Further Discussions with Rodan

161:1.1There was one mat­ter on which Ro­dan and the two apos­tles did not see alike, and that was the per­son­al­ity of God. Ro­dan read­ily ac­cepted all that was pre­sented to him re­gard­ing the at­tri­butes of God, but he con­tended that the Fa­ther in heaven is not, can­not be, a per­son as man con­ceives per­son­al­ity. While the apos­tles found them­selves in dif­fi­culty try­ing to prove that God is a per­son, Ro­dan found it still more dif­fi­cult to prove he is not a per­son.

161:1.2Ro­dan con­tended that the fact of per­son­al­ity con­sists in the co­ex­is­tent fact of full and mu­tual com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween be­ings of equal­ity, be­ings who are ca­pa­ble of sym­pa­thetic un­der­stand­ing. Said Ro­dan: “In or­der to be a per­son, God must have sym­bols of spirit com­mu­ni­ca­tion which would en­able him to be­come fully un­der­stood by those who make con­tact with him. But since God is in­fi­nite and eter­nal, the Cre­ator of all other be­ings, it fol­lows that, as re­gards be­ings of equal­ity, God is alone in the uni­verse. There are none equal to him; there are none with whom he can com­mu­ni­cate as an equal. God in­deed may be the source of all per­son­al­ity, but as such he is tran­scen­dent to per­son­al­ity, even as the Cre­ator is above and be­yond the crea­ture.”

161:1.3This con­tention greatly trou­bled Thomas and Na­than­iel, and they had asked Je­sus to come to their res­cue, but the Mas­ter re­fused to en­ter into their dis­cus­sions. He did say to Thomas: “It mat­ters lit­tle what idea of the Fa­ther you may en­ter­tain as long as you are spir­i­tu­ally ac­quainted with the ideal of his in­fi­nite and eter­nal na­ture.”

161:1.4Thomas con­tended that God does com­mu­ni­cate with man, and there­fore that the Fa­ther is a per­son, even within the def­i­ni­tion of Ro­dan. This the Greek re­jected on the ground that God does not re­veal him­self per­son­ally; that he is still a mys­tery. Then Na­than­iel ap­pealed to his own per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence with God, and that Ro­dan al­lowed, af­firm­ing that he had re­cently had sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences, but these ex­pe­ri­ences, he con­tended, proved only the re­al­ity of God, not his per­son­al­ity.

161:1.5By Mon­day night Thomas gave up. But by Tues­day night Na­than­iel had won Ro­dan to be­lieve in the per­son­al­ity of the Fa­ther, and he ef­fected this change in the Greek’s views by the fol­low­ing steps of rea­son­ing:

161:1.61. The Fa­ther in Par­a­dise does en­joy equal­ity of com­mu­ni­ca­tion with at least two other be­ings who are fully equal to him­self and wholly like him­self—the Eter­nal Son and the In­fi­nite Spirit. In view of the doc­trine of the Trin­ity, the Greek was com­pelled to con­cede the per­son­al­ity pos­si­bil­ity of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. (It was the later con­sid­er­a­tion of these dis­cus­sions which led to the en­larged con­cep­tion of the Trin­ity in the minds of the twelve apos­tles. Of course, it was the gen­eral be­lief that Je­sus was the Eter­nal Son.)

161:1.72. Since Je­sus was equal with the Fa­ther, and since this Son had achieved the man­i­fes­ta­tion of per­son­al­ity to his earth chil­dren, such a phe­nom­e­non con­sti­tuted proof of the fact, and dem­on­stra­tion of the pos­si­bil­ity, of the pos­ses­sion of per­son­al­ity by all three of the God­heads and for­ever set­tled the ques­tion re­gard­ing the abil­ity of God to com­mu­ni­cate with man and the pos­si­bil­ity of man’s com­mu­ni­cat­ing with God.

161:1.83. That Je­sus was on terms of mu­tual as­so­ci­a­tion and per­fect com­mu­ni­ca­tion with man; that Je­sus was the Son of God. That the re­la­tion of Son and Fa­ther pre­sup­poses equal­ity of com­mu­ni­ca­tion and mu­tu­al­ity of sym­pa­thetic un­der­stand­ing; that Je­sus and the Fa­ther were one. That Je­sus main­tained at one and the same time un­der­stand­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tion with both God and man, and that, since both God and man com­pre­hended the mean­ing of the sym­bols of Je­sus’ com­mu­ni­ca­tion, both God and man pos­sessed the at­tri­butes of per­son­al­ity in so far as the re­quire­ments of the abil­ity of in­ter­com­mu­ni­ca­tion were con­cerned. That the per­son­al­ity of Je­sus demon­strated the per­son­al­ity of God, while it proved con­clu­sively the pres­ence of God in man. That two things which are re­lated to the same thing are re­lated to each other.

161:1.94. That per­son­al­ity rep­re­sents man’s high­est con­cept of hu­man re­al­ity and di­vine val­ues; that God also rep­re­sents man’s high­est con­cept of di­vine re­al­ity and in­fi­nite val­ues; there­fore, that God must be a di­vine and in­fi­nite per­son­al­ity, a per­son­al­ity in re­al­ity al­though in­finitely and eter­nally tran­scend­ing man’s con­cept and def­i­ni­tion of per­son­al­ity, but nev­er­the­less al­ways and uni­ver­sally a per­son­al­ity.

161:1.105. That God must be a per­son­al­ity since he is the Cre­ator of all per­son­al­ity and the des­tiny of all per­son­al­ity. Ro­dan had been tremen­dously in­flu­enced by the teach­ing of Je­sus, “Be you there­fore per­fect, even as your Fa­ther in heaven is per­fect.”

161:1.11When Ro­dan heard these ar­gu­ments, he said: “I am con­vinced. I will con­fess God as a per­son if you will per­mit me to qual­ify my con­fes­sion of such a be­lief by at­tach­ing to the mean­ing of per­son­al­ity a group of ex­tended val­ues, such as super­hu­man, tran­scen­dent, su­preme, in­fi­nite, eter­nal, fi­nal, and uni­ver­sal. I am now con­vinced that, while God must be in­finitely more than a per­son­al­ity, he can­not be any­thing less. I am sat­is­fied to end the ar­gu­ment and to ac­cept Je­sus as the per­sonal rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther and the sat­is­fac­tion of all un­sat­is­fied fac­tors in logic, rea­son, and phi­los­o­phy.”