Episode:God the Father—The Universal Father (Part 4)

From Symmetry of Soul


Do not permit the magnitude of God, his infinity, either to obscure or eclipse his personality. The Universal Father is the acme of divine personality; he is the origin and destiny of personality throughout all creation. The Father is truly a personality, notwithstanding that the infinity of his person places him forever beyond the full comprehension of material and finite beings.

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Keywords: Urantia, God, Infinite Personality, Universal Creator, Paradise Creator Sons

Summary by Kermit

Commentary after Review

Referencing the revelation’s seven developmental epochs of progressive civilization [50:5.1], we have often noted that the leading edge of civilization on our world is in the third such stage, the material-comfort era. In our discussion we emphasized the importance of individuals taking the challenge to move toward the subsequent epoch, the quest for knowledge and wisdom. The 5th ER is attempting to foster the striving for connection with things eternal rather than a rerun of the spiritual uplift of the 4th ER.

5. Personality of the Universal Father

Right off the bat we are told to not allow God’s infinite nature to obscure or eclipse his personality. We share the fact of personality with God and with all other personalities in the universe. As we delve into God’s personality we must first attempt to clarify the meanings to which the word personality refers as it is used in the revelation. Personality is used in some instances to mean spirit pattern, while sometimes even in the same sentence it can mean personalized self. This logic can be applied to many other words in the revelation and the correct understanding or even the truth in the revelation demands such clarification. As many times previously noted current usages of these words as “self” and “personality” are only dimly understood or misunderstood altogether. So it is with personality as well as with spirit.

It is abundantly clear that, to us finite beings, God’s personality is vastly transcendent to even the superpersonalities of absonite creatures. As a creator personality he is much more than even our maximum concept of the idea or ideal of personality. Our highest concept of the Universal Creator is embraced within the spiritual ideals of the exalted idea of divine personality. Thus must God be more than a personality of our limited concept, but not less than an eternal, infinite, true, good, and beautiful personality.

Though not perceived directly, personality presence can be inferred from its effects, the things which are made. In our case, we see the invisible Maker through his creation and the revelations and ministrations of his Sons and subordinates. Rather than attempting to grasp God’s immensity, we can approach him apart from his infinity as a point of fact through our own fact point of personality. Through the inner life action of faith grasp we are able to accept the truth which portrays that the Universal Father provides for his children’s eternal spiritual progression as a perfect, eternal, loving, and infinite Creator personality.

Aside from the Paradise Creator Sons, we are told God has no personal or residential manifestation in the local universes (excepting superuniverse personnel). So it is that through faith we can accept the truth that seeing the Creator Son is seeing the Universal Father. For us to actually see God we must attain Paradise.

While Creator Sons do not encompass the Father’s absoluteness and infinity, the Universal Father is in every way divinely present in the Creator Sons. The Michael Sons are perfect, and are the personality pattern for all local universe personalities. Without God and but for his great and eternal person, there would be no personality throughout the universe of universes. God is personality.

Our author reiterates again that despite God being an eternal power, a majestic presence, a transcendent ideal, and a glorious spirit, he is a perfect Creator personality who can know and be known, love and be loved. He is a real spirit and a spiritual reality, with whom we can connect as a point of fact in our experience.

The idea of personality in the Universal Father has come to mankind chiefly through revelation. Our engagement with the threefold actualities through the faculties of reason, wisdom, and religious experience infer and imply the personality of God, but do not completely validate it. Neither does the prepersonal Thought Adjuster. Religion must first formulate the unity of Deity then move to an appreciation of the infinite personality of God. The encompassment of the wholeness of the triunity of reality—unity, is facilitated by the Adjuster. Yet even utilizing the gifts of grace in the most transcendent manner we still find ourselves possessed of the concept of a personal Deity.

Revelation affirms the validity of the personality of God. The First Cause of science or the Universal Unity of philosophy suggest the personality of God but do not certify it. To deny the personality of God forces one into either philosophic materialism or pantheism.

Deity must be divorced from any idea of corporeality. Superhuman progressing personality functions in a union of mind and spirit, with no material encumbrance whatsoever. The corporeality error reinforces both false doctrines of materialism and pantheism.

Personality is not an attribute of God but rather represents the totality of the coordinated infinite nature and unified divine will. It is in a supreme sense the revelation of God to the universes.

The final three paragraphs of this section present us with ever more transcendent transactions whereby God, in spite of his purely existential nature can enjoy continuous expansions of self-realization which are analogous to our acquirement of new experience. And through the mystery of Deity function the Universal Father directly participates in the personality struggle of every time space ascender.

As might be expected the divine indwelling holds much of the secret of these divine doings. The author leaves this section with the declaration of the literal truth—“in Him we all live and move and have our being.”

Notes by Brad

  • This author observes that the quest for knowledge and wisdom is what we must be about here, to be so ambitious as to study Paper 1 in depth.
    • We in the Western world may be in the excesses of the material-comfort era, but individually we can strive to go beyond, to a quest for knowledge and wisdom.


  • Remember form versus substance. This is why it is appropriate to say God "formed the eye," not in a material interventionary sense ("Brad formed a bowl from the wet clay").
    • This is Aristotelean thinking, quite old.
    • Recall that personality is pattern.


  • Personality is a high word, to put it mildly.
    • Not even the best philosophers have not considered this new definition of personality.
    • Self and personalized self differ from one another. As does personality—spirit pattern—as a more abstract concept.
  • Technically, personality refers to finite beings, superpersonality to absonite beings. So there's even a higher word we might need to connote God as a personality.
    • But let that be. Words aren't the point.


  • You cannot see personality with sight. You need insight.
    • "you must discern the invisible Maker through his manifold and diverse creation." (emphasis added)
    • Discern mean to separate apart.
    • Incidentally, it takes insight to truly see beauty. Insight is innate, but it can be ignored, and should be cultivated.
    • This is not hopeless. We can "see" God's personality, because we can be truly humans. God is not hiding.


  • Strive to use your faith grasp, not credulous belief, in all of this.
    • Genuine faith is an act, not a belief. Thought not an act in the outer life. It's the foundation of the inner life.


  • There may be many Old Testament quotes here, but we clearly are being challenged to go beyond those ideas.
    • Those olden ideas are being recast, reframed here.


  • Note that the "manifold and diverse creation" is not just about blobs of matter.
    • For the same reason that inventiveness is not creativity. I can be inventive with matter, but creativity is transcendent of this.


  • God is a point of fact, despite being universal and revealed all over the place in the universe.
    • He relates to me in a point-like fashion. As if I were the only being in the universe. This is how it is.


  • The object of your quest—God—can only truly be found in a philosophic context. Anything else is essentially delusion.