Monday, March 11, 2013

[A]s soon as it is recognized, as in modern revelation it is, that there is more than one eternal will in the universe--indeed, an infinity of such wills or autonomous intelligences--we have cut the thread that supposes God can “do anything.” In all-important ways even He, the greatest of all, can only do with us what we will permit Him to do. Our center selves can agree or disagree, assent or resent, cooperate or oppose. To say, as the scriptures do, that God has all power and that He is almighty and that with Him all things are possible is to say that He has all the power and might it is possible to have in this universe of multiple selves. And as soon as it is recognized, as in modern revelation it is, that there are eternal inanimate things which are subject to laws, to “bounds and conditions” which God did not create but Himself has mastered, we have cut another thread of illusory omnipotence…[God] can do only what our wills and eternal laws will permit. In short, He did not make us from nothing and what He makes of us depends on us and the ultimate nature of a co-eternal universe.

Truman G. Madsen, "Human Anguish and Divine Love," Four Essays on Love, 57-58

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