Evil’s End

“This is my opinion too,” said my teacher. “I also think that the measure of pain is proportional to the quantity of evil in each person. For it is not likely that the one who has gone far in forbidden evils and the one who has fallen into moderate transgressions will be distressed equally as they are purified from their wretched condition. Probably that painful fire is kindled more or less hotly depending on the quantity of matter, and it burns as long as it has fuel. So if a person’s material burden is great, the consuming flame must also become great and long-lasting; but if someone is exposed to the consuming fire more briefly, the punishment relaxes its severe and piercing operation in proportion to the smaller measure of evil in the subject. For evil must be altogether removed in every way from being, and as we have said before, that which does not really exist must cease to exist at all. Since evil does not exist by its nature outside of free choice, when all choice is in God, evil will suffer a complete annihilation because no receptacle remains for it.”

St. Gregory of Nyssa, On the Soul and Resurrection, p. 84