justice

2:3.1God is righ­teous; there­fore is he just. “The Lord is righ­teous in all his ways.” “‘I have not done with­out cause all that I have done,’ says the Lord.” “The judg­ments of the Lord are true and righ­teous al­to­gether.” The jus­tice of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther can­not be in­flu­enced by the acts and per­for­mances of his crea­tures, “for there is no in­iq­uity with the Lord our God, no re­spect of per­sons, no tak­ing of gifts.”

2:3.2How fu­tile to make puerile ap­peals to such a God to mod­ify his change­less de­crees so that we can avoid the just con­se­quences of the op­er­a­tion of his wise nat­u­ral laws and righ­teous spir­i­tual man­dates! “Be not de­ceived; God is not mocked, for what­so­ever a man sows that shall he also reap.” True, even in the jus­tice of reap­ing the har­vest of wrong­do­ing, this di­vine jus­tice is al­ways tem­pered with mercy. In­fi­nite wis­dom is the eter­nal ar­biter which de­ter­mines the pro­por­tions of jus­tice and mercy which shall be meted out in any given cir­cum­stance. The great­est pun­ish­ment (in re­al­ity an in­ev­i­ta­ble con­se­quence) for wrong­do­ing and de­lib­er­ate re­bel­lion against the gov­ern­ment of God is loss of ex­is­tence as an in­di­vid­ual sub­ject of that gov­ern­ment. The fi­nal re­sult of whole­hearted sin is an­ni­hi­la­tion. In the last anal­y­sis, such sin-iden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als have de­stroyed them­selves by be­com­ing wholly un­real through their em­brace of in­iq­uity. The fac­tual dis­ap­pear­ance of such a crea­ture is, how­ever, al­ways de­layed un­til the or­dained or­der of jus­tice cur­rent in that uni­verse has been fully com­plied with.

2:3.3Ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence is usu­ally de­creed at the dis­pen­sa­tional or ep­ochal ad­ju­di­ca­tion of the realm or realms. On a world such as Uran­tia it comes at the end of a plan­e­tary dis­pen­sa­tion. Ces­sa­tion of ex­is­tence can be de­creed at such times by co-or­di­nate ac­tion of all tri­bu­nals of ju­ris­dic­tion, ex­tend­ing from the plan­e­tary coun­cil up through the courts of the Cre­ator Son to the judg­ment tri­bu­nals of the An­cients of Days. The man­date of dis­so­lu­tion orig­i­nates in the higher courts of the super­uni­verse fol­low­ing an un­bro­ken con­fir­ma­tion of the in­dict­ment orig­i­nat­ing on the sphere of the wrong­doer’s res­i­dence; and then, when sen­tence of ex­tinc­tion has been con­firmed on high, the ex­e­cu­tion is by the di­rect act of those judges res­i­den­tial on, and op­er­at­ing from, the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verse.

2:3.4When this sen­tence is fi­nally con­firmed, the sin-iden­ti­fied be­ing in­stantly be­comes as though he had not been. There is no res­ur­rec­tion from such a fate; it is ev­er­last­ing and eter­nal. The liv­ing en­ergy fac­tors of iden­tity are re­solved by the trans­for­ma­tions of time and the meta­mor­phoses of space into the cos­mic po­ten­tials whence they once emerged. As for the per­son­al­ity of the in­iq­ui­tous one, it is de­prived of a con­tin­u­ing life ve­hi­cle by the crea­ture’s fail­ure to make those choices and fi­nal de­ci­sions which would have as­sured eter­nal life. When the con­tin­ued em­brace of sin by the as­so­ci­ated mind cul­mi­nates in com­plete self-iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with in­iq­uity, then upon the ces­sa­tion of life, upon cos­mic dis­so­lu­tion, such an iso­lated per­son­al­ity is ab­sorbed into the over­soul of cre­ation, be­com­ing a part of the evolv­ing ex­pe­ri­ence of the Su­preme Be­ing. Never again does it ap­pear as a per­son­al­ity; its iden­tity be­comes as though it had never been. In the case of an Ad­juster-in­dwelt per­son­al­ity, the ex­pe­ri­en­tial spirit val­ues sur­vive in the re­al­ity of the con­tin­u­ing Ad­juster.

2:3.5In any uni­verse con­test be­tween ac­tual lev­els of re­al­ity, the per­son­al­ity of the higher level will ul­ti­mately tri­umph over the per­son­al­ity of the lower level. This in­ev­i­ta­ble out­come of uni­verse con­tro­versy is in­her­ent in the fact that di­vin­ity of qual­ity equals the de­gree of re­al­ity or ac­tu­al­ity of any will crea­ture. Undi­luted evil, com­plete er­ror, will­ful sin, and un­mit­i­gated in­iq­uity are in­her­ently and au­to­mat­i­cally sui­ci­dal. Such at­ti­tudes of cos­mic un­re­al­ity can sur­vive in the uni­verse only be­cause of tran­sient mercy-tol­er­ance pend­ing the ac­tion of the jus­tice-de­ter­min­ing and fair­ness-find­ing mech­a­nisms of the uni­verse tri­bu­nals of righ­teous ad­ju­di­ca­tion.

2:3.6The rule of the Cre­ator Sons in the lo­cal uni­verses is one of cre­ation and spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion. These Sons de­vote them­selves to the ef­fec­tive ex­e­cu­tion of the Par­a­dise plan of pro­gres­sive mor­tal as­cen­sion, to the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of rebels and wrong thinkers, but when all such lov­ing ef­forts are fi­nally and for­ever re­jected, the fi­nal de­cree of dis­so­lu­tion is ex­e­cuted by forces act­ing un­der the ju­ris­dic­tion of the An­cients of Days.

133:1.1A very in­ter­est­ing in­ci­dent oc­curred one af­ter­noon by the road­side as they neared Tar­en­tum. They ob­served a rough and bul­ly­ing youth bru­tally at­tack­ing a smaller lad. Je­sus has­tened to the as­sis­tance of the as­saulted youth, and when he had res­cued him, he tightly held on to the of­fender un­til the smaller lad had made his es­cape. The mo­ment Je­sus re­leased the lit­tle bully, Ga­nid pounced upon the boy and be­gan soundly to thrash him, and to Ga­nid’s as­ton­ish­ment Je­sus promptly in­ter­fered. Af­ter he had re­strained Ga­nid and per­mit­ted the fright­ened boy to es­cape, the young man, as soon as he got his breath, ex­cit­edly ex­claimed: “I can­not un­der­stand you, Teacher. If mercy re­quires that you res­cue the smaller lad, does not jus­tice de­mand the pun­ish­ment of the larger and of­fend­ing youth?” In an­swer­ing, Je­sus said:

133:1.2“Ga­nid, it is true, you do not un­der­stand. Mercy min­istry is al­ways the work of the in­di­vid­ual, but jus­tice pun­ish­ment is the func­tion of the so­cial, gov­ern­men­tal, or uni­verse ad­min­is­tra­tive groups. As an in­di­vid­ual I am be­holden to show mercy; I must go to the res­cue of the as­saulted lad, and in all con­sis­tency I may em­ploy suf­fi­cient force to re­strain the ag­gres­sor. And that is just what I did. I achieved the de­liv­er­ance of the as­saulted lad; that was the end of mercy min­istry. Then I forcibly de­tained the ag­gres­sor a suf­fi­cient length of time to en­able the weaker party to the dis­pute to make his es­cape, af­ter which I with­drew from the af­fair. I did not pro­ceed to sit in judg­ment on the ag­gres­sor, thus to pass upon his mo­tive—to ad­ju­di­cate all that en­tered into his at­tack upon his fel­low—and then un­der­take to ex­e­cute the pun­ish­ment which my mind might dic­tate as just rec­om­pense for his wrong­do­ing. Ga­nid, mercy may be lav­ish, but jus­tice is pre­cise. Can­not you dis­cern that no two per­sons are likely to agree as to the pun­ish­ment which would sat­isfy the de­mands of jus­tice? One would im­pose forty lashes, an­other twenty, while still an­other would ad­vise soli­tary con­fine­ment as a just pun­ish­ment. Can you not see that on this world such re­spon­si­bil­i­ties had bet­ter rest upon the group or be ad­min­is­tered by cho­sen rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the group? In the uni­verse, judg­ment is vested in those who fully know the an­tecedents of all wrong­do­ing as well as its mo­ti­va­tion. In civ­i­lized so­ci­ety and in an or­ga­nized uni­verse the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice pre­sup­poses the pass­ing of just sen­tence con­se­quent upon fair judg­ment, and such pre­rog­a­tives are vested in the ju­ridi­cal groups of the worlds and in the all-know­ing ad­min­is­tra­tors of the higher uni­verses of all cre­ation.”

133:1.3For days they talked about this prob­lem of man­i­fest­ing mercy and ad­min­is­ter­ing jus­tice. And Ga­nid, at least to some ex­tent, un­der­stood why Je­sus would not en­gage in per­sonal com­bat. But Ga­nid asked one last ques­tion, to which he never re­ceived a fully sat­is­fac­tory an­swer; and that ques­tion was: “But, Teacher, if a stronger and ill-tem­pered crea­ture should at­tack you and threaten to de­stroy you, what would you do? Would you make no ef­fort to de­fend your­self?” Al­though Je­sus could not fully and sat­is­fac­to­rily an­swer the lad’s ques­tion, inas­much as he was not will­ing to dis­close to him that he (Je­sus) was liv­ing on earth as the ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther’s love to an on­look­ing uni­verse, he did say this much:

133:1.4“Ga­nid, I can well un­der­stand how some of these prob­lems per­plex you, and I will en­deavor to an­swer your ques­tion. First, in all at­tacks which might be made upon my per­son, I would de­ter­mine whether or not the ag­gres­sor was a son of God—my brother in the flesh—and if I thought such a crea­ture did not pos­sess moral judg­ment and spir­i­tual rea­son, I would un­hesi­tat­ingly de­fend my­self to the full ca­pac­ity of my pow­ers of re­sis­tance, re­gard­less of con­se­quences to the at­tacker. But I would not thus as­sault a fel­low man of son­ship sta­tus, even in self-de­fense. That is, I would not pun­ish him in ad­vance and with­out judg­ment for his as­sault upon me. I would by ev­ery pos­si­ble ar­ti­fice seek to pre­vent and dis­suade him from mak­ing such an at­tack and to mit­i­gate it in case of my fail­ure to abort it. Ga­nid, I have ab­so­lute con­fi­dence in my heav­enly Fa­ther’s over­care; I am con­se­crated to do­ing the will of my Fa­ther in heaven. I do not be­lieve that real harm can be­fall me; I do not be­lieve that my life­work can re­ally be jeop­ar­dized by any­thing my en­e­mies might wish to visit upon me, and surely we have no vi­o­lence to fear from our friends. I am ab­so­lutely as­sured that the en­tire uni­verse is friendly to me—this all-pow­er­ful truth I in­sist on be­liev­ing with a whole­hearted trust in spite of all ap­pear­ances to the con­trary.”

133:1.5But Ga­nid was not fully sat­is­fied. Many times they talked over these mat­ters, and Je­sus told him some of his boy­hood ex­pe­ri­ences and also about Ja­cob the stone ma­son’s son. On learn­ing how Ja­cob ap­pointed him­self to de­fend Je­sus, Ga­nid said: “Oh, I be­gin to see! In the first place very sel­dom would any nor­mal hu­man be­ing want to at­tack such a kindly per­son as you, and even if any­one should be so un­think­ing as to do such a thing, there is pretty sure to be near at hand some other mor­tal who will fly to your as­sis­tance, even as you al­ways go to the res­cue of any per­son you ob­serve to be in dis­tress. In my heart, Teacher, I agree with you, but in my head I still think that if I had been Ja­cob, I would have en­joyed pun­ish­ing those rude fel­lows who pre­sumed to at­tack you just be­cause they thought you would not de­fend your­self. I pre­sume you are fairly safe in your jour­ney through life since you spend much of your time help­ing oth­ers and min­is­ter­ing to your fel­lows in dis­tress—well, most likely there’ll al­ways be some­one on hand to de­fend you.” And Je­sus replied: “That test has not yet come, Ga­nid, and when it does, we will have to abide by the Fa­ther’s will.” And that was about all the lad could get his teacher to say on this dif­fi­cult sub­ject of self-de­fense and non­re­sis­tance. On an­other oc­ca­sion he did draw from Je­sus the opin­ion that or­ga­nized so­ci­ety had ev­ery right to em­ploy force in the ex­e­cu­tion of its just man­dates.

70:10.2Jus­tice, as con­ceived by man, means get­ting one’s rights and has, there­fore, been a mat­ter of pro­gres­sive evo­lu­tion. The con­cept of jus­tice may well be con­sti­tu­tive in a spirit-en­dowed mind, but it does not spring full-fledgedly into ex­is­tence on the worlds of space.

• even love and mercy cannot abrogate

2:6.8God loves the sin­ner and hates the sin: such a state­ment is true phil­o­soph­i­cally, but God is a tran­scen­dent per­son­al­ity, and per­sons can only love and hate other per­sons. Sin is not a per­son. God loves the sin­ner be­cause he is a per­son­al­ity re­al­ity (po­ten­tially eter­nal), while to­wards sin God strikes no per­sonal at­ti­tude, for sin is not a spir­i­tual re­al­ity; it is not per­sonal; there­fore does only the jus­tice of God take cog­nizance of its ex­is­tence. The love of God saves the sin­ner; the law of God de­stroys the sin. This at­ti­tude of the di­vine na­ture would ap­par­ently change if the sin­ner fi­nally iden­ti­fied him­self wholly with sin just as the same mor­tal mind may also fully iden­tify it­self with the in­dwelling spirit Ad­juster. Such a sin-iden­ti­fied mor­tal would then be­come wholly un­spir­i­tual in na­ture (and there­fore per­son­ally un­real) and would ex­pe­ri­ence even­tual ex­tinc­tion of be­ing. Un­re­al­ity, even in­com­plete­ness of crea­ture na­ture, can­not ex­ist for­ever in a pro­gress­ingly real and in­creas­ingly spir­i­tual uni­verse.

• is precise

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.

• Stationary Sons of Trinity are perfect revelation of

10:0.2The Par­a­dise Trin­ity ef­fec­tively pro­vides for the full ex­pres­sion and per­fect rev­e­la­tion of the eter­nal na­ture of De­ity. The Sta­tion­ary Sons of the Trin­ity like­wise af­ford a full and per­fect rev­e­la­tion of di­vine jus­tice. The Trin­ity is De­ity unity, and this unity rests eter­nally upon the ab­so­lute foun­da­tions of the di­vine one­ness of the three orig­i­nal and co-or­di­nate and co­ex­is­tent per­son­al­i­ties, God the Fa­ther, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

• Trinity attitude

10:5.1The per­sonal De­i­ties have at­tri­butes, but it is hardly con­sis­tent to speak of the Trin­ity as hav­ing at­tri­butes. This as­so­ci­a­tion of di­vine be­ings may more prop­erly be re­garded as hav­ing func­tions, such as jus­tice ad­min­is­tra­tion, to­tal­ity at­ti­tudes, co-or­di­nate ac­tion, and cos­mic over­con­trol. These func­tions are ac­tively su­preme, ul­ti­mate, and (within the lim­its of De­ity) ab­so­lute as far as all liv­ing re­al­i­ties of per­son­al­ity value are con­cerned.

• Trinity attitude

10:6.2Jus­tice is in­her­ent in the uni­ver­sal sov­er­eignty of the Par­a­dise Trin­ity, but good­ness, mercy, and truth are the uni­verse min­istry of the di­vine per­son­al­i­ties, whose De­ity union con­sti­tutes the Trin­ity. Jus­tice is not the at­ti­tude of the Fa­ther, the Son, or the Spirit. Jus­tice is the Trin­ity at­ti­tude of these per­son­al­i­ties of love, mercy, and min­istry. No one of the Par­a­dise De­i­ties fos­ters the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice. Jus­tice is never a per­sonal at­ti­tude; it is al­ways a plu­ral func­tion.

• collective thought of righteousness
• fully perceived, j. is coincident with merciful love
• is precise

10:6.18Jus­tice is the col­lec­tive thought of righ­teous­ness; mercy is its per­sonal ex­pres­sion. Mercy is the at­ti­tude of love; pre­ci­sion char­ac­ter­izes the op­er­a­tion of law; di­vine judg­ment is the soul of fair­ness, ever con­form­ing to the jus­tice of the Trin­ity, ever ful­fill­ing the di­vine love of God. When fully per­ceived and com­pletely un­der­stood, the righ­teous jus­tice of the Trin­ity and the mer­ci­ful love of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther are co­in­ci­dent. But man has no such full un­der­stand­ing of di­vine jus­tice. Thus in the Trin­ity, as man would view it, the per­son­al­i­ties of Fa­ther, Son, and Spirit are ad­justed to co-or­di­nate min­istry of love and law in the ex­pe­ri­en­tial uni­verses of time.

15:12.1When we speak of ex­ec­u­tive and de­lib­er­a­tive branches of the Uversa gov­ern­ment, you may, from the anal­ogy of cer­tain forms of Uran­tian civil gov­ern­ment, rea­son that we must have a third or ju­di­cial branch, and we do; but it does not have a sep­a­rate per­son­nel. Our courts are con­sti­tuted as fol­lows: There pre­sides, in ac­cor­dance with the na­ture and grav­ity of the case, an An­cient of Days, a Per­fec­tor of Wis­dom, or a Di­vine Coun­selor. The ev­i­dence for or against an in­di­vid­ual, a planet, sys­tem, con­stel­la­tion, or uni­verse is pre­sented and in­ter­preted by the Cen­sors. The de­fense of the chil­dren of time and the evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets is of­fered by the Mighty Mes­sen­gers, the of­fi­cial ob­servers of the super­uni­verse gov­ern­ment to the lo­cal uni­verses and sys­tems. The at­ti­tude of the higher gov­ern­ment is por­trayed by Those High in Au­thor­ity. And or­di­nar­ily the ver­dict is for­mu­lated by a vary­ing-sized com­mis­sion con­sist­ing equally of Those with­out Name and Num­ber and a group of un­der­stand­ing per­son­al­i­ties cho­sen from the de­lib­er­a­tive as­sem­bly.

15:12.2The courts of the An­cients of Days are the high re­view tri­bu­nals for the spir­i­tual ad­ju­di­ca­tion of all com­po­nent uni­verses. The Sov­er­eign Sons of the lo­cal uni­verses are su­preme in their own do­mains; they are sub­ject to the super­gov­ern­ment only in so far as they vol­un­tar­ily sub­mit mat­ters for coun­sel or ad­ju­di­ca­tion by the An­cients of Days ex­cept in mat­ters in­volv­ing the ex­tinc­tion of will crea­tures. Man­dates of judg­ment orig­i­nate in the lo­cal uni­verses, but sen­tences in­volv­ing the ex­tinc­tion of will crea­tures are al­ways for­mu­lated on, and ex­e­cuted from, the head­quar­ters of the super­uni­verse. The Sons of the lo­cal uni­verses can de­cree the sur­vival of mor­tal man, but only the An­cients of Days may sit in ex­ec­u­tive judg­ment on the is­sues of eter­nal life and death.

15:12.3In all mat­ters not re­quir­ing trial, the sub­mis­sion of ev­i­dence, the An­cients of Days or their as­so­ciates ren­der de­ci­sions, and these rul­ings are al­ways unan­i­mous. We are here deal­ing with the coun­cils of per­fec­tion. There are no dis­agree­ments nor mi­nor­ity opin­ions in the de­crees of these su­preme and su­perla­tive tri­bu­nals.

15:12.4With cer­tain few ex­cep­tions the super­gov­ern­ments ex­er­cise ju­ris­dic­tion over all things and all be­ings in their re­spec­tive do­mains. There is no ap­peal from the rul­ings and de­ci­sions of the super­uni­verse au­thor­i­ties since they rep­re­sent the con­curred opin­ions of the An­cients of Days and that Mas­ter Spirit who, from Par­a­dise, pre­sides over the des­tiny of the super­uni­verse con­cerned.

• Creators provide for judicial systems to settle honest differences

25:3.7The mo­ment the Cre­ators bring into ex­is­tence evolv­ing in­di­vid­u­als with the power of choice, that mo­ment a de­par­ture is made from the smooth work­ing of di­vine per­fec­tion; mis­un­der­stand­ings are cer­tain to arise, and pro­vi­sion for the fair ad­just­ment of these hon­est dif­fer­ences of view­point must be made. We should all re­mem­ber that the all-wise and all-pow­er­ful Cre­ators could have made the lo­cal uni­verses just as per­fect as Ha­vona. No con­cil­i­at­ing com­mis­sions need func­tion in the cen­tral uni­verse. But the Cre­ators did not choose in their all-wis­dom to do this. And while they have pro­duced uni­verses which abound in dif­fer­ences and teem with dif­fi­cul­ties, they have like­wise pro­vided the mech­a­nisms and the means for com­pos­ing all these dif­fer­ences and for har­mo­niz­ing all this seem­ing con­fu­sion.

• dual magistracy in Nebadon

33:7.2The en­tire ju­di­cial mech­a­nism of Neb­a­don is un­der the super­vi­sion of Ga­briel. The high courts, lo­cated on Sal­ving­ton, are oc­cu­pied with prob­lems of gen­eral uni­verse im­port and with the ap­pel­late cases com­ing up from the sys­tem tri­bu­nals. There are sev­enty branches of these uni­verse courts, and they func­tion in seven di­vi­sions of ten sec­tions each. In all mat­ters of ad­ju­di­ca­tion there pre­sides a dual mag­is­tracy con­sist­ing of one judge of per­fec­tion an­tecedents and one mag­is­trate of as­cen­dant ex­pe­ri­ence.

33:7.3As re­gards ju­ris­dic­tion, the lo­cal uni­verse courts are lim­ited in the fol­low­ing mat­ters:

33:7.41. The ad­min­is­tra­tion of the lo­cal uni­verse is con­cerned with cre­ation, evo­lu­tion, main­te­nance, and min­istry. The uni­verse tri­bu­nals are, there­fore, de­nied the right to pass upon those cases in­volv­ing the ques­tion of eter­nal life and death. This has no ref­er­ence to nat­u­ral death as it ob­tains on Uran­tia, but if the ques­tion of the right of con­tin­ued ex­is­tence, life eter­nal, comes up for ad­ju­di­ca­tion, it must be re­ferred to the tri­bu­nals of Or­von­ton, and if de­cided ad­versely to the in­di­vid­ual, all sen­tences of ex­tinc­tion are car­ried out upon the or­ders, and through the agen­cies, of the rulers of the super­gov­ern­ment.

33:7.52. The de­fault or de­fec­tion of any of the Lo­cal Uni­verse Sons of God which jeop­ar­dizes their sta­tus and au­thor­ity as Sons is never ad­ju­di­cated in the tri­bu­nals of a Son; such a mis­un­der­stand­ing would be im­me­di­ately car­ried to the super­uni­verse courts.

33:7.63. The ques­tion of the read­mis­sion of any con­stituent part of a lo­cal uni­verse—such as a lo­cal sys­tem—to the fel­low­ship of full spir­i­tual sta­tus in the lo­cal cre­ation sub­se­quent to spir­i­tual iso­la­tion must be con­curred in by the high as­sem­bly of the super­uni­verse.

33:7.7In all other mat­ters the courts of Sal­ving­ton are fi­nal and su­preme. There is no ap­peal and no es­cape from their de­ci­sions and de­crees.

• rehabilitated defaulted divine Sons never again serve in original positions

35:9.10There ex­ists a plan for sav­ing these way­ward and un­wise Sons, and many have availed them­selves of this mer­ci­ful pro­vi­sion; but never again may they func­tion in those po­si­tions wherein they de­faulted. Af­ter re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion they are as­signed to cus­to­dial du­ties and to de­part­ments of phys­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion.

• rehabilitated defaulted divine Sons never again serve in original positions

35:10.4It is in con­nec­tion with these ad­min­is­tra­tive spheres of the La­non­an­deks that most of the sal­vaged Sons of that or­der serve as cus­to­di­ans and di­rec­tors of plan­e­tary af­fairs. And these de­fault­ing Plan­e­tary Princes and their as­so­ciates in re­bel­lion who choose to ac­cept the prof­fered re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion will con­tinue to serve in these rou­tine ca­pac­i­ties, at least un­til the uni­verse of Neb­a­don is set­tled in light and life.

• purpose of tribunals is to adjudicate honest differences of opinion; decree survival

39:1.72. Court Ad­vis­ers. These are the se­raphic ad­vis­ers and helpers at­tached to all or­ders of ad­ju­di­ca­tion, from the con­cil­ia­tors up to the high­est tri­bu­nals of the realm. It is not the pur­pose of such tri­bu­nals to de­ter­mine puni­tive sen­tences but rather to ad­ju­di­cate hon­est dif­fer­ences of opin­ion and to de­cree the ev­er­last­ing sur­vival of as­cend­ing mor­tals. Herein lies the duty of the court ad­vis­ers: to see that all charges against mor­tal crea­tures are stated in jus­tice and ad­ju­di­cated in mercy. In this work they are closely as­so­ci­ated with the High Com­mis­sion­ers, Spirit-fused as­cen­dant mor­tals serv­ing in the lo­cal uni­verse.

• demands adjudication of every default and misstep
• fairness based on personal motives and racial tendencies

39:1.8The se­raphic court ad­vis­ers serve ex­ten­sively as de­fend­ers of mor­tals. Not that there ever ex­ists any dis­po­si­tion to be un­fair to the lowly crea­tures of the realms, but while jus­tice de­mands the ad­ju­di­ca­tion of ev­ery de­fault in the climb to­wards di­vine per­fec­tion, mercy re­quires that ev­ery such mis­step be fairly ad­judged in ac­cor­dance with the crea­ture na­ture and the di­vine pur­pose. These an­gels are the ex­po­nents and ex­em­pli­fi­ca­tion of the el­e­ment of mercy in­her­ent in di­vine jus­tice—of fair­ness based on the knowl­edge of the un­der­ly­ing facts of per­sonal mo­tives and racial ten­den­cies.

• judicial review by Melchizedek and ascendant mortal councils

43:2.3While the su­preme ju­di­cial func­tion rests with the cen­tral ad­min­is­tra­tion of a lo­cal uni­verse, there are two sub­sidiary but ma­jor tri­bu­nals at the head­quar­ters of each con­stel­la­tion, the Mel­chiz­e­dek coun­cil and the court of the Most High.

• higher we ascend, the more certain we are to be judged by our own kind

43:2.4All ju­di­cial prob­lems are first re­viewed by the coun­cil of the Mel­chiz­e­deks. Twelve of this or­der who have had cer­tain req­ui­site ex­pe­ri­ence on the evo­lu­tion­ary plan­ets and on the sys­tem head­quar­ters worlds are em­pow­ered to re­view ev­i­dence, di­gest pleas, and for­mu­late pro­vi­sional ver­dicts, which are passed on to the court of the Most High, the reign­ing Con­stel­la­tion Fa­ther. The mor­tal di­vi­sion of this lat­ter tri­bu­nal con­sists of seven judges, all of whom are as­cen­dant mor­tals. The higher you as­cend in the uni­verse, the more cer­tain you are to be judged by those of your own kind.

• tribunals of Planetary Princes

50:2.5Plan­ets vary greatly in na­ture and or­ga­ni­za­tion and in ad­min­is­tra­tion, but all pro­vide for tri­bu­nals of jus­tice. The ju­di­cial sys­tem of the lo­cal uni­verse has its be­gin­nings in the tri­bu­nals of a Plan­e­tary Prince, which are pre­sided over by a mem­ber of his per­sonal staff; the de­crees of such courts re­flect a highly fa­therly and dis­cre­tionary at­ti­tude. All prob­lems in­volv­ing more than the reg­u­la­tion of the plan­e­tary in­hab­i­tants are sub­ject to ap­peal to the higher tri­bu­nals, but the af­fairs of his world do­main are largely ad­justed in ac­cor­dance with the per­sonal dis­cre­tion of the prince.

• time lag of

53:4.5All the mer­ci­ful de­lays of jus­tice Lu­cifer pointed to as ev­i­dence of the in­abil­ity of the gov­ern­ment of the Par­a­dise Sons to stop the re­bel­lion. He would openly defy and ar­ro­gantly chal­lenge Mi­chael, Im­manuel, and the An­cients of Days and then point to the fact that no ac­tion en­sued as pos­i­tive ev­i­dence of the im­po­tency of the uni­verse and the super­uni­verse gov­ern­ments.

54:3.1The moral will crea­tures of the evo­lu­tion­ary worlds are al­ways both­ered with the un­think­ing ques­tion as to why the all-wise Cre­ators per­mit evil and sin. They fail to com­pre­hend that both are in­ev­i­ta­ble if the crea­ture is to be truly free. The free will of evolv­ing man or ex­qui­site an­gel is not a mere philo­sophic con­cept, a sym­bolic ideal. Man’s abil­ity to choose good or evil is a uni­verse re­al­ity. This lib­erty to choose for one­self is an en­dow­ment of the Su­preme Rulers, and they will not per­mit any be­ing or group of be­ings to de­prive a sin­gle per­son­al­ity in the wide uni­verse of this di­vinely be­stowed lib­erty—not even to sat­isfy such mis­guided and ig­no­rant be­ings in the en­joy­ment of this mis­named per­sonal lib­erty.

54:3.2Al­though con­scious and whole­hearted iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with evil (sin) is the equiv­a­lent of nonex­is­tence (an­ni­hi­la­tion), there must al­ways in­ter­vene be­tween the time of such per­sonal iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with sin and the ex­e­cu­tion of the penalty—the au­to­matic re­sult of such a will­ful em­brace of evil—a pe­riod of time of suf­fi­cient length to al­low for such an ad­ju­di­ca­tion of such an in­di­vid­ual’s uni­verse sta­tus as will prove en­tirely sat­is­fac­tory to all re­lated uni­verse per­son­al­i­ties, and which will be so fair and just as to win the ap­proval of the sin­ner him­self.

54:3.3But if this uni­verse rebel against the re­al­ity of truth and good­ness re­fuses to ap­prove the ver­dict, and if the guilty one knows in his heart the jus­tice of his con­dem­na­tion but re­fuses to make such con­fes­sion, then must the ex­e­cu­tion of sen­tence be de­layed in ac­cor­dance with the dis­cre­tion of the An­cients of Days. And the An­cients of Days refuse to an­ni­hi­late any be­ing un­til all moral val­ues and all spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties are ex­tinct, both in the evil­doer and in all re­lated sup­port­ers and pos­si­ble sym­pa­thiz­ers.

• slow but certain

54:4.8But these mercy de­lays are not in­ter­minable. Not­with­stand­ing the long de­lay (as time is reck­oned on Uran­tia) in ad­ju­di­cat­ing the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, we may re­cord that, dur­ing the time of ef­fect­ing this rev­e­la­tion, the first hear­ing in the pend­ing case of Ga­briel vs. Lu­cifer was held on Uversa, and soon there­after there is­sued the man­date of the An­cients of Days di­rect­ing that Sa­tan be hence­forth con­fined to the prison world with Lu­cifer. This ends the abil­ity of Sa­tan to pay fur­ther vis­its to any of the fallen worlds of Sa­ta­nia. Jus­tice in a mercy-dom­i­nated uni­verse may be slow, but it is cer­tain.

• dominated by Father’s love

54:5.32. Su­preme jus­tice is dom­i­nated by a Fa­ther’s love; there­fore will jus­tice never de­stroy that which mercy can save. Time to ac­cept sal­va­tion is vouch­safed ev­ery evil­doer.

• innocent beings involved in tribulations of Lucifer rebellion will be adjudicated mercifully

54:6.1What­ever the dif­fi­cul­ties evo­lu­tion­ary mor­tals may en­counter in their ef­forts to un­der­stand the Lu­cifer re­bel­lion, it should be clear to all re­flec­tive thinkers that the tech­nique of deal­ing with the rebels is a vin­di­ca­tion of di­vine love. The lov­ing mercy ex­tended to the rebels does seem to have in­volved many in­no­cent be­ings in tri­als and tribu­la­tions, but all these dis­traught per­son­al­i­ties may se­curely de­pend upon the all-wise Judges to ad­ju­di­cate their des­tinies in mercy as well as jus­tice.

• local system courts in light and life

55:8.1When an en­tire sys­tem be­comes set­tled in life, a new or­der of gov­ern­ment is in­au­gu­rated. The Plan­e­tary Sov­er­eigns be­come mem­bers of the sys­tem con­clave, and this new ad­min­is­tra­tive body, sub­ject to the veto of the Con­stel­la­tion Fa­thers, is su­preme in au­thor­ity. Such a sys­tem of in­hab­ited worlds be­comes vir­tu­ally self-gov­ern­ing. The sys­tem leg­isla­tive as­sem­bly is con­sti­tuted on the head­quar­ters world, and each planet sends its ten rep­re­sen­ta­tives thereto. Courts are now es­tab­lished on the sys­tem cap­i­tals, and only ap­peals are taken to the uni­verse head­quar­ters.

• even love and mercy cannot abrogate

146:2.54. There is a ba­sic law of jus­tice in the uni­verse which mercy is pow­er­less to cir­cum­vent. The un­selfish glo­ries of Par­a­dise are not pos­si­ble of re­cep­tion by a thor­oughly self­ish crea­ture of the realms of time and space. Even the in­fi­nite love of God can­not force the sal­va­tion of eter­nal sur­vival upon any mor­tal crea­ture who does not choose to sur­vive. Mercy has great lat­i­tude of be­stowal, but, af­ter all, there are man­dates of jus­tice which even love com­bined with mercy can­not ef­fec­tively ab­ro­gate. Again Je­sus quoted from the He­brew scrip­tures: “I have called and you re­fused to hear; I stretched out my hand, but no man re­garded. You have set at naught all my coun­sel, and you have re­jected my re­proof, and be­cause of this re­bel­lious at­ti­tude it be­comes in­ev­i­ta­ble that you shall call upon me and fail to re­ceive an an­swer. Hav­ing re­jected the way of life, you may seek me dili­gently in your times of suf­fer­ing, but you will not find me.”

142:7.17Je­sus replied: “Thomas, Thomas, how long be­fore you will ac­quire the abil­ity to lis­ten with the ear of the spirit? How long will it be be­fore you dis­cern that this king­dom is a spir­i­tual king­dom, and that my Fa­ther is also a spir­i­tual be­ing? Do you not un­der­stand that I am teach­ing you as spir­i­tual chil­dren in the spirit fam­ily of heaven, of which the fa­ther­head is an in­fi­nite and eter­nal spirit? Will you not al­low me to use the earth fam­ily as an il­lus­tra­tion of di­vine re­la­tion­ships with­out so lit­er­ally ap­ply­ing my teach­ing to ma­te­rial af­fairs? In your minds can­not you sep­a­rate the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the king­dom from the ma­te­rial, so­cial, eco­nomic, and po­lit­i­cal prob­lems of the age? When I speak the lan­guage of the spirit, why do you in­sist on trans­lat­ing my mean­ing into the lan­guage of the flesh just be­cause I pre­sume to em­ploy com­mon­place and lit­eral re­la­tion­ships for pur­poses of il­lus­tra­tion? My chil­dren, I im­plore that you cease to ap­ply the teach­ing of the king­dom of the spirit to the sor­did af­fairs of slav­ery, pov­erty, houses, and lands, and to the ma­te­rial prob­lems of hu­man eq­uity and jus­tice. These tem­po­ral mat­ters are the con­cern of the men of this world, and while in a way they af­fect all men, you have been called to rep­re­sent me in the world, even as I rep­re­sent my Fa­ther. You are spir­i­tual am­bas­sadors of a spir­i­tual king­dom, spe­cial rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the spirit Fa­ther. By this time it should be pos­si­ble for me to in­struct you as full-grown men of the spirit king­dom. Must I ever ad­dress you only as chil­dren? Will you never grow up in spirit per­cep­tion? Nev­er­the­less, I love you and will bear with you, even to the very end of our as­so­ci­a­tion in the flesh. And even then shall my spirit go be­fore you into all the world.”

70:11.2Law is al­ways at first neg­a­tive and pro­hibitive; in ad­vanc­ing civ­i­liza­tions it be­comes in­creas­ingly pos­i­tive and di­rec­tive. Early so­ci­ety op­er­ated neg­a­tively, grant­ing the in­di­vid­ual the right to live by im­pos­ing upon all oth­ers the com­mand, “you shall not kill.” Ev­ery grant of rights or lib­erty to the in­di­vid­ual in­volves cur­tail­ment of the lib­er­ties of all oth­ers, and this is ef­fected by the taboo, prim­i­tive law. The whole idea of the taboo is in­her­ently neg­a­tive, for prim­i­tive so­ci­ety was wholly neg­a­tive in its or­ga­ni­za­tion, and the early ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice con­sisted in the en­force­ment of the taboos. But orig­i­nally these laws ap­plied only to fel­low tribes­men, as is il­lus­trated by the later-day He­brews, who had a dif­fer­ent code of ethics for deal­ing with the gen­tiles.

70:10.9So­ci­ety early adopted the pay­ing-back at­ti­tude of re­tal­i­a­tion: an eye for an eye, a life for a life. The evolv­ing tribes all rec­og­nized this right of blood vengeance. Vengeance be­came the aim of prim­i­tive life, but re­li­gion has since greatly mod­i­fied these early tribal prac­tices. The teach­ers of re­vealed re­li­gion have al­ways pro­claimed, “‘Vengeance is mine,’ says the Lord.” Vengeance killing in early times was not al­to­gether un­like pres­ent-day mur­ders un­der the pre­tense of the un­writ­ten law.

140:6.9Then asked Na­than­iel: “Mas­ter, shall we give no place to jus­tice? The law of Moses says, ‘An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.’ What shall we say?” And Je­sus an­swered: “You shall re­turn good for evil. My mes­sen­gers must not strive with men, but be gen­tle to­ward all. Mea­sure for mea­sure shall not be your rule. The rulers of men may have such laws, but not so in the king­dom; mercy al­ways shall de­ter­mine your judg­ments and love your con­duct. And if these are hard say­ings, you can even now turn back. If you find the re­quire­ments of apos­tle­ship too hard, you may re­turn to the less rig­or­ous path­way of dis­ci­ple­ship.”

140:8.5He never ceased to warn his dis­ci­ples against the evil prac­tice of re­tal­i­a­tion; he made no al­low­ance for re­venge, the idea of get­ting even. He de­plored the hold­ing of grudges. He dis­al­lowed the idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. He dis­coun­te­nanced the whole con­cept of pri­vate and per­sonal re­venge, as­sign­ing these mat­ters to civil gov­ern­ment, on the one hand, and to the judg­ment of God, on the other. He made it clear to the three that his teach­ings ap­plied to the in­di­vid­ual, not the state. He sum­ma­rized his in­struc­tions up to that time re­gard­ing these mat­ters, as:

159:5.11When Je­sus in­structed his apos­tles that they should, when one un­justly took away the coat, of­fer the other gar­ment, he re­ferred not so much to a lit­eral sec­ond coat as to the idea of do­ing some­thing pos­i­tive to save the wrong­doer in the place of the olden ad­vice to re­tal­i­ate—“an eye for an eye” and so on. Je­sus ab­horred the idea ei­ther of re­tal­i­a­tion or of be­com­ing just a pas­sive suf­ferer or vic­tim of in­jus­tice. On this oc­ca­sion he taught them the three ways of con­tend­ing with, and re­sist­ing, evil:

39:3.32. Law Fore­cast­ers. The in­tel­lec­tual foun­da­tion of jus­tice is law, and in a lo­cal uni­verse law orig­i­nates in the leg­isla­tive as­sem­blies of the con­stel­la­tions. These de­lib­er­a­tive bod­ies cod­ify and for­mally pro­mul­gate the ba­sic laws of Neb­a­don, laws de­signed to af­ford the great­est pos­si­ble co-or­di­na­tion of a whole con­stel­la­tion con­sis­tent with the fixed pol­icy of non­in­fringe­ment of the moral free will of per­sonal crea­tures. It is the duty of the sec­ond or­der of super­vi­sor ser­a­phim to place be­fore the con­stel­la­tion law­mak­ers a fore­cast of how any pro­posed en­act­ment would af­fect the lives of free­will crea­tures. This ser­vice they are well qual­i­fied to per­form by virtue of long ex­pe­ri­ence in the lo­cal sys­tems and on the in­hab­ited worlds. These ser­a­phim seek no spe­cial fa­vors for one group or an­other, but they do ap­pear be­fore the ce­les­tial law­mak­ers to speak for those who can­not be pres­ent to speak for them­selves. Even mor­tal man may con­tribute to the evo­lu­tion of uni­verse law, for these very ser­a­phim do faith­fully and fully por­tray, not nec­es­sar­ily man’s tran­sient and con­scious de­sires, but rather the true long­ings of the in­ner man, the evolv­ing mor­ontia soul of the ma­te­rial mor­tal on the worlds of space.

81:5.6Might does not make right, but it does en­force the com­monly rec­og­nized rights of each suc­ceed­ing gen­er­a­tion. The prime mis­sion of gov­ern­ment is the def­i­ni­tion of the right, the just and fair reg­u­la­tion of class dif­fer­ences, and the en­force­ment of equal­ity of op­por­tu­nity un­der the rules of law. Ev­ery hu­man right is as­so­ci­ated with a so­cial duty; group priv­i­lege is an in­sur­ance mech­a­nism which un­fail­ingly de­mands the full pay­ment of the ex­act­ing pre­mi­ums of group ser­vice. And group rights, as well as those of the in­di­vid­ual, must be pro­tected, in­clud­ing the reg­u­la­tion of the sex propen­sity.

118:8.10As man shakes off the shack­les of fear, as he bridges con­ti­nents and oceans with his ma­chines, gen­er­a­tions and cen­turies with his rec­ords, he must sub­sti­tute for each tran­scended re­straint a new and vol­un­tar­ily as­sumed re­straint in ac­cor­dance with the moral dic­tates of ex­pand­ing hu­man wis­dom. These self-im­posed re­straints are at once the most pow­er­ful and the most ten­u­ous of all the fac­tors of hu­man civ­i­liza­tion—con­cepts of jus­tice and ide­als of broth­er­hood. Man even qual­i­fies him­self for the re­strain­ing gar­ments of mercy when he dares to love his fel­low men, while he achieves the be­gin­nings of spir­i­tual broth­er­hood when he elects to mete out to them that treat­ment which he him­self would be ac­corded, even that treat­ment which he con­ceives that God would ac­cord them.

70:10.13Jus­tice was thus first meted out by the fam­ily, then by the clan, and later on by the tribe. The ad­min­is­tra­tion of true jus­tice dates from the tak­ing of re­venge from pri­vate and kin groups and lodg­ing it in the hands of the so­cial group, the state.

104:2.5For ex­am­ple: The Mas­ter, when on earth, ad­mon­ished his fol­low­ers that jus­tice is never a per­sonal act; it is al­ways a group func­tion. Nei­ther do the Gods, as per­sons, ad­min­is­ter jus­tice. But they per­form this very func­tion as a col­lec­tive whole, as the Par­a­dise Trin­ity.

159:1.6Thus did Je­sus teach the dan­gers and il­lus­trate the un­fair­ness of sit­ting in per­sonal judg­ment upon one’s fel­lows. Dis­ci­pline must be main­tained, jus­tice must be ad­min­is­tered, but in all these mat­ters the wis­dom of the broth­er­hood should pre­vail. Je­sus in­vested leg­isla­tive and ju­di­cial au­thor­ity in the group, not in the in­di­vid­ual. Even this in­vest­ment of au­thor­ity in the group must not be ex­er­cised as per­sonal au­thor­ity. There is al­ways dan­ger that the ver­dict of an in­di­vid­ual may be warped by prej­u­dice or dis­torted by pas­sion. Group judg­ment is more likely to re­move the dan­gers and elim­i­nate the un­fair­ness of per­sonal bias. Je­sus sought al­ways to min­i­mize the el­e­ments of un­fair­ness, re­tal­i­a­tion, and vengeance.

70:10.1Nat­u­ral jus­tice is a man-made the­ory; it is not a re­al­ity. In na­ture, jus­tice is purely the­o­retic, wholly a fic­tion. Na­ture pro­vides but one kind of jus­tice—in­ev­i­ta­ble con­for­mity of re­sults to causes.

70:11.14The whole idea of prim­i­tive jus­tice was not so much to be fair as to dis­pose of the con­test and thus pre­vent pub­lic dis­or­der and pri­vate vi­o­lence. But prim­i­tive man did not so much re­sent what would now be re­garded as an in­jus­tice; it was taken for granted that those who had power would use it self­ishly. Nev­er­the­less, the sta­tus of any civ­i­liza­tion may be very ac­cu­rately de­ter­mined by the thor­ough­ness and eq­uity of its courts and by the in­tegrity of its judges.