Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 115
THE SUPREME BEING
1. With God the Father, sonship is the great relationship. With God the Supreme, achievement is the prerequisite to status—one must do something as well as be something.
2. If mind cannot fathom conclusions, if it cannot penetrate to true origins, then will such mind unfailingly postulate conclusions and invent origins that it may have a means of logical thought within the frame of these mind‑created postulates. And while such universe frames for creature thought are indispensable to rational intellectual operations they are, without exception, erroneous to a greater or lesser degree.
3. From the existential standpoint, nothing new can happen throughout the galaxies, for the completion of infinity inherent in the I AM is eternally present in the seven Absolutes... But the fact that infinity is thus existentially present in these absolute associations in no way makes it impossible to realize new cosmic experientials. From a finite creature's viewpoint, infinity contains much that is potential, much that is on the order of a future possibility rather than a present actuality.
4. Value is a unique element in universe reality ...To the experiential universes even divine values are increased as actualities by enlarged comprehension of reality meanings.
5. The entire scheme of universal creation and evolution on all experiencing levels is apparently a matter of the conversion of potentialities into actualities ...The apparent method whereby the possibilities of the cosmos are brought into actual existence varies from level to level, being experiential evolution in the finite and experiential eventuation in the absonite.
6. Man, a finite creature in an infinite cosmos, must content himself with distorted reflections and attenuated conceptions of that limitless, boundless, never‑beginning, never‑ending existence the comprehension of which is really beyond his ability.
7. There is a unity in infinity which has been expressed in these Synopsis of Papers as the I AM—the premier postulate of the creature mind. But never can a creature understand how it is that this unity becomes duality, triunity, and diversity while yet remaining an unqualified unity. Man encounters a similar problem when he pauses to contemplate the undivided Deity of Trinity alongside the plural personalization of God.
8. While infinity is on the one hand UNITY, on the other it is DIVERSITY without end or limit. Infinity, as it is observed by finite intelligences, is the maximum paradox of creature philosophy and finite metaphysics.
9, Though man's spiritual nature reaches up in the worship experience to the Father who is infinite, man's intellectual comprehension capacity is exhausted by the maximum conception of the Supreme Being.
10. One basic conception of the absolute level involves a postulate of three phases:
1. The Original...the I AM from which all reality takes origin.
2. The Actual...This triodity of the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and the Paradise Isle constitutes the actual revelation of the originality of the First Source and Center,
3. The Potential. The union of the three Absolutes of potentiality, the Deity, Unqualified, and Universal Absolutes.
11. Actuality (of Deity) is what man seeks in the Paradise ascent. Potentiality (of human divinity) is what man evolves in that search. The Original is what makes possible the coexistence and integration of man the actual, man the potential, and man the eternal.
12. The final dynamics of the cosmos have to do with the continual transfer of reality from potentiality to actuality ...Always will actuals be opening up new avenues of the realization of hitherto impossible potentials—every human decision not only actualizes a new reality in human experience but also opens up a new capacity for human growth. The man lives in every child, and the morontia progressor is resident in the mature God-knowing man.
13. From a practical viewpoint the philosophers of the universe have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as an end. From a circumscribed view there are, indeed, many ends, many terminations of activities but from a larger viewpoint on a higher universe level, there are no endings, merely transitions from one phase of development to another.
14. The Supreme is first of all a spirit person, and this spirit person stems from the Trinity. But the Supreme is secondly a Deity of growth—evolutionary growth—and this growth derives from the two triodities, actual and potential.
15. It is not so difficult to comprehend that the infinite does contain the finite as it is to understand just how this infinite actually is manifest to the finite. But the Thought Adjusters indwelling mortal man are one of the eternal proofs that even the absolute God (as absolute) can and does actually make direct contact with even the lowest and least of all universe will creatures.
16. The growth of Supremacy derives from the triodities; the spirit person of the Supreme, from the Trinity; but the power prerogatives of the Almighty are predicated on the divinity successes of God the Sevenfold, while the conjoining of the power prerogatives of the Almighty Supreme with the spirit person of God the Supreme takes place by virtue of the ministry of the Conjoint Actor, who bestowed the mind of the Supreme as the conjoining factor in this evolutionary Deity.
17. The Supreme Being embraces possibilities for cosmic ministry that are not apparently manifested in the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, or the nonpersonal realities of the Isle of Paradise.
18. The Supreme not only grows as the Creators and creatures of the evolving universes attain to Godlikeness, but this finite Deity also experiences growth as a result of the creature and Creator mastery of the finite possibilities of the grand universe.
19. The motion of the Supreme is twofold: intensively toward Paradise and Deity and extensively toward the limitlessness of the Absolutes of potential. In the present universe age this dual motion is revealed in the descending and ascending personalities of the grand universe. The Supreme Creator Personalities and all their divine associates are reflective of the outward, diverging motion of the Supreme, while the ascending pilgrims from the seven superuniverses are indicative of the inward, converging trend of Supremacy.
20. God the Supreme has been freed from all existential limitations only by having become subject to experiential qualifications of universal function. In attaining capacity for experience, the finite God also becomes subject to the necessity therefor; in achieving liberation from eternity, the Almighty encounters the barriers of time; and the Supreme could only know growth and development as a consequence of partiality of existence and incompleteness of nature, nonabsoluteness of being.
21. Including the Supreme and even the Ultimate, all reality, excepting the unqualified values of the seven Absolutes, is relative. The fact of Supremacy is predicated on Paradise power, Son personality, and Conjoint action, but the growth of the Supreme is involved in the Deity Absolute, the Unqualified Absolute, and the Universal Absolute, And this synthesizing and unifying Deity—God the Supreme—is the personification of the finite shadow cast athwart the grand universe by the infinite unity of the unsearchable nature of the Paradise Father, the First Source and Center.
22. God the Supreme does not appear to have been inevitable in unqualified infinity, but he seems to be on all relativity levels. He is the indispensable focalizer, summarizer, and encompasser of evolutionary experience, effectively unifying the results of this mode of reality perception in his Deity nature. And all this he appears to do for the purpose of contributing to the appearance of the inevitable eventuation, the superexperience and superfine manifestation of God the Ultimate.
Discussion Questions
1. Why can we have only relative concepts of God or reality?
2. What is the finite value of knowing that there are absonite and absolute levels of reality?
3. What is the philosophical value of viewing reality as the original I AM, the actual triodity of the Eternal Son, the Infinite Spirit, and the Isle of Paradise, and the potential triodity of the Deity, Unqualified, and Universal Absolutes?
4. What is the meaning of the philosophical conclusion that there is no end to growth in the universe?
5. What in Ultimate divinity might exist beyond the Supreme concepts of truth, beauty, goodness?
6. What possibilities of Supreme cosmic ministry might take place not manifest in the Eternal Son, Infinite Spirit, and the Isle of Paradise?
7. How does the Supreme Being combine the influences of the Absolutes of Actuality on Paradise and the Absolutes of Potentiality?
A Service of
The Urantia Book Fellowship