Week 5    Day 1

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The Origin of Evil, Part One

CL 444. After I had completed the meditations on conjugial love and had begun the meditations on scortatory [or licentious] love, two angels suddenly stood by me and said, “We perceived and understood what you meditated on before, but the things on which you are now meditating pass by us and we do not perceive them. Leave these alone, for they are of no account.”

But I answered, “This love on which I am now meditating is not of no account, for it exists.”

And they said, “How can there be a love that is not from creation? Is not conjugial love from creation? Is not this love between two who can become one? How can there be a love which divides and separates? Can any young man love any other virgin than the one who loves in return. Must not the love of the one recognize and acknowledge the love of the other, and conjoin themselves of themselves when they meet? Who can love non- love? Is not conjugial love alone mutual and reciprocal? If it is not reciprocal, does it not spring back and become nothing?”

[2] On hearing this I asked the two angels from what society in heaven they came. They said, “We are from the heaven of innocence. We came as infants into this heavenly world and were raised under the auspices of the Lord. And when I became a young man, and my wife who is with me here became a marriageable girl, we were betrothed and pledged, and joined at the first opportunity. And because we have not known of any other love than truly nuptial and conjugial love, when the ideas of your thought about a strange love entirely opposite to our love were communicated to us we did not comprehend it at all. We have therefore come down to ask you the reason why you are meditating upon things that cannot be perceived. Tell us then how there can be a love which is not only not from creation but is actually against creation. We regard opposites to creation as objects that have no reality.”

[3] As he said this, I was gladdened in heart that it was granted me to speak with angels of such innocence that they did not know in the least what scortation is. Therefore I opened my mouth and taught them, saying:

“Do you not know that there is good and evil? And that good and not evil is from creation? And yet evil viewed in itself is not nothing, although it is nothing of good. Good and not evil is from creation, and yet evil viewed in itself is not nothing, although it is nothing of good. Good is from creation, and also good in the greatest degree and in the least degree. And when this least becomes none, on the other side evil springs up. There is therefore no relation or progression of good to evil, but a relation and progression of good to greater and less good, and of evil to greater and to less evil; for in every and in all things they are opposites.

“And because good and evil are opposites, there is an intermediate, and in that is equilibrium, in which evil acts against good; but because it does not prevail it abides in the endeavor. Every man is brought up in this equilibrium, which, as it is between good and evil, or what is the same between heaven and hell, is a spiritual equilibrium, which produces freedom with those who are in it. From this equilibrium the Lord draws all to Himself, and the man who from freedom follows, is led out from evil into good and thus into heaven.

“So it is with love, especially with conjugial love and with scortatory love. The latter love is evil and the former is good. Every man who hears the Lord’s voice and from freedom follows Him is introduced by the Lord into conjugial love, and into all its delights and satisfactions. But he who does not hear and does not follow introduces himself into scortatory love, and at first into its delights, but afterwards into what is undelightful and finally into its miseries.”

[4] When I had said this the two angels asked, “How could evil come into existence when from creation nothing but good had existed? That anything may come into existence, it must have its origin. Good could not be the origin of evil, because evil is nothing of good for it is deprivative and destructive of good. And yet as it exists and is felt, it is not nothing but is something. Say, then, where this something after nothing comes from.”

To this I replied, “This arcanum cannot be unfolded unless it be known that no one is good but God only, and that there is not anything good which in itself is good except from God. He therefore who looks to God, and wills to be led by God, is in good. But he who turns himself away from God and wills to be led by himself is not in good, for the good that he does is either for himself or for the sake of the world. Thus, it is meritorious, or simulated, or hypocritical. From this it is plain that man himself is the origin of evil. Not that this origin was inherent in man from creation, but that by turning away from God, he imposed it on himself. That origin of evil was not in Adam and his wife, but when the serpent said:

In the day that you eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you shall be as God (Gen. 3:5),

and because they then turned away from God and turned to themselves as to a god, they made in themselves the origin of evil. ‘To eat of that tree’ signified to believe that he knows good and evil and has wisdom of himself, and not from God.”

(This discussion is concluded on Day Two.)

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