omnificence

• God does not personally do everything

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.

• Eternal Son not personally responsible for conduct of all spirit personalities

7:0.5The Son is not, how­ever, per­son­ally re­spon­si­ble for the con­duct of all spirit per­son­al­i­ties. The will of the per­sonal crea­ture is rel­a­tively free and hence de­ter­mines the ac­tions of such vo­li­tional be­ings. There­fore the free­will spirit world is not al­ways truly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the char­ac­ter of the Eter­nal Son, even as na­ture on Uran­tia is not truly rev­e­la­tory of the per­fec­tion and im­mutabil­ity of Par­a­dise and De­ity. But no mat­ter what may char­ac­ter­ize the free­will ac­tion of man or an­gel, the Son’s eter­nal grasp of the uni­ver­sal grav­ity con­trol of all spirit re­al­i­ties con­tin­ues as ab­so­lute.

118:6.1God is truly om­nipo­tent, but he is not om­nif­i­cent—he does not per­son­ally do all that is done. Om­nipo­tence em­braces the power-po­ten­tial of the Al­mighty Su­preme and the Su­preme Be­ing, but the vo­li­tional acts of God the Su­preme are not the per­sonal do­ings of God the In­fi­nite.

• doctrine disenfranchises all other personalities

118:6.2To ad­vo­cate the om­nif­i­cence of pri­mal De­ity would be equal to dis­en­fran­chis­ing well-nigh a mil­lion Cre­ator Sons of Par­a­dise, not to men­tion the in­nu­mer­able hosts of var­i­ous other or­ders of con­cur­ring cre­ative as­sis­tants. There is but one un­caused Cause in the whole uni­verse. All other causes are deriva­tives of this one First Great Source and Cen­ter. And none of this phi­los­o­phy does any vi­o­lence to the free-will­ness of the myr­i­ads of the chil­dren of De­ity scat­tered through a vast uni­verse.

118:6.3Within a lo­cal frame, vo­li­tion may ap­pear to func­tion as an un­caused cause, but it un­fail­ingly ex­hibits in­her­i­tance fac­tors which es­tab­lish re­la­tion­ship with the unique, orig­i­nal, and ab­so­lute First Causes.

118:6.4All vo­li­tion is rel­a­tive. In the orig­i­nat­ing sense, only the Fa­ther-I AM pos­sesses fi­nal­ity of vo­li­tion; in the ab­so­lute sense, only the Fa­ther, the Son, and the Spirit ex­hibit the pre­rog­a­tives of vo­li­tion un­con­di­tioned by time and un­lim­ited by space. Mor­tal man is en­dowed with free will, the power of choice, and though such choos­ing is not ab­so­lute, nev­er­the­less, it is rel­a­tively fi­nal on the fi­nite level and con­cern­ing the des­tiny of the choos­ing per­son­al­ity.

118:6.5Vo­li­tion on any level short of the ab­so­lute en­coun­ters lim­i­ta­tions which are con­sti­tu­tive in the very per­son­al­ity ex­er­cis­ing the power of choice. Man can­not choose be­yond the range of that which is choos­able. He can­not, for in­stance, choose to be other than a hu­man be­ing ex­cept that he can elect to be­come more than a man; he can choose to em­bark upon the voy­age of uni­verse as­cen­sion, but this is be­cause the hu­man choice and the di­vine will hap­pen to be co­in­ci­dent upon this point. And what a son de­sires and the Fa­ther wills will cer­tainly come to pass.

118:6.6In the mor­tal life, paths of dif­fer­en­tial con­duct are con­tin­u­ally open­ing and clos­ing, and dur­ing the times when choice is pos­si­ble the hu­man per­son­al­ity is con­stantly de­cid­ing be­tween these many courses of ac­tion. Tem­po­ral vo­li­tion is linked to time, and it must await the pass­ing of time to find op­por­tu­nity for ex­pres­sion. Spir­i­tual vo­li­tion has be­gun to taste lib­er­a­tion from the fet­ters of time, hav­ing achieved par­tial es­cape from time se­quence, and that is be­cause spir­i­tual vo­li­tion is self-iden­ti­fy­ing with the will of God.

118:6.7Vo­li­tion, the act of choos­ing, must func­tion within the uni­verse frame which has ac­tu­al­ized in re­sponse to higher and prior choos­ing. The en­tire range of hu­man will is strictly fi­nite-lim­ited ex­cept in one par­tic­u­lar: When man chooses to find God and to be like him, such a choice is super­fi­nite; only eter­nity can dis­close whether this choice is also super­ab­so­nite.

• fallacy of o. is colossal error of pantheism

118:6.8To rec­og­nize De­ity om­nipo­tence is to en­joy se­cu­rity in your ex­pe­ri­ence of cos­mic cit­i­zen­ship, to pos­sess as­sur­ance of safety in the long jour­ney to Par­a­dise. But to ac­cept the fal­lacy of om­nif­i­cence is to em­brace the colos­sal er­ror of pan­the­ism.

• God has not decided all things for us in advance

118:10.1Prov­i­dence does not mean that God has de­cided all things for us and in ad­vance. God loves us too much to do that, for that would be noth­ing short of cos­mic tyranny. Man does have rel­a­tive pow­ers of choice. Nei­ther is the di­vine love that short­sighted af­fec­tion which would pam­per and spoil the chil­dren of men.

• Jews saw God in everything that happened

148:5.4“Na­than­iel, it is our mis­sion to help men solve their spir­i­tual prob­lems and in this way to quicken their minds so that they may be the bet­ter pre­pared and in­spired to go about solv­ing their man­i­fold ma­te­rial prob­lems. I know of your con­fu­sion as you have read the Scrip­tures. All too of­ten there has pre­vailed a ten­dency to as­cribe to God the re­spon­si­bil­ity for ev­ery­thing which ig­no­rant man fails to un­der­stand. The Fa­ther is not per­son­ally re­spon­si­ble for all you may fail to com­pre­hend. Do not doubt the love of the Fa­ther just be­cause some just and wise law of his or­dain­ing chances to af­flict you be­cause you have in­no­cently or de­lib­er­ately trans­gressed such a di­vine or­di­nance.

• Jews saw God in everything that happened

156:5.4“It is not strange that you ask such ques­tions see­ing that you are be­gin­ning to know the Fa­ther as I know him, and not as the early He­brew proph­ets so dimly saw him. You well know how our fore­fa­thers were dis­posed to see God in al­most ev­ery­thing that hap­pened. They looked for the hand of God in all nat­u­ral oc­cur­rences and in ev­ery un­usual episode of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. They con­nected God with both good and evil. They thought he soft­ened the heart of Moses and hard­ened the heart of Pharaoh. When man had a strong urge to do some­thing, good or evil, he was in the habit of ac­count­ing for these un­usual emo­tions by re­mark­ing: ‘The Lord spoke to me say­ing, do thus and so, or go here and there.’ Ac­cord­ingly, since men so of­ten and so vi­o­lently ran into temp­ta­tion, it be­came the habit of our fore­fa­thers to be­lieve that God led them thither for test­ing, pun­ish­ing, or strength­en­ing. But you, in­deed, now know bet­ter. You know that men are all too of­ten led into temp­ta­tion by the urge of their own self­ish­ness and by the im­pulses of their an­i­mal na­tures. When you are in this way tempted, I ad­mon­ish you that, while you rec­og­nize temp­ta­tion hon­estly and sin­cerely for just what it is, you in­tel­li­gently redi­rect the en­er­gies of spirit, mind, and body, which are seek­ing ex­pres­sion, into higher chan­nels and to­ward more ide­al­is­tic goals. In this way may you trans­form your temp­ta­tions into the high­est types of up­lift­ing mor­tal min­istry while you al­most wholly avoid these waste­ful and weak­en­ing con­flicts be­tween the an­i­mal and spir­i­tual na­tures.