Questo articolo è disponibile anche in: Italian English

Dear Father Angelo,

I wanted to ask you another question, related to the previous one.

Was the distinction between good and evil born from the fall of the angels? Didn’t evil exist before?

Why did God then create the world and man? When I think about it, it seems to me almost like a challenge between Him and Satan such as: now that this opposition exists between us, let’s create a Universe where man is free to choose and let’s see who wins, good or evil, and how many souls are saved and how many are doomed. I don’t really understand where the idea comes from, the impulse to create everything that exists?

I will try to remember you with affection and admiration in my coming prayers.

Yours truly,

Paolo

Dear Paolo,

1. The distinction between good and evil always existed in God’s mind.

Evil manifested itself with the rebellion of the angels.

But it should be immediately pointed out that evil does not exist in itself as an autonomous reality, but as a deprivation or perversion of a good reality.

2. God did not create man for him to choose between two realities.

He created man just for one reason, that he would choose goodness and so become the creator of his own bliss.

Man can misuse this ability to choose, and choose evil.

The final outcome of this perverse choice is the failure of the divine plan for him. This failure is hell.

3. It must also be said that there is no one who seeks hell.

Everyone is solely in search of paradise, of happiness.

But not infrequently the paradise sought is not the real one.

No man turns away from God looking positively for his own unhappiness.

Many are looking for their happiness in the wrong direction.

This wrong direction leads to the absence of God, to the absence and deprivation of any good: here is hell.

4. Creation is not born out of any need.

St. Thomas writes: “But it does not belong to the First Agent, Who is agent only, to act for the acquisition of some end; He intends only to communicate His perfection, which is His goodness” (Summa theologiae, I, 44, 4).

So that “to act from need belongs only to an imperfect agent, which by its nature is both agent and patient.

But this does not belong to God, and therefore He alone is the most perfectly liberal giver, because He does not act for His own profit, but only for His own goodness” (Ib., I, 44, 4, ad 1).

And he concludes: “God produced creatures not because He needed them, nor because of any other extrinsic reason, but on account of the love of His own goodness” (Ib., I, 32, 1, ad 3).

5. Vatican I Council authoritatively confirmed this doctrine by teaching that God “not to increase or acquire His beatitude, but to manifest His perfection through the goods He grants to His creatures, in the full freedom of His will, at the beginning of time created from nothingness the creatures of both the spiritual and material order, that is, the angelic world and the terrestrial one” (DS 3002).

Remember to pray the prayer you promised me.

I reciprocate with all my heart.

I remember you in prayer and I bless you.

Father Angelo