© 1998 Ken Glasziou
© 1998 The Brotherhood of Man Library
The Urantia Papers got off to a bad start when first published as The Urantia Book in 1955. With the best of intentions, many of those responsible for its initial introduction did their utmost to impose it upon the world totally as a divinely authorized revelation.
Expectations of these early readers were not dissimilar to those of John the Baptist in his campaign as herald for the Messiah. They sent the book to kings, queens, popes, presidents, senators, congressmen. Many appear to have expected our world leaders to instantly embrace it as commands direct from God, to drop to their knees in repentance, and to set about the immediate inauguration of the age of Light and Life.
The revelators gave us the Urantia Papers, not “The Urantia Book” nor its transformation to “The Fifth Epochal Revelation.” That was man’s doing. One effect was to send orthodox Christianity to scurry for cover. I’m sure that was not intended by the revelators. In fact it appears to be one of their great hopes that Christianity would be persuaded to switch their primary teaching away from Paul’s Christology and to Jesus’ revelation of the nature of God.
This is not really a criticism of Paul. The revelators indicate their full awareness of the essential role of Paul for the survival of any knowledge of a Jesus of Nazareth into modern times. Without Paul, the memory of Jesus would probably have disappeared from our records. The Papers tell of the disciple, Abner, who rigorously clung to Jesus’ teaching with a no compromise attitude. Abner and his followers quickly disappeared from the pages of history.
Paul’s Christology was the most advanced religion of general appeal to us humans, both in Paul’s time and even up to the present. Paul virtually ignored the human Jesus in his writings (though not necessarily in his private devotions).
Paul’s pragmatic Christology was founded upon the basic human need for forgiveness of sin. Associated with that need, there is a human addiction to the concept of a necessity for appeasement and sacrifice. Thus we make God in our own image.
The practice of Christianity is still built around sin, guilt, and the sacrificial means of escape from punishment. The revelators indicate it may take as personified, and that all of us, of all races, nations, and religions, are rightful members of the family of God.
Some readers who have yet to form an opinion about the validity of the Urantia Papers may turn to its science, archaeology, cosmology, etc., for help in their quest for truth.
Dr. Meredith Sprunger, a retired academic and minister of religion, has pointed out that the origin and authorship of a work such as the Urantia Papers is not a philosophical criterion of truth. The Papers themselves deny that science can validate religious truth.
“The existence of God can never be proved by scientific experiment or by the pure reason of logical deduction. God can be realized only in the realms of human experience.” (UB 1:2.7)
And on page 1106:
“Reason is the proof of science, faith the proof of religion, logic the proof of philosophy, but revelation is validated only by human experience.” (UB 101:2.8)
Thus, according to the Urantia Papers, both the existence of God and the truth of revelation can be validated only through our own personal experience.
The Urantia Papers concentrate our attention upon the role played by the Father-Spirit that indwells us, and the aid provided by other spirit forces such as the Spirit of Truth as prime movers for assisting us in validating our truth experience. They are also referred to in the gospel of John as well as in Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Romans,[^3]
So can the science, anthropology, and archaeology of the Papers give any help in our quest to discover truth?
An important contribution they make is that they demonstrate that the Papers have not been thrown together haphazardly in some kind of save-the-world crusade. For example, the multitude of archaeological references in Part 4 indicate that a fastidious scholarship has gone into the writing of these Papers, work that would have required an enormous input of time and dedicated effort.
To date all attempts to locate scholars who could have actually contributed these and other specialist materials, including the debunking attempt made by professional skeptic, Martin Gardner, have failed to do so.
The Papers also reveal a quite extraordinary knowledge of text from both the Old and New Testaments. Thus, whoever was responsible for authorship had hundreds upon hundreds of relevant quotes readily available, probably in their memory, in support of the many and varied concepts being discussed. It is worth while to ponder upon these points as the Papers are read.
A careful examination of the way biblical quotes were used indicates that they could not simply have been pulled out from a concordance, nor could computerized data bases been used as they were not available up to the time of publication of the book.
The science content of the Papers is extensive and demonstrates a wide ranging knowledge of physics and the biological sciences, some being of the kind normally held only by specialists in restricted fields.
The quality of some of the science component is supportive of my previous conjecture that these Urantia Papers are works of advanced scholars and certainly worthy of serious study—regardless of the question of their authorship or revelatory status.
When assessing the validity of any work, surely it is desirable to do so with an open mind, treating each as a part of our personal search for truth. With this attitude, truth becomes the overriding criterion of value.