Confessor. Can. But this would be a denial of free will. But you and I have been talking about freedom as an indubitable fact, and we only want to comprehend the meaning of this concept. A causal series can be carried on indefinitely only to explain the mechanical causes of conditioned phenomena, and not to explain freedom. If you talk about an infinite series of causes and effects, you will simply refuse to solve the question of freedom at all. This is especially clear when it comes not to man as the first cause of this or that action, but to God as the first cause of all that exists.

Unknown. Explain this in more detail.

Confessor. For the believing mind, God is the first cause of all that exists, the beginning of all existence. Himself having no beginning and therefore eternally abiding. It is impossible to comprehend this, just as it is impossible to comprehend the eternal existence of anything. To deny God as the first cause and to say that the world has existed eternally is to say the doubly incomprehensible. In the first place, it is incomprehensible, just like all the eternal and therefore eternal existence of God; And secondly, it is incomprehensible in the sense of the absence of a first cause in a world where everything operates according to the law of causality, and where it is never possible to arrive at the first cause of the entire causal series of phenomena. Faith in God solves this question differently. It pushes the state of the eternal First Cause into the pre-material realm, into the realm where there are no transitory, causally conditioned phenomena. This is what has always been there, before the creation of the world. And the material world thinks in a way that is understandable to the human mind, as having a beginning and created in time. And therefore the material world lives according to the law of causality, not freedom: it also has its own first cause, the Power of God, which created it.

Unknown. Does what you say reveal the positive content of the concept of freedom? As long as you are constantly showing me why it is possible and even necessary to recognize this incomprehensible concept, and not revealing its content.

Confessor. Yes. It is absolutely necessary for me to point this out beforehand, because otherwise your mind will refuse to perceive what follows and is already comprehensible.

Unknown. Perhaps you are right.

Confessor. Let us now turn to the very content of the concept of freedom. We are created in the image and likeness of God, and "freedom of will" is the likeness of the Divine principle in us. We point out the different properties of the Godhead, but this does not mean that we think of God as something "complex" composed of various elements, just as materialism thinks of matter. God is absolutely simple, indecomposable and indivisible. Thus His attributes are nothing but a perfect human description of this one and indivisible Essence. Such is the human soul, created in His likeness. We say: thought, will, feeling, but these definitions do not correspond in the complexity of the elements of the soul. The soul, as the likeness of God, is not complex, it is an indivisible and simple unit. Freedom of will in this unit is not one of its constituent elements, but one of its properties.

Unknown. It turns out that this is some kind of indivisible spiritual atom.

Confessor. Perhaps yes. But it is better not to use this term. Thus, the beginning of free will is a property of the soul, which consists in the incomprehensible possibility of performing certain actions without causally determined dependence. This property, given to the soul by God, makes man God-like, distinguishes him from all living creatures and in the moral sense opens for him the path to God-perfection, and gives the proper meaning to the concept of good and evil. Absolute good is what the will of God does. For man to do good means to choose and do with his own free will that which will coincide with the will of God. Such free volition will unite man with the Divine principle, give him eternal life as a partaker of the Divinity, and will make the task of God's perfection not abstract, but absolutely real. Now, at last, we come to your question -- what is evil and who created it? Evil is not an independent entity, so it cannot be said that God created it. It was created in man by the same principle that creates every human action, free will. What is it? This is such a free will that opposes the Divine will. Such opposition, the lack of unity of the human will with the Divine will, as it were, tears man away from the Divine principle and entails terrible consequences that create a variety of evils. I will nevertheless give you here a whole series of judgments on the evil of the Holy Fathers and Teachers of the Church.

"Evil is not any essence that has real existence, like other beings created by God, but is only the deviation of beings from their natural state, in which the Creator has placed them, into the opposite state. Therefore, God is not the author of evil, but it comes from the beings themselves, who deviate from their natural state and destiny" (Dionysius the Areopagite).

"We are not created for death, but we die through ourselves, we have been destroyed by our own will" (Tatian).

"Adam prepared his own death through separation from God. Thus, it was not God who created death, but we ourselves brought it upon ourselves by evil permission" (Basil the Great).

Now, having a definite answer to the question of what evil is and where it came from, let us try to answer another of your questions -- about suffering. What was the fall of man? In violation of God's commandment. This commandment was the expression of the Divine will with which the free will of man could be in accord, and then all life would be connected with the Divine principle. Or it could be in contradiction to this will, and then the connection with the Divine principle was broken and life outside of God began. Man fell, that is, he chose the second path.

Unknown. Wait, what kind of freedom is it if a person had to keep the commandment of God?