286. As for God's inability to create the universe and everything in it except as a person, this is something a discerning individual can grasp very clearly on the following basis. Inwardly, we cannot deny that love and wisdom, mercy and forgiveness exist in God. God, as the source of what is good and true, is their essence. Since we cannot deny this, we cannot deny that God is a person, since none of these things can exist apart from a person. The person is their subject, and to separate them from their subject is to say that they do not exist.

Think of wisdom, and posit it outside a person. Is it anything? Can you conceive of it as something ethereal or flamelike? No, unless perhaps you think of it as within these things; and if it is within them, it must be wisdom in a form like ours. It must be in every aspect of that form. Nothing can be lacking if wisdom is to be within it.

In brief, the form of wisdom is human, and because a person is a form of wisdom, a person is also a form of love, mercy, forgiveness--of whatever is good and true, because these act in complete unison with wisdom.

On the fact that love and wisdom cannot occur except in some form, see above, 40-43.

2418. 'Do not halt in all the plain' means he was not to linger over any one of these. This is clear from the meaning of 'a plain' as every aspect of doctrine, dealt with immediately below. What not lingering over any one of them entails will be stated at verse 26, where Lot's wife is referred to as looking back behind him. That 'a plain' in the Word means all aspects of that doctrine is clear in Jeremiah,

He who lays waste will come to every city, and no city will escape; and the valley will perish, and the plain will be destroyed. Jeremiah 48:8.

'City' stands for false doctrinal teaching, 'the plain' for all aspects of that doctrine. In John,

When the thousand years have come to an end Satan will be loosed from his prison, and will come out to deceive the nations which are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. They went up therefore over the whole plain of the earth, and surrounded the camp of the saints; but fire came down from God out of heaven and consumed them. Revelation 20:7-9.

Here 'Gog and Magog' stands for people whose worship was external devoid of internal and so had become idolatrous, 1151. 'The plain of the earth' stands for the Church's matters of doctrine which they lay waste, 'the camp of the saints' for goods that flow from love and charity. 'Consumed by fire from God out of heaven' is similar in meaning to that regarding the men of Sodom and Gomorrah, in verse 24. Also in Jeremiah 33:13 matters of doctrine regarding charity are called 'cities of the mountain' and matters of doctrine regarding faith 'cities of the plain'.