God is Almighty and All-knowing. Therefore, He could foresee the possibility of Adam's Fall. However, God did not prevent the downfall of Adam and Eve.
Foreseeing the destructive consequences of their transgression, why did He not intervene?
God created the Divine Principle to govern people during their growth from Formation to Perfection. God does not intervene directly in the affairs of His children. He has given them free will.
Had they been mature, they would have loved God so deeply that no temptation could have turned them away from Him. For the following reasons, God did not directly intervene, either to prevent the Fall or to restore Adam and Eve to their innocent state immediately.
A. God is absolute and perfect, and He created the Principle to be a perfect system of spiritual law. The Principle provides human beings with all the guidance they need for growth to spiritual maturity. By the Principle, God does not interfere with man and woman while they are fulfilling their respective parts.
During our growth, the Principle is sufficient for our guidance. At the time of their fall, Adam and Eve had reached only the top of the Growth Stage.
If God had stepped in to prevent the Fall or to restore His fallen children directly, He would have violated His Principle and invaded the realm of human responsibility. Thus, the Principle would be imperfect, unable to guide us in our growth.
B. God is not responsible for what He did not create. If, after their fall, God had assumed full responsibility and restored them, He would have been acknowledging their transgression as part of His creation.
If God were to acknowledge the non-principled act initiated by Satan as part of His creation, then He would be acknowledging Satan as a co-creator.
Since God is the sole Creator and brings forth only good, He will in no case recognize evil as part of His creation.
C. God created human beings to be the Lord of all creation. To qualify, we must be mature, having passed through the three stages of growth. When God establishes Direct Dominion over man and woman, they are recognized as having reached maturity.
When Adam and Eve fell, they were still immature and thus under the Indirect Dominion of God.
If God had exercised Direct Dominion over them at the time of their Fall, He would have recognized them as mature, which they were not. To see Adam and Eve become fully qualified, God had to wait until they had grown to the state of Perfection.
To give Adam and Eve lordship, God had to leave them free of direct intervention until they reached the state of Perfection by themselves. If he had done otherwise, Adam's dignity as the Lord of creation would have been hurt.
For these reasons, God did not interfere with the Fall of Adam and Eve. He had to work for their restoration afterward.
Young Oon Kim
Note on Restitution
Because of the human Fall, we became alienated from God and subject to Satan's domination. To separate from Satan and make a condition through which God can claim us as His own involves paying restitution.
Restitution or indemnity is a law that has not been clearly understood; yet it is inexorable in its operation. Restitution means "an act of giving an equivalent for loss, damage, etc."
When Adam fell, he lost his original intrinsic value — the image of God in a human being — and became a debtor to his Creator. God will never desert fallen mankind for two reasons.
First, God created us to reflect the divine image, and He will not be satisfied until we do so. Second, it is part of our nature to live forever regardless of the circumstances surrounding such eternal life.
God will not leave the creation in an eternally unfulfilled and imperfect state. Accordingly, mankind must be restored to its original state.
However, as sinners, we are debtors to God and cannot liquidate our debt and restore our original value by our power alone. God does not and cannot forgive people unconditionally because it is contrary to the Divine Principle.
It is not enough simply to desire to return to Him from Satan's domain. Like the prodigal son, we must make our way painfully and step by step from the far country to our Father's house. Only when we get within sight of that house will our Father run to meet us. (Luke 15:11-32)
Until then, He can never be sure we mean what we say. We must show Him by our will and actions that we intend to return to Him. Unconditional forgiveness conflicts with the justice of God.
However, God does make concessions, which result in our compensating for only a fraction of our total debt. When we fulfill this condition, our whole debt is discharged, and we are acknowledged by God as though we had not sinned at all.
The Law of Restitution is like bankruptcy. Imagine that you owe someone $1,000, but all you can scrape together is $50. Your creditor accepts what you have and forgives the balance. This is what God does. If we pay only five percent of our actual debt to God, He will wipe out the rest—the 95 percent.
However, the five percent in God's eyes is 100 percent for us, and payment requires our utmost devotion and commitment. Satan, however, claims mankind as his own. He has dominated us from the beginning.
Satan is not as generous as God. He will not forgive man anything. He demands one hundred percent payment, and, if it is not paid willingly, he will exact it in the form of illness, pain, worry, fear, doubt, inconvenience, depression, and many other diverse and subtle methods.
God is constantly urging and inspiring us to pay off our debt quickly so that we can return to Him. But for each inspiration from God, Satan demands payment.
Sometimes God will help with this payment; at other times, God leaves us alone to manage it. Sometimes God tries us as severely as does Satan and lets us overcome it.
When we do so, God makes it a condition to speed up his restoration. In this way, humans make payment both to God and to Satan in the course of our restoration.
There is a method by which these debts can be paid off quickly.
We know that physically we are still within Satan's realm, and thus still claimed by him. Conscious payment of physical indemnity or restitution removes Satan's opportunity to attack us. God will not let Satan claim more than his due. One of these methods of payment is fasting.
We know that our physical bodies require food for nourishment. By depriving our bodies of food for a short time, we thereby consciously inhibit our activities.
Fasting is widely practiced among some religious people, but the reason for fasting has never been clear.
Now we know that their fasting is a payment to Satan for release. When Jesus cured the epileptic boy, he told his disciples: "This kind comes out only by prayer and fasting." Prayer calls upon the forces of God, while fasting pays homage to the forces of Satan.
In addition to paying restitution to God and Satan, there is a third kind of restitution. Injustices by man to man must be paid for, either in the flesh or in the spirit, either to the one offended or to another in like circumstances.
Many Christians have felt that Jesus somehow cancelled the law of "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" as stated in the laws given to Moses. (Ex. 21:24)
This is not true. Buddhists and Hindus call this the Law of Karma, and it, too, is inexorable. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said,
So if you are offering your gift at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift. Make friends quickly with your accuser, while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison; truly, I say to you, you will never get out till you have paid the last penny. (Matt. 5:23-26)
Those who harm or mistreat their brothers will find themselves in the position of being themselves mistreated if they fail to make amends. If they arrive in the spirit world with unpaid debts, they will have to work to assist, perhaps the very ones they hurt, to pay what they owe.
Payment in spirit is much more difficult, and thus it behooves us to attend to our obligations while we are yet in the flesh. This, then, is the Law of Restitution.
You will find that your understanding of its operation will enable you to cope much more effectively with what were previously labeled "the mysterious workings of fate."
From Adam's descendants, God called key individuals and families and gave them opportunities to make restitution to restore what was lost through the Fall.
The experiences of key figures in the providence of restoration contain valuable lessons for us.
Young Oon Kim