Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 116
THE ALLMIGHTY SUPREME
1. If man recognized that his Creators—his immediate supervisors—while being divine were also finite, and that the God of time and space was an evolving and nonabsolute Deity, then would the inconsistencies of temporal inequalities cease to be profound religious paradoxes.
2. Experiential growth implies creature‑Creator partnership—God and man in association. Growth is the earmark of experiential Deity: Havona did not grow; Havona is and always has been; it is existential like the everlasting Gods who are its source. But growth characterizes the grand universe.
3. The Almighty Supreme is a living and evolving Deity of power and personality. His present domain, the grand universe, is also a growing realm of power and personality. His destiny is perfection, but his present experience encompasses the elements of growth and incomplete status.
4. The Supreme Being functions primarily in the central universe as a spirit personality; secondarily in the grand universe as God the Almighty, a personality of power. The tertiary function of the Supreme in the master universe is now latent, existing only as an unknown mind potential.
5. The union of the power and personality attributes of Supremacy is the function of Supreme Mind; and the completed evolution of the Almighty Supreme will result in one unified and personal Deity—not in any loosely co‑ordinated association of divine attributes,
6. Throughout the evolutionary ages the physical power potentials of the Supreme is vested in the Seven Supreme Power Directors, and the mind potential reposes in the Seven Master Spirits ...The time‑space mind, the cosmic mind, is differently functioning in the seven superuniverses, but it is co‑ordinated by some unknown associative technique in the Supreme Being.
7. Whereas physique may attain completed growth, and whereas spirit may achieve perfection of development, mind never ceases to progress—it is the experiential technique of endless progress. The Supreme is an experiential Deity and therefore never achieves completion of mind attainment.
8.,God the Supreme derives his spirit and personality attributes from the Paradise Trinity, but he is power‑actualizing in the doings of the Creator Sons, the Ancients of Days, and the Master Spirits, whose collective acts are the source of his growing power as almighty sovereign to and in the seven superuniverses.
9. Unqualified Paradise Deity is incomprehensible to the evolving creatures of time and space ...Therefore does Paradise Deity attenuate and otherwise qualify the extra‑Paradise personalizations of divinity ...And this is the origin of God the Sevenfold, whose successive levels are encountered by mortal man in the following order:
1. The Creator Sons (and Creative Spirits).
2. The Ancients of Days.
3. The Seven Master Spirits.
4. The Supreme Being.
5. The Conjoint Actor.
6. The Eternal Son.
7. The Universal Father.
10. The Supreme ever intervenes as the experiential spirit personalization of the Paradise Trinity and as the experiential focus of the evolutionary almighty power of the creator children of the Paradise Deities. The Supreme Being is the maximum revelation of Deity to the seven superuniverses and for the present universe age.
11. Mind is the flexible reality which creatures and Creators can so readily manipulate; it is the vital link connecting matter and spirit. The mind bestowal of the Third Source and Center unifies the spirit person of God the Supreme with the experiential power of the evolutionary Almighty.
12. The Supreme is both creature and creator; the possibility of his being such is revealed in the bestowal actions of the Eternal Son and his co‑ordinate and subordinate Sons. The bestowal orders of sonship, the Michaels and the Avonals, actually augment their divine natures with bona fide creature natures which have become theirs by the living of the actual creature life on the evolutionary worlds. When divinity becomes like humanity, inherent in this relationship is the possibility that humanity can become divine.
13. The Mystery Monitors are to human beings what the Paradise Trinity is to the Supreme Being. The Adjusters are absolute foundations, and upon absolute foundations freewill choice can cause to be evolved the divine reality of an eternaliter nature, finaliter nature in the case of man, Deity nature in God the Supreme.
14. The local universes are the real laboratories in which are worked out the mind experiments galactic adventures, divinity unfoldings, and personality progressions which, when cosmically totaled, constitute the actual foundation upon which the Supreme is achieving deity evolution in and by experience.
15. In the local universes even the Creators evolve ...The local universes are the starting points of true evolution, the spawning grounds of bona fide imperfect personalities endowed with the freewill choice of becoming cocreators of themselves as they are to be.
16. When the bestowal Sons reveal new ways for man to find God, they are not creating these paths of divinity attainment; rather are they illuminating the everlasting highways of progression which lead through the presence of the Supreme to the person of the Paradise Father.
17. The local universe is the starting place for those personalities who are farthest from God, and who can therefore experience the greatest degree of spiritual ascent in the universe, can achieve the maximum of experiential participation in the cocreation of themselves. These same local universes likewise provide the greatest possible depth of experience for the descending personalities, who thereby achieve something which is to them just as meaningful as the Paradise ascent is to an evolving creature.
18. The Almighty Supreme is evolving as the overcontroller of the physical power of the grand universe. In the present universe age this potential of physical power appears to be centered in the Seven Supreme Power Directors, who operate through the fixed locations of the power centers and through the mobile presences of the physical controllers.
19. The spirit struggles of time and space have to do with the evolution of spirit dominance over matter by the mediation of (personal) mind; the physical (nonpersonal) evolution of the universes has to do with bringing cosmic energy into harmony with the equilibrium concepts of mind subject to the overcontrol of spirit. The total evolution of the entire grand universe is a matter of the personality unification of the energy‑controlling mind with the spirit‑co‑ordinated intellect and will be revealed in the full appearance of the almighty power of the Supreme.
20. A growing universe is an unsettled universe; hence no part of the cosmic whole can find real stability until the fullness of time witnesses the material completion of the seven superuniverses.
21. In the evolutionary superuniverses energy‑matter is dominant except in personality, where spirit through the mediation of mind is struggling for the mastery. The goal of the evolutionary universes is the subjugation of energy‑matter by mind, the co‑ordination of mind with spirit, and all of this by virtue of the creative and unifying presence of personality. Thus, in relation to personality, do physical systems become subordinate; mind systems, co‑ordinate; and spirit systems, directive.
22. There is an interdependence of all forces and personalities throughout the universe of universes…In a human being the mechanism of physical life is responsive, in part, to the dictates of (personal) mind. This very mind may, in turn, become dominated by the leadings of purposive spirit, and the result of such evolutionary development is the production of a new child of the Supreme, a new personal unification of the several kinds of cosmic reality.
23. On Paradise, monota and spirit are as one—indistinguishable except by name. In Havona, matter and spirit, while distinguishably different, are at the same time innately harmonious. In the seven superuniverses, however, there is great divergence; there is a wide gulf between cosmic energy and divine spirit; therefore is there a greater experiential potential for mind action in harmonizing and eventually unifying physical pattern with spiritual purposes
24. The grand universe is not only a material creation of physical grandeur, spirit sublimity, and intellectual magnitude, it is also a magnificent and responsive living organism. There is actual life pulsating throughout the mechanism of the vast creation of the vibrant cosmos.
25. Man's urge for Paradise perfection, his striving for God‑attainment, creates a genuine divinity tension in the living cosmos which can only be resolved by the evolution of an immortal soul; this is what happens in the experience of a single mortal creature. But when all creatures and all Creators in the grand universe likewise strive for God‑attainment and divine perfection, there is built up a profound cosmic tension which can only find resolution in the sublime synthesis of almighty power with the spirit person of the evolving God of all creatures, the Supreme Being.
Discussion Questions
1. How have theologians tried to explain the problem of evil?
2. How does God the Sevenfold relate to the concept of God in Christianity?
3. In the face of the human desire for simplicity, how does the explanation that the spirit and personality of the Supreme Being is in the Paradise Trinity, the Supreme Mind stems from the Infinite Spirit, and the origin of the Almighty Supreme is in the power potentials of the Supreme Creators help us in understanding God the Supreme?
4. How does the control of power in the universe differ from the views of present day religion and science?
5. To what extent does mind dominate our physical bodies?
6. How does history show evidence of the gradual direction and dominance of spirit in civilization and culture?
7. What evidence do we have that the universe is a living organism?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship