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An authoritative and infallible revelation provides a certainty and an authority that is incompatible with human beings having free will choice. For, as has been stated, "If we had reason for faith, then it would not be faith at all, it would be logic. Faith can only be unreasonable." (Appleyard4)
Elsewhere we find: "Uncertainty with security is the essence of the Paradise adventure--uncertainty in time and in mind, uncertainty as to the events of the unfolding Paradise ascent; security in spirit and in eternity, security in the unqualified trust of the creature son in the divine compassion and infinite love of the Universal Father…" (Paper 111, Section 7)
For example, the Urantia Papers state that our eternal universe career is dependent upon the goal of our freewill decisions eventually becoming coincidental with God's will. To reject that as our goal is to sentence ourselves to "become as if we had never been." (Paper 2, Section 3) So do we really have free will? Only if we are uncertain about the veracity of these conditional statements.
In reality God had no option but to ensure that "uncertainty with security is the essence of the Paradise adventure." His alternative? To have created us as robots lacking in free will. Realization of this truth eliminates those puerile arguments about good and evil. We humans are totally responsible for all deliberate evil. And accidental evil is the unavoidable and inevitable result of giving free will to imperfect beings.
Thus the authors of these Urantia Papers also had no option but to find ways and means of preventing their revelation from becoming an infallible security blanket for those whose faith was not yet sufficiently advanced to accept the free will offered to them by the God of free will.
"They would not lie to us" is the cry we hear from those who, in their insecurity, cling to fundamentalism. But the revelators have explained very carefully and very explicitly what they were doing:
"No revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space. While such admissions as this may possibly detract from the immediate force and authority of all revelations, the time has arrived on Urantia when it is advisable to make such frank statements, even at the risk of weakening the future influence and authority of this, the most recent of the revelations of truth to the mortal races of Urantia." (Paper 92, Section 4)
A further consideration is the stated hope of the authors that their offering will help to catalyze the metamorphosis of Christianity from a religion of authority, one that is largely dependent on the infallibility or near infallibility ascribed to the Gospels and apostolic letters of the New Testament, to a religion of the spirit that discovers its authority and meaning in the personal relationships of individual Christians with their indwelling spirit of Deity. Religion of the spirit, as described in the Urantia Papers (Paper 155, Sections 5 & 6), could never be either authoritarian or infallible.
"Ecclesiasticism is at once and forever incompatible with that living faith, growing spirit, and firsthand experience of the faith-comrades of Jesus in the brotherhood of man in the spiritual association of the kingdom of heaven. The praiseworthy desire to preserve traditions of past achievement often leads to the defense of outgrown systems of worship. The well-meant desire to foster ancient thought systems effectually prevents the sponsoring of new and adequate means and methods designed to satisfy the spiritual longings of the expanding and advancing minds of modern men. Likewise, the Christian churches of the twentieth century stand as great, but wholly unconscious, obstacles to the immediate advance of the real gospel--the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.
"'The kingdom of God is within you' was probably the greatest pronouncement Jesus ever made, next to the declaration that his Father is a living and loving spirit." (Paper 195, Section10)
References
1. Dr W.S. Sadler (editor) History of the Urantia Movement.
2. Larry Mullins with Dr. M.J. Sprunger. (2000) A History of the Urantia Papers. (Penumbra Press, Boulder.)
3. Ernest P. Moyer. (2000) The Birth of a Divine Revelation. (Moyer Publishing, Hanover Pa)
4. Bryan Appleyard, Understanding the Present.
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