God Is Good by Choice

It has been proposed that evil has not always existed and won’t exist in the future, because there won’t be evil in the eternal new heavens and earth.

This assumes that these are the only places that will exist. But hell and the lake of fire will also exist.

So, I ask you, is hell full of goodness or evil? Gnashing of teeth...eternal torment...for eternity...etc.

The beings in hell will have chosen to be there, because they will have chosen the darkness and chosen evil.

Yes, God created a perfectly good world with no evil, but that doesn't mean that evil did not exist outside of the world. Does the Bible not say that "sin entered the world, and death through sin" (Rom. 5:12)?

If sin and death are evil, then that would also connote the entrance of evil into the world.

Satan had the opportunity to become evil, even though he was in heaven with God. This substantiates three very relevant and important points.

1. Evil existed outside of the world.
2. God allows all of His creation to be free, or else they would not have free will, which leads into the next point:
3. God allows His creation to stay or go, even in heaven and all of His creation will have that choice for all of eternity.

Finally:

It’s been proposed that God “created a creation that allowed for evil to come into existence as a result of His creations rebellion to His commands.”

If this were true, then it would mean that God created evil, by choice, because the evil would be a byproduct of His creation, rather than a polarity of Himself. This is not the case.

More to the point, the juxtaposition between good and evil is a continuum. If there is no evil, by what metric is good even defined?

Now, it's possible for a being to be created good, but it's impossible for God to not understand the opposite of Himself (what makes Him good), because He is omniscient.

The very fact that He is aware of it means it exists, even if there were no observable amount of evil in any corner of the universe.

Good and evil are not tangible. They are concepts. So, even if they only exist in the infinite understanding of God, they still exist...regardless of whether there is any evidence of evil in the universe or not.

The knowledge of good and evil has always existed, because God has always existed. One defines the other, by it's juxtaposition. They are a polarity.

This is actually more of a beautiful thing, because without the propensity for evil, God would not have a choice to be good. Then He would not be God, because He would not be omnipotent. As it is, God is good by choice, which means He understands the choice, which means He understands evil...and in order for Him to understand it, it has to exist.

Without the presence of good's opposite, there is no context and the term good has no intrinsic definition.

In closing, I don't think there are any scriptures that exclusively and definitively show that good exists without evil. After writing this, I'm even more certain of that, because it would violate so many things we already know to be true of God.

You might say the same about a definitive statement showing that evil has always existed, but I would argue two points:

1. Good and evil in scripture are NORMATIVELY discussed in tandem. So, the very thread of scripture itself shows these as existing together.
2. Again, simple logic puts these as a pair, where one can't exist without at least the propensity for the other.

In light of these two aspects, if there is no definitive scriptural precedent to show otherwise, then hermeneutically speaking the exegetical and systematic approach would be to side with the normative aspects shown clearly in scripture.

Good and evil; light and dark. These are compared in scripture for a reason, because without each other, they have no individual meaning.

-JCF