Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 10
THE PARADISE TRINITY
1. The Paradise Trinity of eternal Deities facilitates the Father’s escape from personality absolutism...The Paradise Trinity effectively provides for the full expression and perfect revelation of the eternal nature of Deity...The 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.
2. From the present situation on the circle of eternity, looking backward into the endless past, we can discover only one inescapable inevitability in universe affairs, and that is the Paradise Trinity. I deem the Trinity to have been inevitable. As I view the past, present, and future of time, I consider nothing else in all the universe of universes to have been inevitable.
3. It would seem that the Father, back in eternity, inaugurated a policy of profound self-distribution ... The Universal Father all along has divested himself of every part of himself that was bestowable on any other Creator or creature...He has given away, actually bestowed, with the dignity and sanctity of personality possession, all of himself and all of his attributes, everything he possibly could divest himself of, in every way, in every age, in every place, and to every person, and in every universe except that of his central indwelling.
4. The First Source and Center is the infinite father-personality, the unlimited source personality. The Eternal Son is the unqualified personality-absolute, that divine being who stands throughout all time and eternity as the perfect revelation of the personal nature of God. The Infinite Spirit is the conjoint personality, the unique personal consequence of the everlasting Father-Son union...The Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit are unique persons; none is a duplicate; each is original; all are united...With the Spirit the existential cycle of Deity personalization attains completion.
5. The Father, Son, and Spirit are certainly equal in nature, co-ordinate in being, but there are unmistakable differences in their universe performances, and when acting alone, each person of Deity is apparently limited in absoluteness.
6. Of all absolute associations, the Paradise Trinity (the first triunity) is unique as an exclusive association of personal Deity ...The Trinity is an association of infinite persons functioning in a nonpersonal capacity but not in contravention of personality. The illustration is crude, but a father, son, and grandson could form a corporate entity which would be nonpersonal but nonetheless subject to their personal wills.
7. The Paradise Trinity is real. It exists as the Deity union of Father, Son, and Spirit; yet the Father, the Son, or the Spirit, or any two of them, can function in relation to this selfsame Paradise Trinity. The Father, Son, and Spirit can collaborate in a non-Trinity manner, but not as three Deities. As persons they can collaborate as they choose, but that is not the Trinity.
8. As a mortal in the flesh you should view the Trinity in accordance with your individual enlightenment and in harmony with the reactions of your mind and soul. You can know very little of the absoluteness of the Trinity, but as you ascend Paradiseward, you will many times experience astonishment at successive revelations and unexpected discoveries of Trinity supremacy and ultimacy, if not of absoluteness.
9. The personal Deities have attributes, but it is hardly consistent to speak of the Trinity as having attributes. This association of divine beings may more properly be regarded as having functions, such as justice administration, totality attitudes, co-ordinate action, and cosmic overcontrol.
10. 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. Living associations, human families, social groups, or the Paradise-Trinity are not augmented by mere arithmetical summation. The group potential is always far in excess of the simple sum of the attributes of the component individuals.
11. The Supreme is the nearest approach to a power-personality focalization of the Trinity which can be comprehended by finite creatures. Hence the Trinity in relation to the finite is sometimes spoken of as the Trinity of Supremacy ...But I do not command language which would enable me to convey to the limited human mind the full truth and the eternal significance of the Paradise Trinity and the nature of the never-ending interassociation of the three beings of infinite perfection.
12. All law takes origin in the First Source and Center; he is law...Justice is inherent in the universal sovereignty of the Paradise Trinity...Justice is not the attitude of the Father, the Son, or the Spirit. Justice is the Trinity attitude of these personalities of love, mercy, and ministry. No one of the Paradise Deities fosters the administration of Justice. Justice is never a personal attitude; it is always a plural function.
13. Judgment, the final application of justice in accordance with the evidence submitted by the personalities of the Infinite Spirit, is the work of the Stationary Sons of the Trinity, beings partaking of the Trinity nature of the united Father, Son, and Spirit.
14. Justice is the collective thought of righteousness; mercy is its personal expression. Mercy is the attitude of love; precision characterizes the operation of law; divine judgment is the soul of fairness, ever conforming to the justice of the Trinity, ever fulfilling the divine love of God. When fully perceived and completely understood, the righteous justice of the Trinity and the merciful love of the Universal Father are coincident. But man has no such full understanding of divine justice. Thus in the Trinity, as man would view it, the personalities of Father, Son, and Spirit are adjusted to co-ordinate ministry of love and law in the experiential universes of time.
15. As things appear to the mortal on the finite level, the Paradise Trinity, like the Supreme Being, is concerned only with the total—total planet, total universe, total superuniverse, total grand universe. This totality attitude exists because the Trinity is the total of Deity and for many other reasons.
16. We do not find the overcontrol of Supremacy to be wholly predictable. Furthermore, this unpredictability appears to be characterized by a certain developmental incompleteness, undoubtedly an earmark of the incompleteness of the Supreme and of the incompleteness of finite reaction to the Paradise Trinity.
17. The mortal mind can immediately think of a thousand and one things—catastrophic physical events, appalling accidents, horrific disasters, painful illnesses, and world-wide scourges—and ask whether such visitations are correlated in the unknown maneuvering of this probable functioning of the Supreme Being. Frankly, we do not know; we are not really sure. But we do observe that, as time passes, all these difficult and more or less mysterious situations always work out for the welfare and progress of the universes. It may be that the circumstances of existence and the inexplicable vicissitudes of living are all interwoven into a meaningful pattern of high value by the function of the Supreme and the overcontrol of the Trinity.
18. Many truths and facts pertaining to the Paradise Trinity can only be even partially comprehended by recognizing a function that transcends the finite...We are inclined to the belief that the unification of the master universe is the eventuating act of the Ultimate and is probably reflective of certain, but not all, phases of the absonite overcontrol of the Paradise Trinity.
19. Three infinite persons seem to be the minimum number of beings required to activate the prepersonal and existential potential of total Deity—the Deity Absolute. We know the Universal Father, the Eternal Son, and the Infinite Spirit as persons, but I do not personally know the Deity Absolute. I love and worship God the Father; I respect and honor the Deity Absolute.
20. The Corps of the Finality embrace, among others, those mortals of time and space who have attained perfection in all that pertains to the will of God ...Having thus found God as the Father of all creatures, these finaliters must sometime begin the quest for the superfinite Father...It may be possible that the finaliters will partially attain the Deity Absolute, but even if they should, still in the eternity of eternities the problem of the Universal Absolute will continue to intrigue, mystify, baffle, and challenge the ascending and progressing finaliters, for we perceive that the unfathomability of the cosmic relationships of the Universal Absolute will tend to grow in proportions as the material universes and their spiritual administration continue to expand.
Discussion Questions
1. Why does the Universal Censor consider the Trinity an “inescapable inevitability in universe affairs?”
2. Explain: “The Father, Son and Spirit can collaborate in a non-Trinity manner, but not as three Deities.” Can the Father, Son, and Spirit function as persons and not as Deities?
3. Does the concept of justice and judgment as a nonpersonal function of the Trinity change our attitude toward these universe actions?
4. Contrast the Christian view of the Trinity with The Urantia Book description.
5, Since divine judgment conforms to the justice of the Trinity and at the same time fulfills the love of God, how do we understand its nature? Is this the meaning of “tough love?”
6. We experience many forms of suffering, yet all things work out for the welfare and progress of the universes. Is this because of suffering or in spite of suffering?
7. Knowing that justice cannot be achieved by any personal, individual attitude or decision, but must always be a group function, where should we alter industrial, educational, and parental policies?
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