Page:The Urantia Book, 1st Edition.djvu/177

 Rh of a very diverse nature. Looking from Paradise out on the universes, these relationships do seem to be very similar, but when viewed from the domains of space, they appear to be quite different.

The divine Sons are indeed the "Word of God," but the children of the Spirit are truly the "Act of God." God speaks through the Son and, with the Son, acts through the Infinite Spirit, while in all universe activities the Son and the Spirit are exquisitely fraternal, working as two equal brothers with admiration and love for an honored and divinely respected common Father.

The Father, Son, and Spirit are certainly equal in nature, co-ordinate in being, but there are unmistakable differences in their universe performances, and when acting alone, each person of Deity is apparently limited in absoluteness.

The Universal Father, prior to his self-willed divestment of the personality, powers, and attributes which constitute the Son and the Spirit, seems to have been (philosophically considered) an unqualified, absolute, and infinite Deity. But such a theoretical First Source and Center without a Son could not in any sense of the word be considered the Universal Father; fatherhood is not real without sonship. Furthermore, the Father, to have been absolute in a total sense, must have existed at some eternally distant moment alone. But he never had such a solitary existence; the Son and the Spirit are both coeternal with the Father. The First Source and Center has always been, and will forever be, the eternal Father of the Original Son and, with the Son, the eternal progenitor of the Infinite Spirit.

We observe that the Father has divested himself of all direct manifestations of absoluteness except absolute fatherhood and absolute volition. We do not know whether volition is an inalienable attribute of the Father; we can only observe that he did not divest himself of volition. Such infinity of will must have been eternally inherent in the First Source and Center.

In bestowing absoluteness of personality upon the Eternal Son, the Universal Father escapes from the fetters of personality absolutism, but in so doing he takes a step which makes it forever impossible for him to act alone as the personality-absolute. And with the final personalization of coexistent Deity—the Conjoint Actor—there ensues the critical trinitarian interdependence of the three divine personalities with regard to the totality of Deity function in absolute.

God is the Father-Absolute of all personalities in the universe of universes. The Father is personally absolute in liberty of action, but in the universes of time and space, made, in the making, and yet to be made, the Father is not discernibly absolute as total Deity except in the Paradise Trinity.

The First Source and Center functions outside of Havona in the phenomenal universes as follows:

As creator, through the Creator Sons, his grandsons. As controller, through the gravity center of Paradise. As spirit, through the Eternal Son. As mind, through the Conjoint Creator. As a Father, he maintains parental contact with all creatures through his personality circuit. As a person, he acts directly throughout creation by his exclusive fragments—in mortal man by the Thought Adjusters. As total Deity, he functions only in the Paradise Trinity.