God as the Heavenly Parent of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother

Note: This is an adaptation of a more detailed paper written for “The Unification Movement” course (LTR 1551) at UTS. Ye Jin Moon consented to have an abridged version published on the AU blog.

On January 7, 2013, True Mother made a truly momentous and historical announcement that from that date forward we in the Unification Movement (UM) should be addressing God not just as Heavenly Father, but as “Heavenly Parent,” which necessarily implies that God is equally Heavenly Father as well as Heavenly Mother.

In the UM, it had been customary to address God in the masculine as Heavenly Father, mainly because of the influence coming from the Old and New Testament Ages when God was regularly viewed in the masculine. However, if we are now living in Cheon Il Guk or “God’s Homeland,” the Ye Jin Moon very first issue we need to address is who God is or why God is the Heavenly Parent of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother (HP of HF/HM).

Let me pursue a brief inquiry into why during “restoration” or “indemnity” history Heavenly Mother’s existence was obscured. Given the UM’s claim that this is the cosmically historic and revolutionary “era of women” in which woman’s lost equal value is regained, it also is critical to comprehend why Heavenly Parent is gender-balanced and equally empowered Heavenly Mother as well as Heavenly Father.

In “An Inquiry into God as Our Heavenly Parents, [www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Talks/Hendrcks/Hendricks-130520.pdf]” Dr. Tyler Hendricks argues that to call God first and foremost “Heavenly Parent” (in the singular as opposed to Heavenly Parents in the plural) is “androgynous” and makes God “a trans-gendered existence that is neither male nor female in any common sense meaning.”

He further pronounces that Heavenly Mother is not co-equal to Heavenly Father but that “Heavenly Father’s creative, initiating love brought forth His Object Partner [Heavenly Mother] from nothing [emphasis added] into full personhood.” According to Dr. Hendricks, Heavenly Mother was never a part of God the Cause or the Origin, but only a part of the Effect or Result, indeed the final result, of Heavenly Father’s creative acts.

I argue to the contrary that God, the only origin, the eternal, self-existent, perfect (Matt. 5:48), and “absolute reality,” should be addressed as the Heavenly Parent of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. Understanding this argument necessitates distinguishing God’s movement before God chose to create and after God chose to create and came to co-exist with the created dual spiritual/physical worlds.

God in the Origin position prior to Creation can only be viewed as the undivided, all-encompassing Original Oneness as the only Original Being in existence prior to any creation. One cannot yet divide God into any categories such as “Dual Positions” or “Dual Characteristics” even if such characteristics are innate within God and later manifested into the creation.

Even after God made the choice to create, one would still need to separate the point when God first established the “Heartistic” Will, Purpose, Ideology, or the Divine Principle (DP) as to how God would bring about the Entire Creation from when God began in earnest the actual implementation or substantiation.

It would be at this point when God had established the Will to create prior to embarking on the Creative Process, that God’s innate “Dual Characteristics” or Dual Positions began to emerge outwardly, ready to substantiate into the Creation throughout the Creative Process. Thereafter, with the last substantiation of human beings, the Heavenly Parent in Will finally became the Heavenly Parent of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother.

The Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother sides would indicate God’s participation in the Effect position consummated in male and female human beings who are each the “sum total” of the Entire Creation or the culmination of all the “Dual Characteristics” or Dual Positions employed throughout the Creative Process. God’s last creative act ended with not just one human person, but with two human persons of equal value.

The dynamics between the Heavenly Parent’s Origin position to the Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother’s Effect position can be better understood when one considers why the numerical value of each of all three positions (Heavenly Parent, Heavenly Father, and Heavenly Mother) is one, totaling the three positions to be numerically three. The Exposition of the Divine Principle’s statement [www.tparents.org/Library/Unification/Books/dp96/dp96-1-1.htm] that “God is one absolute reality in whom the dual characteristics [positions] interact in harmony,” and therefore God is “a Being of the number three” supports this argument.

Once God chose to create and partake in His/Her Creation, it is only accurate to address God as the Heavenly Parent of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother (HP of HF/HM), for God alone and none of the Creation, including human beings, has made a movement from the Origin (Heavenly Parent) to the Effect (Heavenly Father/Heavenly Mother) positions. For the sake of brevity, however, one may address God as the Heavenly Parent (HP) as that is the Origin position already anticipating the manifestation of HP’s Fatherhood (being Heavenly Father) and Motherhood (being Heavenly Mother) to human beings at the end of the Creative Process.

In this way, when a person invokes the Heavenly Parent, one would be wishing to relate to a harmonized opinion of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. However, at times, when one wishes to address specifically either Heavenly Father or Heavenly Mother’s side, one may very well do so, as that would be similar to approaching one’s human father or human mother for different reasons.

Dr. Hendrick’s suggestion that God in Origin is exclusively “Heavenly Father,” and that “Heavenly Mother” is merely a part of the creation is completely incorrect on two fronts. First, it denigrates God’s Original Being by dividing God into Dual Positions of Father/Mother when the manifestations of such Dual Positions are only the consequences of God having chosen to create. Second, when he makes such an unsubstantiated claim that “Heavenly Father” predated “Heavenly Mother,” he is in fact acknowledging that God, the Original Oneness Being, is not “perfect.”

Dr. Hendrick’s unequal and prejudiced treatment towards “Heavenly Father” and “Heavenly Mother” typifies a culturally conditioned, unequal view of the value of man and woman which has nothing to do with Heavenly Parent’s Purpose of Creation, but everything to do with the Fall.

Through the Fall, HP of HF/HM’s Hope of Ideal through human perfection was thwarted; the subversion of the Cosmic “Four-Position Foundation” had occurred; and the humanity to come through Adam and Eve on the collective level had fallen below the physical-self-only creations that do not have the spiritual senses to perceive spiritual reality.

The process of the Fall had begun with archangel Lucifer tempting Adam and Eve with his un-Principled ideology of human fornication with the lower creation or an angel. Thereafter, once Eve committed the sexual fall with the archangel, a lower creation, and then Adam committed the sexual fall with the unrestored Eve, since sexuality unites partners into one, both Adam and Eve, who represented the humanity to come on the collective level, were implicated by the sexual intercourse with the lower creation, thereby lowering human value below the physical-self only creations who engage in instinctive sexuality.

Although on the collective level, both Adam and Eve were together implicated with sexual sins, on the

individual level, since Eve committed the “double sins” with the lower creation and then with Adam, womankind, the collective extension of Eve, came to occupy a differing position. Also, because of the Fall and womankind’s lowered position than that of mankind’s owing to Eve’s choice, Heavenly Mother’s existence was obscured, and humanity has yet to learn deeply about who Heavenly Mother is.

Only when humanity can finally learn to connect to Heavenly Mother will we be able to regain the complete and balanced understanding of who our Heavenly Parent truly is as equal and harmonious Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. Only when we clearly grasp Heavenly Parent of Heavenly Father/Heavenly Mother’s original identity will those who claim that God is the “Heavenly Parents” comprised of a pre-existent “Heavenly Father” and a created “Heavenly Mother,” an after-the-fact creation, be quieted.

It is high time that we human beings mature in understanding and offer Heavenly Parent of Heavenly Father/Heavenly Mother the due respect S/He deserves, that S/He alone is the “Being of number three” who has moved from the Origin or Causal Position to the Effect Position. It is time we clearly perceive who God our Ultimate Parent is. God alone is the Cause as well as the Effect; God alone is the Heavenly Parent of equally empowered and harmonious Heavenly Father as well as Heavenly Mother.

Ye Jin Moon, the eldest daughter of Rev. and Mrs. Sun Myung Moon, has been taking graduate courses at UTS. She is working on various topics relating to the Gender and Dual Positional balanced Divine Principle Ideology.