The human being resembles the Divine Character of God. God’s Divine Character includes omniscience, omnipotence, heart (love), omnipresence, life, truth, goodness, beauty, righteousness, logos, creativity, and so on. Among these, the three most representative characters will be addressed here, as they are especially important for the solution of actual problems. These characters are heart, logos and creativity. Thus, the human being who resembles these three Divine Characters is a being of heart, logos, and creativity. These will be explained in the following section.
1. A Being of Heart
As explained in the Theory of the Original Image, Heart (Shimjung) is the “emotional impulse to seek joy through love.” It is the “source of love,” the “emotional impulse that can not but love,” and the core of the Original Image. Thus, Heart is the core of Sungsang, and therefore the core of God’s personality. Jesus said, “You must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:18). In other words, Jesus taught that human beings should reflect God’s personality centered on God’s Heart.
In human beings as well, heart is the core of the personality. Accordingly, the perfection of one’s personality becomes possible only when one experiences the Heart of God. A person who has perfected his or her character by experiencing the Heart of God is, indeed, a being of heart.
When people continuously experience God’s Heart, they eventually come to inherit God’s Heart completely. Such people naturally come to feel like loving everyone and everything. Not to do so would cause their heart to feel a great deal of pain. Fallen people find it difficult to love others, but once they become one with God’s Heart, their life as a whole is transformed into one of love. Also, if love is present, those who have many possessions can not but want to share with those who have less. This is because love is not self-centered. Consequently, the gap between the haves and have-nots, between the rich and the poor, namely, exploitation in the world, will naturally disappear. Such a phenomenon is manifested due to the equalizing function of love. That human beings are beings of heart means that they live a life of love. Therefore, one can conclude that the human being is Homo amans, a loving person, or a person of love.Heart is the core of the human personality. Therefore, the fact that human beings are beings of heart means that they are beings of personality. Such a person’s spirit mind and physical mind engage in harmonious give and receive action centering on heart, and their faculties of intellect, emotion, and will are all equally developed in a balanced way, centering on heart.
In a fallen person, the functioning of the spirit mind is often very weak and is dominated by the functioning of the physical mind. Also, in many cases a person may have a well-developed faculty of reason (intellectual ability) but lack the emotional maturity, or sufficient will power to do what is good or right. On the other hand, once a person is able to inherit God’s Heart and become a being of heart, then that person’s intellect, emotion, and will can develop in a well-balanced manner, and their spirit mind will have the power to take dominion over their physical mind, whereby they can properly engage in harmonious give and receive action.
Furthermore, as the core of Sungsang, heart is the motivating force that stimulates or empowers the faculties of intellect, emotion, and will to seek the values of truth, beauty, and goodness, respectively. Intellect is the faculty to cognize, and it pursues the value of truth; emotion is the faculty to feel joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, and so forth, and it pursues the value of beauty; and will is the faculty to determine one’s mind, and it pursues the value of goodness. Originally, all three faculties should function with heart as their primary motivation. When one pursues truth through intellectual activity, the result will be the knowledge of science, philosophy, and so on. When one pursues beauty through emotional activity, the result will be art. When one pursues goodness through volitional activity, the result will be morality, ethics, and so on.
Politics, economics, law, media, sports, etc. are also the results of intellectual, emotional, and volitional activities. Accordingly, heart becomes the driving force behind all cultural activities based on intellect, emotion and will. Particularly, it becomes the driving force of artistic activities. The totality of these intellectual, emotional, and volitional activities is culture. In the original world, persons of heart (persons of love) play the main role in cultural activities. This is illustrated in fig. 3.1.
Fig.3.1. The Relationship between Mind, Value, and Culture, centered on Heart
In this way, heart is the driving force behind all cultural activities. Therefore, the culture which human beings should originally have actualized would be a culture of heart. Heart is the essence of what a true culture should be. The culture of heart, which God originally intended to realize through Adam, would have been the “Adam culture.” Due to Adam’s fall, however, a culture of heart was not realized; instead, until today cultures based on self-centeredness, or cultures in which the intellect, emotion, and will are separated from one another, have been established.
For example, in economic activities, in many cases, making money has, until today, been considered as the supreme purpose. In the original world, however, if someone were to live in isolated affluence while others lived in poverty, that person could never live comfortably, but would feel stricken by pain in his or her heart. Thus, those who earned a great deal of money would naturally want to share it with their neighbors or with society. In other words, people would feel like actualizing God’s love through their economic activities. Not only in the economy, but also in other fields, people would want to actualize God’s love. Thus, the culture of heart, or culture of love, will certainly be established, wherein intellectual, emotional and volitional activities will be united, centering on love. Hence, a culture of love is a unified culture.
To date, humankind has tried in many different ways to actualize the true culture, but all attempts ended in failure. The reality that, in human history various cultures have aisen and declined, illustrates this fact. The reason for this is that people did not understand what a true culture is like. The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China is one example. The leaders of that revolution attempted to build a culture based on labor, in accordance with the materialist dialectic, but their efforts resulted only in the oppression of human nature and the delay of modernization. The true culture is a culture centered on heart. The New Cultural Revolution advocated by Rev. Sun Myung Moon aims precisely at the establishment of the culture of heart.
At this point, it may be opportune to elaborate on the concepts of culture and civilization. The sum total of the results of intellectual, emotional, and volitional activities, when considered from their material or external aspects, is called, “civilization”; and when those results are considered from their spiritual or internal aspects (especially in religion, art, and so on), they are called “culture.” Since it is difficult to clearly distinguish the spiritual aspect from the material, however, these two terms are generally used with the same meaning. Therefore, in Unification Thought as well, culture and civilization are often used interchangeably.
2. A Being of Logos
As explained in the Theory of the Original Image, within the Original Image, Logos refers to a product or a new being appearing through inner give and receive action, centering on the purpose of creation. Here, the purpose of creation is based on Heart; therefore, Logos is based on Heart.
The universe was created through Logos and performs its movements in accordance with Logos; in other words, the universe is supported by Logos. Human beings also were created through Logos, and their lives should be in complete accordance with Logos. Thus, the human being is a being of logos.
Logos came into being within the Sungsang of the Original Image through the give and receive action between the Inner Sungsang and Inner Hyungsang, centered on purpose. Since “reason” plays a particularly important role in the Inner Sungsang, and “law” plays an equally important role in the Inner Hyungsang, Logos is referred to as “reason-law,” the unity of reason and law. Thus, a human being, as a being of logos, is a being of reason-law. Since the characteristic feature of reason is freedom and the characteristic feature of law is necessity, a being of logos refers to a being in which freedom and necessity are united. This means that human beings are both normative beings, living according to laws (or norms), and rational beings, behaving according to their free will.
It is commonly held today that since human beings are free, they should not be restricted by any laws or norms. True freedom, however, consists in obeying certain laws―or, more precisely―in willingly observing certain laws. People may think that “freedom” allows them to ignore laws, but this becomes license, rather than freedom, and results in nothing but chaos and destruction. For example, a train, as long as it remains on its tracks, can run rapidly or move slowly, go forward or move backward. If, however, it leaves the tracks, it will not move at all. In other words, the train has freedom only insofar as it remains on the tracks. If it derails, it will destroy itself and may cause damage to people and property.
In like manner, people can enjoy genuine freedom as long as they live in accordance with certain (moral and ethical) norms. Confucius said in The Analects, “At seventy I followed my heart’s desire without overstepping the line.” 2 He meant that at the age of seventy he was able to become a perfected being of logos, in which free will and law are united.
Since human beings are beings of logos, their original nature is to try and follow the law. The law that they should follow is the same law that operates throughout the entire universe; specifically, it is the law of give and receive action. When Logos was formed in the Original Image, it was motivated by Heart, which is the root of love. Therefore, originally, the law of the universe is motivated by Heart, and the purpose of the law is the actualization of love.
As mentioned in Ontology, a family is a miniaturization of the orderly system of the cosmos. Therefore, just as the universe exhibits vertical and horizontal order, so too, the family is, likewise, endowed with vertical and horizontal order. The norms (values) that correspond to these two dimensions of order are the vertical norm and the horizontal norm. The vertical norm in the family is the norm for the relationship between parents and children. The horizontal norm in the family is the norm for the relationships between brothers and sisters, and between husband and wife. Furthermore, in human beings there is a norm for an individual to observe, namely, an individual norm, which is the norm prerequisite to perfecting the personality of each person. The vertical norm, horizontal norm, and individual norm will be explained in detail later in Axiology and Ethics.
The norms of the family, as mentioned above, can be extended directly to the society and nation. Ultimately, the norms of the family become the foundation of the norms to be observed on all the levels of the society and nation. Because of the human fall, however, people failed to become beings of logos. As a result, the breakdown of the family is becoming increasingly noticeable today, and societies and nations are in a chaotic situation. When people restore their original nature as beings of logos, then families, societies and nations will be able to return to their original, orderly status.
3. A Being of Creativity
God created the universe by virtue of His creativity, namely, His ability to create. He then endowed human beings with creativity through which they have been developing science and technology. What, then, is the essential nature of this creativity?
God’s creativity is the ability to create, based on Heart. As was made clear in the Theory of the Original Image, at the time of creation a two-stage give and receive action takes place within the Original Image. The first stage is the inner give and receive action and the second stage is the outer give and receive action. In the first, Logos is formed through the inner give and receive action between Inner Sungsang and Inner Hyungsang centering on the purpose which is established by Heart. In the second, all things are created through the give and receive action between the Logos and the Original Hyungsang centering on the same purpose. Through this two-stage give and receive action, the two-stage developmental four position foundations are formed. Therefore, we can say that God’s creativity is the ability to form these two-stage developmental four position foundations, namely, the inner developmental four position foundation and the outer developmental four position foundation.
In human creative activities, likewise, we first establish a purpose and then make a design or a plan with which to implement that purpose. In other words, an inner give and receive action is first carried out. Then, on the basis of that design or plan, we produce things through carrying out an outer give and receive action. God endowed human beings with creativity in order to empower them to have dominion over the creation with love, centered on heart. Dominion refers to dealing with or controlling material objects (all things in nature, and manufactured properties) and human object partners. The notion of dominion incorporates the meaning of managing, processing, preserving, and so on. Hence, various kinds of activities involving matter, such as primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, as well as the activities to govern society, including politics, art, and science, fall under the activities of having dominion over creation. It was the original nature of dominion that people carry out such varied activities of dominion with God’s love. If from the beginning human beings had completely inherited God’s creativity, they would have been carrying out all of these activities centering on God’s love.
God created human beings and said to them “Have dominion over creation” (Gen. 1:28). In order for human beings to have dominion over the creation in accordance with God’s Words, however, human beings should have responsibly acquired the qualification to be the lord of creation. God, the Greatest Lord, has creativity as the qualification to have dominion over human beings; therefore, human beings were to have been given God’s creativity in order to have dominion over creation. Hence, God intended to endow human beings with His creativity on the condition that they would have fulfilled their portion of responsibility for their perfection throughout their growth period. Thus, human beings could have received God’s creativity and the qualification to have dominion over creation once they had perfected themselves “by accomplishing their own portion of responsibility until the end of their growing period” (DP, 78).
In its original meaning, dominion may be exercised over something only by the person who made that thing; thus, we can not, by our own will, exercise dominion over something made by someone else. Therefore, human beings can not, by their own will, exercise dominion over the creation, since human beings were created after all things had been created by God. However, human beings were created as God’s children, and therefore, they should be allowed to inherit their parent’s property and rights once they have grown up. Accordingly, God desired that Adam and Eve establish a condition to inherit His dominion: God directed them to grow, while accomplishing their portion of responsibility. The condition set for them was that they should perfect themselves through fulfilling their responsibility, whereby the condition would be regarded as equivalent to their having participated in God’s creation of the universe.
Human beings are the integration of all things, a microcosm: the value of one human being is equivalent to that of the entire universe. Therefore, if human beings had perfected themselves, it would have been regarded as having the same value as if they themselves had created the universe. That is why God directed Adam and Eve to fulfill their portion of responsibility. In sum, God bade them fulfill their portion of responsibility in order for them to establish the condition that they had participated in God’s creation. For this purpose, relevant to the process of growth of Adam and Eve, God gave them the commandment not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, which meant they were not to engage in sexual love before the proper time (DP, 60). After God gave them this commandment, He did not interfere with their behavior. The reason for this is because, if God had interfered, then God Himself would have ignored the human portion of responsibility, which would have resulted in the contradiction that He would be allowing an unqualified Adam and Eve to exercise dominion over creation. As it happened, Adam and Eve did fail to comply with God’s commandment, and humankind ever since has been unable to obtain the qualification necessary to exercise dominion over all things.
As a result, human beings have become unable to inherit God’s creativity and, instead, have come to engage in creative activities based on their self-centered reason. Thus, in the case of creative activity on the individual level, people have come to place priority on personal interests; a family places priority on its own family interests; on the national level, each nation places priority on its own national interests, etc. Thus, for the most part, creative activities have become self-centered. Moreover, people have also become quite unconcerned about what happens to the environment or to other people. This has resulted in diverse problems, such as the destruction of nature, pollution, the development of weapons of mass destruction, and so on.
In order to solve these problems, people must become able to acquire the original creativity, which is centered on heart. That heart becomes the center of creativity means that creative activities should be made with love as their motivation, and on the basis of proper values. Therefore, scientists must first be persons of values, or persons of character, before being scientists. In other words, ethics must become the basis of natural science.
In this modern age, however, scientists have limited themselves to the pursuit of objective facts, disregarding values of any kind. The result is the chaotic situation we see today. To solve this problem, Rev. Sun Myung Moon sponsored the International Conferences on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS) and encouraged scientists to deal with values, so that they might restore true creativity. In other words, he encouraged scientists to manifest true creativity under the ethic which requires us “to love nature, to reconsider the dignity of human beings, to seek love among all humankind, and to search for God as the origin of love.” 3