© 2005 Jean-Claude Romeuf
© 2005 French-speaking Association of Readers of the Urantia Book
| Theoretical Explanation of Creation | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 34 — Summer 2005 | Pentecost of the Year 30: Forty or Fifty Days After Easter? |
We have chosen to speak of God the Absolute because the very relative understanding that we can make of it, calls upon the most difficult mental concepts of the Urantia Book. We are aware that the human mind is limited and finite, but, is not the evolutionary goal to reach the upper limits of perfection? Is it not this very goal, which we have set for ourselves, which allows us to experience and actualize in the Supreme, our potential and imperfect divinity?
We do not think that the angels can, for a single moment, smile benevolently, much less sneer stupidly, as the duck laughed (untranslatable into English), when we launch into such theological considerations. On the contrary, they applaud in heaven and are comforted by the work they accomplish for us and the help they bring us by their ministry when, with revelation, the spirit draws the human mind towards ever higher horizons.
Than accepting one’s own fate
It’s not His will my brother
Let your mind play dead!
Contrary to what his name might suggest, God the Absolute is not absolute, for, like God the Supreme and God the Ultimate, he is from a time after Havona. These Deity personalities, even God the Absolute, are part of space-time and are future eternals. They embody the creative and associative will of experience of the Paradise Deities.
It is difficult to imagine God the Absolute in space-time, because we reason only through the past, present and future: what was 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 has a similar experience, but transcending space and time.
As for God the Absolute, he experiences the existential! We can suppose 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. He is therefore the existential experiential manifestation, willed by the Trinity of Paradise. Thus, he is both an actual Deity by what he is and a potential Deity by what he will be and by what he has been! (He is also a potential Deity in the present, because the present he seeks to reach is an absolute present, not limited by time and not representative for us).
God the Supreme, God the Ultimate and God the Absolute are not Creators in a direct line. The creatures of their domains participate in the emergence of their divinity and actualize, through the creativity of their acts, the potential aspects of their ascending personality. Following the example of God the Supreme who also synthesizes the divinity and the creative power of the Supreme Creators coming from Paradise, we can think that God the Ultimate and God the Absolute are also both Creators and creatures.
Mind acting by will, is always the precursor of reality, whether at the Creative level of Paradise Deity or at the level of creature creativity. Nothing is born by chance; creation or creativity is manifested only by the transformation of divine potential, into actual divine. The universal reservoir, in which is contained the total potential Divinity, the customizable potential of Deity and volitional creatures, is represented by the Qualified or Deity Absolute.
Whenever the Universal Father bestows the gift of personality upon a son, that entity, hitherto potential, is drawn directly from the Deity Absolute. In like manner, whenever a mortal, by a purposeful act in accord with the will of the Adjuster, transforms a new concept (meaning) into eternal value, he becomes creative of his personal divinity, divinity which was hitherto potential in the Deity Absolute. Thus every human being participates in the emergence of the Supreme. In order that the divinity and personality of the Supreme may be fully actualized and thus participate fully in the exhaustion of the finite, personalizable, divine potential of the Deity Absolute, God the Supreme, great as He is, 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 Absolutes of potentiality, it is difficult to imagine it as a person. At most, off the tip of the tongue, one could say that it is perhaps prepersonal.
Indeed, when the Supreme has, by its total emergence, exhausted the customizable Finite potential of the Absolute of Deity, there will still remain in this Absolute, the customizable potential of the Ultimate and of God the Absolute. But, we can envisage that the emergence of the Supreme could lead to a reaction from the Absolute of Deity (and not an action, as usual) conferring on it a sort of personality; this is only a wild idea!
In any case, the very presence of God the Absolute will prevent for eternity the total exhaustion of the existential potential contained in the Deity Absolute, because the existential experience of God the Absolute cannot end in time and space. This end is conceivable and real only for the three persons of the Paradise Deity.
Until now, we have spoken of God the Absolute, using the present indicative, because it was easier to express our story. It is a fact that God the Absolute is a reality. He is a potential reality because he has not yet emerged, but already he is at the same time, a current reality. His existence is real only in 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 this, the Ultimate would have to have completed his emergence because he would then be with the Supreme and the Consummator of Universal Destiny, one of the members of the Absolute Trinity.
The Age of the actualization of God the Absolute would extend from the second experiential Trinity until the appearance of the postulate of the Trinity of Trinities formed by the Trinity of Paradise, the Ultimate Trinity and the Absolute Trinity.
From the human point of view it seems unlikely that the Ultimate could complete his experience of transcending time and space except in eternity, for in that case the destiny of the Universe would be consummated. It would first require the completion of the Master Universe from Havona to the farthest edge of the fourth level of outer space.
In this case, the Absolutes of Potentiality that are the Absolute of Deity, the Unqualified Absolute and the Universal Absolute would have reached their completion. However, this is not conceivable to our human mind, because these Absolutes go beyond infinity and existentiality. Not only are they also existential, but they are close to the Origin.
Therefore, in the logic of our mathematical thinking with which there is always the possibility of adding a unit to any number, God the Absolute should never begin His actualization!
Yet, God the Absolute exists! Even if he remains a Personality-Deity that we will not be able to contact by spiritual clairvoyance, because he is not part of God the Sevenfold, we will have the eternal leisure to reach his existentiality by expanding our mental concepts.
This God of absoluteness already brings us to the hypothesis of an Infinite Cosmos surpassing in the Absolute, the infinite potential of the Unqualified Absolute. The total consumption 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 Consumer of Destiny. There could therefore be on one side, a Finite Cosmos but whose growth is infinite and on the other, an Infinite Cosmos consuming the destiny of the first!
In this case, we would witness a cataclysm within the Absolutes of Potentiality with possible personalization of the Absolute of Deity and the Universal Absolute. As for the Unqualified Absolute, it would become useless because it would have exhausted its power of Universe. We can then hypothesize that its two lifelong associates, now become Deity-Personalities, would charge it with other functions!
Jean-Claude Romeuf
| Theoretical Explanation of Creation | Le Lien Urantien — Issue 34 — Summer 2005 | Pentecost of the Year 30: Forty or Fifty Days After Easter? |