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P.73 – §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.
P.73 – §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.
P.73 – §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.
P.73 – §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.
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1. IDENTITY OF THE ETERNAL SON – P.73
P.73 – §5 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.
P.74 – §1 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.
P.74 – §2 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."
P.74 – §3 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."
P.74 – §4 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.
P.74 – §5 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.
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2. NATURE OF THE ETERNAL SON – P.74
P.74 – §6 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.
P.74 – §7 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."
P.74 – §8 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.
P.75 – §1 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.
P.75 – §2 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.
P.75 – §3 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.
P.75 – §4 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.
P.75 – §5 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.
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3. MINISTRY OF THE FATHER’S LOVE – P.75
P.75 – §6 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.
P.75 – §7 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.
P.75 – §8 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.
P.75 – §9 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.
P.75 – §10 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
P.76 – §0 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.
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4. ATTRIBUTES OF THE ETERNAL SON – P.76
P.76 – §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.
P.76 – §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.
P.76 – §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.
P.76 – §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.
P.76 – §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.
P.76 – §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.
P.76 – §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.
P.77 – §1 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.
P.77 – §2 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.
P.77 – §3 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.
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5. LIMITATIONS OF THE ETERNAL SON – P.77
P.77 – §4 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.
P.77 – §5 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.
P.77 – §6 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.
P.77 – §7 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.
P.78 – §1 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.
P.78 – §2 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.
P.78 – §3 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.
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6. THE SPIRIT MIND – P.78
P.78 – §4 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.
P.78 – §5 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.
P.78 – §6 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.
P.78 – §7 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
P.79 – §0 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.
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7. PERSONALITY OF THE ETERNAL SON – P.79
P.79 – §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.
P.79 – §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.
P.79 – §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 – P.79
P.79 – §4 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.
P.79 – §5 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.
P.79 – §6 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
P.80 – §0 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.
P.80 – §1 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.
P.80 – §2 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.
P.80 – §3 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.
P.80 – §4 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.
P.80 – §5 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.
P.80 – §6 [Indited by a Divine Counselor assigned
to formulate this statement depicting the Eternal Son of Paradise.]
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