justice to whomever he wants, whenever he wants, and sends his Holy
Spirit to give the rewards of that justice. This belief has made them stu-
pid. To them it seems that in order to avoid claiming for ourselves even a
speck of contribution to our own salvation, we must act in every way like
a stone when we undertake to become justified, and like a piece of dead
wood in matters spiritual.”
Then one of these bystanders pushed his way into the group and said
in a loud voice, “Oh, you demented people! You are debating about goat’s
wool! Obviously you don’t realize that God Almighty is the divine design
itself and that the laws of the divine design are countless. Their number, of
course, is the number of truths in the Word. God cannot act against those
laws, because acting against them would be acting against himself. It would
be acting not only against justice but also against his own omnipotence.”
[ 3 ] The bystander looked over to the right and saw in the distance
what looked like a sheep and a lamb, as well as a dove in flight. To the
left he saw a goat, a wolf, and a vulture. He said, “You believe that God
in his omnipotence could turn that goat into a sheep, that wolf into a
lamb, and that vulture into a dove, or the reverse. Not so. Doing that is
against the laws of his divine design, of which not even the tip of one
letter can fall to the ground, according to his own words [Luke 16 : 17 ].
How then could God put the justice of his Son’s redemption into some-
one who is rebelling against the laws of his justice? How can justice itself
commit the injustice of predestining anyone to hell, and throwing any-
one into the fire beside which the Devil stands, lighting the torches that
he holds? Oh, you demented people, empty of spirit! Your faith has led
you astray. In your hands faith is like a trap for catching doves.”
When he finished saying this, some sorcerer of the opposite belief made
a kind of trap. He hung it in a tree and said, “Watch me catch that dove!”
Soon a hawk flew to the trap, stuck its neck in, and hung limp. The
dove saw the hawk and flew away. The bystanders were amazed and
shouted, “That isimpressive—a just reward!”
The next day some people from the main group came to me—the 73
group that believed in predestination and God’s assigning of spiritual
credit or blame. They said, “We are drunk in a way, not on wine but on
the things that man said yesterday. He spoke about omnipotence and
also about the divine design. He concluded that the design is as divine as
omnipotence is. He even said that God himself is the divine design. He
said that there are as many laws of the divine design as there are truths in
the Word—not just thousands but millions—and that God is bound by
§73 god the creator & creation 95