Q: Is Jesus the Only-Begotten Son?

You asked: Please help me to understand paper 33 where it says that the Creator Son is not the Eternal Son. And Michael/Jesus is the only begotten Son. What is the difference between them?

Thanks for this important question.  It’s important because up until the appearance of The Urantia Book, it was commonly thought that Jesus was the second person of the trinity – God the Son or the Eternal Son. Until The Urantia Book, there was little understanding of the vast scope of the created universes and the amazing array of divine beings that all stem from God, the Universal Father. 

With the sweeping revelations of The Urantia Book, we now understand that there are far more divine beings in the universe than the three members of the original Trinity. And one of these divine beings is a Creator Son, who is the offspring of the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. The work of the Creator Sons is to create local universes. Michael of Nebadon is one of these Creator Sons, and his creation is our universe of Nebadon. This same Creator Son incarnated on our world as Jesus of Nazareth.

This section of Paper 33 may be the part that you are referring to in your question:

33:1.1 Our Creator Son is the personification of the 611,121st original concept of infinite identity of simultaneous origin in the Universal Father and the Eternal Son. The Michael of Nebadon is the “only-begotten Son” personalizing this 611,121st universal concept of divinity and infinity. His headquarters is in the threefold mansion of light on Salvington. And this dwelling is so ordered because Michael has experienced the living of all three phases of intelligent creature existence: spiritual, morontial, and material. Because of the name associated with his seventh and final bestowal on Urantia, he is sometimes spoken of as Christ Michael.

33:1.2 Our Creator Son is not the Eternal Son, the existential Paradise associate of the Universal Father and the Infinite Spirit. Michael of Nebadon is not a member of the Paradise Trinity. Nevertheless our Master Son possesses in his realm all of the divine attributes and powers that the Eternal Son himself would manifest were he actually to be present on Salvington and functioning in Nebadon. Michael possesses even additional power and authority, for he not only personifies the Eternal Son but also fully represents and actually embodies the personality presence of the Universal Father to and in this local universe. He even represents the Father-Son. These relationships constitute a Creator Son the most powerful, versatile, and influential of all divine beings who are capable of direct administration of evolutionary universes and of personality contact with immature creature beings.

Here is some further explanation from Paper 1:

1:2.9 In theory you may think of God as the Creator, and he is the personal creator of Paradise and the central universe of perfection, but the universes of time and space are all created and organized by the Paradise corps of the Creator Sons. The Universal Father is not the personal creator of the local universe of Nebadon; the universe in which you live is the creation of his Son Michael. Though the Father does not personally create the evolutionary universes, he does control them in many of their universal relationships and in certain of their manifestations of physical, mindal, and spiritual energies. God the Father is the personal creator of the Paradise universe and, in association with the Eternal Son, the creator of all other personal universe Creators.

But, in spite of the fact that there are so many Creator Sons (Michael is #611,121), we can think of Jesus being God’s only-begotten Son to us, as in these passages from Paper 21:.

21:0.1 The Creator Sons are the makers and rulers of the local universes of time and space. These universe creators and sovereigns are of dual origin, embodying the characteristics of God the Father and God the Son. But each Creator Son is different from every other; each is unique in nature as well as in personality; each is the “only-begotten Son” of the perfect deity ideal of his origin.

21:1.1 When the fullness of absolute spiritual ideation in the Eternal Son encounters the fullness of absolute personality concept in the Universal Father, when such a creative union is finally and fully attained, when such absolute identity of spirit and such infinite oneness of personality concept occur, then, right then and there, without the loss of anything of personality or prerogative by either of the infinite Deities, there flashes into full-fledged being a new and original Creator Son, the only-begotten Son of the perfect ideal and the powerful idea whose union produces this new creator personality of power and perfection.

21:1.2 Each Creator Son is the only-begotten and only-begettable offspring of the perfect union of the original concepts of the two infinite and eternal and perfect minds of the ever-existent Creators of the universe of universes. There never can be another such Son because each Creator Son is the unqualified, finished, and final expression and embodiment of all of every phase of every feature of every possibility of every divine reality that could, throughout all eternity, ever be found in, expressed by, or evolved from, those divine creative potentials which united to bring this Michael Son into existence. Each Creator Son is the absolute of the united deity concepts which constitute his divine origin.

All of the Creator Sons are unique and uniquely suited to the universes of their making. We can always think of Jesus/Michael being our “only-begotten Son.” Even though there are many of these Sons in the universe, there will never be another for us.

I hope this reply has been helpful. Thanks for writing, and I hope you will click on the page links in this reply so that you can read more about Michael of Nebadon and the Creator Sons.