489. VII. But for free will in spiritual matters God would be responsible for evil, and thus there could be no imputation of charity and faith. ¹

It follows from the belief held at the present time, a belief which was first hatched by the members of the Council in the city of Nicaea, that God is the cause of evil. That was where the heresy was invented and devised which still persists, that there were three Divine Persons from eternity, and each of them was God in Himself. Once this theory was hatched, its followers had no alternative but to approach each Person singly as God. They put together a belief in the imputation of the Lord God the Saviour's merit or righteousness, and to prevent anyone intruding on the merit with the Lord , took away from man all free will in spiritual matters, and attributed to him utter impotence as far as faith is concerned. And because they deduced everything spiritual in the church solely from that faith, they claimed like impotence in regard to everything the church teaches about salvation. This was the source from which sprang a succession of dreadful heresies, based upon that faith and belief in man's impotence in spiritual matters, as well as that most harmful doctrine of predestination discussed in the preceding section. All these beliefs imply that God is the cause of evil, or that God created both good and evil.

But, my friend, do not place your trust in any Council, but in the Word of the Lord, which is superior to Councils. Is there anything the Roman Catholic councils have not hatched, anything the Council of Dort did not hatch, where that dreadful viper, predestination, was brought to light?

[2] It might be thought that giving man free will in spiritual matters was a mediate cause of evil, and consequently, that if he had not been given such free will, man could not have sinned. But, my friend, pause here for a moment and consider whether any man, if he was to be a man, could have been created without free will in spiritual matters; if that were taken from him, he would cease to be a man and be merely a statue. What is free will but the ability to will and do, to think and speak to all appearance as if from oneself? Since man was given this ability so that he could live as a man, two trees were placed in the Garden of Eden, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This means that he could use the freedom given him to eat the fruit of the tree of life or the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

Footnotes:

The sun in the Bible represents the Lord, with its heat representing His love and its light representing His wisdom. “Daytime,” then, represents a state in which we are turned toward the Lord, receiving His love and being enlightened by His truth. And “nighttime,” obviously, represents states in which we are turned away from the Lord, left cold and blind to the truth. The most common word used for it in the New Christian theology is “obscurity.” The darkness is not absolute, of course. The light of the moon represents the understanding we can have based on facts and our own intelligence. But while the moon reflects some of the sun's light, it offers almost no heat, so this kind of understanding is a cold one, without the warmth of love. And at its darkest and coldest, night represents a state of judgment. This happens when a person -- or a church -- becomes so mired in evil and falsity that there is no light or heat. The Lord can then step in, separate the good from the evil, consign the evil to hell and begin rebuilding based on the remnant that is still good. Drastic as that sounds, it is something that we all go through repeatedly in various aspects of our loves, so that we can be rid of what is evil and let the Lord rebuild us as angels.