In the course of the speech, he cited Proust, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Orwell, Kafka and Mann, and criticized modern-day Don Quixotes who lack his "kindhearted, merciful and humanitarian" nature and "ruthlessly assassinate and annihilate people with their huge war machines".
"It would seem strangely merciful," he wrote, "if nature should blot out these weeks of slow but inevitable torture".
Evangelicals tend to frame the problem of Christian salvation in terms of a fundamental dualism to God's nature (wrath vs. mercy, holiness vs. love, justice vs. grace) that involves a Marcionist split between the Old Testament Father (who is wrathful, holy and just) and the New Testament Son (who is merciful, loving and gracious).
This primordial nature is the "breath" of the Merciful God in his aspect as Lord.
Applying this analogy to God, we can say that God is merciful to the extent that the order of nature (what God created) exhibits merciful characteristics and angry to the extent that it is harsh toward things that do not take proper care of themselves.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
"Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy".
Since God is most good, most merciful, and most just, his omnipotence must be in accordance with these aspects of his nature.
At one point in the Treatise Spinoza observes that the biblical authors "imagined God as ruler, legislator, king, merciful, just, etc., despite the fact that all the latter are merely attributes of human nature and far removed from the divine nature" (Spinoza 2007, 63).
