Design

Design ? Man is the most proficient visible object on this earth for fulfilling the definitional requirements of design. While many definitions are possible^*1, a useful and pointed one is as follows:

Design is any combination, collation or organisation of components, be they material, ideational, motivational, aesthetic, purposive, pragmatic or idealistic, in the realm of mind or spirit, which has a cohesive, mutually supportive mode, at least in principle a construable outcome and an input mode not equatable with null conception.

If it were the last named, it would be a combination displaying useful features for some possible purpose or other but a product of system or systematiser not within the scope of addition to the extant and non-interventionist environment.

On this basis, then, man acts in his digestive (material and intellectual) powers, analytical investigatory dynamics, alignment in conceptual capacity with the conceptual conditions found in his physical environment (he uses logic and perception to unearth laws, which are themselves are conceptual in character, and inherent in 'nature', that is, in what is available for such investigation and legal statement, like E=MC^2, or Newton's laws of motion - for their own select domain). Moreover, he constructs and uses hypotheses, like Avogadro's hypothesis, to probe, these too being conceptual in postulation, and if successful, unearthing what is equally conceptual, that is, the law itself. So the subjective lays mental hands on the objective, the mind of man on the source of mental input, the personal exploratory capacity of man on the initial input which forged the universe, so that it might be subjectible to rational investigation. This being conceptually imprinted by what conceives and is operational at that level, both in understanding and in imprint facility, is found in and with conception, formulable and attested to be operational as such. Since this is creative, the agent who produces the whole range of diverse features is called the Creator.

Moreover, he uses logic and perceptive capacities, including intuition and linguistic built-in features (as potential, to be activated like much else) which ENABLE conceptual formulation and expression. ALL these features each one in itself, and all in synthesis as ONE operating unit (called man), fulfil to the uttermost the definitional design feature. There is nothing visible known to man which approaches the scope of design spread and capacity found in himself, in man.

Whatever man may make as a design, with thrust, knowledge, purpose and built-in equipment, to the extent he is successful AS a designer (as he often is), has the intellectual, practical, conceptual, purposive ingredients of his craft. It echoes them, displays them or has them inherently. Without this, the design would not come. If the existing environmental system (with its own design features, such as those immense and intense in the world of the atom), has sufficient laws, guidance and constraint, then from it alone, various resultants at its own level will follow; but these become merely the outreaches of the environmental design, and neither in theory nor in practice (as in information theory's rejection of non-intelligent information creation - we have to look at facts), does it reach to another domain altogether. Matter has its ways, discernible, detectable, definable, limiting and limited.

Possible placements of sub-units (such as electrons) does NOTHING to invent divers or divergent lines of conceptual concretisation (such as thoughts or a structure of them), or to secure ideational materialisation, or ultra-environmental creation. This requires, empirically as logically, what it takes to institute that kind of a neo-control system, with its rules, laws and codicils, constraints, restraints and meaning, each appropriate to and apt for the level of operation and designation in mind, and later brought to being. The parallel is in direct instruction and collateral information FOR man, as distinct from IN him. This external resource like the internal, needs examination to confirm its adequacy as claimant of divine direct communication to man, and being unique in this capacity, and overflowing with this feature, the Bible becomes part of the total design situation (cf. SMR, TMR), for there are very many levels, with some measures of autonomy not excluded, though all is under review (Ephesians 1:11).

Man then not only EXHIBITS design in MULTITUDES of features (physical) and functions (mental, moral, spiritual, creative, conceptual, originative, discursive, analytically resurgent in elevating thought structure beyond the visible to the invisible designs and desires of his heart), but personal. This part of his design involves not only his power to design with the designed powers of conception and construction made available with his own multiplicitous design, but his WILLINGNESS to bother, or his attraction, enticement, involvement, zest, wit, zeal, absorption in such a program and purpose, so that as ONE UNIT, a PERSON, he fulfils precisely and outrageously magnificently or exuberantly, the uttermost requirements of the definition of design (cf. Deity and Design, Designation and Destiny esp. sections 2 and 8 ).

Man could in one way, even be called meta-design, since he not only shows it physically, but mentally, morally, ideationally, idealistically, with the further design feature, that as ONE being, he may operate with individual option-selection, in terms of weakness or strength, discipline or lassitude, dutifulness in terms of the exercise of his gifts, or dismal indifference born of purposive elements, personal ennui or dynamic, all as ready for usage as an air-conditioner in a car; but in man as a person this involves the meta-design feature of SELECTION by the unit, that is, by man himself.

In this, he shows not only design, and meta-design, but design-for-liberty, which - while limited by his subjection to such elements as desire or deceit, as he chooses, as the case may or may not be - still in principle is the lot of man, who may even decide to direct his creative free-thought to things devious or delightful, creative or desecrative, cruel or gloriously kind. He may in this same way elect to make assault on his neighbour, or on the Maker of his design.

This may, in both cases, be done in many ways; and in the latter, by denying design, however illiterately, so that the endeavour to subvert language may proceed, or by imprisoning those who talk of design, or creation, or dismissing them, or removing them professionally, or by whatever other immoral resort may be creatively imagined in his free-mode mentality, morality and sense of mission. So does man's will work his chosen principles, where confusion does not cloy, though it is only when he finds the source of the wisdom with which he is made, that he does so with apt understanding. As Proverbs 18:4 puts it, "The words of a man's mouth are deep waters; the wellspring of wisdom is flowing brook." Such is the contrast.

In fact, one may ask why or how such a discriminatingly designed being as man COULD be so made that he may self-destruct, morally (leading to weakness and unproductivity or often to war), or intellectually (by burying his talents) or personally (by co-operating in the destruction of his personality by neurotic worry, self-absorption, self-centreness or arrogance - anti-realistic indifference to others or in numerous other ways). The answer is not far to seek, however.

THE PERSONAL BASIS OF DESIGNED CREATIVITY

THAT CAN TILT AT GOD, MAN OR LAUGH AT MURDER,
RANK A LITTLE ABOVE ANGELS, OR DISSIPATE

Part of the magnificence of the design of man is this, that he is not limited by his codes, but may operate in oversight with them as a gift or limit, naturally, and abuse, refuse, absorptively utilise them or even find through them further testimony of the powers and wonders from which they come, which leave him so far beyond the mere littoral of legislation, control by code or other pre-emptive program, that it is in some ways index to another domain altogether. Indeed, as he may war on his Designer, so instead of merely USING or ABUSING the creative capacity given, he may seek and find in the mercies of God, inspiration from that very source, so that there is a fellowship between the Creator of created creativity and the person who has it endowed; and it can be a very creative one.

Similarly, there is provision within his person (that is, the ultimate level of the design which he is), so that many features, verbal, imaginative, logical, may be such that they positively require work for their fulness, so that any such feature may develop on its provided lines to the uttermost, or by alternative election, be treated with contempt or reckless non-recognition.

In some ways, this is like an engine more powerful and usable when fully run-in; though in man, there is involved a further design feature called determination and courage. Thus such personal qualities, features and functions may be junked or utilised, man being gifted with many PERSONAL options about EXISTING equipment, already conceptualised and present, and in varying degrees, susceptible to moral thrust.

In other words, within man, there is not only design of the utmost distinction, and power to make designs of his own, using the same conceptual, analytically investigatory and creative powers as led to his own institution and power to run on conceptualisable lines and ideationally productive support codes, a character identity in kind: there is also the power to refuse and reject parts of what has been given to him at certain quite crucial levels. He may suicide; chide and not create; kill and not labour; crush and not care, survive and be a total failure, as if imitating a rat, fox, hound, or angel or repenting, apply for re-connection by grace..

It is not in his stars or in his genes but in himself that so much of the designated powers lie. Over these he is neither by nature immortal nor under them is he merely subject. Means from the Designer are to hand, for proper fluent use, as when an intelligent horse has a surveying rider with which it is content. Then there is wonder in what the equine agent and his rider may accomplish, the scope of the resultant though a horse be relatively lowly.

Yet there is a limit. He cannot make himself into an angel or a wolf, for example. He may try to IMITATE either, and do a passable job in some ways; but this is part of his ideational, creative and conceptual capacity at work, his non-programmed implementation, which gives him his own powers to implement, within limits on his own, the result of his deliberations, passions or dispositions of forces to hand. His will indeed may wilt, but it is not the final will operative in this scenario, his Creator being deletable in mind, but not in fact, even time itself being one of His creations and constraints for man.

Time is a crafted thing by God, like space, and He is not subject to it. On space, incidentally, a relatively recent scope of ideas, published by Dr Robert Humphreys contains fascinating features (cf. Journal of Creation, 28(3) 2014^*1A) including yet more possible dimensions, both operational and actual. Imagination in man, whether in thought or the thrust of action, is a very lively thing, for to man are accorded different dimensions (cf. SMR pp. 332G), layer on layer, for thought, response and evaluation, born of spirit and available for thrust, suitable for a being made in the image of the free and wonderful God, his Creator and craftsperson! without whose everlasting adequacy nothing has ground, reason or basis, and nothing rules, unproductive. But this is evidently not so!

The end of it is as in the beginning: there is made and active a personally productive, conceptually active being, responsible with options limited, but lively, and a mind to survey and inspect, evaluate personally and move into whatever depths or shallownesses, within limits, he may desire. Options at the level of personal understanding involve settlement with his Maker, rather than on his lees.

He may on the other hand, torching his own spirit, aspire to soaring greatness. With some nonsensical system in view, such as one which would make man matter - the mind as if sourced in the mindless, when while he has it in hand, he is in fact able to manipulate with it, and kill as Stalin is reputed to have done, some 30 or more million other persons, to indulge his tyranny, his tirades and his triumphalism. In so colliding with God, his Maker, as if he were though man with his roving thoughts, the final disposer of events, he naturally moves into the realm of judgment at the receptive level.

Thus, in making judgments about what to do, man who is not God, but creative creation, is judgeable. His options, mischosen, instead of being a source to his happiness, may become his halter, or even his noose in preparation. Cynicism and scepticism are in reality advanced stages of spiritual pathology, that can minister futilely to conscience, disrupt reason, systematise rebellion and occasion a kind of deaf-blindness which is like a spiritual anorexia (cf. SMR pp. 254-270).

Yet he is not so refined in scope, in order to get lost. The testimony of redemption is secure, systematised, sustained and irrevocable (cf. SMR, Redemption or Revolt, Ch. 3). Lost to God in himself as the contemporary norm, man assuredly is, not even knowing he is a design in the case of myriads of misled persons; but to get lost in the sense of being without your Creator when such powers are invested in you, is an offence and a dysfunction so profound that this world, as predicted by Jesus Christ (Matthew 24:22), will become unable to continue without more work from the Creator, in this case, a work of judgment proceeding and to come, and salvation, already completed for man himself, except in application.

The latter involves the restoration of any individual man to His Maker, by the avenue of re-deployment made available in the God's good news edition, the Gospel of salvation. It is a creative and designed way out of man's dilemma: HOW CAN he be himself, and yet remade! In the Gospel grace ? However, it is a matter of repentance to the truth, so that just as from his Maker he came, so to his Maker he goes, and from Him he is convicted, alerted, warned; and then, accepting the grace and restoration provided, he may become the man he was to be, pardoned, reprocessed, indeed regenerated (Titus 3:3-7), so that past things no longer rule, and ruinous choices no longer abide as master, or dictator or debaser.

"Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation;
old things have passed away: behold, all things have become new.
Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself
through Jesus Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation,
that is, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself,
not imputing their trespasses to them,
and has committed to us the word of reconciliation."

In Christ, God the Father was at work,
so that by the infinitely precious sacrifice of His Son:
(like pouring out trillions on the desert sand, except that here,
there are some containers made ready),
by this focus, this Person in the Trinity^*2 ,
He brought man the pardon, peace, acceptability and authority
fitting for the children of God.

It is as if ransomed from brigand,
sin and its associated power of evil, man is brought back home.

JUST AS CURSE HAS A CAUSE, SO LIES HAVE A BASIS

The Lord of the Lies

THIS brigand, the devil^**3 and his lying lair, sin with its deceptive touch,
wilfulness and its vaunted powers, can no longer, in the saved life,
induce the entry gate's opening, as if by a secret code; and while there is many a fight,
and some lessons are learned in failure (II Corinthians 2:11),
their fatuousness shown in results (Proverbs 1):
yet dominion is returned willingly to God, who foreknowing all,
is wise in selection; and whom does HE select ?

It is those to whom this Gospel
being addressed, does not fail to find reception (John 1:12, 3:19),
others self-selecting for eternal separation, being autonomous at least.

It is HE who knows to whom this address is effectual, for sin blinds;

but for all that,

it is not GOD who is blinded, who rejects blindly, but in His knowledge of all things,
it is man; and this, foreknown to God, is made secure in predestination (Romans 8:30ff.), that grand guarantee that in nothing will any mistake be made, for none who might be won, will be lost (Colossians 1:19ff., John 3:19), and none who might finesse duplicity to gain entrance, will achieve it. The power of God is sufficient for this; the wisdom is not deficient to achieve it; and achieve it, He does (II Timothy 2:19).

The works of sin are irrelevant to the provision of mercy, in this, that they are merely showing its need, in the midst of the curse (Romans 5, 8:17ff., Galatians 3). It is the knowledge of the soul that is is central to the work of God, who knowing His own, spiritual receptors, seen without sin in eternity, are taken in His grace. It is then not the limit in the grace of God but in the spirit of man which is the operative differential, as it is written (John 3): GOD SO LOVED THE WORLD ... CAME NOT TO JUDGE BUT TO SAVE THE WORLD ... THIS IS THE CONDEMNATION, LIGHT HAS COME INTO THE WORLD, SOME HAVE PREFERRED DARKNESS TO LIGHT. What is it that achieves condemnation in the face of SUCH love ? It is the preference for darkness. Whose is this differential and critical feature ? It is that of man, at the level relevant to, and discerned in eternity.

Since in the nature of being sunk in sin (I Corinthians 2:14, Romans 7:13-18), ALL have that sad preference (I Corinthians 2:14), this is all, as indicated in Ephesians 1:4, wrought apart from the history in sin, and of sin, and before sin, in the incandescent wonder of divine love. It is a love never muted, much disputed, thrustingly imputed where it finds its place. God has never revoked His own sovereignty, but HAS denied any part in the loss of the lost, having done all, on behalf of all (I John 2:1ff.), that some might receive it and so have His ransom given, His death not only on their behalf (as to all), but in their place (securing the ransom in actual substitution, for many - Matthew 20:28), so securing those healed by His stripes: and it is these whose sins are statedly and actually born (Isaiah 53:1-4, cf. Deuteronomy 29:18ff.).

It is HIS own divine sovereignty which accords the result; it is HIS finding which achieves it; and it is all done before this world was so much as created, where His love is for all (Colossians 1:19ff., John 3), and His finding is of some.

Design ? God has designed it all, the creation, and perceiving in advance, made allowance for the desecration, and provision for the restoration, attainment for the salvation and application of the same.

"Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ,
as though God were pleading through us:
we implore you on Christ’s behalf, be reconciled to God.
For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us,
that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."

In view of the fall of man (Genesis 3, Romans 12), originated near the first, continued in status quo since that time, as in a bankruptcy for a firm, there is a certain distancing from God which has occurred. This is so, , to the point that those so created and fallen, are aliens to the Kingdom of Heaven, in themselves without Christ and (therefore) without hope; and indeed, it is not only status and standing, as that of a fallen creation, that is in view, but function and spirit: for God IS a Spirit, and this is paramount accordingly (Ephesians 2:5ff., 4:17ff., Romans 5:1ff., 8:17ff.).

Recovery of any soul, of any living human person, is by contract or more biblically in term, covenant. In this, that God has supplied His own way, choosing to institute it by the incarnation of His eternal Word, His vicarious sacrifice for sin and federating bodily resurrection, as a creation-deep event, massive in performance, a massif of His power and love, mercy and depth of devotion to mankind (as in Titus 2-3).

Having made His creation, in His image, capable of consideration and contemplation, indeed communication with Himself, He did not forbear, but greatly loving, gave the prodigious gift necessary to clear justice, rescue life, defeat the just due of death and overcome the snarling protestations of hypocritical defiance from the devil, who was able to make men fear death because of the very justice of their plight, when it came to them! Justice however is not disbanded, but met; and truth is not divorced, but satisfied: thus (Isaiah 53),

"He shall see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied."

Within this same covenant is the power of His Holy Spirit, a third member of the trinity, to enliven the change, the marvel of the rescue, supplying the comfort, wisdom, connection, fellowship, being sent from Christ (John 15:26). This moves marvellously in the continuum of time between His ascension back to heaven, job accomplished (Acts 1:7ff, John 16:1ff., John 16:8ff.) and His gathering of His people to Himself, and the inception of judgment on this earth.

THE CURE IN THE DIVINE COVENANT

AND THE MISSIONARY MANDATE

This is the other side of the Gospel: by covenant you may be returned to Maker, Creator, who thus becomes your Redeemer, and this is a kingdom with its ways and conduct and King; but if you find this and reject Him (John 15:22ff.), then there is no other cover (Hebrews 6), method, provision, nor could any other be more free, total, comprehensive or costly to the Creator, or a better testimony to His purity of love and depth of empathy, as well as of the standards for life, which can be neither sleazy nor breezy. Rather is it a sacred and beautiful thing, fitting for Him who made it. Judgment (John 5:19-23) according to those same divine, relevant standards is then the nadir for this zenith, and the residual from this divine zeal, when despite its grandeur and grace, mercy and peace-making, it is trifled with, neglected or rejected.

With the creation in general, and man in particular, all things have their point, purpose, place, whether in blessing or cursing, uplifting or downputting, in revelation or in desecration, and are both addressed and divinely assessed. While often

what are the established procedures,

(in terms of physical laws, chemical ones, astronomical ones, physiological ones, mathematical ones, logical ones for effectual validity and operational felicity, material ones, moral ones),

are simply left to occur (Proverbs 1, so that man eats the fruit of his own dealings);

yet even here there is a prevenient consideration on the part of the Creator who, in salvation or in judgment, "works all things after the counsel of His own will" (Ephesians 1:11).

Thus,

not only does He oversee the natural deployments and growth of the systems chosen;

not merely does He superintend the rules laid down, the laws conceptually instituted and THEREFORE conceptually discernible and even statable, even mathematically very often, by man, so that the powers procedures in creation as an exercise are by no means the same (as in general is the case in any creation, at whatever level it is occurring) as those which operate in the completed work. Thus Shakespeare in creative mode is by no means the same as the reader in receptive review.

He also works within these fields, both generically (Exodus 7-12), as desired in creativity (Exodus 16-17), or judgment (Numbers 11:31ff.), and individually, in rescue from the same or enhancement as needed (Exodus 14:19ff.), or even simple addition as when a child touches his toy, or restrains it from falling over. This He may do even with special and direct individuality of application, using supernatural power direct, ultra-systematically, but by no means without effect in any designated system, in health, in war, in invention by man, in the use of His own devices (cf. II Chronicles 22:24-26, Mark 8:24ff., Mark 2). He may choose to do this, or to let it alone to exhibit the folly of misuse, or enable the results of real vision in an inventor, to appear.

Such things He does as seems good to Him, for this or that person, or people, in health or sickness, in ruin or wildness, in their self-elevation or self-negation (Isaiah 37:21ff., II Corinthians 12), in false glorying or in permitting time for the exposure of faults by their own incline (Hosea 12:7-10), in answering prayer (Acts 12, as for imprisoned Peter) or rebuking its pretence or pretension (Matthew 23:12-25), in doing things suddenly or slowly, with dramatic effect, or gradually growing testimony to warrant patient conscientiousness of method (II Chronicles 20).

There are multiple depths and dimensions to the movements of God relative to His creation, which is scarcely surprising, since His depth is infinite, His comprehension that of the all-sufficient and eternal Creator, and nothing vexes His heart by its complexity, or overtops His perspective and overview, by its height.

DESIGN MAXIMUS

His designs are therefore

formal, functional, physical, mental, moral, intellectual, conceptual, ideational, geometrical.

multi-partite in concept.

permanently perceived.

subject to natural wear where sin (misalliance, disjunction from the deity in part of whole)
occurs, as enshrined in what man has found as the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

susceptible to multiple levels of restoration as in discretionary divine healing, or personal rejuvenation (Isaiah 40:26ff.), or even regeneration, the beginning of the end of judgment, because here is the new human format for the institution of its removal from destiny (Titus 3:5ff., II Corinthians 5, John 3, Romans 8).

He may in designing an entity, incorporate a purpose material, mental, moral, spiritual, and He may institute conditions and apparatus in the entity created, to enable this purpose to be fulfilled. We often use the terminology which contains just such a concept, as when we say, "In doing this, of course, his design was to enable such and such to occur."

Design is just a beginning. Purpose is multiple in machination, multiplication, depth, subtlety, brilliance, in things slow and composite, in things fast and simple; and the means and media of the accomplishments are as he appoints. They may be a vast canvass, like this, our universe; or a minute revelation of divine dexterity and mathematics, aesthetics and exuberance as in the butterfly. They may constitute direct or indirect lessons to man.

Let us return to the dramatist. A playwright like Shakespeare may envisage, design numerous scenes in 5 Acts, for example, with all kinds of dramatic ironies and touches of wisdom and wit, and have a multiplied series of interactions which portend this or that concerning a situation and a personality, together with the interlocking and interaction of persons and the moral outcomes. How much more does the Creator who made the creativity of Shakespeare - able to envisage in things moral, physical, personal, judicial and so forth, all that is in His heart - go beyond and deploy in magnificent dynamics. Moreover, how marvellous it is to have His own personal word to those redeemed, and to those as yet unredeemed as to their status and options, in the negative, and the covenant from Himself, in the positive!

How very much more marvellous is His design, determination, decision to command all men everywhere to repent (Acts 17:13), as likewise to receive those who call on His name, those whom He knew from the first, and to enfold all in His entreaties, issuing from the heart, to the heart, to come back from alienation to redemption through Christ crucified, yes, rather risen! (Romans 8:34).

How even better it is to know that He would have all men to repent and receive the truth, the heart now made ready for it, and to become reconciled to Him by the work of reconciliation which HE has done in Christ (Colossians 1:19ff.):

bearing the blame,

dying for the same (I Peter 2:21-25),

resurrected in life eternal,

this His from the first (I John 1:1,17:1-3, 16:15),

presenting the glory liberally and freely!

This is by design (cf. John 1:9-12, Psalm 40, Isaiah 50-55): that no man anywhere has ANY ground, being confronted with and realising this mercy, this desire of the divine heart, this profundity of mercy, to imagine God is against his restoration. It is a designed salvation designated for man by the God who, always being there, COULD make what He DID make.

It is He who by His Word, made this world, that Light outshining who did it, being expressed in the understanding, however violated, of every man (John 1:9). He came ready to free mind and spirit that those who become His might liberated, be mightily soaring above earth and its fixtures (Ephesians 2:6), inundated in wonder and secured as the children of God (John 1:12, 11:25-26). He came, express (Hebrews 1:1-3), deity in format as man, and was that Light who now incarnate, had made the world, now inhabiting it for salvation for this product, this mankind (I John 1:2-4). So He came, at the declared time (Christ the Citadel Ch. 2), went, having triumphed in His saving task and finished it (Philippians 2, Ephesians 2, Hebrews 9:12), and will return when affairs finished and unrolled, it is time (I Timothy 3:16, Acts 1:7).

It is only when the name of the Lord is NOT called on in faith, when His covenant is NOT believed, His mercy is NOT validated in the heart, when in short He is not believed, however great the self-deceptions: it is only then that He is not to be found. If with ALL the heart you truly seek Him (and He KNOWS His own and their hearts before all time or any sin - Ephesians 1:4), then you will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13).

But one says, WHY should I ? or I do not know if I should ... ? and so on; then faith being dead, so is mercy not alive in the soul. NO ONE can FAIL to find God who is WILLING to do His will, said Christ (John 7:17), that is, fail to know His word as truth, as from God, so be made free to know Him as the truth, who came to show in truth the mercy in heart which is for man; but it is not for fiddling (Hebrews 6), for it is by covenant of the Almighty, the Spirit of God inscribing it on the very heart which believes in Him (Hebrews 8:10).

The sincerity of the divine quest to save sinning man is invariable, invulnerable, insatiable in love; it is imponderable, being beyond quantification, inextinguishable, but departs when, all expended and nothing attended or amended, the very spirit of man would fail were its entreaties to continue (Isaiah 57:15ff., Hosea 9:10-17). Even then, however, the Lord may act to redeem what follows, those following on, and deal marvellously beyond measure (cf. Hosea 12:10, 13:15, Micah 7:7ff.). His love is no mere effluvium, but more candid than the skies, profound than all the oceans, never intrusive, buccaneering, never sedated, acting to secure its total expression.

Thank God it is not less, which could be no more, and thus has He designed the lot for man.

Professor John Hartnett, February 16, 2016, published further reviews and information on this fascinating adventure into efforts to assess all the elements in view adequately, accurately and justly. For this, see

Movements IN or after creation figure in these arenas of thought. The intricacies of the legal formulations, mathematical finesse, creative conjunctions transcending the nothing option, a sort of useless obligato, are so intensive as to render them not merely irrational, but comic like some sort of intellectual escapism. But the escape is ineffectual.

As here,
so in Dismantling the Big Bang, Hartnett and Williams, specify defects in these manifestly logically inadequate formulations.

Indeed, you simply cannot squeeze something out of nothing, and have to have what is there from the start, or there IS no start, neither of this bit nor that piece, their frames of references, their ontological incidence nor anything else affirmable. Start with an inadequate Beginning Entity, and you still cannot by definition arrive where we are. Pull pieces slowly and sequentially IN YOUR MIND out of nothing, from time to time, and it is the same deceit. You can think a plan, but if you want to move to its result, you need action. Plans and performance are not by any means identical!

A juggler can mislead by speed; but no speed can delude on this, though negative feelings and desire can mislead marvellously well.

See A Spiritual Potpourri Ch. 12, Possess Your Possessions Vol., 6, Chs. 6, 7

Consider and marvel. If you are dissatisfied with this fallen race, do not blame God. He HAS spoken AND acted, and done so entirely self-sacrificially, and being omnipotent, effectually. He has done this in providing free redemption for man. God as the Bible indicates, CANNOT lie. The term 'God' would then be self-contradictory. It would mean denying what He freely did, and thence having dissatisfaction with it, and looking for something different. That would be a dependency on other things, the mark of a participant in a system. It is precisely for the creation of systems and all order and rationality that God Almighty, as shown in SMR, has accomplished. The ultimate and supreme has need of nothing for nothing is what could contain or direct or limit Him: there is definitionally in other words, nothing there to do it. It cannot be done.

God did far otherwise than manufacture such an abortion. Providing to man the ability NOT to love, but instead at will to hate, to reject, to rebel, He also endowed with the ability and even agility to love. Then when this was trivialised by mankind, through Adam and Eve, the solution which He provided came at once. The news of the solution to this beginning of evils for man (Genesis 3:15) was spoken from the first, and duly and in the laboratory of history, the Lord carried out the prescription. You don't have to take it; but it is there.

It is this marvellous speech to His creation, mankind, this action, this personalised redemption, which He also called into being, and worked into history culminating in the Cross. It is this rather than a self-contradictory, systematically clashing, deficiency-creating God, compelled from inner constraint to get (and hence to will, since He is Almighty) a clash with His own sufficiency through a strangulated, inadequately produced, insufficiently informed, brilliantly constructed creation: one horribly defective in direction. To want such a thing would be a signal of dependence on His creation for His satisfaction, which is a signal of NOT-GOD, to use the term used by Moses in Deuteronomy 32. In other words, such callow self-contradiction as a wandering, lying, frustrated, ignorant race with power to invent, put forward as if it were the divine creation is a contradiction in terms. It is man, not God who has sought, rebellious and irrational, to rely on such a mental confusion. It is God rather than man, who has the solution of the fallen creation (cf. Romans 5, 8); it is man who may throw it away. In His foreknowledge and predestination God has ensured there will be no error in the eternal results.