"There are therefore two aspects to God: that in which good is chosen and evil is rejected by an irreversible act, and this is the original positivity, the existence of God to whom the first choice has led; and that in which evil as a discarded alternative remains forever as the backdrop to positivity, as a presence that is forgotten and set aside, as a possibility that has been overcome but remains available. It cannot be said, then, that evil is present as such in the divine essence or nature; nor that instantaneous evil as such already resides in God, and that God, in order to become himself, must identify it and get rid of it. But it must be said that evil is contemporary with divine existence, in the sense that it arises in that timeless act in which original freedom affirms itself only by defeating the alternative possibility of nothingness. In the act in which God originates and therefore is God, that is, in divine existence itself, evil emerges as a reality already established, but as a possibility already discarded."