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.
