How allowing evil could lead to greater good?

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How allowing evil could lead to a greater good when it is certain that there will be many individuals who will go to Hell?
 
Such a good question…to which, I think there can be no adequate answer. I have my 🍿 and 🥤 and I’m ready to see this one play out. Let us see what the Augustinian-Thomistic Hell-apologists have to say…
 
Hell is a consequence of free will and manifests the justice of God: only evil souls choose to go there, fulfilling their own aeviternal selfish will. Free will also allows for heaven, and purgatory, which demonstrates the infinite mercy of God.
 
I think the question isn’t so much about “Can good come out of evil?” (of course it can) but rather the fact that an eternal hell means that evil will forever exist alongside good. The permanence of said evil (where there was none prior to Creation) would at first glance seem to indicate that the good has permanently lost ground, and is therefore lesser not greater.
 
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This is a great mystery. God’s ways are not our ways. We ought to have faith and trust in God.
 
That is why God is God, if He was easy to understand He would not be God.

The best example of how evil can lead to greater good, is Christ crucifixion. It is easily the worst injustice ever made in all of human history and He used it to bring forth the greatest good possible: our Redemption.

God does work in mysterious ways.

People who end up in Hell, that is because they wanted to, remember the doors of Hell always close from the inside.
 
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When a person is rude to you and you respond calmly…you can grow stronger spiritually, by the grace of God.

When illness and pain that cannot be helped much and you endure what you cannot change by accepting the suffering in union with Christ…one can grow in endurance for the love of Our Lord.
 
STT said:
How allowing evil could lead to a greater good when it is certain that there will be many individuals who will go to Hell?
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Here’s the counter-example to your implied assertion:

Deicide is evil. However, it led to the greater good of our potential salvation.
 
It could also lead to an even greater evil; such as a large soviet empire from Moscow to Paris. And by the numbers the Soviet Union killed far more people than the brutal regime of the Nazis
 
Easy to understand on what He demands from us in regard to moral / ethics / the 10 commandments. However it is very hard to understand the Mind of God see Romans 11:33

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways!”

See also Isaiah 55:8-9
“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,” declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.

Could an adult explain to small children all the complexities of the modern world ? Of course not, well between us and God the difference is much greater than that.
 
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Or Himmler or Goering would have taken over. Or some other evil man we never heard of because Hitler wasn’t killed.
 
Untried is unproven…

We are on earth for neither…

Nor was Christ…

geo
 
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I am not a big fan of this interpretation of God’s will.

So God’s will is seen in two different operations, so to speak.
Permissive.
Active.

Stuff happens, and God allows it to happen. For instance, I decide to steal a 6 pack of Wiehstephaner cause it’s so delicious. God “allows” me to do this evil.
That’s permissive will. This is not God actively willing me to steal.
Even though God allows me to choose evil, God redeems that action for God’s kingdom. (evil redeemed by the cross…)

I think many times people believe God actively wills evil on humanity because it’s mysteriously “good for us”. That’s not it, and I think that is where your confusion lies.
 
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It never can. Scripture says this in Romans and the Catechism confirms in 1756
 
We are children toddling our way through mistakes and God permits us to encounter evils that we should learn from them…
We do live in the rulership of Good AND evil, for that is the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and evil… And Adam was not prepared to eat of it when he did, and he did eat, and he died that day…
So we have free will in this life to choose either and both and perhaps neither… And we prove the Faith in our own flesh in trials and tribulations…

Christ’s words were: “For I have overcome the world…”

Are we not to follow Christ?

Are we not to overcome the world?

geo
 
Allowing evil gives us the opportunity to experience it first-hand-to know both good and evil-and so to choose between the two. Evil is anything outside of God’s will. In this world, where man’s will reigns and God is absent in any direct manner over ourselves including our morality, we experience daily the negative effects of this situation. By hearing of God’s nature and will we can be drawn to the ultimate Good that transcends all the rest. In this choosing we are perfected as we grow in justice, as we come to increasingly own it.
 
yammerGee said:
I think the question isn’t so much about “Can good come out of evil?” (of course it can) but rather the fact that an eternal hell means that evil will forever exist alongside good. The permanence of said evil (where there was none prior to Creation) would at first glance seem to indicate that the good has permanently lost ground, and is therefore lesser not greater.
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This and moreover evil does not bring greater good for those who go to Hell because of an evil act.
 
I don’t think if there is a mystery in here. One does evil and then goes to Hell so no good comes out of evil.
 
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