Interpreting Creation and Fall

Darrol Bryant: I think we may begin again. This afternoon we will begin by letting Pat say a couple of things about the doctrine of creation and the three blessings. Then we're going to let Jonathan, who is sitting there with his manuscript by his side (laughter), say some things about the fall. He has that worked out and he is going to read to us. (laughter)

That will probably take us until coffee time, and then after that, we'll spend the rest of the afternoon on eschatology and hermeneutics. Anthony is going to say something about that topic to introduce it. We will do this against the backdrop of the hermeneutical discussion and with an eye to the practice of the Church. If we try to relate these doctrines to the way in which Unification organizes its life and incarnates these doctrinal formulations then we will get an additional angle on our whole discussion. That will take us through the afternoon. We're invited this evening to the Dursts where we will have supper, and after supper there will be a conversation on the things that are still on people's minds. Pat, would you like to begin?

Patricia Zulkosky: The question, as Dr. Richardson argued, that Rev. Moon is asking is, "What is the purpose of creation and man's life?" We believe that we can arrive at some understanding of God by looking at the nature of man, in an ideal sense, and creation. Through this kind of process, we come to the conclusion that God has both masculine and feminine natures, internal and external aspects, and a number of other complementary aspects. We know that God, having all of these different attributes, can in and of Himself have relationship, in a sense, inside Himself. Man can also have give-and-take inside himself with, for instance, the idea of chocolate cake, but until that becomes a substantial reality that a person can have give-and-take with in a more substantial way, there's something lacking. So in the same way, God could conceive of the blueprint of the creation of children who would be responsive to His nature. But unless this became a living reality, there would be something lacking in the joy that God could feel.

From the beginning, God conceived of an ideal blue-print, not of a creation that would be deformed or full of suffering and struggle. This ideal we feel is summarized in the Scripture in three words, when God tells man to be fruitful, to multiply, and to have dominion. These three aspects of life are what we call the three blessings. The first blessing involves centering our lives on God. Man is to completely unite mind and body centering on God and the direction of goodness. The result of this would be what we call a man or woman of perfect personality. God created man so that each person could have grown in maturity to be the visible reflection of a unique aspect of God. Each person has that responsibility to become an object to God in a very real way. If even one person fails to do that, then there's some aspect of God that can't be completely fulfilled. So ultimately, every human being needs to fulfill his or her unique potential. Sometimes, in fulfilling the first blessing, you will hear people saying that this is the meaning of becoming perfect. For us, perfect doesn't mean climbing to the top of a mountain as an end point from which you can't go any further. But it's the point of maturation where the possibilities for man to fulfill his uniqueness are opened up. A tiny baby can't pick up a straight pin and put it in a pop bottle. It's impossible. You need a certain amount of maturation on all different levels in order to be able to do those things. For us, perfection isn't the end point, but it's the beginning point of man's development and fulfillment of his individual uniqueness.

Even so, just one person, one man who becomes this man of perfect personality would only be the expression of the masculine nature of God, and as such, couldn't understand the depths of the feminine nature of God. In a similar way, an ideal woman couldn't understand the male nature of God. So it takes man and woman together, acting as a unit, to really experience the fullness of the nature of God. This is the second blessing. Also through the procreative act and having children, they can in a sense stand in the position of God to their children. Adam and Eve were born without sin, and had the responsibility to grow to reach maturity or perfection. Then as sinless expressions of the nature of God, they could have given birth to sinless, but still immature children, who also would have had to grow. But these children would have had the advantage of perfect parents, ideal parents, to raise them. God becomes, not only the parental God, but He's a grandparent, and this whole kind of familial situation develops.

Then the third blessing is to take dominion over creation, so that, after man has developed his heart and relationship to God, and his ability to love mankind, he can take this same heart and apply it to creation, being very sensitive to the purpose of creation as God's way of giving joy to man. Through man, creation can fulfill its purpose and give joy to God. Through our sensitivity and our relationship to creation, we can extend a great deal of joy and satisfaction to creation. Creation's ability to serve man and be appreciated for its service to man can return so much joy and stimulation back to God. Man stands in the mediator position between God and the rest of creation. These are the three blessings.

Another point that's very important in our idea of creation is the idea that man has a physical man and also a spiritual man. Our physical man has five senses with which we can perceive the physical world, and it needs certain things in order to grow like air and sunlight, food and water. At the same time that man is conceived and born, his spirit man is also created. Our spirit man also has five senses. We can understand in this sense terms like clairvoyance and clairaudience. Ideally speaking, if man hadn't fallen, we would be fully aware of our spiritual senses and be able to perceive the spiritual world freely at will. It may be something like tuning in a different station on the radio or television. Birth would be a very major celebration in the life of man, as the beginning of our physical life and also the beginning of our eternal life. Then marriage, of course, would be a second celebration for man, and death would be a third. Because man is made of the same elements as the rest of physical creation and the rest of physical creation has a life and death cycle, we believe that our physical man also has a life and death cycle. But our spirit man has, we believe, an eternal existence. Just as our physical man needs certain things to grow, our spirit man also needs certain things to grow. Parallel to sun and air for our physical man would be God's truth and love. Parallel to those things like food and water that man has to make an effort to get would be man's good deeds, and by doing good deeds, our spirit man is nourished by what we call vitality elements. It's through our time on earth that we grow our spirit man through realizing the three blessings as well as our physical self to the point where we can be an expression of the nature of God. For us, physical death is a natural occurrence, and yet we also have eternal life in the spiritual world with our spirit man. I think these are the basic points that Jonathan can build on.

Jonathan Wells: I'm just going to go through a quick summary of the Unification doctrine of the fall. There are two starting points for what I'm going to say. One is in Genesis where we have the story of Adam and Eve being told by God not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. The serpent conversed with Eve, deceived her, and she ate the fruit, and she went to Adam and he did likewise. God then evicted them from the Garden of Eden. The other element is the philosophical one, probably as old as Genesis, certainly as old as the Old Testament, and that is, "What is the origin of evil?" Christian traditions, against which the new theological proposals in the Divine Principle have to be measured, have always used this Adam and Eve story as the explanation for the origin of evil. The key issue is this: God is good, but there's evil in the world. God, being good, couldn't create the evil. Where did the evil come from? The traditional answer is that evil is grounded in human free will. Mankind has free will, and freely chose to turn away from God. This happened in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.

The Genesis story by itself, of course, is inadequate. There are many serious questions raised in the story that are not fully answered. Where did the serpent come from? Why is it that a serpent could speak to Eve? What was it about the fruit that did all the damage? These are questions that have been asked from the very beginning of the Judaic tradition.

One of the early attempts to answer them in Christianity was by Irenaeus in the second century. Irenaeus said that Adam and Eve were children originally and they were growing up. If they had gone on to reach maturity without falling, without disobeying God, they would have reached perfection. (This is exactly what the Divine Principle says, although Irenaeus understood it somewhat differently.) But a serpent came along and deceived Adam and Eve into violating God's commandment, and they by their free will turned aside from God's commandment and as a consequence they died. God said, "On the day that you eat the fruit, you will die." Irenaeus said they died in two ways. First of all they died spiritually, and later they died physically.

Furthermore, they were afflicted with lust, because in the story of Genesis, immediately after eating the fruit, they covered their nakedness, indicating shame of their sexual parts. Irenaeus went on to explain that all the descendants of Adam and Eve were held in captivity by Satan until Christ came to liberate them. There are some problems with Irenaeus' story. First of all, it still doesn't explain where evil comes from. The serpent is already there, evil, and presumably created by God. Irenaeus frankly says the origin of evil is a mystery and we can't know the answer.

In answer to questions like, "Why are the descendants of Adam and Eve held in bondage?" his answer was that they all had sinned in Adam. This is the theory of seminal identity, but actually it creates more problems than it solves. Does it mean that all of us are pieces of Adam, or did Adam contain little seeds of every human being who is descended from him? How can you say that we sinned in Adam? These questions all remain in Christian theology.

Two centuries later Augustine tried to answer them. Using the same Genesis story, Augustine emphasized the free will aspect. The serpent is interpreted both by Irenaeus and Augustine as being Satan, the fallen angel, although it's a real serpent that Satan is using. For Augustine, Adam and Eve still died both spiritually and physically and their sin was transmitted to their descendants in one of two ways. Augustine never makes up his mind, he holds both a seminal identity theory and a theory of concupiscence. The very act of procreation is infected with sin because of concupiscence. Therefore all of the descendants acquire this sinfulness. But that has a problem too, because that means a physical act is contaminating man's spirit, which Augustine wouldn't grant.

One thing Augustine did was to really emphasize free will. In fact, Augustine emphasized it so much, that it turns out that the story in Genesis has nothing to do with the fall. Augustine said that Satan fell by his free will, but actually Adam and Eve decided to turn away from God before the temptation. The temptation actually had nothing to do with it. So when you follow Augustine's reasoning to its logical conclusion, it's just a question of spontaneous free will, and the story in Genesis is irrelevant.

Moreover, the doctrine of foreknowledge in Irenaeus and Augustine lead them to conclude that God wanted evil in the world, either as a justification for sending Christ, or to make the good appear more beautiful.

Another serious problem that both Irenaeus and Augustine have is that neither of them can explain why shame and concupiscence followed the fall. They come close when they say that because of their spiritual disobedience Adam and Eve incurred a physical disobedience: their flesh wouldn't obey their will. But logically, should that have manifested itself as gluttony if they had eaten a literal fruit? Why does eating a fruit lead to sexual lust? There's no connection there, and Irenaeus and Augustine were unable to make one.

The Unification view interprets the fruit symbolically, and says that God's prohibition was actually a command to Adam and Eve to refrain from a love relationship until they reached maturity. So, like the Irenaean view, Unification says that Adam and Eve were growing to perfection. God told them that if before they reached perfection they were to join together in a marital relationship -- which was their ultimate destiny -- they would short-circuit their love. Instead of joining themselves to God and then to each other, they would lose that connection with God. So according to Unification theology the serpent is a symbol for Satan, as in the other two versions. But in this instance Satan is Lucifer the archangel who actually developed a relationship with Eve. He was supposed to be Eve's servant, but he became envious of Adam and Eve because they enjoyed a special favor in God's eyes. The envy wasn't necessarily evil. For example, one could be envious of someone and want to emulate them or out-do them without necessarily having to destroy them. Envy can be used constructively or destructively. So Lucifer's envy, in the Unification view, was not evil at first. But his relationship with Eve gradually went past the point of God's prohibition, and Lucifer and Eve had something akin to a sexual relationship. At that point, Eve went to Adam, and induced Adam to have a love relationship with her. In a sense, Lucifer usurped the position of God in their relationship, and spiritually, the human race that descended from Adam and Eve then had Lucifer in its lineage. As Jesus said, "You are of your father, the devil." Christ comes as a sinless man to become the new Adam, the source of the human race. There's more, but that gives you the main features of our understanding of the fall.

Darrol Bryant: Many questions come to mind, but I'm wondering if anyone wants to add a word about how that account of the fall links up with the practice of the Unification Church.

Jonathan Wells: In our practice, it means that the members of the Unification Church practice a very strict chastity. This is because we believe that our sexuality has to be restored. God originally intended for Adam and Eve to have a sexual relationship when they reached maturity. The fall was not sex itself but the prematurity of it. Restoration of that failure, then, requires a period of absolute chastity or celibacy to prepare ourselves for marriage by uniting with God first. When we reach sufficient individual maturity, then we marry.

Herbert Richardson: I'm a little confused about this prematurity thing. I'd like to know if Eve sinned because she had sexual relations before she was supposed to, or because she had sexual relations with a person with whom she was not supposed to. That is, let's suppose that Eve had become the right age. Then would it have been all right for her to have a sexual relationship with Satan? Because then it wouldn't be premature.

Jonathan Wells: No.

Herbert Richardson: Well, why not? You've stressed the prematurity factor, but it could go another way if we ask why did Satan seduce Eve sexually? Why didn't Satan just provoke Adam and Eve to have a sexual relationship with each other too early? I think that there's some kind of question here about whether it's the partner, or whether it's the prematurity.

Jonathan Wells: I think both elements enter into the picture. If we look at the probable dynamics of a boy and a girl growing to maturity, it's actually very unlikely that given God's commandment they would have united prematurely without the presence of Lucifer.

Herbert Richardson: Yes, but the question is whether the presence of Lucifer couldn't have been just as efficacious in inducing them to have premature sexual relations with each other. One of the big problems in your account is how it is the case that there could be such a thing as a sexual relation between a flesh-and-blood woman and Lucifer who doesn't have a body? You then have to have some notion of spiritual sexual intercourse. You wouldn't have this problem, if you would go the route I suggested and have Lucifer inducing Adam and Eve to a premature sexual relationship.

Theologian X: You pointed out that both Augustine and Irenaeus seem to envisage the serpent as the real carnal form that Satan takes -- I think one can construe Augustine and Irenaeus that way. I wonder if one of the reasons you might have referred to that was that in this version of the myth that you're offering it is thought to be the case that there was a carnal serpent who actually did, in some rather outlandish way, copulate with Eve? How do you deal with this formidable problem of envisaging a spiritual being having intercourse with a physical woman?

Jonathan Wells: I would have to argue that the idea of a sexual relationship between Eve and Lucifer is not all that implausible if we accept other biblical passages which talk about angels eating a meal, putting Jacob's thigh out of joint, and appearing in quite substantial forms to a variety of biblical figures.

Herbert Richardson: Can we have sexual relations today with angelic beings? Could you or I have a sexual relation with an angelic being today? Do we have any cases of it in the Unification Church? (laughter) I don't think it's just a funny thing, we really have a question. If you are really going to take this story in that kind of straight-forward, literal way and talk about it as the structure of reality, then it's a problem if those kinds of relationships have ceased.

Theologian X: I'd like to get back to hermeneutics again. Herb said that Jon was making a literal rendering of the text, but Jon himself said it was symbolic. I'd like to ask why the symbolism went in the direction it did when it could have gone in the other direction. For example, why are you concerned about the issue of sex at all? If we take Augustine and Irenaeus out of the picture for a minute and just look at the biblical text, there is no mention of sex at all. You interpreted the sense of shame, covering up genitalia with fig leaves, or whatever it was, as indicating that the original sin was sexual in nature. But certainly the text does not say that. If one is permitted a symbolic interpretation, which I think we have every right to -- this shame, to me, most likely, is a shame for the broken relationship with God in its entirety, not sex in particular. First of all, phenomenologically, there's more than one reason that we might want to cover up our private parts. That is, it's not just for sexual reasons, but it also happens to be the dirtiest part of the body, too. And we know in some cultures, there are other reasons besides sex for covering up those parts of the body. But more important, in terms of interpreting the significance of the Adam and Eve story with the benefit of historical-critical analysis, is the insight that the Adam-Eve story is a microcosm of the history of Israel with God. Hence, the problem is the broken covenant. The commandment against adultery is only one small part of this very large and complex relationship with God. And the Adam and Eve story is a very simplified version of this. So it would be impossible to think of the sin of the human race over against God in its entire complexity being represented there in the story, and not simply premature sexual relations which I would see as only one aspect of sin.

Anthony Guerra: Could I speak first of all to the question of hermeneutics? The Divine Principle makes certain exegetical judgments in accord with some interpreters of the Old Testament that the words used in the Genesis account point to a sexual relationship as the origin of the human fall. Words like "to know," "picking the fruit" happen to be used in the original language to refer to a sexual relationship. Further, the history of religious analysis, the historical method, shows that there are exact parallels with other traditions in the area which are quite explicitly about a sexual relationship.

Theologian X: Yes, but the issue is idolatry. When Israel is in Canaan, the kind of religion that you have in Canaan is a fertility religion. The main dimension of the worship involved cultic prostitution. The first commandment has to do with which God you worship. So it's not fornication in the modern sense of violating a social more, but it's fornication in the sense of actually choosing a religion other than the religion of Yahweh, and that's the reason for the profundity of sexual language there. It's not the same issue that we have today. The sexual language represents the entire confrontation of the religion of Yahweh with an alien culture.

Anthony Guerra: That's not my point. The point is what it meant then. Your interpretation is certainly plausible, but another interpretation is that it is a sexual relationship -- and that it's referring to a concern for lineage, for families and a certain kind of adultery.

Virginia Hearn: I don't think Genesis 3 uses the verb "to know" in connection with Eve and Satan.

Mose Durst: I think the story can be interpreted in terms of the misdirection of love. Here's why. If the ideal of human growth is to perfect one's love, to manifest God's love and to become a reflection of that divine love, then the failure to reflect that divine love, the failure to mature, the misdirection of love, the idolatry of love focused on something other than divine love becomes manifest in the brokenness of one's will, the brokenness of one's relationship to the world. In Unification theology, the ground upon which we stand in relationship to the world is divine love. If we mature, then we can have a complete relationship to God, to each other and to the world, and understand our full value. If we misdirect that love, as happened in the Adam and Eve story in the temptation with the serpent, we don't reflect an eternal love, we don't reflect the universal love, we don't reflect the God-centered love but we reflect an idolatrous love. So it's both the partner and timing that's wrong. The direction, the attachment, the prematurity, all these things are misdirected.

Theologian X: Oh, I agree with that whole-heartedly, and I think you're right. My question was more formal. Why bother with all the fuss about the Adam and Eve story to say what you just said. I think what you just said is very fine, but I don't think we need these gymnastics with Genesis 3 in order to support that.

Mose Durst: Rev. Moon spent nine years in the hills of Korea meditating and praying about this. His great insight was that this in fact happened. For Rev. Moon the relationship of Lucifer and Eve was a real relationship, there was a real spiritual relationship ] between this being called Lucifer and the human being Eve and that central act took place. His revelation was understanding that it was a real act. We need to understand the significance of that real act in order not to do the same thing. By understanding the nature of the specific act rather than a general idea like pride, by knowing the specific act, we gain a certain power to withstand the temptation to repeat the act.

Darrol Bryant: What is the specific act that we might repeat? Would each of us repeat a relationship with Satan?

Mose Durst: Not necessarily with Satan, but premature love relations, the desire to enter into a love relationship that's immature.

Neil Duddy: The main thing that strikes me as interesting, is that you have a device for exegeting that passage that leads to an "ideal." I believe that you pad the Scripture with other material. Thus when you read the Adam and Eve story you do so in terms of your most positive features: the ideal family and what it should be. So rather than focusing on what traditionally might be held as a negative aspect of evil, that passage has for you the purpose of providing a very positive vehicle for what life should have been like before the fall.

Herbert Richardson: I don't think that Unification theology actually derives from an interpretation of these texts Jonathan was using. I think that the texts on which it is based are different texts, texts which are usually completely overlooked in many Christian denominations.

The device is exactly what Dr. Durst was offering us. What is salvation? Look at Scripture and see what Scripture tells us salvation is. Salvation is portrayed in Scripture under the symbol of marriage. The eschatological banquet is a marriage banquet. We, in waiting for Christ, wait as the wise and foolish virgins. They are waiting for the coming of the bridegroom. The Song of Songs talks about the ultimate eschatological beatitude under the rubric of marriage. St. Paul talks about our being brides of Christ. In the Old Testament, the word for sin is adultery. The covenant is the bridal or the marriage covenant. The marriage imagery and symbols pervade the Scripture, and they are the ones that are finally decisive for describing what it is to be united with God. Then, at this point, you just make the obvious theological move and say, "Well, obviously, that which is most sinful is that which strikes most centrally at what salvation is." What is salvation? It is being brides of Christ. It is marriage with God. Therefore what sin is would be that which would most strike at the marriage union. What is that? Adultery.

In a sense, then, it isn't really read back in. One has to realize that the interpretation of a particular text in the Scripture doesn't rest just on what you find in that particular text, but rests on what you find in a number of other texts that are taken to illuminate it. It is the same as when you read a novel and try to understand a particular sentence. You don't understand the sentence by just taking it out and analyzing those words, you understand that sentence by understanding how that sentence functions in the story and relates to other things. Now, I think that in Christianity the teaching that salvation involves becoming united with Christ in marriage, with God in marriage, is at the heart of Scripture. I think that many churches have failed to emphasize this point. But they've only failed to emphasize that by failing to interpret certain kinds of texts in the Scripture. For example, who of us have heard preachers talk about the wise- and-foolish-virgins parable in terms of an eschatological inter pretation? It's usually understood in a moralistic way. I think that's simply wrong, if you look at the Scripture. It is by a reading of the whole Scripture that one can rightly understand the text. Likewise, it is in the light of their whole reading of Scripture that Unification theology reads Genesis. That's where I think the matter rests.

However, there is another matter that hasn't come out here and that is that Unification theology is not so interested in the doctrine as in the behavior. What I'd like to ask at this point is this: if it is the case that salvation involves, not just marriage, but becoming brides of Christ, is it the case that in the Unification Church, the Blessing, the marriage ceremony is not just a union which puts two people together in marriage, but actually puts two people together in Christ? Is Rev. Moon functioning, in this way, as some kind of a Christ figure, so that when people are blessed, what is really happening is that they are getting united with Christ? It seems to me that if this is the symbolism of the Church, if it is, then it must be the case that the Blessing involves, not just people being united with each other, but also being united in some kind of mystical marriage with the one who represents the Christ. That's what I think is the case. Isn't that true?

Jonathan Wells: What do you mean by the one who represents the Christ?

Herbert Richardson: Well, I'm assuming that when Rev. Moon and Mrs. Moon perform these marriages that what is being created is the family. But it is very interesting what kind of family is being created. At the anthropological level, in an African tribe, when you get married to somebody, you don't just marry the person, you marry her whole family. Families get married. And it seems to me that within the Unification Church, the Blessing is not just understood as two people getting married, but they get married, in a sense, into the family, and I would think that they really marry Rev. Moon and Mrs. Moon. And the married couple, in a sense, become brother-in-law and sister-in-law to everybody else in the movement. It must operate that way.

Durwood Foster: You used another phrase that is intriguing to me, "in some mystical way. "I think that begs a lot of questions, but it would be interesting to get some response on this from members of the Church.

By the way, let me say that I agree with your suggestion and your exposition that the doctrine of sin is really a reflex derivation from the vision of salvation. I think that's true at bottom in Unification theology as it's true in biblical theology. The story of the fall is there in Genesis 3 because in the dynamics of biblical theology it came in as a reflexive derivation from the vision of faithfulness to Yahweh. So there isn't a disjuncture between Unification and the Bible hermeneutically at that point. But to go ahead with my other point, what seems to be missing, if this is merely "some mystical way" in which the newly-weds are joined to the Rev. Moon, is the physical connection. Already with Christ, we did and do have a mystical connection, which many of us feel is sufficient, if I may say so. But what Unification theology seems to be proposing is that there is something drastically needed beyond that, namely a making good of what has gone physically wrong, the contamination that was originally introduced through the union between Eve and Satan. What would seem to be needed in addition to the mystical union with Rev. and Mrs. Moon, is some kind of physical union also. We might just leave that as a question. Is there any way in which the Unification interpretation seeks to supply that, or make good what otherwise seems to be a gap at that point?

Herbert Richardson: I'm sure we're moving into the area where everybody's getting very nervous. Everyone should realize why, when one comes down this road to see how the logic of this system works, people who've thought about this would suggest that there must be some sort of physical relation between Rev. Moon and Mrs. Moon and the other people. Then, they get involved in all kinds of fantasies which I think are mad, but I can understand why people get confused here. What is that physical relationship between Rev. Moon and the other people that must happen if the symbol system is genuinely to operate without a gap at this point?

Jonathan Wells: I think the best way I could describe it would be to use the traditional term, sanctification. But in the traditional Christian approach all we have is a spiritual union with Jesus. Wouldn't it be nice to have Jesus here with us, physically, in the room, directing us, kicking us, pushing us out to witness to Him, guiding our lives, inspiring us. The very fact that we're still fallen means that having a spiritual connection with Jesus while necessary, isn't sufficient. Our relationship with Rev. Moon is part of the sanctifying process, it's a very direct day-to day transmission of a living tradition, a physical act of world- involving tradition. That's the relationship.

Neil Duddy: I think it's more than that though. The sacra mental aspect in Christian life would illustrate a physical kind of relationship with Jesus. We eat His body and drink His blood, and some people think that it's really Jesus' blood. So that's moving along that path. I think there is some ceremony in the Blessing ceremony itself which does deal with that question. Now, whether we want to discuss that here, I don't know.

Herbert Richardson: I don't think that there's any need to talk about particular things, but just to know that there is something there, that the problem is recognized liturgically. I think what Jonathan said is absolutely right. The word is actually "attendance": to be in attendance upon and with this person in a living, loving way. I'm just struck by the wedding rings that are given by Rev. Moon both to the husband and to the wife, is that right?

David Kim: No, the rings are bought by Headquarters. They are not given to the bridal couple directly by Rev. Moon himself. People seem to make some kind of trouble or difficulty out of everything, and then put the blame on Rev. Moon. The real question is this: Why do we emphasize all the time, and in every way the fall of man? Because the fall of man is the very cause of the problem of this universe. God's heart is broken. His divine love toward mankind is lost. He is no longer sovereign. Satan is in the place of God, and the World has been in this mess for 6,000 years. It's really messed up! If you are a competent doctor, you have to diagnose the cause of the disease.

The Unification Principle gives some workable prescription for the cause of evil in the world. That's very important. In the family, husband and wife must be loyal and faithful to each other as life-time partners. If the husband goes to another man's wife every weekend for sex, or the wife changes her husband every week with another man for sex (this is actually happening in this adulterous world), then what kind of strange acts and behavior would result! This is just one example or illustration. What is the cause behind these real symptoms evident in our society? You have to know the cause in order to solve the problem. Like a criminal investigator in a criminal case, you have to find the causes, otherwise there is no real solution. Even though husband and wife may live together, and sleep together in the same bed, the problem still remains. So we must find the cause of these universal problems.

What do we teach in theology? What do courses in systematic theology teach in the seminaries? Fortunately or unfortunately, I have attended two seminaries since coming to this country in 1959 as a Unification Church missionary. I enjoyed systematic theology very much. Systematic theology teaches about Creation and the fall of man, about Jesus Christ and the Second Coming. The doctrine of the fall in systematic theology says that there is no solution to the fall of man, human theories cannot answer the mystery of the fall, only God knows. That was the conclusion then. The Unification Principle, however, explains and clarifies the true story of the fall of man. It is based not only on empirical data, but it is also biblically oriented. First of all: the fall of the first human ancestors actually took place. The story of the fall has to do with our ancestors' act of adultery or fornication. That is a revelation from God to Rev. Moon in his early years -- a revelation from Jesus Christ and God. Many psychics or spiritually sensitive people in Korea and throughout the world, often saw in the past, and see even now, visions or scenes which took place at the time of the fall just as if they were watching a TV screen. These revelations and visions are seen and received by devoted Christian groups. They were revealed to one group of uneducated women during deep and intensive prayer, but these women were unable to interpret the scenes until they heard the adulterous act between Archangel, Eve and Adam explained by the teachers of the Unification Church.

Unfaithful acts between a husband and wife are adulterous and illegal even according to existing secular laws and constitute grounds for divorce and punishment. If someone takes another man's wife and commits adultery, he will break the law, isn't that so? The same thing applies to our first ancestors, Adam and Eve. According to the law of God, since the fall of man, Satan has been controlling mankind and the world for 6,000 years with his secret crime unexposed. Satan is using this as his weapon to control mankind. Sexual love is polluted by Satan. This most precious love now becomes the most dirty, and just as commercialized as the cheapest commodity. Recently in this country horrible pornography has been encouraging unnatural sexual relationships even between animals and human beings. Very recently one incident of pornography happened on one of the college campuses in New York City. Our CARP is fighting this issue now. In one of the on-campus student newspapers, a picture appeared in which a Catholic nun was masturbating with a crucifix, a cross. Nobody on the campus protested. They were afraid to speak out against such an insulting and blasphemous act. But Moon people got upset and involved themselves in the issue by making a big demonstration. We put up a fight. We aroused public opinion for the sake of Christianity and other religions. As a result of our initiative, that daily campus newspaper is suspended and is going to be out of publication soon. In other words, this kind of stuff is currently affecting whole campuses throughout the United States, not to mention in other countries.

Promiscuity and immorality are infiltrating everywhere. The Catholic faith was blasphemed and insulted, but no one from the religious world stood up and spoke out to confess and defend their own beliefs in the face of this kind of threat and challenge from Satan's power.

The fundamental problem of the universe begins with the fall of man. That is why we have to study the fall of man very thoroughly and diagnose it properly and precisely. Otherwise we cannot solve the problems. Where will the solution come from? Philosophy? It doesn't understand the fall of man. Sociology? It emphasizes phenomena and structure, and is not concerned with causes. Theology? It is the science of God, and I still believe in it personally. Of course I am conservatively oriented, but I believe a thorough study of human problems must come from the field of theology.

This is the reason why the Unification Principle emphasizes the fall and is very serious about it, and constantly talks about the fall of man as the root of human problems. The fall was a real incident. Because of the fall, Unification people believe, God is not liberated yet, and His creation is not complete. Satan is the god of this world, not God, our Heavenly Father. The Bible mentions clearly that Jesus is not the King of Kings, because the prince of the world is still Satan. Evangelicals must agree with us on this point. If we don't believe in the Bible, then we have no basis for discussion. If we believe in it, we must think seriously about the fall of man. Why do we emphasize this all the time? It is the root and the cause of the problem of the universe and mankind.

If we know what happened in the beginning, clarify the problem and solve it, God's love will directly come to us. The other Christians will be elevated to a higher level than where they are now. We Unification people are a little bit more advanced on this point. I prefer to call us Unification Christians. Unfortunately many Christians are persecuting us.

Theologian X: Just a moment! I thought it was a little more complicated than that. I just want to ask you this question. I agree that the fall is a problem. My only question is, why is the entire fall thought of in terms of only one sin, the sexual sin? Because there are all kinds of other sins that are in evidence.

David Kim: Adultery is the issue. Sex in itself is not sin. Sex at the wrong time, in the wrong place, with the wrong partner is sinful. This is the adultery, fornication and unnatural lust described in the Scripture. You have to go back to the purpose of God's creation, and find out why God created Adam and Eve, then you have to sort it all out and explain it logically and systematically. Our Unification message is, I believe, helpful in understanding the fall of man as the source of universal problems which surround mankind. We don't necessarily say that we have all the answers to all the problems.

Rev. Moon, although he receives many things from God, cannot say everything. Even Jesus said 2,000 years ago, "I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them..." Rev. Moon receives much knowledge from God, but he cannot tell all of it to his followers, just as in Jesus' time. In the book, Divine Principle, we have some of the things he received from God, and because of it, he is labeled the heretic of heretics, and is persecuted and accused as a seeker for political power, both by the traditional Christians and by the Fraser Committee.¹ Already with the Divine Principle book, we have too many problems with this world. Ten years ago the situation was much worse than at present, but still there are things in the Divine Principle book that are disagreeable to many people.

Darrol Bryant: Several people want to respond. But please make it brief so we can take a break for coffee.

Anthony Guerra: Mr. Kim's contribution expresses one of the ways in which, if you read the Divine Principle, we approach the problem of sin. We look at the sociological phenomenon of the break-up of the family and we see this as a major factor in the decline of society. If you think about something which would be the most painful emotional experience in your life, then I think most people would say it would be if their spouse left them and had sexual relations with someone else. We might intellectualize about it, but people I know to whom that's happened have been torn up by it. I know a professor that's happened to, and it's one of the most painful things in his life. What the Divine Principle does in its doctrine of the fall is look at that psycho-social-spiritual phenomenon and say that's the symptom, what's the cause? Then, it goes back and says, here's the cause. That's, I think, the hermeneutic principle.

Theologian X: Why is the fall of man theologically equated ' I with adultery when there are other sins to be accounted for?

Anthony Guerra: This is the point of keeping the story of the fall as a story. The way it's presented in the Divine Principle is as a kind of mytho-poetic expression, rather than a scientific, theological statement. It talks specifically about personal relationships. It involves both an ontology and specific human beings. If you read the Divine Principle, the problem of the fall is something which is a problem of the development of two human beings and their relationship with God and also with the angelic world. In this relationship there was supposed to be unity. They were the two beings who first had the spiritual capacity to relate to God as His children. They also, because they were the first, needed some kind of nurturing. Everyone else was going to have parents, how were they going to be raised up? How was God going to communicate to them? He was going to do this through the already created spiritual beings, i.e. the angels. So now you have the scenario: God who is the Creator-Father, the angelic world which is to assist in the completion of creation, that is, the perfection of Adam and Eve, and Adam and Eve who are to grow, reach perfection and marry. Now, the Divine Principle says that there began to be a problem in terms of the way the angel and Eve were relating, and also in the way Adam and Eve were relating. The Divine Principle says Lucifer became jealous of Adam, there was envy. A whole number of sins that we normally talk about are put in the context of the disordering of personal spiritual relationships. The fall, or the premature sexual act, is simply the dramatic high point or consummation of that disordering, of that failure to center our lives in God. Why is it so critical? It is critical precisely because of what I spoke about before: the centrality of the family in the human order. Sin is what now perverts the unit that gives life to humanity: the family. Once that relationship is interfered with it has consequences. It is not a simple matter.

Theologian X: Let me just ask a quick yes or no question based on what Mr. Kim said. Do you permit or advocate interracial marriage?

Anthony Guerra: Oh, yes! Interracial marriage is central to what we are all about. What we are trying to do in marriage is to reconstitute the body of Christ, that is, the family of humanity as one family under God. At this latest matching² there were over 100 black people, and those black people were the first to be matched. Rev. Moon asked, "Who are the white people who would like to marry a black person?" Then many of them were matched interracially. Because we seek to constitute the body of Christ, the one family of humanity, of God, interracial marriage is seen as essential to that process of building a united humanity. In his speech at the Blessing, Rev. Moon spoke about the "love race." We must create a love race and a love culture: "What color are you? You are love color."

Patricia Zulkosky: At the same time there's no sense in which you are coerced to marry someone from other than your race, but it's perfectly open for you if you desire that.

Anthony Guerra: But it's really encouraged. This is one of the reasons I personally love Rev. Moon. There are a lot of liberal ministers I know, who get up and say, "We're for interracial unity," but I've never heard a minister say, "God would really like you white people to marry a black person." I've never heard any minister say that, except Rev. Moon.

David Kim: Actually Anthony's wife to be is Korean and he is Italian; Mike's wife to be is Japanese and he is American; Jonathan is engaged to an American woman. But all the matchings are according to their wishes, no coercion is involved. I was with Rev. Moon for 15 hours during the matching process. I thought that my knowledge and skill in matching was 85% correct in the past, but this time I gave up and completely disqualified myself. I suggested quite a number of couples to Rev. Moon, but he had a far better idea, as I can now see from the fruits. I got only one out of 20 cases, and 19 cases I flunked. So Rev. Moon is the "heavenly matchmaker. "I don't know why you got off in this direction from the topic of the fall of man. (laughter)

You theologians may like to know where Rev. Moon gets that kind of capability to make 705 excellent matches in 15 hours. I think you may be interested in what he said about it himself: "I have two special lenses..." Rev. Moon can see things spiritually and physically, and then match the candidates in all aspects of spirit and body. Right after the matching ceremony, during the State Directors' conference, he confessed, "I don't remember who is matched to whom anymore. I remember just one of the three famous Sheeran sisters, and she is working as a state director in West Virginia. The rest of them I don't remember." Here is my interpretation: When Rev. Moon stands up he acts as a channel for God in the matching process, the Spirit of God is working through him.

In some cases, people came back a second time for rematching after a disagreement between the two. "What happened to you?" Rev. Moon curiously asked one couple. The girl answered, "That brother rejected me." All during the long hours of the matching process, Rev. Moon remembered clearly whom he sent out with whom. Here is a very interesting and true story of which I was an eye-witness in Korea during the 1,800 couple matching. Once Rev. Moon recommended three matches, one right after the other. In their hurry and excitement, they somehow got mixed up on their way out of the hall, and couldn't remember which sister should go with which brother for consultation and talking. In a few minutes, wrong couples were formed before they went out of the hall. Suddenly Rev. Moon intervened in the mixed-up situation, and said as he regrouped the couples according to his original recommendations: "No, no, no, that one come here with this person, you go join that person over there..." In this way he cleared up all the confusion in the wrongly matched group. I was standing beside him, but didn't remember which one had been matched to whom. Rev. Moon remembered, though, precisely and in detail. I am totally amazed by his actions.

Therefore you have to remember that the matching process is not solely the doing of Rev. Moon himself, but is an act of God. God is alive and I believe God is using Rev. Moon because Rev. Moon's heart and love are directly connected to God. When he was 16 years old, still a young lad, he inherited a heavenly heart and heavenly secrets from Jesus and God. Unfortunately he is from the Orient, a yellow man, so many people persecute him in this country and throughout the world. If he were a white man, the Kingdom of God might already have been established! In conclusion, I personally believe that Rev. Moon's act in matching, engagement and marriage is truly an act of God. I have talked too much already.

Darrol Bryant: Let's break for coffee.

Notes:

1 Donald M. Fraser was Chairman of the Subcommittee on International Organization of the House of Representatives' Committee on International Relations when it investigated the Unification Church as part of an investigation of Korean-American relations.

2 Reference is to the matching of 1410 members of the Unification Church by Rev. Moon on May 12, 1979, just three weeks prior to this conference.