P27:3, 1:5.1 Do not permit the magnitude of
God, his infinity, either to obscure or eclipse his personality. "He
who planned the ear, shall he not hear? He who formed the eye, shall he
not see?" The Universal Father is the acme of divine personality;
he is the origin and destiny of personality throughout all creation. God
is both infinite and personal; he is an infinite personality. The Father
is truly a personality, notwithstanding that the infinity of his person
places him forever beyond the full comprehension of material and finite
beings.
P27:4, 1:5.2 God is much
more than a personality as personality is understood by the human mind;
he is even far more than any possible concept of a superpersonality. But
it is utterly futile to discuss such incomprehensible concepts of divine
personality with the minds of material creatures whose maximum concept
of the reality of being consists in the idea and ideal of personality.
The material creature's highest possible concept of the Universal Creator
is embraced within the spiritual ideals of the exalted idea of divine personality.
Therefore, although you may know that God must be much more than the human
conception of personality, you equally well know that the Universal Father
cannot possibly be anything less than an eternal, infinite, true, good,
and beautiful personality.
P27:5, 1:5.3 God is not
hiding from any of his creatures. He is
unapproachable to so many orders
of beings only because he "dwells in a light which no material creature
can approach." The immensity and grandeur of the divine personality
is beyond the grasp of the
unperfected mind of evolutionary mortals. He
"measures the waters in the hollow of his hand, measures a universe
with the span of his hand. It is he who sits on the circle of the earth,
who stretches out the heavens as a curtain and spreads them out as a universe
to dwell in." "Lift up your eyes on high and behold who has created
all these things, who brings out their worlds by number and calls them
all by their names"; and so it is true that "the invisible things
of God are partially understood by the things which are made." Today,
and as you are, you must discern the invisible Maker through his manifold
and diverse creation, as well as through the revelation and ministration
of his Sons and their numerous subordinates.
P28:1, 1:5.4 Even though
material mortals cannot see the person of God, they should rejoice in the
assurance that he is a person; by faith accept the truth which portrays
that the Universal Father so loved the world as to provide for the eternal
spiritual progression of its lowly inhabitants; that he "delights
in his children." God is lacking in none of those superhuman and divine
attributes which constitute a perfect, eternal, loving, and infinite Creator
personality.
P28:2, 1:5.5 In the
local creations (excepting the personnel of the superuniverses) God has
no personal or residential manifestation aside from the Paradise Creator
Sons who are the fathers of the inhabited worlds and the sovereigns of
the local universes. If the faith of the creature were perfect, he would
assuredly know that when he had seen a Creator Son he had seen the Universal
Father; in seeking for the Father, he would not ask nor expect to see other
than the Son. Mortal man simply cannot see God until he achieves completed
spirit transformation and actually attains Paradise.
P28:3, 1:5.6 The natures
of the Paradise Creator Sons do not encompass all the unqualified potentials
of the universal absoluteness of the infinite nature of the First Great
Source and Center, but the Universal Father is in every way divinely
present in the Creator Sons. The Father and his Sons are one. These Paradise
Sons of the order of Michael are perfect personalities, even the pattern
for all local universe personality from that of the Bright and Morning
Star down to the lowest human creature of progressing animal evolution.
P28:4, 1:5.7 Without
God and except for his great and central person, there would be no personality
throughout all the vast universe of universes. God is personality.
P28:5, 1:5.8 Notwithstanding
that God is an eternal power, a majestic presence, a transcendent ideal,
and a glorious spirit, though he is all these and infinitely more, nonetheless,
he is truly and everlastingly a perfect Creator personality, a person who
can "know and be known," who can "love and be loved,"
and one who can befriend us; while you can be known, as other humans have
been known, as the friend of God. He is a real spirit and a spiritual reality.
P28:6, 1:5.9 As we see
the Universal Father revealed throughout his universe; as we discern him
indwelling his myriads of creatures; as we behold him in the persons of
his Sovereign Sons; as we continue to sense his divine presence here and
there, near and afar, let us not doubt nor question his personality primacy.
Notwithstanding all these far-flung distributions, he remains a true person
and everlastingly maintains personal connection with the countless hosts
of his creatures scattered throughout the universe of universes.
P28:7, 1:5.10 The idea
of the personality of the Universal Father is an enlarged and truer concept
of God which has come to mankind chiefly through revelation. Reason, wisdom,
and religious experience all infer and imply the personality of God, but
they do not altogether validate it. Even the indwelling Thought Adjuster
is prepersonal. The truth and maturity of any religion is directly proportional
to its concept of the infinite personality of God and to its grasp of the
absolute unity of Deity. The idea of a personal Deity becomes, then, the
measure of religious maturity after religion has first formulated the concept
of the unity of God.
P29:1, 1:5.11 Primitive
religion had many personal gods, and they were fashioned in the image of
man. Revelation affirms the validity of the personality concept of God
which is merely possible in the scientific postulate of a First Cause and
is only provisionally suggested in the philosophic idea of Universal Unity.
Only by personality approach can any person begin to comprehend the unity
of God. To deny the personality of the First Source and Center leaves one
only the choice of two philosophic dilemmas: materialism or pantheism.
P29:2, 1:5.12 In the contemplation
of Deity, the concept of personality must be divested of the idea of corporeality.
A material body is not indispensable to personality in either man or God.
The corporeality error is shown in both extremes of human philosophy. In
materialism, since man loses his body at death, he ceases to exist as a
personality; in pantheism, since God has no body, he is not, therefore,
a person. The superhuman type of progressing personality functions in a
union of mind and spirit.
P29:3, 1:5.13 Personality
is not simply an attribute of God; it rather stands for the totality of
the co-ordinated infinite nature and the unified divine will which is exhibited
in eternity and universality of perfect expression. Personality, in the
supreme sense, is the revelation of God to the universe of universes.
P29:4, 1:5.14 God,
being eternal, universal, absolute, and infinite, does not grow in knowledge
nor increase in wisdom. God does not acquire experience, as finite man
might conjecture or comprehend, but he does, within the realms of his own
eternal personality, enjoy those continuous expansions of self-realization
which are in certain ways comparable to, and analogous with, the acquirement
of new experience by the finite creatures of the evolutionary worlds.
P29:5, 1:5.15 The absolute
perfection of the infinite God would cause him to suffer the awful limitations
of unqualified finality of perfectness were it not a fact that the Universal
Father directly participates in the personality struggle of every imperfect
soul in the wide universe who seeks, by divine aid, to ascend to the spiritually
perfect worlds on high. This progressive experience of every spirit being
and every mortal creature throughout the universe of universes is a part
of the Father's ever-expanding
Deity-consciousness of the never-ending
divine circle of ceaseless self-realization.
P29:6, 1:5.16 It is literally
true: "In all your afflictions he is afflicted." "In all
your triumphs he triumphs in and with you." His prepersonal divine
spirit is a real part of you. The Isle of Paradise responds to all the
physical metamorphoses of the universe of universes; the Eternal Son includes
all the spirit impulses of all creation; the Conjoint Actor encompasses
all the mind expression of the expanding cosmos. The Universal Father realizes
in the fullness of the divine consciousness all the individual experience
of the progressive struggles of the expanding minds and the ascending spirits
of every entity, being, and personality of the whole evolutionary creation
of time and space. And all this is literally true, for "in him we
all live and move and have our being."