Pyeong Hwa Gyeong (008) - View of the Principle of the Providential History of Salvation
2. True husband and wife perfect God’s absolute ideal of love
God, as the subject partner of true love, did establish humankind as the object partner of true love. Accordingly, God can fulfill the ideal of true love only through humankind. The fulfillment of God’s purpose of creation is the ideal world where God and humankind are united through absolute love. Human beings were created as the greatest object partners of God’s love. They alone in all creation potentially embody the full nature of God and they are born the visible bodies of the invisible God. If a person matures, they become a perfect temple of God—a visible, substantial body in which God can freely and peacefully dwell.
God’s overall ideal of absolute true love is realized and perfected through humankind in a vertical parent-child relationship. God created Adam first; he was to be the son of God and, at the same time, the substantial body of God. Later, God created Eve as the object partner of Adam so that Adam and Eve could fulfill the ideal of horizontal love in conjugal love. Eve was to be the daughter of God and also as a bride she was to realize substantially the ideal of the horizontal love of God.
The place where Adam and Eve are harmonized perfectly, consummating their first love by marrying under the blessing of God, is precisely the place where God meets His substantial bride. This is because God’s ideal of absolute love descends vertically and joins where the ideal of conjugal love between Adam and Eve is realized horizontally. In this way, the true love of God and the true love of humankind join in perfect communion at a single point, although they come from different directions, one vertical and the other horizontal.
God’s act of creation was necessary and we cannot imagine creation without a purpose. There was only one reason God needed the creation: to realize the ideal of true love. God developed life in pairs, from the simplest and lowest levels up to the human level, subject and object and positive and negative, to form reciprocal relationships under the ideal of love. The creation’s ideal of love and God’s ideal of ultimate love are not separate or different. The Principle of Creation is at work to complete the absolute love of God through the realization of true love between men and women in the human world. This is the reason why, in the beginning, God created one man and one woman, Adam and Eve.
God’s purpose of creation called for Adam and Eve to obey the commandment from God, who is the subject of true love, and fulfill their maturation as a true man and a true woman. Beyond that, they were to become a true couple united in the true love of God and then, by having sons and daughters through true love, they would have become true parents and lived in happiness. Had Adam and Eve matured in true love, they would have fulfilled God’s desire to wear a substantial body and when they perfected themselves as a true couple, the ideal of God’s absolute love would have been fulfilled.
By Adam and Eve having children of goodness and becoming true parents, God would have established substantially the position of parents eternally and achieved His ideal, which was to create infinite citizenship in the kingdom of heaven in heaven by means of multiplying myriad generations of loving descendants in the physical world.
Adam and Eve, the human ancestors, fell away from God. When they were expelled from Eden, they had not yet had children. Having driven them out, God had no basis to follow after them to bless their marriage. The entire human race has thus descended from our fallen ancestors. Humanity has multiplied without any direct relationship whatsoever with the love of God. |