Urantia Book Paper 6 The Eternal Son
SPIRITWEB ORG, PROMOTING SPIRITUAL CONSCIOUSNESS ON THE INTERNET.
Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART I: The Central and Super
Universes : The Universal Father The Nature Of God The Attributes Of God God's
Relation To The Universe God's Relation To The Individual The Eternal Son
Relation Of The Eternal Son To The Universe The Infinite Spirit Relation Of The
Infinite Spirit To The Universe The Paradise Trinity The Eternal Isle Of
Paradise The Universe Of Universes The Sacred Spheres Of Paradise The Central
And Divine Universe The Seven Superuniverses The Seven Master Spirits The Seven
Supreme Spirit Groups The Supreme Trinity Personalities The Co-ordinate
Trinity-origin Beings The Paradise Sons Of God The Paradise Creator Sons The
Trinitized Sons Of God The Solitary Messengers Higher Personalities Of The
Infinite Spirit The Messenger Hosts Of Space Ministering Spirits Of The Central
Universe Ministry Of The Primary Supernaphim Ministering Spirits Of The
Superuniverses The Universe Power Directors Personalities Of The Grand Universe
The Corps Of The Finality
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Paper 6 The Eternal Son
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Introduction
THE Eternal Son is the perfect and final expression of the "first" personal and
absolute concept of the Universal Father. Accordingly, whenever and however the
Father personally and absolutely expresses himself, he does so through his
Eternal Son, who ever has been, now is, and ever will be, the living and divine
Word. And this Eternal Son is residential at the center of all things, in
association with, and immediately enshrouding the personal presence of, the
Eternal and Universal Father.
We speak of God's "first" thought and allude to an impossible time origin of
the Eternal Son for the purpose of gaining access to the thought channels of
the human intellect. Such distortions of language represent our best efforts at
contact-compromise with the time-bound minds of mortal creatures. In the
sequential sense the Universal Father never could have had a first thought, nor
could the Eternal Son ever have had a beginning. But I was instructed to
portray the realities of eternity to the time-limited minds of mortals by such
symbols of thought and to designate the relationships of eternity by such time
concepts of sequentiality.
The Eternal Son is the spiritual personalization of the Paradise Father's
universal and infinite concept of divine reality, unqualified spirit, and
absolute personality. And thereby does the Son constitute the divine revelation
of the creator identity of the Universal Father. The perfect personality of the
Son discloses that the Father is actually the eternal and universal source of
all the meanings and values of the spiritual, the volitional, the purposeful,
and the personal.
In an effort to enable the finite mind of time to form some sequential concept
of the relationships of the eternal and infinite beings of the Paradise
Trinity, we utilize such license of conception as to refer to the "Father's
first personal, universal, and infinite concept." It is impossible for me to
convey to the human mind any adequate idea of the eternal relations of the
Deities; therefore do I employ such terms as will afford the finite mind
something of an idea of the relationship of these eternal beings in the
subsequent eras of time. We believe the Son sprang from the Father; we are
taught that both are unqualifiedly eternal. It is apparent, therefore, that no
time creature can ever fully comprehend this mystery of a Son who is derived
from the Father, and yet who is co-ordinately eternal with the Father himself.
1. IDENTITY OF THE ETERNAL SON
The Eternal Son is the original and only-begotten Son of God. He is God the
Son, the Second Person of Deity and the associate creator of all things. As the
Father is the First Great Source and Center, so the Eternal Son is the Second
Great Source and Center.
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The Eternal Son is the spiritual center and the divine administrator of the
spiritual government of the universe of universes. The Universal Father is
first a creator and then a controller; the Eternal Son is first a cocreator and
then a spiritual administrator. "God is spirit," and the Son is a personal
revelation of that spirit. The First Source and Center is the Volitional
Absolute; the Second Source and Center is the Personality Absolute.
The Universal Father never personally functions as a creator except in
conjunction with the Son or with the co-ordinate action of the Son. Had the New
Testament writer referred to the Eternal Son, he would have uttered the truth
when he wrote: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and
the Word was God. All things were made by him, and without him was not anything
made that was made."
When a Son of the Eternal Son appeared on Urantia, those who fraternized with
this divine being in human form alluded to him as "He who was from the
beginning, whom we have heard, whom we have seen with our eyes, whom we have
looked upon, and our hands have handled, even the Word of life." And this
bestowal Son came forth from the Father just as truly as did the Original Son,
as is suggested in one of his earthly prayers: "And now, O my Father, glorify
me with your own self, with the glory which I had with you before this world
was."
The Eternal Son is known by different names in various universes. In the
central universe he is known as the Co-ordinate Source, the Cocreator, and the
Associate Absolute. On Uversa, the headquarters of the superuniverse, we
designate the Son as the Co-ordinate Spirit Center and as the Eternal Spirit
Administrator. On Salvington, the headquarters of your local universe, this Son
is of record as the Second Eternal Source and Center. The Melchizedeks speak of
him as the Son of Sons. On your world, but not in your system of inhabited
spheres, this Original Son has been confused with a co-ordinate Creator Son,
Michael of Nebadon, who bestowed himself upon the mortal races of Urantia.
Although any of the Paradise Sons may fittingly be called Sons of God, we are
in the habit of reserving the designation "the Eternal Son" for this Original
Son, the Second Source and Center, cocreator with the Universal Father of the
central universe of power and perfection and cocreator of all other divine Sons
who spring from the infinite Deities.
2. NATURE OF THE ETERNAL SON
The Eternal Son is just as changeless and infinitely dependable as the
Universal Father. He is also just as spiritual as the Father, just as truly an
unlimited spirit. To you of lowly origin the Son would appear to be more
personal since he is one step nearer you in approachability than is the
Universal Father.
The Eternal Son is the eternal Word of God. He is wholly like the Father; in
fact, the Eternal Son is God the Father personally manifest to the universe of
universes. And thus it was and is and forever will be true of the Eternal Son
and of all the co-ordinate Creator Sons: "He who has seen the Son has seen the
Father."
In nature the Son is wholly like the spirit Father. When we worship the
Universal Father, actually we at the same time worship God the Son and God the
Spirit. God the Son is just as divinely real and eternal in nature as God the
Father.
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The Son not only possesses all the Father's infinite and transcendent
righteousness, but the Son is also reflective of all the Father's holiness of
character. The Son shares the Father's perfection and jointly shares the
responsibility of aiding all creatures of imperfection in their spiritual
efforts to attain divine perfection.
The Eternal Son possesses all the Father's character of divinity and attributes
of spirituality. The Son is the fullness of God's absoluteness in personality
and spirit, and these qualities the Son reveals in his personal management of
the spiritual government of the universe of universes.
God is, indeed, a universal spirit; God is spirit; and this spirit nature of
the Father is focalized and personalized in the Deity of the Eternal Son. In
the Son all spiritual characteristics are apparently greatly enhanced by
differentiation from the universality of the First Source and Center. And as
the Father shares his spirit nature with the Son, so do they together just as
fully and unreservedly share the divine spirit with the Conjoint Actor, the
Infinite Spirit.
In the love of truth and in the creation of beauty the Father and the Son are
equal except that the Son appears to devote himself more to the realization of
the exclusively spiritual beauty of universal values.
In divine goodness I discern no difference between the Father and the Son. The
Father loves his universe children as a father; the Eternal Son looks upon all
creatures both as father and as brother.
3. MINISTRY OF THE FATHER'S LOVE
The Son shares the justice and righteousness of the Trinity but overshadows
these divinity traits by the infinite personalization of the Father's love and
mercy; the Son is the revelation of divine love to the universes. As God is
love, so the Son is mercy. The Son cannot love more than the Father, but he can
show mercy to creatures in one additional way, for he not only is a primal
creator like the Father, but he is also the Eternal Son of that same Father,
thereby sharing in the sonship experience of all other sons of the Universal
Father.
The Eternal Son is the great mercy minister to all creation. Mercy is the
essence of the Son's spiritual character. The mandates of the Eternal Son, as
they go forth over the spirit circuits of the Second Source and Center, are
keyed in tones of mercy.
To comprehend the love of the Eternal Son, you must first perceive its divine
source, the Father, who is love, and then behold the unfolding of this infinite
affection in the far-flung ministry of the Infinite Spirit and his almost
limitless host of ministering personalities.
The ministry of the Eternal Son is devoted to the revelation of the God of love
to the universe of universes. This divine Son is not engaged in the ignoble
task of trying to persuade his gracious Father to love his lowly creatures and
to show mercy to the wrongdoers of time. How wrong to envisage the Eternal Son
as appealing to the Universal Father to show mercy to his lowly creatures on
the material worlds of space! Such concepts of God are crude and grotesque.
Rather should you realize that all the merciful ministrations of the Sons of
God are a direct revelation of the Father's heart of universal love and
infinite compassion. The Father's love is the real and eternal source of the
Son's mercy.
God is love, the Son is mercy. Mercy is applied love, the Father's love in
action in the person of his Eternal Son. The love of this universal Son is
like-
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wise universal. As love is comprehended on a sex planet, the love of God is
more comparable to the love of a father, while the love of the Eternal Son is
more like the affection of a mother. Crude, indeed, are such illustrations, but
I employ them in the hope of conveying to the human mind the thought that there
is a difference, not in divine content but in quality and technique of
expression, between the love of the Father and the love of the Son.
4. ATTRIBUTES OF THE ETERNAL SON
The Eternal Son motivates the spirit level of cosmic reality; the spiritual
power of the Son is absolute in relation to all universe actualities. He
exercises perfect control over the interassociation of all undifferentiated
spirit energy and over all actualized spirit reality through his absolute grasp
of spirit gravity. All pure unfragmented spirit and all spiritual beings and
values are responsive to the infinite drawing power of the primal Son of
Paradise. And if the eternal future should witness the appearance of an
unlimited universe, the spirit gravity and the spirit power of the Original Son
will be found wholly adequate for the spiritual control and effective
administration of such a boundless creation.
The Son is omnipotent only in the spiritual realm. In the eternal economy of
universe administration, wasteful and needless repetition of function is never
encountered; the Deities are not given to useless duplication of universe
ministry.
The omnipresence of the Original Son constitutes the spiritual unity of the
universe of universes. The spiritual cohesion of all creation rests upon the
everywhere active presence of the divine spirit of the Eternal Son. When we
conceive of the Father's spiritual presence, we find it difficult to
differentiate it in our thinking from the spiritual presence of the Eternal
Son. The spirit of the Father is eternally resident in the spirit of the Son.
The Father must be spiritually omnipresent, but such omnipresence appears to be
inseparable from the everywhere spirit activities of the Eternal Son. We do,
however, believe that in all situations of Father-Son presence of a dual
spiritual nature the spirit of the Son is co-ordinate with the spirit of the
Father.
In his contact with personality, the Father acts in the personality circuit. In
his personal and detectable contact with spiritual creation, he appears in the
fragments of the totality of his Deity, and these Father fragments have a
solitary, unique, and exclusive function wherever and whenever they appear in
the universes. In all such situations the spirit of the Son is co-ordinate with
the spiritual function of the fragmented presence of the Universal Father.
Spiritually the Eternal Son is omnipresent. The spirit of the Eternal Son is
most certainly with you and around you, but not within you and a part of you
like the Mystery Monitor. The indwelling Father fragment adjusts the human mind
to progressively divine attitudes, whereupon such an ascending mind becomes
increasingly responsive to the spiritual drawing power of the all-powerful
spirit-gravity circuit of the Second Source and Center.
The Original Son is universally and spiritually self-conscious. In wisdom the
Son is the full equal of the Father. In the realms of knowledge, omniscience,
we cannot distinguish between the First and Second Sources; like the Father,
the Son knows all; he is never surprised by any universe event; he comprehends
the end from the beginning.
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The Father and the Son really know the number and whereabouts of all the
spirits and spiritualized beings in the universe of universes. Not only does
the Son know all things by virtue of his own omnipresent spirit, but the Son,
equally with the Father and the Conjoint Actor, is fully cognizant of the vast
reflectivity intelligence of the Supreme Being, which intelligence is at all
times aware of all things that transpire on all the worlds of the seven
superuniverses. And there are other ways in which the Paradise Son is
omniscient.
The Eternal Son, as a loving, merciful, and ministering spiritual personality,
is wholly and infinitely equal with the Universal Father, while in all those
merciful and affectionate personal contacts with the ascendant beings of the
lower realms the Eternal Son is just as kind and considerate, just as patient
and long-suffering, as are his Paradise Sons in the local universes who so
frequently bestow themselves upon the evolutionary worlds of time.
It is needless further to expatiate on the attributes of the Eternal Son. With
the exceptions noted, it is only necessary to study the spiritual attributes of
God the Father to understand and correctly evaluate the attributes of God the
Son.
5. LIMITATIONS OF THE ETERNAL SON
The Eternal Son does not personally function in the physical domains, nor does
he function, except through the Conjoint Actor, in the levels of mind ministry
to creature beings. But these qualifications do not in any manner otherwise
limit the Eternal Son in the full and free exercise of all the divine
attributes of spiritual omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence.
The Eternal Son does not personally pervade the potentials of spirit inherent
in the infinity of the Deity Absolute, but as these potentials become actual,
they come within the all-powerful grasp of the spirit-gravity circuit of the
Son.
Personality is the exclusive gift of the Universal Father. The Eternal Son
derives personality from the Father, but he does not, without the Father,
bestow personality. The Son gives origin to a vast spirit host, but such
derivations are not personalities. When the Son creates personality, he does so
in conjunction with the Father or with the Conjoint Creator, who may act for
the Father in such relationships. The Eternal Son is thus a cocreator of
personalities, but he bestows personality upon no being and of himself, alone,
never creates personal beings. This limitation of action does not, however,
deprive the Son of the ability to create any or all types of
other-than-personal reality.
The Eternal Son is limited in transmittal of creator prerogatives. The Father,
in eternalizing the Original Son, bestowed upon him the power and privilege of
subsequently joining with the Father in the divine act of producing additional
Sons possessing creative attributes, and this they have done and now do. But
when these co-ordinate Sons have been produced, the prerogatives of creatorship
are apparently not further transmissible. The Eternal Son transmits creatorship
powers only to the first or direct personalization. Therefore, when the Father
and the Son unite to personalize a Creator Son, they achieve their purpose; but
the Creator Son thus brought into existence is never able to transmit or
delegate the prerogatives of creatorship to the various orders of Sons which he
may subsequently create, notwithstanding that, in the highest local universe
Sons, there does appear a very limited reflection of the creative attributes of
a Creator Son.
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The Eternal Son, as an infinite and exclusively personal being, cannot
fragmentize his nature, cannot distribute and bestow individualized portions of
his selfhood upon other entities or persons as do the Universal Father and the
Infinite Spirit. But the Son can and does bestow himself as an unlimited spirit
to bathe all creation and unceasingly draw all spirit personalities and
spiritual realities to himself.
Ever remember, the Eternal Son is the personal portrayal of the spirit Father
to all creation. The Son is personal and nothing but personal in the Deity
sense; such a divine and absolute personality cannot be disintegrated or
fragmentized. God the Father and God the Spirit are truly personal, but they
are also everything else in addition to being such Deity personalities.
Though the Eternal Son cannot personally participate in the bestowal of the
Thought Adjusters, he did sit in council with the Universal Father in the
eternal past, approving the plan and pledging endless co-operation, when the
Father, in projecting the bestowal of the Thought Adjusters, proposed to the
Son, "Let us make mortal man in our own image." And as the spirit fragment of
the Father dwells within you, so does the spirit presence of the Son envelop
you, while these two forever work as one for your spiritual advancement.
6. THE SPIRIT MIND
The Eternal Son is spirit and has mind, but not a mind or a spirit which mortal
mind can comprehend. Mortal man perceives mind on the finite, cosmic, material,
and personal levels. Man also observes mind phenomena in living organisms
functioning on the subpersonal (animal) level, but it is difficult for him to
grasp the nature of mind when associated with supermaterial beings and as a
part of exclusive spirit personalities. Mind must, however, be differently
defined when it refers to the spirit level of existence, and when it is used to
denote spirit functions of intelligence. That kind of mind which is directly
allied with spirit is comparable neither to that mind which co-ordinates spirit
and matter nor to that mind which is allied only with matter.
Spirit is ever conscious, minded, and possessed of varied phases of identity.
Without mind in some phase there would be no spiritual consciousness in the
fraternity of spirit beings. The equivalent of mind, the ability to know and be
known, is indigenous to Deity. Deity may be personal, prepersonal,
superpersonal, or impersonal, but Deity is never mindless, that is, never
without the ability at least to communicate with similar entities, beings, or
personalities.
The mind of the Eternal Son is like that of the Father but unlike any other
mind in the universe, and with the mind of the Father it is ancestor to the
diverse and far-flung minds of the Conjoint Creator. The mind of the Father and
the Son, that intellect which is ancestral to the absolute mind of the Third
Source and Center, is perhaps best illustrated in the premind of a Thought
Adjuster, for, though these Father fragments are entirely outside of the mind
circuits of the Conjoint Actor, they have some form of premind; they know as
they are known; they enjoy the equivalent of human thinking.
The Eternal Son is wholly spiritual; man is very nearly entirely material;
therefore much pertaining to the spirit personality of the Eternal Son, to his
seven spiritual spheres encircling Paradise and to the nature of the impersonal
creations of the Paradise Son, will have to await your attainment of spirit
status following your completion of the morontia ascension of the local
universe of
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Nebadon. And then, as you pass through the superuniverse and on to Havona, many
of these spirit-concealed mysteries will clarify as you begin to be endowed
with the "mind of the spirit"--spiritual insight.
7. PERSONALITY OF THE ETERNAL SON
The Eternal Son is that infinite personality from whose unqualified personality
fetters the Universal Father escaped by the technique of trinitization, and by
virtue of which he has ever since continued to bestow himself in endless
profusion upon his ever-expanding universe of Creators and creatures. The Son
is absolute personality; God is father personality--the source of personality,
the bestower of personality, the cause of personality. Every personal being
derives personality from the Universal Father just as the Original Son
eternally derives his personality from the Paradise Father.
The personality of the Paradise Son is absolute and purely spiritual, and this
absolute personality is also the divine and eternal pattern, first, of the
Father's bestowal of personality upon the Conjoint Actor and, subsequently, of
his bestowal of personality upon the myriads of his creatures throughout a
far-flung universe.
The Eternal Son is truly a merciful minister, a divine spirit, a spiritual
power, and a real personality. The Son is the spiritual and personal nature of
God made manifest to the universes--the sum and substance of the First Source
and Center, divested of all that which is nonpersonal, extradivine,
nonspiritual, and pure potential. But it is impossible to convey to the human
mind a word picture of the beauty and grandeur of the supernal personality of
the Eternal Son. Everything that tends to obscure the Universal Father operates
with almost equal influence to prevent the conceptual recognition of the
Eternal Son. You must await your attainment of Paradise, and then you will
understand why I was unable to portray the character of this absolute
personality to the understanding of the finite mind.
8. REALIZATION OF THE ETERNAL SON
Concerning identity, nature, and other attributes of personality, the Eternal
Son is the full equal, the perfect complement, and the eternal counterpart of
the Universal Father. In the same sense that God is the Universal Father, the
Son is the Universal Mother. And all of us, high and low, constitute their
universal family.
To appreciate the character of the Son, you should study the revelation of the
divine character of the Father; they are forever and inseparably one. As divine
personalities they are virtually indistinguishable by the lower orders of
intelligence. They are not so difficult of separate recognition by those whose
origin is in the creative acts of the Deities themselves. Beings of nativity in
the central universe and on Paradise discern the Father and the Son not only as
one personal unity of universal control but also as two separate personalities
functioning in definite domains of universe administration.
As persons you may conceive of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son as
separate individuals, for they indeed are; but in the administration of the
universes they are so intertwined and interrelated that it is not always
possible to distinguish between them. When, in the affairs of the universes,
the Father and the Son
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are encountered in confusing interassociations, it is not always profitable to
attempt to segregate their operations; merely recall that God is the initiating
thought and the Son is the expressionful word. In each local universe this
inseparability is personalized in the divinity of the Creator Son, who stands
for both Father and Son to the creatures of ten million inhabited worlds.
The Eternal Son is infinite, but he is approachable through the persons of his
Paradise Sons and through the patient ministry of the Infinite Spirit. Without
the bestowal service of the Paradise Sons and the loving ministry of the
creatures of the Infinite Spirit, beings of material origin could hardly hope
to attain the Eternal Son. And it is equally true: With the help and guidance
of these celestial agencies the God-conscious mortal will certainly attain
Paradise and sometime stand in the personal presence of this majestic Son of
Sons.
Even though the Eternal Son is the pattern of mortal personality attainment,
you find it easier to grasp the reality of both the Father and the Spirit
because the Father is the actual bestower of your human personality and the
Infinite Spirit is the absolute source of your mortal mind. But as you ascend
in the Paradise path of spiritual progression, the personality of the Eternal
Son will become increasingly real to you, and the reality of his infinitely
spiritual mind will become more discernible to your progressively
spiritualizing mind.
Never can the concept of the Eternal Son shine brightly in your material or
subsequent morontial mind; not until you spiritize and commence your spirit
ascension will the comprehension of the personality of the Eternal Son begin to
equal the vividness of your concept of the personality of the Creator Son of
Paradise origin who, in person and as a person, onetime incarnated and lived on
Urantia as a man among men.
Throughout your local universe experience the Creator Son, whose personality is
comprehensible by man, must compensate for your inability to grasp the full
significance of the more exclusively spiritual, but none the less personal,
Eternal Son of Paradise. As you progress through Orvonton and Havona, as you
leave behind you the vivid picture and deep memories of the Creator Son of your
local universe, the passing of this material and morontia experience will be
compensated by ever-enlarging concepts and intensifying comprehension of the
Eternal Son of Paradise, whose reality and nearness will ever augment as you
progress Paradiseward.
The Eternal Son is a grand and glorious personality. Although it is beyond the
powers of the mortal and material mind to grasp the actuality of the
personality of such an infinite being, doubt not, he is a person. I know
whereof I speak. Times almost without number I have stood in the divine
presence of this Eternal Son and then journeyed forth in the universe to
execute his gracious bidding.
[Indited by a Divine Counselor assigned to formulate this statement depicting
the Eternal Son of Paradise.]
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Subjects Archive The Urantia Book Urantia Book PART I: The Central and Super
Universes : The Universal Father The Nature Of God The Attributes Of God God's
Relation To The Universe God's Relation To The Individual The Eternal Son
Relation Of The Eternal Son To The Universe The Infinite Spirit Relation Of The
Infinite Spirit To The Universe The Paradise Trinity The Eternal Isle Of
Paradise The Universe Of Universes The Sacred Spheres Of Paradise The Central
And Divine Universe The Seven Superuniverses The Seven Master Spirits The Seven
Supreme Spirit Groups The Supreme Trinity Personalities The Co-ordinate
Trinity-origin Beings The Paradise Sons Of God The Paradise Creator Sons The
Trinitized Sons Of God The Solitary Messengers Higher Personalities Of The
Infinite Spirit The Messenger Hosts Of Space Ministering Spirits Of The Central
Universe Ministry Of The Primary Supernaphim Ministering Spirits Of The
Superuniverses The Universe Power Directors Personalities Of The Grand Universe
The Corps Of The Finality
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