The Urantia Book
PAPER 2
THE NATURE OF GOD
Presented by a Divine Counselor acting by authority of the
Ancients of Days on Uversa.
2:0.1 INASMUCH 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.
2:0.2 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.
2:0.3 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
2:1.1 "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 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!"
2:1.2 "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."
2:1.3 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.
2:1.4 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.
2:1.5 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.
2:1.6 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.
2:1.7 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 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 therefor.
2:1.8 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.
2:1.9 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.
2:1.10 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.
2:1.11 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
2:2.1 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.
2:2.2 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 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.
2:2.3 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.
2:2.4 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.
2:2.5
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.
2:2.6 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.
2:2.7 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
2:3.1 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."
2:3.2 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 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.
2:3.3 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.
2:3.4 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.
2:3.5 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.
2:3.6 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
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
2:4.1 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."
2:4.2 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.
2:4.3 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.
2:4.4 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.
2:4.5 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
2:5.1 "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
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."
2:5.2 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."
2:5.3 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."
2:5.4 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."
2:5.5 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.
2:5.6 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.
2:5.7 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.
2:5.8 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 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.
2:5.9 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.
2:5.10 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.
2:5.11 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.
2:5.12 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
2:6.1 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.
2:6.2 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.
2:6.3 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."
2:6.4 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.
2:6.5 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.
2:6.6 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.
2:6.7 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.
2:6.8 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.
2:6.9 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
2:7.1 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.
2:7.2 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.
2:7.3 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.
2:7.4 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.
2:7.5 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.
2:7.6 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.
2:7.7 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 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.
2:7.8 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.
2:7.9 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.
2:7.10 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.
2:7.11 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.
2:7.12 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.
2:7.13
Presented by a Divine Counselor acting by authority of the
Ancients of Days on Uversa.
