Compiled by Tyler Hendricks and Wungi Min
August 1, 2008
Edited by Tyler Hendricks, Summer 2008
READING 1: THE CORE THEOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING
Commencement Address 2001
The world doesn’t know how precious and important lineage is. Christianity does not understand the true meaning of rebirth or the meaning of original sin. True education must be provided. What is the meaning of original sin? What is the meaning of rebirth? UTS graduates should be able to answer right away. Rebirth is necessary because the problem of sin relates to lineage.
Through Christianity God has provided every possible teaching. Judaism and Christianity paved the road of serving God as our Father. On that foundation Jesus came as the only begotten Son of God in the end times. Even Adam, to begin with, was the begotten Son of God. But because his blood lineage was stained, Jesus had to come as another begotten son, with a pure lineage.
To this day, the most serious problem has been that of lineage, and how to restore the lineage that can inherit God’s Kingship. Lineage is more important than kingship. Lineage should be respected and honored. We have to teach how to support and how to respect pure lineage. Social structure and form of government are not as important as lineage.
The saints in the spirit world know this truth. That’s why they are united in support of Rev. Moon and are coming down to this physical world and help their descendants. More than that; if their descendents don’t follow a straight path, the saints and their good ancestors may punish them. The saints are waiting for your prayer. They are ready to teach you.
Only through one begotten son, who comes as humanity’s True Parent, will God’s lineage be bequeathed. If UTS cannot provide the proper teachings related to this, I will close it.
All the true seeds will enter the Kingdom. A couple married in the Holy Blessing are never to divorce. This is the law of the Heavenly Constitution. Divorce divides parents and children. If we keep a relationship of pure love between husband and wife throughout life, from the beginning to the end, then the children will be the pure and eternal children of God.
Unification Theological Seminary was founded based on the purpose and goal of cultivating leaders across the globe who can complete the Will of God by building a God-centered ideal world based on ideal families. After you graduate from UTS you have to clearly understand the nature of the world’s chaos, how it was caused and what we have to do.
The reproductive organs should pursue only God-centered love. Otherwise, we will all end up in Hell. UTS students also, if you act immorally, you will be cut off. We have to be alert. Make sure nobody violates this universal principle. This violation prevented the creation of God’s family. UTS faculty and graduates should understand this.
UTS graduates, you have to take a quantum leap to reach another dimension, in terms of your commitment and your mission. Study my prayers and teachings. Unification Church leaders have failed to carry out their mission to introduce these prayers and teachings to the people well enough in the past. You graduates should become the bones of this world, while the secular world leaders are like flesh. The bone marrow—the message—should be sewn into you.
Commencement Address 1988
… A movement toward unifying all the different faiths of the world must be actively launched. How? Through the spirit of ecumenism and continued fellowship among all denominations and religions, enhance unity and harmony and eliminate dogmatic biases. And through encouraging interfaith dialogue, cooperation and mutual assistance … through sharing common ideals and concerns … aggressively initiate further participation in ecumenism on the worldwide level.
READING 2: UNIFICATION INTERFAITH
Commencement Address 2001
There are many representatives from different religions, but they have to study how to liberate God because they do not have teachings about it in any of their religions. I may mobilize the founders of different religions because I want to bring together many young people from various religions like Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam, and so forth. With the permission of their founders and heads of their religions, they can come here and study how to make the entire world one family. That is the meaning of Unification Theology.
All religions should be united and make joint efforts for the establishment of one global family. In order to realize this, all existing barriers among races, religions, denominations and nations must be broken down to create one unified world. The Unification Theological Seminary was founded based on such an inter-religious, international and interracial ideology.
God goes all the way, even to His death. That’s the way God has been carrying out the providence, through establishing different religions. But these religions, instead of becoming one, became adversaries. Yet now in the spirit world all these saints, the founders of the major religions, became one. They are all united, centering on Rev. Moon.
The four major religious founders are now communicating with one another, on which foundation God’s authority is also being manifested to the entire world.
I’m telling the incumbent president of UTS to create classes on Confucianism, Buddhism, Islam and so forth, so that by the time students graduate we will have taught them precisely about God and the spirit world. Confucianism, Buddhism, and Islam—all those courses should be provided at UTS, but somehow they were taken away. You don’t have those courses here, do you? Super-denominational, super-religious courses are not here in your school. You have to create those courses again. It doesn’t matter whether people are Buddhists or Muslims, they should all be united, even if they have to sacrifice their own religion. They have to come forward and follow True Parents. That’s the way we can secure liberation on earth.
Commencement Address 1987
UTS has been giving its students an interdenominational and inter-religious education, and it serves as a model for breaking scholarly barriers, by inviting scholars from various religious denominations to teach and share with the students of our own denomination.
… In the near future, a department devoted to researching all the great religions of the world will be installed.
God is not a being who dwells in doctrines, nor is God restricted by rituals and forms …
Centered on the Unification Theological Seminary, I initiated New ERA and the God Conferences, two truly ecumenical movements. Through these, I demonstrated both the possibility of and the necessity for the harmony and unification of Christian denominations and, further, of other great religions. I believe that this unification and harmony will be the precious result of patience, sacrifice, and true love. To advance the will of God on earth and bring peace to the world through sincere dialogue and the creation of harmony among religious bodies, I also founded the Council for the World’s Religions and the Assembly of the World’s Religions. These organizations have performed miracles in the stagnant religious world. Further, I founded the Youth Seminar on World Religions and the Religious Youth Service, bringing young people together in helping to prevent racial and religious wars and to establish a peaceful ideal world under God. Through all these organizations, I am presenting to the world’s religions a new alternative. All of these programs and projects are part of the Unification Movement that I initiated. It is my wish that you graduates, and everyone here today, may inherit this foundation with the heart of an owner, expand it, and bring forth new fruit.
READING 3: HAVE PERSONAL VISION AND PASSION
(April 14, 1977)
Are you here because I told you to be here or did you come on your own accord? Of course we all came on our own accord. That in itself is a great thing. So … even by going through suffering we will feel the situation of God. This is the whole purpose of doing difficult things and suffering.
(June 29, 1977)
It is good, on the occasion of your graduation, to determine yourselves that all throughout your life you are going to do something. Small or big, you have some destination, some purpose. Say, ‘I am going to accomplish this;’ it must be something you can be proud of. If it will take you ten years, you will have to work very consistently, as if it were overnight, as if it were only one day.
Unless we do this, there is nothing that will remain, no matter how many years we live. If we make up our mind now and set it upon a certain goal to which we pledge to ourselves, to nature and to Heaven, even at the cost of our lives we have to accomplish that. If it takes ten years, we will do it. If it takes twenty years, we will do it. By the end of that time, something will remain. The more difficult it is, the more worthy great it is. The longer it takes, the greater it is. What determines greatness [from the viewpoint] of the people of the future? It is how difficult it was. Walking a hundred miles starts with one step. To walk ten steps, you go step by step. Going step by step is very important. Many people make up their mind, but when it becomes difficult, only a few people continue to the end.
In a university you have a major. What am I going to do that other people don’t do, or, even if others do it, that I can do it in a way that is of unique value? As you may have guessed, as a graduate of a theological school, your specialty will be spiritual leadership. We have to specialize in the realm of heart. It is never easy; in fact it is more difficult than anything else.
A person who would argue, saying ‘I won’t do this now, I will do that tonight,’ will not likely do it during the night either. So, stop arguing and do it in the daytime, while time is available. For you, the next twenty years will be your daytime. Consider that you are just like Father, although with less intensity. Still you have to have a twenty-one year course. Father started his twenty-one year course at the age of forty. Now, everyone here can start their twenty-one year course at the age of twenty-five or thirty. How much of an advantage you have! You have a prototype, you have a historical reference. The only remaining thing is your own realization and determination. If your wife flees from you, it shouldn’t really matter. If the entire government tried to come against you and to bury you, it certainly wouldn’t matter. What matters is whether you are going to pursue your goal [with the same power you had when] you started.
…When you go out to work, you have to raise your own funds for your activities. How can you do that? While in school, you will learn how to raise funds. When you go out, you can then use that skill.
…So, when you are determined to start even a small project to support yourself, and if you are really determined to do that, it can be a success. It is not that difficult. Once you make up your mind strongly and carry it out, your plan will come to realization.
What is the most important, focused advice that you can ever receive? Five or ten years from now, look back and think of the time you set your goal. You will realize that because of that determination you made, you achieved what you did.
READING 4: BE WELL-ROUNDED PEOPLE
Commencement Address 1978
The contribution of higher education… must be measured not only in the production of academics and intellectuals, technicians and specialists, but also in the creation of mature human beings of good character. In particular, the purpose of Seminary education is the formation of God’s ideal and the fulfillment of His providence, a task that goes beyond the concerns of any particular denomination or religion. Upon that foundation, seminarians must be trained to become leaders representing and carrying out God’s ideal and His will. In this regard, firstly, the seminarians should explore God’s providential development of human history and have an accurate vision of God’s ideal world …
Second, you, as a witness of God’s will, should know the real meaning of God’s Public Will. … You must put the needs of the world ahead of your needs or the needs of your church.
You are not graduates from a denominational seminary with a denominational theology.
I want all of you to be holders of the banner of spiritual revolution in order to reform the corruption in Christendom. Awaken the American public to reassume their heavenly responsibility. Be good examples for others and fulfill your mission as righteous individuals who will save the free world from destruction, who will realize ‘One World Under God.’
(March 3, 1979)
… People will wonder: this is supposed to be a theological seminary; why are martial arts necessary? Isn’t it an institution of peace? Before we can educate someone, we need to have abilities. We can’t say things with our mouths only. We have to have a real ability in order to educate other people. In labor camps, in wharves and construction sites, what language is the strongest language? It is muscle power; that is the only language that is effective there.
Academic standing is important, but not that important. Becoming a real man and having a high academic achievement are two different things.
Father will one day make the strongest soccer team in America. We will organize our own soccer team, the Theological Seminary Soccer Team. If you can do that, even the name will have an impact. And if you win the American national competition, the world will gaze at you, stare at you in disbelief… ‘A theological seminary!?’ All the theological seminaries in the world will be the first ones to be surprised.
Father really expects that one day all graduates from Barrytown will become world-renowned leaders in all fields, in the political area, in the economy… Father might even order you to go to the mountain and get boars and bears, doing successful hunting, bringing in some result, giving you a certain time to do that. There would be many things Father would want you to do, and you just jump right into it.
[This is] why you have to do karate, why you have to use your body and train in self-defense in a theological seminary, why you went out fund-raising, even during the vacations, and why you are doing witnessing at the same time. Even one of these is difficult, but you are doing all three in one time. May be it becomes a bit clearer now why you are doing this.
Commencement Address 1982
First, and most significant, the Seminary has conducted a series of seminars to which renowned theologians were invited … Theology today … seems to have come to a barrier, causing it to falter … to reveal the direction of God’s providence to the modern theological field … to search out the contents with which we can digest the problems of modern times … we have initiated an ecumenical movement, working with prominent theologians … the result is New ERA … the search for ecumenical unity … we must embrace both conservatism and liberalism.
Second, you have studied many schools of theology [but we must now analyze and comprehend people as much as we did books].
Thirdly, we have participated in the Home Church movement … since you have learned that unification is brought about only through sacrifice and service, I am sure you will fulfill this central mission towards your original homeland intended by God.
Fourthly, we have learned to carry out economic activities … learning about ideal ownership and proper management of resources. … I would like you to engage in economic activities so that you may gain confidence as a giving person … to become an example to all others establishing patterns of personal virtue.
What I ask of you at your graduation is that you become responsible persons to connect ideal and original ownership, family, society, world and universe … thus you will inherit the course of messiahship.
READING 5: THEORY AND PRACTICE
Commencement Address 1985
My desire has always been that the theological curriculum of this school should not be dependent only on doctrine and ritual. I have also endeavored for this campus to be a place where the students can develop deep personal faith and authentic spiritual communication with the spirit of God.
It is not through books that God wishes to relate to you. The living God longs for the opportunity to walk with you on this campus and to dwell in your hearts …
The seminary that proposes to educate leaders for the realization of God’s ideal for the creation must certainly place itself beyond racial discrimination, religious prejudice, and denominational strife.
Commencement Address 1981
Education should not only be theoretical, but must also include the working out and testing of theories in practical living and experience, so that those theories may be assessed for their validity and practicality. With this direction in mind you must lead the nation of America and the world.
Commencement Address 1984
Your new commitment must include practical action hand-in-hand with your ideals, theories and dreams. … [not just] utopian ideas, your theories must be proven to be true and valid in action and practice.
Commencement Address 1988
You must give education and guidance to people to not only believe in God’s will but to live it in their everyday lives. We must develop a ‘practical application’ movement.
READING 6: BREAKING DOWN THE WALLS
(January 2, 1977)
Father met all nine professors of this Seminary on the last day of this term and gave them directions. Why don’t you do research your belief system, i.e. Judaism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Greek Orthodoxy and other denominations. Compare your belief, your church, your denomination, your religion, with our Unification Theology, Unification thought and Divine Principle, and write something. I’ll help you! Secondly, you know your own religion, why don’t you bring great thinkers in your religious denomination to me?
Through international conferences in the area of each professor, which Father will support, the professors associated to us will be given a chance to speak out, to compare, study and research for other academics. By way of intensive studies, the conclusion will be clear: Unification Theology and Unification Thought is far better than their own. A comparative study of their thought with the Unification view will clarify all these things.
Then, naturally, these scholars will want to study Divine Principle, because they are thinkers, they know what the decline of Christianity is. Even their own religion, their own denomination, is sinking. So, they are thinking, where do we find a remedy, a recipe to rescue us? They know that the radical, constructive forces of Unification Theology and Unification Thought are what they must study. Then the contemporary protestant churches will become sympathetic and will be attracted to us.
In order to be a real leader in the field of religion, they’ll have to come to UTS where, by that time, we will have a doctoral course, too. This will be the world headquarters to unite all religions, to lead the theological world.
They’ll think they would like to have you, by the 1980s. Other institutes, seminaries, schools or universities will like to have Unification Theological Seminary graduates among their staff and faculty. So, all the cathedrals and denominational churches will welcome you; they will like to have UTS graduates. This place will be connected to the worldwide scholarly community. They will like to have you in their big churches, denominations and seminaries. Actually, from the practical point of view, all the other, outside seminarians have a similar education, but they don’t know how to revitalize their churches. They know how you Unificationists are doing under the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, so they are thinking that if they hire you and they get help from you, their church will grow, while others cannot do this kind of thing. So, your value is great.
We have four denominations [represented on the faculty]: Protestant, Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Judaism. So, our students, ten people, will be assigned to assist these four major religious denominations, and from there a foundation will be set and we’ll push forward. Through your interfaith activities, if you are assigned to one of these committees, you will investigate available documents to discover worldrenowned scholars relevant to that committee. Already, you sent two thousand copies [of the Unification Theological Affirmations] to schools and libraries. They can study them; you will have an individual correspondence. Make connections on a continuous basis. Four people will do. Four people will cover their entire religion or denomination. Raise questions. They will answer back. Then you can make a personal relationship.
One team of four people will study the Presbyterian faith or whatever. You become experts in that area. If you are objective and see the good and bad points, you will later be invited to lecture about their denomination and how to develop it and give it vitality. You will become the teachers, because you know more than they do. They only have their own denomination, but you have the Unification theology and comparative studies. So, you will be invited as their lecturers.
From this year 1977 on, I give a new mission of UTS. An interfaith team of professors should be formed here at the Seminary, with your help. … Rev. Moon’s spirit of unification is to be interfaith oriented, not discriminating against other people. This will be the real meaning of the interfaith theological seminary.
One example. Dr. [Herbert] Richardson is a wonderful force in the theological camp. Centering on his studies, he suddenly switched to Unificationism. We see the dynamic power of the Unification Theology. His shift is a witness, not only to you, but also to the world. This means that many [conscientious, renowned] scholars will do the same thing Dr. Richardson did. If you people bring forty world-renowned scholars, let those forty turn thousands of scholars upside down and transform them to our Unification system, just like we see it in Dr. Richardson.
Then you will challenge the Lutheran professor, why don’t we give a revival to the Lutheran denomination? We’ll help you! Your denomination, Methodism, is sinking down, your Baptist Church is in trouble, we will give you the solution,… We can use them as instructors from the Lutheran denomination. Then, we have an association with them, and send them back to their own denomination with us. We give something to them. Instead of denying their denomination, let them stay as they are. We give good things to them, to develop their denomination.
Commencement Address 1982 (Prayer)
Your long-fostered wish is to unite all religions … we need champions for you, young people who can accomplish this solemn task. That was the very reason for establishing this Unification Theological Seminary.
READING 7: A VISION FOR UTS STUDENTS
Commencement Address 1999
In 1975, only three years after I came to America, I founded the Unification Theological Seminary in Barrytown, investing a lot of money and selecting a good number of students. Earlier in that year, 120 capable American members had already been sent out as missionaries to 120 nations in the world; so, selecting a good number of students for the Seminary meant to sacrifice our church in America. Yet I had a dream of reviving Christianity even by sacrificing ourselves. There were even some critics among us who questioned what I was doing, so to found this Seminary was a difficult decision on my part. But I had to do this. How many times I came to this property to pray before deciding to purchase it for the founding of this Seminary! To that degree I was serious about reviving Christianity and saving the nation of America and the world through Unification Theological Seminary.
Meeting with UTS Alumni, January 28, 1993
Father feels a special affinity towards UTS graduates. In the beginning, Father drove two and a half hours everyday to see you. If one day he didn’t see you he felt something was missing. Father went so often to Barrytown in order to teach the right tradition to the first classes. Father was thinking he has to create pathfinders with whom he can set up the proper tradition.
The first graduating class has unforgettable memories of Father pushing them into the water to go carp fishing. Father stayed up all night with the students, making the nets by hand. Father created Ocean Church with the most important purpose of giving you an unforgettable memory, to teach you something about tradition. ‘Father was with me in the cold, late at night, making nets with me.’ I wanted to create a new tradition for the sake of posterity. How many of you alumni really value those days? Father was thinking that he had to prepare for the day to provide leadership for a declining America.
(February 26, 1977)
If you are so small-minded as to say, ‘the reason of my being here is to get a degree,’ if you have that small an ambition for humanity, you will surely be punished, because you have spent more than [the value of] that ambition. If your ambition stops with that kind of ambition, then it would have been better if you hadn’t come to the Theological Seminary to begin with. So we must know that the fact that we have been here was to learn something and to discipline ourselves. So we have to meet this minimum standard so that we can return this service to the world and to Heaven.
Father will pray to God to drive the Theological Seminary students into the most miserable situation when they graduate, mercilessly. Father will one day pray to God like that, so that they will save the world. As long as they are driven that way and persevere in that misery, they will have enough condition to save the world.
Commencement Address 1980
God’s plan centering on the major religions has not been realized. … You, as seminary graduates, must assume the unfinished task …
You must:
a) Plunge yourself into the troubled world and work there …
b) Sacrifice yourself unconditionally …
c) Accept willingly the suffering path
d) Clearly show the world the direction of God’s heavenly ideal, and
e) Educate people about God, His desire, and His heavenly ideal for humankind.
Accept willingly and unconditionally the suffering path of indemnity… The degree of your success, in your responsibility as central figures in a central religious movement, will be determined by the years of indemnity and the amount of suffering and sacrifice you are able to endure.
(October 20, 1979)
Today, we are incurring many expenses, even during this difficult financial situation of our church, only because one day we will speak the same language as [Christian leaders and scholars], we will understand their problems much better through studying, and one day we will serve them. This is why we are studying now. We have just described one most difficult thing in America, which is to revive the Christian spirit.
(Commencement Address, 1987)
Are you not feeling a sense of liberation with graduation? In certain ways, strict regulation is helpful for a life of faith. But a secular life relying on habit, which can easily involve your own past life, is not the way of true life. Only by living a life of true love and continual self-sacrifice can a person overcome Satan. Moreover, great satisfaction can be gained by exercising public righteousness, even when it is difficult. I wish all of you may lead such a life.
The Messiah comes to teach mankind to overcome Satan, to destroy Satan’s base in this world, and to build God’s Kingdom on earth. The Messiah shows the example for this through his own life. Thus, the Messiah comes with the love of true parents, which is the highest love.
Unification Church members should be able to embrace the world with love. Only when you are totally united, centered on the love of parents who have become one with God, can you totally win the world back to God. Through this love, and by overcoming Satan’s cunning tricks in your daily life, you can live in the eternal realm of liberation. When you are an individual of such love, you can finally build a true family and further, an ideal society, nation, and world, which will be the Kingdom of Heaven.
Beloved graduates! In order to find the best location for our seminary I looked at many different places. This place was not chosen easily. I put great emphasis on finding a place in a beautiful natural environment, where the spirit of the mountains and the river could help educate you in wholesomeness of character. After this school opened, I came here many times and prayed, and I personally educated students from many different perspectives. My heart and my dream dwell in the Hudson riverbanks, the surrounding mountain-tops, the trees, the grass, and even in every small rock. On this campus, there is nothing in which my heart is not given. You have been living here day by day, drinking in the life spirit provided by God, under the protection of the world of good spirits. I hope that you will not leave this campus with only a bag of knowledge accumulated by your years of research, but also with God’s hope for each one of you, and my expectations for you as you go out to the field to practice the ministry of love.
I expect all of you, who are graduating at a time whose importance can hardly be matched in the entire providence of God, to become witnesses of the living God and of true love. For this, I pray each of you will become a lighthouse and an example for all humankind, and that you can educate all people through an exemplary life.
I pray that God’s blessings will be with you, and that you will all be the disciples of love and heart.
READING 8: UTS AND MY FUTURE
(January 2, 1977)
We have to be responsible for these areas: how to bring the young people into oneness in a new dimension, because even the government and the social thinkers in this country and throughout the world don’t have a remedy. They don’t have the solution. You must have it.
This is a direction for three areas; the church area, the Victory Over Communism area and youth work: how to save young people who are in trouble. This is the direction the Unification system, church and movement should lead, so you will be in that position. This means, you will have to be the teachers and counselors to the ministers of the established churches and their theologians and scholars. Also, you have to teach and train the politicians who don’t know how to prevent the flood of communism. Also, you have to educate the conventional educators to influence the young people.
You have to prepare yourselves. Out of these three areas, in which do you have some talent? What preparation should you have if you were assigned by Father in that particular area? You have to prepare yourselves from now on.
READING 9: THE INTERFAITH VOCATION
(May 2, 1978)
Those who are going to the field … will be working to help the universities. You will become the chaplains, the campus ministers, so that you will be the key person to influence campuses, the president, the dean, the vice president, whomever. That is Father’s plan for the graduating class placements. We have a curriculum similar to the other seminaries so that one can have their professors teach here. Later we can expand the curriculum, of course. The reason we have inter-religious concerns in our seminary is to end the denominationalism in Christianity and the fighting among the different religions. By seeing us peacefully working together, they will say, ‘Oh, look at the Unification Theological Seminary, even though they are of different denominations, they are working together, that is an example.’ They will learn, and automatically they will stop fighting among the denominations.
Then later for instance an Islamic scholar will say, ‘Why doesn’t a Unification Seminary graduate come here teach at our Islamic center in Washington DC?’ Then these people will hire you. A Muslim leader will coming on May 30th. If he interested, we can weave an exchange among the different religions.
So you will not only go to the Unification Church; you will go to Islam, because you will be equipped with all this while you are here. Interfaith. You may think how in the world can I, as a Unificationist scholar, become a Muslim, but Father will forgive you. Father will pray to God, ‘this person has a special mission, so I will send him.’ If you did that out of a self-centered motivation, your conscience would bother you, but if you come to Father, Heavenly Father must accept it.
Think of it. Free people from [being] Unification graduates to go to the Buddhist temple. The whole religion of Buddhism will become united. You will stimulate Buddhist monks and theologians to study more their own theology, because they will recognize that they have a weak point. Unification Theology is a bigger umbrella! Then when graduation comes, leaders with a variety of religious attire will come in, Buddhists with their shaved heads and Muslims with their own attire and Greek Orthodox with ornate vestments, Baptists will come with beards, just think of it. An assembly of all the different kinds of regalia, representing different denominations and different religions, will appear. The world religions will draw the conclusion that the ideal religion must be like the Unification religion.