The Theology of The Urantia Book
Part 2: The Urantia Book View of God
- I. God the Father
- 1. The Universal Father is the God of all creation. [1:0.1] God is spirit and we should think of Him as the creator, controller, and infinite upholder of all things. [1:3.1] In science God is regarded as a cause, in philosophy an ultimate reality, and in religion as a loving Father. [4:4.7]
- 2. God is a person who can know and be known; he is the source of personality. [1:5.16] God's conduct is personal - conscious and volitional. He is not a slave to his own perfection and infinity. [12:7.6]
- 3. God is not just a synonym for nature, law, beauty, or love. He is not "the noblest work of man" neither is he manlike or machinelike. He is a transcendent reality. [1:2.1]
- 4. God is infinite, eternal, righteous, just, loving, merciful, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, and primal. [See Paper 3]
- 5. God is the bestower of personality and he dwells within us. In Him we live and move and have our being. [5:6.1], [12:7.12]
- II. God the Son
- 1. The Son is the spiritual and personal nature of God made manifest to the universes. [6:7.3] He is the eternal Word of God. [6:1.4], [12:7.12] The Eternal Son is the great mercy minister to all creation.[6:2.2]
- "The Eternal Son is a complete, exclusive, universal, and final revelation of the spirit and personality of the Universal Father." [77:7.1]
- 2. The spirit-gravity pull of the Eternal Son constitutes the secret of the Paradise ascension of surviving mortals. [7:3.2]
- 3. The Sons of the Eternal Son can incarnate in the likeness of mortal flesh. [7:5.4]
- 1. The Son is the spiritual and personal nature of God made manifest to the universes. [6:7.3] He is the eternal Word of God. [6:1.4], [12:7.12] The Eternal Son is the great mercy minister to all creation.[6:2.2]
- III. God the Spirit
- 1. The Infinite Spirit is the effective agent for the execution of the Father-Son plan for spiritual growth and Paradise attainment. God is love; the Son is mercy; and the Spirit is ministry. [8:3.5], [9:0.3]
- 2. The Infinite Spirit is the correlator of all actual reality - the manipulator of energy, the absolute mind and the source of the mind-gravity circuit, and a minister to personalities. [8:6.1], [9:1.3], [9:4.2], [9:6.1]
- 3. The ministry of the Paradise Trinity is co-ordinated. [3:6.8]
- IV. God the Supreme
- 1. God the Supreme is the actualizing God of time and space. [0:2.12] He is the personalization of the totality of evolutionary universe experience. [118:9.9] The Supreme grows as the personalities in the evolving universes attain Godlikeness.
- This concept is very close to the contemporary deity concepts in the writings of Jung, Tillich, Teilhard de Chardin, and Whitehead. Process Theology, which stems from Whiteheadian philosophy, speaks about the "primordial" nature of God ( I AM, Paradise Trinity, Absolutes) and the "consequent" nature of God (Supreme). Whitehead's "universe as living organism" parallels the concept of God the Supreme as presented in The Urantia Book. This concept of God the Supreme also has parallels with the idea of the "immanence of God" as it is developed in traditional theology.
- 2. With God the Supreme one must do something as well as be something. [115:0.1] The Supreme is the catalyzer of all universe growth. [117:3.13]
- 3. At the end of the present universe age the Supreme Being will function as an experiential sovereign of the grand universe. [117:2.7]
- 1. God the Supreme is the actualizing God of time and space. [0:2.12] He is the personalization of the totality of evolutionary universe experience. [118:9.9] The Supreme grows as the personalities in the evolving universes attain Godlikeness.
- V. God the Sevenfold
- 1. Man progressively discerns God through the ministry of God the Sevenfold. This is the "spiritual ladder" by which man ascends the universe from his planetary origin to Paradise. Mortals in our universe successively encounter God in the following order:
- 2. In spite of the complexity of the manifestations of Deity in the universe of universes, God is one and there is universal unity in his ministry. [56:0.1], [34:5.2]
- "Although Divinity may be plural in manifestation, in human experience Deity is singular, always one. Neither is spiritual ministry plural in human experience. Regardless of plurality of origin all spirit influences are one in function." [34:5.2]
- VI. The I AM Concept - The First Source and Center
- 1. The I AM achieves personality by becoming the Father of the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit. Concomitant with the differentiation of the Son and the Spirit from the Father, the isle of Paradise and the Central universe came into being. (In actuality the Paradise Trinity, Paradise, and the Central Universe have always been in existence.) [0:3.15]
- 2. The I AM has existential and potential qualities of reality expressed by the interaction of seven Absolutes:
- 1). The First Source and Center - The Universal Father.
- 2). The Second Source and Center - The Eternal Son.
- 3). The Third Source and Center - The Infinite Spirit.
- 4). The Isle of Paradise - the source of all universe energy and gravity control.
- 5). The Deity Absolute - the source of universe causational and personality potentials.
- 6). The Unqualified Absolute - the source of universe static-reactive and infinite capacity potentials.
- 7). The Universal Absolute - the source of universe unity and integration. [105:1]
- 3. God, as the First Source and Center, is primal in relation to total reality and is limited only by volition. [0:12.2]
- "The First Source and Center is that infinity who unqualifiedly transcends all mind, all matter, all spirit." [1:7.7]
- VII. Summary
- 1.The Urantia Book achieves a coherent integration of trinitarian and process theologies, combining the best of the traditional concepts of God with the most meaningful of the present day dynamic concepts (Tillich, Teilhard de Chardin, Whitehead).
- 2. Although the concept of God is greatly expanded in The Urantia Book, it is rooted in Judeo-Christian theological perspectives.
- 3.The chief contribution of The Urantia Book view of God is that it enlarges and integrates traditional concepts in a way which illuminates spiritual values while simultaneously stimulating new and creative thinking about theological and philosophical meanings.
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The Urantia Book Fellowship
Serving the Readership since 1955
