The Nature of God

2:4.1Mercy 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.”

2:4.2God 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.

2:4.3Only 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.

2:4.4Mercy 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.

2:4.5Di­vine 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.