moral, or soteriological obstacle to universal restoration.
If restoration is possible, just, cost-free, and more perfectly ordered, then the refusal to restore cannot be justified by justice, order, freedom, or sufficiency. It can only be justified by divine will understood as unconstrained by love’s completion.
At that point, love no longer has the final word.
7. Conclusion: Eternal Privation as Theological Failure
Augustine’s privation theory of evil succeeds in rejecting ontological dualism but fails to deliver eschatological victory. By sustaining an eternal privation within creation, Augustine preserves evil in perpetuity—not as a substance, but as a final condition.
This produces a God who is just but not finally restorative, loving but not victorious, sovereign but willing to preserve unhealed ruin forever. Such a portrait stands in tension with the biblical revelation of God as Father, with the moral logic of Jesus’ teaching, and with Scripture’s vision of judgment as purposive and complete.
If justice does not require refusal to regenerate—and it does not—then eternal punishment represents not the triumph of righteousness but the limitation of love. And a theology in which love does not finally triumph is, by the standards of Scripture itself, theologically defective.
