It is true that both punishments—eternal torture and eternal death—would in some way last forever. This is why a direct phrase like "eternal punishment" in Matthew 25 in no way logically requires that the author must mean eternal torture. Eternal torture is objectively more severe than eternal death (obvious to any rational person) no matter what some delusional people suppose, and logically, it is true by necessity that eternal torture can only be an unjust penalty if there is such a thing as morality—so many people overlook this crucial fact that no human can just know that morality exists, although all rationalistic people can know what is possible or impossible if it does exist. Why, though, would eternal death not be unjust if it too lasts forever, as the executed being is not resurrected?
The crucial difference is that there is no continuous, active punishment with eternal death. The execution of the soul occurs, and then this state of affairs is never undone. That is how God or any other superhuman being would impose eternal death on someone. Killing the soul, the consciousness, is the active part of the penalty, along with any limited torment beforehand, and leaving the soul dead is only a passive continuation of the effects of this destruction. The active dimension of the punishment utterly ceases when the process of killing the sinner is over.
Each moment, each pang of present suffering, absolutely perpetuates the punishment of eternal torture, in contrast: this penalty by nature brings pain that never ends. Everlasting agony entails endless active punishment. There is nothing passive about such a penalty, whatever the particulars of the torture inflicted. Since unending active punishment inherently exceeds the scope of any sin, however great, eternal torture cannot possibly be justice, whereas eternal death brought about as a form of punitive capital punishment does not have this logical and moral error.
If two people live forever and one one of them was punished for stealing the other's property by giving some of their own property to the victim on top of returning what was stolen (restitution), then that punitive loss of property might very well be permanent. Sure, it could be returned as a gift or out of mercy, but other than such exceptions, it now belongs to the victim going forward. In one very particular sense, the effects of this punishment would last forever. But in no way would the thief in this scenario be suffering eternal punishment in an active sense. Like the unrepentant sinner damned to soul oblivion in Judeo-Christian theology, they are not being punished eternally; they were punished and the new status quo is never reversed.
The reason why eternal death can be justice, still having something about the punishment that leaves a permanent effect, but never eternal torture reduces down to this distinction. The one is preceded by active punishment for a time and the unrevoked death is only a passive consequence, where the recipient is no longer around to experience any pain. The other has active punishment that never reaches an end. Logically, there is a vital difference between the two. Cosmic capital punishment in the fires of Yahweh's wrath, in which the sinner is literally burned to ashes and thus denied eternal life (2 Peter 2:6), certainly leads to the status of eternal death. There is nothing logically impossible about eternal death being just unlike any kind of eternal torture.
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