The Divine Principle from a Unification Thought perspective

The Second Blessing, part 4

Let me begin this by saying that this Second Great Blessing and the four types of love  — Genesis 1:28 (the one to “multiply”) — is a core teaching of Father and Mother Moon’s ministry. And so there are volumes, volumes, and more volumes of material on this topic in their books, speeches and sermons, taught throughout the entire course of their public lives. Counting just the Exposition of the Divine Principle (about 400 pages) and the three Holy Books (about 6000 pages) — which are only part of the much more extensive material which has not been translated into English — we could still be overwhelmed by the amount of material that’s available.

It’s here where, yet again, Unification Thought has become an invaluable resource for me. The reason is that, in the decades before these huge tomes appeared, Dr. Lee had already been poring over so many of those speeches, sermons and books that had largely been unavailable in English. He then distilled the information into concise chapters in the Unification Thought books.

I find that the sections in the New Essentials of Unification Thought textbook which open up the Second Great Blessing are mainly in the sixth chapter (Ethics), in the Appendix, and in the fourth chapter (Axiology).

To get started, let’s review the Second Great Blessing as summed up in the Divine Principle:

“God’s second blessing was to be fulfilled by Adam and Eve after they had achieved individual perfection as object partners to God…. In order to construct the four position foundation in their family, Adam and Eve should have joined in loving oneness as husband and wife and raised children.… When God’s second blessing is fulfilled, this family or community also become a good object partner giving joy to God.” • Exposition of the Divine Principle (EDP), p. 34

I’ll be using ideas from Unification Thought that reference “individual perfection”, the “four position foundation”, child-rearing and “family or community…giving joy to God” because those are the ideas that the Unification Thought Theory of Ethics is built around. In the New Essentials of Unification Thought textbook (hereafter NEUT), it states:

“Within the Divine Principle there are three foundational points upon which this theory of ethics is established. The first is God’s true love; the second is the family four position foundation; and the third is the three object purpose.” • NEUT, p. 280

These three points are more than enough to start with today, so let’s begin looking:

God’s True Love

The first foundation point is “God’s true love” and it acknowledges that we came into existence because of the need within God’s heart. This ethics doesn’t start with some observed goodwill to others that’s innate within us, but it starts with a love beyond us that caused our existence. God essentially desired someone (an “object”) who could fully receive and freely return love. And that generous Divine love enables us to relate with God and with each other; it express outwardly in our personal relationships.

Which leads to the second foundation point of the Theory of Ethics: the family with four positions (God, father, mother and children) is the conduit of God’s love. The book says:

“…God’s love is manifested through the family… as parents’ love, husband and wife’s love and children’s love.” • NEUT, p. 280

Manifested in Four Types of Love

So originally, God’s love was intended to come to us through our own family. And this is closely tied to the third foundational point: Each one of the four positions relates to the other three. Specifically,

• God loves the husband, wife and children;
• the husband loves God, his wife, his children;
• the wife loves God, her husband, her children;
• the children love God, their father, their mother.

So these loves flowing between ourselves and the members of our family are not just our own love for each other, but they represent the love that God feels for each of us. Through our loving interactions, God’s love also is to be conveyed and felt.

The point that’s being made is a remarkable one: that God’s love is experienced most directly through the four different positions in a person’s own family. And it comes in different flavors — NEUT puts it this way:

“…love has twelve directions, because the person in each of the four positions has a different kind of love for each of the three object partners, respectively. Consequently, various kinds of love, with different nuances come to appear…” • NEUT, p. 281–2

Before I learned this perspective in my early 20s, I’d become certain that God, if He existed, would be discovered in nature. To find God, I’d have to escape human society. So this idea that God’s original intention was to come to me through the members of my immediate family was a surprising and unexpected revelation.

But as I’ve considered Father and Mother Moon’s teaching over the years, and gradually come to understand the intention of the original design, my experience has changed. I now know that God originally intended to give True Love to me, directly through the members of my own immediate family.

I clearly remember a day long ago when Father Moon told us that we had to take care of our parents. And he told us that if we didn’t have them, that we should go outside and find an old couple to move into our house and love and care for! That went right to my heart, because I’m an only son, and my Confucian wife and I had worried about how to attend my aging parents.

Through this guidance, I gradually came to recognize that God had tried to love me all my life — through my own father’s love for me, and through my own mother’s love for me, despite our differences and disagreements. So that now, when I use their dinnerware, wear his overcoat or shirts she made, or read his prayers and use their gifts, I feel their hearts — and through them, God’s. So I thank God daily for that remarkable feeling, and Father and Mother Moon and their disciples — my teachers — for taking me to that deeper understanding.

To a different degree, I can also now perceive God’s love coming to me through my extended family — uncles, aunts and cousins. (Fortunately, they practice their faith so prayer and the sacraments are part of the fabric of their lives.)

The fifth realm of True Love in the family

So, back in ’66, the Divine Principle mentioned three types of love: parental, conjugal and childrens’ love. Later, I learned that the fourth realm of heart is siblings’ love. But in 2006, when the New Essentials of Unification Thought came out, I read this:

Grandparents belong to the past and they are the king and queen of the past. It means that they were king and queen on earth in the past. Then, what is their status now? They are still king and queen. However, they are no longer a king and queen representing the earth, but a king and queen representing the spirit world. Furthermore, they are a king and queen representing God. In other words, grandparents represent the spirit world and God. Accordingly, the four position foundation centered on God as explained in the Divine Principle is also the four position foundation centered on grandparents in the original world. Therefore, from now on, grandparents will be the center of the family four position foundation, representing God and the True Parents of humankind. Hence, the position of grandparents is that of God, which is the highest in the family and, therefore, children and grandchildren have to attend their grandparents in the most respectful manner. • NEUT, p. 544

This was a remarkable statement, with uncanny resemblance to my own 3-generation family experience. (As soon as we could after receiving Father Moon’s instructions to care for our parents, we moved mine into the master bedroom of our house. Because of their healthy religious life, our 3-generation family was blessed with an unusual glimpse into our teachings about family.) So I looked further into the aforementioned Holy Books that were published decades after the Divine Principle and found where UT had gotten this from. Here are just two of many explanations:

…Your grandfather is the special envoy of heaven. If Adam’s family had not fallen, the grandfather would have been attended like God. Your grandfather is the last remaining master amongst your ancestors who have all passed away to the spirit world throughout history. Consequently, he is God’s representative… (246-198, 1993.4.16)

…When you look at a family, you find a grandfather and grandmother, a father and mother, and sons and daughters. This makes three generations. All throughout history, this is the way it has always been. The grandparents represent your ancestors in heaven who have passed away to the spirit world. They are the ambassadors plenipotentiary sent to your household. So, like whom should you attend your grandfather and grandmother? You should attend them like God. By attending them in this way, heaven will begin. (226-56, 1992.2.1)

So it now seems that after the first parents had fulfilled the first blessing (“oneness” with God) and in time become grandparents, God intended to become “visible” to that family especially through those grandparents, when they reached the age of 50 and even more so beyond it. So everything falls together into a pretty remarkable picture. To see what I mean, try stepping back and looking at the four position foundation; try imagining that:

• children would be born to parents in their 20s who had reached a basic oneness with God
• they’d have grandparents in their 50s who were a couple of decades into strengthening and building upon that oneness; and
• they’d even have great-grandparents in their 70s, who’d been building oneness for nearly 50 years.
• And because of the increasing spiritual depth of these three generations of parents, grandparents and great-grandparents, God’s love would flow increasingly into the everyday lives of their family members.

In this picture, children would be born into an extended family that was filled to overflowing with many different cross-currents of God’s love. Without the human fall, our first ancestors would have become one in heart with God (Father Moon says this would have been in their 20s) and as they aged to their 50s, their 70s and beyond, they would grow to understand God ever more deeply. And so God’s love would flow ever more fully into the family through each of its members, most especially through the grandparents. It’d be a pretty remarkable environment for a child to be born and raised in. And likewise for his dad and mom, for his elder siblings, for the four grandparents, for the eight great-grandparents, let alone for the cousins, aunts and uncles and their parents — it’d be quite the situation…

And those are some musings about the three Divine Principle foundation points in Unification Thought’s Ethics. Next time, we’ll get into how these play out in the theory. Till then, I hope you can try to find or express God’s love to your immediate family members. You are the most immediate channel God has to tell them they’re beloved. ❦