The Femininity of God Revealed at Last

Closeness

The Divine Principle from a Unification Thought perspective

Last month, I celebrated the first anniversary of my son’s marriage blessing. So I’m in a good frame of mind to be thinking about this section of the Principle. The section is the one which explains the significance of the Second Great Blessing (Genesis 1:28) — the one to “multiply”.

The Second Blessing, part 3

The Principle reads:

“God’s second blessing was to be fulfilled by Adam and Eve after they had achieved individual perfection as object partners to God, each manifesting an aspect of God’s dual characteristics. 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.… The individual feels joy, and likewise God feels joy …when each perceives in this family… the manifestation of his own internal nature and external form.…” • Exposition of the Divine Principle (EDP), p. 34

What I want to look at this time is still in that first sentence: its last phrase states that each of the partners in a perfected couple manifests “an aspect of God’s dual characteristics”. The dual characteristics are those of masculinity and femininity (EDP, p. 16), and of internal nature and external form (EDP, p. 17).

These dual characteristics are mentioned in an earlier part of the Principle, and so we’d actually looked at them a little in the 16th installment of my posts, more than a year ago. But it doesn’t hurt to recap and there are a few things to add as well.

Dual Characteristics Challenge Traditional Beliefs

Firstly, it’s interesting how the Principle sequences its discussion of these two sets of characteristics. Just as you’d sometimes open a challenging conversation by speaking about something that’s familiar to everyone, the Principle addresses the duality of masculinity and femininity first, clearly assuming that this set is widely understood and accepted in Oriental philosophy. This is obvious to me in the way the Principle introduces the second pair of characteristics. It reads:

Yin Yang

“However, there is another pair of dual characteristics…which are even more fundamental to existence than the dual characteristics of yang and yin. Every entity possesses both an outer form and an inner quality. The visible outer form resembles the invisible inner quality… The inner quality is called internal nature, and the outer form or shape is called external form…” • EDP, p. 17

After providing evidence of the presence especially of internal nature in all things, it concludes that the First Cause of the universe must be the origin of internal nature. It soon follows with the assertion that the First Cause must also possesses masculinity and femininity, referring to and illuminating an intriguing passage in the bible: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gen. 1:27). It then concludes this section entitled “The Dual Characteristics of God”. The next section ends by emphasizing an important difference between the Divine Principle and traditional Oriental thought:

“East Asian metaphysics observes the universe exclusively from the viewpoint of yang and yin while failing to recognize that all things also possess internal nature and external form.… Hence, it does not comprehend that the Great Ultimate is a God with personality.” • EDP, p. 21

For an Asian person — someone with a Confucian, Buddhist, or Taoist background — this is revelatory. But for a Western reader with a Judeo-Christian background (culturally, even if not religiously), it doesn’t have the same significance. Why? It’s because the Abrahamic faiths have described a God who cares about His people, their lives, their choices, their destinies. He talks to them through prophets or visions, He gives them laws and scriptures; He listens to and answers their prayers; He provides for or disciplines them. So the understanding of a “God with personality” has been there since the time of Abraham, a few thousand years ago. You could say that it was there to lesser degrees even before. And that’s the end of Section 1. The Principle then moves on to other topics.

God is Equally Manifested in Masculinity and Femininity

But wait — there’s more to it: In the decades since that book was published, Father Moon has been more specific about the dual characteristics of masculinity and femininity. Back in 1966, the Divine Principle stated simply: “the yang and yin of God were manifested in masculinity and femininity” (EDP, p. 19) and then left it at that. The implications weren’t explained further and the discussion moved on to the subject-object relationship.

That obscurity reminds me of an observation that my philosophy professor at the seminary made: he admired the Principle not only for what it contained, but also for what it wisely chose to leave out. He meant that there were many topics that would have been too controversial for Christianity; they would have become unnecessary stumbling blocks to acceptance if they were all included. I think that this idea of God’s masculinity and femininity was one of those ideas.

The God of Abraham had been understood as a Judge and a King. Then, almost a thousand years later, Jesus challenged people with his understanding that God was in fact a Father to us. And that’s the picture we’ve tried to understand and elevate our souls to grasp for the last two thousand years.

Embracing the Heavenly Mother of Life

Okay, so the Principle states that God is a “God with personality” (EDP, p. 21), but what of this suggestion that the First Cause is also the source of masculinity and femininity? Where does that lead us if we pursue it to its logical conclusion (as was the “internal nature/external form” duality)? It’s actually as challenging an idea to mainstream understanding as Jesus’ perspective was when he first offered it. But here are just four excerpts from a more recent book of Father Moon’s teachings — Cheon Seong Gyeong, published in 2014. Note the dates at the end of each — they range from 5–24 years after the publication of the Divine Principle book. Starting with the earliest:

“…(God) brought together all the male attributes within Himself to create man, and all the female attributes to create woman. …When these have give and take with each other, they come together in union to engage in a process… which will one day become a major issue in the fields of philosophy and religion.” (41-290, 1971.2.17)

“If God is a personal god, who would He be like? He is the combined form of Adam and Eve.…The coming together in union of man and woman as object partners  …  is the way for Adam and Eve as human beings to perfect His ideal of creation.” (166-208, 1987.6.7)

“Is God feminine or masculine? He is both feminine and masculine. …the two natures of both sexes coexist within Him… God combines a central subject-like masculine character, and an objective horizontal feminine character within Himself.” (188-92, 1989.2.19)

“…if we were to trace back this coming together in love of man and woman to its beginning, we would clearly see that it stems from God’s dual characteristics. The union of masculinity and femininity that exists within God was developed and manifested  in the reciprocal relationships of creation…” (210-317, 1990.12.27)

painting by B. Andersson

painting by B. Andersson

What we’re being told is that there’s an entire other dimension of God that we need to understand and develop; a relationship with: a feminine, motherly dimension. As Abraham extended the understanding of God, and then Jesus extended it further, Father and Mother Moon are also to extend our understanding.

So today, not only does the Divine Principle challenge East Asian metaphysics with the notion of a God of character, but it has a parallel challenge to mainstream Abrahamic faiths with the notion of a feminine aspect of God. We’ll be returning to this in later parts of our study. In the meantime, as Mother Moon has asked, we can try on the expression Heavenly Parent and embrace its intention to include the Mother aspect of God in our conversations, especially those with God. ❦

Print Friendly, PDF & Email

Tags: , , , , , , ,

2 Responses to “The Femininity of God Revealed at Last”

  1. WordPress › Error

    There has been a critical error on your website.

    Learn more about debugging in WordPress.