A fiendish paradox

In my previous post, I wrote that "even the sinner finds God beautiful to the extent he can perceive Him." Even the sinner? Even the demons!

And, as for the demons, what they are is both from the Good, and good. But their evil is from the declension from their own proper goods, and a change—the weakness, as regards their identity and condition, of the angelic perfection befitting them. And they aspire to the Good, in so far as they aspire to be and to live and to think. And in so far as they do not aspire to the Good, they aspire to the non-existent; and this is not aspiration, but a missing of the true aspiration.

This is a fine how-do-you-do. Confirmed for all eternity in their rejection of God, demons nevertheless cannot do anything -- anything, including merely existing -- without thereby glorifying God. Everything they choose, they regard as good, yet all goodness comes from God. The very choice to reject God forever is a celebration of God as Sovereign.

Which means that God is present, in a certain way, in every act of a demon. (God is not present in the evil of the act, you understand, since evil is a lack of existence; evil has no place, so to speak, for God to be present in.) And where God, in Whom nothing is passive, is present, God is at work:

... if no single thing is without participation in the Good, but the lack of the Good is an evil, and no existing thing is deprived absolutely of the Good, the Divine Providence is in all existing things, and no single thing is without Providence.

When Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, the LORD provided them with leather garments. Even in Hell, the LORD provides for His creatures. Even in Hell, God is at work.

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