The Urantia Book
PAPER 6
THE ETERNAL SON
Indited by a Divine Counselor assigned to formulate this
statement depicting the Eternal Son of Paradise.
6:0.1 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.
6:0.2 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.
6:0.3 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.
6:0.4 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
6:1.1 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.
6:1.2 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.
6:1.3 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."
6:1.4 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."
6:1.5 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.
6:1.6 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
6:2.1 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.
6:2.2 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."
6:2.3 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.
6:2.4 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.
6:2.5 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.
6:2.6 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.
6:2.7 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.
6:2.8 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
6:3.1 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.
6:3.2 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.
6:3.3 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.
6:3.4 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.
6:3.5 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 likewise
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
6:4.1 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.
6:4.2 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.
6:4.3 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.
6:4.4 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.
6:4.5 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.
6:4.6 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.
6:4.7 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.
6:4.8 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.
6:4.9 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.
6:4.10 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
6:5.1 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.
6:5.2 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.
6:5.3 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.
6:5.4 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.
6:5.5 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.
6:5.6 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.
6:5.7 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
6:6.1 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.
6:6.2 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.
6:6.3 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.
6:6.4 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 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
6:7.1 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.
6:7.2 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.
6:7.3 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
6:8.1 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.
6:8.2 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.
6:8.3 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 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.
6:8.4 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.
6:8.5 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.
6:8.6 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.
6:8.7 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.
6:8.8 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.
6:8.9
Indited by a Divine Counselor assigned to formulate this
statement depicting the Eternal Son of Paradise.
