© 1997 Kenneth T. Glasziou
© 1997 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
| Our Major Responsibility: Disseminating the Fifth Epochal Revelation | Fall 1997 — Index | My Acceptance of The Urantia Book |
The Urantia Book contains some remarkable scientific, archaeological, and anthropological material that is indicative of extraordinary knowledge on the part of its authors. I’m quite sure that if some of these pronouncements were evaluated by experts in this particular field, such authorities would be forced to admit that the odds against it having been composed correctly by a human author at the time of the publication of the book are of astronomical proportions. A considerable number of new readers of The Urantia Book have perceived this “prophetic” science as an adequate reason for them to undertake a serious study of the book. Much later, as they are inspired by its enlarged vision of spiritual reality, the importance of this scientific material may decline to almost zero.
If most or all of the science material in the book had been of the quality of its prophetic science, it seems likely that the book would have been quickly accepted in academia and from there penetrated widely into Christian churches. But this is not the case.
Besides its prophetic material, this strange book contains portions having the potential of being utilized for its ridicule. Thinking this over, I came to a rough estimate that if about 3% of its content had been removed before the first printing, perhaps it would have turned the book into the sensation that many of the original Forum members had hoped for or expected. Given the removal of that material and some attention-drawing mechanism to its prophetic components (italics for example), then it seems likely that this revelation could now have been well on its way to catalyze a revolution as expressed in:
What a transcendent service if, through this revelation, the Son of Man should be recovered from the tomb of traditional theology and be presented as the living Jesus to the church that bears his name, and to all other religions! (UB 196:1.2)
Assuming that these difficult bits and pieces had been edited out of the book and some emphasis given to the prophetic materials, let me quote from the book on what might have come to pass — and, hopefully, may still take place — had its prophetic science been leading the way.
The philosophic elimination of religious fear and the steady progress of science add greatly to the mortality of false gods; and even though these casualties of man-made deities may momentarily befog the spiritual vision, they eventually destroy that ignorance and superstition which so long obscured the living God of eternal love. (UB 102:6.1)
Ancient magic was the cocoon of modern science, indispensable in its time but now no longer useful. And so the phantasms of ignorant superstition agitated the primitive minds of men until the concepts of science could be born. Today, Urantia is in the twilight zone of this intellectual evolution. One half the world is grasping eagerly for the light of truth and the facts of scientific discovery, while the other half languishes in the arms of ancient superstition and but thinly disguised magic. (UB 88:6.8)
Science teaches man to speak the new language of mathematics and trains his thoughts along lines of exacting precision. And science also stabilizes philosophy through the elimination of error, while it purifies religion by the destruction of superstition. (UB 81:6.10)
So you see, if we scientists had been in the driver’s seat, the false gods would all be dead, philosophic elimination of religious fear would have been achieved, and religion would have been purified by the destruction of superstition. Reality, however, is different. The revelators themselves scuttled us. Some readers may not have noticed the sections of the book (I call it the “funny stuff”) that have the potential to cause embarrassment if we were called upon to defend them at some public meeting like a TV host show. Stories like the existence of large passenger birds — the fandors — carrying Adam and Eve on inspection trips about the Garden challenge our credulity. Or describing the origin of secondary midwayers (beings just above human beings) who are invisible to human vision as the unique product of material human beings (who were descendants of supermortal personalities) seems a bit strange.
The way these “strange” stories are told in the book is leading some readers who recognize the extraordinary spiritual quality of most of the book to wonder whether the revelators have used some technique akin to allegory in order to present us with a deeper overview of the cosmology of the universe than could otherwise be given if they are to stay within the rules governing revelation. If so, this means that this “funny stuff” is told using symbolism, allegory, or mythology that hides much deeper realities — or that reality may sometimes be “stranger than fiction.”
The extensive and scholarly research of Matthew Block has confirmed the long overlooked fact by some readers of The Urantia Book that the revelators have drawn extensively upon human sources — just as stated on UB 0:12.12 and UB 121:8.13 . As this is more generally realized by students of The Urantia Book they will be more inclined to regard the Fifth Epochal Revelation, not as divine dictation, but as the word of God in the words of freewill celestial beings, some only a little higher than ourselves on the scale of intellectual ability and others many orders of magnitude above our level of knowledge, comprehension, and intellectual ability. These authors have combined together in providing us with what they believe is a reasonably comprehensible overview of the hierarchical structure among universe personalities, a new cosmology that is light years ahead of anything we have had previously, and authoritative insights into the natures of the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, the role of the Trinity, together with an expanded version of Jesus’ living revelation of God-likeness — and much, much more. In doing so they have chosen whatever means they, as individuals, considered were suitable to achieve the goals that were set for them.
It is also possible that a restraint was set on this revelation — that it had to be presented in a way that would not unduly upset the normal progress of the planet. It should be obvious from reading the revelation that the goal of mortal life on inhabited planets is not a competition to attain “light and life” status in record time nor that our journey to Paradise is a race to see who can get there first. On our life journey it is the experiences accumulated and the adversities overcome that appear to be of enormous value for the fulfillment of whatever is eventually in store for us.
The inclusion of “funny stuff” was surely the deliberate act of the revelators and may have slowed up the acceptance of the revelation. If so we have to bow to their superior wisdom, accept what is, and get on with the job at hand.
The inclusion of “funny stuff” was surely the deliberate act of the revelators and may have slowed up the acceptance of the revelation. If so we have to bow to their superior wisdom, accept what is, and get on with the job at hand. A part of that job may be to explain the nature of the book to the world at large. Many have attempted to foist it on others, as an errorless (except for typos) divine revelation, in concept not very different from the divine dictation doctrine regarding the Bible. Mainline Christian theologians (and many others) have long since rejected this doctrine of the literal inspiration of scriptures. The best description of the Bible among scholars is that the Bible contains the word of God in the words of men (Good News Bible, Catholic Study Edition, Thomas Nelson, N.Y. 1979). This more accurate view of the Bible has helped those in the Christian faith to get a more meaningful understanding and experience with the Universal Father and Christ Jesus.
Some students of The Urantia Book coming out of the scholarly disciplines of Christian theology have always viewed the book in this light. A new era for many readers of The Urantia Book appears to be dawning — one in which scholarly research, followed by explanation, exposition, and exegesis — that will bring a greater understanding of this great book. Certainly we must get past the divine dictation theory of its origin.
In summary, we see that some readers such as myself firmly believe that The Urantia Book does contain material of a scientific nature that could only have been guessed at by a hypothetical human author both at the time of the receipt of the Papers and also at the time of the publication of the book. Much of the scientific material in the book reflects the science of the 1930’s to the 1950’s. The revelators clearly state in the description of their mandate that they have included scientific material (for the purpose of showing the integration of science, philosophy, and religion) that will “soon be outdated.”
I believe that many Urantia Book readers, myself included, have made an error more or less identical to that made by Christian fundamentalists in that we were so impressed with the high quality of the Fifth Epochal Revelation that we assumed that it was the word of God in the words of God himself. Hence we skipped over all of the denials of such a view in the book itself in the hope that here at last we were in possession of absolute truth-and no longer would we have to live in uncertainty or struggle with evaluating truth. A careful reading of The Urantia Book will reveal that such is not the character of divine revelation nor the way of the Universal Father.
We now have to reread The Urantia Book in a more scholarly manner, recognizing its revelatory status but also recognizing that the revelators may have retained the techniques of the ages in bringing this revelation to humankind. Truth is sometimes best communicated to lowly mortals in parables and myths — which theological scholars have long recognized. The revelators did not relieve us of the task of thinking for ourselves. In The Urantia Book we have, I believe, the most authentic and detailed cosmological overview of reality available to humankind from which we have to struggle, as always, to discover our own personal truth. A God who loves us could do no other:
The proof that revelation is revelation is this same fact of human experience: the fact that revelation does synthesize the apparently divergent sciences of nature and the theology of religion into a consistent and logical universe philosophy, a co-ordinated and unbroken explanation of both science and religion, thus creating a harmony of mind and satisfaction of spirit which answers in human experience those questionings of the mortal mind which craves to know how the Infinite works out his will and plans in matter, with minds, and on spirit. (UB 101:2.1)
Ken T. Glasziou, M. Sc., Ph. D., is a research scientist, retired, who is active in church work in Australia. He is author of Science and Religion; The New Age Beyond 2000 A. D., and Christ or Chaos: The Evolution of a Revelation.
| Our Major Responsibility: Disseminating the Fifth Epochal Revelation | Fall 1997 — Index | My Acceptance of The Urantia Book |