United States Catholic Catechism for Adults

Chapter 5. I Believe in God • 57

answer includes the drama of sin, the love of God who sent his only Son to be our Redeemer and Savior, and the call of God to sinful humanity to repent and to love him in return. We may ask why God did not create a world so perfect that no evil could exist in it. God freely willed to create a world that is not immedi ately at its state of ultimate perfection, but one that must journey toward that perfection through time. “In God’s plan this process of becoming involves the appearance of certain beings and the disappearance of oth ers, the existence of the more perfect alongside the less perfect, both con structive and destructive forces of nature” (CCC, no. 310). Physical evil can thus exist alongside physical good because creation has not reached its ultimate perfection. On this journey, created realities remain limited and thus subject to decay and death. As intelligent and free creatures, both angels and human beings must make their way to their ultimate destinies by using their intellect and will to make free choices. They can and must choose between loving God— who has shown his love for them in creation and Revelation—and lov ing something else. Thus moral evil—the evil of sin—can also exist in this state of journeying (cf. CCC, nos. 309-313). God permits such moral evil in part out of respect for the gift of freedom with which he endowed created beings. But his response to moral evil is an even greater act of love through the sending of his Son who offers his life to bring us back to God. “Christ has ransomed us with his blood, and paid for us the price of Adam’s sin to our eternal Father. . . . O happy fault, O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!” (Easter Proclamation [ Exsultet ] at the Easter Vigil). St. Catherine of Siena said, to “those who are scandalized and rebel against what happens to them”: “Everything comes from love, all is ordained for the salvation of man, God does nothing without this goal in mind” ( Dialogue on Providence , chap. IV, 138). ISSUES OF FAITH AND SCIENCE Catholic philosophy and theology have traditionally held that the human intellect comes to know the truth through scientific discovery and philo-