© 2006 Jean-Claude Romeuf
© 2006 Olga López, for translation
© 2006 Urantia Association of Spain
We have chosen to speak of God the Absolute, since the relative comprehension that we can reach refers to the most difficult mental concepts of the Urantia Book. We are aware that the human mind is limited and finite, but isn’t it our evolutionary goal to reach the upper limits of perfection? Is it not this same goal that we have set for ourselves that allows us to experience and actualize our potential and imperfect divinity in the Supreme?
We do not think that the angels would, not for a moment, smile benevolently, let alone laugh sarcastically, when we launched ourselves into such theological considerations. On the contrary, they applaud from heaven and are comforted by the work they do for us and by the help they bring us through their ministry when, with revelation, the spirit lifts the human mind to ever higher horizons.
There is no worse misery
Than accept your own luck
It is not His will, my brother,
let your mind feign death!
Contrary to what might be deduced from his name, God the Absolute is not absolute, for, like God the Supreme and God the Ultimate, he belongs to a post-Havona age. These Deity personalities, including God the Absolute, are part of spacetime and are eternal futures. They materialize the will for creative and associative experience of the Paradise Deities.
It is difficult to imagine God the Absolute in space-time, for we only reason through the past, present, and future: what has been created, what is, and what will be. God the Supreme actualizes the divinity of his personality in the finite: through us the values of beauty, truth and goodness, until then potential, become actual. God the Ultimate lives a similar experience, but transcending space and time.
As for God the Absolute, live the experience of the existential! It could be supposed that his experience consists of becoming at the same time an eternal present, an eternal future and an eternal past, going back to the origin of eternity, the Universal Father and even to the I AM. It is therefore the existential experiential manifestation, desired by the Paradise Trinity. Thus, it is both an actual Deity because it is a potential Deity for what will be and for what has been (it is also a potential Deity in the present, since the present that it seeks to achieve is an absolute present, not limited by time and that it is not representative for us).
God the Supreme, God the Ultimate, and God the Absolute are not Creators by direct line. The creators of your domains participate in the emergence of your divinity and actualize, through the creativity of their acts, the potential aspects of your rising personality. With the example of God the Supreme, who also synthesizes the divinity and creative power of the Supreme Creators from Paradise, we can think that God the Ultimate and God the Absolute are also Creators and creatures at the same time.
Mind acting by will is always the forerunner of reality, whether on the Creative level of Paradise Deity or on the level of creature creativity. Nothing arises by chance; creation or creativity only manifests through the transformation of divine potential into divine actual. The universal reservoir in which total potential Divinity is contained, the personalizable potential of Deity and will creatures, is represented by the Qualified or Deity Absolute.
Every time the Universal Father grants the gift of personality to one of his children, this entity, until then potential, arises directly from the Deity Absolute. In the same way, every time a mortal, by a reflective act in accordance with the will of the Adjuster, transforms a new concept (meaning) into an eternal value, he becomes creative of his personal divinity, divinity that was potential until that day. in the Deity Absolute. This is how every human being participates in the emergence of the Supreme. In order for the divinity and personality of the Supreme to fully actualize and fully participate in the exhaustion of the finite customizable and divine potential of the Deity Absolute, God the Supreme, however great, requires the participation of the creature.
Although the three experiential Deities are not Absolutes, they can be considered as persons. Although the Deity Absolute is one of the three potentiality Absolutes, it is hardly conceivable as a person. At most one could say that it is perhaps prepersonal.
Indeed, when the Supreme, through his total appearance, has exhausted the customizable Finite potential of the Deity Absolute, the customizable potential of the Ultimate and of God the Absolute will still remain in this Absolute. But it is conceivable that the appearance of the Supreme could involve a reaction of the Deity Absolute (and not an action, as is his custom), although this is only a lucubration.
In any case, the very presence of God the Absolute will prevent during all eternity the total exhaustion of the existential potential contained in the Deity Absolute, since the existential experience of God the Absolute cannot have an end in time and space. This ending is only conceivable and real for the three persons of the Paradise Deity.
Until now we have spoken of God the Absolute using the present indicative, since it was easier to express our story. It is a fact that God the Absolute is a reality. It is a potential reality since it has not yet appeared, but from now on it is, at the same time, a current reality. Its existence is only real through ways incomprehensible to our mind.
If we stick to the logic of the Urantia Book, God the Absolute could only begin his actualization after the unification of the second experiential Trinity, and would be a consequence of this unification. For that, it would be necessary for the Ultimate to have achieved his appearance, since he would then be, with the Supreme and the Consummator of the Universal Destiny, one of the members of the Absolute Trinity.
The Era of the actualization of God the Absolute would be staggered from the second experiential Trinity until the appearance of the postulate of the Trinity of Trinities formed by the Paradise Trinity, the Ultimate Trinity and the Absolute Trinity.
From the human point of view, it seems unlikely that the Ultimate could crown his experience of transcendence of time and space in any way other than eternity, for in that case the fate of the Universe would be consummated. It would be necessary to attend first of all the completion of the Master Universe, from Havona to the edge of the fourth level of outer space.
In this case, the Potentiality Absolutes that are the Deity Absolute, the Unqualified Absolute, and the Universal Absolute would have come to completion. Now, this is not conceivable for our human mind, since these Absolutes go beyond infinity and existentiality. Not only are they existential, but they are also close to the Origin.
Thus, in the logic of our mathematical thought, with which there is always the possibility of adding a unit to any number, God the Absolute should never begin his actualization!
However, God the Absolute exists! Even if he remains as a Personality-Deity that we cannot contact through spiritual clairvoyance, since he is not part of God the Sevenfold, we will have all eternity to reach his existence by expanding our mental concepts.
This God of absoluteness already leads us to the hypothesis of an infinite cosmos surpassed in the Absolute, the infinite potential of the Unqualified Absolute. The total consummation of the actualization of the potential of the Absolutes of Potentiality would be the very fact of the unification of the Absolute Trinity, one of whose members is called the Consummator of Destiny. Then there could be, on the one hand, a finite cosmos whose growth is infinite, and, on the other, an infinite cosmos that consumes the fate of the former!
In this case, we would witness a cataclysm within the Absolutes of Potentiality with possible personalization of the Deity Absolute and the Universal Absolute. As for the Unqualified Absolute, it would become useless since it would have exhausted its universe power. We could then launch the hypothesis that his two usual associates, now converted into Deities-Personalities, would assign him other functions.
Published in no. 34 of the AFFUB bulletin “Le Lien Urantien”. Translation by Olga Lopez.
¶ References
- Light and Life Magazine (all old issues): https://aue.urantia-association.org/numeros-antiguos-del-lyv/