Was Jesus ever in a hurry? 1103:2 says “never”; 1509:1 says “only a few times.” Can we discern truth, beauty, and goodness in the phenomena of the material world? Yes (2078:7) and no (1137:3). Have you ever noticed what seemed to be a contradiction in The Urantia Book? How did you react? Do the authors themselves offer any guidance to help make sense of such an experience? Sometimes we need only draw a simple distinction to resolve the problem; sometimes the question surpasses the capacity of the human mind; sometimes there is a challenge calling for emotional maturity and soul growth.
Some tensions seem comparatively trivial. Is our first duty to strive for perfection (22:1) or to worship God (303:5)? I don’t believe there is any reason to resolve that difference. Even the issue of whether the Book of Job presents an excellent (1060:5) or poor (1664:3) concept of God seems to be a matter of what features the commentator chose to emphasize. Other tensions are hard. Trying to synthesize perspectives and hints in the papers regarding the management of epochal revelation is as difficult a task of interpretion as I know.
On the whole, the 196 papers exhibit a magnificent consistency, but there are apparent gaps in that consistency and important lessons to be learned from pondering them. In formal logic, a contradiction is a disaster, since it permits the deduction of any statement whatsoever. It is evident that putting together output by authors from all over the universe was not governed by the “ideal” of producing a formal system. Because tensions between different passages are so rare, some readers repress the recognition of an apparent contradiction, assuming that a revelation could contain no such thing, and assuming that the authors had complete information and complete agreement about its interpretation. After all, very strong claims are made for the enduring validity of the historic facts and religious truth presented in the book (1109:3). Other readers, insisting that faith must not foster betrayal of intellectual integrity (1114:7), are keen to spot contradictions but hasty, failing to notice that what one passage affirms is usually not the same as what another passage denies. For example, the Gods neither create evil nor permit sin and rebellion [613:2]; yet a comment on the Lucifer rebellion states, We cannot fathom the wisdom that permits such catastrophes [761:7]. Paradise has an exact geographic location (118:5), yet it is not in space (120:20—which only makes sense once you begin to realize that space has a highly specific meaning in this text (120:3).
The papers offer elements for a philosophic technique of responding to different kinds of apparent contradictions.
- One kind of apparent contradiction arises from the fact that the authors often had to use single words from our limited vocabulary to convey multiple meanings.When we realize that terms such as “God” (0:2/3-4) “force,” “energy,” and “power” (0:6/9) have various meanings, the appropriate response is to study to discover the multiple meanings a term may carry so as to know the options for interpreting a particular passage. Is the golden rule, for example, an intermediate standard (1573.3) or an ideal (1950.3)? That depends on the meaning attached to the term “golden rule.” In this case we can find a mediating passage–1650#4–that clearly distinguishes levels of meaning of the rule, providing a key to harmonize tensions between other passages.
The power of the technique of shifting word meanings is revealed in the comment on Jesus’ way of speaking of the kingdom of heaven. He would use the same term on various occasions to refer to five different phases of the kingdom. By this process of gradually changing man’s will and thus affecting human decisions, Michael and his associates are likewise gradually but certainly changing the entire course of human evolution, social and otherwise [1863:5].
- Some contradictions are better regarded as creative tensions.They show a deliberate strategy to make the reader think, and they challenge our tendency to jump to conclusions. Creative tensions both sharpen interpretation and make the mind more flexible. The authors, whose goal with the reader is to engage not only the human intellect but also the Spirit of Truth and the Thought Adjuster (17:2), subtly lead us to become more open in our way of reading and listening to the presentation of truth. If the authors always attached a single meaning to each word, we would become dogmatists, intolerant of linguistic variation, incapable of thinking for ourselves and of expressing truth in a contemporary and spontaneous way (1087:3). Flexibility of expression helps liberate the reader from the imposing authority of revelation.
The two sides of a tension are sometimes juxtaposed before us in the same passage. The gentlest introduction to this technique is the way we are told of God as a universal spirit: Said the seer of old: “Lo, he goes by me, and I see him not” [25:2].
Noticing this friendly play on words prepares us for a more difficult lesson. Section one of Paper 5 begins by explaining the inability of the finite creature to approach the infinite Father [62:3]. The ensuing exposition, noting the provisions made for our ascent, carefully bridges the gap between the fact of our initial inability and the resounding affirmation that God is approachable (62:3, 63:6). In this case, the appropriate response is again to let the tension draw our attention, to differentiate meanings, and to meditate in the hope of facilitating the work of the Adjuster and the Spirit of Truth who alone can accomplish revelation.
Jesus, I believe, deliberately put a creative tension in the Ordination Sermon. The apostles were told that they are “to save men, not to judge them”; and then were immediately told to show “just judgment,”not presenting what is holy to dogs or casting pearls before swine (1571.4-5). There are two things to do with a passage such as this. First, the logical mind can draw distinctions to dispel any seeming contradiction on a literal level. In this case, recall that judging souls is not the province of mortals and that justice is a group function. However, the response to the tension is not fulfilled by reason. Once the distinction has been made, it remains easy for the mind to work only with a single side of this teaching rather than to undertake the soul growth needed to respond to both sides.
- Many seeming contradictions result from the many-sidedness of truth and from the fact that, on a particular occasion, it may appropriate to highlight only one side.The many-sidedness of truth has occasioned confusion for the apostles (1617:4) and divisiveness among later followers of Jesus (1866:4; 42:6). We allow for this and are therefore not shaken when we read, ‘Dust you are and to dust shall you return’ is literally true of all mankind[769:6]. Jesus taught as the occasion served; he was not a systematic teacher [1672:4]. Think what a burden it would be to balance every statement with its complementary sides! Thus Jesus could say to Ganid, “I am absolutely assured that the entire universe is friendly to me” [1470:0]; and in his farewell discourse he could alert the apostles to “the enmity of the world” [1946:6]. (For a mediating passage, see Jesus’ remarks on evil in his systematic discourse on reality (1435:3-6) where the relative nature of evil is expressed in terms of the incompleteness of the time-space-limited expression of infinity and eternity.
- Some apparent contradictions result from the fact that the authors sometimes talk about the same topic from different perspectives. None of the authors is infinite; and finite knowledge is relative to the knower’s experience (42:2-4). The authors of the later papers seem to have read and respected the papers previously indited. Even when they want to propose an addition, modification, or change of emphasis, they write so as to avoid direct contradiction. For example, compare the discussion in 43:4 of health, sanity, and happiness with the strikingly similar passage at 1097:6, which inserts mental efficiency in place of sanity; and compare the supreme religious project (constructing a philosophy of living) of 43:4 with the evangelistic project of 2082:9-2083:1, in which exclusive devotion to Jesus and his teachings take precedence over the themes of truth, beauty, and goodness.
When there are differences of opinion, the simplest response is to let each reader identify with the view closest to his or her own opinion. Sometimes it is better to try to synthesize information from higher sources with information from lower sources of information, attempting to imitate the Ancients of Days, who correlate higher and lower sources of information in order to deduce the will of God (309:4; 310:10).
A Solitary Messenger assures us, The finite world was made by an infinite Creator–it is the handiwork of his divine Sons—and therefore it must be good. It is the misuse, distortion, and perversion of the finite that gives origin to evil and sin [1222:2]. A Mighty Messenger teaches, man’s Creators–his immediate supervisors–while being divine [are] also finite, and that the God of time and space [is] an evolving and nonabsolute Deity. . . . When viewing the exquisitely perfect spheres of Havona, it is both reasonable and logical to believe they were made by a perfect, infinite, and absolute Creator. But that same reason and logic would compel any honest being, when viewing the turmoil, imperfections, and inequities of Urantia, to conclude that your world had been made by, and was being managed by, Creators who were subabsolute, preinfinite, and other than perfect [1268:1-2]. Here we have an honest expression of how things look from two perspectives, one higher and and one lower. In this case, all I can do is to honor the fact that the team assigned to produce the papers tolerates differences. There is no imposition of orthodoxy.
- The most painful contradictions are not a matter of formal logic at all. We read, for example, of the temporal contradictions of mortal existence[2087:3], and think of the inconsistencies of temporal inequalities[1268.1]. On the topic of equality and inequality many readers feel a contradiction that they know is not strictly intellectual, since it is easy to distinguish senses in which we are equal from senses in which we are unequal. The teaching of brotherhood, spiritual equality, in the family of humankind is the alpha and omega of the revelation of human relations; but we are also taught, especially in Part III, to acknowledge that we are not equal in a civilizational sense (63:2-3; 138:2-5; 794:9-12; 1468:3). It would be nice if it were enough to add this distinction to our philosophy, recognizing both the truth of equality and the facts of inequality—a feat too complex for many people today. But the energy for this philosophic achievement comes from a spiritual source. The appropriate response, in the face of inequalities, seems to be to nourish the mind so fully on the truth of spiritual equality that, as other inequalities are lucidly acknowledged, the recognition of civilizational superiority and inferiority becomes free of every trace of contempt, envy, and antagonism. Rather, we engage in the project of helping one another attain the superb equality that is our destiny as finished ascenders (345:9; cf. 538:6; 624:6; 566:6; 516:1; 533:6; 1179:7-8).
- For the human mind, the hardest tensions to penetrate are inherent in the difficulty of comprehending God. God is immutable; but not until you achieve Paradise status can you even begin to understand how God can pass from simplicity to complexity, from identity to variation, from quiescence to motion, from infinity to finitude, from the divine to the human, and from unity to duality and triunity[58:7]. To understand the Trinity, we will just have to wait (31:8). The incarnation of a Creator Son we will never understand (1317:1).
With other tensions we wrestle. Though it is literally true that God is all and in all [44:5] and that God is the dynamism of all change [1155:6,] we must reject the colossal error of pantheism [1300:4]. To avoid thinking that God does everything, we must distinguish primary and secondary causation (1298); accidents are not prearranged (1830:7). Nevertheless, a Divine Counselor teaches that God has made a way for the lightning [47:2] and that “in the larger sense the apparent ‘accidents’ of the cosmos are undoubtedly a part of the finite drama of the time-space adventure of the Infinite in his eternal manipulation of the Absolutes [56:4].
Wisdom suggests studying each passage for everything it has to teach in its own context. The problems of topical study should not upstage the experience of a sequential reading of the papers.
When it is our turn to express truth, it is not always fitting to offer a studied, diplomatic, and harmonious account. Circumstance invites a speaker to highlight the melody of one particular side of a many-sided truth. Nor can we cling to any one favorite passage on any given topic as necessarily being the key to responding to everything relevant that may come up. Responding to the situation, accepting our limitations, we move beyond intellect to allow divine truth to move afresh.
