 The second factor in the regenerative process is punishment for sin: here pain has a crucial role. Conway holds that the disequilibrium between corporeality and spirit, whereby it becomes more corporeal, is a painful condition. The pain so experienced is punishment for the sin which brought about it to this condition (in that respect sin is its own punishment). But Conway holds, further, that the purpose of punishment is not merely retributive; pain has a purgative effect on the degenerate creature, leading to its release from its overly corporeal, inactive condition, and enabling it to reset itself on a trajectory of recovery of its original godlikeness. In this process its constitutional composition becomes increasingly refined (spirit-like) in tandem with its increase in goodness. The trajectories of degeneration, on the one hand, and amelioration echo Plato’s account of immortality of the soul in the Phaedo 80d–84b. In Conway’s version, pain and suffering are beneficial because they have a restorative function, thereby playing a crucial role in sustaining the over-all dynamic towards perfectibility in her metaphysical system. In this way Conway vindicates the justice of God.  Conway’s system is thus a theodicy, which explains pain and suffering as a transient conditions, contributory to the amelioration and recovery of creatures. The consequences in terms of religious belief are that Conway denies the eternity of hell punishment and upholds the doctrine the universal salvation or apocotastasis.