The beginning of evil
I try to define evil, its origin and the identity of Satan
The simplest "religious" definition of good is: it is an action and a result of action in accordance with the Will of God. The will of God should be understood here as a way to implement His principles and laws. Therefore, good is the state of reality shaped by the Perfect Good and Absolute Creator.
Therefore, the "religious" definition of evil should be: it is an action and its result incompatible with the Will of God. Thus, evil is a state contrary to the laws of the Creator, being not only a denial of good, but also a state of spiritual death.
The introduction by the Creator of the concept of death for breaking the law in the Garden of Eden suggests that a border has been established for which both His Jurisdiction and His Omniscience do not exist. This is what the state of death means.
In previous chapters, I showed that everything in the universe arose from Him and that all this is Good. So what was created outside of Him is a void without proper spiritual life, or evil. This is the wider definition of evil. This also means that God did not create evil and did not know him. This is the idea that accompanies all the other parties to my study. So now it is necessary to find the source and cause of the creation of evil, that is, what is beyond God.
When looking for the sources of evil, one must reach to the beginning of the existence of the universe. I assume, according to the concept of this study, that at the beginning there must have been a first cause, and not an indefinite nothingness. I also assume that this original state supplemented the presence of elements of intelligence, will and emotionality in it. Here I come to the attributes of the Creator, i.e. I am beginning to speak about His Elemental Intelligence, Will and Emotionality. In other words, the source, or rather the essence of everything is His Knowledge, Goodness and Love. Of the three, as St. Paul in his hymn about love (1 Corinthians 13, 1-13), the most important is love. It is not only a feeling, but also a powerful force, the Divine Power. It has an important attribute: the direction. This is a very important value. The right direction of love comes from the Divine Knowledge and Will. Good, then, is the result of preserving the direction of love given to it by the Creator. Direction incompatible with the Will of God means evil.
The Heavenly Father bestows His universe with love, albeit in a different degree, and in others, everything else. This love leads everything to perfection, maintaining the original, good direction given to it by the Creator. God is perfect and never changes her destiny. Someone who is created "in the image and likeness of God", being perfect like Him, should also not change its direction. Unfortunately, an imperfect being only on the way to perfection can possibly change the direction of love. Then evil appears, a state incompatible with the concept of the world created by God.
Everything indicates that the evil created by beings at the beginning of human history initiated the creation of a bad world. It also destroyed the hopes for the creation of the proper, planned by the Creator. By the ideal world I understand the so-called Heavenly Kingdom, that is, the human environment under God's control. It should be eternal, perfect and good, just like Him. Of course, there is no such thing at present. We have something quite the opposite of the Kingdom of Heaven.
Hell (the reverse of the Kingdom of Heaven) I define as the world under the dominion of Satan, who I will present on the following pages.
The condition of the life environment that surrounds us is very far from perfect, and actually it is rather bad than good. Fortunately, it is not eternal, which is a source of great hope for the waiting Kingdom of Heaven. Hell cannot be eternal, as it had its beginning already after the creation of the world and occurred completely against the Will of God. For only what is in accordance with the Will of God is eternal. The evil will have its end, otherwise the Creator would fail. This, on the other hand, is impossible by the very nature of God described in the framework of this concept of reasoning which I accepted in this reflection. For I assumed that the Original Being is the Absolute, which means, among other things, that He is the hundred percent Good.
Just as God is the center of the perfect world, Satan is the center and master of hell.
These two concepts – Satan and hell – now require a more detailed explanation.
Everything indicates that Satan is the being who took the place of God, initiating the fallen world at the time of Adam and Eve's fall.
Who is Satan? We meet this name in the numerous verses of the Bible. For the first time he appears as a being in the form of a serpent who talks in paradise with Adam and Eve, resulting in the fall of the first people. According to the Bible, it was the greatest tragedy in the process of human development. It was then that God lost his original relationship with people in His world, known as the Garden of Eden or paradise.
Satan must have been an angel because at that time, apart from angels and two people, there were no other beings in Paradise who could lead such serious talks about good and evil. This angel could not be found in paradise by accident, because at that time everything was still under God's control. So he was there in accordance with God's command.
I would like to remind you that angels have the task of helping man to achieve perfection ("in the image and likeness of God") and always accompany him as servants. So it was in paradise. Evidently this angel, or rather an archangel, was chosen from among others to look after Adam and Eve. According to his mission, he should be the wisest of all. It was the Archangel Lucifer. His name is now identified with Satan, but before the fall in paradise it was "decent" archangel and certainly very clever. Among other angels, he accompanied the Creator in the creation of the universe. The first people appeared much later, and therefore had great knowledge to convey to them. Lucifer, as a teacher and educator, had to introduce them into a new reality, because this was probably the Will of God. For the Creator, as an Absolutely Perfect Being, could not participate directly in raising His imperfect children.
Unfortunately, there was a situation before which God warned Adam and Eve. The fall of not only the first people, but above all the Archangel Lucifer, who from that moment became Satan.
I will point out that the Bible describes these events vaguely and in a symbolic way. In my opinion, the cause of all this story was the desire for love, which was to develop only between Adam and Eve. Meanwhile, a third participant also appeared in this process. The archangel, fascinated and charmed by the feeling that arose in the first people, which he had never met at such a level, ignored the commandment of "not consuming the forbidden fruit", obstructing the path to the highest degree of love intended only for God's children. The power of love is the greatest of all strength. It leads to a takeover, as if to appropriate another person, what we commonly call falling in love. Unfortunately, wrongly directed can destroy life instead of creating it. The Archangel apparently did not control his wrong direction and did not subdue her strength, despite a clear warning, or actually a ban on God's part. This thirst was so strong that it overwhelmed the Archangel. It aroused in him the desire to experience the same feelings that Adam and Eve had to experience. It was, however, a level of love for the children of God, whereas Lucifer had the right to this feeling only at the level of the servant of God.
The love inherited from God by Adam and Eve must inevitably lead them to unite in the act of sex, both at the level of spiritual and physical persons. Meanwhile, Archangel Lucifer, driven by the desire for love, entered the level of God's children and found himself in the position of Adam. This led to a situation in which he spiritually took control of Eve prematurely. This was similar to a sexual act, although it was a spiritual act from which children cannot be born. This fact has made Lucifer for some time like a husband of Eve and was the first phase of the fall. At this wrong level, Lucifer became an imperfect being, just as imperfect Adam was at that moment. When Eve had understood her error too late, she turned to her legitimate future spouse and merged with him with a sexual act, but this time fully physical. Unfortunately, instead of washing away her previous sin, she drew immature Adam's act into the second phase of the fall. At that time, the fallen Archangel Lucifer became the father of the first people and took God's position before them. From this moment we are talking about the existence of Satan.
Consider now a more technical point of view regarding the events that occurred. The fact that Lucifer was able to take a physical form in the Garden of Eden, to look after Adam and Eve by God's command, seems to be a surprising fact. This is not strange, however, since we know from the Bible that angels have repeatedly performed various activities in the physical world that could not be performed without physical energy.
What else do we know?
We know that none of the angels subordinate to Lucifer, nor himself after the fall, he never took the material form again. This means that he could never use a special Energy that allows direct action in the physical world. From this it follows that this vast amount of energy (E = mc˛), needed for the materialization of the spiritual being, can only come from God, because this is the absolute domain of the Creator. Without His consent, it cannot be used. As a good archangel, Lucifer was full of affection in dealing with Adam and Eve. However, as Satan, he lost the opportunity to use God's energy after the fall, and along with it, the angels who accompanied him lost it.
At the moment when the fall came and Lucifer became Satan, the interaction between him and God ceased, because the Archangel ceased to act in accordance with the Will of the Creator. Immediately, his ability to directly intervene in the physical world ended. So after the fall, Adam and Eve never had direct physical contact with Satan. Nevertheless, he became the master of our earthly life by controlling our spiritual people for whom he became an illegal father. His reign is therefore only the reign of spiritual people. Other, purely physical creatures have no contact either with Satan or with fallen angels. This is because fallen beings and spiritual people do not have access to God's energy, and they have too little of their own to have a physical presentation. God's original plan was that His children would have access to His Energy. He also wanted them, while they live in the spiritual world, to naturally be "physicalized" and have physical contact with people living on Earth in their physical bodies. On this occasion, it must be said that this knowledge allows us to better understand the activities of Jesus and His miracles. Jesus Christ, called the Son of God, had access to the energy of God.
Still, there is another question. Why could not God create a perfect man right away, so that he could not fall down? We treat God as fully perfect. It is obvious that only the perfect Creator could proceed to the creation of the universe and man. Let’s try to think about it.
The creation of the world had to take place at a specific time and successive stages. The individual stages required a transition from the initial plan to its full implementation, that is, the path to perfection went through a period of imperfection. It was only at the end of this road that the creative act could be deserved of saying: "God saw that they were good" (Genesis 1:12). This statement means that perfection has been achieved confirmed by the perfect Creator.
Such a dynamic process of creation therefore has sections of the state of imperfection which are beyond the direct control of the Creator. It is about the period of growth within the framework of laws and principles established by God. In the case of all other things and creatures outside of man, the path to their maturity was automatically based on established principles and laws. In the meantime, in the case of man, it was necessary to introduce, apart from the creative force based on principles and laws, yet another force, greater and more important than that. It is the power of love that has developed in each of us and is to help us come to unity with God.
In the period of development towards perfection, unfortunately, we remain outside the control of God. The first people were to support from Archangel Lucifer during this period because they did not have "earthly" parents. It was he who Heavenly Father gave responsibility for raising His children. Of course, during their growth, people also have their own independent part of responsibility for themselves. Therefore, the task of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden consisted in the fact that based on his responsibility to Heavenly Father and with the help of the teachings of the Archangel, they would reach the level of maturity appointed by the Creator. Thanks to this, they could become His real children. The driving force on this road was love flowing from God. Besides, it was supposed to make men the masters of the world of angels. Heavenly Father could only teach them that they are in a state of imperfection (an expression of this was the ban on consuming fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, the meaning of which I will explain later in this study) and give them to the Archangel who supports them. In this way He wanted to enable his growing children to learn about the created universe and become his heirs. On the other hand, it would be palpable for them to reach personal perfection, for at that moment Heavenly Father would be directly involved in their lives. At the same time, this moment would be like a permission to "eat fruit", that is, to combine Adam and Eve with a sexual act. Unfortunately, mainly through the fault of the Archangel, and partly from his own, the first people "consumed fruit" prematurely.
In God, the power of love is the causative power, and therefore it dominates over the creative power, or the power of principles and laws. So practically the power of love can work with more power than the power of laws and principles. Because God is perfect, these two forces exist together in Him and harmoniously complement each other. By creating a man in His "image and likeness", God gave it to them because it could not be otherwise. Unfortunately, during the passage through the state of imperfection, the power of love could break the power of principles and laws, threatening the life of Adam and Eve. Therefore, to protect the first people, God gave them the most important and overriding instruction on "not eating fruit" and made sure that they understood it as a prohibition of using premature love. With the Archangel, this ban created an impassable barrier between the position of angels and people. In the face of Eve, he concerned the failure of love in no other way than Adam, which was identified with the creation of good. Another direction, that is to the Archangel, was evil. From here you can call her the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. For Adam, this prohibition concerned not giving up life before his love would reach the level of full maturity foreseen by the Creator. From here we can call him the Tree of Life. Thanks to this, we can understand the existence of these two unusual trees in the Garden of Eden.
The meaning of the ban on consuming the "fruit" and the awareness of God's children about the effects of its consumption is evidenced by the statement of yet innocent Eve: "We can eat fruit from the trees of this garden, only about the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden, God said: You are not allowed eat of it and even touch it, lest you die"(Genesis 3, 2-5). The knowledge of Adam and Eve was therefore sufficient not to make a fatal mistake. The knowledge stood open before the first people, but with an exception. It concerned the knowledge of giving life and inheriting the Divine Personality for the next generations. They shared this gift with the Creator. For such a joint action, however, an appropriate level of human perfection was needed, including, of course, the highest state of love that Heavenly Father destined for His children. God is perfect, and so His partners must adjust their level to Him. Adam and Eve could not prematurely and independently start transmit something they had not yet fully achieved. They had to wait for an invitation to cooperate with their Father. For on His part, He gives birth to each person a "breath of life", that is, a spiritual person, while the parents make themselves a physical person. Unfortunately, the first people inspired by Lucifer, who wanted the highest love, broke the bond with the Heavenly Father prematurely. It was the use of their level of immature love for the act of creating a new man and the premature takeover of a new spiritual person from the Creator. This can be called the break-up of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, or simply the original sin. Lucifer assumed the place of God in this arrangement, and people stopped in development at a much lower level than the Creator predicted.
During this period, God could not interfere in man's actions in accordance with the principle that man himself goes through the path to perfection, in order to come to perfect God and reach His level. Therefore, the Creator is not responsible for the fall of a man. Unfortunately, as we know, the instruction of God did not take effect because of the devotion of the Archangel and the misdirecting of love by the participants of the fall.
Most theologians, not only Christian ones, watch the causes of the fall of Adam and Eve in the fact of the existence of freedom in man and in the action of free will derived from it. They claim that God gave people free will, in which He does not interfere. This means that in the Garden of Eden, God left his children the choice between eating and not eating "the forbidden fruit". Because they chose to "eat the fruit" and show disobedience to the ban on its consumption, a fall has inevitably occurred. Hence the conclusion arises that free will, or simply human freedom, led him to fall. These ideas clearly contradict my claims that the cause of the fall was the ill–oriented power of love.
Freedom is a certain state of functioning, in other words a sphere in which a man realizing his free will moves. So it is not a force that can cause a fall. What speaks for the fact that freedom was not the cause of the fall?
First, freedom can only create a state of readiness to make a decision leading to a fall, but the final decision requires action of force that is not freedom. For example, we can freely approach the edge of the abyss, but crossing its edge ends all freedom, because the force of gravity begins to pull a man into the abyss.
Second, the consumption of fruit by Adam and Eve was a conscious act. For God, as a caring Father, took care to explain to them the danger of the forbidden fruit. Since Adam and Eve knew that eating a fruit would bring them death, it meant committing something like suicide. You can call their deed, since the first people consciously made a decision against the deadly threat. Suicide is not committed, however, in a state of freedom, but in the absence of freedom, when there is no other way out of a difficult situation or hope for any other solution.
Thirdly, since there was a type of suicide, it must have been caused by a force more powerful than the power to preserve life, which is naturally the power of love. I do not need to remind you how many suicides were the result of a disappointed love.
I would like to add further arguments to the defense of God, which oppose the claims that He subjected His children to trial or put them before a free choice resulting from their free will. It would look like a test of loyalty or obedience.
First of all, God does not test it after creating His work, because it would seem that He tests Himself. God is perfect and does not make mistakes, and only things that are in doubt are tested.
Second, Adam and Eve, after being created by God, were innocent and did not know evil because they came out of the hand of a perfect Creator who does not know evil and did not create it. God does not test such pure-minded creations because He would have to suspect the existence of evil in them, and this does not agree with His fatherhood and perfection.
Third, God is all-knowing, so he does not use tests, always knowing the results of each test.
Fourthly, God, as a Loving Father, would not expose his children to a possible negative test result, the more that this supposed test was "to death and life" ("when you consume it, you will surely die" - Gen 2:17). Every loving father always protects his children from the effects of any danger and does not subject them to death tests.
These are arguments that must be taken into account before using a superficial way of explaining what happened in the world created at that time by God.
Therefore, I invariably claim that the fall of Adam and Eve and the fall of the Archangel Lucifer were caused by the misdirecting of the power of love. This situation also affects the explanation of the so-called angel rebellion, which is mentioned in the Bible.
Some Christian theologians say that before the fall of the first people there was a rebellion of angels, headed by Archangel Lucifer. This entails the logical question of why God, being aware of the threat of rebellious angels, did not protect His innocent children enough and exposed them to temptation from the fallen Archangel? In addition, in connection with the above theorem, there is a doubt questioning the fact of the perfection of God's work, since the angels created by him raise the rebellion destroying the arrangement of the divine world. However, I must defend God and define these theologians' claims as untrue.
In addition to the above reasoning, I ask myself once again why the educator appointed by Heavenly Father brought people to fall. You can even accuse God that he, by choosing such an inordinate archangel, contributed to the destruction of the good world. That would be the case if our Creator chose an immature and rebellious creature for the educator of Adam and Eve. After all, He should foresee that this evil educator bears the intention of depriving Him of supremacy over people and taking his place in the created world. I must say that such thinking is wrong. Heavenly Father chose for the most important educational mission of the most appropriate and wisest of his archangels. At that time and in his position, Lucifer was perfect. Unfortunately, in his case, based on the above argumentation, it can be concluded that the misdirected power of love led him to abandon his mission. It weakened him, made him imperfect and took away his sense of responsibility. This state, in turn, prompted him to take over the position of God's children, which led to the highest level of God's love. As you know, Adam, the son of God, was an imperfect man at that time. Therefore, taking over his position made Lucifer even more imperfect. In this state, the Archangel continued to desire the highest love, which eventually led him to unite with Eve, or make her "eat" the forbidden "fruit". You can call it not only a fall, but also a rebellion against God Himself.
The "rebellion" of angels and their downfall certainly had a place with the fall of Adam and Eve. It is this situation in the Garden of Eden, in which the Archangel and the first people broke God's law, led to the simultaneous fall of people, the Archangel and other angels who are both witnesses and participants of this tragic history. The sequence of events presented above describes the whole tragedy that took place in the Garden of Eden, that is, in the God's world that is being formed. The mentioned "rebellion" of angels is the result of the situation that arose at that time. From that moment, Adam and Eve lost their relationship with God, Archangel Lucifer became Satan who ruled over people, and his angels were subjected to fallen demons. This was the proper beginning of hell in the spiritual world and in the physical world.
And thus: we are living in hell!
The continuation of these considerations can be found in the following chapters:
"Center of evil - Satan",
"The world without evil and the present world",
"End of the world",
"God and the present world",
"God does not know evil".