The great enigma
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To do God's will or not, by acting for good or for evil - these are our alternative. All intelligent creatures must freely choose their fate : eternal life or eternal death.
Why did the God of love, all-knowing and all-powerful, knowingly create a world in which some of those called to God would in fact follow the path of evil and thus be doomed to eternal death?
The first part of the answer seems clear : God could do no more, because he had given everything - namely himself, on the Cross - so that the greatest possible number would be chosen. But why is it that not all who are called are chosen? Clearly, because some of them refuse to do God's will and because God cannot prevent them from choosing evil.
To fathom the mystery of this apparent limitation on the power of the All-powerful, we must go back to the origin of the universe and to the primordial alternative.
As God is infinitely good, he undoubtedly created the best of all possible worlds; and as God is perfect, the best of all worlds is that which best reflects his perfection.
In most respects, of course, the world we live in today is far from this state of perfection which, according to the Scriptures, will be attained only at the end of time, in the heavenly Jerusalem described at the end of the Book of Revelation.
In fact, the newly-created world was already "very good" (Genesis 1 :31). It was subsequently defiled by the combined sins of Lucifer and Adam, but God had an alternative plan.
God had foreseen the original sin, as he had foreseen the rebellion of Lucifer. Throughout eternity, God knows the destiny of all his creation in the centuries of centuries. The Church, in the Exsultet on Holy Saturday, sings of the "felix culpa" (fortunate sin) : without Adam's sin, the destiny of humanity would have been limited to a happy natural life in the Earthly Paradise; whereas after the Fall, humanity, being redeemed through Christ's sacrifice, is destined for a blessed supernatural life, called eternal life, which will - and already does - participate in the very life of God.
What was Lucifer's project, and why did he need Adam's help
to bring it about?
Lucifer's target was the Incarnation. Adam's refusal to perform
God's will effectively prevented the Incarnation from occurring,
because Adam had "lost holiness," according to a
canon of the Council of Trent. Here, holiness is sanctifying
grace, and by transmitting his sin to his descendants, the
first man deprived them of this grace as well.
For Adam, the original sin consisted in depriving himself of sanctifying grace, and hence of its vehicle, the Holy Spirit. The Person of God's love, rejected by the first man and his descendants, could no longer bring about the Incarnation in creatures that no longer wanted it.
Lucifer's plan was thwarted by the Immaculate Conception, which was free of original sin and thus endowed by the Holy Spirit with sanctifying grace. Through its Fiat, the Immaculate Conception brought about the Incarnation. Faced with the choice of whether to follow God's will, the Virgin Mary answered "yes" where Lucifer and Adam had said "no".
Why did Lucifer attack the Incarnation?
According to the Spanish Jesuit Suarez and many other theologians, God asked the angels to adore the incarnated Word, which he showed them in the future. Some of them, led by Lucifer, refused, being unwilling to humble their spiritual nature by bowing down before a man, even if he was the Son of God.
Furthermore, Lucifer, the most intelligent of all creatures, knew that the Incarnation was the final purpose of the Creation (we will come back to this point) and that since the universe had been created, the Incarnation would necessarily occur. He thought that the Word, prevented by Adam's sin from being incarnated in human nature, would thus be obliged to unite with the angelic nature.
The consequences of original sin were not limited to the loss of sanctifying grace. At the same time, Adam was deprived of all the advantages of his preternatural state, including immortality, and the earth became "cursed" (Genesis 3 :17-18).
These two events affecting Adam's body and the earth allow us to put forward a hypothesis as to the manner in which the original sin was committed. This is authorized by the Biblical Commission of June 1909, which held that a distinction may be made between the substance of the account in Genesis, which is historical, and certain details which may be interpreted allegorically.
First of all, how could Adam have been immortal? In the current state of our scientific knowledge, the only plausible explanation is that his body was composed of photons, since the photon can die or disintegrate only if it is divided into matter and antimatter. Thus a primordial universe exclusively composed of photons, like that which existed before the Big Bang, is immortal - and so are its constituent elements, including the first human couple - unless something sets off the process of its disintegration.
Being endowed with innate knowledge, Adam knew how to divide the photon, and he dared to do so out of indulgence for his wife, who in turn was tempted by Lucifer. And this triggered the Big Bang.
Although it may seem far-fetched, this hypothesis is logical. There is a similarity between splitting a fine piece of fruit into two parts and splitting a high-energy photon, in both cases the consequence is a catastrophe involving change to the structure of the elements constituting the universe. Adam and Eve, now made of matter and condemned henceforth to the planet Earth, symbolized this tragic story in order to make it accessible to their descendants.
In this process, the choice of alternative that faced Adam was not a trial imposed by a demanding God, but a dangerous situation arising from the structure of the primordial universe in which Adam lived. And God, not wanting the first man to risk his life unknowingly, gave him a very precise warning of the risk represented by the forbidden fruit : "for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die" (Genesis 2 :17).
According to Catholic dogma, God freely decided throughout eternity to create one of the innumerable virtual worlds that he contains within himself, by drawing it from the void.
Without making it a point of dogma - the issue is open - the Church accepts that the Incarnation could have occurred even if the first man had not sinned, but it does not accept any reasons other than those of manifesting and glorifying God. In the context of our hypothesis, we may add another reason : the creation of the world.
For God, creation consists of making a virtual world real. The real is, while the virtual only can be (the Thomists would say that it is latent). Before the creation, only God is real, only God is. He even names himself : "I am" (Exodus 3 :14).
Being omnipresent, God exists in all virtual worlds, but unilaterally, without transmitting reality into them. He could not create if he were one person only, but his tripartite nature allows him to send the Son on a mission to incorporate himself into the chosen virtual world and, through his presence, to give it reality, being, "the life," as Jesus said.
The creation took place in two steps. First, the chosen virtual world received an initial degree of existence, with a view to the coming of its ultimate purpose : the Son, who could not be directly incarnated in a virtual - and hence inexistent - world. Between this period, which covers the entire old Testament, and the following period, comes the Fiat of the Virgin Mary, which brought about the Incarnation. Thus the Son gave the world a plenitude of existence, an eternal life which will find fulfilment in the new heaven and new earth, where humanity will participate in the life of God.
Like the Virgin, all her children, all human beings, are affected by the Incarnation. Many times during their earthly lives, they find themselves confronted with a choice between saying "yes" and saying "no" to the coming of Christ in them, between receiving and not receiving eternal life from him.
Christ and eternal life may be received in various ways, but the principle is always the same : making room for Christ. This principle applies from the smallest action, such as that of a traveller who gives up his or her seat to a disabled person, to the most heroic, that of the martyr who gives his or her life for Christ. Thus we are more or less following the advice of Padre Pio : "Pour yourself out of you, and fill yourself with God."
Long ago, faced with the same alternative, Lucifer and his angels did not wish to leave their place in Heaven and fall to the Earth "without form, and void" of Genesis 1 :2, to structure it by their movements, for the purpose of constituting the body of Christ.
Christ can do nothing for the rebel angels, who have turned to evil for all eternity, but to save humanity he sacrifices himself and offers himself to human beings in the Eucharist, which gives everlasting life even in this fallen world.
Humanity, like the angels, must declare whether it is for or against God : "He that is not with me is against me," said Jesus (Matthew 12 :30, Mark 9 :40, Luke 11 :23). But why are human beings free to do so?
God made humanity in his image : if God is free, then humanity is free. In what way is God free? He is not free ad intra, that is, within his Trinity - for example, the Father necessarily engenders the Son. However, God is free ad extra, free to create or not to create. If the foundation of God's freedom is this choice between creating or not creating - i.e. between incarnating and not incarnating - then this is the foundation of human freedom as well, since humanity was created in God's image.
We should distinguish, however, between active Incarnation, which is the work of all three divine Persons, and passive Incarnation, which involves the Son alone because he alone is incarnated.
Clearly, humanity did not participate in the active Incarnation, which occurred prior to its existence, but human beings can, like the Virgin, participate in passive Incarnation by saying "yes" to the coming of Christ and by moving over to make room for him. In so doing, they participate, as far as their nature allows, in the mission of the incarnated Son.
The alternative "for or against Christ" is part of the process of creation, if there is to be any creation at all. God could not prevent humans and angels from being confronted with this question, and he respects the wish of those who, having knowingly said "no" to the incarnation of love, will perpetually persist in their own negation, however they may suffer.
But divine pity reaches even to hell, where, according to Saint Catherine of Genoa, "A ray of divine love still shines in the sorrow of the damned."