The Theology of True Parents

The importance of a new understanding in the Cheon Il Guk Era

Father and Mother Moon teach unchanging truth, but its expression is going through a change

I will present the 7th lecture in the series that we’ve been following on the Theology of True Parents, or the Christology of True Parents. And I’m adding a subtitle, “The Importance of a New Understanding in the Era of the Heavenly Kingdom (‘Cheonilguk era’ in Korean)”. This is adapted from a lecture by Jin-choon Kim entitled “Heavenly Parent’s Ideal and True Parents’ Lives”.

But first I will give an introduction to it.

The unchanging truth of God and its changing expression

The first part of it, is to understand Mother Moon‘s heart about the unchanging truth of God, while the reality is that the expression of that truth changes.

We’re very familiar with this from the introduction to the Divine Principle, which speaks a lot about the need for a new expression of truth, whilst at the same time pointing out that the scriptures that we have so far are but a textbook.

And sometimes you need to upgrade your textbook and learn something new. And Mother Moon, in almost every speech, says something like this,

“Our almighty and all-knowing God is the same at the beginning and at the end.” (Mother Moon Nov. 2023)

What she means by this is that God will definitely fulfill His dream, Her dream, the dream that was there at the very beginning of creation, when Adam and Eve were young and in the Garden.

Yes, history has been a miserable and long deviation from that. However, in the end, God will prevail. And because that’s the case, no matter what we do, or what happens, eventually God‘s will shall be fulfilled.

But as we know, it does depend on human responsibility as well, if it’s to happen in the shortest possible time.

Another way of saying this, of course, comes from the Book of Revelation 22;13, where God says,

“I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”

So, Mother Moon is simply articulating a well-known Biblical principle.

The truth, which maybe you could consider as the sun – the truth of God – is constant, but how we receive it depends on the stage of our spiritual growth.

It’s planted as a seed, as Jesus said in one parable, and then if we nurture that seed, our spiritual life grows and progresses. But if it falls on dry ground, stony ground, then it will never mature within us, which is the goal.

By the same token, God‘s revelation progresses according to our own spiritual growth, humanity as a whole. And as we heard […] this evening, we’ve come to a time when it’s time for all religions, including our own, to get off and move together to the final destination.

In the introduction to Divine Principle there’s a somewhat challenging space I excerpt here.

“It may be displeasing to religious believers, especially to Christians, to learn that a new expression of truth must appear. They believe that the scriptures they have are already perfect and flawless. Certainly, truth itself is unique, eternal, immutable and absolute. Scriptures, however, are not the truth itself, but are textbooks teaching the truth.” (Exposition of the Divine Principle, p7)

And later on, in the chapter on the Consummation of human history, there’s guidance for people who are faced in a time of change with new insights and new truths,

“Those who can perceive spiritual things, however, will understand the providence of the new age spiritually, and come to respond to it, even though they may face discrepancies between the new view of truth and that of the old age.” (Divine Principle, 1973 translation, p135)

It continues on the next page,

“We should not be attached to conventional ideas, but should at all costs find the new truth, leading us to the providence of the new age.” (Ibid. p136)

And believers in the Last Days

“must try to perceive spiritual things through humble prayer.” (Ibid. p136)

This is why Mother Moon is so keen on emphasizing the importance of devotion, of prayer. This is also why we do these long vigil prayers and many other conditions like the one we’re doing now because we need help from God to perceive spiritual things. And humble prayer is the way.

Father Moon said this back in the 1970s when I joined the movement,

“We must understand that the Divine Principle which you study is not all of the truth. It is just a small part of the total truth. There is a tremendous amount which you don’t understand yet.” (Unofficial notes from a speech by Father Moon titled “The Unification Theological Seminary”, 24^th April 1992.)

Of course, Mother Moon has recently been saying similar things.

“In the future, the Divine Principle will need many updates. It covers the time only until the 1960s. True Parents’ teachings cover the time after the 1960s. So therefore the True Parents’ scriptures must emerge.”

I guess it’s a matter of time. And particularly Mother Moon said,

“The section on the Second Coming in the second part of the Divine Principle has to be about the True Parents. Life is not born from man alone. God created both man and woman.”

And this theme, of course, underlies a lot of what Mother Moon is saying today.

We need to look again even at the Divine Principle, from a more balanced perspective. We are informed by the True Parents that only a couple, man and woman together, can provide salvation. God’s ideal is a couple together. God‘s very nature, as explained in Genesis 1;29, is male and female.

So let’s take another look at this statement from the Divine Principle. We’ll read it again.

“It may be displeasing to religious believers, especially to Christians, to learn that a new expression of truth must appear. They believe the scriptures they have are already perfect and flawless.”

And I’ve taken the liberty of updating this,

“It may be displeasing to religious believers, including Unificationists, to learn that a new expression of truth must appear. We believe that the scriptures we have are already perfect and flawless.”

And of course, Mother Moon is saying that they’re incomplete. There’s more to come.

And that’s why we’ve been studying for the last seven weeks, this new understanding of the True Parents’ Theology.

What are the main points of this lecture, which is actually a very complex one with enormously complicated slides? It’s really very simple.

1. God has had a dream since the Garden of Eden. It’s based on the fulfillment of the three blessings.

“God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and over the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” (Genesis 1;28)

That was the first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve in the garden.

The fulfillment of the three blessings and that ideal takes time. And finally, that Father and Mother Moon together, and only together, can fulfill the ideal.

2.  The life course of the True Parents can really be understood through three stages until now. And there’s one more to come.

There’s the early life of both Father and Mother Moon separately before the Holy Blessing.

Then there’s their victorious life together on earth after the Holy Blessing – a period of 52 years, which as we know, Mother Moon recently described in many ways as a wilderness course. Why?

Because even throughout that time, there was so little support from Christianity, from the nation of South Korea, and – let’s be honest –sometimes insufficient support and understanding from us members.

Then the third stage, which Mother Moon calls life belonging to the Kingdom of Heaven (“Cheonil-guk” in Korean), which really began with Foundation Day in 2013, with Father Moon ascended in heaven and Mother Moon still on earth.

And then in the future, there will be that time when both Father and Mother Moon are ascended in heaven. But of course, we’re not there yet, and so more understanding may come later.

And finally, Dr. Jin-choon Kim closes with a focus on,

“So what? What should our responsibility be? What should our focus be in this time, to keep going?”

And I am particularly going to share about the type of person Heaven needs us to be. Heavenly Parent’s dream back in the beginning, and forever will be the fulfillment of the three great blessings – we know it well – which will lead to, in due course, ideal couple, ideal children and family, and an ideal world.

This is the fundamental truth underlying everything else that we study in the Divine Principle.

But usually, at least for myself, I’ve always thought of the three blessings as some kind of series. You do the first one then the second one, and then the third one.

The first blessing is to become an ideal individual, and the second blessing is to reach family perfection and create an ideal family – which, of course, Mother Moon did – that is to spread throughout the world.

And then finally to have perfection and dominion over all things, both the things of creation, but also creating a society that is comfortable and secure.

But, you know, it doesn’t really happen that way. I think any spouse who’s honest will admit,

“I’m not a perfect spouse. I’m still working on it, even though I now have a family.”

I think a truer look is that these things are continuous and interlinked. And in the beginning, maybe when we receive the marriage blessing, the overlap between our own state of spiritual growth and the reality of our family life is quite small. And as for the third blessing, well, I know a lot of young couples who are really struggling to make ends meet.

But over time, these areas coalesce until that central area of overlap becomes very large.

So it takes time to fulfill the blessings – for the True Parents as well. It isn’t something that happens one, two, three. It’s a constant process. And this is what Dr. Kim wanted to emphasize.

When we think about the course of Father Moon, […] it involves a period of growth. Father and Mother Moon weren’t born perfect. They weren’t born with all knowledge, like the Buddha was supposed to have been, so that at birth he was already teaching. No, Mother Moon constantly emphasizes the need for growth.

And then came the day of the Holy Wedding, the anniversary of which we just celebrated, followed by the holy works of True Parents over 52 years and beyond.

So it’s important, then again, to recognize that – even when analyzing the lives of the True Parents – or our own lives, we’re gentle on ourselves and realize that it’s okay as long as we are moving forward.

Another way of looking at this that we’ve studied in the earlier lectures is that up until their Holy Blessing [1960], Father and Mother Moon had a slightly different course.

Mother Moon has talked about her role as the Only Begotten Daughter. Father Moon, on the other hand, never was himself the Only Begotten Son.

But what he emphasized was the fact that he was called by Jesus, and that he inherited the mission that Jesus could not fulfill.

Then after the Holy Blessing [1960], until Foundation Day [2013], the truth of the matter is that Father Moon was more involved in the external initiatives, creating many different organizations, traveling all over the world.

But gradually, from about 1995 onwards, it was Mother Moon who began to take over the role of teaching about the providence.

And of course, after Father Moon’s ascension, he is in the spirit world, but still always supports Mother Moon.

It’s on her shoulders now to complete the providence as she promised.

So in a sense, there’s nothing controversial here [in presentation of Dr. Jin-choon Kim which Dr. Balcomb based his lecture on].

And in terms of our outreach to Christianity, which Mother Moon talks about a lot, it’s incredibly important to emphasize the inheritance from Jesus. Otherwise, that door, I think, is largely closed.

But Christians with their minds and hearts open, and indeed Muslims, Hindus and others, can accept Mother Moon‘s claim that she has come as the Daughter of God.

So that’s why in the lectures that we’ve covered, we’ve emphasized that Father Moon is the Lord at the second advent who inherited Jesus’s mission, but he had to accept it for himself, and it wasn’t easy.

And Mother Moon is the first Only Begotten Daughter. […] She was chosen at birth, but still she had to accept and grow through the mission by herself.

And in one of the chapters, we studied the reality that if Jesus had been able to gain the support that he needed, he would have married an Only Begotten Daughter at that time. But because he couldn’t, that woman never appeared publicly.

And instead, the Holy Spirit appeared at Pentecost. We’ll be celebrating Pentecost with Mother Moon in just two weeks’ time.

This is the course, the separate but combined course, under the guidance of the Heavenly Parent.

And this is why the Holy Wedding has become the main Holy Day in our movement. Originally, as Father Moon explained many times, if Adam and Eve hadn’t fallen, the day of their wedding would have been the day of fulfillment of all these things.

So again – I’m emphasizing this – Father Moon had to inherit the course of Jesus, and he did, and Mother Moon had to accept her responsibility – and she’s spoken about it pretty eloquently recently – in order to come to the Holy Wedding.

And Mother Moon has been very frank, as I think every woman on this call would agree with. It’s not easy for someone who’s 17 to marry someone who’s 40. Actually, in her memoirs, Mother Moon said, “Father reminded me of my grandfather.”

But it wasn’t that easy for Father Moon either, because, as he mentioned, with such a difference in age and experience, it took several years for the True Parents to find the balance. And that was something that even God couldn’t really intervene in. It was their responsibility.

But through it and the appearance of True Parents, it became possible for the first time for salvation to be given to all humanity.

There are many ways that Dr. Kim is exploring this, but the key point is to understand that Providence is progressing and the things that Father and Mother Moon did while they were both alive on earth, and the things that Mother Moon has to do now are different.

And again, so what? The key point is not to dwell on the past, but to try to support Mother Moon as she moves forward. So […] recently, of course, we’ve been focusing on the course of Mother Moon. […]

Mother Moon points out that the prophecy of the Bride actually appears many times in the Bible, but it’s always been overlooked because over centuries of Christian interpretation, the Bride became spiritualized, perhaps to mean the church or the believers in the Last Days.

Christianity didn’t understand this fundamental point, that Jesus was meant to really marry and become humanity’s True Father, but he could not.

Mother Moon simultaneously carries the role of the Holy Spirit. After all, the Holy Spirit came to substitute for the True Mother who would have appeared at the first coming of the Messiah [at the time of Jesus].

There are lots of quotes about the nature of the Holy Spirit:

For the kingdom of God is a matter of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. (Rom 14:17)

When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth (John 16:13)

The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness. (Gal 5:22)

The Spirit helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us (Rom 8:26)

The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. (Rom 8:16)

Anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven. (Matt 12:32)

And when I read it, I realize this is really exactly what Mother Moon does. She comforts, she guides us into new truth. She always emphasizes the importance of kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and tries to help us when we’re weak.

So, thanks to Mother Moon!