World Scripture

Published by Paragon House Publishers
Editor, Andrew Wilson
World Scripture (PDF)

Preface

World Scripture and the Teachings of Sun Myung Moon builds on the foundation of World Scripture: a Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts (1991). That volume was a pioneering work in the annals of religious literature. Never before were the scriptures of the world’s religions examined so systematically to illuminate their universal teachings and underscore their common ground. Never before had a major work drawing on sacred texts articulated a vision of interreligious compatibility and harmony. Conventional textbooks treat each religion separately, comparing similarities and differences. The religions are viewed as outgrowths of humanity’s diverse cultures and historical contexts. According to this pluralistic and somewhat relativistic perspective, the religions propose irreconcilable truth claims. Such a manner of presentation does little to disclose the common ground among religions, or the fact that the unifying force behind all religion is the one God, who in His love has been raising people of every culture to knowledge of His truth.

In the past it was fashionable to believe that religious differences were indeed irreconcilable and that, therefore, in the march of history towards globalization and a technologically advanced world civilization, religions were destined to decline and disappear. Nevertheless, Rev. Dr. Sun Myung Moon commissioned World Scripture based upon the firm conviction that religions have a key role to play in building world peace in the 21st century. Knowing the fundamental power of religion to mold thought and culture, from the beginning of his ministry he taught of the need for interreligious harmony and unity as a necessary pre-requisite for world peace. In the 1970s, after his ministry had expanded beyond Asia to the West, Father Moon began to sponsor annual dialogues for reconciliation among religions, including the Assembly of the World’s Religions in 1985, 1990 and 1992. It was shortly after the first of these Assemblies that he outlined his concept for World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts. He enlisted the support of an Editorial Board of forty distinguished scholars drawn from the religions of the world, and with their guidance that book was published six years later.

Although initially Father Moon’s vision of and activism on behalf of interreligious unity was misunderstood and considered to be impractical and unrealistic, today people everywhere recognize that the world has no viable alternative. We experience the violence, fear and anxiety of a world in travail, as global linkages of communication and commerce are undermined by tensions that arise from persistent cultural and religious misunderstanding, prejudice and conflict. If a new global civilization of peace is to survive its birth pangs, people must forge bonds of fraternity across civilizations and especially between religions. And to enlist the religions in peacebuilding requires an awareness of their shared values. These shared values are widespread in scriptures and the daily practice of the faithful, and they give the lie to the extremist agitation to tribalism, intolerance and fear of difference. These values include: the Golden Rule, respect for the rights of every human being, self-mastery, moral restraint, family, charity, forgiveness and peace under the gracious sovereignty of the one God.

By highlighting these shared values, World Scripture: A Comparative Anthology of Sacred Texts demonstrated that the common ground among religions is in reality vast and deep. It called on believers to focus on these points of shared understanding, rather than fixating on the differences. It was written with the hope that when believers of every tradition are informed by these common values, they can defuse religious enmity and mobilize their religions as positive forces for world peace.

Sun Myung Moon and His Teachings

The present volume, the second in the World Scripture series, brings together these sacred texts with selections from Father Moon’s teachings. It is no exaggeration to say that his teachings thoroughly cover the multitude of topics espoused by the world’s religions. As a native of Korea, a land blessed with deep roots in Buddhism, Confucianism and traditional religions, and which has seen the explosive growth of Christianity as well as the emergence of Islam, Father Moon in his youth drank deeply from their fountains of wisdom. His deep respect for the religious traditions is evident in his teachings. Often he affirms a particular religion’s doctrine and demonstrates its application in the contemporary world. Occasionally he takes issue with a doctrine and offers a different explanation. And not infrequently, he takes a traditional religious concept and raises it to a higher dimension.

For the many people who have come to know and respect Father Moon for his interreligious work and his efforts for world peace, these pages offer a doorway into his thought. For those who are already well acquainted with Father Moon’s teachings, these pages reveal the rich connections between his thought and the heritage of the world’s religions.

While the truth of God is universal, every religion offers a specific path whereby one may find the truth, practice the truth, and embody it in one’s life. It is a great blessing for anyone to follow such a path that leads to salvation and the fullness of spiritual realization. For this reason, World Scripture and the Teachings of Sun Myung Moon affirms the great wisdom of the world’s religious traditions and the believers who adhere closely to their chosen path. This volume, therefore, is not designed for a spiritual dilettante who only wishes to pick and choose from among the world’s religions just the teachings that are pleasing to him. At the same time, this volume counsels believers on the path of religion to chart a course that avoids the pitfalls of narrow-mindedness, exclusivism and triumphalism.

Father Moon’s words are not the musings of an academic who studies about the world’s religions. He is a master practitioner of religion: one who lives by what he teaches, who has tested his words in the fire of experience, and who can proclaim them as a path to God and God’s love. Yet at the same time, as you will see, the life-giving truth taught by Father Moon is aligned with the teachings of all the world’s faiths. Therefore, as we study the world’s religions in the light of his teachings, we can attain a deep faith and a life-giving connection to Ultimate Reality without falling into exclusivism.

People may wonder: What sort of religious leader is Father Moon? How can he advocate unity and harmony at a time when religions seem so diametrically at odds with one another? Why does he pursue interfaith work with the fervor that other committed religionists pour into evangelizing and making converts? The answer to this question lies in his view of God.

Father Moon knows God as the God of love and sacrifice, always willing to give first, forever living for the sake of others. He is the God who, ever since the time of the tragic Fall of humanity, has been desperately seeking to reunite with us. From this perspective, all the major religions are God-made; each is an expression of God’s effort to elevate humanity. Further, being God-made, they each have, transcending cultural and historical differences, certain core elements that reflect God’s divine nature of love and sacrifice. Hence, it is to be expected that we can find common values among the religions of the world, not one or two but many.

Chief among God’s attributes, according to Father Moon, is parental love. God’s parental love is evident in His founding of religions in diverse cultural and historical circumstances, for the purpose of awakening and educating human beings everywhere to attain fellowship with Him. In this sense, the religions of the world are like brothers and sisters in God’s family. When the children get along well together, their parents are pleased. Why should religions promote charity and cooperation with other religions? It is first of all to please God, who is their common Parent and who wants them to live in harmony and peace.

Here is the source of Father Moon’s revolutionary view of the relationship among religions. Religions should align themselves with the ultimate wish of God, the Parent of humankind, whose love is higher and more comprehensive than any human love. The Parent’s desire is not that religions exist only for themselves, as if it were enough that their rituals and teachings connect their adherents to God above. They also need to relate to the other religions as their brothers and sisters. Instead of remaining separate from one another and even fighting with one another, religions should live for the sake of one another with the common purpose of liberating the world together: “We should not pursue our own self-interest but rather seek for the welfare of other religious groups. Religions should walk the path of self-denial, self-sacrifice, and service to others.” For some eighty-seven years he has practiced this way of life.

Distinctive Features of This Volume

As regards the selection of texts from the world’s traditions, there are some notable developments in this volume as compared with the first World Scripture. First, texts are included from the Hellenistic tradition of classical Greece and Rome. Father Moon classifies Socrates, the greatest exemplar of classical philosophy and a martyr to truth, as one of the world’s great saints alongside Buddha, Confucius, Jesus and Muhammad. As the World Scripture series aims to establish common ground among religions, this volume extends the common ground to include classical philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. There are indeed shared values between Athens and Jerusalem.

Second, this volume goes further than the first volume of World Scripture in seeking to address contemporary issues, including democracy, women’s rights, the meaning of freedom, economic justice, the environment, the arts, and more. Father Moon speaks frequently about the problems of the contemporary world, advocating new solutions grounded in timeless spiritual principles. To better explore this side of his thought and its connections with the world’s religious traditions, it seemed appropriate to supplement the scriptures with selected quotations from world-level figures who likewise applied their faith to their social context. They include: Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dalai Lama, Susan B. Anthony, various papal encyclicals, Islamic teachers such as Rumi and Al-Ghazzali, and others.

Third, one of the pillars of Father Moon’s thought is divine providence, which he sees as carried out in an historical line extending from Adam, to Noah, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, to Moses and Jesus. God’s providence includes as well the lives and teachings of Buddha, Confucius and Muhammad, whose roles were to expand the fruits of the central line of providence outward to the rest of the world. To better explore this aspect of his thought, this volume recasts the World Scripture chapter The Founder into a new chapter, History of God’s Providence, where each of these figures is treated in turn. As regards the biblical figures, wherever possible scriptural testimony is drawn from the texts of all three Abrahamic faiths.

Translation

A special challenge in preparing this volume was to establish accurate translations of Father Moon’s teachings. This was a considerable undertaking, occupying the work of the editors and their staff for two full years. Korean and English are such dissimilar languages that translation between them is extremely difficult, and furthermore Father Moon has a unique vocabulary and gives his Korean words special meanings. Few people have both the requisite skills in translation and familiarity with Father Moon’s thought as to be qualified for the task. Although thousands of pages of Father Moon’s words exist in English, the translations are largely unreliable. Many were simultaneous translations made in the heat of delivering a sermon, where the translator was oftentimes reduced to paraphrasing a complex thought. Sometimes the translator adjusted the content on purpose to be more understandable to a Western audience; this was especially the case for certain well-known public speeches delivered in 1973 and 1974.

Hence, it was not surprising that when English passages selected for the book were checked against the Korean text, eighty percent of them had to be completely re-translated. The American and Korean editors met together on a weekly basis to review the translations, identify difficulties, and come up with renderings that satisfied both the criteria of accuracy and good English sense. Nevertheless, no translation can be perfect; there is always something lost or misunderstood in going from one language to another, one culture to another, one way of thinking to another. The editors regret where their work may fall short and cause misunderstanding.

Acknowledgements

World Scripture and the Teachings of Sun Myung Moon would not have been possible without the support and labor of many dedicated people whom I wish to acknowledge. Particularly, I would like to thank Dr. Andrew Wilson, who has been leading this task with a deep sense of commitment ever since the publication of the first World Scripture, for his profound knowledge and wise judgment in planning this volume and in selecting and arranging its text. I would also like to recognize Dr. Theodore Shimmyo and Hee Hun Oh Standard for guiding the overall direction of the book and for their exceptional endeavors to attain an accurate translation of Father Moon’s teachings that is both faithful to the original language and intelligent in its English expression.

I am also grateful to all those who supplied new passages from diverse traditions in order to fill out the World Scripture in areas where it were lacking, especially Elio Roman, Dr. Muhammad Habash, Dr. Thomas Selover, David Eaton, Dr. Charles Selengut, Mark Callahan and Dr. Dietrich Seidel; and I wish to thank once again all the editors and contributors to the first World Scripture, which served as the basis upon which this new compilation was created. Furthermore, I am grateful to Dr. Sung-Bae Jin and his team of scholars in Korea, including Dr. Taek-Yong Oh and Prof. Jae-Il Lee of Sun Moon University, who provided key texts from Father Moon’s voluminous speeches. Acknowledgment is also due to Hyanghwa Oh, Tim Elder, Lym-Sung Kim, YoungAe Cotter, Moonsook Choi Yoon and Michiko Kim, who made dedicated efforts to translate these passages from Korean to English; to Julian Gray, Dr. Clinton Bennett, Dr. David Carlson, David Fraser-Harris and Kyoungho Kim, who gave valuable advice on a wide range of editorial and translation matters; to Dr. Thomas Walsh and the staff of the Universal Peace Federation who provided organizational support; to Dr. Tyler Hendricks and the Unification Theological Seminary which offered its generous assistance; and finally, to Dr. Gordon Anderson and Jeff Anderson, who worked to lay out and produce the book, pursued the difficult task of obtaining permissions, and went the extra mile to meet some very tight deadlines.

Chung Hwan Kwak
Executive Editor
November 29, 2006

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