PAPER 104
GROWTH OF THE TRINITY CONCEPT
104:0.1 THE Trinity concept of revealed religion
must not be confused with the triad beliefs of evolutionary religions. The
ideas of triads arose from many suggestive relationships but chiefly because
of the three joints of the fingers, because three legs were the fewest which
could stabilize a stool, because three support points could keep up a tent;
furthermore, primitive man, for a long time, could not count beyond
three.
104:0.2 Aside from certain natural couplets, such as
past and present, day and night, hot and cold, and male and female, man
generally tends to think in triads: yesterday, today, and tomorrow; sunrise,
noon, and sunset; father, mother, and child. Three cheers are given the
victor. The dead are buried on the third day, and the ghost is placated by
three ablutions of water.
104:0.3 As a consequence of these natural
associations in human experience, the triad made its appearance in religion,
and this long before the Paradise Trinity of Deities, or even any of their
representatives, had been revealed to mankind. Later on, the Persians, Hindus,
Greeks, Egyptians, Babylonians, Romans, and Scandinavians all had triad gods,
but these were still not true trinities. Triad deities all had a natural
origin and have appeared at one time or another among most of the intelligent
peoples of Urantia. Sometimes the concept of an evolutionary triad has become
mixed with that of a revealed Trinity; in these instances it is often
impossible to distinguish one from the other.
1. URANTIAN TRINITY CONCEPTS
104:1.1 The first Urantian revelation leading to the
comprehension of the Paradise Trinity was made by the staff of Prince
Caligastia about one-half million years ago. This earliest Trinity concept was
lost to the world in the unsettled times following the planetary
rebellion.
104:1.2 The second presentation of the Trinity was
made by Adam and Eve in the first and second gardens. These teachings had not
been wholly obliterated even in the times of Machiventa Melchizedek about
thirty-five thousand years later, for the Trinity concept of the Sethites
persisted in both Mesopotamia and Egypt but more especially in India, where it
was long perpetuated in Agni, the Vedic three-headed fire god.
104:1.3 The third presentation of the Trinity was
made by Machiventa Melchizedek, and this doctrine was symbolized by the three
concentric circles which the sage of Salem wore on his breast plate. But
Machiventa found it very difficult to teach the Palestinian Bedouins about the
Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit. Most of his
disciples thought that the Trinity consisted of the three Most Highs of
Norlatiadek; a few conceived of the Trinity as the System Sovereign, the
Constellation Father, and the local universe Creator Deity; still fewer even
remotely grasped the idea of the Paradise association of the Father, Son, and
Spirit.
104:1.4 Through the activities of the Salem
missionaries the Melchizedek teachings of the Trinity gradually spread
throughout much of Eurasia and northern Africa. It is often difficult to
distinguish between the triads and the trinities in the later Andite and the
post-Melchizedek ages, when both concepts to a certain extent intermingled and
coalesced.
104:1.5 Among the Hindus the trinitarian concept
took root as Being, Intelligence, and Joy. (A later Indian conception was
Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu.) While the earlier Trinity portrayals were brought
to India by the Sethite priests, the later ideas of the Trinity were imported
by the Salem missionaries and were developed by the native intellects of India
through a compounding of these doctrines with the evolutionary triad
conceptions.
104:1.6 The Buddhist faith developed two doctrines
of a trinitarian nature: The earlier was Teacher, Law, and Brotherhood; that
was the presentation made by Gautama Siddhartha. The later idea, developing
among the northern branch of the followers of Buddha, embraced Supreme Lord,
Holy Spirit, and Incarnate Savior.
104:1.7 And these ideas of the Hindus and Buddhists
were real trinitarian postulates, that is, the idea of a threefold
manifestation of a monotheistic God. A true trinity conception is not just a
grouping together of three separate gods.
104:1.8 The Hebrews knew about the Trinity from the
Kenite traditions of the days of Melchizedek, but their monotheistic zeal for
the one God, Yahweh, so eclipsed all such teachings that by the time of Jesus'
appearance the Elohim doctrine had been practically eradicated from Jewish
theology. The Hebrew mind could not reconcile the trinitarian concept with the
monotheistic belief in the One Lord, the God of Israel.
104:1.9 The followers of the Islamic faith likewise
failed to grasp the idea of the Trinity. It is always difficult for an
emerging monotheism to tolerate trinitarianism when confronted by polytheism.
The trinity idea takes best hold of those religions which have a firm
monotheistic tradition coupled with doctrinal elasticity. The great
monotheists, the Hebrews and Mohammedans, found it difficult to distinguish
between worshiping three gods, polytheism, and trinitarianism, the worship of
one Deity existing in a triune manifestation of divinity and personality.
104:1.10 Jesus taught his apostles the truth
regarding the persons of the Paradise Trinity, but they thought he spoke
figuratively and symbolically. Having been nurtured in Hebraic monotheism,
they found it difficult to entertain any belief that seemed to conflict with
their dominating concept of Yahweh. And the early Christians inherited the
Hebraic prejudice against the Trinity concept.
104:1.11 The first Trinity of Christianity was
proclaimed at Antioch and consisted of God, his Word, and his Wisdom. Paul
knew of the Paradise Trinity of Father, Son, and Spirit, but he seldom
preached about it and made mention thereof in only a few of his letters to the
newly forming churches. Even then, as did his fellow apostles, Paul confused
Jesus, the Creator Son of the local universe, with the Second Person of Deity,
the Eternal Son of Paradise.
104:1.12 The Christian concept of the Trinity, which
began to gain recognition near the close of the first century after Christ,
was comprised of the Universal Father, the Creator Son of Nebadon, and the
Divine Minister of Salvington -- Mother Spirit of the local universe and
creative consort of the Creator Son.
104:1.13 Not since the times of Jesus has the
factual identity of the Paradise Trinity been known on Urantia (except by a
few individuals to whom it was especially revealed) until its presentation in
these revelatory disclosures. But though the Christian concept of the Trinity
erred in fact, it was practically true with respect to spiritual
relationships. Only in its philosophic implications and cosmological
consequences did this concept suffer embarrassment: It has been difficult for
many who are cosmic minded to believe that the Second Person of Deity, the
second member of an infinite Trinity, once dwelt on Urantia; and while in
spirit this is true, in actuality it is not a fact. The Michael Creators fully
embody the divinity of the Eternal Son, but they are not the absolute
personality.
2. TRINITY UNITY AND DEITY PLURALITY
104:2.1 Monotheism arose as a philosophic protest
against the inconsistency of polytheism. It developed first through pantheon
organizations with the departmentalization of supernatural activities, then
through the henotheistic exaltation of one god above the many, and finally
through the exclusion of all but the One God of final value.
104:2.2 Trinitarianism grows out of the experiential
protest against the impossibility of conceiving the oneness of a
deanthropomorphized solitary Deity of unrelated universe significance. Given a
sufficient time, philosophy tends to abstract the personal qualities from the
Deity concept of pure monotheism, thus reducing this idea of an unrelated God
to the status of a pantheistic Absolute. It has always been difficult to
understand the personal nature of a God who has no personal relationships in
equality with other and co-ordinate personal beings. Personality in Deity
demands that such Deity exist in relation to other and equal personal
Deity.
104:2.3 Through the recognition of the Trinity
concept the mind of man can hope to grasp something of the interrelationship
of love and law in the time-space creations. Through spiritual faith man gains
insight into the love of God but soon discovers that this spiritual faith has
no influence on the ordained laws of the material universe. Irrespective of
the firmness of man's belief in God as his Paradise Father, expanding cosmic
horizons demand that he also give recognition to the reality of Paradise Deity
as universal law, that he recognize the Trinity sovereignty extending outward
from Paradise and overshadowing even the evolving local universes of the
Creator Sons and Creative Daughters of the three eternal persons whose deity
union is the fact and reality and eternal indivisibility of the Paradise
Trinity.
104:2.4 And this selfsame Paradise Trinity is a real
entity -- not a personality but nonetheless a true and absolute reality; not a
personality but nonetheless compatible with coexistent personalities -- the
personalities of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. The Trinity is a
supersummative Deity reality eventuating out of the conjoining of the three
Paradise Deities. The qualities, characteristics, and functions of the Trinity
are not the simple sum of the attributes of the three Paradise Deities;
Trinity functions are something unique, original, and not wholly predictable
from an analysis of the attributes of Father, Son, and Spirit.
104:2.5 For example: The Master, when on earth,
admonished his followers that justice is never a personal act; it is
always a group function. Neither do the Gods, as persons, administer
justice. But they perform this very function as a collective whole, as the
Paradise Trinity.
104:2.6 The conceptual grasp of the Trinity
association of Father, Son, and Spirit prepares the human mind for the further
presentation of certain other threefold relationships. Theological reason may
be fully satisfied by the concept of the Paradise Trinity, but philosophical
and cosmological reason demand the recognition of the other triune
associations of the First Source and Center, those triunities in which the
Infinite functions in various non-Father capacities of universal manifestation
-- the relationships of the God of force, energy, power, causation, reaction,
potentiality, actuality, gravity, tension, pattern, principle, and unity.
3. TRINITIES AND TRIUNITIES
104:3.1 While mankind has sometimes grasped at an
understanding of the Trinity of the three persons of Deity, consistency
demands that the human intellect perceive that there are certain relationships
between all seven Absolutes. But all that which is true of the Paradise
Trinity is not necessarily true of a triunity, for a triunity is
something other than a trinity. In certain functional aspects a triunity may
be analogous to a trinity, but it is never homologous in nature with a
trinity.
104:3.2 Mortal man is passing through a great age of
expanding horizons and enlarging concepts on Urantia, and his cosmic
philosophy must accelerate in evolution to keep pace with the expansion of the
intellectual arena of human thought. As the cosmic consciousness of mortal man
expands, he perceives the interrelatedness of all that he finds in his
material science, intellectual philosophy, and spiritual insight. Still, with
all this belief in the unity of the cosmos, man perceives the diversity of all
existence. In spite of all concepts concerning the immutability of Deity, man
perceives that he lives in a universe of constant change and experiential
growth. Regardless of the realization of the survival of spiritual values, man
has ever to reckon with the mathematics and premathematics of force, energy,
and power.
104:3.3 In some manner the eternal repleteness of
infinity must be reconciled with the time-growth of the evolving universes and
with the incompleteness of the experiential inhabitants thereof. In some way
the conception of total infinitude must be so segmented and qualified that the
mortal intellect and the morontia soul can grasp this concept of final value
and spiritualizing significance.
104:3.4 While reason demands a monotheistic unity of
cosmic reality, finite experience requires the postulate of plural Absolutes
and of their co-ordination in cosmic relationships. Without co-ordinate
existences there is no possibility for the appearance of diversity of absolute
relationships, no chance for the operation of differentials, variables,
modifiers, attenuators, qualifiers, or diminishers.
104:3.5 In these papers total reality (infinity) has
been presented as it exists in the seven Absolutes:
1. The Universal Father.
2. The Eternal Son.
3. The Infinite Spirit.
4. The Isle of Paradise.
5. The Deity Absolute.
6. The Universal Absolute.
7. The Unqualified Absolute.
104:3.6 The First Source and Center, who is Father
to the Eternal Son, is also Pattern to the Paradise Isle. He is personality
unqualified in the Son but personality potentialized in the Deity Absolute.
The Father is energy revealed in Paradise-Havona and at the same time energy
concealed in the Unqualified Absolute. The Infinite is ever disclosed in the
ceaseless acts of the Conjoint Actor while he is eternally functioning in the
compensating but enshrouded activities of the Universal Absolute. Thus is the
Father related to the six co-ordinate Absolutes, and thus do all seven
encompass the circle of infinity throughout the endless cycles of eternity.
104:3.7 It would seem that triunity of absolute
relationships is inevitable. Personality seeks other personality association
on absolute as well as on all other levels. And the association of the three
Paradise personalities eternalizes the first triunity, the personality union
of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. For when these three persons, as
persons, conjoin for united function, they thereby constitute a triunity
of functional unity, not a trinity -- an organic entity -- but nonetheless a
triunity, a threefold functional aggregate unanimity.
104:3.8 The Paradise Trinity is not a triunity; it
is not a functional unanimity; rather is it undivided and indivisible Deity.
The Father, Son, and Spirit (as persons) can sustain a relationship to the
Paradise Trinity, for the Trinity is their undivided Deity. The Father, Son,
and Spirit sustain no such personal relationship to the first triunity, for
that is their functional union as three persons. Only as the Trinity -- as
undivided Deity -- do they collectively sustain an external relationship to
the triunity of their personal aggregation.
104:3.9 Thus does the Paradise Trinity stand unique
among absolute relationships; there are several existential triunities but
only one existential Trinity. A triunity is not an entity. It is functional
rather than organic. Its members are partners rather than corporative. The
components of the triunities may be entities, but a triunity itself is an
association.
104:3.10 There is, however, one point of comparison
between trinity and triunity: Both eventuate in functions that are something
other than the discernible sum of the attributes of the component members. But
while they are thus comparable from a functional standpoint, they otherwise
exhibit no categorical relationship. They are roughly related as the relation
of function to structure. But the function of the triunity association is not
the function of the trinity structure or entity.
104:3.11 The triunities are nonetheless real; they
are very real. In them is total reality functionalized, and through them does
the Universal Father exercise immediate and personal control over the master
functions of infinity.
4. THE SEVEN TRIUNITIES
104:4.1 In attempting the description of seven
triunities, attention is directed to the fact that the Universal Father is the
primal member of each. He is, was, and ever will be: the First Universal
Father-Source, Absolute Center, Primal Cause, Universal Controller, Limitless
Energizer, Original Unity, Unqualified Upholder, First Person of Deity, Primal
Cosmic Pattern, and Essence of Infinity. The Universal Father is the personal
cause of the Absolutes; he is the absolute of Absolutes.
104:4.2 The nature and meaning of the seven
triunities may be suggested as:
104:4.3 The First Triunity -- the
personal-purposive triunity. This is the grouping of the three Deity
personalities:
1. The Universal Father.
2. The Eternal Son.
3. The Infinite Spirit.
104:4.4 This is the threefold union of love, mercy,
and ministry -- the purposive and personal association of the three eternal
Paradise personalities. This is the divinely fraternal, creature-loving,
fatherly-acting, and ascension-promoting association. The divine personalities
of this first triunity are personality-bequeathing, spirit-bestowing, and
mind-endowing Gods.
104:4.5 This is the triunity of infinite volition;
it acts throughout the eternal present and in all of the past-present-future
flow of time. This association yields volitional infinity and provides the
mechanisms whereby personal Deity becomes self-revelatory to the creatures of
the evolving cosmos.
104:4.6 The Second Triunity -- the power-pattern
triunity. Whether it be a tiny ultimaton, a blazing star, or a whirling
nebula, even the central or superuniverses, from the smallest to the largest
material organizations, always is the physical pattern -- the cosmic
configuration -- derived from the function of this triunity. This association
consists of:
1. The Father-Son.
2. The Paradise Isle.
3. The Conjoint Actor.
104:4.7 Energy is organized by the cosmic agents of
the Third Source and Center; energy is fashioned after the pattern of
Paradise, the absolute materialization; but behind all of this ceaseless
manipulation is the presence of the Father-Son, whose union first activated
the Paradise pattern in the appearance of Havona concomitant with the birth of
the Infinite Spirit, the Conjoint Actor.
104:4.8 In religious experience, creatures make
contact with the God who is love, but such spiritual insight must never
eclipse the intelligent recognition of the universe fact of the pattern which
is Paradise. The Paradise personalities enlist the freewill adoration of all
creatures by the compelling power of divine love and lead all such spirit-born
personalities into the supernal delights of the unending service of the
finaliter sons of God. The second triunity is the architect of the space stage
whereon these transactions unfold; it determines the patterns of cosmic
configuration.
104:4.9 Love may characterize the divinity of the
first triunity, but pattern is the galactic manifestation of the second
triunity. What the first triunity is to evolving personalities, the second
triunity is to the evolving universes. Pattern and personality are two of the
great manifestations of the acts of the First Source and Center; and no matter
how difficult it may be to comprehend, it is nonetheless true that the
power-pattern and the loving person are one and the same universal reality;
the Paradise Isle and the Eternal Son are co-ordinate but antipodal
revelations of the unfathomable nature of the Universal Father-Force.
104:4.10 The Third Triunity -- the
spirit-evolutional triunity. The entirety of spiritual manifestation has
its beginning and end in this association, consisting of:
1. The Universal Father.
2. The Son-Spirit.
3. The Deity Absolute.
104:4.11 From spirit potency to Paradise spirit, all
spirit finds reality expression in this triune association of the pure spirit
essence of the Father, the active spirit values of the Son-Spirit, and the
unlimited spirit potentials of the Deity Absolute. The existential values of
spirit have their primordial genesis, complete manifestation, and final
destiny in this triunity.
104:4.12 The Father exists before spirit; the
Son-Spirit functions as active creative spirit; the Deity Absolute exists as
all-encompassing spirit, even beyond spirit.
104:4.13 The Fourth Triunity -- the triunity of
energy infinity. Within this triunity there eternalizes the beginnings and
the endings of all energy reality, from space potency to monota. This grouping
embraces the following:
1. The Father-Spirit.
2. The Paradise Isle.
3. The Unqualified Absolute.
104:4.14 Paradise is the center of the force-energy
activation of the cosmos -- the universe position of the First Source and
Center, the cosmic focal point of the Unqualified Absolute, and the source of
all energy. Existentially present within this triunity is the energy potential
of the cosmos-infinite, of which the grand universe and the master universe
are only partial manifestations.
104:4.15 The fourth triunity absolutely controls the
fundamental units of cosmic energy and releases them from the grasp of the
Unqualified Absolute in direct proportion to the appearance in the
experiential Deities of subabsolute capacity to control and stabilize the
metamorphosing cosmos.
104:4.16 This triunity is force and energy.
The endless possibilities of the Unqualified Absolute are centered around the
absolutum of the Isle of Paradise, whence emanate the unimaginable agitations
of the otherwise static quiescence of the Unqualified. And the endless
throbbing of the material Paradise heart of the infinite cosmos beats in
harmony with the unfathomable pattern and the unsearchable plan of the
Infinite Energizer, the First Source and Center.
104:4.17 The Fifth Triunity -- the triunity of
reactive infinity. This association consists of:
1. The Universal Father.
2. The Universal Absolute.
3. The Unqualified Absolute.
104:4.18 This grouping yields the eternalization of
the functional infinity realization of all that is actualizable within the
domains of nondeity reality. This triunity manifests unlimited reactive
capacity to the volitional, causative, tensional, and patternal actions and
presences of the other triunities.
104:4.19 The Sixth Triunity -- the triunity of
cosmic-associated Deity. This grouping consists of:
1. The Universal Father.
2. The Deity Absolute.
3. The Universal Absolute.
104:4.20 This is the association of
Deity-in-the-cosmos, the immanence of Deity in conjunction with the
transcendence of Deity. This is the last outreach of divinity on the levels of
infinity toward those realities which lie outside the domain of deified
reality.
104:4.21 The Seventh Triunity -- the triunity of
infinite unity. This is the unity of infinity functionally manifest in
time and eternity, the co-ordinate unification of actuals and potentials. This
group consists of:
1. The Universal Father.
2. The Conjoint Actor.
3. The Universal Absolute.
104:4.22 The Conjoint Actor universally integrates
the varying functional aspects of all actualized reality on all levels of
manifestation, from finites through transcendentals and on to absolutes. The
Universal Absolute perfectly compensates the differentials inherent in the
varying aspects of all incomplete reality, from the limitless potentialities
of active-volitional and causative Deity reality to the boundless
possibilities of static, reactive, nondeity reality in the incomprehensible
domains of the Unqualified Absolute.
104:4.23 As they function in this triunity, the
Conjoint Actor and the Universal Absolute are alike responsive to Deity and to
nondeity presences, as also is the First Source and Center, who in this
relationship is to all intents and purposes conceptually indistinguishable
from the I AM.
104:4.24 These approximations are sufficient to
elucidate the concept of the triunities. Not knowing the ultimate level of the
triunities, you cannot fully comprehend the first seven. While we do not deem
it wise to attempt any further elaboration, we may state that there are
fifteen triune associations of the First Source and Center, eight of which are
unrevealed in these papers. These unrevealed associations are concerned with
realities, actualities, and potentialities which are beyond the experiential
level of supremacy.
104:4.25 The triunities are the functional balance
wheel of infinity, the unification of the uniqueness of the Seven Infinity
Absolutes. It is the existential presence of the triunities that enables the
Father-I AM to experience functional infinity unity despite the
diversification of infinity into seven Absolutes. The First Source and Center
is the unifying member of all triunities; in him all things have their
unqualified beginnings, eternal existences, and infinite destinies -- "in him
all things consist."
104:4.26 Although these associations cannot augment
the infinity of the Father-I AM, they do appear to make possible the
subinfinite and subabsolute manifestations of his reality. The seven
triunities multiply versatility, eternalize new depths, deitize new values,
disclose new potentialities, reveal new meanings; and all these diversified
manifestations in time and space and in the eternal cosmos are existent in the
hypothetical stasis of the original infinity of the I AM.
5. TRIODITIES
104:5.1 There are certain other triune relationships
which are non-Father in constitution, but they are not real triunities, and
they are always distinguished from the Father triunities. They are called
variously, associate triunities, co-ordinate triunities, and
triodities. They are consequential to the existence of the triunities.
Two of these associations are constituted as follows:
104:5.2 The Triodity of Actuality. This
triodity consists in the interrelationship of the three absolute actuals:
1. The Eternal Son.
2. The Paradise Isle.
3. The Conjoint Actor.
104:5.3 The Eternal Son is the absolute of spirit
reality, the absolute personality. The Paradise Isle is the absolute of cosmic
reality, the absolute pattern. The Conjoint Actor is the absolute of mind
reality, the co-ordinate of absolute spirit reality, and the existential Deity
synthesis of personality and power. This triune association eventuates the
co-ordination of the sum total of actualized reality -- spirit, cosmic, or
mindal. It is unqualified in actuality.
104:5.4 The Triodity of Potentiality. This
triodity consists in the association of the three Absolutes of
potentiality:
1. The Deity Absolute.
2. The Universal Absolute.
3. The Unqualified Absolute.
104:5.5 Thus are interassociated the infinity
reservoirs of all latent energy reality -- spirit, mindal, or cosmic. This
association yields the integration of all latent energy reality. It is
infinite in potential.
104:5.6 As the triunities are primarily concerned
with the functional unification of infinity, so are triodities involved in the
cosmic appearance of experiential Deities. The triunities are indirectly
concerned, but the triodities are directly concerned, in the experiential
Deities -- Supreme, Ultimate, and Absolute. They appear in the emerging
power-personality synthesis of the Supreme Being. And to the time creatures of
space the Supreme Being is a revelation of the unity of the I AM.
104:5.7 Presented
by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.
