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