Paper 6 Overview: The Eternal Son

The Eternal Son represents the perfect expression of the Universal Father's first personal and absolute concept. As the Second Person of Deity, the Son functions as the divine revelation of the Father's creator identity and serves as the spiritual center of the universe. The Son possesses all the Father's spiritual qualities and perfectly embodies the purely spiritual aspects of the First Source and Center's nature, entirely free from non-personal or non-spiritual elements.

The Eternal Son's relationship with the Universal Father is one of perfect unity while maintaining distinct personalities and functions. The Son exercises absolute authority over all spirit realities through his spirit-gravity circuit and provides a merciful ministry to all creation. Though the Eternal Son has certain limitations, these do not restrict his divine attributes of spiritual omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. Through the bestowal Sons and the ministry of the Infinite Spirit, mortal beings can eventually attain the Eternal Son on their Paradise ascent.

The Eternal Son represents the perfect and final expression of the Universal Father's "first" personal and absolute concept. Whenever the Father expresses himself personally and absolutely, he does so through his Eternal Son, who has always existed as the living divine Word. This Eternal Son resides at the center of all things, directly enveloping the personal presence of the Universal Father.

We discuss God's "first" thought and allude to an impossible time origin of the Eternal Son as conceptual tools to help time-bound mortal minds understand these eternal realities. In truth, the Father never had a first thought, and the Son never had a beginning. The Eternal Son spiritually personifies the Father's universal concept of divine reality, unqualified spirit, and absolute personality, thereby constituting the divine revelation of the Universal Father's creator identity. The Son's perfect personality discloses that the Father is the eternal source of all spiritual, volitional, purposeful, and personal values.

The Eternal Son is the original and only-begotten Son of God, representing the Second Person of Deity and the associate creator of all things. As the Father is the First Great Source and Center, the Eternal Son is the Second Great Source and Center. The Son serves as the spiritual center and divine administrator of the spiritual government of the universe of universes.

The Father functions first as a creator and then as a controller, while the Son functions first as a cocreator and then as a spiritual administrator. The Universal Father never personally creates except in conjunction with the Son or with the Son's coordinated action. The Eternal Son is known by different names throughout the universes, including the Co-ordinate Source, Cocreator, and Associate Absolute in the central universe. In the superuniverse, he is known as the Co-ordinate Spirit Center and Eternal Spirit Administrator, while in the local universe, he is referred to as the Second Eternal Source and Center. On Urantia, he has sometimes been confused with the Creator Son, Michael of Nebadon, who bestowed himself on the human races.

The Eternal Son is as changeless and infinitely dependable as the Universal Father. He is just as spiritual as the Father, being truly an unlimited spirit. To humans of lowly origin, the Son appears more personal since he is one step closer in approachability than the Universal Father. The Eternal Son is the eternal Word of God, completely like the Father in every way.

When we worship the Universal Father, we simultaneously worship God the Son and God the Spirit. The Son is just as divinely real and eternal as the Father. The Son possesses all the Father's infinite righteousness and shares the responsibility of helping imperfect creatures in their spiritual efforts to attain divine perfection. The Eternal Son embodies all the Father's character of divinity and spiritual attributes, revealing these qualities through his management of the spiritual government of the universe. In the creation of beauty and the love of truth, the Father and Son are equal, though the Son seems more devoted to realizing the exclusively spiritual beauty of universal values.

The Son shares the justice and righteousness of the Trinity but especially emphasizes the infinite personalization of the Father's love and mercy. The Son serves as the revelation of divine love to the universes. Though the Son cannot love more than the Father, he can show mercy to creatures in an additional way because he is both a primal creator like the Father and also the Eternal Son sharing in the sonship experience of all other sons of the Universal Father.

The Eternal Son functions as the great mercy minister to all creation, with mercy forming the essence of his spiritual character. To understand the love of the Eternal Son, one must first perceive its divine source in the Father and then observe how this infinite affection unfolds through the extensive ministry of the Infinite Spirit and its vast host of ministering personalities. The Son's ministry is dedicated to revealing the God of love to the universe of universes. We should not imagine the Eternal Son as appealing to the Father to show mercy to his creatures, as all merciful ministrations of the Sons of God directly reveal the Father's universal love and infinite compassion.

The Eternal Son motivates the spirit level of cosmic reality, exercising absolute control over all spirit energy and actualized spirit reality through his perfect grasp of spirit gravity. All pure spirit and spiritual beings respond to the infinite drawing power of the Paradise Son. If the future should witness an unlimited universe, the Son's spirit power would be entirely adequate for its spiritual control and administration.

The Son is omnipotent only in the spiritual realm, as the Deities do not engage in wasteful duplication of universe functions. The omnipresence of the Original Son constitutes the spiritual unity of the universe, with the spiritual cohesion of creation resting upon his active presence. The Father's spiritual presence is difficult to distinguish from the Son's, as the Father's spirit eternally resides in the Son's spirit. The Son is universally self-conscious and equals the Father in wisdom and knowledge. The Father and Son know the location of all spirits and spiritualized beings in the universe through the Son's omnipresent spirit and the Supreme Being's reflectivity intelligence.

The Eternal Son does not personally function in physical domains or in mind ministry to creature beings except through the Conjoint Actor. These qualifications do not limit the Son's full exercise of his divine attributes of spiritual omniscience, omnipresence, and omnipotence. The Son does not personally pervade the spirit potentials in the Deity Absolute, but as these potentials become actual, they come within his spirit-gravity control.

Personality is exclusively bestowed by the Universal Father. The Eternal Son derives his personality from the Father but cannot independently bestow personality. When creating personalities, the Son does so in conjunction with the Father or the Conjoint Creator. The Son can create any type of other-than-personal reality. The Father bestowed upon the Son the power to subsequently produce additional Sons with creative attributes, but this creative prerogative is not further transmissible to these co-ordinate Sons. The Eternal Son cannot fragmentize his nature like the Father and Infinite Spirit, but he does bestow himself as an unlimited spirit to draw all spirit realities to himself.

The Eternal Son possesses spirit and mind, but not in forms that mortal mind can comprehend. Humans perceive mind at finite, cosmic, material, and personal levels, but find it difficult to grasp mind when associated with supermaterial beings or exclusive spirit personalities. Mind must be defined differently when referring to the spirit level of existence or spirit functions of intelligence.

Spirit is always conscious, minded, and possesses various phases of identity. Without mind in some form, there would be no spiritual consciousness among spirit beings. Deity, whether personal, prepersonal, superpersonal, or impersonal, is never mindless and can always communicate with similar entities. The mind of the Eternal Son resembles the Father's but differs from all other minds in the universe. Along with the Father's mind, it serves as the ancestor to the diverse minds of the Conjoint Creator. Many mysteries of the spirit personality of the Eternal Son must await our attainment of spirit status after completing the morontia ascension of the local universe.

The Eternal Son represents that infinite personality from whose fetters the Universal Father escaped through trinitization, enabling the Father to bestow himself endlessly upon his expanding universe. Every personal being derives personality from the Universal Father, just as the Original Son eternally derives his personality from the Paradise Father. The Son's personality is absolute and purely spiritual, serving as the divine pattern for the Father's bestowal of personality upon the Conjoint Actor and subsequently upon countless creatures.

The Eternal Son truly functions as a merciful minister, divine spirit, spiritual power, and real personality. He embodies the spiritual and personal nature of God made manifest to the universes—essentially capturing the First Source and Center divested of all nonpersonal, extradivine, nonspiritual, and pure potential elements. The human mind cannot fully grasp the beauty and grandeur of the Son's supernal personality, as everything that obscures the Universal Father similarly prevents recognition of the Eternal Son. We must await our attainment of Paradise to truly understand this absolute personality that exceeds finite comprehension.

Regarding identity, nature, and personality attributes, the Eternal Son fully equals the Universal Father as his perfect complement and eternal counterpart. In the same sense that God is the Universal Father, the Son is the Universal Mother, and all beings throughout creation constitute their universal family. To appreciate the Son's character, one must study the Father's divine character, as they are forever inseparably one and virtually indistinguishable to lower orders of intelligence.

As separate individuals, you can conceive of the Father and Son, but in universe administration, they are so intertwined that distinguishing between them is not always possible. When their operations appear confusingly interrelated, remember that God initiates the thought and the Son expresses the word. In each local universe, this inseparability is personified in the Creator Son, who represents both Father and Son to creatures on millions of inhabited worlds. The Eternal Son is approachable through his Paradise Sons and the ministry of the Infinite Spirit. As mortals progress in their Paradise path of spiritual advancement, the personality of the Eternal Son becomes increasingly real to them, especially as they spiritualize and begin their spirit ascension.