Evil is instrumental to God's plan of bringing about an Elect people.
God "authored" evil into the story of Creation for this purpose.
God is not "in a war" with evil, Man by way of his affection to Sin, and that is by design.
Evil is not some unfortunate consequence of Creation that "got away" from God, but a vital rebellious force that God ultimately intends for good.
#ToChristAlone
The Orthodox Christian view is evil is not a substance or something created or authorized by God. It is a privation, a lack or corruption of the good that God intended. Evil arises from the misuse of free will, turning away from God’s perfect design, and has no independent existence.
Does Satan play a role?
Angels, existing outside time, made a single, eternal choice to obey or reject God. Fallen angels chose against God’s goodness, introducing evil as a privation, not something God created or authorized.
Satan, originally a high-ranking angel, possessed free will and existed outside temporal constraints in an eternal “now.” In a single, irrevocable act, he chose pride and rebellion against God, turning away from divine goodness.
This choice introduced evil as a privation, a corruption of his created goodness, not as something God authorized or created. As a result, Satan became the chief adversary, leading other angels in their fall, perpetually opposing God’s will while remaining subject to His ultimate authority.
After the creation of man too, right?
Satan, an angel, fell before human creation in an eternal moment, choosing pride over God’s goodness, introducing evil as a privation, not created by God. He sways humans through temptation, exploiting free will to incite sin, as in Genesis 3.
Ok. That’s what I originally thought. However I was listening to some podcast with two Fathers and stated otherwise. I may have misunderstood what they were discussing.
Great film worth a watch about good and evil: Nefarious (2023)
Nefarious is an excellent movie.
The fallen angels are also granted free will, but have no means of salvation — the rebellious spirits (the principalities and powers we struggle with) are still completely subject to God’s sovereignty.
Their reaction to Christ in the gospels makes this clear. But also the “lying spirit” that God allowed to deceive Ahab is another example.
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.
