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TRUTH, BEAUTY AND GOODNESS IN THE URANTIA BOOK
~ An Overview ~
What all might be gleaned from this intentional string of truth, beauty and goodness quotes that stretch from page three to 2097? Consider these five quotes about comprehending God’s unfathomable nature, they could be denominated the comprehensibilites of divinity.
A whole book could be written about the first one’s implications. It is the only use of TB&G in the Foreword:
1. …Divinity is creature comprehensible as truth, beauty, and goodness; correlated in personality as love, mercy, and ministry; disclosed on impersonal levels as justice, power, and sovereignty…. (3.4) 0:1.17
These four reflect and embellish number one:
24. …Throughout this glorious age the chief pursuit of the ever-advancing mortals is the quest for a better understanding and a fuller realization of the comprehensible elements of Deity–truth, beauty, and goodness. This represents man’s effort to discern God in mind, matter, and spirit. And as the mortal pursues this quest, he finds himself increasingly absorbed in the experiential study of philosophy, cosmology, and divinity…. (646:3) 56:10.2
26. …The worlds settled in light and life are so fully concerned with the comprehension of truth, beauty, and goodness because these quality values embrace the revelation of Deity to the realms of time and space…. (646:10) 56:10.9
30. …To finite man truth, beauty, and goodness embrace the full revelation of divinity reality. As this love-comprehension of Deity finds spiritual expression in the lives of God-knowing mortals, there are yielded the fruits of divinity: intellectual peace, social progress, moral satisfaction, spiritual joy, and cosmic wisdom. The advanced mortals on a world in the seventh stage of light and life have learned that love is the greatest thing in the universe — and they know that God is love…. (648.3) 56:10.20
43. …To material, evolutionary, finite creatures, a life predicated on the living of the Father’s will leads directly to the attainment of spirit supremacy in the personality arena and brings such creatures one step nearer the comprehension of the Father-Infinite. Such a Father life is one predicated on truth, sensitive to beauty, and dominated by goodness…. (1175:1) 106:9.12
The third TB&G quote of the 84 is about God’s INcomprehensibility:
3. …God is much more than a personality as personality is understood by the human mind; he is even far more than any possible concept of a superpersonality. But it is utterly futile to discuss such incomprehensible concepts of divine personality with the minds of material creatures whose maximum concept of the reality of being consists in the idea and ideal of personality. The material creature’s highest possible concept of the Universal Creator is embraced within the spiritual ideals of the exalted idea of divine personality. Therefore, although you may know that God must be much more than the human conception of personality, you equally well know that the Universal Father cannot possibly be anything less than an eternal, infinite, true, good, and beautiful personality…. (27.4) 1:5.2
The second of the 84 is one of many about love. Since love is all but equated with God’s truth, beauty and goodness, additional facts about love’s many appearances in the TB&G quotes might prove valuable:
2. …The God of universal love unfailingly manifests himself to every one of his creatures up to the fullness of that creature’s capacity to spiritually grasp the qualities of divine truth, beauty, and goodness…. (26.7) 1:4.5
You might measure the significance of the TB&G/love connection by how many times the word love appears in the 84. These are the quote numbers that have at least one form of the word love: 1,2,5,9,11,12,14,16,17,22,28,29,30,34,39,41,42,43,46,50,56,58,60,63,65, 66,68,71,72,73,78,80,82,83 and 84.
In some cases love is defined as truth, beauty and goodness. From a Divine Counselor:
14. …The Hebrews based their religion on goodness; the Greeks on beauty; both religions sought truth. Jesus revealed a God of love, and love is all-embracing of truth, beauty, and goodness…. (67.4) 5:4.6
These two love quotes were authored by the Midwayers:
82. …love, divested of truth, beauty, and goodness, is only a sentiment, a philosophic distortion, a psychic illusion, a spiritual deception…. (2096.5) 196:3.29
84. …Even that which is true, beautiful, and good may not perish in human experience. If man does not choose to survive, then does the surviving Adjuster conserve those realities born of love and nurtured in service…. (2097.3)
Eight of the 84 (and one the primary themes of The Urantia Book) are associated with doing Father’s will. Note the emphasis on Godlikeness in the first three:
60. …An experience is good when it heightens the appreciation of beauty, augments the moral will, enhances the discernment of truth, enlarges the capacity to love and serve one’s fellows, exalts the spiritual ideals, and unifies the supreme human motives of time with the eternal plans of the indwelling Adjuster, all of which lead directly to an increased desire to do the Father’s will, thereby fostering the divine passion to find God and to be more like him…. (1458.2) 132:2.5
63. …Revealed truth, personally discovered truth, is the supreme delight of the human soul; it is the joint creation of the material mind and the indwelling spirit. The eternal salvation of this truth-discerning and beauty-loving soul is assured by that hunger and thirst for goodness which leads this mortal to develop a singleness of purpose to do the Father’s will, to find God and to become like him…. (1459.4) 132:3.4
59. …In substance Jesus said: The will of God is the way of God, partnership with the choice of God in the face of any potential alternative. To do the will of God, therefore, is the progressive experience of becoming more and more like God, and God is the source and destiny of all that is good and beautiful and true…. (1431.2) 130:2.7
43. …To material, evolutionary, finite creatures, a life predicated on the living of the Father’s will leads directly to the attainment of spirit supremacy in the personality arena and brings such creatures one step nearer the comprehension of the Father-Infinite. Such a Father life is one predicated on truth, sensitive to beauty, and dominated by goodness…. (1175.1) 106:9.12
78. …The human Jesus saw God as being holy, just, and great, as well as being true, beautiful, and good. All these attributes of divinity he focused in his mind as the “will of the Father in heaven.” (2087.2) 196:0.2
16. …As mortal man strives to do the will of God, these beings of the central universe live to gratify the ideals of the Paradise Trinity. In their very nature they are the will of God. Man rejoices in the goodness of God, Havoners exult in the divine beauty, while you both enjoy the ministry of the liberty of living truth…. (157.5) 14:4.13
47. …The Adjuster bestowed upon man is, in the last analysis, impervious to evil and incapable of sin, but mortal mind can actually be twisted, distorted, and rendered evil and ugly by the sinful machinations of a perverse and self-seeking human will. Likewise can this mind be made noble, beautiful, true, and good–actually great–in accordance with the spirit-illuminated will of a God-knowing human being…. (1217.1) 111:1.6
12. …The divine omnipotence is perfectly co-ordinated with the other attributes of the personality of God. The power of God is, ordinarily, only limited in its universe spiritual manifestation by three conditions or situations:
1. By the nature of God, especially by his infinite love, by truth, beauty, and goodness.
2. By the will of God, by his mercy ministry and fatherly relationship with the personalities of the universe.
3. By the law of God, by the righteousness and justice of the eternal Paradise Trinity…. (48.3) 3:2.11The revelation that humans should endeavor to be Godlike is a new concept, one that requires our utmost wisdom in knowing the difference between being Godlike and attempting to be God. Seeking and doing Father’s will makes you more and more like God. Health and happiness are natural side effects of living God’s truth. And beauty always results in combining living truth and goodness.
Day by day you will choose values that gradually unify you with God, values symbolized by the words: Truth, Goodness and Beauty. Or else you make choices that are dis-unifying. The first steps toward, or away from, Paradise perfection are taken here on Urantia. By a series of value choices based on attunement with the Indweller, you eventually and completely dedicate your eternal career to discerning and executing Father’s good will. But you are indwelt by the Spirit of Truth too, Jesus’ saving gift to humanity. This gift always points the way to God’s will. And do not forget your angels who always work for your progress in discerning and doing Father’s will.
It is no simple matter discovering and executing the divine will on a disordered, experimental and twice defaulted planet. There is no visible presence of the benign government of God as there is on planets that have not suffered defaults and quarantine. World wars have been fought over differing interpretations of the divine leadings in the human mind. Indeed, few wars are fought without inviting the blessing of God, by each side. Leadings must be scrutinized and wisely evaluated in a culture whose children are brought up knowing but meager bits of truth, goodness and beauty.
It should be noted there are areas of the book that have concentrated teachings on TB&G. For example the sixth and seventh Sections of Paper 2 actually defines the nature and character of God the Universal Father, like nothing before.
Quotes 5-11 are all from those two Sections. And all are about God’s personal values. Number ten ties our physical, emotional, mental well being in with truth, beauty and goodness:
10. …Health, sanity, and happiness are integrations of truth, beauty, and goodness as they are blended in human experience…. (43.4) 2:7.11
Paper 56, Section 10, Truth, Beauty and Goodness may be the gravity center of the revelators’ essential statements on these three words they chose to represent God’s values, character and nature. It has eight of the 84 uses of truth, beauty and goodness, numbers 23-30.
This is first use of the 84 by Jesus, about the gradations of evil:
58. …Jesus said: “My brother, God is love; therefore he must be good, and his goodness is so great and real that it cannot contain the small and unreal things of evil. God is so positively good that there is absolutely no place in him for negative evil. Evil is the immature choosing and the unthinking misstep of those who are resistant to goodness, rejectful of beauty, and disloyal to truth…. (1429.1) 130:1.5
It should be noted that quotes 58-72 are all verbatim from Jesus, or at least directly attributable to his teachings before and after his death. He delivered TB&G quote numbers 71 and 72 as a morontia being. Here is his last use of the trio, his parting advice to John Zebedee:
72. “…It is the love of God that impels men to seek salvation. Love is the ancestor of all spiritual goodness, the essence of the true and the beautiful….” (2047.5) 192:2.1
Quotes 73 to 84 are in the book’s two concluding Papers: 195 and 196. And all twelve of these supernal uses were written by the Midwayers–under the direction and authority of the Melchizedeks of course.
Quote number 4 connects truth, beauty, goodness, and personality:
4. …The concept of truth might possibly be entertained apart from personality, the concept of beauty may exist without personality, but the concept of divine goodness is understandable only in relation to personality. Only a person can love and be loved. Even beauty and truth would be divorced from survival hope if they were not attributes of a personal God, a loving Father…. (31.3) 1:7.3
Twenty-four quotes use the words person, personal, or personality. Without personality truth, goodness and beauty are unappreciated, unsought, cosmic orphans.
Number 13 is about the vast difference in perception between terrestrial and Havona reality. Havonites do not experience relative good and evil as we do.
13. …The full appreciation of truth, beauty, and goodness is inherent in the perfection of the divine universe. The inhabitants of the Havona worlds do not require the potential of relative value levels as a choice stimulus; such perfect beings are able to identify and choose the good in the absence of all contrastive and thought-compelling moral situations…. (52.2) 3:5.16
The words religion and religious are used many, many times in the 84. The most definitive might be this one:
67. …True religion–the religion of revelation. The revelation of supernatural values, a partial insight into eternal realities, a glimpse of the goodness and beauty of the infinite character of the Father in heaven–the religion of the spirit as demonstrated in human experience…. (1728.4) 155:5.2
On the destiny of religion:
15. …Religion is destined to become the reality of the spiritual unification of all that is good, beautiful, and true in human experience…. (67.5) 5:4.7
These quotes all refer to religion: 5,8,9,14,15,27,32,34,36,37,38,40,66,67,69,73,77,79,81 and 83. It is another rich, rich vein of study in the 84.
Quote 18 addresses philosophy, another outstanding theme in the 84:
18. …Beauty, rhythm, and harmony are intellectually associated and spiritually akin. Truth, fact, and relationship are intellectually inseparable and associated with the philosophic concepts of beauty. Goodness, righteousness, and justice are philosophically interrelated and spiritually bound up together with living truth and divine beauty…. (507.3) 44:7.2
Philosophy is presented as the reconciler between religion and science, an indispensable link in cosmic connectivity. These quotes use one form or another of the word philosophy: 5,8,9,10,18,19,24,27,36,41,56,80 and 82.
Yet another grand theme of the revelation is Unity. Number 20 is a good example (and another reference to Godlikeness):
20. …These divine qualities are perfectly and absolutely unified in God. And every God-knowing man or angel possesses the potential of unlimited self-expression on ever-progressive levels of unified self- realization by the technique of the never-ending achievement of Godlikeness–the experiential blending in the evolutionary experience of eternal truth, universal beauty, and divine goodness…. (507.5) 44:7.4
All these contain a form of the word unity: 7,9,10,15,19,22,23,26,28,32,41,43,49,55,56,57,60,62,75,80.
Apparently truth, beauty and goodness are universal teachings and values. Consider how the “advanced worlds” treat this trio:
21. …And on these worlds they are magnificently trained by the competitive systems of keen striving in the advanced domains and divisions of diverse achievement in the mastery of truth, beauty, and goodness…. (625.9) 55:3.10
Urantia will someday have whole universities devoted to study and integration of cosmic truth, beauty and goodness. Someday we will recognize the primal need for a great philosophy. How can we be ever be a great people without great philosophic foundations? The authors offer us a new and better philosophy for recognizing and dealing with life’s problems and mysteries. How long before this great philosophy–the cosmic understanding and integration of truth, beauty and goodness–takes its rightful place in Urantian culture? Decades? Centuries? Millennia? Decamillennia? Much depends on observing the three alive and producing good fruit in God’s professed believers.
Concepts connoting value appear in 26 of the 84, numbers 11,13,15,17,19,25,26,32,34,35,38,39,48,49,52,54,55,56,61,62,67,70,73,76,80 and 84. For example:
25. …Through the realization of truth the appreciation of beauty leads to the sense of the eternal fitness of those things which impinge upon the recognition of divine goodness in Deity relations with all beings; and thus even cosmology leads to the pursuit of divine reality values–to God-consciousness…. (646.9) 56:10.8
References to Adjusters are in quotes 45,46,47,60,81 and 84. But the God Fragments are first mentioned in number 44:
44. …In a sense the Adjusters may be fostering a certain degree of planetary cross-fertilization in the domains of truth, beauty, and goodness…. (1199.1) 109:4.6
The Supreme Being is also associated with this trio, beginning with 22,28 and 46. But the most pointed and concentrated teachings on the Supreme are in 51,52,53,54,57, and this last one that speaks directly to our destiny:
62. …a perfected spirit personality becomes so wholly, divinely, and spiritually unified with the positive and supreme qualities of goodness, beauty, and truth that there remains no possibility that such a righteous spirit would cast any negative shadow of potential evil when exposed to the searching luminosity of the divine light of the infinite Rulers of Paradise. In all such spirit personalities, goodness is no longer partial, contrastive, and comparative; it has become divinely complete and spiritually replete; it approaches the purity and perfection of the Supreme…. (1458.6) 132:2.9
Perfection is another outstanding theme within the 84. Quotes with one or another form of the word perfect are: 12,13,16,20,27,54,55,62 and 64. Number 27 is a good example:
27. …Truth is the basis of science and philosophy, presenting the intellectual foundation of religion. Beauty sponsors art, music, and the meaningful rhythms of all human experience. Goodness embraces the sense of ethics, morality, and religion–experiential perfection-hunger…. (647.1) 56:10.10
Quote 31 is interesting for two reasons. First it offers profound advice on the importance and method of preserving cosmic values. And second, it is the only one that cites the “golden rule”:
31. …an ideal society cannot be realized when either the weak or the wicked lie in wait to take unfair and unholy advantage of those who are chiefly actuated by devotion to the service of truth, beauty, and goodness. In such a situation only one course is practical: The “golden rulers” may establish a progressive society in which they live according to their ideals while maintaining an adequate defense against their benighted fellows who might seek either to exploit their pacific predilections or to destroy their advancing civilization…. (804.16) 71:4.16
Number 33 is the only one that refers to tolerance of the symbol, as it relates to TB&G:
33. …Those who are God-conscious without symbolism must not deny the grace- ministry of the symbol to those who find it difficult to worship Deity and to revere truth, beauty, and goodness without form and ritual. In prayerful worship, most mortals envision some symbol of the object-goal of their devotions…. (999.3) 91:5.7
One of the most profound of the 84, as regards the spiritual nature of TB&G, is this one:
74. …The concepts of truth, beauty, and goodness are not inherent in either physics or chemistry. A machine cannot know, much less know truth, hunger for righteousness, and cherish goodness…. (2077.7) 195:6.11
And the last of the 84 that has not been cited in one place or another in this overview, complements number 74. It speaks of faith:
76. …Paradise values of eternity and infinity, of truth, beauty, and goodness, are concealed within the facts of the phenomena of the universes of time and space. But it requires the eye of faith in a spirit-born mortal to detect and discern these spiritual values…. (2078.7) 195:7.4
It should be noted here the authors include two cautions in the 84. Numbers 28 and 79 suggest we avoid putting truth, goodness and beauty above their source, the Universal Father:
28. …Even truth, beauty, and goodness–man’s intellectual approach to the universe of mind, matter, and spirit–must be combined into one unified concept of a divine and supreme ideal. As mortal personality unifies the human experience with matter, mind, and spirit, so does this divine and supreme ideal become power- unified in Supremacy and then personalized as a God of fatherly love…. (647.6) 56:10.15
79. …The idealization and attempted service of truth, beauty, and goodness is not a substitute for genuine religious experience–spiritual reality. Psychology and idealism are not the equivalent of religious reality. The projections of the human intellect may indeed originate false gods–gods in man’s image– but the true God-consciousness does not have such an origin. The God-consciousness is resident in the indwelling spirit. Many of the religious systems of man come from the formulations of the human intellect, but the God-consciousness is not necessarily a part of these grotesque systems of religious slavery…. (2095.7) 196:3.23
Because wisdom, knowledge, reason, and fact are related to a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of the word truth as presented in the book, they appear repeatedly in the 84. The importance of clearly distinguishing truth from wisdom, knowledge, reason, and fact is paramount for the student of Truth. The most distinguishing factor between truth and the others is that “truth lives”. These 84 quotes are the foundation of new and living philosophy designed to move Urantia from 21st century thinking and acting to another and higher level. It is a philosophy that perfectly reconciles God’s Truth, Goodness and Beauty with the knowledge of science and the insights of genuine religious experience, thereby enhancing wisdom, clarifying knowledge, informing reason, and enlarging our cosmic perspective of all known facts.
The 84 quotes are too long to be included here. The English version of the 84 has well over 8000 words, about ten pages of UB text. But they are available on UAI’s websites in multiple languages:
84 Uses of Truth, Beauty & Goodness In 16 Languages
So much more can and will be said about the revelator’s presentation of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. We have only begun to tap the vast philosophic resources available in just this one grand theme of the revelation. Interest in philosophy will grow as humanity grapples more and more with the many new ethical and moral questions that our high-flying technology is creating. Of course the timeless, fundamental questions about our soul and survival remain. Truth, Beauty and Goodness, as presented anew in The Urantia Book, have essential insights into all the great questions–when the world is ready.
Other articles and insights on truth, beauty and goodness in The Urantia Book:
- Dr. Sadler on Truth, Beauty & Goodness: http://www.urantia.org/en/study/urantia-book-workbooks
- Beauty, Goodness & Truth – Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentals
- The Natural Theology of Beauty, Truth and Goodness by Steve McIntosh: http://www.integralworld.net/mcintosh4.html
Occurrences, by paragraph:
Truth = 790
True = 702
Truly = 273
Truths = 95
Truthful = 5
Truest = 4
Truthfully = 4
Truer = 3
Truthfulness = 2
Trueness = 1Good = 559
Goodness = 152
Goods = 25
Goodly = 4
Goodnesses = 2Beauty = 148
Beautiful = 125
Beauties = 9
Beautifully = 6
Beautification = 6
Beauteous = 4
Beautified = 1***
Richard E Warren
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