Exploring Unification Theology Edited by M. Darrol Bryant and Susan Hodges
|
|
Exploring Unification Theology Edited by M. Darrol Bryant and Susan Hodges |
Before I begin to deal with the subject matter proper of this paper, I would like to offer a few general observations about Unification's Theology of Creation as a whole. The first is that Unification theology understands that an adequately theistic system "begins" its theological reflection with the story of Adam and Eve, not with the story of Jesus. Unification thought tries to be a genuinely Geological system, and it realizes that such an intention can only be fulfilled where the various theological "loci" are developed from the prospective glance of the doctrine of creation. Any other perspective is necessarily "retrospective," and by that token invariably anthropocentric.
Furthermore, Unification theology also discerns that to lend concreteness to the doctrine of sin and subsequently to the doctrine of salvation, creation must be defined in terms of specific structures. This is where all theological reflection either gets started on an adequate footing or goes amiss. Not only does Unification theology affirm the priority of creation, but it also displays considerable sensitivity to the fact that even the foundational assumption of creation is subject to ideological distortion. If vaguely formulated, the theological assumption of creation is as susceptible of being swallowed up by an alien structure as Christology and eschatology have been in the contemporary theological discussion. To prevent this, Unification theology sees that the theology of creation must be lent a certain concreteness. An analysis of cosmic structures is required, and Unification's notion of the three four-position bases (of the individual, the family and society) performs this indispensable function. It is at this level that a specific sense is prepared for Unification's subsequent conception of sin and restoration.
Finally, to a considerable extent Unification theology, though it recognizes the indispensability of an analysis of concrete structures, nonetheless has succeeded in preventing its theology from being swallowed up by an alien philosophy. This is indeed unique in the contemporary theological context. The worthiness of contemporary theologies is increasingly judged by the measure to which they can make their concepts concrete without being assimilated to alien philosophical analyses. These philosophical analyses prove to be covers for a narrative portrayal of life which comes into conflict with the theologies to which those philosophical analyses have been attached. In the Protestant and Catholic worlds the search is on for distinctively "Christian" ontologies. Unification theology participates in that search.
Recognizing the crucial relevance of the theology of creation, I should now like to turn to the topic proper of this paper. This topic is the relationship of Unification doctrines of creation and restoration. A rather cursory perusal of the Divine Principle makes manifestly obvious the fundamentally of the so-called "Restoration motif" in Unification thought. According to the Divine Principle, redemption is the restoration of the original creation; it is emphatically not a radically or absolutely new start.
However much this restoration motif might be attractive -- especially to Reformed Calvinists -- our enthusiasm must be tempered by a more thorough-going analysis of what specifically is meant by "restoration." Theologically, many options are possible within even a restorationist framework. In other words, we might say that the logical fundamentality of creation in relation to redemption can itself be variously understood.
For example, such widely historically separated and signally different theologians as Irenaeus and Luther formally concur in asserting the theological priority of creation over redemption. Both Irenaeus and Luther share (at least formally speaking) the conviction that salvation can be understood only against the background of God's more primitive work in creation. Yet the specific meaning of this principle of the logical originality of God's work in creation has a different actual meaning in each case. In fact this is already indicated by the use of two distinct terms in their common stress on the essentiality of God's original work: namely "creation" in the case of Irenaeus and "law" in the case of Luther.
Though Irenaeus and Luther stand together over against theologians who "begin" their theological reflection with the story of Jesus, Irenaeus and Luther stand together only in an abstract and formal sense. The specific difference between Irenaeus' conception, on the one hand, and Luther's on the other, must not be neglected.
For Irenaeus the essence of Christianity is best described in terms of the "duality of creation and recapitulation." However, for Luther this same essence is understood in terms of the "dialectic of law and gospel."
In the theology of Irenaeus, recapitulation releases and sets free the uncorrupted life of the original creation. The new is the old, for the goal of salvation is the restoration and re-establishment of the lost goal of creation. For Irenaeus, then, the form of the relationship that exists between creation and redemption is one of harmony, unity and continuity. Recapitulation frees humankind for creation.
By contrast, in the case of Luther the essential form of the relation that exists between creation and redemption is conflict. The law-gospel formula stresses the contrast between its two constituent terms. Thus, Luther's formula emphasizes the radical uniqueness of the gospel.
This is not to deny that for Luther law and gospel are in some sense harmonious. They are, indeed, both activities of the same God. They are two ways in which the one God rules. Yet, this dimension of the law-gospel relationship is not the point that qualifies it and lends it its specific sense. The uniqueness of the law-gospel relationship is that the two terms form an antithesis. The law-gospel relationship highlights the principle of dissimilarity. The Word bestows forgiveness, and the law-gospel formula thus stresses man's freedom from the burden of guilt more than his actual possession of new life. The new is opposed to the old, for the old is what is overcome. The gospel frees humankind/row that law.
My point thus far has been to demonstrate the importance of asking what Unification thought means by "creation" in asserting that salvation is its "restoration." Though it is theologically difficult to quarrel with restorationism as such, the discussion cannot be allowed to end at this point. For the concrete concept of creation involved in Unification thought may itself pose new problems.
For example, my assessment is that Unification theology's concrete concept of creation comes finally to vitiate the restoration motif itself. Unification theology maintains a notion of creation as the differentiation of the inner life of God, a notion that finds no easy reconciliation with the motif of restoration in its most precise sense. Restoration thus becomes "Return to God" in a literal sense, and this is divinization, not the repetition or re-establishment of "creaturehood." In Unification theology restoration cannot be the republication of creaturehood because "creaturehood" is not adequately ontically distinguished from the being of God and cannot be assigned, therefore, an intermediate character or nature of its own. Therefore, the question of how "it" can be "restored" is immediately suggested. The following pages will be devoted to a clarification of this argument.
The Divine Principle opens its theological discussion of Unification thought with the idea of the "Dual Characteristics of God." [20] This duality of God is the polarity of positivity and negativity. Furthermore, it is a reciprocal relationship corresponding to the dualities of interiority and exteriority, subject and object, character and form, and masculinity and femininity. [24]
In addition, the Divine Principle asserts that the world was created in God's image. Like God, the world displays the polarity of positivity and negativity at the fundamental ontic level. "The Universe," says the Divine Principle, "... has its own internal character and external form."
But, according to Unification thought, the world is more than a metaphor. It is more than a reflection of the divine life. Indeed, the strong claim is made that the universe has God as its center. The created order is the external form of God; or God is the inner character or deepest energy of the world. Says the Divine Principle: "In relation to the whole creation, God is the masculine subject representing its internal character." [25]
Though God is transcendent, according to the Divine Principle He is also the dynamis of the created order. In fact the Divine Principle calls Him the "Universal Prime Energy."
Energy is, of course, motion, not just extension in space and duration in time. In Unification theology the notion of energy (which is God) explains how the creation, though fundamentally and at the highest level of generality intelligible in terms of positivity and negativity, specifically becomes a multiplicity of concrete, dual structures. God's being is the base of the cosmic process through whose "give-and-take" secondary, tertiary and quaternary purposes emerge. Says the Divine Principle: "When, through Universal Prime Energy, the dual essentialities of God enter into give-and-take action by forming a reciprocal relationship, the force of give-and-take action causes multiplication." [31]
Finally, this process of differentiation is designated the "origin-division-union (O-D-U) action." Little has to be said about how basic this three-tiered "ontology" is to Unification thought. It is the overall structural framework within which Unification thought concretely articulates (1) its doctrine of sin as the vitiation of personal integrity, familial order, and social community; (2) its notion of the mission and failure of Israel; (3) its doctrine of the work and failure of Christ; and finally (4) its very this-worldly conception of the personal, familial, and world-political calling of the community of the regenerate. Upon the children of God rests the awesome responsibility of bringing about fulfillment at every level in the wake of the failures that have characterized the past.
Crucial to my purposes is the initial assumption that the three four-position (O-D-U) bases constitute the horizontal structure of creation, and that they are in effect actually (ontologically) the unfolded objectification of the inner life of God Himself. Creation is actually the life of God; or, the inner, dynamic, organizational structure of the universe is the Divine Being Himself.
This theological position is nowhere more vividly indicated than in Unification's conception of God's Joy and Love, and Unification's corresponding notion of the centrality of the base position of family and marriage. The group constituted by God, male and female, and children is the concrete foundation from which the base of human society flows and in terms of which the base of the human constitution (God, mind and body, perfect man) acquires its real significance.
According to Unification thought God is Heart (Love) and His desire is the experience of Joy. God can only fulfill Himself by objectifying Himself in His creation, whose center base is marriage and the family. Only through man, through his experience of love and joy, can God's own desire for fulfillment and Joy be realized. Man is the vehicle through which God (the Lover) relates Himself to the world (the Beloved.)1
If man fails, God does not experience Joy. But as man achieves perfection, says Prof. Kim, "the incarnation of God is at last fulfilled."2 As we follow man's efforts to attain to the purpose of creation at every level or base position, we are in effect observing the development of God's own life. The evolution of creation is God's own history.
But this growth of creation is also man's history, man's autobiography. However, since the life of the world is preceded by God and since it comes again to be drawn into Him, man's perfection really comes to life beyond the restoration of creaturehood. Says the Divine Principle: "The man whose mind and body have formed a four-position foundation of the original God-centered nature becomes God's temple... and forms one body with Him... This means that man attains deity." [43, emphasis added.]
Another way of indicating the same thing might be to say that since the life of God is also the life of man, man "precedes" himself and in principle should be destined to become more than he was actually created to be. What he was created to be has nospecifiable boundaries. For example, in Unification theology marital love is sacred, so that, as Prof. Kim herself observes, "When a man and woman unite in perfection, they are in a sense a new higher being even closer to God."3
It should be apparent that Unification theology regards as a single continuous reality the life of God and the being of the creation. If deification is not the final goal of creation, then surely creation is in principle at best only an intermediate and subordinate metaphysical part of the Divine Being.
But what has become here of the notion of Creation? What has become of the idea that God is Creator, not creation? What has become of the idea that there is an absolute void between God and what He calls into being? What has become of the idea that there is nothing in God Himself that can or must ensue in creation? And, if we allow these ideas to disappear, can we still speak in a theologically respectable way of "Creation?"
Furthermore, when the infinite difference between God and His creation is ignored, is not the precise sense of "restoration" also jeopardized? Is it not the case that if God and creation are somehow only interrelated and structured through one another, then the creation can have no finally definable nature, just as God can finally have no incomprehensibility, or dignity and majesty?
It is my impression that if the indelible line of demarcation that separates God from His creation is eclipsed, then restoration cannot be the recapitulation of creaturehood either; for there is then no such reality as "creaturehood," at least as distinct from the being of God Himself. Restoration must become the transformation and translation of humanity into the divinity of God. The concrete sense of restoration becomes qualified by the notion of divinization, and restoration becomes specifically "Return to God" in a substantive or metaphysical sense. The notion of "Union with God" is inevitably turned into a cosmological process.
My criticism of Unification theology is that while it tries to honor the language of restoration, it vitiates this effort by failing adequately to honor the ontic difference between God and His creation. This difference is the key assumption of the doctrine of creation. Creation stands or falls with this idea.
Furthermore, the restoration motif goes hand in hand with creation. Where creation becomes confused with the actually incomprehensible majesty of God, creation loses its nature as a "self-identical" reality, and the sense of restoration becomes deification or actual metaphysical "Return to God." Unification theology must choose between creation and restoration on the one hand and the principle of the bi-polarity of the Divine Being in terms of positivity and negativity on the other. The two are incompatible concepts.
Lloyd Eby: I want to ask a question. At the end of your paper you say that "the difference between God and His creation is the key assumption of the doctrine of creation." What is that key?
Dr. Vander Goot: I'm talking about classical Christian theology. It seems to me that within Christian thought that assumption has to be made and is the point of the doctrine of creation. God is one thing and that which He calls into being is quite another thing. From the point of view of being, God and Creation do not overlap. God is absolutely. There is nothing within Him, or before Him, or alongside Him out of which creation flows. God is absolutely. That means in effect, that God is one thing and creation is another.
Dr. Clark: Your criticism of Unification thought is that the distinction between the Creator and the creation is confused. Yet when you were speaking I found myself thinking that much of what you said Unification theology is sounds like Greek Orthodox thought. Would you make this same criticism of Greek Orthodox theology?
Linda Mitchell: In my understanding, the Divine Principle and Greek Orthodox thought seem very close. I understand Greek Orthodoxy to say that there are two aspects of God: His essence and His energies. Man can never become one with God in essence, but he can become one with God's energies. The Divine Principle never asserts that man will become one in being with God, but simply that he will be united in heart with God.
Dr. Vander Goot: Okay, but how does that stand theologically with the fact that there is the persistent argument in the Divine Principle that God is the "Center" of the universe? This is not, it seems to me, a metaphor, but an ontology. t
Dr. Richardson: How do you differentiate that from the Orthodox way of saying that the world is dependent on God, that man is made in the image of God, that God's purposes are worked out in creation, and so on? Why are you criticizing Unification theology for a way of talking about these considerations that is very much a part of traditional Christian language?
Dr. Vander Goot: To say that the creation is totally dependent on God is not to say that there is no distinction between the Creator and creation. It is simply to say that the creation has no absolute identity or being in and of itself, and that creation must constantly be referred to that which lies beyond it.
Dr. Richardson: But is it as clear as you assume that the Divine Principle confuses creation with Creator? For example, creation falls. There is at least one case in which there obviously is some distinction between God the Creator and His creation.
Dr. Vander Goot: Yes, that's true. There is another fact, too, that constitutes a break from the divinization motif, namely, the stress on the doctrine of the Christian life and the physical coming of the Kingdom. I find that these two things contravene the more ontological presupposition with which the Divine Principle begins.
Dr. Richardson: Perhaps we have two doctrines of creation in Unification theology. Is there one articulated and stated doctrine of creation which is not a doctrine of creation at all, but a doctrine of emanation? And then do we have an implicit doctrine of creation in Unification's stress on the doctrine of the Christian life, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit and the doctrine of sin? Is it only there implicitly? Could you draw it out and put it over against the expressed and articulated doctrine of creation one finds in Section One of the Divine Principle?
Farley Jones: Maybe. But I'm not convinced that the Divine Principle does not distinguish between the Creator and creation. Early in your paper you write, "In fact, the Divine Principle calls Him, God, the Universal Prime Energy." But now, in the Divine Principle, we read that "God is the Creator of all things. He's the absolute reality, eternally self-existent, transcendent of time and space; therefore, the fundamental energy of His Being must also be absolute and eternally self-existent. At the same time, He is the source of the energy which enables all things to maintain their existence. We call this energy (that is, the energy which enables all things to maintain their existence, which God is the source of) Universal Prime Energy." So there is, in the Divine Principle, a distinction between God and Universal Prime Energy.
Dr. Vander Goot: But the problem is right there. God is called energy, right? Even if God is distinguished from Universal Prime Energy, He is called energy. Now that is the problem. Philosophically, God is described in terms of a condition that belongs to the creation itself.
Dr. Richardson: But wouldn't we have to know, then, how they understand that: whether ontologically, or metaphorically, or mythically?
Dr. Vander Goot: You've got to take the whole context and come to a judgment on what the sense of the statement actually is. The Divine Principle claims that God is energy, absolute transcendent energy, although He may be distinct from Universal Prime Energy.
Klaus Lindner: May I add something? There is energy which enables God to create, but the energy which is created out of "give and take action" is a different energy from the energy which enables God to create. Energy is part of God's existence, but the energy out of which the universe is created is a different energy.
Dr. Vander Goot: But that's exactly the point. You're saying that there's something in God which finally explains the creation. There is a principle within Him, namely, energy, that finally enables Him to create Universal Prime Energy, right? That is a highly dubious conception.
Dr. Richardson: You mean to say that Christian teaching is that there is nothing in God that would explain how it is possible for God to create?
Dr. Vander Goot: There's nothing like a philosophical or metaphysical principle that would explain it, no.
Dr. Richardson: But the question is whether this is a philosophical or metaphysical principle or a theological mode of speaking which every Christian would use. Suppose you say, "God can create because He possesses the power to be creative."
Dr. Vander Goot: You're being unprincipled if you think you're explaining creation by using naive language like that. (laughter)
Dr. Richardson: Surely the point is that the cause has to be sufficient to produce the effect.
Dr. Vander Goot: God's not related to the world as cause to effect.
Dr. Richardson: I might say then that you're not talking any longer about Christian dogma, but that you're proposing one philosophical or theological interpretation of the Christian dogma of creation. It's perfectly clear, for example, that one type of Christian theology uses the cosmological argument, and other kinds of Christian theology argue from degrees of perfection. It may well be the case that theologians can argue whether it's right to use these arguments or not, but clearly, in the Christian tradition, these arguments are used in order to explain what it means to say that God is the Creator.
Dr. Vander Goot: But there's nothing uniquely Christian about that argument. That's my point. That argument was, in effect, used by the Greeks. There's nothing that differentiates the Greek conception of the relationship with God from the Christian conception.
Dr. Richardson: Yes, but don't you see that some Christian theologians have always thought that we had some arguments that were also used by the Greeks, and that we didn't need to make them up for ourselves, (laughter) It's an advantage, (laughter)
Jonathan Wells: I see a way of tying this in with our previous discussion about prayer. First of all, I'd like to say that this is a very fundamental issue and I'm not sure that any of us claim to fully understand the Divine Principle. But let me go back to the question of prayer. It's been my habit for the last few years, even before I was in the Church, to go out several evenings a week, usually in the mountains or the woods, to pray. I used to be quite a pantheist, and when I'd pray, I believed that my prayer was a mystical mingling with the bushes and the trees and the mountains. That's how I prayed; that's how I felt God. I think this is what you mean about confusing the Creator with the creation. I had no sense of the distinction in those days. Whereas now, when I go out and pray, as I did last night, I'm quite conscious that the trees and the rocks are the creation, and that God is quite transcendent and apart from that.
David Jarvis: The Divine Principle is operating in an Eastern philosophical mode in which it's more common to speak of God in terms of energy. I was going to say that I agree with your perception that the Divine Principle is saying that God in some way creates the tangible world out of Himself, out of His own energy. But I lose you at the point where you say that means that we cannot say that God is different from creation. I'd like you to clarify that distinction. Why must we choose between our ontical idea of God's creating out of His energy and our idea of God?
Dr. Vander Goot: Because the idea of God's creating out of His energy is not a doctrine of creation, but is really a doctrine of emanation. It seems to me that when you stress restoration as much as you do, you imply a classical doctrine of creation which cannot go hand in hand with the notion that the creation is really the external form of God who is its inner character. There's an inconsistency here.
David Jarvis: I don't see that. I don't even see the inconsistency of that last point.
Dr. Vander Goot: In the theory of emanation, restoration doesn't mean the recovery of creaturehood. It actually means freedom from creation. Man is finally reabsorbed into the Divine Being. As the creation flows from God, so it returns to Him. So whatever creation was, you restore it regardless. If you understand the created order to be an emanation of God, how can you ever have a Fall?
Dr. Richardson: Let's think about this in relation to the history of theology. It seems to me that in the first century of Christian theology, metaphysics, for various reasons, had not been developed in such a way that you could distinguish metaphysically between a creationist and an emanationist view of the relation between God and the world. For a thousand years of Christian theology, the way that the Church affirmed the distinction between God and the world wasn't by trying to develop a special metaphysical principle to distinguish creation from emanation, but by saying that the world had not always existed, that the world had a beginning in time. Now when you get to Anselm and St. Thomas, the philosophical arguments begin to carry the day and make a man like St. Thomas agree that one can no longer defend on philosophical grounds the doctrine that the world had its beginning in time. And so then the effort moves towards finding a distinctive metaphysical principle to distinguish between creation and emanation. So I would say that there are different ways that theology can defend the distinction between Creator and creation other than by fighting for a distinction in the metaphysical order which you call ontic distinctiveness. The most traditional way, as in Scripture and in the larger part of Christian tradition, has been to argue that the world was specially created by God, and has a distinctive beginning in time.
Dr. Vander Goot: My point is that within the Unification theological system itself, there is, it seems, a duality, an internal problem. There is the restoration motif on one hand and the divinization motif on the other.
Jonathan Wells: I still don't understand, I guess, what the problem is. In my understanding, God created the world; and then, because of the Fall, the world no longer operates in accordance with God's original wishes. I don't understand how restoration language vitiates the language of creation by failing adequately to honor the difference between God and His creation. I think that the distinction is in the Divine Principle because that's where I learned it. But I guess that the point is not made clear enough in the text.
Lokesh Mazumdar: I'd like to shift to another point. We've been talking about the how of creation without getting into the why of creation. The why can't be ignored. To carry on a discussion in this way is a very secular way of looking at God: we're not looking at the real heart, the real desire that led God to create in the way that He did. Moreover, when the Divine Principle talks about restoration it is not talking about changes of "energy structure," but it is talking about the restoration of love between God and His creatures. I think that that is something that needs to be pointed out.
Dr. Vander Goot: Well, that's why I say in my paper that this theological position cannot finally be discussed in terms of philosophical principles, but must be talked about in terms of Unification's conception of God's love. I think I have seen your point. And that is what the discussion of joy and love in my paper is about.
Dr. Sawatsky: I wonder if there is a prior question that underlies this discussion; and that is, can a member of the Unification Church tolerate inconsistencies or contradictions within the Divine Principle? Must it be systematically perfect? If it must be systematically perfect, then Henry might be uncovering its Achilles' heel. If you can tolerate variation, even inconsistencies, then you can flow with it. If, for example, we were working with Calvin's Institutes, we would be very concerned about consistency. If, on the other hand, we were looking at Luther's sermons, we might well come up with some contradictions and not worry about them. Even within classical Christian theology we recognize different kinds of theologizing. What are we working with here? Are we working with material that is more pastoral than systematic? That's my question.
Tirza Shilgi: I just wanted to say that it is generally agreed within the Unification Movement that the version of the Divine Principle that we have now is not the final version. Therefore, we are very interested in this kind of discussion and not very upset by it.
Dr. Sawatsky: That is very interesting. We are looking at a theology which itself is in the process of evolution. Klaus Lindner: I don't think it's the theology itself, but the expression of the theology which is in the process of evolution.
Dr. Bryant: Well, that is a very major problem for us who are from outside. It's difficult to know what to make of the Divine Principle.
Joe Stein: I think one of the difficulties we run into is the question of emphasis. What caused me some difficulty with the paper was that something was emphasized which we don't emphasize. We place a greater emphasis on the intentional quality of God in creation. Behind the act of creation, behind the very fact of God's creating the world, lies an intention. There's a will and a desire involved. That intention is, in a sense, a form of energy which is invested. So energy doesn't become something that's material. Energy can be spiritual as well as just material. So I felt that the emphasis in this paper on the doctrine of creation didn't seem to communicate to me the essence of the doctrine of creation as it exists in the Divine Principle.
Dr. Bryant: Can you say something that may help to clarify that? What I understand you to be saying is that when you people read the Divine Principle, the priority is clearly on the development of a particular Unification spirituality. You want to become certain kinds of human beings, to develop a parental heart, etc. So doctrine in a formal sense is secondary to spirituality. When you say that the theology isn't changing but the expression is, it sounds like there's a basic intuition, or orientation, or sensibility that's the real stuff, and on top of that you're trying to work out a theology that is adequate to that intuition. Does that sound right?
Joe Stein: I think so. Just yesterday we had a talk with Rev. Moon. We discussed the question of what is primary for us: the knowledge of God, or the experience of God. And we realized among ourselves that through the experience of God, we gain knowledge and understanding; but through the mere study of God, or through an attempt to know or understand God in an external sense, we lose something. I think the experience of God is prior.
Dr. Vander Goot: It seems to me that Darrol's point is this: if there is a doctrine of creation, then, at least in the way it's understood, it is constructed from the retrospective glance at the doctrine of the Christian life and the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. What we have, it seems to me, in the Divine Principle is that, plus a speculative principle. You not only have a doctrine of creation constructed with a view to what you can do with it in the context of your doctrine of Christian life or doctrine of the Holy Spirit, but you also have a very speculative starting point.
Joe Stein: Our theology is very much based in our experience.
Dr. Bryant: Yes, I think that's right, but I think that what Henry is pointing out, and what seems to make people a little bit uncomfortable here, is that there is a specifically intellectual content, too, in the Divine Principle, that one can evaluate and consider in terms of intellectual criteria.
David Jarvis: Well, I'd kind of like to get back to the original question of whether or not Henry's formulation squared with what we believe. The way I see the Divine Principle, the doctrine of creation is committed to a certain synthesis or consonance between scientific and religious formulations of the idea of creation. And in a sense, the whole concept of energy and creation from energy has been very, very vague because science is, at this point, very vague on how that mechanism works. So we're saying that God is connected to the creation in some way, but exactly how and how this connection should be formulated we don't yet know. I think it may come more from the scientific realm through the study of the creation than through theology. Okay, that's just my guess. The how of creation, if God's the Creator, is, I think very vague at this point.
I think we're saying that God is energy, but we stress that God's energy is only one aspect of His Being. I think some of the people have brought this out. Energy is only a small aspect of God's Being. There's also intelligence, will, love, other kinds of being in God. To say that God is the creation or that we're equating God and the creation wholly is probably incorrect.
Then there's the whole question of emphasis. Because of the way the Divine Principle formulates the theory of creation in terms of dualities, in terms of yin and yang, you have to be very careful when you're talking about creation to specify your universe of discourse. You have to specify what system you're working through. In other words, to try and freeze it into certain rigid categories leads you into innumerable difficulties. It's a very fluid concept. Everything in the universe has these dual aspects, and when we're speaking of God it's very difficult. You have to specify the point of view that you're operating from in talking in those dualistic or dual aspect terms. However, I found your paper helpful. It made me aware of things that need to be clarified.
All bracketed references are to the Divine Principle, 2nd edition, New York: Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, 1973.
1 See Young Oon Kim, Unification Theology and Christian Thought, rev. ed. New York: Golden Gate, 1976, pp. 23-25.
2 Ibid., p. 38, emphasis added.
3 Ibid., p. 49.