God created an enormous number of souls, whose purpose was to contemplate and adore him forever. True adoration, of course, requires freedom of the will: beings need to choose to adore God if their worship is a true honor. That means all souls must also have had the capacity to choose not to worship God—that is, to do evil. None of these created souls were inherently evil, however, and none—not even the soul that was to become the devil—“was incapable of good” (On First Principles 1.8.1–3).
