PAPER 2
- THE NATURE OF GOD
IN as much as
man's highest possible concept of God is
embraced within the human idea and ideal of a
primal and infinite personality, it is
permissible, and may prove helpful, to study
certain characteristics of the divine nature
which constitute the character of Deity. The
nature of God can best be understood by the
revelation of the Father which Michael of Nebadon unfolded in his manifold teachings and
in his superb mortal life in the flesh. The
divine nature can also be better understood by
man if he regards himself as a child of God and
looks up to the Paradise Creator as a true
spiritual Father.
The
nature of God can be studied in a revelation of
supreme ideas, the divine character can be
envisaged as a portrayal of supernal ideals, but
the most enlightening and spiritually edifying
of all revelations of the divine nature is to be
found in the comprehension of the religious life
of Jesus of Nazareth, both before and after his
attainment of full consciousness of divinity. If
the incarnated life of Michael is taken as the
background of the revelation of God to man, we
may attempt to put in human word symbols certain
ideas and ideals concerning the divine nature
which may possibly contribute to a further
illumination and unification of the human
concept of the nature and the character of the
personality of the Universal Father.
In all
our efforts to enlarge and spiritualize the
human concept of God, we are tremendously
handicapped by the limited capacity of the
mortal mind. We are also seriously handicapped
in the execution of our assignment by the
limitations of language and by the poverty of
material which can be utilized for purposes of
illustration or comparison in our efforts to
portray divine values and to present spiritual
meanings to the finite, mortal mind of man. All
our efforts to enlarge the human concept of God
would be well-nigh futile except for the fact
that the mortal mind is indwelt by the bestowed
Adjuster of the Universal Father and is pervaded
by the Truth Spirit of the Creator Son.
Depending, therefore, on the presence of these
divine spirits within the heart of man for
assistance in the enlargement of the concept of
God, I cheerfully undertake the execution of my
mandate to attempt the further portrayal of the
nature of God to the mind of man.
1.
THE INFINITY OF GOD
"Touching the
Infinite, we cannot find him out. The divine
footsteps are not known." "His understanding is
infinite and his greatness is unsearchable." The
blinding light of the Father's presence is such
that to his lowly creatures he apparently
"dwells in the thick darkness." Not only are his
thoughts and plans unsearchable, but "he does
great and marvelous things without number." "God
is
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great;
we comprehend him not, neither can the number of
his years be searched out." "Will God indeed
dwell on the earth? Behold, the heaven
(universe) and the heaven of heavens (universe
of universes) cannot contain him." "How
unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past
finding out!"
"There is but
one God, the infinite Father, who is also a
faithful Creator." "The divine Creator is also
the Universal Disposer, the source and destiny
of souls. He is the Supreme Soul, the Primal
Mind, and the Unlimited Spirit of all creation."
"The great Controller makes no mistakes. He is
resplendent in majesty and glory." "The Creator
God is wholly devoid of fear and enmity. He is
immortal, eternal, self-existent, divine, and
bountiful." "How pure and beautiful, how deep
and unfathomable is the supernal Ancestor of all
things!" "The Infinite is most excellent in that
he imparts himself to men. He is the beginning
and the end, the Father of every good and
perfect purpose." "With God all things are
possible; the eternal Creator is the cause of
causes."
Notwithstanding the infinity of the stupendous
manifestations of the Father's eternal and
universal personality, he is unqualifiedly
self-conscious of both his infinity and
eternity; likewise he knows fully his perfection
and power. He is the only being in the universe,
aside from his divine co-ordinates, who
experiences a perfect, proper, and complete
appraisal of himself.
The
Father constantly and unfailingly meets the need
of the differential of demand for himself as it
changes from time to time in various sections of
his master universe. The great God knows and
understands himself; he is infinitely
self-conscious of all his primal attributes of
perfection. God is not a cosmic accident;
neither is he a universe experimenter. The
Universe Sovereigns may engage in adventure; the
Constellation Fathers may experiment; the system
heads may practice; but the Universal Father
sees the end from the beginning, and his divine
plan and eternal purpose actually embrace and
comprehend all the experiments and all the
adventures of all his subordinates in every
world, system, and constellation in every
universe of his vast domains.
No
thing is new to God, and no cosmic event ever
comes as a surprise; he inhabits the circle of
eternity. He is without beginning or end of
days. To God there is no past, present, or
future; all time is present at any given moment.
He is the great and only I AM.
The Universal
Father is absolutely and without qualification
infinite in all his attributes; and this fact,
in and of itself, automatically shuts him off
from all direct personal communication with
finite material beings and other lowly created
intelligences.
And
all this necessitates such arrangements for
contact and communication with his manifold
creatures as have been ordained, first, in the
personalities of the Paradise Sons of God, who,
although perfect in divinity, also often partake
of the nature of the very flesh and blood of the
planetary races, becoming one of you and one
with you; thus, as it were, God becomes man, as
occurred in the bestowal of Michael, who was
called interchangeably the Son of God and the
Son of Man. And second, there are the
personalities of the Infinite Spirit, the
various orders of the seraphic hosts and other
celestial intelligences who draw near to the
material beings of lowly origin and in so many
ways minister to them and serve them. And third,
there are the impersonal Mystery Monitors,
Thought Adjusters, the actual gift of the great
God himself sent to indwell such as the humans
of Urantia, sent without announcement and
without explanation. In
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endless profusion they descend from the heights
of glory to grace and indwell the humble minds
of those mortals who possess the capacity for
God-consciousness or the potential therefore.
In
these ways and in many others, in ways unknown
to you and utterly beyond finite comprehension,
does the Paradise Father lovingly and willingly downstep and otherwise modify, dilute, and
attenuate his infinity in order that he may be
able to draw nearer the finite minds of his
creature children. And so, through a series of
personality distributions which are
diminishingly absolute, the infinite Father is
enabled to enjoy close contact with the diverse
intelligences of the many realms of his
far-flung universe.
All
this he has done and now does, and evermore will
continue to do, without in the least detracting
from the fact and reality of his infinity,
eternity, and primacy. And these things are
absolutely true, notwithstanding the difficulty
of their comprehension, the mystery in which
they are enshrouded, or the impossibility of
their being fully understood by creatures such
as dwell on Urantia.
Because the First Father is infinite in his
plans and eternal in his purposes, it is
inherently impossible for any finite being ever
to grasp or comprehend these divine plans and
purposes in their fullness. Mortal man can
glimpse the Father's purposes only now and then,
here and there, as they are revealed in relation
to the outworking of the plan of creature
ascension on its successive levels of universe
progression. Though man cannot encompass the
significance of infinity, the infinite Father
does most certainly fully comprehend and
lovingly embrace all the finity of all his
children in all universes.
Divinity and eternity the Father shares with
large numbers of the higher Paradise beings, but
we question whether infinity and consequent
universal primacy is fully shared with any save
his co-ordinate associates of the Paradise
Trinity. Infinity of personality must, perforce,
embrace all finitude of personality; hence the
truth--literal truth--of the teaching which
declares that "In Him we live and move and have
our being." That fragment of the pure Deity of
the Universal Father which indwells mortal man
is a part of the infinity of the First
Great Source and Center, the Father of Fathers.
2.
THE FATHER'S ETERNAL PERFECTION
Even your
olden prophets understood the eternal,
never-beginning, never-ending, circular nature
of the Universal Father. God is literally and
eternally present in his universe of universes.
He inhabits the present moment with all his
absolute majesty and eternal greatness. "The
Father has life in himself, and this life is
eternal life." Throughout the eternal ages it
has been the Father who "gives to all life."
There is infinite perfection in the divine
integrity. "I am the Lord; I change not." Our
knowledge of the universe of universes discloses
not only that he is the Father of lights, but
also that in his conduct of interplanetary
affairs there "is no variableness neither shadow
of changing." He "declares the end from the
beginning." He says: "My counsel shall stand; I
will do all my pleasures" "according to the
eternal purpose which I purposed in my Son."
Thus are the plans and purposes of the First
Source and Center like himself: eternal,
perfect, and forever changeless.
There is finality of completeness and perfection
of repleteness in the mandates of the Father.
"Whatsoever God does, it shall be forever;
nothing can be
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added
to it nor anything taken from it." The Universal
Father does not repent of his original purposes
of wisdom and perfection. His plans are
steadfast, his counsel immutable, while his acts
are divine and infallible. "A thousand years in
his sight are but as yesterday when it is past
and as a watch in the night." The perfection of
divinity and the magnitude of eternity are
forever beyond the full grasp of the
circumscribed mind of mortal man.
The reactions
of a changeless God, in the execution of his
eternal purpose, may seem to vary in accordance
with the changing attitude and the shifting
minds of his created intelligences; that is,
they may apparently and superficially vary; but
underneath the surface and beneath all outward
manifestations, there is still present the
changeless purpose, the everlasting plan, of the
eternal God.
Out
in the universes, perfection must necessarily be
a relative term, but in the central universe and
especially on Paradise, perfection is undiluted;
in certain phases it is even absolute. Trinity
manifestations vary the exhibition of the divine
perfection but do not attenuate it.
God's primal perfection consists not in an
assumed righteousness but rather in the inherent
perfection of the goodness of his divine nature.
He is final, complete, and perfect. There is no
thing lacking in the beauty and perfection of
his righteous character. And the whole scheme of
living existences on the worlds of space is
centered in the divine purpose of elevating all
will creatures to the high destiny of the
experience of sharing the Father's Paradise
perfection. God is neither self-centered nor
self-contained; he never ceases to bestow
himself upon all self-conscious creatures of the
vast universe of universes.
God
is eternally and infinitely perfect, he cannot
personally know imperfection as his own
experience, but he does share the consciousness
of all the experience of imperfectness of all
the struggling creatures of the evolutionary
universes of all the Paradise Creator Sons. The
personal and liberating touch of the God of
perfection overshadows the hearts and encircuits
the natures of all those mortal creatures who
have ascended to the universe level of moral
discernment. In this manner, as well as through
the contacts of the divine presence, the
Universal Father actually participates in the
experience with immaturity and
imperfection in the evolving career of every
moral being of the entire universe.
Human limitations, potential evil, are not a
part of the divine nature, but mortal experience
with evil and all man's relations thereto
are most certainly a part of God's
ever-expanding self-realization in the children
of time--creatures of moral responsibility who
have been created or evolved by every Creator
Son going out from Paradise.
3.
JUSTICE AND RIGHTEOUSNESS
God is
righteous; therefore is he just. "The Lord is
righteous in all his ways." "`I have not done
without cause all that I have done,' says the
Lord." "The judgments of the Lord are true and
righteous altogether." The justice of the
Universal Father cannot be influenced by the
acts and performances of his creatures, "for
there is no iniquity with the Lord our God, no
respect of persons, no taking of gifts."
How
futile to make puerile appeals to such a God to
modify his changeless decrees so that we can
avoid the just consequences of the operation of
his wise
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natural laws and righteous spiritual mandates!
"Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for
whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap."
True, even in the justice of reaping the harvest
of wrongdoing, this divine justice is always
tempered with mercy. Infinite wisdom is the
eternal arbiter which determines the proportions
of justice and mercy which shall be meted out in
any given circumstance. The greatest punishment
(in reality an inevitable consequence) for
wrongdoing and deliberate rebellion against the
government of God is loss of existence as an
individual subject of that government. The final
result of wholehearted sin is annihilation. In
the last analysis, such sin-identified
individuals have destroyed themselves by
becoming wholly unreal through their embrace of
iniquity. The factual disappearance of such a
creature is, however, always delayed until the
ordained order of justice current in that
universe has been fully complied with.
Cessation of existence is usually decreed at the
dispensational or epochal adjudication of the
realm or realms. On a world such as Urantia it
comes at the end of a planetary dispensation.
Cessation of existence can be decreed at such
times by co-ordinate action of all tribunals of
jurisdiction, extending from the planetary
council up through the courts of the Creator Son
to the judgment tribunals of the Ancients of
Days. The mandate of dissolution originates in
the higher courts of the superuniverse following
an unbroken confirmation of the indictment
originating on the sphere of the wrongdoer's
residence; and then, when sentence of extinction
has been confirmed on high, the execution is by
the direct act of those judges residential on,
and operating from, the headquarters of the
superuniverse.
When
this sentence is finally confirmed, the
sin-identified being instantly becomes as though
he had not been. There is no resurrection from
such a fate; it is everlasting and eternal. The
living energy factors of identity are resolved
by the transformations of time and the
metamorphoses of space into the cosmic
potentials whence they once emerged. As for the
personality of the iniquitous one, it is
deprived of a continuing life vehicle by the
creature's failure to make those choices and
final decisions which would have assured eternal
life. When the continued embrace of sin by the
associated mind culminates in complete
self-identification with iniquity, then upon the
cessation of life, upon cosmic dissolution, such
an isolated personality is absorbed into the
oversoul of creation, becoming a part of the
evolving experience of the Supreme Being. Never
again does it appear as a personality; its
identity becomes as though it had never been. In
the case of an Adjuster-indwelt personality, the
experiential spirit values survive in the
reality of the continuing Adjuster.
In
any universe contest between actual levels of
reality, the personality of the higher level
will ultimately triumph over the personality of
the lower level. This inevitable outcome of
universe controversy is inherent in the fact
that divinity of quality equals the degree of
reality or actuality of any will creature.
Undiluted evil, complete error, willful sin, and
unmitigated iniquity are inherently and
automatically suicidal. Such attitudes of cosmic
unreality can survive in the universe only
because of transient mercy-tolerance pending the
action of the justice-determining and
fairness-finding mechanisms of the universe
tribunals of righteous adjudication.
The rule of
the Creator Sons in the local universes is one
of creation and spiritualization. These Sons
devote themselves to the effective execution of
the
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Paradise plan of progressive mortal ascension,
to the rehabilitation of rebels and wrong
thinkers, but when all such loving efforts are
finally and forever rejected, the final decree
of dissolution is executed by forces acting
under the jurisdiction of the Ancients of Days.
4.
THE DIVINE MERCY
Mercy is
simply justice tempered by that wisdom which
grows out of perfection of knowledge and the
full recognition of the natural weaknesses and
environmental handicaps of finite creatures.
"Our God is full of compassion, gracious,
long-suffering, and plenteous in mercy."
Therefore "whosoever calls upon the Lord shall
be saved," "for he will abundantly pardon." "The
mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to
everlasting"; yes, "his mercy endures forever."
"I am the Lord who executes loving-kindness,
judgment, and righteousness in the earth, for in
these things I delight." "I do not afflict
willingly nor grieve the children of men," for I
am "the Father of mercies and the God of all
comfort."
God
is inherently kind, naturally compassionate, and
everlastingly merciful. And never is it
necessary that any influence be brought to bear
upon the Father to call forth his
loving-kindness. The creature's need is wholly
sufficient to insure the full flow of the
Father's tender mercies and his saving grace.
Since God knows all about his children, it is
easy for him to forgive. The better man
understands his neighbor, the easier it will be
to forgive him, even to love him.
Only
the discernment of infinite wisdom enables a
righteous God to minister justice and mercy at
the same time and in any given universe
situation. The heavenly Father is never torn by
conflicting attitudes towards his universe
children; God is never a victim of attitudinal
antagonisms. God's all-knowingness unfailingly
directs his free will in the choosing of that
universe conduct which perfectly,
simultaneously, and equally satisfies the
demands of all his divine attributes and the
infinite qualities of his eternal nature.
Mercy is the natural and inevitable offspring of
goodness and love. The good nature of a loving
Father could not possibly withhold the wise
ministry of mercy to each member of every group
of his universe children. Eternal justice and
divine mercy together constitute what in human
experience would be called fairness.
Divine mercy
represents a fairness technique of adjustment
between the universe levels of perfection and
imperfection. Mercy is the justice of Supremacy
adapted to the situations of the evolving
finite, the righteousness of eternity modified
to meet the highest interests and universe
welfare of the children of time. Mercy is not a
contravention of justice but rather an
understanding interpretation of the demands of
supreme justice as it is fairly applied to the
subordinate spiritual beings and to the material
creatures of the evolving universes. Mercy is
the justice of the Paradise Trinity wisely and
lovingly visited upon the manifold intelligences
of the creations of time and space as it is
formulated by divine wisdom and determined by
the all-knowing mind and the sovereign free will
of the Universal Father and all his associated
Creators.
5.
THE LOVE OF GOD
"God is
love"; therefore his only personal attitude
towards the affairs of the universe is always a
reaction of divine affection. The Father loves
us sufficiently
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to
bestow his life upon us. "He makes his sun to
rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain
on the just and on the unjust."
It is wrong
to think of God as being coaxed into loving his
children because of the sacrifices of his Sons
or the intercession of his subordinate
creatures, "for the Father himself loves you."
It is in response to this paternal affection
that God sends the marvelous Adjusters to
indwell the minds of men. God's love is
universal; "whosoever will may come." He would
"have all men be saved by coming into the
knowledge of the truth." He is "not willing that
any should perish."
The
Creators are the very first to attempt to save
man from the disastrous results of his foolish
transgression of the divine laws. God's love is
by nature a fatherly affection; therefore does
he sometimes "chasten us for our own profit,
that we may be partakers of his holiness." Even
during your fiery trials remember that "in all
our afflictions he is afflicted with us."
God
is divinely kind to sinners. When rebels return
to righteousness, they are mercifully received,
"for our God will abundantly pardon." "I am he
who blots out your transgressions for my own
sake, and I will not remember your sins."
"Behold what manner of love the Father has
bestowed upon us that we should be called the
sons of God."
After all, the greatest evidence of the goodness
of God and the supreme reason for loving him is
the indwelling gift of the Father--the Adjuster
who so patiently awaits the hour when you both
shall be eternally made one. Though you cannot
find God by searching, if you will submit to the
leading of the indwelling spirit, you will be
unerringly guided, step by step, life by life,
through universe upon universe, and age by age,
until you finally stand in the presence of the
Paradise personality of the Universal Father.
How
unreasonable that you should not worship God
because the limitations of human nature and the
handicaps of your material creation make it
impossible for you to see him. Between you and
God there is a tremendous distance (physical
space) to be traversed. There likewise exists a
great gulf of spiritual differential which must
be bridged; but notwithstanding all that
physically and spiritually separates you from
the Paradise personal presence of God, stop and
ponder the solemn fact that God lives within
you; he has in his own way already bridged the
gulf. He has sent of himself, his spirit, to
live in you and to toil with you as you pursue
your eternal universe career.
I
find it easy and pleasant to worship one who is
so great and at the same time so affectionately
devoted to the uplifting ministry of his lowly
creatures. I naturally love one who is so
powerful in creation and in the control thereof,
and yet who is so perfect in goodness and so
faithful in the loving-kindness which constantly
overshadows us. I think I would love God just as
much if he were not so great and powerful, as
long as he is so good and merciful. We all love
the Father more because of his nature than in
recognition of his amazing attributes.
When
I observe the Creator Sons and their subordinate
administrators struggling so valiantly with the
manifold difficulties of time inherent in the
evolution of the universes of space, I discover
that I bear these lesser rulers of the universes
a great and profound affection. After all, I
think we all, including the mortals of the
realms, love the Universal Father and all other
beings, divine or human, because we discern that
these personalities truly love us. The
experience of loving is very much a direct
response to the experience of being loved.
Knowing
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that
God loves me, I should continue to love him
supremely, even though he were divested of all
his attributes of supremacy, ultimacy, and
absoluteness.
The Father's
love follows us now and throughout the endless
circle of the eternal ages. As you ponder the
loving nature of God, there is only one
reasonable and natural personality reaction
thereto: You will increasingly love your Maker;
you will yield to God an affection analogous to
that given by a child to an earthly parent; for,
as a father, a real father, a true father, loves
his children, so the Universal Father loves and
forever seeks the welfare of his created sons
and daughters.
But
the love of God is an intelligent and farseeing
parental affection. The divine love functions in
unified association with divine wisdom and all
other infinite characteristics of the perfect
nature of the Universal Father. God is love, but
love is not God. The greatest manifestation of
the divine love for mortal beings is observed in
the bestowal of the Thought Adjusters, but your
greatest revelation of the Father's love is seen
in the bestowal life of his Son Michael as he
lived on earth the ideal spiritual life. It is
the indwelling Adjuster who individualizes the
love of God to each human soul.
At
times I am almost pained to be compelled to
portray the divine affection of the heavenly
Father for his universe children by the
employment of the human word symbol love.
This term, even though it does connote man's
highest concept of the mortal relations of
respect and devotion, is so frequently
designative of so much of human relationship
that is wholly ignoble and utterly unfit to be
known by any word which is also used to indicate
the matchless affection of the living God for
his universe creatures! How unfortunate that I
cannot make use of some supernal and exclusive
term which would convey to the mind of man the
true nature and exquisitely beautiful
significance of the divine affection of the
Paradise Father.
When
man loses sight of the love of a personal God,
the kingdom of God becomes merely the kingdom of
good. Notwithstanding the infinite unity of the
divine nature, love is the dominant
characteristic of all God's personal dealings
with his creatures.
6.
THE GOODNESS OF GOD
In the
physical universe we may see the divine beauty,
in the intellectual world we may discern eternal
truth, but the goodness of God is found only in
the spiritual world of personal religious
experience. In its true essence, religion is a
faith-trust in the goodness of God. God could be
great and absolute, somehow even intelligent and
personal, in philosophy, but in religion God
must also be moral; he must be good. Man might
fear a great God, but he trusts and loves only a
good God. This goodness of God is a part of the
personality of God, and its full revelation
appears only in the personal religious
experience of the believing sons of God.
Religion implies that the superworld of spirit
nature is cognizant of, and responsive to, the
fundamental needs of the human world.
Evolutionary religion may become ethical, but
only revealed religion becomes truly and
spiritually moral. The olden concept that God is
a Deity dominated by kingly morality was
upstepped by Jesus to that affectionately
touching level of intimate family morality of
the parent-child relationship, than which there
is none more tender and beautiful in mortal
experience.
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The "richness
of the goodness of God leads erring man to
repentance." "Every good gift and every perfect
gift comes down from the Father of lights." "God
is good; he is the eternal refuge of the souls
of men." "The Lord God is merciful and gracious.
He is long-suffering and abundant in goodness
and truth." "Taste and see that the Lord is
good! Blessed is the man who trusts him." "The
Lord is gracious and full of compassion. He is
the God of salvation." "He heals the
brokenhearted and binds up the wounds of the
soul. He is man's all-powerful benefactor."
The
concept of God as a king-judge, although it
fostered a high moral standard and created a
law-respecting people as a group, left the
individual believer in a sad position of
insecurity respecting his status in time and in
eternity. The later Hebrew prophets proclaimed
God to be a Father to Israel; Jesus revealed God
as the Father of each human being. The entire
mortal concept of God is transcendently
illuminated by the life of Jesus. Selflessness
is inherent in parental love. God loves not
like a father, but as a father. He is
the Paradise Father of every universe
personality.
Righteousness implies that God is the source of
the moral law of the universe. Truth exhibits
God as a revealer, as a teacher. But love gives
and craves affection, seeks understanding
fellowship such as exists between parent and
child. Righteousness may be the divine thought,
but love is a father's attitude. The erroneous
supposition that the righteousness of God was
irreconcilable with the selfless love of the
heavenly Father, presupposed absence of unity in
the nature of Deity and led directly to the
elaboration of the atonement doctrine, which is
a philosophic assault upon both the unity and
the free-willness of God.
The
affectionate heavenly Father, whose spirit
indwells his children on earth, is not a divided
personality--one of justice and one of
mercy--neither does it require a mediator to
secure the Father's favor or forgiveness. Divine
righteousness is not dominated by strict
retributive justice; God as a father transcends
God as a judge.
God
is never wrathful, vengeful, or angry. It is
true that wisdom does often restrain his love,
while justice conditions his rejected mercy. His
love of righteousness cannot help being
exhibited as equal hatred for sin. The Father is
not an inconsistent personality; the divine
unity is perfect. In the Paradise Trinity there
is absolute unity despite the eternal identities
of the co-ordinates of God.
God
loves the sinner and hates the sin: such
a statement is true philosophically, but God is
a transcendent personality, and persons can only
love and hate other persons. Sin is not a
person. God loves the sinner because he is a
personality reality (potentially eternal), while
towards sin God strikes no personal attitude,
for sin is not a spiritual reality; it is not
personal; therefore does only the justice of God
take cognizance of its existence. The love of
God saves the sinner; the law of God destroys
the sin. This attitude of the divine nature
would apparently change if the sinner finally
identified himself wholly with sin just as the
same mortal mind may also fully identify itself
with the indwelling spirit Adjuster. Such a
sin-identified mortal would then become wholly
unspiritual in nature (and therefore personally
unreal) and would experience eventual extinction
of being. Unreality, even incompleteness of
creature nature, cannot exist forever in a
progressingly real and increasingly spiritual
universe.
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Facing the world of personality, God is
discovered to be a loving person; facing the
spiritual world, he is a personal love; in
religious experience he is both. Love identifies
the volitional will of God. The goodness of God
rests at the bottom of the divine
free-willness--the universal tendency to love,
show mercy, manifest patience, and minister
forgiveness.
7.
DIVINE TRUTH AND BEAUTY
All
finite knowledge and creature understanding are
relative. Information and intelligence,
gleaned from even high sources, is only
relatively complete, locally accurate, and
personally true.
Physical facts are fairly uniform, but truth is
a living and flexible factor in the philosophy
of the universe. Evolving personalities are only
partially wise and relatively true in their
communications. They can be certain only as far
as their personal experience extends. That which
apparently may be wholly true in one place may
be only relatively true in another segment of
creation.
Divine truth, final truth, is uniform and
universal, but the story of things spiritual, as
it is told by numerous individuals hailing from
various spheres, may sometimes vary in details
owing to this relativity in the completeness of
knowledge and in the repleteness of personal
experience as well as in the length and extent
of that experience. While the laws and decrees,
the thoughts and attitudes, of the First Great
Source and Center are eternally, infinitely, and
universally true; at the same time, their
application to, and adjustment for, every
universe, system, world, and created
intelligence, are in accordance with the plans
and technique of the Creator Sons as they
function in their respective universes, as well
as in harmony with the local plans and
procedures of the Infinite Spirit and of all
other associated celestial personalities.
The
false science of materialism would sentence
mortal man to become an outcast in the universe.
Such partial knowledge is potentially evil; it
is knowledge composed of both good and evil.
Truth is beautiful because it is both replete
and symmetrical. When man searches for truth, he
pursues the divinely real.
Philosophers
commit their gravest error when they are misled
into the fallacy of abstraction, the practice of
focusing the attention upon one aspect of
reality and then of pronouncing such an isolated
aspect to be the whole truth. The wise
philosopher will always look for the creative
design which is behind, and pre-existent to, all
universe phenomena. The creator thought
invariably precedes creative action.
Intellectual self-consciousness can discover the
beauty of truth, its spiritual quality, not only
by the philosophic consistency of its concepts,
but more certainly and surely by the unerring
response of the ever-present Spirit of Truth.
Happiness ensues from the recognition of truth
because it can be acted out; it can be
lived. Disappointment and sorrow attend upon
error because, not being a reality, it cannot be
realized in experience. Divine truth is best
known by its spiritual flavor.
The
eternal quest is for unification, for divine
coherence. The far-flung physical universe
coheres in the Isle of Paradise; the
intellectual universe coheres in the God of
mind, the Conjoint Actor; the spiritual universe
is coherent in the personality of the Eternal
Son. But the isolated mortal of time and space
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coheres in God the Father through the direct
relationship between the indwelling Thought
Adjuster and the Universal Father. Man's
Adjuster is a fragment of God and everlastingly
seeks for divine unification; it coheres with,
and in, the Paradise Deity of the First Source
and Center.
The
discernment of supreme beauty is the discovery
and integration of reality: The discernment of
the divine goodness in the eternal truth, that
is ultimate beauty. Even the charm of human art
consists in the harmony of its unity.
The
great mistake of the Hebrew religion was its
failure to associate the goodness of God with
the factual truths of science and the appealing
beauty of art. As civilization progressed, and
since religion continued to pursue the same
unwise course of overemphasizing the goodness of
God to the relative exclusion of truth and
neglect of beauty, there developed an increasing
tendency for certain types of men to turn away
from the abstract and dissociated concept of
isolated goodness. The overstressed and isolated
morality of modern religion, which fails to hold
the devotion and loyalty of many
twentieth-century men, would rehabilitate itself
if, in addition to its moral mandates, it would
give equal consideration to the truths of
science, philosophy, and spiritual experience,
and to the beauties of the physical creation,
the charm of intellectual art, and the grandeur
of genuine character achievement.
The
religious challenge of this age is to those
farseeing and forward-looking men and women of
spiritual insight who will dare to construct a
new and appealing philosophy of living out of
the enlarged and exquisitely integrated modern
concepts of cosmic truth, universe beauty, and
divine goodness. Such a new and righteous vision
of morality will attract all that is good in the
mind of man and challenge that which is best in
the human soul. Truth, beauty, and goodness are
divine realities, and as man ascends the scale
of spiritual living, these supreme qualities of
the Eternal become increasingly co-ordinated and
unified in God, who is love.
All
truth--material, philosophic, or spiritual--is
both beautiful and good. All real
beauty--material art or spiritual symmetry--is
both true and good. All genuine
goodness--whether personal morality, social
equity, or divine ministry--is equally true and
beautiful. Health, sanity, and happiness are
integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as
they are blended in human experience. Such
levels of efficient living come about through
the unification of energy systems, idea systems,
and spirit systems.
Truth is coherent, beauty attractive, goodness
stabilizing. And when these values of that which
is real are co-ordinated in personality
experience, the result is a high order of love
conditioned by wisdom and qualified by loyalty.
The real purpose of all universe education is to
effect the better co-ordination of the isolated
child of the worlds with the larger realities of
his expanding experience. Reality is finite on
the human level, infinite and eternal on the
higher and divine levels.
[Presented by a Divine Counselor acting by
authority of the Ancients of Days on Uversa.]
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