490. It is plain from the first chapter of Genesis that everything created by God was good. It says there that 'God saw that it was good' (verses 10, 12, 18, 21, 25), and at the end 'God saw everything that He made, and behold, it was very good' (verse 31). It is also plain from man's primeval state in paradise. Evil, however, arose from man, as is plain from Adam's second ¹ state, that is, after the fall, by his being expelled from paradise. It is clear from these facts that if free will in spiritual matters had not been given to man, God Himself, and not man, would have been the cause of evil; in this case God would have created both good and evil, and it is wicked even to think that God created evil too. The reason why God did not create evil, since He bestowed on man free will in spiritual matters, and never puts any evil into his mind, is that He is good itself, and in good God is omnipresent, continually urging and demanding to be received. Even if He is not received, still He does not go away. For if He did, man would instantly die, or rather dissolve into non-existence, since man gets his life, and the continued existence of all he consists of, from God.

[2] Evil was not created by God but introduced by man, because man turns the good which continually flows in from God into evil, by turning away from God and turning towards himself. When this happens, the pleasure given by good remains, but it now becomes the pleasure given by evil; for without an apparently similar pleasure being left man would cease to live, since it is pleasure which makes up the vital principle of his love. These two pleasures are still diametrically opposed, though a person is unaware of this so long as he lives in the world. After death, however, he will know this and indeed feel it plainly, for then the pleasure given by the love of good is turned into heavenly blessedness, but the pleasure given by the love of evil into the torments of hell. These arguments prove that everyone is predestined to heaven, and no one to hell; but it is the person who commits himself to hell by misusing his free will in spiritual matters. As a result he embraces the ideas wafted from hell, since, as was said above, everyone is held mid-way between heaven and hell, so that he can be in equilibrium between good and evil, and consequently have free will in spiritual matters.

Footnotes:

3686. 'And Esau saw that the daughters of Canaan were evil in the eyes of Isaac his father' means the Lord's foresight and provision that the affections for that truth - the affections to which natural good had been joined until then - would not be suitable for such conjunction. This is clear from the meaning of 'seeing' here as foresight and provision, dealt with in 2837, 2839; from the representation of 'Esau' as the Lord as regards the Divine Good of the Natural, dealt with already; from the meaning of 'the daughters of Canaan', in this case the daughters of Heth, as affections for truth from a non-genuine source, dealt with in 3470, 3620-3622; and from the meaning of '[evil] in the eyes of Isaac his father' as not being suitable for such conjunction, that is to say, through the good of the natural, represented by 'Esau', with the good of the rational, represented by 'Isaac'. From this it is evident that all these words mean the Lord's foresight and provision that the affections for that truth, being from a non-genuine source, would not be suitable for conjunction. The truth of all this may be seen from the explanation given at 26:34-35, where the subject is the daughters of Heth whom Esau had taken as wives, and at 27:46, where the subject is the plea to Jacob not to marry one of the daughters of Canaan. The reason why 'the daughters of Canaan' here means affections for truth from a non-genuine source, whereas above 'the daughters of Canaan' meant affections for falsity and evil, 3662, 3683, is that the Hittites in the land of Canaan belonged to the Church as it existed among gentiles. They were not so much under the influence of falsity and evil as other nations there, such as the Canaanites, Amorites, and Perizzites. This also was why the Hittites represented the Lord's spiritual Church among the gentiles, 2913, 2986.

[2] The Most Ancient Church which was celestial and existed before the Flood was situated in the land of Canaan, see 567. The Ancient Church which existed after the Flood was also situated there, as well as in many other countries, 1238, 2385. This was how it came about that all the gentile nations there, and also all the territories there, and all the rivers there, served as representatives. For the most ancient people, who were celestial, perceived through all the objects they beheld the kind of things that belong to the Lord's kingdom, 920, 1409, 2896, 2897, 2995, and so beheld the same through the territories and the rivers there.

[3] After their times those representatives survived in the Ancient Church, including the representatives related to the places there. Furthermore the Word that existed in the Ancient Church, dealt with in 2897-2899, contained place-names which were for the same reason representative; and the Word existing after their times, which is called Moses and the Prophets, also contains them. This was why Abraham was commanded to go there, and the promise was made to him that his descendants would possess that land. That promise was not made because they were any better than all the other nations, for they were the worst of them all, 1167, 3373. But it was made so that through them the representative Church might be established, in which no attention was paid to representative persons and places themselves but to the actual things which these represented, 3670, and thus also so that the names existing in the Most Ancient and the Ancient Churches might be preserved.