Preview #7 God and Reality

Chapter Six

UB Paper 10

The Paradise Trinity

by a Universal Censor

The Urantia Book

Paper 10 by a Universal Censor

The Paradise Trinity

10.0.1 THE Paradise Trinity of eternal Deities facilitates the Father’s escape from personality absolutism. The Trinity perfectly associates the limitless expression of God’s infinite personal will with the absoluteness of Deity. The Eternal Son and the various Sons of divine origin, together with the Conjoint Actor and his universe children, effectively provide for the Father’s liberation from the limitations otherwise inherent in primacy, perfection, changelessness, eternity, universality, absoluteness, and infinity.

(JRT) This is not difficult to understand. A bird in a golden cage may seem to be individually rich, but it is suffering from loneliness and social impoverishment. In all respects God reveals Himself as a supremely social and affectionate person. He cannot live like a bird in a golden cage.

10.0.2 The Paradise Trinity effectively provides for the full expression and perfect revelation of the eternal nature of Deity. The Stationary Sons of the Trinity likewise afford a full and perfect revelation of divine justice. The Trinity is Deity unity, and this unity rests eternally upon the absolute foundations of the divine oneness of the three original and co-ordinate and coexistent personalities, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.

10:0.3 From the present situation on the circle of eternity, looking backward into the endless past, we can discover only one inescapable inevitability in universe affairs, and that is the Paradise Trinity. I deem the Trinity to have been inevitable. As I view the past, present, and future of time, I consider nothing else in all the universe of universes to have been inevitable. The present master universe, viewed in retrospect or in prospect, is unthinkable without the Trinity. Given the Paradise Trinity, we can postulate alternate or even multiple ways of doing all things, but without the Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit we are unable to conceive how the Infinite could achieve threefold and co-ordinate personalization in the face of the absolute oneness of Deity. No other concept of creation measures up to the Trinity standards of the completeness of the absoluteness inherent in Deity unity coupled with the repleteness of volitional liberation inherent in the threefold personalization of Deity.

1. Self-Distribution of the First Source and Center

10.1.1 It would seem that the Father, back in eternity, inaugurated a policy of profound self-distribution. There is inherent in the selfless, loving, and lovable nature of the Universal Father something which causes him to reserve to himself the exercise of only those powers and that authority which he apparently finds it impossible to delegate or to bestow.

10.1.2 The Universal Father all along has divested himself of every part of himself that was bestowable on any other Creator or creature. He has delegated to his divine Sons and their associated intelligences every power and all authority that could be delegated. He has actually transferred to his Sovereign Sons, in their respective universes, every prerogative of administrative authority that was transferable. In the affairs of a local universe, he has made each Sovereign Creator Son just as perfect, competent, and authoritative as is the Eternal Son in the original and central universe. He has given away, actually bestowed, with the dignity and sanctity of personality possession, all of himself and all of his attributes, everything he possibly could divest himself of, in every way, in every age, in every place, and to every person, and in every universe except that of his central indwelling.

10.1.3 Divine personality is not self-centered; self-distribution and sharing of personality characterize divine freewill selfhood. Creatures crave association with other personal creatures; Creators are moved to share divinity with their universe children; the personality of the Infinite is disclosed as the Universal Father, who shares reality of being and equality of self with two co-ordinate personalities, the Eternal Son and the Conjoint Actor.

10.1.4 For knowledge concerning the Father’s personality and divine attributes we will always be dependent on the revelations of the Eternal Son, for when the conjoint act of creation was effected, when the Third Person of Deity sprang into personality existence and executed the combined concepts of his divine parents, the Father ceased to exist as the unqualified personality. With the coming into being of the Conjoint Actor and the materialization of the central core of creation, certain eternal changes took place. God gave himself as an absolute personality to his Eternal Son. Thus does the Father bestow the “personality of infinity” upon his only-begotten Son, while they both bestow the “conjoint personality” of their eternal union upon the Infinite Spirit.

10.1.5 For these and other reasons beyond the concept of the finite mind, it is exceedingly difficult for the human creature to comprehend God’s infinite father-personality except as it is universally revealed in the Eternal Son and, with the Son, is universally active in the Infinite Spirit.

10.1.6 Since the Paradise Sons of God visit the evolutionary worlds and sometimes even there dwell in the likeness of mortal flesh, and since these bestowals make it possible for mortal man actually to know something of the nature and character of divine personality, therefore must the creatures of the planetary spheres look to the bestowals of these Paradise Sons for reliable and trustworthy information regarding the Father, the Son, and the Spirit.

2. Deity Personalization

10.2.1 By the technique of trinitization the Father divests himself of that unqualified spirit personality which is the Son, but in so doing he constitutes himself the Father of this very Son and thereby possesses himself of unlimited capacity to become the divine Father of all subsequently created, eventuated, or other personalized types of intelligent will creatures. As the absolute and unqualified personality the Father can function only as and with the Son, but as a personal Father he continues to bestow personality upon the diverse hosts of the differing levels of intelligent will creatures, and he forever maintains personal relations of loving association with this vast family of universe children.

10.2.2 After the Father has bestowed upon the personality of his Son the fullness of himself, and when this act of self-bestowal is complete and perfect, of the infinite power and nature which are thus existent in the Father-Son union, the eternal partners conjointly bestow those qualities and attributes which constitute still another being like themselves; and this conjoint personality, the Infinite Spirit, completes the existential personalization of Deity.

10.2.3 The Son is indispensable to the fatherhood of God. The Spirit is indispensable to the fraternity of the Second and Third Persons. Three persons are a minimum social group, but this is least of all the many reasons for believing in the inevitability of the Conjoint Actor.

10:2.4 The First Source and Center is the infinite father-personality, the unlimited source personality. The Eternal Son is the unqualified personality-absolute, that divine being who stands throughout all time and eternity as the perfect revelation of the personal nature of God. The Infinite Spirit is the conjoint personality, the unique personal consequence of the everlasting Father-Son union.

10.2.5 The personality of the First Source and Center is the personality of infinity minus the absolute personality of the Eternal Son. The personality of the Third Source and Center is the superadditive consequence of the union of the liberated Father-personality and the absolute Son-personality.

10.2.6 The Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit are unique persons; none is a duplicate; each is original; all are united.

10.2.7 The Eternal Son alone experiences the fullness of divine personality relationship, consciousness of both sonship with the Father and paternity to the Spirit and of divine equality with both Father-ancestor and Spirit-associate. The Father knows the experience of having a Son who is his equal, but the Father knows no ancestral antecedents. The Eternal Son has the experience of sonship, recognition of personality ancestry, and at the same time the Son is conscious of being joint parent to the Infinite Spirit. The Infinite Spirit is conscious of twofold personality ancestry but is not parental to a co-ordinate Deity personality. With the Spirit the existential cycle of Deity personalization attains completion; the primary personalities of the Third Source and Center are experiential and are seven in number.

(JRT) Notice that the Holy Spirit is conscious of a two-fold personality ancestry. This is a demonstration of sequence without chronology. There is no chronological sequence because the Holy Spirit is eternal. There was never a time when He did not exist. But there is an absolute causal sequence because He is conscious of His own ancestry. That explains the Primacy of the Father, Who is rightly called the One First Cause and Source of everything that exists, the Infinity. However much His Self-giving and generous Love and Free Will persuades Him to share His original prerogatives, He yet remains their Self-Existent Source. Yet we should never attempt to refute or dilute in any way His absolute decision to share His Godhead equally with the Son and the Holy Spirit. That is sacrosanct.

(JRT) Monjoronson says that there is no time sequence in the Absolute. But, instead of a time sequence there is a "developmental" sequence. I find this a helpful distinction.

10.2.8 I am of origin in the Paradise Trinity. I know the Trinity as unified Deity; I also know that the Father, Son, and Spirit exist and act in their definite personal capacities. I positively know that they not only act personally and collectively, but that they also co-ordinate their performances in various groupings, so that in the end they function in seven different singular and plural capacities. And since these seven associations exhaust the possibilities for such divinity combination, it is inevitable that the realities of the universe shall appear in seven variations of values, meanings, and personality.

(JRT) The Sacred Seven are:

1. Father;

2.Son;

3.Spirit;

4.Father/Son;

5.Father/Spirit;

6.Son/Spirit;

7.Father/Son/Spirit.

The Seven Master Spirits who are the Voices of the seven permutations of the Three Absolute Deities, as well as being rulers of the Seven Finite Superuniverses, derive their functions from these permutations of the Three. This sets the spiritual pattern of cosmic creation.

3. The Three Persons of Deity

10.3.1 Notwithstanding there is only one Deity, there are three positive and divine personalizations of Deity. Regarding the endowment of man with the divine Adjusters, the Father said: “Let us make mortal man in our own image.” Repeatedly throughout the Urantian writings there occurs this reference to the acts and doings of plural Deity, clearly showing recognition of the existence and working of the three Sources and Centers.

(JRT) Not only in the UB, this is a recurrent phenomenon in the Bible also. And don't forget that the Holy Quran recognizes all the revelations stemming from Abraham.

10.3.2 We are taught that the Son and the Spirit sustain the same and equal relations to the Father in the Trinity association. In eternity and as Deities they undoubtedly do, but in time and as personalities they certainly disclose relationships of a very diverse nature. Looking from Paradise out on the universes, these relationships do seem to be very similar, but when viewed from the domains of space, they appear to be quite different.

10.3.3 The divine Sons are indeed the “Word of God,” but the children of the Spirit are truly the “Act of God.” God speaks through the Son and, with the Son, acts through the Infinite Spirit, while in all universe activities the Son and the Spirit are exquisitely fraternal, working as two equal brothers with admiration and love for an honored and divinely respected common Father.

10.3.4 The Father, Son, and Spirit are certainly equal in nature, co-ordinate in being, but there are unmistakable differences in their universe performances, and when acting alone, each person of Deity is apparently limited in absoluteness.

10.3.5 The Universal Father, prior to his self-willed divestment of the personality, powers, and attributes which constitute the Son and the Spirit, seems to have been (philosophically considered) an unqualified, absolute, and infinite Deity. But such a theoretical First Source and Center without a Son could not in any sense of the word be considered the Universal Father; fatherhood is not real without sonship. Furthermore, the Father, to have been absolute in a total sense, must have existed at some eternally distant moment alone. But he never had such a solitary existence; the Son and the Spirit are both coeternal with the Father. The First Source and Center has always been, and will forever be, the eternal Father of the Original Son and, with the Son, the eternal progenitor of the Infinite Spirit.

10.3.6 We observe that the Father has divested himself of all direct manifestations of absoluteness except absolute fatherhood and absolute volition. We do not know whether volition is an inalienable attribute of the Father; we can only observe that he did not divest himself of volition. Such infinity of will must have been eternally inherent in the First Source and Center.

(JRT) My theory is that God’s Will, which is the same as His volition, is part and parcel of the Principle of Self-Existence, and, therefore, while God may share it, He can no more alienate or abdicate it then He can cease to be God. The Principle of Self-Existence must also include Increate Love as ontologically identical with Will;  Integrity of character, which is the highest form of Love; Intelligence, Consciousness, and many other perfections known and unknown to us, that must be included in Increate Love. Also, Joy must be included, because it functions like the dynamo of energy that is also required. I admit that all this is beyond mortal understanding, but my theory does propose a logical explanation for the Self-Existence of God, as Uncaused Cause. As such, it could help people who remain baffled by the concept of God. It may be beyond ordinary logic, but it is not illogical.

(JRT) In my opinion, if the above is true as stated, then the concept of "nothingness" is a mere abstraction without any foundation in reality: it is distinctio rationis sine fundamento in re. In other words the original Absolute Infinity must include everything and everywhere that can possibly exist, subject to Its own conscious will. And what cannot exist has no existence. Therefore "nothingness" is not a reality at all. Since we know that there is something rather than nothing, and since we cannot discover any other cause of our own existence than the will of the Infinity Itself (the Brahman), therefore the existence of God as the Infinity is the most probable hypothesis in philosophy. The FACT of being implies the FACT of God.