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Cheon Seong Gyeong 2013
Women have to lead the way. This is the reason I have now directed all the blessed wives in Korea to go to the front line. They have already been mobilized. Because Korea is the headquarters nation, the elder Blessed Families of Korea have all been sent to the front line. So all the Unificationist women throughout the world should follow their example and also go to the front line! Amen. (170-241, 1987.11.21)
Cheon Seong Gyeong 1003
How should you think in order to lead a kind of life of attendance to God? You should think that you are one with God and one with True Parents. If everything in your life is in oneness with them, you should have the idea that everything belongs to God and to True Parents; and that what belongs to True Parents belongs to the kingdom of True Parents and then to you. Since even this house, nation, world and universe belong to True Parents, you come to the conclusion that everything belongs to you since you are True Parents’ son. (161-231, 1987.2.15)
Intellectual Knowledge and Spiritual Wisdom
There is a huge difference between intellectual knowledge and the spiritual truth that is conducive to salvation and enlightenment. Intellectual and conceptual knowledge, for all its utility in the world, does not always profit the spiritual seeker, and too much of it may even impede higher realization. There is a gulf between Athens and Jerusalem—between the conceptual systems of secular philosophy and the scriptural truth of religion. Scriptures call us to check our priorities, as we live in an age that pushes secular learning. A second topic of this section concerns ways of knowing. While intellectual knowledge is gained through empirical perception of sense data and rational formulation of theories, spiritually minded people employ intuition and sensitivity to the inner dimensions of reality. Reliance upon reason can be an impediment to the spiritual path; hence much religious practice, such as Zen Buddhism, is aimed at blocking the intellect. For instance the Zen kaon, “has a dog the Buddha nature?” only leads the questioner into a welter of mental confusion until he realizes that the way out is beyond any conceptual understanding whatsoever. Nevertheless, Father Moon regards both the paths of rationality and spirituality as having their place in the Kingdom, and seeks for a balance.
The final texts return to the opposition between secular knowledge and divine knowledge, focusing particularly on the damage caused by science and technology when it is not restrained or directed by spiritual wisdom. Ultimately science and all secular knowledge needs to be guided by what Father Moon calls “absolute values,”—the true love of God that seeks to benefit humanity and the whole creation.
1. Intellectual Knowledge Does Not Profit for Salvation
What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?
Tertullian (Christianity)
Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. If any one imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know. But if one loves God, one is known by Him.
1 Corinthians 8.1-3
My now-deceased mother really scolded me. She said, “Go away somewhere into the wilderness, since all you seem to do is look at books. For all the days to come you will be pitiful because the book blocks your path. Never will anything be revealed to you in a vision, for you live like a white man.”
Delaware Testimony (Native American Religions)
Of making many books there is no end, and much study is a weariness of the flesh.
Ecclesiastes 12.12
A thousand and hundred thousand feats of intellect shall not accompany man in the hereafter.
Adi Granth, Japuji 1, M.1, p. 1 (Sikhism)
This is true knowledge: to seek the Self as the true end of wisdom always. To seek anything else is ignorance.
Bhagavad-Gita 13.11 (Hinduism)
Though I reach a high rung of knowledge, I know that not a single letter of the teachings is within me, and I have not taken a single step in the service of God.
The Baal Shem Tov (Judaism)
True words are not fine-sounding;
Fine-sounding words are not true.
The good man does not prove by argument;
And he who proves by argument is not good.
True wisdom is different from much learning;
Much learning means little wisdom.
Tao Te Ching 81 (Taoism)
Of all things seen in the world
Only mind is the host;
By grasping forms according to interpretation
It becomes deluded, not true to reality.
All philosophies in the world
Are mental fabrications;
There has never been a single doctrine
By which one could enter the true essence of things.
Garland Sutra 10 (Buddhism)
Where is the wise man? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe. For the Jews demand signs and the Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.
1 Corinthians 1.20-25
Rabbi Eleazar Hisma said, “Offerings of birds and purifications of women, these, yea these, are the essential precepts. Astronomy and geometry are but fringes to wisdom.”
Mishnah, Avot 3.23 (Judaism)
It was necessary for human salvation that certain truths which exceed human reason should be made known to him by divine revelation. Even as regards those truths about God which human reason could have discovered, it was necessary that humans be taught by a divine revelation; because the truth about God such as reason could discover would only be known by a few, and that after a long time, and with the admixture of many errors. Whereas humankind’s whole salvation, which is in God, depends upon the knowledge of this truth. Therefore, in order that human salvation might be brought about more fitly and more surely, it was necessary that they be taught divine truths by divine revelation. Therefore, besides philosophical science built up by reason, there necessarily should be a sacred science learned through revelation.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica 1.1.1 (Christianity)
The whole object of the Prophets and the Sages was to declare that a limit is set to human reason where it must halt.
Maimonides, Guide of the Perplexed 1.32 (Judaism)
Human philosophy has made God manlike. Christian Science makes man Godlike. The first is error; the latter is truth. Metaphysics is above physics, and matter does not enter into metaphysical premises or conclusions. The categories of metaphysics rest on one basis, the divine Mind.
Science and Health, 269 (Christian Science)