Zion will be redeemed with justice,and its returned exiles with judg-
ment.(Isaiah 1 : 27 )
He will sit on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it
with judgmentand justice.(Isaiah 9 : 7 )
I will raise up for David a righteous offshoot who will reign as king and
execute judgmentand justiceon earth. (Jeremiah 23 : 5 ; 33 : 15 )Elsewhere we read that we ought to practice justice and judgment, as in
Isaiah 1 : 21 ; 5 : 16 ; 58 : 2 ; Jeremiah 4 : 2 ; 22 : 3 , 13 , 15 ; Ezekiel 18 : 5 ; 33 : 14 , 16 , 19 ;
Amos 6 : 12 ; Micah 7 : 9 ; Deuteronomy 33 : 21 ; and John 16 : 8 , 10 , 11.
2. We cannot comprehend God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and omni - 52
presence unless we know what the divine design is, and unless we learn that
God is the divine design and that he imposed that design on the universe as a
whole and on everything in it as he created it.Astounding quantities and
varieties of folly have crept into human minds and slithered into the
church through the heads of its founders as a result of their not under-
standing the design that God built into the universe and everything in it.
A mere list of these foolish notions, which appears below [§§ 56 – 58 ], will
make this clear.
For now let me open a discussion of the divine design with a general
definition: A “design” is the quality of arrangement, boundaries, and inter-
action among parts, substances, or entities that together make up a form.
This quality results in a state—a state that is perfect when produced by wis-
dom acting on the basis of love, and imperfect when spawned by unsound
reasoning acting on the basis of mere desire.
This definition uses the terms substance, form, and state. By sub-
stance we mean form as well, because every substance is a form, and the
quality of that form is its state. The perfection or imperfection of that
state is a result of the design it has.
Because these points are metaphysical, though, they are unavoidably
cloaked in thick darkness; but in the ensuing discussion, application of
these terms in illustrative examples will dispel this darkness.
God is the divine design because he is substance itself and form itself. 53
He is substance because from him come all things that subsist, that came
into existence in the past, and that are coming into existence now. He is
form because every quality of [these] substances arose and arises from
him. Quality comes from no other source than form.
Now, because God is the absolute, the first, and the only substance
and form and is also the absolute and only love and the absolute and only
§53 god the creator & creation 77