Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 3
THE ATTRIBUTES OF GOD
1. God is everywhere present; the Universal Father rules the circle of eternity. But he rules the local universes in the persons of his Paradise Creator Sons, even as he bestows life through these Sons.
2. The Universal Father is all the time present in all parts and in all hearts of his far-flung creation....The infinite can be finally revealed only in infinity; the cause can never be fully comprehended by an analysis of effects; the living God is immeasurably greater than the sum total of creation that has come into being as a result of the creative acts of his unfettered free will.
3. God is in perfection and without limitation, discernibly present only on Paradise and in the central universe....God has limited his direct and actual presence in recognition of the sovereignty and the divine prerogatives of the co-ordinate creators and rulers of the universes of time and space.
4. Concerning God’s presence in a planet, system, constellation, or a universe, the degree of such presence in any creational unit is a measure of the degree of the evolving presence of the Supreme Being....The Father does not retire in seclusion because he has been slighted; his affections are not alienated because of the creatures wrongdoing. Rather, having been endowed with the power of choice (concerning Himself), his children, in the exercise of that choice, directly determine the degree and limitations of the Father’s divine influence in their own hearts and souls. The Father has freely bestowed himself upon us without limit and without favor. He is no respecter of persons, systems, or universes.
5. Within the bounds of that which is consistent with the divine nature, it is literally true that “with God all things are possible.” The long-drawn-out evolutionary process of peoples, planets, and universes are under the perfect control of the universe creators and administrators and unfold in accordance with the eternal purposes of the Universal Father, proceeding in harmony and order and in keeping with the all-wise plan of God.
6. Regardless of appearances, the power of God is not functioning in the universe as a blind force....Situations do arise in which it appears that emergency rulings have been made...such misunderstanding of God is due to the profound ignorance you enjoy regarding the existence of the higher laws of the realm, the magnitude of the Father’s character, and the infinity of his attributes, and the fact of his free-willness.
7. To you the creature, many of the acts of the all-powerful Creator seem to be arbitrary, detached, and not infrequently heartless and cruel. But again I assure you that this is not true. God’s doings are all purposeful, intelligent, wise, kind, and eternally considerate of the best good, not always of an individual being, an individual race, an individual planet, or even an individual universe; but they are for the welfare and best good of all concerned, from the lowest to the highest.
8. God is unlimited in power, divine in nature, final in will, infinite in attributes, eternal in wisdom, and absolute in reality....God is possessed of unlimited power to know all things; his consciousness is universal....We are not wholly certain as to whether or not God chooses to foreknow events of sin. But even if God should foreknow the freewill acts of his children, such foreknowledge does not in the least abrogate their freedom. One thing is certain: God is never subject to surprise.
9. The successive bestowal of himself upon the universes as they are brought into being in no wise lessens the potential of power or the store of wisdom as they continue to reside and repose in the central personality of Deity.
10. Mortal man cannot possibly know the infinitude of the heavenly Father....But this same finite human being can actually feel—literally experience—the full and undiminished impact of such an infinite Father’s LOVE....Therefore man’s nearest and dearest approach to God is by and through love, for God is love.
11. In his contact with post-Havona creations, the Universal Father does not exercise his infinite power and final authority by direct transmittal but rather through his Sons and their subordinate personalities.... In the affairs of men’s hearts the Universal Father may not always have his way; but in the conduct and destiny of a planet the divine plan prevails; the eternal purpose of wisdom and love triumphs.
12. The uncertainties of life and the vicissitudes of existence do not in any manner contradict the concept of the universal sovereignty of God. All evolutionary creature life is beset by certain inevitabilities. Consider the following:
1. Is courage—strength of character—desirable? Then must man be reared in an environment which necessitates grappling with hardship and reacting to disappointments...
2. Is altruism—service of one’s fellows—desirable? Then must life experience provide for encountering situations of social inequality.
3. Is hope—the grandeur of trust—desirable? Then human existence must constantly be confronted with insecurities and recurrent uncertainties.
4. Is faith—the supreme assertion of human thought—desirable? Then must the mind of man find itself in that troublesome predicament where it ever knows less than it can believe.
5. Is the love of truth and the willingness to go wherever it leads, desirable? Then must man grow up in a world where error is present and falsehood always possible.
6. Is idealism—the approaching concept of the divine—desirable? Then must man struggle in an environment of relative goodness and beauty, surroundings stimulative of the irrepressible reach for better things.
7. Is loyalty—devotion to highest duty—desirable? Then must man carry on amid the possibilities of betrayal and desertion....
8. Is unselfishness—the spirit of self-forgetfulness—desirable? Then must mortal man live face to face with the incessant clamoring of an inescapable self for recognition and honor. Man could not dynamically choose the divine life if there were no self-life to forsake. Man could never lay saving hold on righteousness if there were no potential evil to exalt and differentiate the good by contrast.
9. Is pleasure—the satisfaction of happiness—desirable? Then must man live in a world where the alternative of pain and the likelihood of suffering are ever-present experiential possibilities.
13. The only evolutionary world without error (the possibility of unwise judgment) would be a world without free intelligence....The possibility of mistaken judgment (evil) becomes sin only when the human will consciously endorses and knowingly embraces a deliberate immoral judgment....Everything divine which the human mind grasps and the human soul acquires is an experiential attainment; it is a reality of personal experience and is therefore a unique possession in contrast to the inherent goodness and righteousness of the inerrant personalities of Havona.
14. The creatures of Havona...have faith in the stability of the universe, but they are utter strangers to that saving faith whereby mortal man climbs from the status of an animal up to the portals of Paradise....They are idealists, but they are born that way; they are wholly ignorant of the ecstasy of becoming such by exhilarating choice....They are unselfish, but they never gained such levels of experience by the magnificent conquest of a belligerent self.
15. With divine selflessness, consummate generosity, the Universal Father relinquishes authority and delegates power, but he is still primal....The sovereignty of God is unlimited; it is the fundamental fact of all creation.
16. It is a great blunder to humanize God, except in the concept of the indwelling Thought Adjuster, but even that is not so stupid as completely to mechanize the idea of the First Great Source and Center....The infinite and eternal Ruler of the universe of universes is power, form, energy, process, pattern, principle, presence, and idealized reality. But he is more; he is personal.
17. God the Father loves men; God the Son serves men; God the Spirit inspires the children of the universe to the ever-ascending adventure of finding God the Father by the ways ordained by God the Sons through the ministry of the grace of God the Spirit.
Discussion Questions
1. Is the prologue of the Gospel of John designating Christ as the creator of our universe compatible with the idea of God the Father as creator?
2. How do we harmonize the concept of an all-good, all-wise, all-powerful God with the evil and suffering in the world?
3. What comfort do some people get from believing in the doctrine of foreordination—God determines everything?
4. If our “nearest and dearest approach to God is by and through love,” how do we help people who are angry & bitter about life?
5. Are the “inevitabilities” of evil necessary in our world?
6. What do you think of the distinction between evil (mistaken judgment) and sin (knowingly disobeying the will of God)?
7. What are the advantages of beings who grow toward perfection by conscious choice over those who are created perfect?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship