Meredith Sprunger's Synopsis of The Urantia Book
Synopsis of Paper 118
SUPREME AND ULTIMATE--TIME AND SPACE
1. The dual presence of the Supreme and the Ultimate constitutes the basic association of subabsolute and derived Deity, for they are interdependently complemental in the attainment of destiny. Together they constitute the experiential bridge linking the beginnings and the completions of all creative growth in the master universe.
2. Creative growth is unending but ever satisfying, endless in extent but always punctuated by those personality‑satisfying moments of transient goal attainment which serve so effectively as the mobilization preludes to new adventures in cosmic growth, universe exploration, and Deity attainment.
3. There is a direct relationship between maturity and the unit of time consciousness in any given intellect...Experience, wisdom, and judgment are the concomitants of the lengthening of the time unit in mortal experience...In the maturity of the developing self, the past and future are brought together to illuminate the true meaning of the present. As the self matures, it reaches further and further back into the past for experience, while its wisdom forecasts seek to penetrate deeper and deeper into the unknown future ...so does judgment become less and less dependent on the momentary present.
4. Patience is exercised by those mortals whose time units are short; true maturity transcends patience by a forbearance born of real understanding. To become mature is to live more intensely in the present, at the same time escaping from the limitations of the present.
5. The time unit of maturity is proportioned so to reveal the co‑ordinate relationship of past‑present‑future that the self begins to gain insight into the wholeness of events, begins to view the landscape of time from the panoramic perspective of broadened. horizons, begins perhaps to suspect the nonbeginning, nonending eternal continuum, the fragments of which are called. time.
6. On the absolute and eternal level, potential reality is just as meaningful as actual reality ...To God, as absolute, an ascending mortal who has made the eternal decision is already a Paradise finaliter.
7. Finaliters will no doubt believe that, even if they should be successful in finding God the Absolute, they would only be discovering the same God, the Paradise Father manifesting himself on more nearly infinite and universal levels.
8. You do, after all, perceive time by analysis and space by synthesis. You co‑ordinate and associate these two dissimilar conceptions by the integrating insight of personality. Of all the animal world only man possesses this time‑space perceptibility.
9. Things are time conditioned, but truth is timeless. The more truth you know, the more truth you are, the more of the past you can understand. and of the future you can comprehend .... The concept of the Supreme is essential to the co‑ordination of the divine and unchanging overworld with the finite and ever‑changing underworld.
10. All patterns of reality occupy space on the material levels, but spirit patterns only exist in relation to space; they do not occupy or displace space, neither do they contain it. But to us the master riddle of space pertains to the pattern of an idea... Does the pattern—the reality—or an idea occupy space? We really do not know, albeit we are sure that an idea pattern does not contain space. But it would. hardly be safe to postulate that the immaterial is always nonspatial.
11. Many of the theologic difficulties and the metaphysical dilemmas of mortal man are due to man's dislocation of Deity personality and consequent assignment of infinite and absolute attributes to subordinate Divinity and to evolutionary Deity. You must not forget that, while there is indeed a true First Cause, there are also a host of coordinate and subordinate causes, both associate and secondary causes.
12. Causation, disregarding existential., is threefold in its basic constitution...
1. Activation of static potentials
2. Eventuation of universe capacities
3. Creation and evolution of universe actuals13. The omnipotence of Deity does not imply the power to do the nondoable. Within the time-space frame and from the intellectual reference point of mortal comprehension, even the infinite God. cannot create square circles or produce evil that is inherently good. God. cannot do the ungodlike thing.
14. When man and God enter into partnership, no limitation can be placed upon the future possibilities of such a partnership.
15. Mortal consciousness proceeds from the fact, to the meaning, and then to the value. Creator consciousness proceeds from the thought‑value, through the word‑meaning, to the fact of action... Always must God first find man that man may later find God. Always must there be a Universal Father before there can ever be universal sonship and consequent universal brotherhood.
16. God is truly omnipotent, but he is not omnificent—he does not personally do all that is done ...To advocate the omnificence of primal Deity would be equal to disenfranchising well-nigh a million Creator Sons of Paradise, not to mention the innumerable hosts of various other orders of concurring creative assistants. There is but one uncaused Cause in the whole universe. All other causes are derivatives of this one First Great Source and Center. And. none of this philosophy does any violence to the freewillness of the myriads of the children of Deity scattered through a vast universe.
17. Volition on any level short of the absolute encounters limitations which are constitutive in the very personality exercising the power of choice...In the mortal life, paths of differential conduct are continually opening and closing, and during the times when choice is possible the human personality is constantly deciding between these many. courses of action…The entire range of human will is strictly finite‑limited except in one particular: When man chooses to find God and to be like him, such a choice is superfinite; only eternity can disclose whether this choice is also superabsonite.
18. To recognize Deity omnipotence is to enjoy security in your experience of cosmic citizenship, to possess assurance of safety in the long journey to Paradise. But to accept the fallacy of omnificence is to embrace the colossal error of Pantheism.
19. The function of Creator will and creature will, in the grand universe, operates within the limits, and in accordance with the possibilities, established by the Master Architects. This foreordination of these maximum limits does not, however, in the least abridge the sovereignty of creature will within these boundaries. Neither does ultimate foreknowledge—full allowance for all finite choice—constitute an abrogation of finite volition.
20. Sin in time‑conditioned space clearly proves the temporal liberty—even license—of the finite will. Sin depicts immaturity dazzled by the freedom of the relatively sovereign will of personality while failing to perceive the supreme obligations and duties of cosmic citizenship.
21. The bestowal of life renders material‑energy systems capable of self‑perpetuation, self-propagation, and self‑adaptation. The bestowal of personality imparts to living organisms the further prerogatives of self‑determination, self‑evolution, and self-identification with a fusion spirit of Duty.
22. Mortal man is a machine, a living mechanism; his roots are truly in the physical world of energy. Many human reactions are mechanical in nature; much of life is machinelike. But man, a mechanism, is much more than a machine; he is mind endowed and spirit indwelt; and though he can never throughout his material life escape the chemical and electrical mechanics of his existence, he can increasingly learn how to subordinate this physical-life machine to the directive wisdom of experience by the process of consecrating the human mind to the execution of the spiritual urges of the indwelling Thought Adjuster.
23. The great danger that besets the creature is, that, in achieving liberation from the fetters of the life mechanism, he will fail to compensate this loss of stability by effecting a harmonious working liaison with spirit.
24. The slowness of evolution, of human cultural progress, testifies to the effectiveness of that brake—material inertia—which so efficiently operates to retard dangerous velocities of progress ...For when culture advances overfast, when material achievement outruns the evolution of worship‑wisdom, then does civilization contain within itself the seeds of retrogression. , ,. .
25. As man shakes off the shackles of fear....he must substitute for each transcended restraint a new and voluntarily assumed restraint in accordance with the moral dictates of expending human wisdom., These self‑imposed restraints are at once the most powerful and the most tenuous of all the factors of human civilization—concepts of justice and ideals of brotherhood
26. An automatic universe reaction is stable and, in some form, continuing in the cosmos. A personality who knows God and desires to do his will, who has spirit insight, is divinely stable and eternally existent. Man’s great universe adventure consists in the transit of his mortal mind from the stability of mechanical statics to the divinity of spiritual dynamics, and he achieves this transformation by the force and constancy of his own personality decisions, in each of life's situations declaring, “It is my will that your will be done.”
27. Finite creatures are effectively insulated from the absolute levels by time and space. But these insulating media, without which no mortal could exist operate directly to limit the range of finite action ...Mechanisms produced by higher minds function to liberate their creative sources but to some degree unvaryingly limit the action of all subordinate intelligences. To the creatures of the universes this limitation becomes apparent as the mechanism of the universes.
28. Providence does not mean that God has decided all things for us and in advance. God loves us too much to do that, for that would be nothing short of cosmic tyranny. Man does have relative powers of choice. Neither is the divine love that shortsighted affection which would. pamper and spoil the children of men.
29. God. loves each creature as a child., and that love overshadows each creature throughout all time and eternity. Providence functions with regard to the total and deals with the function of any creature as such function is related to the total. Providential intervention with regard to any being is indicative of the importance of the function of that being as concerns the evolutionary growth of some total; such total may be the total race, the total nation, the total planet, or even a higher total. It is the importance of the function of the creature that occasions providential intervention, not the importance of the creature as a person.
30. Most of what a mortal would. call providential is not; his judgment of such matters is very handicapped by lack of farsighted vision into the true meanings of the circumstance of life. Much of what a mortal would. call good luck might really be bad luck; the smile of fortune that bestows unearned leisure and undeserved wealth may be the greatest of human afflictions; the apparent cruelty of a perverse fate that heaps tribulation upon some suffering mortal may in reality be the tempering fire that is transmuting the soft iron of immature personality into the tempered steel of real character.
31. The love of the Father operates directly in the heart of the individual, independent of the actions or reactions of all other individuals; the relationship is personal—man and God.. The impersonal presence of Deity (Almighty Supreme and Paradise Trinity) manifests regard for the whole, not for the part. The providence of the overcontrol of Supremacy becomes increasingly apparent as the successive parts of the universe progress in the attainment of finite destinies.
32. Man, the civilized, will someday achieve relative mastery of the physical forces of his planet; the love of God in his heart will be effectively outpoured as love for his fellow men, while the values of human existence will be nearing the limits of mortal capacity.
33. To realize providence in time, man must accomplish the task of achieving perfection. But man can even now foretaste this providence in its eternity meanings as he ponders the universe fact that all things, be they good or evil, work together for the advancement of God‑knowing mortals in their quest for the Father of all.
34. Providence is the sure and certain march of the galaxies of apace and the personalities of time toward the goals of eternity, first in the Supreme, then in the Ultimate, and perhaps in the Absolute. And in infinity we believe there is the same providence, and this is the will, the actions, the purpose of the Paradise Trinity thus motivating the cosmic panorama of universes upon universes.
Discussion Questions
1. Why are the Urantia Synopsis of Papers the first revelation of the cosmology of the universe of universes?
2. Is it possible to perceive truth separated from its time-space associations?
3. Why is God’s foreknowledge, omniscience, not human predestination?
4. What happens when we go beyond our evolutionary growth preparation?
5. What prevents the over rapid growth potential of the Urantia Synopsis of Papers from causing danger in our culture?
6. How do the mechanisms of the universe prevent over rapid growth?
7. How do we determine the real nature of our apparent good fortune or bad fortune?
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