Thus, the culprit in the world of evil, according to biblical teaching, is undoubtedly an intelligent creature of God – the highest spirit in heaven and the first pair of people on earth. Consequently, the Biblical teaching decisively affirms the very proposition which has always led philosophical thought to a whole series of profound perplexities and has always made it impossible to construct a strictly philosophical conception of the world.

Meanwhile, biblical teaching is not a philosophical doctrine; it does not at all have in mind the questions we have posed, as natural perplexities of human thought, and consequently it does not at all give a direct answer to these questions in the sense of scientific agreement of its assertions with the fundamental concept of God. Consequently, philosophical thought must necessarily seek this agreement by means of independent philosophical speculation.

On the basis of the concept of God as omniscient and omnipotent, we must necessarily think that God foresaw the appearance of evil and that He could always have prevented its appearance, if only He did not want to allow it. Hence, on the basis of this concept of God, we can very easily arrive at a certain reconciliation of God with evil. We may think that the actual existence of evil derives from the idea of its existence in the divine plan of creation, i.e., we may think that God Himself wanted the existence of evil, only, of course, He did not want it as a permanent existence, but only as a temporary moment in the world's existence, precisely such a moment which is needed only as a contributing condition for the positive development of good, and which therefore must necessarily disappear from being. as soon as the good becomes the absolute principle of world existence[283]. However, this possible explanation of evil is decisively refuted by its real significance in human life, and therefore it cannot be accepted as the true formula of being. Evil could contribute to good only in the only case if the sphere of its existence were limited only to the sphere of human ideas, i.e. if people only fought it as a temptation and never realized it in reality. Then it would not in the least destroy the divine world order, and then it would really be possible to say of it that its idea was part of the divine plan of the universe, because all the particular ideas about it in the human spirit would then really only contribute to the embodiment of God's thought about the world in the exact realization of the ultimate goal of world existence. But in fact, man experiences evil: he either suffers from evil or perishes in evil, and, in any case, he not only fights evil, but also creates the very evil against which he is obliged to fight. Under such circumstances, evil obviously does not contribute to the development of good, but only destroys it, and therefore it is God who cannot will its existence, since in this case the will of evil would in essence be the unwill of what God really wanted to create. But why, then, did He allow him to appear in the world?

The solution of this question logically and quite naturally leads to the construction of the following consideration: if God really cannot will the existence of evil, and yet evil exists in the world, then it means that God did not foresee its appearance, because otherwise He would undoubtedly have prevented the catastrophe of the first fall, and then no evil would have existed and could not exist. This consideration can also be partly supported by the fact that evil, according to Biblical teaching, has its basis in the personal freedom of rational creatures, so that it does not follow from a chain of necessary causes, but each time enters the world process as an event which, by the nature of created being, is undoubtedly only possible. But if the omniscient God could not positively foresee what would actually come out of His creations, then He would have no reason to create a world being, because under this condition He would clearly run the risk of not fulfilling His intentions and could mistakenly be the cause of such a being that it would be better not to create at all. Consequently, by limiting divine omniscience, in essence, only the eternal absurdity of the world's existence is affirmed, but in order to explain its real absurdity, it is not at all necessary that the world necessarily appeared in existence through divine creation. In affirming the reality of this creation, we can affirm only the eternal rationality of the world's being, and in affirming this rationality, we absolutely cannot admit that the real foundation of divine creation is only God's divinatory assumption whether the world will not actually turn out to be what God wished it to be. If the world is really God's creation, then God undoubtedly contemplates it as His finished work, and therefore in the process of world existence there can be absolutely nothing that is not in God's contemplation of the world.

We do not have divine knowledge and cannot embrace the world's existence in God's contemplation of its entire reality. We see only that there is evil in the world and that its existence contradicts our concept of God; And from this we inevitably have serious perplexities, because we really cannot think of the world in any other way than in contradictory formulas. But for all the limitations of our understanding, we can nevertheless understand that the creative idea of the world, according to which it is realized in being, and the objective contemplation of the whole world history in God's mind do not in the least negate each other, so that the divine mind, which thinks the idea of the world and contemplates its reality, simultaneously contemplates in it not only the appearance and existence of evil, but also the actual realization of the pre-eternal idea of being.

3.

Analysis of the biblical teaching on the essence of evil and its inevitable consequences.

Whoever accepts the truth of the theistic world view has in this very truth a positive reason to believe that in the future of our world the eternal idea of world existence will undoubtedly be realized. But in the presence of those contradictions of thought which inevitably arise from the fact of the existence of evil, this belief in an unknown future can logically take place only if the path by which God's thought about the world could actually be realized is precisely determined. And in order to accurately determine this path, it is necessary to first find out why exactly evil exists in the world. For the circumstances of its appearance, so far as we have explained them, do not in the least determine that it should appear and necessarily continue to exist. On the contrary, if evil has really entered the world only through the free activity of rational beings, it seems quite natural to think that it can exist only so long as rational beings are pleased to maintain it; and as soon as they wish to reject it, it will completely disappear from the world, and the world will again be as it was before the appearance of evil in it. Yet the Biblical teaching directly and decisively rejects this optimistic dream, and moreover rejects it not only in relation to the past and the present, but also in relation to the entire future process of world life, i.e. it rejects it unconditionally. According to the Apostle, evil cannot disappear from the world by the mere desire of people to destroy it, because the inclination towards it, at least in man, has the meaning of a physical law of life (Romans 7:21-23). But what, in fact, determines this necessary existence of evil – the apostolic teaching does not give us a clear and detailed answer to this question.

Yet this question is essential, and it is certainly not difficult to understand why it is particularly important. If it is true that evil, once introduced into the world by the free will of rational beings, cannot really disappear from the world, then it is self-evident that the realization of the ultimate goal of the world

Existence can be attained only by means of some kind of miracle, i.e., by such an exceptional path that lies outside the natural course of world life and therefore cannot be defined at all within the natural limits of human thought.

Consequently, depending on how and by what means the existence of evil is explained, it is possible to recognize or deny not only the biblical view of evil, but the entire essence of the biblical doctrine in general in its genuine, supernatural content; because the whole essence of the biblical teaching is undoubtedly expressed by the teaching about God's salvation of the world from evil, and this teaching can be made understandable and probable only in the knowledge of the impossibility of the natural destruction of evil. But is it true that the world cannot free itself from evil, and why cannot it free itself from it? In any case, this question is not solved in the same way.

According to a well-known theological opinion, man has committed three great evils: a) he infinitely offended the infinitely great God, b) he infected his entire being with sin, and c) he caused the disastrous consequences of sin both in his own nature and in his external nature. In these great evils the fatal cause for the necessary series of all subsequent evils is usually indicated.

But if we follow the Biblical account exactly, it will be clear to us that Eve did not at all draw the conclusion to which the serpent undoubtedly led her, because she had no hostile feeling towards God when she decided to transgress His commandment. After all, in fact, she discussed only the false report of the serpent to her destruction and did not discuss God's commandment at all. She saw that the forbidden tree was no different from the other trees of paradise, and from this point of view she was quite right in believing that the use of the fruit of the forbidden tree could not threaten her with any terrible consequences, and she seemed to have completely forgotten to take another point of view. At least, the Bible gives us absolutely no reason to think that Eve was discussing the question: why exactly did God give people his commandment and why did He tell Adam that breaking the commandment would lead to his death? If she had asked herself this question, she would undoubtedly have supplemented her consideration, and in that case the indisputable fact of her reverent attitude towards God would certainly have led her to form the following judgment: a forbidden tree in itself, it is true, cannot be deadly; but God still cannot tell lies, and if He said that death would follow from eating forbidden fruits, then it means that it will actually follow; but in this case, therefore, it will follow not from the fact that the tree is deadly, but from the fact that the use of the fruit of this tree is forbidden by God, i.e. death will follow not from the very eating of the forbidden fruit, but only from the transgression of God's commandment. In this judgment, Eve would obviously have taken a different point of view: she would have discussed the serpent's report not from the point of view of her own considerations about the real properties of the forbidden tree in itself, but only from the point of view given by him regarding the tree, God's commandment, and this correct point of view would logically have led her finally to a correct assessment of the serpent's false message. Eve would have easily understood then that if the forbidden tree is no different from other trees and is exceptional only by virtue of God's commandment given about it, then in itself, obviously, it can equally cause neither death nor give knowledge, and just as death threatens the transgression of the commandment, so knowledge can be attained by people only by unswervingly preserving the commandment given to them. Consequently, it would clearly see that the serpent was mistaken, and a clear understanding of this mistake would constitute for it a logically perfect and psychologically necessary motive to decisively reject the serpent's knowingly false report and to preserve God's commandment.