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.

7120. 'Let the service be made heavy on the men' means that the assault should be enlarged. This is clear from the meaning of 'being made heavy' as being enlarged; from the meaning of 'the service', when the expression is used by those who molest by means of falsities, as the aim to bring under their control, dealt with in 6666, 6670, 6671, and so assault since it is through assaults that they aim to gain control; and from the meaning of 'the men' as those who belong to the spiritual Church. There are two words in the original language meaning a person; one is adam and the other is enosh. A person called adam means a member of the celestial Church, while a person called enosh means a member of the spiritual Church. Here the word used for 'the men' is enosh because the subject is those who belong to the spiritual Church.