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On the Revelatory Status of the Urantia Book.
Ken Glasziou, Maleny, Qld.
Some years ago I wrote an article for the Six-O-Six newsletter implying that the scientific content of The Urantia Book may contain errors. This statement brought an impassioned response categorically denying that the book could contain error and stating that in no circumstances would the revelators lie to us. The inclusion of a science content section in Innerface has stirred similar emotional responses, the most extreme being that whenever current science is in disagreement with The Urantia Book, it is science that is wrong and never the book.
I admit to having subscribed to a similar sentiment when I first accepted the book as a divinely authored revelation. Eventually I discovered so many examples of what I felt sure were errors that the demands of simple logic required me either to abandon my faith in the book as revelation or to delve more deeply into the nature of epochal revelation. If the book was not authored by celestial beings, what then are the alternatives? It contains in-depth coverage in many fields of human knowledge--cosmology, physics, chemistry, biochemistry, genetics, geology, anthropology, archaeology, pyschology, biblical scholarship, and then some. It was written prior to the age of computers, computerized data bases, and search and find programs. The amount of research required to write it would have been colossal. And then there was the 'prophetic' material I discovered in its pages--such as about neutrinos, supernovas, and neutron stars, the sub-atomic strong force, its statements on continental drift, the time of origin of the solar system--and, in our current Cosmic Reflections section, what might turn out to be a mind-blowing commentary about quantum physics.
It is dubious that a single individual could have written the Urantia Papers. In any case, style analysis indicates multiple authorship. Could a committee have written it, yet maintain both secrecy and the consistency displayed in its text? Taking all factors into consideration, I find the book entirely unique. In my experience, nothing else comes even close to it in terms of its quality and consistency. Hence I have concluded that human authorship is impossibly unlikely. My personal problem then becomes to make sense of its peculiarities. In part, what follows is a result of my delvings.
"To the time-space creature, all things must have a beginning save the ONE UNCAUSED--the primeval cause of causes. Therefore do we conceptualize this philosophic value-level as the I AM, at the same time instructing all creatures that the Eternal Son and the Infinite Spirit are co-eternal with the I AM; in other words there never was a time when the I AM was not the Father of the Son, and with him, of the Spirit."
Most of us are content to distil the Foreword's account of beginnings to something approximating the concept that the I AM escaped solitude by voluntarily occupying a self-created Paradise at the same time as becoming the Universal Father of the Eternal Son. Together, the Father and the Son created the God of Action, the Infinite Spirit. Then, collaboratively, these three created Havona, its inhabitants and the rest of the administration required to put together the Grand and Master Universes. Finally they created ourselves.
In giving us such a time-dependent concept, the book unabashedly acknowledges that it is false, but that it is necessary to do so because our feeble, finite minds are incapable of comprehending the incomprehensible--a spaceless, timeless, infinity that is the dwelling place of likewise incomprehensible, eternal Gods. So did the Revelators lie to us? No, of course not, for they told us what they were going to do.
To fully appreciate the Fifth Epochal Revelation, we really do need to consider the horrific difficulties confronting the revelators in coping with our relatively primitive mental and spiritual capacities. Then there was the further difficulty imposed by the mandate under which they were authorised to work.
I have always thought it strange that the mandate to produce the book was not spelled out in some kind of preface. Surely that would have been the logical place for the Revelators to inform us about the limitations to what they were permitted to tell us. But this is not so--bits of the mandate are scattered throughout the pages of the book, with the part that concerns its science coming long after most of the science content has already been presented.
Another point that we need to note is that this revelation nowhere claims to be either a divine revelation, a divinely inspired revelation, or a product of divine dictation. It is given to us by a goodly number of celestial or superhuman beings ranging from the very high (Divine Counselors, Perfectors of Wisdom, Universal Censors, etc.) to mere midwayers and seraphim who, reputedly, are not all that far above our own lowly levels of intellect.
It is also worth noting that Part 1 of the book has been provided by the most senior group of authors, probably all of whom would have experienced the very presence of the Universal Father in Paradise. Yet these same beings are humble enough to use the words "I/we do not know/understand/comprehend..." at least 35 times in that first section of the Revelation!
"Truth, what is truth?" is a phrase made infamous by Pontius Pilate during the trial of Jesus of Nazareth. In The Urantia Book, speaking to Nathaniel, Jesus says, "Nothing which human nature has touched can be regarded as infallible. Through the mind of man, divine
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