The Nature of God

2:2.1Even 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.

2:2.2There 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.

2:2.3The 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.

2:2.4Out 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.

2:2.5God’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.

2:2.6God 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.

2:2.7Hu­man 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.