Fall of Man Lecture -- Jonathan Wells

If God is a God of goodness, and if God's ideal is to have a perfect world, then why is there so much evil in the world? This fundamental question has been plaguing religious people for centuries. The Christian tradition has generally dealt with the question in the context of the story of Adam and Eve. According to that story, as you know, God placed Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and gave them a commandment: "And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, 'You may freely eat of every tree of the Garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.' "(Genesis 2:16-17) Then the serpent, which Genesis calls more subtle than any other wild creature, asked Eve, "Did God say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the Garden?' "So she explained the commandment to the serpent." But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.'" Eve then ate of the fruit, and took some to Adam. He also ate of it, and then both of them, for the first time, felt ashamed of their nakedness. Subsequently, God expelled them from the Garden on account of their sin.

The elements of the story that we are interested in are the two trees that Genesis says are in the midst of the Garden, the tree of life and the tree of knowledge; and the two people in the Garden, Adam and Eve; and the fruit of the tree of knowledge; and the serpent. The question we have to answer first is whether we are going to take this story literally or symbolically. If the fruit is literal, we have a problem. For one thing, we have a problem with God's purpose for putting it there. As we learned yesterday, the Divine Principle maintains that Adam and Eve were young children in the Garden of Eden. Incidentally, Irenaeus maintained the same thing. But why would God put a fruit in front of his children that was so tempting, when they would die if they ate it? If a human parent were to do that, we would probably hold him or her responsible for the subsequent tragedy. For example, if I were to place my children in a room with a bowl of fruit, seta poisoned apple on top of the pile, and then tell my children they could eat all they wanted except the one right in the middle, would you consider me a good parent? So it just doesn't make sense to say that God put a literal fruit in the Garden solely for the purpose of testing his children, knowing that they would die when they ate it. But if the fruit isn't literal, then what is it a symbol for?

At this point I am going to outline the Divine Principle's analysis of the symbolism of the fall story. Since the tree of knowledge is not mentioned in many places in the Bible, and the meaning of the fruit is so ambiguous, let's take a look at the tree next to it. The "tree of life" is mentioned in many places throughout the Old and New Testaments. For example, the Genesis story says that after the fall, Adam was prevented from reaching the tree of life by an angel with a flaming sword. The implication, of course, is that Adam's desire was to reach the tree of life. In Proverbs 13:12, we read that "Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a desire fulfilled is a tree of life." And skipping ahead then to Revelation 22:14 we find, "Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and that they may enter the city by the gates." Now we also find several references in the New Testament to Jesus as a vine; and in Romans 11:17, Paul compares Jesus to the olive tree to which sinful people are grafted like branches. Looking at all these passages, we could infer that the tree of life generally refers to perfected man. Jesus, unlike Adam, reached perfection; and Jesus was the tree of life. But in the story of the fall, the Divine Principle says that the tree of life is actually a symbol for Adam. Now originally, the whole creation was the Garden of Eden, and as we heard yesterday, Adam and Eve were meant to be the center of that creation. So with two trees standing next to each other in the center of the Garden, if one is a symbol of Adam, I think we can infer that the other might be a symbol for Eve.

Durwood Foster: Jon, would you repeat very briefly how you moved from the tree of life as a symbol for perfected man to the tree as a symbol for Adam? Adam was not yet perfected.

Jonathan Wells: That is a very good point.

There is a very subtle distinction in the symbolism here. Jesus was the tree of life. Adam wanted to become the tree of life, but he fell instead while he was growing toward perfection. During the growth period both Adam and Eve were in a position to fall. If Adam had reached perfection, he would have been called the "tree of life." If Eve had reached perfection she would have been called the "tree of the knowledge of good," and she would have borne good children; but since she disobeyed God's commandment, she became a tree of evil and bore evil children. But according to the Divine Principle, the symbolism of the Genesis story -- which of course was written after the fall -- does not mean that Eve was by nature inferior to Adam. OK? Next, let's take a look at the serpent.

Some traditional Christian versions of the fall maintain that Satan used an actual serpent as his instrument. The Divine Principle, however, interprets the serpent merely as a symbol for Satan, or fallen Lucifer. In any case, I think that it is generally acknowledged that we are talking about Satan here. The Christian tradition interprets the Genesis story in the light of New Testament revelation. In Revelation 12:9 we read "And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world -- he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him." Now what is the nature of Satan? Presumably, before the fall there was no evil. Since God created everything good, whatever we are talking about here became evil because of the fall. The fall is the origin of evil. Before the fall Satan was Lucifer, the archangel. As Revelation 12:9 points out, Lucifer had angels under his dominion. The archangel somehow turned away from God and became evil, and his identity then became Satan; but originally he must have been good.

Now in I Corinthians 6:3, we are told that mankind is to have dominion over the angels:. "Do you not know that we are to judge angels?" And so according to the Divine Principle, Lucifer was originally supposed to be the servant of Adam and Eve. After all, Adam and Eve were God's children, and Lucifer was God's servant. So here we have an angelic figure living in the invisible substantial world with whom Adam and Eve before the fall could communicate readily. As Joe pointed out yesterday, the fall damaged the human spirit; but if we hadn't fallen, our spiritual senses would have been quite acute. So Adam and Eve presumably had fairly easy communication with the spiritual being, Lucifer.

Now we can begin to take a look at the meaning of the fruit itself. What could have been the nature of the sin whereby Adam and Eve fell? In Jude 6-7, there is an interesting juxtaposition between Sodom and Gomorrah on the one hand and the sinful angels on the other: "... likewise [they] acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust..." In Job 31:33 in the Old Testament, we read (in some versions) "I have concealed my transgressions like Adam." Also, in several passages in the New Testament, both John the Baptist and Jesus refer to fallen mankind as descendants of Satan: "You brood of vipers!" and "You are of your father the devil..." (Mt. 3:7 and Jn. 8:44). The implication in these passages is that the angel indulged in unnatural lust, that Adam concealed his transgressions when he covered his nakedness, and that fallen people are descended from Satan. Taken together, they imply that the fruit represents the misuse of love. Unification theology finds corroboration for this in the practice of circumcision, which would appear to be a very bizarre practice for God to require of the chosen people unless the misuse of love was the root of sin; and also in the fact that every major religion condemns fornication and adultery as being among the worst of sins.

The Unification interpretation, then, is that the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil represents Eve's love, specifically the love of immature Eve. Somehow, Satan and Eve and Adam must have been involved in the misuse of sexual love, and this must have constituted the original sin. This isn't actually such a novel idea. Several commentators both Jewish and Christian, have come up with similar notions of a sexual fall. But I think the most valuable contribution of Unification theology has been to explain the internal aspect of the fall. It is not enough to say that Adam and Eve fell by committing fornication. For one thing, we know from yesterday's lecture that God intended for us to have sexual relationships. The fulfillment of the second blessing is a God-centered marriage. How, then, was innocent love perverted to fornication? First of all, I would like to comment on the meaning of perfection in Unification theology. As we heard yesterday, to fulfill the first blessing Adam and Eve had to center their minds and bodies on God. Having established this relationship with him, they would have become a perfect man and a perfect woman. Unification theology emphasizes the relational basis of perfection. We know, for example, that God is free. Nobody would want to say that God has not free will, and yet God would never sin. Now if someone achieves this intimate relationship with God, this unity with God's heart, his or her body would act as though God himself were directing it. With this kind of intimate love relationship with God, perfected man and perfected woman would be so much the image of God that they would not sin. It would be completely alien to their nature; nevertheless, they would be free.

However, as we learned yesterday, for this relationship to be a genuine one, for it to be the kind of relationship which could bring joy to God as well as joy to us, it must depend at least partially on our own responsibility. For such a relationship to work, the center of it can't be law. It can't be all legal requirement; and it can't be some kind of "non posse peccare" substance that God injects into the blood stream. Its basis has to be love, and for that reason God made love the strongest force in the universe, stronger even than the Principle itself. For example, plants and animals grow automatically, by virtue of natural law, to perfection, i.e., to maturity; but in order for us to be the children of God and to fulfill the three blessings, we have to be co-creators with God. And the only way we can do this is, in a sense, to help create ourselves by fulfilling our own responsibility.

Now in the Garden of Eden before the fall, Adam and Eve were in the growth stage. God was not exercising direct dominion over them, and so the fulfillment of the commandment was their portion of responsibility. It was during this period that something happened between Lucifer and God's growing children.

Angels are God's servants and messengers. The archangel was with God from the early stages of creation and originally God's love flowed to the angels and the creation through Lucifer. When God created Adam and Eve, he loved them as his children, with a much greater love than the love he felt towards Lucifer. Nevertheless, since God's love is infinite, his love towards Lucifer and the angels did not diminish. But Lucifer perceived himself to be in a situation which we see now often in families. When a baby is born, love and attention is showered on it, and the other children sometimes become jealous. According to the Unification interpretation, when Adam and Eve were created, Lucifer mistakenly felt that God's love for him had diminished. When he felt God's love for Adam and Eve, he was strongly attracted to them; because after all, especially in the spiritual world, God's love is the source of life. So the archangel was attracted to Adam and Eve, and especially to Eve. At first there wasn't anything wrong with that attraction; in fact, God wanted the archangel to become attracted to Adam and Eve and to serve them. In a certain sense, even Lucifer's envy wasn't evil. For example, I could be envious of somebody's accomplishments and be motivated thereby to emulate them. Envy is not necessarily destructive; and in the archangel's case, it could have served merely to draw him closer to Adam and Eve.

So Lucifer and Eve began to have give and take. As we learned yesterday, give and take is the basis of existence, action and multiplication. It generates energy. Their relationship actually generated^ force of its own. In that context, however, God wanted Eve to obey the commandment, and resist the temptation to misuse the love that God was giving her and to direct it faithfully towards him. If Eve had done so, she would have attained perfection, and the archangel would have kept his proper position as a servant. Instead, as their relationship developed its own power and attraction, Lucifer told Eve that she would not die, but would become like God. Of course, there was a kernel of truth in that, because God did want Adam and Eve to become like him, but not by engaging in fornication with Lucifer. At that point the archangel and Eve lost faith in the commandment and fell, and according to the Divine Principle, they had a sexual relationship.

Now that undoubtedly seems very odd to many of you, that a human being and an angel could have a sexual relationship. In fact, for a lot of people it seems odd to talk about angels at all these days, and certainly I can't offer you any empirical proof for their existence. But in the Bible we read about angels having very real and vivid encounters with people. For example, in Genesis 32:25 we read that an angel put Jacob's thigh out of joint: "... he touched the hollow of his thigh; and Jacob's thigh was put out of joint as he wrestled with him." We also read about angels eating with Abraham. So the idea of an intense physical interaction between Lucifer and Eve is not alien to biblical themes. Furthermore, throughout the Christian tradition we encounter stories of people's experiences with spirits. Biblically and theologically, it is neither unacceptable nor inconsistent to conclude that Eve and Lucifer committed fornication in a spiritual -- but nevertheless very real -- sense.

Because of the unity which was thereby established between them, Eve then acquired certain things from the archangel. One thing she acquired was knowledge and an increased awareness that Adam and not Lucifer was to be her spouse. She also realized that Adam, who was at that point still innocent and growing towards perfection, was her only route back to God. Actually, if Adam had attained perfection he could have saved Eve. He could have been Eve's messiah. But instead, when Eve went to Adam, he also lost faith in the commandment and committed fornication with Eve. Although they would have eventually been husband and wife, it was not yet time. This was the physical fall. So we have first the spiritual fall and then the physical fall.

God had said, "... for in the day that you eat of it you shall die," so the first result of the fall was death. However, as Joe pointed out yesterday, we are not meant to be physically immortal. The Divine Principle teaches, like Augustine, that the death immediately following the fall was a spiritual death. The spirits of Adam and Eve were supposed to unite with God, and that would have been their source of life. But instead, they united with Lucifer, who became Satan through the fall. They thereby cut their spirits off from God, and died spiritually. However, unlike Augustine, the Divine Principle teaches that their subsequent physical death was not a result of the fall. It would have happened anyway.

A second result of the fall was lust, as Irenaeus and Augustine pointed out. According to the Divine Principle, lust followed the fall precisely because Adam and Eve misused their sexual parts. If they had eaten a literal fruit, then they would have covered their mouths or their hands. Why would they cover their sexual parts? Augustine attributes lust to disobedience: since they disobeyed God, their bodies disobeyed them. But that still doesn't say anything about sex. Where does the sexual aspect come from if it wasn't involved in the fall? The Divine Principle does a better job than Irenaeus and Augustine of explaining the connection between lust and the fall.

A third result of the fall was Satan's dominion. Originally, Adam and Eve were supposed to center their lives on God, and Lucifer was supposed to be their servant; but through the fall, Adam and Eve submitted to Satan instead of to God. What they inherited from Satan, their false father, the Divine Principle calls fallen nature. And the course of the fall that I have outlined here leads to four aspects of fallen nature which I will list briefly.

The first aspect of fallen nature is a failure to take God's standpoint. For example, if Lucifer had taken God's standpoint, then he would have served Eve instead of regarding her as an object of desire. Lucifer would have loved Adam and Eve the same way God loved Adam and Eve, but instead Lucifer failed to take God's standpoint and acted out of his own selfishness. The second aspect of fallen nature is leaving the proper position. Lucifer was supposed to protect and serve Adam and Eve but instead he left that position. The third aspect of fallen nature is the reversal of dominion. Instead of serving Adam and Eve, Lucifer assumed dominion over them. The fourth aspect of fallen nature is multiplication of evil. After Lucifer and Eve united in fornication, they carried their sin to Adam and then to all the descendants of Adam and Eve. According to the Divine Principle, Satan, the god of this world as he is called in the New Testament, exemplifies these aspects of fallen nature and seeks to extend his dominion by multiplying evil through evil spirits.

As descendants of Adam and Eve, we all find ourselves in a midway position between God and Satan. Ina sense, Satan has usurped the position of our original parents, so we are born into Satan's family. Nevertheless, we are not entirely separated from God, and we still have an original mind. We were created by God, and from the standpoint of creation we are still God's children. But our spiritual lineage has been tainted by the fall. Now here I want to emphasize again the relational aspect of Unification theology. Just as perfection would be fundamentally relational, based on give-and-take action, so sin and fallen nature are fundamentally relational. This means that we are born in a position to relate to Satan. We grow up in a family and a society and a world in which all of us have a sort of contradictory mind, a double allegiance. We don't spend all of our time relating to God. Instead, we spend a significant part of our time centering on selfish desires and on things that strengthen Satan's dominion, such as anti-religious ideologies. Crime, violence, drugs and pornography play right into Satan's hands. We find ourselves one moment relating to God and the next moment relating to Satan. We still have free will to some extent: we can still choose to turn towards Satan or towards God. But that, by itself, isn't enough to save us. We can't save ourselves because the fall disrupted the relationship between the spiritual and the physical, and free will no longer guarantees free action. We can will something good, but that doesn't mean that we can do it. We tend to be dominated by less-than ideal motives. Yet we can turn to God, and God constantly entreats us to do that.

Traditional Christian theodicies tend to end the fall story by saying that an angry God will punish sinful people with eternal damnation. But the Divine Principle does not emphasize God's wrath. God created the world for joy, and he created Adam and Eve so he could experience the joy of parenthood -- not so he could be a stern judge. When Adam and Eve turned against their heavenly Father, he must have been overwhelmed with grief. In Unification theology, a most terrible and tragic result of the fall was that it broke God's heart. Yet God is a perfect parent, so instead of being vindictive, God continues to suffer and work for the salvation of his children. And that is what our subsequent lectures will be about.

Discussion

Participant: Let me clarify something. I think you said angels or archangels were with God before creation?

Jonathan Wells: No. I said from the beginning of creation. The angels are created beings.

Participant: How would you react to the statement in John's gospel, "In the beginning was the Word?"

Jonathan Wells: Well, the Word is qualitatively different. The Word is not an angel, the Word is with God, the Word is God.

Participant: You did say that the angels assisted God in the creation. I think that is the point at which the question probably arose. I would gather that the angels were created first, then, the creation was created. Or was your comment not to be taken in that sequential way?

Jonathan Wells: One way of interpreting the first chapter of Genesis, in which God says "Let us make man in our image," is to say that he is speaking to the angels. Another interpretation is that he is speaking to the trinity. But when I say the angels were created in the beginning, I mean they were created at the beginning of the creation process to help God as his servants and messengers.

Participant: I am still confused when you say the angels assisted in creation, but are part of creation. God did not have any assistance before creating the angels?

Jonathan Wells: No, he didn't have any that I know of. In the beginning it was God alone.

David Kim: He is referring to the biblical passage in which God is talking with the angels. Angels must have assisted in God's creation in some way. They were consulted by God in his creation process. One of the functions of the angels is to give consultation and advice to God. In my family situation, if I am going to build a swimming pool in the backyard, I may talk to my oldest son, saying, "What do you think about this plan of mine to build the most wonderful swimming pool for our family here in the backyard?" In this interaction, my son is not the initiator or the creator of the swimming pool. He is merely consulted by me, his father.

Participant: I am looking at page 76 of the Divine Principle where it says that God was speaking to the angels who had been created before man. In other words, the first act of creation was the angels with whom God then consulted about the creation of man and the rest of the world.

Jonathan Wells: I am not sure I can say more than that.

Participant: I am not sure of this either, but was the invisible substantial world created before the visible substantial world? Is that also in the principle?

Jonathan Wells: I don't know. David Kim: We never talk about that. It's much too deep a question to answer.

Donald Jones: I was intrigued by your comment that prior to the fall there was no evil and that Lucifer fell when Eve fell. I am thinking of Kierkegaard's analysis of the fall and his thesis that sin posits itself. It is commonly thought by traditional Christians that sin comes by way of temptation and that the fallen angel, Lucifer, was already evil and thereby constrained or tempted or misled Eve. The notion that Lucifer fell at the same time that Eve fell is itself a distinctively different view than the Christian tradition has taught. Would you have any further comment on that?

Jonathan Wells: In one of the earliest Christian attempts to explain the fall Irenaeus says that Satan tempted Eve and she fell. When Irenaeus asked where Satan came from he found no answer. It is a mystery. But it is also the most fundamental question of any theodicy, any attempt to explain the fall. Irenaeus just left it unanswered.

Augustine talked about the fall of Satan in terms of free will. He says that Satan just decided to become prideful and thereby he fell. However, Augustine doesn't want to say that Eve fell because Satan tempted her, since Eve could not be blamed for her sin. Augustine wants to indict Adam and Eve, otherwise he can't justify eternal damnation. So he actually says that Adam and Eve fell before they ate the fruit by becoming prideful. So actually, the biblical story that was acted out by Satan and Adam and Eve was more or less a facade, because evil was already present. Kierkegaard, as you mentioned, talks about sin positing itself after the fall.

Donald Jones: If I am understanding Kierkegaard correctly, what he says is that sin posited itself. This is to say that there is no possibility of a perfectly good being falling. In other words, for Kierkegaard the fall is absurd at any point when we talk about the beginning of sin; sin is already there.

Jonathan Wells: What Kierkegaard says in the Concept of Dread is that Adam and Eve felt sensuousness before the fall. It is interesting that you brought this up since Kierkegaard actually has a sexual interpretation of the fall. For Kierkegaard, Adam and Eve felt sensuousness, and along with that, dread. When he says that sin posits itself, he is in fact saying that ultimately any free act is absurd, inexplicable. Augustine says the same thing. So there is some truth in saying that sin posits itself. Nevertheless, Kierkegaard also wanted to say that this sensuousness and dread led up to the fall by fascinating Adam and Eve and beguiling them until finally sensuousness became sexuality. At that point, sin enters.

Participant: You are saying that Adam and Eve put Satan in God's place and you're saying that they fell because of a sexual relationship with Lucifer. But how can an angel be substituted in God's place? What is the implied proper relationship between God, Adam and Eve?

Jonathan Wells: The essence of the relationship between God, Adam and Eve is not sexual; it is love. The point here is that Adam and Eve were supposed to direct their love to God with the kind of intensity with which they would have directed it towards a lover. Now, they were created in such a way that when they were finally to unite as man and wife, the bond between the two of them would be as strong as the bond with God. It is the bond of love that keeps this unity, this perfection together. By misdirecting that love, by fornication, Eve misdirected her love from God to Lucifer. So the bond she established with Lucifer took the place of the bond that she was in the process of establishing with God.

Participant: Then the fall was due more to a love bond than a physical bond? Jonathan Wells: That is quite true. The sexual aspect is external, but the essence of it, the internal aspect, is love. Donald Jones: Isn't there a false dichotomy, though, between the sensuous and the sexual?

Jonathan Wells: Kierkegaard made it that distinction, not I. I am not saying that Eve was supposed to have sensuous feelings toward Lucifer. She was supposed to love Lucifer, but love him as her servant, not as her lover. When a relationship begins to develop between two people, it tends to start off very low key and very innocently. But as the relationship develops, as the other person responds, this reciprocal give-and-take action generates its own force. There may be a certain sensuousness involved which isn't necessarily evil but which could become evil. In the case of the fall the sexual act was the point where Eve passed the point of no return.

David Kim: Maybe I can clarify the question of the different kinds of love taught in the Divine Principle. What is God's love? God's love must be the combination of the three or four different kinds of love. Western people may think that sex is the highest point in life. However, in reality, genuine love between husband and wife is the highest thing. It can be channeled, expressed and further completed through the act of sex between husband and wife. Many people in the world live together as husband and wife for only just physical sex without any real love between them. On the weekend, the husbands go after other women and the wives go after other men. That is not the expression of real love. Instead it is a promiscuous and adulterous act. Thus many people live together without real love, with only a physical, sexual relationship. People in this world emphasize physical sexuality much too much. When a mother loves her baby, is that sexually oriented? You have to understand clearly about the different kinds of love we are talking about in the Divine Principle.

Jonathan Wells: Joe mentioned yesterday that we speak of three kinds of love. First, there is the love of a parent for children. Adam and Eve, if they had fulfilled the second blessing, would have felt this kind of love for their children. Second, there is conjugal love which is the love we are talking about in a marriage relationship, a love between equals. The third kind of love is filial piety which is the love that a child directs towards its parents: the respect, trust and obedience that a child feels.

As Mr. Kim was saying, many marriages today exist on the basis of sex and have very little love in them. In the ideal situation, of course, love is established and sex follows. Here sex is centered on God and serves God's purpose. These questions often come up about the sexual aspect of the fall. Often the Divine Principle is criticized for dwelling on sex. Actually, I wonder who is really dwelling on sex. It seems to me that contemporary American society -- and that includes many churches -- is obsessed with sex. Much more so than the Unification Church. Here all I am saying is that, according to the Divine Principle, the fall was the misuse of love, which took the form of an illicit sexual relationship at the dawn of human history.

Participant: What I heard today is that the culmination of the fall centers in an adulterous act between Eve and Satan. I'm confused. How does one have a sexual relationship with a spiritual being? Is Satan thought of as a physical being? Is Satan masculine or feminine?

Anthony Guerra: We claim in the first chapter of the Divine Principle that human nature has two aspects, both of which have a bi-polar nature. There is a physical aspect in which there is a physical mind and physical body, and there is a spiritual aspect which consists of a spiritual mind and a spiritual body. We say that the spiritual body is substantial but not physical. The differences between an angel and a human being is that ontologically an angel does not have a physical mind and physical body but is simply a spiritual being, with both a spiritual mind and a spiritual body. So presumably since a human being and an angel both have spiritual bodies, then there is a possibility of give and take.

Participant: But that is on a spiritual level. I don't understand how sexual intercourse is possible.

Prepared Theological Responses

Donald Jones

What I would like to do is focus on one term and say something about that and if it strikes anyone as interesting perhaps they can articulate the issue better than I. The term is "freedom." and I find it strange the way it functions in the language of Unification theology. I want to quote Young Oon Kim's book Unification Theology and Christian Thought¹ in which she says. "Free will is the highest gift God gave man." I would agree with that affirmation, but I want to contrast my own perspective (which you will recognize as a combination of Reinhold Niebuhr, a little bit of Soren Kierkegaard and Ernest Becker) with the Unification understanding of freedom as it relates to sin and salvation.

Here is my thesis. The preoccupation with fornication and unnatural lust in the treatment of the fall at the expense of an emphasis on freedom, or on responsibility, or on decision, or on voluntary control, or on obedience, seems to be rooted in an understanding of God and the self that does not do full justice to the full range of freedom both in the sovereignty of God and in an understanding of the self.

The notion of a perfected love is rooted in an understanding of the self that does not gauge realistically human finitude and so the treatment, as I see it, of the self -- the anthropology of Unificationism -- does not in my view take sufficiently into account the paradox of finitude and freedom. If I had to do my chart, I would put mind/body on the side of finitude, and freedom on the other side, for mind is as finite as body. Freedom is the capacity to make contact with God.

Now I just want to point out quickly the difference between a traditional view of the fall as disobedience and a view of the fall as concupiscence. I know both are traditional, you can find them both in Augustine, among others. But it seems to me that there is a preoccupation with concupiscence in Unification theology at the expense of disobedience, and that has to do with an understanding of freedom.

In the Divine Principle we read the statement "man fell because of fornication." Now I ask why shouldn't fornication be the expression of the fall or the result of the fall? Unificationism says "Eve should not have done that. Eve should have restrained herself." These are the words of the Divine Principle. If Eve had restrained herself there would have been no fall. A statement such as that presupposes the capacity of Eve to restrain herself, but Eve didn't and I know one of the problems is that Eve was a young woman. (What would you say -- 13, 14 or 15 years old?)

She was not fully mature in wisdom and knowledge. And that is why she can't be held completely accountable. This points to one of the differences between a traditional Christian understanding of the fall and the Unification understanding of the fall.

On the one hand, you have the Unification emphasis on fornication and unnatural lust of a young woman; on the other hand, you have the traditional Christian emphasis on disobedience and the radical freedom of the self. This, of course, is rooted in an understanding of God as sovereign freedom. If I am not mistaken, this is a phrase of John Calvin; "God is sovereign freedom" which is finally the one thing that one can say about God. I might add that the term "sovereign freedom" is more meaningful than to say God is omnipotent or omniscient. What sovereign freedom means is nothing else is necessary. If that is the case, then what does the imago dei mean? It means that which is essential to the human is freedom. Freedom is the capacity not only to choose but the capacity to stand out from oneself, the capacity for self-transcendence and the source of both obedience and disobedience to God. Hence, the very gift which I think is admitted by Unification theology, is in my notion a traditional interpretation, the source of disobedience as well as obedience. As Reinhold Niebuhr said, it is the source of "man's grandeur as well as man's misery."

So in this view, freedom is the source of man's creativity and is also the source of destructiveness. Now in this view, then, you couldn't possibly posit or project a perfected world. Given this view, you couldn't even project a perfected small family because the more freedom you get, the greater the capacity to do evil as well as to do good. Indeed the real problem is narcissism or idolatry: the more freedom you have, the more godlike you feel, the more you deny your finitude and fly off into reveries of divinity, at least one expression of which is spiritual pride. Is this not a danger for Unificationists? I am just pointing out that according to this classic Lutheran or neo-Lutheran understanding of freedom, you could never have a doctrine of perfected love, a doctrine which is a hallmark of Unification theology.

Now on the other side, if the emphasis is on fornication, premature sensuality and sexuality, and unprincipled love, then it is not freedom which is the source of the fall but precisely the loss of original freedom. That is the case, isn't it? Isn't the problem a loss of freedom and not that freedom itself is the source of the fall? On page 93 of the Divine Principle "Man could not have fallen due to the freedom of the original mind." Another passage says, "Therefore in accordance with the principle of creation, freedom is always accompanied by responsibility and it is always in pursuit of actual results that make God happy." (p. 92) This is the key: freedom can only act in the direction of good; it can only do things that make God happy. This is not the kind of freedom that Niebuhr is talking about, or I am talking about, or, what I think the early Christians were talking about, or what, I think, the early story of Adam and Eve presupposes. The vision I get is that when a command was given, "You shall not eat of this particular tree," Adam and Eve were faced with limits. When I can identify with something like that, I suddenly become conscious of my own capacity to do precisely what I have been told not to do. The awareness of freedom was the precondition of the fall in this view. But not so in the Divine Principle.

Now of course this is why the Unification Church can be perfectionist. If you create the social conditions and the conditions in the family that enhance freedom and if that freedom can do only the good, then with that understanding of freedom a perfected love and a perfected community can be envisioned. Now, I'll just close with a couple of summary points.

First, it seems to me that the treatment of freedom in the Divine Principle doesn't really do justice to the human experience, at least to my experience. I don't know if my methodology is meaningful to any of you -- it is an existential/phenomenological/introspective approach in which the test of religious language and religious stories is whether or not they do justice to the human experience, to my experience. What I am saying is that the classical Christian approach helps me to grasp my life the way it is more than the Unification approach does. My primal parents, Adam and Eve, were adults.

And secondly, I think your language is wrong. Is freedom the word we want if we mean simply directional freedom, that is, freedom in the direction of the good? Or could another term be clearer? The Unification version seems to me to rest on a qualified understanding of freedom. In sexuality -- and I don't mind the sexuality part of the Divine Principle in its articulation of the fall -- it seems to me that the spiritual issue is not fornication; the spiritual issue is in the control of sexuality. For me "spirit" is almost a synonym for "freedom." Freedom, commitment and decision are what makes the human a real human; it is the freedom to withstand the sensual drives, to withstand the external pressures and moreover, the freedom to affirm the joys of human sexuality, that is the spiritual issue.

I have two other minor points. First, do we really believe that Satan is male? I don't think the Divine Principle states explicitly that Satan is male, but it seems assumed. Why not female? Why not neutral? Have you ever thought that the angel that wrestled with Jacob might have been a female and not a male? Why do you think that Satan is a male? Herb Richardson has reminded me that in medieval cathedrals, in sculptures and carvings and on the roofs of churches, you frequently will see Adam being seduced by a female Satan. That is interesting, don't you think? Secondly, is there -- and this goes back to the lecture on the creation -- a notion of ideal created sexuality: that is, sexuality in the ideal, created, original state? Or is the ideal sexuality in the restored, perfected, love state only? In the Hebrew tradition, Adam and Eve were one flesh, or they had sexual intercourse and that was good. There the primal parents represented healthy, normative sexuality. Does the Unification Church affirm the goodness of sexuality in the created order and is it mythologically presented in a way analogous to the Hebrew scriptures?

My aim has been to point to fundamental differences in perspective on the doctrine of the fall between traditional Christianity and the Unification Church, and to stimulate discussion. Thank you.

J. Stillson Judah

I should preface my remarks by saying that when Darrol first put the bee on me to present something concerning the fall, I told him that although I was a historian of religions rather than a theologian, it just so happened that I was reading something pertinent in the galley-proofs of a book by Carl Raschke entitled, The Interruption of Eternity² It dealt with Alan Watts' interpretation of the fall, which became one of the pegs on which the counter-culture of the sixties hung its mantle. I began to ponder about that and about how certain repeatable cultural conditions might be able to give us a clue concerning what particular doctrines might become attractive at just a particular time. One might call this tendency a symbolic cultural identification in which a particular belief has special relevance during a period of cultural change and expresses in symbolic form either an identification with some aspect of change or an aversion to it. I shall give two examples which might be compared with the sexual interpretation of the fall in Unification theology.

If one views the idea of the fall as a universal concept separate from its individual interpretations, the common denominator in all cases is some explanation of why humanity is in its particular predicament and must be saved. In orthodox Hindu philosophy, instead of an event there is the belief in avidya or universal ignorance of the truth of one's real nature, the knowledge of which one must attain for salvation. In some of the sectarian Hindu religions, however, there is a better indication of a real fall as an event. One example is that of the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, the parent organization of the Hare Krishna movement. Their particular sect dates from the 16th century, the time when Chaitanya, one of India's greatest saints, lived. His thought has some interesting parallels with that of the Unification Church. Chaitanya based his teachings not only on the Bhagavadgita and other sections of India's great epic, the Mahabharata, but also upon later Purana and Pancharatra texts, as well as the love poetry from the 12th to 14th centuries. This poetry was interpreted in a spiritual sense as the love of God for humanity, his creation, and its response expressed as bhakti or devotion to God.

Chaitanya taught that this God was Krishna, the highest personality of Godhead, comprising the all-expansive Brahman interpreted as spirit. Its universal form was personified as Vishnu, an expression of Krishna. Krishna, like the concept of God in Unification theology has both male and female aspects. As a being he is male, but his energy, which has various grades, is female. Thus Krishna forms a unity with his energy, but in order to receive spiritual love he separated himself from his highest energy, forming many heavenly cowherds and cowherdesses, the favorite of which is Radha, his eternal consort. Thus spiritual beings were formed, to have a God-centered love for Krishna. Chaitanya taught, however, that some began to become selfish and thought of their own sensual gratification with one another. Consequently a fall occurred. Krishna decided that if they wanted this kind of sensual love, he would create a world and their physical bodies from maya, his illusory lowest energy. Therefore, the doctrine of the fall in Chaitanya's thought entailed death and reincarnation until one recognized the necessity for practicing a truly God-centered love. Thus in the Hare Krishna movement very similarly to the Unification Church the doctrine of the fall is centered on the primeval misuse of sex.

It is noteworthy that in the 16th century at the time of Chaitanya a great acculturation process was occurring which conflicted with Hindu religion and culture. In the cultural confusion many Hindus and Buddhists had converted to the religion of the Moslem conquerors and had entered their civil services, while Hinduism and Buddhism showed signs of decadence. A form of Tantrism promoting sexual license had become popular in some forms of Hinduism and Buddhism. Therefore, Chaitanya's doctrine attributing the fall to a misuse of sexual freedom instead of a God-centered spiritual love militated against this religious licentiousness. This belief became particularly important as an explanation and tenet of faith for those who were dissatisfied with these sexual forms of religious practice, and it served to purify the religion.

While millions in India today believe in Chaitanya's teachings, they had a particular relevance again in the 19th century when Western culture and Christianity were strongly fostered under British rule. The process of cultural change was again similar to that under Moslem domination in Chaitanya's time, and the Gaudiya Vaishnava movement under Bhaktivinode was formed to purify Vaishnavism again of the "left-handed" Tantric sexual practices that had become influential.

If we now turn to America of the sixties and examine Alan Watts' doctrine of the fall, its relevance as a rationale for hippie subculture should become apparent. I depend here on Carl Raschke's interpretation of the fall in the philosophy of Watts which he gives in his forthcoming book, The Interruption of Eternity.

Alan Watts' interpretation of Zen for the West is very well-known from his books, but particularly in the sixties he became interested in promoting psychedelics, whose use formed one important base of the hippie subculture. He developed an ethic which was called creative morality. This entailed spontaneity, festivity and the joy of living, in which there was no burden of guilt, nor was there a definite purpose, nor a socially prescribed boundary. He felt that conventional morality tied one's mind to respectability and to future objectives. He suggested as an alternative that one be allowed the freedom to cherish "the now," and "the marvelous moment." This simple philosophy provided a foundation and a rationale for the counter-culture morality of the "hang-loose" ethic of doing one's own thing and for sexual license. According to Watts the direct experience of God through psychedelics would be the antidote to ritualism, moralism and dogmatism. Like the Sahajiyas against whom Chaitanya contended, Watts also gave a rationale for a sexual type of Tantric yoga. Raschke observes, however, that when Watts finally declared that promiscuity was as good as fidelity, and marriage, entirely irrelevant, he followed with the divorce of his second wife. Watts believed the malaise of our modern culture began a long time ago. He taught that the fall took place when humanity surrendered to the dictates of rationalism and law in social conduct. At that time he felt humanity had neglected the impulses and intuition of its non-reflective being. Therefore, it forsook the promise of enlightenment. He declared that all were now trying to harmonize with the cosmic self, but reconciliation had to occur by revising the sacred in terms of playfulness and lack of seriousness toward secular concerns. The instincts had to redefine nature. Responsible striving for time-bound objectives had to be replaced by the joyous revelation of immediate experience.

Unfortunately acid often provided a lonely or even bad trip; and a life of free love and sexual license brought no enduring happiness. The Vietnamese war ended as did the major protests of the sixties, and the great social revolution that demonstrators in Berkeley and elsewhere had thought was imminent did not occur. Therefore, Watts' interpretation of the fall had but an ephemeral importance for a disappearing hippie subculture. By 1970 the charismatic phase of the counter-culture had ended and an organized phase had already begun. Many new religious movements appeared, some of which became prominent in the late sixties. Many of these had a strict moral ethic. Just as the religion of Chaitanya became important earlier during similar conditions in 16th century India, and later in the 19th century as the Gaudiya Vaishnava movement, so have similar doctrines become meaningful to many Western youth today. Therefore, the view of the fall of humanity through misuse of sex, which he taught, has been a view with which many dissatisfied youth could readily identify and find meaning in the Hare Krishna movement. I do not want to press the importance of this doctrine of the fall too far. Certainly there were many other factors of equal importance, and the particular relevance of this belief may not apply necessarily to all who have entered the movement under different circumstances.

Using the same counter-cultural criteria as for the Hare Krishna movement, the survey of members of the Unification Church reveals they were less counter-cultural in many respects. One would expect this, however, since conditions in the seventies are different. Still for most of those surveyed the same lack of meaning was expressed in the biographies, and the effects of conditions of the sixties were very similar for those who joined the Hare Krishna movement. Therefore, here again such a doctrine in which the fall was interpreted in sexual terms had a special timely relevance. It is to Rev. Moon's credit that he has offered interpretations which have fitted well into the temper of these times, and ones with which many could readily identify.

Now I end this with a question: if such a doctrine of the fall represents a relevant protest against conditions here, in Korea where this belief of the Unification Church originated, did similar conditions exist to give the same relevance of meaning to the Koreans?

Myrtle Langley

I want to approach this subject from two angles: first of all as a student of religion and secondly as a member of the Christian church, more particularly the Anglican (or Episcopalian) tradition and that in its evangelical variety. What I want to do is to make two preliminary points and then make a third point about the fall arising out of these. I believe that what I have to say will have some connection with our previous speakers this afternoon.

First -- and this is a thesis which you, including members of the Unification Church, may want to shoot down -- I believe that Unification theology, and more particularly the Divine Principle, is an Asian approach to Christian theology. Here is somebody from Asia, from Korea in particular, somebody who was in fact taught by Christian missionaries, who grew up in the Presbyterian Church, who shows influences of Holiness thought and also influences of dispensationalism, grappling with a Christian theology in his own situation: an Asian expression of Christian theology. Now this is nothing new, and in fact it is a very good thing to do; it is quite a legitimate thing to do.

I spent seven years in Africa, as some of you know, and during that period I came in contact with the Independent Churches movement. And I saw many folk in Africa trying to do their theology within their own cultural context. This is very necessary. Indeed, as Paul Tillich said, theology has got to be done again in every age. I have the feeling at the moment that it is in the West that we are not doing theology: that very often we are talking about the theology that Augustine did or that Irenaeus did or that somebody else did, but we are not grappling with a theology for today. Whereas in Africa, in South America, in Asia, people are trying to do their theology. I see, therefore, with the Divine Principle, certain forms and categories of oriental philosophy. I think you will agree with me. I also see within the Divine Principle, and within the whole Unificationist approach, a situational or a contextual emphasis arising from the concept of the ideal family perhaps: a preoccupation with the problem of sex. And I think we have here a presupposition which is brought to the Genesis account. Now I am not saying that we shouldn't approach theology with presuppositions. We all do so. On the other hand, there are unwitting ways and unconscious ways but also deliberate ways. And here I think we have got a deliberate presupposition, although perhaps, not a conscious one.

Second, I detect a fundamentalist approach to scripture, particularly in relation to the story of the fall and creation. There is some nodding toward imagery, toward symbolism, but basically there is a literalism of approach. Let me remind you that I am talking about Divine Principle, because there are people here -- Unificationists -- who would say that they don't take the Genesis account as literal or as factual but in another way. But this literalism is very strongly present in the Divine Principle. I find it very irritating at times.

Now, to go on to the point about the fall: I feel that with the Divine Principle there is an understanding of the fall which shows the ideal family; it's preoccupied with sex; and interprets the image of God in man in a way which I wouldn't want to do, nor would others. I should like to make an alternative suggestion. If you remember, yesterday we were given the three, as it were, blessings or mandates -- to be fruitful, to multiply, to rule the earth and subdue it. I should like to suggest that there are two: to be fruitful and multiply, to rule the earth and subdue it. Further, I would suggest that we look at the image of God in man not as something to do with man's nature, but, after von Rad, as primarily concerned with God's purpose for man, the purpose being here, as it were, dominion, stewardship. Man is to be the intermediary. Man is created in relationship to God (God is at the center), in relationship to his fellows (in multiplying), and in relationship to the creation (stewardship). And if we accept this interpretation, then we don't have to focus on the sexual as the sin. Rather, I think the sexual aspect of sin can be explained within the disobedient act. Of course the sexual is affected by the fall -- our emotion, wills, whatever -- but the main effect is that man takes his direction for himself and his direction no longer comes from God. I see the center here as a selfishness having something to do with power, a lust for power rather than just sexual lust. I think that here Unificationists might find other Christians more or less in agreement with them.

I have been concerned to look at the Unification Church from the Christian point of view because in England there is a concern about legitimation or legitimacy. The Archbishop of Canterbury made a bland statement that the Unification Church is not Christian. As many members of the Unification Church there want to know whether some of us consider them Christian or not, I have said that personally I think the Divine Principle comes within the Christian orbit. However, I am aware too that there were those within the Unification movement who would not want to be considered under the umbrella of Christianity, but who would wish to be thought of in interfaith terms.

Discussion

Jonathan Wells: Thank you very much. I would just like to make a few very short comments before opening to a general discussion.

Actually, there is a lot that I would like to say in response to all three speakers, but what I will say focuses on the point raised by Don Jones concerning the apparent conflict or disproportion between the emphasis on free will on the one hand, and fornication, sexuality and concupiscence on the other. First of all, I must say that it fascinates me that the Divine Principle and the Unification Church are accused of being preoccupied with sex in precisely that country of the world which is obsessed with sex. But it is a fact that the Divine Principle draws attention to this aspect of the fall. Now all I am going to do is contrast the Divine Principle with the Augustinian view.

Augustine basically rests his entire doctrine of the fall on free will. He says that free will is something that has no efficient cause. That is, my free act is something that comes from me alone. I think that we might all agree with that. Augustine then claims that Satan fell solely by free will. That means that Satan, who was created good by God decided to become evil. Now many modern philosophers have problems with that, for example, Kierkegaard and John Hick. John Hick claims that if Satan fell by spontaneously becoming evil, that amounts to a self-creation of evil ex nihilo. I would agree. But leaving that aside: Augustine goes on to say that Adam and Eve also became evil spontaneously. That is, they decided to turn away from God and become prideful. Frankly, I find that psychologically implausible. There is no context, no temptation, no motivation. It is simply a purely spontaneous decision to become evil. Augustine claims that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, they were already evil. They did it out of sheer perversity, and therefore deserve eternal damnation. It is interesting to me that Augustine's version of the fall is totally independent of the Genesis story. It is a really neo-platonic fall.

By contrast Unification theology tries to read the Genesis story as being itself the story of the fall. Free will still comes into play. Adam and Eve were given free will by God, and this tremendous gift meant that they had a responsibility to fulfill, as I think Don pointed out very nicely. All that Unification theology does is try to find within the Genesis story itself the context, the plausibility of the misuse of free will. Genesis talks about Adam and Eve being naked and then covering themselves in shame after the fall. That is the Genesis story. We don't have to approach that story with a presupposition concerning sexuality, for we find it within the story itself. Personally, I find the Unification version of the fall psychologically more plausible and realistic than others I've read. To say merely that Adam, Eve and Satan spontaneously willed to be evil, in a vacuum as it were, is implausible. There is a lot more I could say, but I'll stop here.

Participant: Do you want to say something about Eve being a young woman? Psychologically and confessionally, I find it difficult to identify with primal parents who are 13 or 14 years old, especially when they assume only a portion of the responsibility. In the view of the fall which roots disobedience in freedom, the primal parents assume total responsibility. That accords with my experience: when I yield to temptation it is completely my yielding, my decision. I am totally responsible for my actions. I think that this is a defect in your account.

Jonathan Wells: I am glad you brought this up. This morning as you may recall, the question came up about whether Adam and Eve share responsibility with Lucifer in the matter of the fall. I said that it seemed to me that Adam and Eve certainly had the major share of responsibility and Lucifer had a minor share. I was corrected on that point afterwards, and it was pointed out to me that Lucifer had no responsibility at all in the fall. It was the responsibility of Adam and Eve, since they were the ones to whom God had given the commandment. Now it is true they were immature -- I didn't give the age as 13 or 14, though I have heard that age mentioned. But despite their immaturity, they still bore responsibility. Actually, such responsibility wasn't a difficult one in those circumstances, since in a sinless world they were not surrounded by many temptations.

Frank Flinn: I have just two questions. First I have recently come to believe that in a certain sense we in the modem age have overemphasized the notion of freedom. Is freedom man's only meaning? I think the Divine Principle is raising a similar question by saying, "Look, it can't be just freedom, there is a growth process; there are other things that are just as primary as freedom itself." I think I would agree with that. Second, was Eve an adolescent? That is good Pauline thinking. Paul stresses weaknesses and fragility in Romans 7 and, in fact, Paul says it wasn't me, it was the sin in me that's the problem. He literally quotes Eve's phrases when he talks about his weakness, and Paul identifies the law as given for children who were weak. So the notion of a young Eve is not totally outside of the tradition. In fact I think it is very Pauline.

David Simpson: I raised the question in the small-group discussion about some of the problems related to the sexual imagery of the sin/fall experience. One of the points that I want to raise involves an oversimplified retelling of the Genesis story. Satan in the form of the serpent comes to Eve in the garden and says, "Do you want to get it on with me?" She says, not knowing to say no, "Yes." Eve then goes back to Adam and relates this experience. He feels somewhat betrayed and she says, "No, it wasn't me, it was the serpent." That, it seems to me, is the familiar trap that your account falls into, the trap of female responsibility. I don't think you can say that Adam and Eve are equally responsible in terms of your telling of the story. That is one of the basic problems that I have with your account, its sexism.

Frederick Sontag: I feel we have overdone the extensive analysis of this story. But my point now is on Augustine. I am surprised that you swallowed him hook, line and sinker, because although he makes this assertion of free will, which is clearly to relieve any responsibility from God for the cause of the fall or of evil, he says that God foreknows the fall and that it could not be otherwise. Now, I think you would agree that that is a strange notion of "freedom." Augustine's doctrine of free will makes the fall not at all so spontaneous as it seems. God foreknows the whole sequence. What would Unification theory say -- that God does foreknow the fall? And knows its inevitability?

Anthony Guerra: I think that in Unification theology the response to the question of God's foreknowledge is to make a distinction between knowledge of fact and knowledge of possibility. We take seriously God's commitment to the historical order and to human decision in that order. God does not predetermine. In that way, we must leave open his awareness until the decision is made. So, God certainly knew the possibility of the fall; that is precisely why he gave the commandment, if you read the story in these terms. He gave the commandment to forewarn them of that possibility. What he didn't know, is whether or not they would choose it. It is the distinction between knowledge of possibilities and knowledge of facts that is relevant here. We would say God knows all that there is to know and when the facts occur, then he knows them too.

Frederick Sontag: Is it possible for the fall not to have occurred?

Anthony Guerra: Yes, not only possible but absolutely preferable! (Laughter.) In Unification theology there is an intimate relationship between the principle of creation and the notion of the fall. God's original idea is to have the perfected family that brings forth the children of God, the divine-human race. Thus our view of the fall must intimately affect the family.

Durwood Foster: I want to touch very briefly on three somewhat disparate points, although they all relate to the theme of the fall and to freedom. One is a rather broad matter that seems to emerge out of all of the commentators and this is the impression that the Unification understanding of the fall is very one-sidedly preoccupied with the sexual aspect -- indeed, preoccupied in such a way that sex itself is identified with and is responsible for the evil that is in the world. Perhaps not all of the commentators were so extreme, but it seems to me that my friend Stillson Judah did specifically suggest this in proposing a parallel between the Unification doctrine of the fall and the doctrine of the Gaudiya Vaishnavas, a doctrine that is represented contemporarily by the Hare Krishna movement. It is true that in the Hare Krishna movement physical sex itself is viewed pejoratively, and that the only pure love, as Stillson said, is spiritual love directed towards God alone. However, it seems to me that the Unification doctrine differs decisively -- and I would say in a Biblical way -- from the Hindu or the Gaudiya Vaishnavas doctrine. Unification doctrine differs decisively in having a very positive estimate of sexuality per se, as David Kim brought out emphatically in our discussion group this morning. What is indicted in the Unification perspective is illicit or polluted sexuality, not sexuality per se. I think that point needs to be made strongly, because there seems to be a misrepresentation of Unification teaching at this point. There is a very positive affirmation of licit or principled sexuality in the Unification perspective that is worth noting.

In addition, it is also the case that if one reads the Divine Principle, there is no way one finds an exclusive attention to the sexual dimension of the fall. The dimension of jealousy and the note of pride come into play, particularly in respect to Lucifer, who in yielding to prideful jealousy becomes Satan. So if you bear in mind the fact that in classical Christian biblical analysis there are two great themes: the theme of pride on the one hand, the theme of concupiscence on the other, and along with them the theme of faithlessness, I think that you have to admit that the Divine Principle presents all three of those elements. They are not weighted in the same way, nor are they combined in the same way precisely, but nevertheless all three elements are there. Lack of faith, or unbelief, jealousy or wounded pride, concupiscence or unprincipled desire -- these are present in the Unification approach as well as in the classical Christian approach. It is true, and here I certainly agree in part with Don Jones, that in the classical biblical analysis pride plays a much more conspicuous role in the misuse of human freedom than it does in the Unification account. I don't want to blur that. I think that he is right in pointing that out.

There are two other points that I want to make very briefly. One is on Augustine. I am glad that Fred Sontag made the point he did because I think that Jonathan's presentation of Augustine is not comprehensive or complete. There are several ways in which it isn't complete, but certainly one of them is the failure to see Augustine's total perspective: while man is free initially or originally to sin -- that is, that the original human being is posse non peccare -- the original human being is not non posse non peccare, that is, not able not to sin, this means that within the Augustinian perspective, the fall is comprehended within the providence of God. This has very important eschatological implications, among other things, which I am going to mention when we come to echatology in a couple of days. Here it means that in the Augustinian perspective, the whole theme of evil and the fall, in my view at least, is finally more satisfyingly comprehended than it is in the Unification perspective.

The last point I wanted to make was with respect to freedom. I was interested in the citation by Don Jones of the statement from Divine Principle that human beings could not have fallen because of freedom or out of freedom. I know there is a statement like that. In that connection, it seems to me there is a vacillation in the approach of Divine Principle because that citation stands in obvious tension with the notion of the so-called portion of responsibility. This responsibility is a matter that is also emphasized in the Unification approach and is reflected again in what Tony just said. In the Unification approach there is, in fact, a conspicuous emphasis on the contingency that is involved in the fall. This is located partly in Satan, in spite of what Jonathan says about Satan having no responsibility, and partly in Adam and Eve. The point I want to make is simply that when that statement cited by Don Jones is made in the Divine Principle, it seems to me to be oblivious to the distinction which has been current in Western philosophy since Kant and was already anticipated earlier in other ways, the distinction between material and formal freedom. It seems to me clear that the statement on page 93 is referring to what Kant regarded as material freedom, that is, the freedom for the good, the freedom to realize oneself or to realize potentialities which are in the Christian tradition good, because God created the world very good. Material freedom is realized perfectly or fulfilled in union with God. So when a human being attains the level of perfection, as Unification doctrine says, and is in harmony with God and is pervaded by God's spirit, human freedom will be materially perfect at that point, and incapable of falling. We have heard this here a number of times, but all of this does not introduce what Kant construed as formal freedom, that is, the freedom to do or not to do, to fulfill or not to fulfill oneself. It seems to me that the ghost or shadow of that formal freedom comes into Divine Principle discussion under the heading of the portion of responsibility which in fact is not fulfilled by Adam and Eve, and of course, not fulfilled by other human beings in the long history thereafter. So, if that distinction can be introduced, it seems to me it clarifies the fact that in spite of the statement made in Divine Principle about material freedom, there is still a very important categorical appeal to what I would call formal freedom in the Divine Principle itself.

Tom McGowan: I think Stillson Judah did us a valuable service by offering parallels. I would share one other American religious tradition in which the fall is a creative event, and that is the Mormon religion. In their theology, God has directed Adam and Eve to bear children in order to bring the spirits from the spirit world into this world and eventually forward to the resurrected world. When Eve falls, Adam had the choice of falling with her and fulfilling God's major directive of having children, or not falling. He decides deliberately to fall to join with her and to be creative. That is just one observation.

Secondly, I think we were on a very important point this morning when we were thinking of the relationship of Lucifer to Adam and Eve. It was either going to be the teacher relationship, or the servant relationship, or a combination of both. I think it is important in understanding the story of the fall to figure out who this character Lucifer is and how he fits in. I would ask the Unificationists if Lucifer was called to be the perfect angel as Adam and Eve were called to be the perfect man and woman. I presume so. And if so, there was probably some kind of a four-position foundation which Lucifer should have established. I don't know if you have ever thought of this in your theology, but what was the four-position foundation for Lucifer? Was Lucifer supposed to have an angelic bride? Or was he supposed to be complemented by Adam and Eve? And, if so, how?

My last point is another question: is there hope for Lucifer's salvation?

James Deotis Roberts: This morning I was concerned that we had not really plumbed the source of evil or the cause of the fall. Now I understand that Satan was not responsible. The question that I have in mind is this: where did the propensity, the original tendency for evil and the result of the fall begin? What was the source of that? And if it was not Lucifer, then obviously you say it was Adam and Eve. Then, I have a problem with the rather sexist implications of that which hasn't been dealt with sufficiently. The other problem is the bringing in of Augustine. He is certainly a traditional theologian of great note, but it needs to be said that he had a very negative attitude towards the physical universe and towards the body, and that his main problem was sexuality. That was very difficult for him to overcome. I think the result of his own experience in that regard is that he got the whole doctrine of sin on the wrong trail for hundreds of years. The elements of pride and self-centeredness are those things which seem to be the real explanation of why we put ourselves in the place of God. We have been sidetracked by a preoccupation with the sensual, with the negative attitude towards the body. Would we want to buy into that attitude towards the physical universe? I don't think that is consistent with the totality of Unification thought in which natural science is brought in very frequently to illustrate theological truths.

Jonathan Wells: I brought in Augustine because he is the major figure in traditional Christian theology who deals with the fall. His ideas have had a major impact on the history of Christian thought. But there are significant differences between Unification theology and Augustine. As Dr. Roberts pointed out, Augustine believed that pride was the essence of the fall, spontaneous pride that precedes the eating of the fruit. For Augustine, sexuality followed the eating of the fruit; it was the disobedience of the body following the disobedience to God. Now the Augustinian tradition, as you also accurately pointed out, takes a very disparaging attitude towards sex which is not in the Divine Principle. It is not sex that is evil, but the misuse of sexual love.

The other issue that Fred Sontag and Durwood Foster both raised is the question of foreknowledge. I won't deal with it at length. But it is true that Augustine felt that the fall was completely foreknown by God. God knew from the very beginning that the fall was going to happen, but in a sense it was a good thing that it did (the felix culpa concept), because without evil the world (for Augustine) would be less beautiful. This is the aesthetic view of evil. The Divine Principle clearly and emphatically rejects the/<?//x culpa concept. There is no felix culpa concept in the Divine Principle because the fall was an unmitigated disaster. There was nothing good about it; it wasn't intended from the beginning, and God did not know for sure that it was going to happen. According to the Divine Principle, God foreknew merely the possibility of the fall.

Anthony Guerra: Tom McGowan raised the question of whether Satan is to be redeemed in the final order. In Unification theology, Satan was originally Lucifer, a creation of God. God is omnipotent in the sense that he is able to bring about his purpose. Consequently, Lucifer will also finally fulfill his original purpose and then be restored. I don't think that that is specifically stated in the Divine Principle but that is what is commonly held in the church. Even Lucifer will be restored.

I also wanted to respond to several matters which Durwood Foster raised, most of which I agreed with, and which Myrtle Langley also mentioned. In general, they speak to the contextual way the Divine Principle uses the categories of virtues and vices, such as pride and envy, by placing them within the existential or the relational mode of Adam, Eve and Lucifer. That is precisely why yesterday we said that the biblical or the Hebraic language and mode of thinking is in many ways compatible with our view. Biblical language also keeps things in the personal or the relational mode. In our view, the cause of sin is the disruption of proper relationships between God and humanity, and between fellow human beings and even between human and angelic beings. Because of this relational mode of thinking, we don't point our finger at specific figures and say they are the cause, because that would be false. It must be the relationship that is disrupted. With Adam and Eve that is the central cause. Our theology is basically saying that these problems that we have in our life have an original source, and that the original source is the fall. So one can in some ways do an introspective analysis and ask if this fall story has any plausibility. If in fact the specific content doesn't seem right, at least the process is certainly one which is familiar; that is, the problem of loving God and loving one's spouse properly. This is something that people have experienced. The fall doctrine is meant to account for the present, historical, existential reality.

To another issue: I think that certainly Lucifer is responsible for failing to accomplish his mission. But the point that Jonathan was trying to make is that Eve was responsible for what she did, totally responsible. And so was Adam. This is important because it gets to the question of the sexist element: Adam could have refused to sin at that point, but he didn't. Therefore, he becomes culpable in the same way as Eve. Moreover, since we think of this in a relational sense, Adam and Eve were having some relationship and if they were taking care of one another, being responsible for one another, then Lucifer wouldn't have had such an easy time of it. At least that is one way of looking at it.

Elizabeth Clark: I am not sure that I like what is happening to Augustine in this discussion. It seems to me that what Unification theology shares with Augustine's theology is the speculative picture that Adam and Eve would have had sexual relations in the Garden of Eden if they had stayed innocent. This is both in Augustine and in Unification thought. The problem was Adam and Eve had sexual relations too soon and without permission, which is the same as in Augustine's view. This morning in our very interesting group discussion, we got into a big debate about whether or not Unification's theology of sexuality was understanding sexuality in a thoroughly erotic way. And here I would like to ask what Adam and Eve's sexuality would have been like if they had stayed innocent? Augustine says that sex in the Garden of Eden, if Adam and Eve had stayed innocent, would have been extremely rationalistic and very unerotic. Is there any kind of speculation in Unification theology about that? Is there a difference between ideal sex, the kind of sex that Adam and Eve would have had if they hadn't fallen -- and restored sex? Is there a distinction between those two kinds of sexuality?

Kapp Johnson: One question I had in reading the Divine Principle involves the tremendous amount of responsibility placed on various individuals in the Bible and in history who, it appears to me, did not have a sufficient amount of knowledge for the responsibility that was placed upon them. The Divine Principle makes a number of claims that nobody knew the principle of creation until now. Well, if that is true, how could somebody be held responsible for what they did?

Sami Gupta: I must start by saying that I am not a Christian, nor am I a theologian. So if I make some comments, it is in the context of some questions that seem to be of importance to me. Now my understanding of what theology is, is that it is really self-knowledge. Yet it seems to me that the story of Adam and Eve has come to be a kind of detective story. Who has done what to whom? (Laughter.) What does that have to do with my life as a human being? How am I to understand these very beautiful myths from the Bible as reflecting in some way my mythic and spiritual evolution?

Jonathan Wells: Darrol tells me that I have time for one sentence on each of these questions. First, the question of sexuality with or without the fall or after restoration. Augustine says that if there hadn't been a fall, "The man then would have sown the seed and the woman received it as need required, the generative organs being moved by the will not excited by lust." That is straight Augustine. In the Divine Principle, the relationship between a husband and wife is more spontaneous and joyful. I don't think it is quite as coldly rationalistic as Augustine would make it.

Second, the question of free will and responsibility. Free will does presuppose knowledge, and the Divine Principle says that knowledge hasn't been available until now. But certainly there has been some knowledge available. The Old Testament is knowledge, the New Testament is knowledge. It has never been the case that there was no knowledge. For if there was no knowledge, there was no responsibility, as you quite rightly say. All the Divine Principle is saying is that the state of our knowledge improves as God continues to give us more revelation. That also means that our responsibility increases as we learn more.

The last question: The introduction to the Divine Principle is saying that what we need now is a new ideology, one that can illuminate the truths of science and religion, our relationship to God, the origin of evil, the fundamental questions of human life. We need a coherent, rational explanation of these things that can guide us into a moral and ethical life-style and that can restore our responsibility to God. The Divine Principle claims to be an ideology that can do that. Now how do we test that? This is a question that keeps coming up and I think, with Jesus, that the answer is "by their fruits you shall know them." So if in fact this explanation succeeds in its task, then its fruits will be rational satisfaction, a moral and ethical lifestyle, and a restored relationship with God. I think that is the ultimate test.

Notes:

1 Young Oon Kim, Unification Theology and Christian Thought. New York. N.Y.: Golden Gate Publishing Co., 1975.

2 The Interruption of Eternity: Modern Gnosticism and the Origins of the New Religious Consciousness, Chicago: Nelson Hall, 1980.