And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.
All Commentaries on Matthew 25:46 Go To Matthew 25
Augustine of Hippo
AD 430
De Fid. et Op. 15: Some deceive themselves, saying, that the fire indeed is called everlasting, but not the punishment. This the Lord foreseeing, sums up His sentence in these words.
City of God, book xix, ch. 11: Eternal life is our chief good, and the end of the city of God, of which the Apostle speaks, “And the end everlasting life.” But because eternal life might be understood by those who are not well versed in Holy Scripture, to mean also the life of the wicked, because of the immortality of their souls, or because of the endless torments of the wicked; therefore we must call the end of this City in which the chief good shall be attained, either peace in life eternal, or life eternal in peace, that it may be intelligible to all.
City of God, book xxi, ch. 11: And the justice of no law is concerned to provide that the duration of each man’s punishment should be the same with thesin which drew that punishment upon him. There never was any man, who held that the torment of him, who committed a murder or adultery, should be compressed within the same space of time as the commission of the act. And when for any enormous crime a man is punished with death, does the law estimate his punishment by the delay that takes place in putting him to death, and not rather by this, that they remove him for ever from the society of the living? And fines, disgrace, exile, slavery, when they, are inflicted without any hopes of mercy, do they not seem like eternal punishments in proportion to the length of this life? They are only therefore not eternal, because the life which suffers them is not itself eternal. But they say, How then is that true which Christ says, “With what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again,” if temporal sin is punished with eternal pain? They do not observe that this is said with a view, not to the equality of the period of time, but of the retribution of evil, i.e. that he that has done evil should suffer evil. Man was made worthy of everlasting evil, because he destroyed in himself that good which might have eternal.
City of God, book xxi, ch. 3: But, they assert, nobody can be at once capable of suffering pain, and incapable of death. It must be that one live in pain, but it need not be that pain kill him; for not even these mortal bodies diefrom every pain; but the reason that some pain causes their death is, that the connection between the soul and our present body is such that it gives way to extreme pain. But then the soul shall be united to such a body, and in such away, that no pain shall be able to overcome the connection. There will not thenbe no death, but an everlasting death, the soul being unable to live, as being without God, and equally unable to rid itself of the pains of body by dying. Among these impugners of the eternity of punishment, Origen is the most merciful, who believed that the Devil himself and his Angels, after sufferings proportioned to their deserts, and a long endurance, should be delivered from those torments, and associated with the holy Angels. But for these and other things he was not undeservedly rebuked by the Church, because even his seeming mercy was thrownaway, making for the saints real pains in which their sins were to be expiated, and fictitious blessedness, if the joys of the good were not to be secure andendless.In quite another way does the mercy of others err through their humane sympathies, who think that the sufferings of those men who are condemned by this sentence will be temporal, but that the happiness of those who are set free sooner or later will be eternal. Why does their charity extend to the whole race of man, but dries up when they come to the angelic race?.
City of God, book xxi, ch. 19, 20: So some there are who hold out liberation from punishment not to all men, but to those only who have been washed in Christ’s Baptism, and have been partakers of His Body, let them have lived as they will; because of that which the Lord speaks, “If any man eat of this bread, he shall not die eternally.” And the Lord forewarns us that He will put alms done on the right hand, and on the left alms not done, to show us how mighty are alms to do away former sins, not to give impunity to a continuance in sin.
