All-Mercy Face of the Divine, effecting a greater contraction of here-and-now Divine consciousness. For the inviolability and integrity of the holy core dynamic-“quest for potential”-must be vigilantly protected.

To undermine “quest for potential” would undermine the very core of the Divine and of Divine Creation. This is the true underlying message of the Jobian finale. Job’s protestations of gratuitous suffering bring forth the Divine response in two complete chapters devoted to the Divine as the source of the wonder of creation. At the crux of Divine Creation-quest for potentiality-lies the elusive solution to the problem of theodicy.

The Divine “response” to Job begins as follows:

Where wast thou
when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare if thou hast the understanding! …
Whereupon were the foundations thereof fastened? …
When the morning stars sang together,
And all the creations of God shouted for joy …
Canst thou bind the chains of the Pleiades,
Or loose the bands of Orion?
-Job 38:4-13

Upon closer observation and interpretation in light of our formulation, the dazzling Divine response is seen as one not of ultimate unfathomability, but rather as one of cloaked fathomability, concealed in the majestic spendor of Divine poetry. It is this same inviolate core dynamic, which was central to the Divine creation of the foundations of the earth and of the multiplicity of wondrous Divine creations, which ultimately allows gratuitous evil to go unchallenged in the millennia to come later.

The dynamic of “quest for potential” is crucial to the Divine. crucial to creation, and crucial to theodicy. This is implicit in the message of the Jobian finale. In retrospect, the solution to theodicy required the discernment of a dynamic of such alltranscending power; else the all-merciful, all-powerful Divine