© 2010 Bob Debold
© 2010 The Urantia Book Fellowship
| The Problem of Business | Volume 11, Number 1, 2010 (Summer) — Index | We Are the Creatures Who Carry the Life |
_The following was presented at The Urantia Book Fellowship Summer Study Session, at Dominican University, River Forest, IL, on July 9, 2006 _
¶ Considerations of the Supreme—United Spiritual Ministration
The Supreme Being is an entirely new concept that the authors of The Urantia Book reveal to us. They have told us about a finite, evolutionary, experiential, eternal god who does not equate to God the Father as conventional usage dictates. We must grapple with the fact that the compound term “The Supreme” (with a capital letter) appears 632 times in the 2097 pages of The Urantia Book, including 156 cases in which the term “Being” is appended. The approximately six hundred paragraphs include only three seemingly direct references in Part IV, “The Life and Teachings of Jesus.”
Except in the Jesus papers, the authors of The Urantia Book have woven the Supreme as a highly thematic message about this newly revealed concept of Deity. It just may be the most important new philosophic or theological idea that the authors give us; it most certainly embodies one of the fifth epochal revelation’s most stimulating and most provocative thoughts. While the concept of the Supreme is certainly not a hidden or obscure feature of the text, the evolutionary development of the Supreme is not entirely self-evident to beginning readers. Even long-term readerstudents are somewhat puzzled as to what this mighty Deity is and symbolizes:
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consciousness of the cosmos
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one Lord of the seven superuniverses
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maximum Deity reality
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personality unification of the sevenfold manifestation of Deity in time-space
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power-personalizing unifying Deity
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evolving presence of God in a creational unit
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unifier of all things by reflectivity intelligence
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spirit personality in Havona
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evolutionary Deity that is something less and something other than the Trinity
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weaver of meaningful patterns of high value of physical events
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evolving superuniverse personality manifestation
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growing experiential sovereign channel to the existential Trinity
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father of Majeston
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cosmic overcontroller
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future master universe functioner
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sometime purpose of Master Son portrayal through bestowal of experiential divinity
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paragon for eventual planetary allegiance
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evolving personality synthesis of Deity unity
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unique avenue of approach for man to ascend to the transcendental experience
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religious assumption of the validity of mind, spirit, and the universe
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revelation of the unity of the I AM
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emerging personality
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embracer of all of everything evolving in time and space
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associater of all of the absoluteness of the several triodities
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member of the first experiential Trinity
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relation-requirement for universe citizenship
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connector of finite to absonite
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functioner of the universe approach to transcending finite limitations
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embodier of all creature evolution, progression, and spiritualization along with the experiences of the descending personalities of Paradise
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non-creator culminator (with exception)
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embracer of possibilities of cosmic ministry not apparently manifested in the triodity of actuality
One of my reasons for presenting such a long list was to bring to light the metaphor that Bill Sadler, Jr. always promoted—the teachings are constructed and written as a symphony.[1] Each of these short descriptions has a sub-context that connects to our overall effort of attempting to understand more and more about God the Father from our finite perspective. The list also points out how difficult it is to put the complete concept of the Supreme in a neat package. After all, we are talking about how the Father has constructed and is maintaining and creating the universe of universes through his corporative trinity, through his partnership triunity with the Eternal Son and Infinite Spirit, and by drawing on the three Absolutes of infinite potential. (To me it appears that at least some parts of The Urantia Book may be constructed like a hologram, so that each sub-context has the whole context somehow enfolded entirely within it. This idea may be a bit overstated and probably does not apply to every portion of the text, but I will speculate that the concept of universe reflectivity may be holographic in principle if not in fact.)
¶ Self-evidence is not Self-evident
Our founding Fathers stated in the United States Declaration of Independence that it is self-evident that “… all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” In juxtaposition to this historic and widely accepted statement, I maintain that the Supreme is not self-evident. Let me tell a personal story related to this phenomenon.
I originally started reading The Urantia Book with the Jesus papers but dipped into the earlier papers from time to time, so that I eventually ended up reading almost everything except the Foreword and the first nine papers. For quite a while I avoided the Foreword as it seemed too “technical.” The papers I skimmed were usually a random, ad hoc choice, probably based on an immediate need to find out some initially obscure fact, such as “what is a frandalank,” or “what is a midwayer”? Of course the details about Midwayers, in themselves, take a number of papers to understand, given the complex linkages that relate to their origins, not to mention their purpose in the current scheme of things. What I later found after a serial reading that took roughly four to five years in John Bullock’s Northern Virginia/Washington, DC reading group was this large concept about the Supreme that I had not understood for a very long time. This fact became a true conundrum during one evening meeting.
After a particularly sincere statement about something someone didn’t understand with regard to the Supreme Being, the usually relaxed and easygoing John stood up and went into a short tirade toward the entire group. He barked: “Don’t you understand? We’re creating a Deity by our everyday decisions and actions.” It was a real surprise to hear him bellow in his well-honed operatic voice, while pointing directly down at the front cover of the book. John was a patient leader-teacher, but this particular time was poignant with apparent impatience! (Although I have used quotation marks, I am paraphrasing what John blurted out that night.) Obviously John felt the subject needed some emphasis, and he literally leapt out of the chair when he made his comment. I remember being awestruck and dumbfounded, but instantly realized that I had been missing a VERY large revealed truth, for I truly didn’t understand just what John had said. This Deity that John was referring to is the Supreme Being, but knowing that is just the tip of a potentially unfathomable iceberg.
The authors of The Urantia Book address this dilemma in a number of ways. In paper 117, “God The Supreme,” a Mighty Messenger writes: “Men do not find the Supreme suddenly and spectacularly as an earthquake tears chasms into the rocks, but they find him slowly and patiently as a river quietly wears away the soil beneath.” [UB 117:6.25] And then we have this statement: “A human ascender can find the Father; God is existential and therefore real, irrespective of the status of experience in the total universe. But no single ascender will ever find the Supreme until all ascenders have reached that maximum universe maturity which qualifies them simultaneously to participate in this discovery.” [UB 117:6.21]
¶ Symphonic Alignment / Holographic Configuration?
(Although I have been talking about the Supreme Being self-evident,) the author quoted above discusses “finding” the Supreme. In between lies consciousness. I believe that we are all conscious of the Supreme to a certain degree, but it requires a nudge to turn this general awareness into some concept that is discernible and self-evident. This is what revelation does, since something that is “self-evident” is believed to be true without proof (but only if we understand what it means). For example, the Buddhists and Hindus developed the concept of the oversoul and came extremely close to constructing a philosophical postulate of the Supreme. They fell short because they did not understand the reality of personality.
A Melchizedek of Nebadon tells us: “In certain phases the concept of the One Universal Oversoul as the totality of the summation of all creature existence led the Indian philosophers very close to the truth of the Supreme Being, but this truth availed them naught because they failed to evolve any reasonable or rational personal approach to the attainment of their theoretic monotheistic goal of Brahman-Narayana.” [UB 94:3.4]
But finding the Supreme is not merely about the functional construction—the “what” and the “who”—although that is a good start for a finite mind. It is also about meaning and value. Questions of “why” and “how” are of utmost importance to us all and may be the best links to the pushpull of Supremacy in which we all partake.
The revelators tell us that the Supreme’s source lies in his relationship with the existential Trinity, that his function relates to the universe of activity, and that his immediate destiny is the Trinity Ultimate. He has three functions: first to operate as a spirit personality (God the Supreme) in the central universe, Havona; second, to act as God the Almighty in the grand universe; and third, to serve as an unknown and latent mind potential for the master universe. The first two stages of Supremacy have been revealed to us and are discussed with some rigor in The Urantia Book. On the other hand, the wording that the revelators use is not as symmetrical as stated above. The phrase “God the Almighty” occurs only once; most references to this function of the Supreme use the phrase “the Almighty Supreme.”
According to a Divine Counselor, there has been much confusion because of the previous failure “to distinguish between the personalities of the Paradise Trinity and between Paradise Deity and the local universe creators and administrators.” [UB 4:5.2] Our priests and prophets in the past have failed to differentiate between Planetary Princes, System Sovereigns, Constel lat ion Fathers, Creator Sons, Superuniverse Rulers, the Supreme Being, and the Universal Father. In the childlike state of humanity’s institutional religions and theological reflections, it seems that most of history’s celestial messages have been attributed to the Father, although Gabriel is mentioned in some cases.
Given the Adam and Eve default and the spiritual catastrophe that our rebellious Planetary Prince precipitated, I’m not surprised. What does surprise me is the great range and extent of the ministering spirits that actually do help us in our ascent, as well as the fact that we collaborate with them in ways I can hardly fathom. Of course, one of our universe goals is to participate in this service ministry at the level of our evolved and evolving spiritual growth. So it would repay us to understand not only the “who” but also the “how” and the “why” at a minimum. By seeking to comprehend the Supreme, I believe we can reach a better understanding of the “why.” I expect the other questions are best fleshed out in small group discussions. We will attempt to create a symphony if not a hologram of thought.
¶ The Trinity on Steroids
Before we can examine the Supreme in depth, we have to talk about the first existential Trinity—the adjustment of the Christian Trinity—and the first triunity.
The existential trinity (the Paradise Trinity) consists of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit. We are told in somewhat metaphorical terms that it is “corporative.” It is undivided and indivisible Deity; it is organic. Yet the same three existential Deities, as persons, functionally associate in a group called the first triunity. A good metaphor for a triunity is three people pulling on a rope in a tug-of-war; their efforts are summative, while the organic reality of the Trinity is best seen as the trunk of a tree (see [figure1]). The trunk unifies the full reality of the tree. It is impossible to delineate the three branches of the tree inside the trunk, but the twisting pattern above the trunk is like a triunity, ending in three distinct, individual main branches. Total reality functions through the many triunities, but the Trinity, as a purposeful corporation, operates on all levels that unify reality as a whole. This implies that the Paradise Trinity is related to finite causation and is responsible for the existence and actions of the Supreme, since the Supreme sums up the totality of finite timespace reality. The Supreme is a finite reflection of the fact, reality, and indivisibility of the three persons of Paradise Deity functioning as the Paradise Trinity.
A Melchizedek of Nebadon teaches us about this truth: “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.” [UB 104:2.3]
Each of us is indwelt by a fragment of the Universal Father (i.e., a Thought Adjuster), but the Supreme Being has nothing to do with that. To the contrary, the ministry of the Supreme during the current universe age is collective and essentially impersonal, thereby resembling those attributes of the Paradise Trinity. The Trinity, however, is existential and absolute, whereas the Supreme is experiential, finite, and at this stage, a work in progress.
| Triodity of Actuality | Triodity of Potentiality |
|---|---|
| Eternal Son | Deity Absolute |
| Paradise Isle | Unqualified Absolute |
| Conjoint Actor | Universal Absolute |
Table 1: The two revealed triodities are involved in the cosmic appearance of the Supreme. His evolutionary growth derives from these two revealed triodities—non-Father triunities.
Before we can discuss the Supreme in detail, we need to talk about one more existential concept, the triodities. Triodities are non-Father triunities. Triodities are involved in the cosmic appearance of experiential Deities. These existential threesomes are directly concerned with the growth of the experiential Deities— Supreme, Ultimate, and Absolute. The Supreme is firstly a spirit person and secondly a Deity of growth—evolutionary growth. This growth comes from the two revealed triodities, the Triodity of Actuality and the Triodity of Potentiality. Table 1 shows this relationship and the fascinating symmetry.
Thus, the Supreme Being is based squarely on the Trinity and sits between two triodities—the Actual and the Potential. In this symmetry, the Supreme is the summation on the finite level of the entire transfer process of mind, matter, and spirit, the process that we call growth by experiential evolution.
Apparently the Father gets out of the business of direct overcontrol of the finite, except in regard to personality. We can only speculate why, but free will is an attribute of personality, and it is obvious that the Father allows free will to function at the human level.
A Mighty Messenger tells us that our intellectual capacity is “exhausted by the maximum conception of the Supreme Being.” [UB 115:3.4] This may have been the challenge that stimulated many of the great turn-of-the-twentieth century thinkers like Charles Hartshorne[2], Alfred North Whitehead[3], and Charles Sanders Peirce. Hartshorne discussed the infinite, immeasurable gap between the infinite and finite; this chasm was so large that he believed Whitehead’s postulating of a “dipolar god” amounted to instantiating a finite god. What they both missed was the belief (or the faith) that both could exist simultaneously. Since the Divine Counselor appears to have drawn on Hartshorne’s thinking about divinity on page three of the Foreword, the authors seem to have had considerable respect for these thought gems.
We need to consider one more thing about triodities. We are told they repercuss directly in the Supreme, but are derived through the eventuated level of the absonite, in the domain of the Ultimate. It appears as though the Trinity, like all good to great corporations, has set up the processes and structures for working its way out of a job. Trinity, Inc. is allowing its stakeholders to own stock options that become more valuable as they improve over time. The stakeholders have been given the duty and the responsibility of working together as an emerging collective to create a living organization.
¶ The Work-in-Process
The Supreme Being is a Deity composed of “parts” and is actualizing in the evolutionary universes. In order to understand what this means we should examine how this reality designated as the Supreme Being is constructed. A Mighty Messenger states: “The Supreme Being is the unification of three phases of Deity reality: God the Supreme, the spiritual unification of certain aspects of the Paradise Trinity; the Almighty Supreme, the power unification of the grand universe Creators; and the Supreme Mind, the individual contribution of the Third Source and Center and his co-ordinates to the reality of the Supreme Being.” [UB 22:7.11]
The Supreme Being is incomplete at the present time. He unifies three domains of Deity reality: spirit, power and mind. Power effectively amounts to an orderly arrangement of matter and energy; the power of the Supreme is actualizing by the non-personal acts of the Creator Sons, the Ancients of Days, and the Master Spirits, the experiential half of God the Sevenfold. The Supreme Being is “emerging” as a Deity who will eventually present the “cosmic culmination” of the evolution of the grand universe when it reaches the stage known as light and life, or when the seven superuniverses arrive at the phase that is called “secondary maximums”. It is at this precise milestone—the moment in time when finite possibilities are about be exceeded or transcended—that the Supreme Being will become a person whom finite beings can contact, i.e., recognize, relate to, and communicate with.
The Supreme’s non-personal acts function on the level of meanings and values—living truth, spiritual beauty and divine goodness, as well as love, mercy and ministry. By converting the untamed energies of the dead vaults of space into a balanced, coordinated and organic whole, the grand universe Creators are setting the stage for the rest of us to become participants in this vast network. We will eventually achieve an understanding of this power concept when we traverse and train on the superuniverse capitals, but it will take us until we reach the outer circuits of Havona before we achieve even small steps in comprehending the personality of the Supreme.
For us truly to “find” the Supreme, we will have to be seventhstage spirits, and the Supreme will have to be functioning in the outer space regions. What we do today can barely scratch the surface of this immense concept. We do know that the Almighty Supreme is a “living” Deity. The Mighty Messenger author also states that the vast universe has coordinating centers that might be compared to the delicate chemical-control system of the human mechanism, then adds that he could tell us much more about the physical universe if we knew something about the physique of a power center.
The revelators tell us that God the Supreme has a spirit personality that functions in Havona. God the Supreme clearly started in Paradise as a personal Deity (a spiritual being) who exists on the absolute level but who embodies the potential for experiential growth that is associated with time and space (i.e., the finite level). The grand universe unification that is currently in progress— in part, God the Supreme plus the Almighty Supreme plus the Supreme Mind—will endow the completed Supreme Being with the meanings, values, and reality of all finite experience, but of necessity we are still talking about a personal Deity who will remain a spiritual being and who will retain at least some dimensions associated with the absolute.
The analogy of a corporation makes sense here. The impersonal presence of the Paradise Trinity, working with the Creator personalities of time and space (i.e., in the superuniverses), is weaving the Supreme’s emerging reality much as our morontia soul is developing in liaison with 1) the Adjuster, 2) our volitional personality, and 3) our finite potential (mind). In other words the total reality of the Supreme Being, not just the part that is the spirit personality of God the Supreme in Havona, is unifying through the evolutionary growth of the sevenfold manifestation of Deity. The Supreme Being is an experiential Deity, the cumulative synthesis of all finite reality.
¶ Let’s Get Personal—The Spirit Nucleus
The revelators tell us that God the Supreme existed in Havona as a person before the creation of the seven superuniverses, but that he functioned only on spiritual levels. Therefore for humans in this universe age he is not consciously contactable, and that is a clue to why the Supreme is not self-evident. Given our inability to achieve more than a limited experiential contact with the universe of universes, we need some technique that will enable us to understand the infinity of the absolute Father in finite terms, since as humans we generally cannot perceive spirits.
While discussing an ascender’s time on the sixth circle of Havona, a Perfector of Wisdom from Uversa states as follows in Paper 26, “Ministering Spirits of the Central Universe”:
I am somewhat at a loss to explain what takes place on this circle. No personalized presence of Supremacy is perceptible to the ascenders. In certain respects, new relationships with the Seventh Master Spirit compensate this noncontactability of the Supreme Being. But regardless of our inability to grasp the technique, each ascending creature seems to undergo a transforming growth, a new integration of consciousness, a new spiritualization of purpose, a new sensitivity for divinity, which can hardly be satisfactorily explained without assuming the unrevealed activity of the Supreme Being. To those of us who have observed these mysterious transactions, it appears as if God the Supreme were affectionately bestowing upon his experiential children, up to the very limits of their experiential capacities, those enhancements of intellectual grasp, of spiritual insight, and of personality outreach which they will so need, in all their efforts at penetrating the divinity level of the Trinity of Supremacy, to achieve the eternal and existential Deities of Paradise. [UB 26:6.3]
The Supreme provides us this channel and mechanism, but only the completion of grand universe development will allow us to attain God the Supreme. At the end of cosmic growth on the finite level—light and life—the Supreme Being will cumulate and perfect all aspects of his essence and identity, thereby enabling us to attain God the Supreme as an “actual divinity presence.” There is a large difference in meaning between God the Supreme in Havona and the Supreme Being as the evolved Deity that belongs to the first experiential Trinity—the Supreme Creators, the Supreme Being, and the Architects of the Master Universe.
¶ Let’s Get Physical—The Almighty Power-Personality Team
We can now turn to the Almighty Supreme, the non-personal part. It is difficult to describe the origin of the Almighty Supreme. All we know is that the Almighty Supreme could not start evolving until the evolutionary universes came into existence, and that he started evolving as soon as they did. So we could postulate that the coming into being of the Almighty Supreme marked the start of evolution in the seven superuniverses. Here we are not just talking about the evolution of physical energy and physical power; we are also discussing the evolutionary acts of the Supreme Creators—the combined actions of the Creator Sons (Michaels) and Creative Spirits (Divine Ministers), of the Ancients of Days, and of the Master Spirits—as they strive to stabilize and perfect the administration of the superuniverses.
Since the Almighty is an outcome of the evolving superuniverses, he is ubiquitous throughout all seven. But what “form” can we attribute to this presence? It is difficult for us to conceive of the Almighty as not being focalized in one spot, because we generally tend to think of a personal Deity in ways that continue, expand and perfect human characteristics. Thus, it is difficult to imagine the Almighty Supreme as a discrete “person” when we know that he is incomplete and so far from finished.
We also know the experience of every evolving creature personality is a phase of the experience of the Almighty Supreme. The completed evolution of the Almighty Supreme will result in one unified and personal Deity, not in any loosely co-ordinated association of divine attributes. What is most difficult to understand about the overall description regarding the Almighty Supreme during his growth phase is the “virtual” absence of personality.
Remember from the Foreword that the term “God” always denotes personality. The only reference to personality is related to the statement concerning the Supreme Being where he is referred to as “God the Almighty.” The Mighty Messenger tells us:
The Supreme Being functions primarily in the central universe as a spirit personality; secondarily in the grand universe as God the Almighty, a personality of power. The tertiary function of the Supreme in the master universe is now latent, existing only as an unknown mind potential. No one knows just what this third development of the Supreme Being will disclose. Some believe that, when the superuniverses are settled in light and life, the Supreme will become functional from Uversa as the almighty and experiential sovereign of the grand universe while expanding in power as the superalmighty of the outer universes. Others speculate that the third stage of Supremacy will involve the third level of Deity manifestation. But none of us really know. [UB 116:0.5]
The Almighty Supreme draws his very being from the acts of God the Sevenfold, including the Sevenfold Controllers. We must have a clear view of all this if we hope to understand the Almighty Supreme.
A Divine Counselor defines God the Sevenfold as follows: “Deity personality anywhere actually functioning in time and space. The personal Paradise Deities and their creative associates functioning in and beyond the borders of the central universe and power-personalizing as the Supreme Being on the first creature level of unifying Deity revelation in time and space. This level, the grand universe, is the sphere of the time-space descension of Paradise personalities in reciprocal association with the time-space ascension of evolutionary creatures.” [UB 0:2.16]
God the Sevenfold is difficult to visualize because he is not just one entity. The Sevenfold is a deity association of a group of beings—a very large group—who work together on the finite level of the grand universe, functioning as the Deity of evolutionary mortals in the Paradise-ascension career. Since the term “God” always denotes personality, we cannot imagine God the Sevenfold in the anthropomorphic terms we are used to. God the Sevenfold is not a Trinity, so the corporate picture doesn’t work either. Is this a being who moves and functions in unison? If we were to conceive of God the Sevenfold as having a personality, we would then have to imagine how to contact him, since all personality is contactable.
It seems more appropriate to think of “ministry” when we consider God the Sevenfold. The divine ministry of the Sevenfold reaches inward through the Eternal Son to the Paradise Father and outward through the Ancients of Days to the universe Fathers—the Creator Sons. This ministry relates to truth, beauty and goodness, and thus there is a direct connection with the Supreme. God the Sevenfold co-ordinates finite evolution from functional perspectives, while the Supreme Being synthesizes destiny attainment.
Another part of the Sevenfold is mentioned just once, but it is a very important part—and is directly related to the Almighty Supreme. Although God the Sevenfold consists of spirit personalities, there is a physical control level of this Deity association—the Sevenfold Controllers. When you put the two next to each other, you get a sense of how power and personality align. Figure 3 shows this pattern.
In contrast, Figure 2 was a current picture of a global phenomenon that I believe may give us a very crude but potentially useful way to think about how the Almighty Supreme may be power-personality synthesizing. I challenge the reader to guess what Figure 2 may depict and have provided the answer at the end of the list of references following this article.
¶ Cosmic Glue—Supreme Mind
Supreme Mind is the ingredient that makes it possible for the other two elements of the Supreme that we have been discussing to exist as a unified whole. On the other hand, we are not told much about it. The authors have not given us a full paper devoted to Supreme Mind. The main account appears in section 1 of the paper on the Almighty Supreme, and there are a few other scattered references. To be exact, the phrase appears in only sixteen paragraphs out of 2097 pages.
In a general sense, mind is the “flexible reality” that creatures and Creators alike can readily manipulate. In the paper on the Almighty Supreme, a Mighty Messenger tells us about all we know about Supreme Mind, its nature and function: “The mind focalizations of the Third Source and Center. The finite domains of energy and spirit are literally held together by the mind presences of the Conjoint Actor. This is true from the Creative Spirit in a local universe through the Reflective Spirits of a superuniverse to the Master Spirits in the grand universe. The mind circuits emanating from these varied intelligences focuses represent the cosmic arena of creature choice. Mind is the flexible reality which creatures and Creators can so readily manipulate; it is the vital link connecting matter and spirit. The mind bestowal of the Third Source and Center unifies the spirit person of God the Supreme with the experiential power of the evolutionary Almighty.” [UB 116:3.2]
We also know that factualizing Supreme Mind converges as a time-space experience in Majeston, and we can conclude that Supreme Mind is developing concomitantly with the Almighty Supreme and God the Supreme in Havona. A Divine Counselor of Uversa conjectures that Supreme Mind is probably “concerned” with reflectivity, since the “consciousness of the cosmos” displays “intricate transactions and unerring operations.” [UB 9:7.4] Supreme Mind is sometimes referred to as the experiential mind of the Supreme; it not only reveals the relationship of divine absolute mind with cosmic mind, but is also where that relationship resides. We are told the Master Spirits are constantly working to “stabilize” and equalize the cosmic-mind circuits. This may provide us a clue as to why the Lucifer rebellion was such a cosmic calamity and local catastrophe.
¶ Supremacy—Charact er of Unity
Since we have discussed all three strands that weave together to form the Supreme Being, we should do our best to appraise how our own lives are affected by this awesome new concept of cosmic citizenship and the purposeful unification of all finite realities. Master Sons are uniquely able to portray the experiential divinity of the Supreme, and our Sovereign Creator Son— who lived on earth as Jesus of Nazareth—can do that, and has. Thus, Supremacy with a capital “S” indicates function. A Divine Counselor states: “The Deity level of Supremacy may be conceived as a function in relation to finite existences.” [UB 0:1.11] Thus an act of Supremacy need not be an action of the Supreme Being alone. Supremacy pertains to the overcontrol of the finite level by any or all of the Deities or Trinities.
By implication, Supremacy with a capital “S” refers to phenomena that reflect the presence of the Supreme Being in the domains of the finite. The Mighty Messenger who describes the Supreme Being writes: “Human beings have learned that the motion of the invisible may sometimes be discerned by observing its effects on the visible; and we in the universes have long since learned to detect the movements and trends of Supremacy by observing the repercussions of such evolutions in the personalities and patterns of the grand universe.” [UB 115:6.7]
Supremacy is simultaneously a dual movement: inward to Paradise—including the ascent of spiritualizing personalities— and growth outward “toward infinity and the Absolutes therein.” [UB 115:6.4-6] Here and there the authors offer us indirect clues. For example, a Divine Counselor tells us that the creation of Havona Servitals involves “certain phases of Supremacy,” in a paragraph in which he also conjectures that the Supreme Being is in some way concerned with the transactions that bring the Graduate Guides into existence:
The Seven Master Spirits and the associated Seven Supreme Power Directors, respectively, are the personal repositories of the mind potential and of the power potential of the Supreme Being which he does not, as yet, operate personally. And when these Paradise associates collaborate to create the Havona Servitals, the latter are inherently involved in certain phases of Supremacy. Havona Servitals are thus, in actuality, a reflection in the perfect central universe of certain evolutionary potentialities of the time-space domains, all of which is disclosed when a servital undergoes transformation and re-creation. We believe that this transformation takes place in response to the will of the Infinite Spirit, undoubtedly acting in behalf of the Supreme. Graduate Guides are not created by the Supreme Being, but we all conjecture that experiential Deity is in some way concerned in those transactions which bring these beings into existence. [UB 24:7.8]
Another interesting statement identifies mercy as “the justice of Supremacy adapted to the situations of the evolving finite, the righteousness of eternity modified to meet the highest interests and universe welfare of the children of time.” [UB 2:4.5]
¶ Reflectivity—Finite Omniscience/Supreme Consciousness
As used in The Urantia Book, the term “reflectivity” appears to be rather new. On the other hand, if we dig into the larger context (the hologram), we can postulate a great deal about just what reflectivity is. A Perfector of Wisdom tells us that reflectivity has “impenetrable mysteries.” [UB 13:1.10] In a general sense we think that something is reflective because it acts like a mirror, so that the image of a source object can be viewed by itself. The authors of The Urantia Book appear to extend this concept by including at least “intelligence” and “consciousness” as additional ingredients. In the same paragraph cited above the Perfector of Wisdom states that the uses of reflectivity include “intelligence gathering and information dissemination.” [UB 13:1.10] The Infinite Spirit administers it.
Since reflectivity seems to be a level of consciousness of the Conjoint Actor, it may border on the Absolute in some sense. On the other hand, the very limited amount of information we are given tends to imply that reflectivity is mainly a feature of the finite superuniverses. It concerns matter, mind, and spirit in a collective sense, even though it terminates (or originates) in Paradise.
A Divine Counselor of Uversa tells us:
The Conjoint Actor is able to co-ordinate all levels of universe actuality in such manner as to make possible the simultaneous recognition of the mental, the material, and the spiritual. This is the phenomenon of universe reflectivity, that unique and inexplicable power to see, hear, sense, and know all things as they transpire throughout a superuniverse, and to focalize, by reflectivity, all this information and knowledge at any desired point. The action of reflectivity is shown in perfection on each of the headquarters worlds of the seven superuniverses. It is also operative throughout all sectors of the superuniverses and within the boundaries of the local universes. Reflectivity finally focalizes on Paradise. [UB 9:7.1]
Surprisingly enough, the Internet encyclopedia Wikipedia provides a good definition of reflectivity: “A method in the universes of time and space that allows higher spiritual beings to see, hear, sense, and know all things as they transpire. Reflectivity appears to be omniscience within the limits of the experiential finite.”[4] The article then explained omniscience as the capacity to know everything, or at least everything that can be known about a person, including thoughts and feelings. In the traditional monotheistic faiths, this ability is normally attributed to God. In addition, omniscience is sometimes understood to imply the capacity to know everything that will be.
Charles Hartshorne discussed the development of process philosophy in his essay “A New World View”.[5] In doing so, he asked: “How do we even know that things have passed away, if not by preserving in memory at least something of what they have been?” He then extended the question so that it applied to Deity. “If we are to raise the question of deity at all, why not consider a perfect or divine memory and a perfect or divine perception of happenings, once they have occurred? In such a perfect memory or perception the past might be literally immortal, adequately preserved in all its quality, all its beauty, forever.” This tends to imply that Hartshorne was postulating reflectivity as inevitability and a requirement of Deity in a universal sense.
¶ Summarizing to Some Conclusions
The following section provides some personal conjecture related to the previous expository material. As acknowledged at the beginning of the essay, I have made every attempt to portray material from The Urantia Book in as accurate a way as possible. My intention was to refrain from speculation; I have attempted to confine the material to an explanation of what the revelators have said plus analyzing these ideas from alternate perspectives, and I am encouraging the development of a larger framework.
¶ Connections to the Fourth Epochal Revelation
Did Jesus teach about the Supreme? Certain passages imply that he did, at least to a limited degree. Before I get to that, however, I would like to offer you a few comments on the overall context.
In a very general sense, Melchizedek’s message can be understood as faith and trust in God as a Father, whereas Jesus emphasized love and service. To me the central message of The Urantia Book is about cosmic citizenship, and that is why the Supreme is such an important element of the fifth epochal revelation. The Supreme is certainly ubiquitous in Parts I through III, one of several recurring themes that may remind us of a symphony.
The Supreme Being is neither the personality nor the absoluteness of the First Source and Center. Instead he is an expression of the Trinity in ways that finite beings may be able to understand. Yes, this new and intriguing Deity concept is extremely large and sometimes enigmatic, but it is definitely subinfinite. The Supreme Being is a Deity concept that did not evolve from religious thought, nor become a faith assumption in any of the world’s institutional religions. To the contrary, it first came to light as revealed in The Urantia Book. Although the underlying meanings and values are finite, in some ways they are as difficult to comprehend as the Christian Trinity was for the early followers of Jesus. Even though the Trinity was implied in the gospel messages that the apostles delivered and in their preaching and writing, it took considerable effort to explain to early believers that this teaching was not just a mysterious portrayal of three divine personalities of the Father under with one nature. [6]
While the Trinity required a great amount of faith to accept for the early disciples, the difficulties for us are not as formidable, for the concept of the Supreme Being includes aspects that can be understood as a logical and reasonable approach to reality. Given a small amount of faith in the accuracy of the fifth epochal revelation, readers of The Urantia Book can appreciate the concept’s profound intensity and depth, especially as a way of integrating and unifying our understanding of the realities of the universe when they are mapped against contemporary science or just common sense.
There are three passages in Part IV that mention the Supreme in connection with Jesus’ teachings. In two cases Jesus refers to the Supreme while discussing spiritual living. The other one is part of Rodan’s summary of what Jesus taught.
- While Jesus was teaching on Mount Gerizim about prayer and worship, he said: “Worship—contemplation of the spiritual— must alternate with service, contact with material reality. Work should alternate with play; religion should be balanced by humor. Profound philosophy should be relieved by rhythmic poetry. The strain of living—the time tension of personality—should be relaxed by the restfulness of worship. The feelings of insecurity arising from the fear of personality isolation in the universe should be antidoted by the faith contemplation of the Father and by the attempted realization of the Supreme.” [UB 143:7.3] (emphasis added)
The Midwayer Commission concluded this section by stating that the apostles didn’t grasp much of what he taught that night, but “other worlds did, and other generations on earth will.” There aren’t many references even in The Urantia Book of Jesus teaching directly about the Supreme, but he did make a clear statement about the juxtaposition of the Father as spirit and the attempted realization of the Supreme (capital ‘S’) that night. The apostles do not seem to have taught this concept of the Supreme at all, but maybe current readers of The Urantia Book are part of the generations that “will.” The fact that “other worlds did” implies that Jesus’ message was passed along to other inhabited planets in Nebadon—and probably to many that were more spiritually advanced than Urantia is today.
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While discoursing about good and evil to Mardus, the leader of the Cynics of Rome, Jesus said (in modern phraseology): “By the time of the attainment of Paradise the ascending mortal’s capacity for identifying the self with true spirit values has become so enlarged as to result in the attainment of the perfection of the possession of the light of life. Such a perfected spirit personality becomes so wholly, divinely, and spiritually unified with the positive and supreme qualities of goodness, beauty, and truth that there remains no possibility that such a righteous spirit would cast any negative shadow of potential evil when exposed to the searching luminosity of the divine light of the infinite Rulers of Paradise. In all such spirit personalities, goodness is no longer partial, contrastive, and comparative; it has become divinely complete and spiritually replete; it approaches the purity and perfection of the Supreme.” [UB 132:2.9] (emphasis added)
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During discussions of Rodan’s with Nathaniel, Thomas and two dozen believers at Magadan, Rodan stated: The religion of Jesus transcends all our former concepts of the idea of worship in that he not only portrays his Father as the ideal of infinite reality but positively declares that this divine source of values and the eternal center of the universe is truly and personally attainable by every mortal creature who chooses to enter the kingdom of heaven on earth, thereby acknowledging the acceptance of sonship with God and brotherhood with man. That, I submit, is the highest concept of religion the world has ever known, and I pronounce that there can never be a higher since this gospel embraces the infinity of realities, the divinity of values, and the eternity of universal attainments. Such a concept constitutes the achievement of the experience of the idealism of the supreme and the ultimate. [UB 160:5.7] (emphasis added)
Although “supreme” and “ultimate” are not capitalized, I have the impression that Rodan—the only human being who is cited in The Urantia Book as a direct source of spiritual teachings—came very close to understanding the advanced teachings of Jesus, the true meaning of his term “the kingdom”. Later in the discussion, Rodan says that this religion he has learned from Jesus “demands living and spiritual experience.” [UB 160:5.12] This is very close to a Mighty Messenger’s statement that achievement is the prerequisite to status with God the Supreme: “one must do something as well as be something.” [UB 115:0.1]
¶ Cosmic Socialization
We are told that our ascent through the psychic circles involves “cosmic socialization.” Attainment of the circles, sometimes known as “cosmic circles,” has to do with personality status, mind attainment, soul growth, and Adjuster attunement. A Mighty Messenger visiting on Urantia, and in collaboration with a certain Melchizedek, the vicegerent Planetary Prince of Urantia, tells us: “Every impulse of every electron, thought, or spirit is an acting unit in the whole universe. Only sin is isolated and evil gravity resisting on the mental and spiritual levels. The universe is a whole; no thing or being exists or lives in isolation. Self-realization is potentially evil if it is antisocial. It is literally true: ‘No man lives by himself.’” Cosmic socialization constitutes the highest form of personality unification. Said Jesus: ‘He who would be greatest among you, let him become server of all.’” [UB 56:10.14]
Cosmic socialization, according to David Kantor in his plenary address in 1999 in Vancouver, sets the locus of spiritual growth in the relationship between personalities. Note the term personality; it embraces all personal entities of the universe, including humans. The Mighty Messenger whom I cited above was referring to relationships that extend from the Paradise Trinity right on down to our human enemies; this obviously includes the universe panoply of ministering personalities who are distributed among the angelic orders. I believe that the process of personality integration through relationships with others is one of the messages that Jesus meant to convey in his teachings on the brotherhood of man. Brotherhood is the other half of the paradox of the part and the whole.[7] [UB 12:7] (Debold 1998)
Over the years, as the teachings of The Urantia Book have mellowed and matured in my mind, the ideal of developing a philosophy of living as the Divine Counselor recommends has been gaining momentum in my thinking and has begun to influence my everyday interactions with others. Comments that the religion of Jesus “must develop a new and appropriate symbolism” from new and expanding ideas, ideals and loyalties, makes more sense if these symbols are staunchly based on the paradigm of cosmic citizenship. Since the revelators urge us to predicate this higher symbolism on the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, we should consider what process of development will make the new philosophy of living attractive and influential among fellow inhabitants of our planet Urantia.
The Midwayers tell us that Jesus’ concept of the kingdom must likewise reflect the dual concept of the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. This living gospel encompasses living faith, growing spirit, and firsthand experience of the faith-comrades of Jesus in the brotherhood of man as a hallmark of the spiritual association of the kingdom of heaven. Jesus always taught that the kingdom embraces man’s personal relationships with his fellows on earth as well as with the Father in heaven.
Nevertheless, the kingdom idea really never got much past the locus of “true believers” over the past two thousand years and that is now inhibiting a fuller understanding of the message. It would seem the purpose of why this network of personality relationships ought to be spiritualized before it could ever possibly be realized is paramount. Purpose precedes strategy; strategy comes before tactics. The brotherhood needs a spiritual culture to be in place as well as the intellectual understanding of the universe infrastructure that is in place already to get in high gear. I am not exactly sure which comes first.
We are advised that a religious revelation “is essential to the realization of brotherhood on Urantia.” There is a very interesting statement in the same section of Paper 52 about effecting the brotherhood on this spiritually out-of-sync planet. A Mighty Messenger attached to the staff of Gabriel says: “The quickest way to realize the brotherhood of man on Urantia is to effect the spiritual transformation of present-day humanity. The only technique for accelerating the natural trend of social evolution is that of applying spiritual pressure from above, thus augmenting moral insight while enhancing the soul capacity of every mortal to understand and love every other mortal. Mutual understanding and fraternal love are transcendent civilizers and mighty factors in the world-wide realization of the brotherhood of man.” [UB 52:6.7]
These words were formalized and indited by 1935. Over seventy years later, I do not see clear signs that humanity really has experienced a transformation based on spiritual pressure from above. I realize that the Christian gospel that descended from the fourth epochal revelation took two thousand years to mature to what it is today, but a quick review of the third and fourth epochal revelations shows that they both attempted to establish a stronger spiritual foundation by which cosmic citizenship could develop.
Melchizedek’s theme was developing the covenant—a relationship— with God by faith and trust. Jesus continued that message with a new revelation about the Father’s fatherly personality and broadened the good news to include love and service. To me, however, Jesus also seems to have advocated greater attention to developing interpersonal relationships, on the understanding that this is an integral part of the spiritual realities that will enable us to build the brotherhood aspects of the kingdom.
Learning along these lines will continue for quite some time during our universe ascent. In the paper entitled “The Seraphic Hosts,” a Melchizedek tells us about the order of supervisor seraphim that are called “Ethical Sensitizers.” He says: “It is the mission of these seraphim to foster and to promote the growth of creature appreciation of the morality of interpersonal relationships, for such is the seed and secret of the continued and purposeful growth of society and government, human or superhuman. These enhancers of ethical appreciation function anywhere and everywhere they may be of service, as volunteer counselors to the planetary rulers and as exchange teachers on the system training worlds. You will not, however, come under their full guidance until you reach the brotherhood schools on Edentia, where they will quicken your appreciation of those very truths of fraternity which you will even then be so earnestly exploring by the actual experience of living with the univitatia in the social laboratories of Edentia, the seventy satellites of the Norlatiadek capital.” [UB 39:3.7] (emphasis added).
There are many obvious parallels, such as the Father’s relationships with the Supreme’s relationship with the Trinity, and our relationships with our individual Thought Adjusters. The Thought Adjuster parents our morontia soul, and the cosmic mind contributes to the Supreme’s emerging reality through the network of personality relationships that enable seraphim to minister to us and foster our everyday discovering, recognizing, interpreting, and choosing. In the final analysis, the decisions of human will deliver to the Supreme whatever real spiritual values are created along the way, even if we don’t survive. On the other hand, the actual identity of the Supreme depends on the actions and character development of all finite beings. Thus we can augment our own personality values, and also contribute to the growth of the Supreme, by developing a network of personal relationships that embody logarithmic spiritual development in the network growth created within the brotherhood. The whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts; now with this revelation, we can begin to gain an understanding of the why and how.
True religion—personal religion—inspires dynamic service to others, in part, by reorganizing the soul for loyalty and commitment to supreme values. These values become “visible” to us through social, ethical and moral interactions with other personalities that register in superconscious levels of the mind. The entire ministry of the angelic orders seems to be focused on enhancing personal relationships, especially in a spiritual sense.
The Urantia Revelation has challenged us to imagine a better world and seek to put our ideals into practice. Group effort is the only way that this can happen, and the struggle to develop communities is something in which we all participate. Our understanding of our roles in contributing to the evolutionary growth of the Supreme is only one of the key principles of the revelation that encourage us to develop community relationships of a transcendent nature, so that we may be able to see into one another’s souls and do our best to nourish whole-personality growth. A true understanding of Supremacy and all its implications enables us to enhance the individual message of sonship, worship, achievement, and personal salvation by linking all of that to a keen sense of group relationships, spiritual brotherhood, and cosmic consciousness. These ideals express, embody, and facilitate the reality of cosmic citizenship. Bill Sadler, Jr., once said: “…we begin to realize we are a community of souls: those having graduated, those living, and those yet to be born.”
In essence, the process of building the living temple of spiritual fellowship is finding God in your own heart and at the same time discovering God in the hearts of your fellow brothers and sisters. I wish I had been the first to say that, but I found it in the works of Dr. John Lange.[8] In any case, I believe that this inspiring insight of his gives us a good start toward understanding the essence of Supremacy.
Finally we end on those special words by the Mighty Messenger that provide us inspiration to be something and do something:
The temporal relation of man to the Supreme is the foundation for cosmic morality, the universal sensitivity to, and acceptance of, duty. This is a morality which transcends the temporal sense of relative right and wrong; it is a morality directly predicated on the self-conscious creature’s appreciation of experiential obligation to experiential Deity. Mortal man and all other finite creatures are created out of the living potential of energy, mind, and spirit existent in the Supreme. It is upon the Supreme that the Adjuster-mortal ascender draws for the creation of the immortal and divine character of a finaliter. It is out of the very reality of the Supreme that the Adjuster, with the consent of the human will, weaves the patterns of the eternal nature of an ascending son of God. [UB 117:4.8]
Bob Debold has been reading The Urantia Book since 1975. He began serious study after moving from New Jersey to Washington DC in 1981 and joining John Bullock’s study group in Arlington, Va. Bob has a Masters in organizational management and his seminal published work in this discipline entitled “Performance Management in a Fourth Wave Society, Systemic Measurement, Evaluation, and Incentives for Developing a Holonic Performance Management System” was catalyzed and derivative of the concepts developed by the Perfector of Wisdom in section 7 of the paper “The Universe of Universes.”
¶ Bibliography
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Adler, M. (198 0) How To Think About God A Guide for the 20th Century Pagan. Collier Books, NY, NY
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Adler, M. (1993 ) The Four Dimensions of Philosophy Metaphysical Moral Objective Categorical. Collier Books, NY, NY
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Hartshorne, C. (1964 ) Man’s Vision of God. (Reprinted from 194 1 original) Harper & Row.
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Heidegger, M. (195 ) What is Philosophy? Twayne Publishers Inc., (English Translation)
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Peat F. D. (1987 ) , Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind. Bantam, NY, NY.
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Project Gutenberg, (1995) https://snowy.arsc.alaska.edu/gutenberg/etext95/taote10.txt, accessed 6/20/2006.
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Figure 2 is a graphical representation of the state of the internet as of 11/23/2003. (https://www.opte.org/maps/)
¶ References
- Article obtained from The Fellowship site
| The Problem of Business | Volume 11, Number 1, 2010 (Summer) — Index | We Are the Creatures Who Carry the Life |
¶ Notes
W. Sadler, Jr., A Study in the Master Universe, Second Society Foundation, 1968 ↩︎
C. Hartshorne, Philosophers Speak of God, Humanity Books, 2000 ↩︎
A.N. Whitehead, “Process and Reality”, an essay in cosmology, University Cambridge ↩︎
Reflectivity, Wikipedia, 2006 ↩︎
C. Hartshorne, “A New World View”, essay, 1976 ↩︎
W.E. Hopkins, Origin and Evolution of Religion, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1923 ↩︎
R. Debold (1998 ) “Holonic Systems Management in the Fourth Wave.” Perspectives, World Business Academy 12(3) Berrett-Koehler (1998 ): 43 –56 ↩︎
Dr. J. Lange, “Spiritual Community: The Quest for Supremacy” Accessed 2006: https://www.ubfellowship.org/index_fef.htm ↩︎