At the consummation of all things, what does success look like for God's creation? We have three options that have been believed by various Christians throughout the history of Christian faith.
Eternal life/Eternal damnation (Augustine): In this scenario, God succeeds in saving some rational souls for eternal life through Christ. However, God does not eliminate evil in all but perpetuates it by preserving those who willfully reject God in eternal torment. Conclusion: Failure since sin and evil, found in those rational souls that reject their ultimate good, persists for all eternity by God's will.
Eternal life/Annihilation (Arnobius of Sicca): In this scenario, God succeeds in saving some for eternal life through Christ and eliminating evil in rational souls. However, this elimination of evil includes the annihilation of some rational souls who willfully reject their ultimate good. Conclusion: Partial success since the result is the elimination of evil in rational souls but God loses some of God's good creation by destroying it.
Eternal life/Universal restoration (Gregory of Nyssa): In this scenario, God succeeds in saving all for eternal life through Christ. Some are saved in this life and others in the age to come through the remedial punishment of divine love until all rational souls reject sin and evil, willfully bending the knee and confessing Christ as Lord, after which Christ will hand the consummated kingdom over and God will be all in all. Conclusion: Complete success since God succeeds in eliminating all evil in all rational souls and saving all of God's good creation.
Note: It should be noted that Nyssa (the Pillar of Orthodoxy and Father of Fathers) taught the complete and absolute elimination of evil through reconciliation in Christ without destroying good. "Evil must necessarily be eliminated, absolutely and in every respect, once and for all" (On the Soul and Resurrection 101).
"For, thanks to all the respects in which Christ has mixed with humanity, having passed through all that is proper to the human nature, birth, nourishment, growth, and having gone as far as the trial of death, he has accomplished all the tasks I have mentioned, both liberating the human being from evil and healing even the inventor of evilness." (Great Catechetical Oration 26).
It seems clear that divine success at the consummation can only be the universal restoration of all. Anything short of that ranges from failure to partial success. Eternal damnation means that God wilfully perpetuates evil for eternity. Annihilation means God loses some of God's good creation. Do you agree or disagree?
What you wrote, and what you quote Nyssa to say, seem to me to assume a very temporal, human, POV. While the seminal act of God, in Christ's life, death and resurrection definitely demonstrates that this temporal life, though a vapor, is nevertheless real, I can't help but think on the question of how God sees this matter (as though we can say he considers it separately from other matters). I don't like arguments based on what we say or what we think, and particularly on how we say and think. Some of the cosmological arguments to me sound this way, and to me at best can only prove some conclusion of "what we must (or should) say or think". They assume substance to our thinking.
We necessarily think that some action within this temporal frame completed within this temporal frame, means "no more action within this temporal frame", and rightly so, but "after", or maybe I should say, "outside of", this temporal frame, a completed action doesn't necessarily follow that use regardless of the fact that it was done within the temporal frame.
The reality of what happened within this temporal 'remains' truth —that it did happen— even after this temporal is 'over with'. And certainly, the everlasting Word of God that is of such immanence and effect, and so valuable and pure, during this temporal, is not discarded when this temporal is 'over with' —in fact, there is every reason to say that it is totally relevant, in Heaven, in a way we could not have imagined.
But these facts don't render our viewpoint valid, during this temporal life, particularly as applies to the 'after'life.
So: When we say that
"Evil must necessarily be eliminated, absolutely and in every respect, once and for all", we can only say it means or works out how WE mean it, and that, only during this temporal realm. —I don't know if you were in on one of the threads concerning the language in Heaven. To my mind, if God speaking brought creation into reality, there may be reason to think that in Heaven, a word no longer is a substitute or even a representation of the actual thing, but the thing, the fact, itself.
Now I am NOT saying that evil then is allowed to exist or maintained in existence, 'after' this temporal. Remember that we can surely say that God exists. But we have no comprehension of what such a word means when we apply it to God. We think we know what little WE mean* by it, but we don't know what it means.
What I AM saying is that when a fact is fact, as caused by God, we have no way to know what 'undone' means in his reality. Nor what 'restored' or even 'death' is. We know evil opposes him, and we have vague notions of the other things, but we don't know. True logic is true. But our logic is presumptuous on a child's level.
*See CS Lewis', from
Till We Have Faces —"...the babble we think we mean..."
