God’s Relation to the Universe

4:4.1God is the only sta­tion­ary, self-con­tained, and change­less be­ing in the whole uni­verse of uni­verses, hav­ing no out­side, no be­yond, no past, and no fu­ture. God is pur­po­sive en­ergy (cre­ative spirit) and ab­so­lute will, and these are self-ex­is­tent and uni­ver­sal.

4:4.2Since God is self-ex­is­tent, he is ab­so­lutely in­de­pen­dent. The very iden­tity of God is in­im­i­cal to change. “I, the Lord, change not.” God is im­mutable; but not un­til you achieve Par­a­dise sta­tus can you even be­gin to un­der­stand how God can pass from sim­plic­ity to com­plex­ity, from iden­tity to vari­a­tion, from qui­es­cence to mo­tion, from in­fin­ity to fini­tude, from the di­vine to the hu­man, and from unity to du­al­ity and tri­unity. And God can thus mod­ify the man­i­fes­ta­tions of his ab­so­lute­ness be­cause di­vine im­mutabil­ity does not im­ply im­mo­bil­ity; God has will—he is will.

4:4.3God is the be­ing of ab­so­lute self-de­ter­mi­na­tion; there are no lim­its to his uni­verse re­ac­tions save those which are self-im­posed, and his free­will acts are con­di­tioned only by those di­vine qual­i­ties and per­fect at­tri­butes which in­her­ently char­ac­ter­ize his eter­nal na­ture. There­fore is God re­lated to the uni­verse as the be­ing of fi­nal good­ness plus a free will of cre­ative in­fin­ity.

4:4.4The Fa­ther-Ab­so­lute is the cre­ator of the cen­tral and per­fect uni­verse and the Fa­ther of all other Cre­ators. Per­son­al­ity, good­ness, and nu­mer­ous other char­ac­ter­is­tics, God shares with man and other be­ings, but in­fin­ity of will is his alone. God is lim­ited in his cre­ative acts only by the sen­ti­ments of his eter­nal na­ture and by the dic­tates of his in­fi­nite wis­dom. God per­son­ally chooses only that which is in­finitely per­fect, hence the su­per­nal per­fec­tion of the cen­tral uni­verse; and while the Cre­ator Sons fully share his di­vin­ity, even phases of his ab­so­lute­ness, they are not al­to­gether lim­ited by that fi­nal­ity of wis­dom which di­rects the Fa­ther’s in­fin­ity of will. Hence, in the Mi­chael or­der of son­ship, cre­ative free will be­comes even more ac­tive, wholly di­vine and well-nigh ul­ti­mate, if not ab­so­lute. The Fa­ther is in­fi­nite and eter­nal, but to deny the pos­si­bil­ity of his vo­li­tional self-lim­i­ta­tion amounts to a de­nial of this very con­cept of his vo­li­tional ab­so­lute­ness.

4:4.5God’s ab­so­lute­ness per­vades all seven lev­els of uni­verse re­al­ity. And the whole of this ab­so­lute na­ture is sub­ject to the re­la­tion­ship of the Cre­ator to his uni­verse crea­ture fam­ily. Pre­ci­sion may char­ac­ter­ize trini­tar­ian jus­tice in the uni­verse of uni­verses, but in all his vast fam­ily re­la­tion­ship with the crea­tures of time the God of uni­verses is gov­erned by di­vine sen­ti­ment. First and last—eter­nally—the in­fi­nite God is a Fa­ther. Of all the pos­si­ble ti­tles by which he might ap­pro­pri­ately be known, I have been in­structed to por­tray the God of all cre­ation as the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther.

4:4.6In God the Fa­ther free­will per­for­mances are not ruled by power, nor are they guided by in­tel­lect alone; the di­vine per­son­al­ity is de­fined as con­sist­ing in spirit and man­i­fest­ing him­self to the uni­verses as love. There­fore, in all his per­sonal re­la­tions with the crea­ture per­son­al­i­ties of the uni­verses, the First Source and Cen­ter is al­ways and con­sis­tently a lov­ing Fa­ther. God is a Fa­ther in the high­est sense of the term. He is eter­nally mo­ti­vated by the per­fect ide­al­ism of di­vine love, and that ten­der na­ture finds its strong­est ex­pres­sion and great­est sat­is­fac­tion in lov­ing and be­ing loved.

4:4.7In sci­ence, God is the First Cause; in re­li­gion, the uni­ver­sal and lov­ing Fa­ther; in phi­los­o­phy, the one be­ing who ex­ists by him­self, not de­pen­dent on any other be­ing for ex­is­tence but benef­i­cently con­fer­ring re­al­ity of ex­is­tence on all things and upon all other be­ings. But it re­quires rev­e­la­tion to show that the First Cause of sci­ence and the self-ex­is­tent Unity of phi­los­o­phy are the God of re­li­gion, full of mercy and good­ness and pledged to ef­fect the eter­nal sur­vival of his chil­dren on earth.

4:4.8We crave the con­cept of the In­fi­nite, but we wor­ship the ex­pe­ri­ence-idea of God, our any­where and any-time ca­pac­ity to grasp the per­son­al­ity and di­vin­ity fac­tors of our high­est con­cept of De­ity.

4:4.9The con­scious­ness of a vic­to­ri­ous hu­man life on earth is born of that crea­ture faith which dares to chal­lenge each re­cur­ring episode of ex­is­tence when con­fronted with the aw­ful spec­ta­cle of hu­man lim­i­ta­tions, by the un­fail­ing dec­la­ra­tion: Even if I can­not do this, there lives in me one who can and will do it, a part of the Fa­ther-Ab­so­lute of the uni­verse of uni­verses. And that is “the vic­tory which over­comes the world, even your faith.”