© 1994 Stuart R. Kerr III
© 1994 The Christian Fellowship of Students of The Urantia Book
| The Historicity of The Urantia Book | Fall 1994 — Index | Significant Books: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus J. Borg |
The doctrine of the Trinity has always posed conceptual problems for Christian theology. How can three persons constitute a unitary reality? Conversely, how does God differentiate his perfect unity into the plurality of his creation? How can the limitations of finitude be derived from limitless infinity, temporal succession from absolute eternity, generative possibility from primal necessity? The Urantia Book presents a view of reality which places these perplexing questions within the framework of a new paradigm that makes them more understandable.
This expanded picture of reality structures the compatibility of awesome complexity and sublime simplicity. The Urantia Book reveals a cosmos functioning as a harmonious system. Divine infinity is mirrored in the multiplicity of finite things, and divine eternity is integrally expressed in the endless temporal succession of cosmic events. The interrelatedness of finite things to one another and to the whole expresses a comprehensive and true “unity in plurality.”
The universe of universes is altogether unified. God is one in power and personality. There is co-ordination of all levels of energy and all phases of personality. Philosophically and experientially, in concept and in reality, all things and beings center in the Paradise Father. God is all and in all, and no things or beings exist without him. (UB 56:9.14)
Throughout the progressive evolution of humankind, individuals have striven to discover truths concerning the nature of reality. That there is a “many,” a plurality of things, is clear to most of us. But the human intellect searches for an underlying commonality. We hunger for a systematic and comprehensive view that ties things together. The goal of human thought in science, philosophy, and religion is to uncover the elemental and inherent unity in things. We intuitively value a unity amid diversity, a coherence of reality vibrant in richness and vitality. The highest articulation of such a unifying reality is our conceptualization of God.
It has been the burden of both experience and revelation to enhance our understanding of God. The knowledge of God was acquired gradually as humankind became increasingly able to receive it. The Old Testament effectively delivered the people of the Levant from polytheism and fixed in their hearts and minds the great and fundamental truth of the unity of the Godhead. Readiness for the knowledge of the Trinity, however, had to wait until the fullness of time when God’s Son would incarnate into the world and the Spirit of Truth would prepare humankind for an expanded knowledge of the Godhead. Premature revelation would actually hinder religious progress. Humankind needed to understand the unity of God before it could profitably be taught the enigma of the Trinity.
The dual nature of Jesus, as Son of Man and Son of God, has been a significant help in our understanding the mystery of the Trinity. In Jesus we see a superbly unified person with a duality of natures. Here we have unity combined with diversity. The human nature of Jesus in no way detracts from his divine nature, nor does his divine nature obscure his true humanity. These two natures are unified and supersummative in quality. Even lowly human beings can experience a growing unity with the indwelling Spirit of God. We have been given the choice of unifying our will with the Father’s will and gradually attaining attunement with God.
In Jesus we see a superbly unified person with a duality of natures. Here we have unity combined with diversity. The human nature of Jesus in no way detracts from his divine nature, nor does his divine nature obscure his true humanity.
The doctrine of the Trinity is an expansion of the doctrine of the Incarnation. Although different elements of the Trinity doctrine are found scattered throughout all parts of the Bible, there is no one place where this doctrine is set forth in a complete and systematic form. The New Testament assumes the Trinity with a sublime naturalness and simplicity. The first use of the term “Trinity” dates to the second century. Tertullian describes the distinctions in the Godhead as “persons,” not meaning personalities, but forms of manifestation. To avoid the pitfall of Tritheism, this same explanation of the Trinity is encountered today. When God acts as creator, it is a Father function; when God acts as a savior, it is a Son function; when God acts as a sustainer, it is a Spirit function. Orthodox theologians, however, point out that all three persons of the Trinity are involved in each of these functions.
The church has stated the doctrine of the Trinity in various creeds, such as the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. The Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 concisely summarized the doctrine in these words: “Firmly we believe and simply we confess that one alone is true God, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, three persons, one essence, one substance, and one nature entirely simple. The Father is from no one, the Son from the Father alone, and the Holy Spirit equally from both…consubstantial, co-equal, co-omnipotent, and co-eternal.”
Today, 20th century people are searching for a more complete understanding of spiritual reality. As we prepare to enter the next millennium, The Urantia Book presents a new paradigm of spiritual knowledge with an enhanced and expanded vision of the Trinity. In language which time-space conditioned beings can understand, we are told that in the dawn of eternity the Father-I Am breaks free from the static fetters of unqualified infinity confinement by the exercise of his absolute free-will. This primal act repercusses in the dynamic relationship of the Seven Absolutes of Infinity. The Paradise Trinity is the existential core of this Deity Reality in which the Universal Father is Primal, the First Source and Center of all things, beings, and realities. The Universal Father is discernible as personality and is the divine Father of all personalities.
The Son shares with the Father his divine character of Deity. They are forever and inseparably one personal unity of universe presence; and it is by virtue of this mutual omnipresence that all creation rests upon the everywhere active presence of the spirit of the Eternal Son. The spirit of the Father is eternally resident in the spirit of the Son, but the Son alone perfectly personalizes the Father’s love and mercy. To the universes of creation, the Son is the living revelation of divine love.
As God is love, so the Son is mercy. The Son cannot love more than the Father, but he can show mercy to creatures in one additional way, he not only is a primal creator like the Father, but he is also the Eternal Son of that same Father thereby sharing in the sonship experience of all other sons of the Universal Father. (UB 6:3.1)
The Son is the perfect image of the Father, perfectly mirroring and expressing all that the Father is. The Son is uncreated, eternal, without beginning, equally God. The Father and the Son love one another with a boundless love that fully expresses their reality; and this personal love proceeding from the Father and the Son is the Infinite Spirit. The Spirit is not created; the Spirit is a person co-equal and co-eternal with the Father and the Son.
In language which time-space conditioned beings can understand, we are told that in the dawn of eternity the Father-I Am breaks free from the static fetters of unqualified infinity confinement by the exercise of his absolute free-will.
The Infinite Spirit is the third person of the Trinity, and as “unitive” Being, proceeding from both the Father and the Son, maintains the unity of creation. Acting as the Conjoint Creator with the Father-Son union, the Spirit is the universal and divine minister of the Son’s mercy and the Father’s love. The Infinite Spirit is the source of universal and absolute mind. It is through mind endowment that the Spirit serves as the indispensable co-ordinator of both spiritual and material realities. He is the universal co-ordinator of creation, the correlator of all actual reality. The Spirit is the unifier of the manifold energies and diverse creations which have appeared in consequence of the divine plan and eternal purpose of the Universal Father.
The Conjoint Actor functions throughout the grand universe as a positive and distinct personality, especially in the higher spheres of spiritual values, physical-energy relationships, and true mind meanings. He functions specifically wherever and whenever energy and spirit associate and interact; he dominates all reactions with mind, wields great power in the spiritual world, and exerts a mighty influence over energy and matter. At all times the Third Source is expressive of the nature of the First Source and Center. (UB 9:1.4)
The existence of these three eternal persons of Deity in no way violates the truth of divine unity. The three perfectly individualized personalities of Deity are as one to all persons and things in the universe: “Trinity is Deity unity, and this unity rests eternally upon the absolute foundations of the divine oneness of the three original and co-ordinate and coexistent personalities, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.” (UB 10:0.2) All the diversity of the character traits and infinite powers of the three persons of the Trinity are divinely unified and undivided Deity realities.
The existence of these three eternal persons of Deity in no way violates the truth of divine unity. The three perfectly individualized personalities of Deity are as one to all persons and things in the universe: “Trinity is Deity unity, and this unity rests eternally upon the absolute foundations of the divine oneness of the three original and co-ordinate and coexistent personalities, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit.” (UB 10:0.2)
Personality is inherent in the individual members of the Trinity, but the Trinity is not, in and of itself, personal. The unified essence of the Trinity might be understood more properly as a supersummative conjoining of the three Deity endowments of the Father, Son, and Spirit. These three eternal personalizations of Deity become undivided and indivisible within the Deity reality of the Trinity, and this oneness of Deity is existential and absolute. This divine unity encompasses a Deity reality which exceeds by far the simple sum of the personal attributes of the three persons of Deity.
The Trinity interacts with manifested reality in a collective sense, functioning in ways that are both personal and nonpersonal. It is a divine reality comprising qualities, characteristics, and functions which are unique, original, and not wholly predictable. “The Trinity association of the three Paradise Deities results in the evolution, eventuation, and deitization of new meanings, values, powers, and capacities for universal revelation, action, and administration.” (UB 10:5.2)
As we view the past, present, and future of time, the authors of The Urantia Book tell us that of all things manifested in the universe of universes, only the concept of the Trinity is deemed inevitable: “The original and eternal Paradise Trinity is existential and was inevitable. This never-beginning Trinity was inherent in the fact of the differentiation of the personal and the nonpersonal by the Father’s unfettered will and factualized when his personal will co-ordinated these dual realities by mind.” (UB 0:12.1)
“The original and eternal Paradise Trinity is existential and was inevitable. This never-beginning Trinity was inherent in the fact of the differentiation of the personal and the nonpersonal by the Father’s unfettered will and factualized when his personal will co-ordinated these dual realities by mind.” (UB 0:12.1)
The reality of the present master universe is unthinkable without the Trinity. Only the conception of the Trinity union of the Father, Son, and Spirit allows postulation as to how the Infinite could possibly achieve threefold and co-ordinate personalization in the presence of the absolute oneness of Deity. No other philosophic or theologic proposal could account for “the completeness of the absoluteness inherent in Deity unity coupled with the repleteness of volitional liberation inherent in the threefold personalization of Deity.” (UB 10:0.3)
Faith in the Trinity entails a faith in three divine persons living in the deep eternal relationships incumbent upon this Trinity. The Father is always the Father to the Eternal Son who is ever his only-begotten and uncreated Son. The Infinite Spirit lives always as the conjoint third person who administers the eternal love of the Father and Son to the universe of universes. These persons revealed within the Godhead are distinct; they are a community eternally bound together in perfect understanding and love. In learning the mystery of the Trinity, we realize that divine life can be shared, and shared even by us created individuals who, as sons and daughters in faith, can be brought into the joy of the perfect community.
The Paradise Trinity is existent. The stage of universal space is set for the manifold and never-ending panorama of the creative unfolding of the purpose of the Universal Father through the personality of the Eternal Son and by the execution of the God of Action, the executive agency for the reality performances of the Father-Son creator partnership.” (UB 8:1.3)
Stuart Kerr, III, is a marketing program specialist for GE, with technical expertise in industrial adhesives and coatings. He has been a student of The Urantia Book for many years.
| The Historicity of The Urantia Book | Fall 1994 — Index | Significant Books: Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time by Marcus J. Borg |