International Conferences for Clergy

QUESTION: 1. Is it possible to draw a picture of God by looking at His damaged creation?

ANSWER: The Divine Principle states that it is in the Son, who is the exact representation of God that we see most completely the Father in Heaven. It is why Jesus said,..."as you see me you see the Father." The Divine Principle states that Jesus is the word made flesh and as the word, Jesus serves as a model through which all the creation was made. The things of the creation made by God, are visible testimony of the relationship of God the Father and God the Son. It is not wrong to observe that testimony in the things that God has made and to praise His name for it. Did not Jesus tell us to "consider the Lilies?"

QUESTION: 2. Explain a little more about the spiritual body in comparison to the spiritual mind.

ANSWER: The spiritual body is the spiritual form of a person. The appearance of Moses and Elijah was the appearance of their spiritual forms (at the Mount of Transfiguration). The spiritual mind is the internal character of the spirit that possess the qualities of the individual. Jesus instructed us to love God with all our strength, mind, soul and heart. These qualities are not merely functions of the instinctive physical brain, but are internal spiritual functions of the spiritual mind. The center of our spiritual mind, therefore, is our heart.

QUESTION: 3. If we are in God's image, as stated in Genesis 1:27, then God must have a body and form. Comment?

ANSWER: We have and internal character and an external form, and so, as God's image, we can assume that God, likewise, has a form. God's form is outside time and space, it is the source of the material universe (and therefore is not material itself), and is composed of a spiritualized energy that we refer to as Universal Prime Energy. In other words, God does not possess material form.

Physical material is a creation of God (including man's physical form). The energy of creation, the energy manifested within the atoms of any physical form is eternal and comes from God. However, the form of any physical being or entity is not eternal, absolute and unchanging. Therefore, physical form is not the basis of real existence. Energy is invisible, formless, and cannot be created nor destroyed and thus, God as the source of all energy and the ultimate basis of reality is likewise, eternal, invisible absolute and unchanging. Jesus tells us in John 4:24 "God is spirit" and thus God seeks to live in us and us in Him. God's declaration in Gen. 1:27 is with regard to quality and not external appearances.

QUESTION: 4. The lectures contain statements about positivity and negativity. Why is man referred to as always positive and woman always negative? I have met many men who seemed to be very negative.

ANSWER: Actually positive and negative are many times misused. Negativity in the true sense would mean responsiveness and objectivity. To say someone is negative with the implication being somehow meant to indicate reluctance and complaint, is a complete misuse of the word. Women are not locked into responsiveness and objectivity, nor are men slaves to positivity and subjectivity. These are general strengths and characteristics that in our oneness we are to share and inherit from each other.

QUESTION: 5. Is God a "He" or a "She" or what? Why do we refer to God as "He"?

ANSWER: Jesus said the Lord is One. God is not two. God is the harmonized subject of the dual characteristics of masculinity and femininity. God created in His image male and female. Because God's dual characteristics are harmonized, only one, unified personality emerges in God. He is our ultimate subject and therefore, Jesus identified God as Our Father.

QUESTION: 6. What is your belief in evolution and how does it fit into your religion or religious belief?

ANSWER: Darwin's theory is not accurate. However, if God is the author of all truth, then the truth of science and the truth of religion must be able to harmonize on a higher plateau of understanding. With regard to evolution, it remains the task of modern science, armed with a fresh spiritual insight and absolute values, to discover the actual orderly process of creation and existence.

QUESTION: 7. Can you define or describe the spiritual body and how does it appear?

ANSWER: The spiritual body appears just as you are, that is it looks just like a person, the person you are (your spirit body). Actually, the spirit body is in the pattern of the physical body, the physical body is a reflection of the spirit body. 1Cor. 15:44 states that were there is a natural body there is also a spiritual body. We can see examples of the appearance of spiritual bodies. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah both appeared in their spiritualized forms and were easily recognized by the Apostles.

QUESTION: 8. Do we have a spiritual heart? Does God?

ANSWER: 1John 4:7-8 tells us that God is love and that love comes from God. The essence of God's personality and being is His heart. Because God's heart is the essence of His personality and being, it caused all attributes of God (intellect, emotion and will) to be what they are and do what they do. Thus, God's intellect moves in accordance with the way of God's True Love, God's emotion moves in accordance with the way of God's True Love, God's will moves in accordance with the way of God's True Love. The way of God's True Love is, simply, the way of sacrificing one's self for the betterment of others. Because that is the nature of God's True Love and heart, it is the center and essence of God's personality and being. We can know that God's fundamental identity is that of an unconditional loving, sacrificial True Parent. This is why Jesus addressed God as "Father." As a true Father, God's ideal has always been to become one with a perfect object of love. That perfect object of love would be His children created in His image. This is why God created us and gave us, also, a spiritual heart of love.

QUESTION: 9. Where does love come from in man, the heart or the intellect?

ANSWER: Heart is the source of love. The intellect is an attribute of the heart and should function in concert with the heart. The heart (and love) should be subject over and direct the intellect. That means that our thinking and intellectual pursuits should reflect the intentions of God's True Love, that is , for the sake of others, for the sake of the whole purpose.

QUESTION: 10. Do you maintain that the spiritual body has no substance? (as opposed to the physical body).

ANSWER: The spiritual body has no physical substance. The spiritual body has form and is composed of spiritual substance that is beyond physical law (and therefore are not subject to the laws of decay).

QUESTION: 11. Perfect harmony equals subject and object and Second Blessing. Please explain both with supporting scriptures. Where is Christ in these diagrams and doctrines?

ANSWER: This is referring to God's ideal before sin came into the world! After sin comes into the world, the entire equation changes centering on the regenerative powers represented in the Holy Trinity of God, the Father, Jesus, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

QUESTION: 12. Why did God create the world?

ANSWER: I recommend that you study the Divine Principle chapter on the Principle of Creation, under the section: The purpose of Creation.

Briefly, God is a God of Love (1John 4...God is Love). But without a responding object of love, God could not feel joy. God created man and woman in His image, so that they could fulfill the purpose of love. God wanted objects of love that could feel and respond to His love. This would produce joy. God created in order to produce joy. This is why, when Adam and Eve sinned and did not fulfill their role, God felt grief (Gen. 6:6).

QUESTION: 13. God made us in His own image and likeness. Since God is a spirit to be worshipped in spirit and truth, is it not then the spiritual embodiment of man and not the physical body of man that was and is molded in His image and likeness?

ANSWER: Yes. The purpose of the physical body and the physical world is to serve as the realm where man is to play a role in his own growth and perfection. The flesh is like the soil in which the spirit grows. Once man perfects, then he no longer needs this body of flesh and it is cast aside and we are raised a spiritual body dwelling in Heaven, the world of spirit. Christ returns to re-institute the original principles that were lost be the entrance of sin into the world.

QUESTION: 14. Before one is perfected, can one get messages from God?

ANSWER: Yes. Man can get God's word. before perfection, though, man's relationship with God is conditional. Man must fulfill the condition of faith in God's word in order to maintain his relationship with God. In perfection, man is inseparable from God and is one with God. In perfection man's relationship with God is unconditional, unchanging, impervious to temptation and sin.

QUESTION: 15. The lectures seem to place man in the superior position over woman. Shouldn't man and woman be considered equal?

ANSWER: Man is not to be placed in a superior position and woman in an inferior position. A superior being and an inferior could never become perfectly one. In quality and character man and woman are equal partners.

The Divine Principle stress is on the roles of "subject" and "object" relationship. For any two bodies that seek to become one, they must first set up the positions of subject and object. When the positions of subject and object are established then give and take action can take place. The most important element in establishing give and take action is for the subject and object to both place priority on the higher, common purpose. That higher purpose is the ideal of their perfect oneness. Therefore, man's value and woman's value are most fully derived when the ideal and common higher purpose is substantialized in them. When man begins to think he is innately superior to woman, the dynamics of true relationship and procurement of true value are broken down.

QUESTION: 16. Do you believe in a Mother in Heaven?

ANSWER: God is the perfect oneness of Original Masculinity and Original Femininity. Out of that perfect oneness emerges a harmonized, single personality of Absolute subjectivity, which Jesus referred to as "Father". However, God's purpose of Creation was to establish the position of "Mother" in Heaven. This was the very role that Eve was to fulfill. Because of Eve's fornication with the archangel, she lost that position, as did Adam lose his position by joining in fornication with Eve. The goal of restoration history has been to set the positions of True Parents that was lost by Adam and Eve.

QUESTION: 17. Is God the immovable mover or does He also share an evolutionary past similar to man?

ANSWER: Because God is beyond time and space, and is absolute, eternal, unchanging, perfect, omniscient, omnipotent, and sovereign. And because God is self existing with life within Himself, God, therefore, always was and always will be, was not created nor evolved.

QUESTION: 18. If God does not intervene in His law, how does one explain the sun "standing still" in the book of Joshua?

ANSWER: Miracles do not violate God's law. Miracles take place in complete accord with the higher laws of the spirit. In that we are largely in ignorance with regard to the intricate interrelationship of spiritual law with physical law, sometimes the manifestation of the spirit appears to violate physical law. This in fact is never the case.

QUESTION: 19. If our spirits are power and energy, then are not our spirits made of pure "matter" because energy is matter?

ANSWER: All spirits are creation of God. But to classify our spirits as material would need qualification. "Energy" is not material as we know it, but the ultimate reality behind material. Material as we know it to be in the physical context, is largely an image of form. In the physical context, no form has permanence. Form is temporal in the physical sense. The energy within form is eternal. Man's spirit is composed of a kind of "material" but this would not be the same as in the physical realm. Man's spiritual form does have permanence. Man's spirit has eternal form which does not change or deteriorate.