Evil is clearly not a vital force. It is the absence of good.
This isn’t just an orthodox perspective. This is well understood even across schismatic lines — God is not responsible for sin or evil, man is. And simultaneously God, and only God, is responsible for all that is good, beautiful, and true.
Our modern and overly rationalistic worldview has a difficult time with this, but this isn’t a new topic and these arguments are as old as Christianity.
Can God eliminate evil at any time of His choosing?
He already did, and He already revealed to John (in the book of Revelation) how he did.
Time as we understand it is an artifact of our fallen world, we cannot even reason about time without death. We have no idea what a “deathless time” would even look like, but we will.
Almost all of the church fathers delved deeply into this topic, and unfortunately our modern view tends to ignore this and just presuppose a Newtonian and mechanistic view of time (which can be falsified even under its own system).
Thank you for this interaction.
