Discussion

David Kelly: I am going to talk about the paper by Lloyd Eby, more specifically Part II, and then the paper by Steve Post. I think that the common element I find here is an attempt to suggest that Western individualism and Eastern or Oriental relationism ought to be seen as counterbalances to each other. There is also the implication that the two traditions can be harmonized. There is a difference between arguing, as Charles Frankel has argued, that these kinds of value concepts or general approaches to life ought to be used as correctives to each other, which I find myself in thorough agreement with, and suggesting that somehow the two approaches can be harmonized in a totally unified 'ism.' Given the notion that these counterbalancing approaches, value systems or structures are mutually corrective, I have to wonder at the claim that various questions which Western metaethics and Western normative ethics have been posing for so many decades are solved when one is able to counterbalance or use these approaches as correctives. By all means, balance and correct. I think that is good. But don't imply then that questions are definitely solved by this process. Do realize that what you end up with is at least to some extent a trade-off, and in my notion of ethics that is not altogether bad. That is not ideal, in the sense of eschatological idealism, but it is not bad.

The other thing that I want to say is that this is part of what I have been calling the slipperiness of Unification language and Unification theology. I have had a lot of discussion about that with individuals and each time I am told Unification theology is not slippery; it is merely that I don't understand it. I find that as one moves in one direction one reaches a certain point and the response is: well, the answer to your question is over here in this other direction. That may very well be correct, but the notion that total harmony can be developed by two approaches to living which can validly be used as correctives to one another is something that I am not convinced of.

With respect to Lloyd's paper, I want first to do some of the general theory. Lloyd runs very quickly through the metaethical problems of relativism and absolutism and then moves immediately into the whole problem of the naturalist fallacy which he picks up from Hume and G.E. Moore. When I first read it myself, I decided that this was really a very quick kind of transition. But when I looked at it again I decided that what Lloyd is doing is precisely what I would do with the metaethical problem. Lloyd has opted for a kind of empirical absolutism on the metaethical level. That is all very technical stuff. Having arrived at that, he finds himself in the problem of the naturalist fallacy. If you opt for other metaethical solutions like relativism or non-cognitivism, or even if you opt for other absolutist metaethical positions like intuitionism or supernaturalism, you don't have to worry about the empirical. Is that right?

Lloyd Eby: Yes, you have got it right.

David Kelly: Then you don't have to worry about the naturalist fallacy at all. You have made a very quick option for empirical metaethical absolutism which is precisely the same option that I have made in my own work.

Lloyd Eby: I agree.

David Kelly: Once one has refuted relativism, at what level is relationism still to some degree a relativism? There are Karl Mannheim's questions still to face. I am very slow to say that somehow or other the relativist question has been answered in this process nor has the G.E. Moore question as such been answered. You still have to find out which basic question you are working from.

Steve's paper makes the argument that I try to make in my Paper -- namely that Unification does have some kind of social ethic -- quite impossible. If he is right, my attempt at a defense of Unificationism as having a social ethic can no longer be sustained. Steve tends to suggest that the most radical transformation of Western society is on the level of family life and that existing political structures are largely unchanged. Maybe that can be interpreted in a sense that still allows for a structural critique. There is a sense in this paper that political and economic structures are not really important, that somehow or other by having perfect families with blessed children the structures of our society will take care of themselves. If that is true, then my attempt at a defense on this issue doesn't work.

Of course if everyone did love God, we wouldn't be sitting around here worrying about the problem that they don't or that we don't. (Laughter) And that is precisely the point. I have jotted down a number of bald statements. I'll just quickly read them because they are addressed to both Lloyd and Steve. Certainly those of you who know me will detect a now familiar skeptical, sociological, and perhaps perverse slant to my comments, (laughter) I think there are some powerful images at work in both of these papers and some distinctive emphases. To Lloyd's and Steve's credit they stress, celebrate and worry about those images and those ideas. I like that.

A second comment: the times select the religion that survives and thrives. This is one of the bottom lines of the paper that I wrote. To me, one of the remarkable ironies of history (a "Moonie" would say, one of the miraculous providences of God) is that a religion born in an Eastern traditional society is so right for today. The image of the family and the idea of the perfect family as the beginning and end of religion, it seems to me, is a perfect match for the possibilities of religiosity within the modern world.

A third comment which touches on the family. Loving parents and siblings involve, as the saying goes, some good news and some bad news. There are some trade-offs when this metaphor is chosen and when this metaphor is projected on the cosmos. I think the fundamental trade-off in its barest terms is the security of having parents for the bondage of remaining children. I know that is an oversimplification, but it seems to be a problem for Unificationism that stubbornly remains no matter how we hedge it around.

Social contract theory or mythology is not nearly as individualistic as Eby and perhaps by extension Post, implies. The social contract is a myth that becomes necessary for founding the polis when other mythologies -- household gods, tribal deities, or monotheistic lords -- fail. I think we have to see social contract mythology as an effort to found the polis. To attribute individualism in a crass and unqualified way to social contract theory is to misunderstand the profound social impulse in that mythology. Surely, latent individualism is an enemy of social contract theory, as both Eby and Post point out, and this is why the family becomes the powerful and primary locus of identity and meaning within the rationalized and bureaucratized structures of modern society.

Western paradigms do not deny that human beings and societies exist in hierarchies. Rather they insist that these hierarchies are man-made and hence open to human change and subject to human control. The hierarchies are not natural; they are human and hence "accidental" in a sense.

Post's analysis draws on the contrast between classical consensual societies and contemporary adversarial societies. That is the crucial nub of the issue in all of the papers on the topic today. The question is simply whether inspirations, images and models drawn from simpler, less complex consensual communities (whether those be families, tribes or civilizations) are really applicable in modern urbanized industrial societies whose bureaucracies, like Hobbe's natural man, are each laws unto themselves. The notion of a series of checks and balances maintained by contract, though understood in an adversarial way, may be the only glue that holds situations together, and may be the only basis for society. I am astonished by Steve's comment that the individual good and the common good do not conflict.

Stephen Post: That is a very naive comment but I am saying that it is the ideal.

Lonnie Kliever: Oh, indeed, and I understand that this is an ideal. The problem in my paper that I was trying to flag is how the ideal is reached -- ideologically or structurally or institutionally? What I see in Unificationism is an ideology that envisions an ideal without a structure to achieve that ideal.

I am not sure how Steve is using the word theocracy. It seems to me that it is too narrow a definition of theocracy. There are other models. A God-centered democracy sounds like a version of theocracy to me even though it may not be sociologically possible. A very interesting point that Steve raised was to point out the inherent limitations in Troeltsch's typology. It is a limitation carried over in Niebuhr's reworking of that typology in Christ and Culture. There is certainly a remarkable post-Niebuhrian literature on the church-sect typology. I think of Bryan Wilson's work, for example, where he analyzes eight types of sects, and within that scheme there is certainly room for politically concerned and politically aspiring sectarian movements. But those sectarian movements can only change society by exemplary and strategic withdrawal.

Finally a comment which is.an indirect response to one of Steve's question's to me. The model of the family as the model for society is certainly the reading of Divine Principle which I have assumed in my own exposition. The form of government envisioned as the ideal family is a consensual democracy where a perfect harmony between individual good and common good prevails. My problem with that ideal is that the means of achieving consensual democracy institutionally and structurally is simply not there. Appealing to the family as the means by which we will all love God and love one another and hence share common goals and common concerns seems to me to be sociologically naive. Now I remember from my childhood a timely phrase -- man's extremity is God's opportunity. For such a theology, the sociological impossibility of perfect families being the means by which consensual democracy is established poses no problem. But for a person like myself, the problem does not go away by the confession of that kind of faith. But that would not surprise you at all. Your underlining of the ideal family as the model of the democratic society is a terribly helpful and important point in your paper and it is consistent with how I have read the Principle. If I have implied that I saw the sinful family as the model for society in the paper, then that is my fault for not communicating that point clearly.

Lloyd Eby: Let me say a little about the process of genesis of the paper that I brought to this session. Parr I was written first. Then as I thought some more, I realized that to take the family model in a simple way won't do. So I began to think about it some more and on that basis then I wrote Part II.

On David Kelly's paper, let me say at the outset that I agree with a lot in this paper. My comments on it are small, nitpicking ones. There is a lot here that I agree with. Unificationism's tendency to identify all too quickly the heavenly side and the satanic side is a problem, but I don't think Unificationism is quite as naive as this suggests. In my paper I try to suggest some of the subtlety in Unificationism. Human history does not admit of an easy separation of absolute good and absolute evil. We never claim that it does. We don't claim there is any such thing as absolute good and absolute evil in human history.

On the question of the oppression of women, I claim that this simply is not there and is a misreading of Unificationism. There is no theoretical basis for the accusation. There may be a basis in terms of practice but there is no theoretical basis in Unificationism for the repression of women. Subject/object language in Unificationism is not a basis for repression of one by the other, because the claim is that in a give-and-take relationship, even though one is subject and one is object, that those are necessary correlates of one another. One doesn't have the relationship without the two parts and the two parts are absolutely essential for the relationship. They are of equal value and of equal necessity.

I object to the phrase "thoroughly gnostic." It seems to me that Klaus was arguing yesterday that Unification historical typology is not gnostic but realistic in some fashion. Now whether Klaus' arguments succeed or not is another thing. But just to say straight out that it is gnostic is a false understanding.

As to Lonnie's paper, last night Lonnie and I agreed that I was going to be Lonnie's spiritual father, so I don't know whether to spank him (laughter) or take him by the hand and try to get this little boy to get his lesson right one more time, (laughter) There are just so many things in here that... why can't you get this right, Lonnie? (Laughter)

Darrol Bryant: You just lost your role as spiritual father! (Laughter)

Lonnie Klieier: We are going to have an Oedipus scene right here! (Laughter)

Lloyd Eby: The basic misunderstanding that occurs in this paper is precisely the point that I was mentioning in terms of the problem of whether or not Unificationism has a theoretical foundation for the repression of mistreatment of women. Lonnie fails to recognize and take seriously the fact that Unificationism has within its metaphysic a series of bipolar give-and-take relationships which occur between the individual and the group, between private and public, between the particular and the general and so on. Neither of those two poles can be denied or neither can be subsumed into the other.

Lonnie is accurate, I think, in his analysis of religious institutions as they do in fact exist in modern Western society. Steve says the same thing. But I think this doesn't fit Unificationism because it does not see itself as fitting that type. I think that Unificationism does care for the whole person. One of the reasons that Unificationism comes in for so much criticism at the popular level is that it does in fact do that. At the popular level there is this feeling that religion somehow ought not to have anything to do with the personal role and the personal life of its adherents. Unificationism claims that it ought to perform that role and therefore we get the problem.

One other thing that I object to is the term theocratic: I think that what Unificationism is not theocratic but theocentric. That makes a difference, so the answer to the question that Lonnie raises in his title is: neither of those.

Frank Flinn: I want to raise two topics. One has to do with Weber's notions of bureaucracy. The second one has to do with the notion of family in Unification.

Pertaining to the first one, my question is shaped by George Grant's recent book English-speaking Justice which is a critique of contractual liberalism. The Webenan notion of bureaucracy is not tenable. As a Roman Catholic living with the Roman Catholic tradition I do not look upon my church as a bureaucracy. The typology that comes out of the Troeltschian and Weberian mode of analysis is saying: the gospel is kerygma, the church is bureaucracy. I claim that that is a labeling, a value judgment which is not a factual description in any sense of the term. The notion of bureaucracy that we tend to sling around -- is that an adequate concept? We Roman Catholics see the church as a house for the tradition -- a creative thing, not necessarily a limiting thing. I am not saying there are no problems in Roman Catholicism; I am simply saying that I am questioning the notion of bureaucracy fundamentally as a value judgment laid on institutions that is not necessarily descriptive of the real phenomenon.

Second, Unificationists are becoming very aware that the family is a carrier of structures of domination. There is a realization within Unification that the ideal family is not there yet. The notion of the ideal family in Unification is not a description of what is there but a critique of what we are all facing, including those within Unification. We need to get more sophisticated about that notion. I would suggest that Lonnie take consideration of that.

Andrew Wilson: Frank, thank you for your remark about the family.

Both Stanley Johannesen and David Kelly have made snide remarks about our use of numbers as arcane or obscure. I think our use of numbers is not at all arcane. It is derived from the Bible but also from philosophy. The view that nature has a mathematical basis extends from Pythagoras and Plato all the way through modern science. We are asserting that since the God of nature is also the God of history, logically history should show mathematical regularity and structure just as does nature. Scholars ought to take the mathematics of Divine Principle more seriously and try to understand what it means instead of dismissing it with terms such as arcane.

As to the alleged "slippenness" of Unification theology I would reply that we do not have a propositional view of truth. We do not believe that theology ought to lay down a dogmatic system to which we must conform our lives or our social institutions. Rather Unification theology speaks of subject-object interaction. The subject and the object each have a form and individuality which can be described, but their interaction leads to a growing, developing newness which is more than the sum of its parts. This is why the Unification view of society and the Unification view of the future are open-ended. When we Unificationists envision the uniting of East and West we do not describe exactly the nature of that unity, but rather we enter into their living encounter, into a process of give and take. Then it is up to us to practically work out in the world exactly what that new society will be. This so-called slipperiness is essential for a praxis that allows full expression of human creativity.

Neil Duddy: Just two questions of clarification. We hear a lot about the term yin/yang, the kind of a taoist symbol of give-and-take and position of mutual relationship. M y understanding of those symbols and how they work out in the Orient is that the ultimate intention is to eliminate the distinction that creates individuality, that it is a statement that all is one. I hear that a lot, but I don't get the feeling that the Principle is speaking about erasure of values and value judgments as to whether things are helpful or unhelpful or translated into a wheel or karma or anything along that line. When you make a statement such as "sets up a real union between people in which spiritual characteristics are interchanged, thus each individual is changed by it," that conjures up for me a notion of tantric yoga. People like Rash Nish. who is a really powerful guru in India who uses sexual union as a spiritual technique to erase the polarities between male and female. Differences of personalities are erased through a sexual technique that is considered to be a spiritual technology and I am really interested to see how you would distinguish yourself from that type of tantric use of sexuality and still have identity. What is the spiritual exchange that is taking place there?

Durwood Foster: Concerning Andrew's response to David Kelly, it seems to me that David is calling in his last paragraph for exactly the same thing Andrew recommends. We should seek to understand more precisely, deeply, and adequately the arcane conceptuality that is involved in that part of Divine Principle. Perhaps there is more agreement between you and David than might appear from your comment, Andrew.

Also, a passing word on Reinhold Niebuhr and Niebuhrianism -- Reinhold and Richard together but Reinhold particularly, because he was my teacher. It saddens me greatly whenever his name becomes a symbol for the baptism of the status quo or the simple acceptance of the givenness of society. For one thing, one has to take into account the developmental dimension in both the Niebuhrs. Earlier on they had a more conspicuously prophetic impact upon society. Later this becomes more ambiguous, but the situation is rather complex. It is bound up with the destiny of theology in America over the last generation. I would say in general that Reinhold and Richard both exemplify the Protestant principle, if I can use that phrase, as a principle of transcendent criticism which stands over both the social status quo and also over the pretensions and illusions of Utopian groups which would prematurely transform the status quo according to their own preconceived images of the ideal society, overlooking death and human sinfulness. Now the pathos of the Protestant principle is that in adopting its critical stance toward Utopian groups one tends inevitably to support by inaction the prevailing concordat between the different elements of society. This is an unresolved problem in the Niebuhrs. But it still is very wrong and very sad to identify them with simply the acceptance of society as it is.

The main thing that I want to say has to do with the discussion about the conflict between freedom and order or the conflict between autonomy and heteronomy if I may use the Tillichian terms. I think Tillich in the social dimensions of his thought was profoundly concerned with the same issues. The image that Tillich used to express the social ideal was theonomy. I haven't heard that used yet but to me it is a better word than theocracy. It has deep affinities with some of the other phrases that we have been using, like consensual democracy as over against adversarial democracy and so on. One of the deepest unresolved questions of modern life and maybe of all human life is whether the theonomous ideal is really possible and particularly whether it is possible within history. The later Tillich and the later Niebuhr gravely doubted that the theonomous ideal was possible within history. This is the equivalent of their critique of utopianism. It bears profoundly upon the issue to what extent a resolution of the conflict between liberty and order or between individual freedom and the common good of social unity is possible. Many instances of analysis come to mind that suggest that a resolution isn't possible. Freud for example is a salient example of someone who sees the malaise of civilization in terms of the conflict between the id and the superego as an inevitable and irresolvable conflict.

But Tillich saw in Jesus a symbol of the ideal resolution of the conflict whereby the individual will would gratify the universal will. This is the sense in which for Tillich the picture of Jesus as the Christ is the theonomous norm. Now one of the matrices of the Unification movement challenges precisely this point. Jesus is an individual. The question of what kind of social ethic evolves or is inferable from Jesus has been an unresolved problem throughout Christian history. The Unification Church makes a point of this and suggests we must add to the individual theonomy of Jesus the second two blessings. Beyond Jesus' individual perfection, we must solve the social problem and the ecological problem. We haven't talked much about the ecological problem so I'll leave that out for the moment. The social problem in Unificationism is to be solved through the family. Let me say that in general terms there is nothing new about that. There come to mind the proposals of Protestant liberalism on which I cut my theological teeth, for example, Harnack's brotherhood of man under the fatherhood of God. The central Christian mandate is what we are striving for in the human family. In terms of the exchange that went on between Lonnie and Steve, the concept of family is ambiguous in the role it plays in the discussion. On the one hand it has a literal signification; on the other hand, obviously it has a symbolic function. Insofar as we are talking about the literal family, I would argue that this does not really advance us far beyond the problem that inheres in the older kind of Christian individualism. Indeed the sorts of psychic and social resentment and competitiveness that are generated between the nuclear families that make up religious groups are even more problematic and vicious than the problems that exist between individuals. This has been historically the experience in religion. Bur "family" in Unification theology tends to function at the same time symbolically in the social organization of the Unification movement. We don't have simply the nuclear family as the main thing that hits one in the eye, but we have a communal organization which is much wider. Just one final point going back to Tillich's notion of theonomy. In regard to some of the discussion yesterday I recall how Tillich thought that in developing an adequate idea of theonomy there is a problem in the overemphasis in some strains of the Christian tradition upon the personal God. He held there must be some way of alleviating the inherent problematic of the over againstness and hierarchicalness of the personal God as this was discerned by Freud and others. I am trying to say too much here too quickly. I just want to suggest that it was precisely because of this that Tillich attempted to offer symbols such as "ground of being" that alleviate and qualify or dialectically balance the symbol of the personal God. Tillich never made peace entirely with this problem. He says in his Systematic Theology that the symbol of the personal God is absolutely indispensable and yet at the same time there is a great deal of struggle in Tillich to overcome that symbol dialectically or at least in some way balance it. I would suggest again that this is part of the problem that is left to us as our theological task.

Lonnie Kliever: Point one is simply to say a good word for the word "bureaucracy." Some are horrified that we would use that word to talk about holy institutions, Catholic or Unificationist, and I have heard two disavowals that the church is bureaucratic. Such disavowals assume a moral negativism surrounding that word bureaucracy. I use it in the more descriptive sense of simply denoting the specialization of tasks and the rationalization of ends in modern social structures. That is precisely what Max Weber meant by bureaucracy and it seems to me that the Unification Church is thus bureaucratic in this sense. Mr. Kim and I enjoyed breakfast together and one of the interesting things that I learned from him is something about the way in which Rev. Moon assigns special tasks and lets people fulfill those tasks. It is one of the geniuses of bureaucracy to fashion institutions and structures that perform specialized tasks and serve specific ends.

A second comment; I certainly want to disabuse myself of being a crypto-Niebuhrian, whether Reinhold or H. Richard. I have studied with one and have written about another and I certainly am heavily indebted and informed by their own critique but I have not in the paper been arguing a Niebuhrian position. Indeed, I have not intentionally argued any position but simply sociologically described the religious scene as that scene comes to expression in the images and the institutions of the Unification Church.

A third point and this is in a sense a moot point but it is worth pointing out. Steve comments that my paper is not radical enough, that what we need is a pre-Constantinian, counter-culture sectarian ethic. An implication of my paper is that sectarian ethics is not as radical as it seems. My point can best be made by suggesting that you read Thomas Luckmann's "The Invisible Religion" and Carl Braaten's "Christ and Counterculture" side by side and ask yourself if countercultural ethics is not the only appropriate ethics for modernity where the moral and the religious has increasingly been confined to what Luckmann calls the "private sector."

A fourth point that strikes me is that the whole image of counterculture which Steve touches on is a double-edged one. I am intrigued with what will happen to the Unification Church as the home church movement becomes more aggressive and more successful, when more and more people within the church will not submit their lives and their energies to the fulltime service of the church. What happens when Unificationist faith comes in conflict with the performance roles imposed by society's primary institutions. One of the clear things that come across about the Unification Church, at least in America is its ghettoization and that ghettoization is through and through -- it is familial and vocational as well as religious. That is its power and that is its attractiveness. But I am wondering as a very interested observer what will happen if the home church movement is successful. Here H. Richard Niebuhr's works on Social Sources of Denominationalism is instructive. What happens when a sect becomes a denomination? I think Niebuhr's contribution is dated but the "church-sect" question is still important in the context of the American cultural and religious scene.

David Kelly: The thing that comes to mind as context for the first two comments is a comment that was made by one of the commissioners during the Watergate hearings. He suggested that if an animal comes into the room, and if it walks like an elephant, it may be but probably is not a mouse with a glandular condition, (laughter) That is very facile and very simplistic. I don't mean it as a putdown at all but both the distinction between heavenly side and satanic side and the language that can lead to sexism are present in Divine Principle. Now it is correct that many of the papers that have been written here definitely work against those kinds of negative ideas. But there still is within the ontology of Divine Principle a sense of identification of good and evil in present culture in ways that I find at least potentially dangerous, and there is within Unification thought (not the book Unification Thought particularly but also there) and within Divine Principle some language that certainly looks to me to have sexist implications. Specifically Divine Principle, pages 48 and 49: God gives love as subject, man returns beauty as object; and between men and women, man is the subject giving love and woman is the object returning beauty. Now when I read that I see, at least within my language tradition, God as somehow more than human beings. Therefore when the parallel is made, I see man as subject being more than woman as object. Now that certainly can be developed as Lloyd did here and at breakfast. Finally when we get to "thoroughly gnostic and arcane," if that turns out to be the major issue of contention, I am willing to retire "thoroughly gnostic," but you will have to grant me some kind of word that means arcane. As Durwood also pointed out, this is an important mosaic within the way in which Divine Principle, if indeed it has anything to say at all, says it.

Lloyd Eby: First of all I want to come back to something that Frank Flinn said earlier. This applies also to something that I noticed in Lonnie's paper. Unificationism doesn't stop at the family. Even the Divine Principle text as I remember talks about further levels of social interaction, what it would call society or tribe, nation, and finally world. Those aren't incidental; those are necessary for the developments of the underlying stuff, and I think that is important. In other words, there is an implication there that the simple understanding of the family isn't sufficient.

To Neil's comment -- most of what you said I agree with, all the premises I agree with -- then you ask the question about the possible tantric use of sex.

Neil Duddy: Lloyd, I was just drawing the parallel and asking you to differentiate.

Lloyd Eby: Right, all the premises up to the question. Then you ask, what is the distinction between that and the Unification view? I think the difference is in the Unification claim that a give-and-take relationship does not subsume the poles that make up that relationship. The relationship is a relationship between the poles and it requires both poles; it doesn't subsume them. Therefore you do not have a loss of individuation nor a loss of differentiation in the Unification view whether it is sexually or whatever, so it seems to me that that point is different.

Neil Duddy: Let me just take that one step further, because scripture says that you become one flesh, and as I read your statement about the interchange of spirituality I got a sense of spiritual exchange taking place. I was asking tor some notion of what that implies.

Lloyd Eby: I think it implies that, for example, if you and I have a conversation that is in any sense a conversation that isn't trivial, we interchange things. I take, I learn something from you, you learn something from me and we build on this. There is an interchange going on, but that does not deny either my or your individuality. And it seems to me that is precisely the same model.

Neil Duddy: But conversation is a spiritual exchange.

Lloyd Eby: Right. It is a conversational model.

Now to some things that Durwood Foster said concerning the conflict between freedom and order, autonomy and heteronomy. That is an important point; I think that conflict, that tension, is built into Unificationism and I think that the tension is a healthy one. I think that tension ought to be there. If we use the Tillichian language and talk about theonomy, fine. You raised the question whether it is possible within history, and then Lonnie whispered in my ear and said that the further question is, is it necessary? I think Unificationism would want to say "yes" to both those questions: Yes, it is necessary and yes, it is possible, and it would see the possibility in quite a similar way. I don't know Tillich well, but if I understand your reading of Tillich accurately I take it to be that Tillich is saying that somehow this begins to occur in Jesus of Nazareth and his work. I would say, Yes, that is precisely what Unificationism is claiming. In the work of Jesus of Nazareth and the work of the Lord of the Second Advent (and the Lord of the Second Advent, incidentally is necessarily and not incidentally a couple, not an individual, a couple) that is the way both the necessity and the possibility get worked out in Unificationism.

Durwood Foster: Lloyd, it would be very interesting if you would tell us where that teaching of the Lord of the Second Advent as a couple is grounded. Would you agree that it is not in Divine Principle?

Lloyd Eby: I don't know. I would have to look at the book again; I haven't looked at it for a while. If it is not in the book, it ought to be there. It is based on the Adam and Eve typology. It wasn't just Eve who fell or Adam, but it was Adam and Eve together who fell. The human race, the human family, or whatever you want to call it, comes not just from Eve or from Adam, but it comes from a combination of the two, therefore the salvific work has to also come from a pair, and therefore the Lord of the Second Advent comes to complete what Jesus was prevented from completing, namely the salvific work of the family. It seems to me that that is the very basis of Unification theory.

Klaus Lindner: It is also based on the Bible that the Lord comes as a bridegroom, that kind of imagery.

Lloyd Eby: Now to something that Steve Post said that I am very unhappy with and that is his defense of Rawls. I want to completely disassociate myself from Rawls because I think that one doesn't get anything that can get you anywhere in Rawls.

I will admit that there is some place in Unificationism for some understanding of contract and the importance of contract theory. I tried to suggest that, although not very well, in my paper, when I suggest that the relationship between nation states, for example, is the relationship between mature individuals. That is a kind of contractual relationship. I fully anticipate that in a restored world I would go to the grocer and pay him money for my groceries. That too is a contract. And I don't have to worry about his family and his children and all those things at the time that I am buying my groceries.

Now to Lonnie's point about bureaucracy. I think he is right and I accept that bureaucracy is descriptive and it is not necessarily bad, but it is a specification of tasks and rationalization of ends.

On the question, what happens when a sect becomes a denomination, it seems to me that that is assuming too quickly that the same pattern one has seen as a historical development applies to Unificationism. It seems to me that one can't make that assumption; it may indeed be true but one can't just assume that it is true.

James Deotis Roberts: My first point has to do with the issue that has been raised about what I consider to be a conflict in metaphysics, and we need to sort this out. For example, it seems to me that much of Divine Principle reflects a Taoist metaphysics in which there is no absolute substantial difference between things but an interaction within one continuum. That is to say, a chain of relationships within one continuum rather than changes from one substance to another substance.

There seems to me to be a conflict between Western metaphysics and some of the original things which may have come out of the Chinese philosophical tradition where there is an assertion that reality is one thing and there is change within one continuum between relations of positive and negative and so forth. We refer here to the yin-yang interaction. The concept of substance which seems to be mixed with that is one that comes out of the Greek tradition and developed in the Western philosophy of science. This view has been criticized somewhat by process thought which might be very useful in recovering some of the original flavor and overcoming some of the problems which exist when two things are in conflict. This would enable Westerners to understand something of what is being said. Conversely those who know the Eastern tradition may understand what was originally intended.

Another thing, it seems to me, which needs sorting out is the understanding of sin in relationship to sexuality. That is to say, Western theology got boxed into the Augustinian tradition of sin as sexuality. Some of that was overcome when Reinhold Niebuhr talked about sin as pride. And one of the statements of Reinhold Niebuhr deals with the pride of this nation, the pride of wealth, the pride of power, and the pride of race. That was a very prophetic and concise statement, which needs to be brought into this discussion. The subject of family deserves attention also. In my own tradition we have been working very intensely on the family for the last ten to fifteen years since Moynihan wrote his report on the Black family and concluded that the Black family was pathological. He failed to understand that the Black family is pathological primarily because it exists in a pathological society. This view of Moynihan triggered a controversy that was taken up by a number of Black scholars in theology and sociology. Recently I have researched and will publish on the Black family. As you know there is a lot of interest in the family, but on that score the real issue is which is prior in terms of the problem we want to solve, whether we can simply solve the larger problem, the structural problems in the economy and so forth through the family, or whether we have to work at those structural changes and humanize those structures in order to make the health of the family possible.

The real test of democracy in the urban centers of this country as well as in South Africa rides upon the extent we can make life human for racial groups that are outside the mainstream. For ethnic groups that are not really integrated into the mainstream, you cannot separate the problems within the family from larger social ills. As church leaders concerned about strong healthy families we see this matter as crucial for the survival of people. We cannot see that, however. Just in terms of counseling families, we have to work with the structures of society such as the unemployment of Black males for example, or the high suicide rate of young Black males between eighteen and thirty-five. There are many young men on drugs or in prison. We have to deal with the criminal system, we have to deal with the administration of justice. The actual number of Black women who are of marriageable age is many times greater than that of Black men. There is a whole cluster of problems that are structural that we have to deal with at the same time that we deal with the family and the church ministering to these families. Otherwise we cannot contribute very much to the solution of these problems.

I am not enchanted with democracy. We have been victims of it for hundreds of years and so have many Third World peoples. Democracy is on trial. The free enterprise system is on trial in the inner cities of this country as well as in say South Africa, in the neo-colonial situation, right here on this island. In talking to the natives I found out that they have the political power but Americans and British people have the economic power, so these are the kinds of problems that have to be dealt with before we can talk about the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven on earth.

Lloyd Eby: I want to respond to that. I completely agree with you. I think that is exactly right, and it seems to me that you are implying by your point that Unificationism has not yet dealt with these problems in an adequate way and I think that is quite right. One of the things I want to do is turn the point back to you, and then I would suggest that if you can tell me or us how to deal with those problems in a way that we don't know, then please do that. It seems to me that nobody has quite figured out how to do that yet, and to suggest somehow that there is a failing in Unificationism because we haven't figured out how to do that is true, but nobody else has either, or at least in any very good way.

Frederick Sontag: I just have two questions, one for Lloyd and one for Steve. For Lloyd, I want to see if I understand him correctly. For Steve, I want to see if I can understand him at all. He is too metaphysical for me. People who claim they are not metaphysical actually have a very elaborate metaphysics.

Lloyd, you say in Western democratic contract theory the underlying ontology is individualistic. Now if I understand you, are you really trying to claim that the entire Western tradition is like that?

Lloyd Eby: No, I am not. What I have done is paint with a very broad brush for heuristic purposes. I agree that within both those paradigms one can find all kinds of differences.

Frederick Sontag: Well, that seems to me to destroy the whole thing.

Lloyd Eby: No, I don't think so, because what it allows us to do is to think systematically and see where we are going.

Frederick Sontag: But then don't make the contrast between Western and Eastern and say Unification claims that these are inherently related to God, and to other people. Somehow this is unfair. Take Spinoza, take Hegel, take British idealism. You say in Western thought, man is primarily an individual, and society is an artificial identity. This just doesn't seem to do much justice to a long Western tradition. In addition, you say that the Western paradigm has negative economic implications. If each person is an isolated individual, then each person will want only what he wants. Well, Marxism comes out of Western thought, and this is primarily community oriented. Its statement comes out of Hegel. Everybody isn't an economic individual in Western thought. That is only one side of Western thought. So the argument, you admit, is an oversimplification, but then I don't get the point. I guess Unification thought is picking up aspects of Western thought but somehow not contrasting itself to all Western thought. Could that be?

Lloyd Eby: That is fair. I also made a deliberate oversimplification. But I did it because it seemed to me that that was a useful procedural method.

Frederick Sontag: Steve, I can't get a hold of what you are trying to say and I have tried, I think. You say, "This means the most radical transformation will be on the level of family life and the existing political structures will be largely unchanged." I don't get that. I simply don't see how family life could change radically and existing political structures could just go on. In the first place, I don't see it as a goal of Divine Principle. It seems to me that existing political structures must be changed in some way. And you do have a slight romanticization of democracy, as both you and Deotis were agreeing. And I don't think that it does function perfectly. It is understandable that the romanticization of democracy came out of American colonial notions, and that in Korea at the time of the origins of the Unification Church there was a great drama about American democracy and its goals. There are certain beautiful qualities to it, but we are in the midst of reappraising some of the negative sides. The Unification sectarian status can begin to shift from a ghettoized minority to a spiritual and political reform movement which can ultimately reshape the world in the form of the Unification Church. Well, it is going to be a reform movement and it is either going to reform the whole world including political structures or it is not.

Stephen Post: I quite agree that in the history of Western thought there is a precedent for Unificationism, and I think it is erroneous to imply that we have to go the Eastern instead.

Jonathan Wells: It seems to me that there has been something lacking in the discussion this morning, except maybe for Deotis' remark. What has been lacking is any mention of the context in which the discussion is taking place. The Unification proposal is not being made in a neutral environment, but in a world facing a disaster situation. Not only are we in trouble internationally, but also domestically, sociologically, familially, and psychiatrically; and it seems to me that we can't ignore this when we analyze the problems and ambiguities of the Unification proposal.

Modernity's "celebration of democracy and autonomy" is more than offset by alienation, a sky-rocketing crime rate, and widespread family breakdown. It seems to me that we have got to do something, and that something has got to be radical. To consider Unificationism in isolation apart from the need for this radical change seems to me to be overlooking something essential.

Anthony Guerra: A paramount religious question is indeed whether radical change within the historical order is possible. Now I think that Unificationism clearly answers this question in the affirmative. It should be noted, however, that St. Augustine and many of the Christian traditions, enunciated a negative response to the same question. These latter are exempted therefore from a task which the Unificationist must deliberate upon -- namely, a praxis for the transformation of the social order in accord with its understanding of God's will. The Unification written sources provide no detailed blueprint for the reformation of society but scrutiny of the multi-faceted Unification movement is highly instructive and may afford more insight as to its proposed praxis for the rebirth of civilization. I have coined the term a "cooperative alternative culture" to describe the social entity of the Unification movement. The term "counterculture" is inappropriate and violates the Unificationists' self-understanding of their community. Unificationism is forming an alternative society which seeks to cooperate with the established social order in order to promote a gradual transformation of the entire society. Unificationists believe that the process of cooperative interaction between itself as an alternative social model and the wider society is essential for the realization of its ideals.

Lonnie Kliever: First of all, speaking for myself and my perception of the papers, I am not aware of any of the four of us closing our eyes to the problems of the world that surround us and the tumult that troubles us within our own breasts. If I thought for a moment that we were ignorant of that and that we had been deceived by the palms waving outside the window into believing that we were in some sort of Edenic paradise, then I think we would deserve your sermonic gesture, Jonathan. But I don't think that we have forgotten that context and I think that the affirmations and the criticisms that have been raised on both sides of the table are made with that unwholesome and unhealthy world before our eyes.

A second comment, and that is to say something that I did not say in the paper. I do affirm the importance of sectarian communities and countercultural moralities. It seems to me that if renewal is to come in society it is to be gained only in this way. The evaluation that I made simply marked the troublesome disparity between Unificationist ideology and the institutionalization of that ideology. I have heard nothing really to suggest that this disparity is far from the views expressed on both ends of this table and I am wondering how that disparity is to be bridged.

A third comment: I do believe that Durwood's earlier notion about the two ranges of the metaphor of family is important to keep in mind. I at least suggested that in my paper by speaking of the family as religious cult and the religious cult as family. And it is certainly the case that the paradigmatic community that I see in the Unification Church is not limited to the nuclear family; it is the church as family. That paradigmatic family includes reaching out into business and into politics and I think that is one of the interesting and important contributions that this church will make.

Finally a fourth comment: I was reminded in listening to this conversation of Harvey Cox's call in The Feast of Fools for a "metainstitution" -- an institution which denies its own self for the sake of the institutions of society. I have some trouble finding that in Divine Principle, but I do not have trouble finding it in conferences like this one or the International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences. One of the remarkable things about the Unification Church, and this is something that Mr. Kim and I were talking about at breakfast, is the way in which this church has taken the lead in bringing together parties, persons, and perspectives without requiring any signatures on the bottom line that you are going away with a different faith or a different morality or a different perspective than what you brought. I see in the practical work of the church in these sorts of ventures the first glimmering of what Cox talked about as a "metainstitution" that seeks to renew other institutions. That sense of mission I applaud and I celebrate.

Darrol Bryant: I want to say for purposes of the record and since Mr. Kim is here that it seems there is a certain problem that we are beginning to run up against in these conferences and that is that we are running up against the limits of Divine Principle as presently stated and constituted and that has been said before. The text is not yet a finished text and the discourse on the Principle is to continue and, as we have it in its present form, it does not yet move from the first blessing stage into the second and third blessing stages, and I feel often that our conversations find us constantly coming up against its edges and saying there are clearly other things that are needed.