The Attributes of God

3:2.1All the uni­verses know that “the Lord God om­nipo­tent reigns.” The af­fairs of this world and other worlds are di­vinely super­vised. “He does ac­cord­ing to his will in the army of heaven and among the in­hab­i­tants of the earth.” It is eter­nally true, “there is no power but of God.”

3:2.2Within the bounds of that which is con­sis­tent with the di­vine na­ture, it is lit­er­ally true that “with God all things are pos­si­ble.” The long-drawn-out evo­lu­tion­ary pro­cesses of peo­ples, plan­ets, and uni­verses are un­der the per­fect con­trol of the uni­verse cre­ators and ad­min­is­tra­tors and un­fold in ac­cor­dance with the eter­nal pur­pose of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther, pro­ceed­ing in har­mony and or­der and in keep­ing with the all-wise plan of God. There is only one law­giver. He up­holds the worlds in space and swings the uni­verses around the end­less cir­cle of the eter­nal cir­cuit.

3:2.3Of all the di­vine at­tri­butes, his om­nipo­tence, es­pe­cially as it pre­vails in the ma­te­rial uni­verse, is the best un­der­stood. Viewed as an un­spir­i­tual phe­nom­e­non, God is en­ergy. This dec­la­ra­tion of phys­i­cal fact is pred­i­cated on the in­com­pre­hen­si­ble truth that the First Source and Cen­ter is the pri­mal cause of the uni­ver­sal phys­i­cal phe­nom­ena of all space. From this di­vine ac­tiv­ity all phys­i­cal en­ergy and other ma­te­rial man­i­fes­ta­tions are de­rived. Light, that is, light with­out heat, is an­other of the non­spir­i­tual man­i­fes­ta­tions of the De­i­ties. And there is still an­other form of non­spir­i­tual en­ergy which is vir­tu­ally un­known on Uran­tia; it is as yet un­rec­og­nized.

3:2.4God con­trols all power; he has made “a way for the light­ning”; he has or­dained the cir­cuits of all en­ergy. He has de­creed the time and man­ner of the man­i­fes­ta­tion of all forms of en­ergy-mat­ter. And all these things are held for­ever in his ev­er­last­ing grasp—in the grav­i­ta­tional con­trol cen­ter­ing on nether Par­a­dise. The light and en­ergy of the eter­nal God thus swing on for­ever around his ma­jes­tic cir­cuit, the end­less but or­derly pro­ces­sion of the starry hosts com­pos­ing the uni­verse of uni­verses. All cre­ation cir­cles eter­nally around the Par­a­dise-Per­son­al­ity cen­ter of all things and be­ings.

3:2.5The om­nipo­tence of the Fa­ther per­tains to the ev­ery­where dom­i­nance of the ab­so­lute level, whereon the three en­er­gies, ma­te­rial, mindal, and spir­i­tual, are in­dis­tin­guish­able in close prox­im­ity to him—the Source of all things. Crea­ture mind, be­ing nei­ther Par­a­dise monota nor Par­a­dise spirit, is not di­rectly re­spon­sive to the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther. God ad­justs with the mind of im­per­fec­tion—with Uran­tia mor­tals through the Thought Ad­justers.

3:2.6The Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther is not a tran­sient force, a shift­ing power, or a fluc­tu­at­ing en­ergy. The power and wis­dom of the Fa­ther are wholly ad­e­quate to cope with any and all uni­verse ex­i­gen­cies. As the emer­gen­cies of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence arise, he has fore­seen them all, and there­fore he does not re­act to the af­fairs of the uni­verse in a de­tached way but rather in ac­cor­dance with the dic­tates of eter­nal wis­dom and in con­so­nance with the man­dates of in­fi­nite judg­ment. Re­gard­less of ap­pear­ances, the power of God is not func­tion­ing in the uni­verse as a blind force.

3:2.7Sit­u­a­tions do arise in which it ap­pears that emer­gency rul­ings have been made, that nat­u­ral laws have been sus­pended, that mis­adap­ta­tions have been rec­og­nized, and that an ef­fort is be­ing made to rec­tify the sit­u­a­tion; but such is not the case. Such con­cepts of God have their ori­gin in the lim­ited range of your view­point, in the finite­ness of your com­pre­hen­sion, and in the cir­cum­scribed scope of your sur­vey; such mis­un­der­stand­ing of God is due to the pro­found ig­no­rance you en­joy re­gard­ing the ex­is­tence of the higher laws of the realm, the mag­ni­tude of the Fa­ther’s char­ac­ter, the in­fin­ity of his at­tri­butes, and the fact of his free-will­ness.

3:2.8The plan­e­tary crea­tures of God’s spirit in­dwelling, scat­tered hither and yon through­out the uni­verses of space, are so nearly in­fi­nite in num­ber and or­der, their in­tel­lects are so di­verse, their minds are so lim­ited and some­times so gross, their vi­sion is so cur­tailed and lo­cal­ized, that it is al­most im­pos­si­ble to for­mu­late gen­er­al­iza­tions of law ad­e­quately ex­pres­sive of the Fa­ther’s in­fi­nite at­tri­butes and at the same time to any de­gree com­pre­hen­si­ble to these cre­ated in­tel­li­gences. There­fore, to you the crea­ture, many of the acts of the all-pow­er­ful Cre­ator seem to be ar­bi­trary, de­tached, and not in­fre­quently heart­less and cruel. But again I as­sure you that this is not true. God’s do­ings are all pur­pose­ful, in­tel­li­gent, wise, kind, and eter­nally con­sid­er­ate of the best good, not al­ways of an in­di­vid­ual be­ing, an in­di­vid­ual race, an in­di­vid­ual planet, or even an in­di­vid­ual uni­verse; but they are for the wel­fare and best good of all con­cerned, from the low­est to the high­est. In the epochs of time the wel­fare of the part may some­times ap­pear to dif­fer from the wel­fare of the whole; in the cir­cle of eter­nity such ap­par­ent dif­fer­ences are nonex­is­tent.

3:2.9We are all a part of the fam­ily of God, and we must there­fore some­times share in the fam­ily dis­ci­pline. Many of the acts of God which so dis­turb and con­fuse us are the re­sult of the de­ci­sions and fi­nal rul­ings of all-wis­dom, em­pow­er­ing the Con­joint Ac­tor to ex­e­cute the choos­ing of the in­fal­li­ble will of the in­fi­nite mind, to en­force the de­ci­sions of the per­son­al­ity of per­fec­tion, whose sur­vey, vi­sion, and so­lic­i­tude em­brace the high­est and eter­nal wel­fare of all his vast and far-flung cre­ation.

3:2.10Thus it is that your de­tached, sec­tional, fi­nite, gross, and highly ma­te­ri­al­is­tic view­point and the lim­i­ta­tions in­her­ent in the na­ture of your be­ing con­sti­tute such a hand­i­cap that you are un­able to see, com­pre­hend, or know the wis­dom and kind­ness of many of the di­vine acts which to you seem fraught with such crush­ing cru­elty, and which seem to be char­ac­ter­ized by such ut­ter in­dif­fer­ence to the com­fort and wel­fare, to the plan­e­tary hap­pi­ness and per­sonal pros­per­ity, of your fel­low crea­tures. It is be­cause of the lim­its of hu­man vi­sion, it is be­cause of your cir­cum­scribed un­der­stand­ing and fi­nite com­pre­hen­sion, that you mis­un­der­stand the mo­tives, and per­vert the pur­poses, of God. But many things oc­cur on the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds which are not the per­sonal do­ings of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

3:2.11The di­vine om­nipo­tence is per­fectly co-or­di­nated with the other at­tri­butes of the per­son­al­ity of God. The power of God is, or­di­nar­ily, only lim­ited in its uni­verse spir­i­tual man­i­fes­ta­tion by three con­di­tions or sit­u­a­tions:

3:2.121. By the na­ture of God, es­pe­cially by his in­fi­nite love, by truth, beauty, and good­ness.

3:2.132. By the will of God, by his mercy min­istry and fa­therly re­la­tion­ship with the per­son­al­i­ties of the uni­verse.

3:2.143. By the law of God, by the righ­teous­ness and jus­tice of the eter­nal Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

3:2.15God is un­lim­ited in power, di­vine in na­ture, fi­nal in will, in­fi­nite in at­tri­butes, eter­nal in wis­dom, and ab­so­lute in re­al­ity. But all these char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther are uni­fied in De­ity and uni­ver­sally ex­pressed in the Par­a­dise Trin­ity and in the di­vine Sons of the Trin­ity. Oth­er­wise, out­side of Par­a­dise and the cen­tral uni­verse of Ha­vona, ev­ery­thing per­tain­ing to God is lim­ited by the evo­lu­tion­ary pres­ence of the Su­preme, con­di­tioned by the even­tu­at­ing pres­ence of the Ul­ti­mate, and co-or­di­nated by the three ex­is­ten­tial Ab­so­lutes—De­ity, Uni­ver­sal, and Un­qual­i­fied. And God’s pres­ence is thus lim­ited be­cause such is the will of God.