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The 5th Epochal Revelation
-The Urantia Papers
PAPER 6
THE ETERNAL SON
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.
*
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