Original Sin

Korean: 원죄 (Wonjoe)
Hanja: 原罪 — original / root crime
Also known as: The Root of Sin; The Fallen Lineage; The Inheritance of Satan's Blood

What is Original Sin?

Original Sin (Korean: 원죄, Wonjoe) is, in Unification theology, the foundational corruption of the human lineage that occurred through the Human Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. It is not understood as a legal guilt imputed from one generation to the next in the Augustinian sense, nor as a mere moral tendency toward wrongdoing. Rather, it is a biological and spiritual inheritance — a contamination of the bloodline itself, introduced at the very root of human ancestry through an act of illicit love.

Rev. Moon explained this with precision:

"Due to the Fall, human beings could not but surrender to their false father, Satan, the devil. People changed their father. We discarded God, our true Father, and became one with Satan, the false father. In this way, the first man and woman became Satan's son and daughter." — The Fall Means the Father's Place was Taken by Another, Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book 8

Original Sin is thus the most fundamental of all human problems — not an individual moral failure, but a cosmic misdirection of love, life, and lineage away from God and toward Satan.

The Root of the Fall: Illicit Love, Not a Literal Fruit

Central to the Unification understanding of Original Sin is the interpretation of the Genesis narrative. Rev. Moon consistently taught that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life are not literal botanical objects, but symbolic language referring to the love of woman and man, respectively. The "eating of the fruit" signifies a premature, unprincipled sexual relationship — not the consumption of a forbidden food.

As Rev. Moon taught:

"The fruit of the tree of life is the male sexual organ, and the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is the female sexual organ. They must not even be touched. And if one eats of these fruits, it will be a disaster. In the Bible, it is written in a metaphorical fashion." — The Fall Means the Father's Place was Taken by Another, Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book 8

The evidence within the Genesis text itself supports this interpretation. After the Fall, Adam and Eve did not cover their mouths or their hands — they covered their sexual parts. Rev. Moon drew on this detail directly:

"If the Christian churches had a mind to interpret the Bible a little more intellectually, they would immediately be able to understand the origin of the Fall. Why were Adam and Eve ashamed of their sexual parts? Why did they cover them?" — The Fall Means the Father's Place was Taken by Another

This reinterpretation is not an isolated doctrinal claim but the foundation upon which the entire Unification understanding of sin, restoration, and the Blessing Ceremony rests.

The Two Falls: Spiritual and Physical

The Exposition of the Divine Principle teaches that the Fall unfolded in two stages, each equally essential to understanding Original Sin:

The Spiritual Fall — The archangel Lucifer, entrusted with the role of servant and guardian, developed an unprincipled love for Eve while she was still in a period of growth and not yet ready for the consummation of love. Eve, responding to the archangel's stimulation, entered into an illicit spiritual relationship with him. Through this, she received his nature — self-centered love, jealousy, and the impulse to usurp God's position. This is called the spiritual fall.

The Physical Fall — Feeling spiritually separated from God and fearful, Eve then went to Adam and drew him into a physical relationship before the proper time established by God. Through this act, Adam also received the elements of the fallen archangel, and the couple entered into a physical union outside of God's blessing. This is called the physical fall.

The consequence of both falls is that the lineage of God — which should have flowed through Adam and Eve to all of humanity — was redirected through Satan. As the Divine Principle teaches:

"The root of sin was not that the first human ancestors ate a fruit, but rather that they had an illicit sexual relationship with an angel. Consequently, they could not multiply God's good lineage but instead multiplied Satan's evil lineage." — Exposition of the Divine Principle, Chapter 2

The Four Kinds of Sin

The Exposition of the Divine Principle classifies all human sin into four categories, all of which trace back to Original Sin as their root:

1. Original Sin — The sin that originated with the spiritual and physical fall of the first ancestors. It is ingrained in the human lineage and is the root of all other sins. It cannot be removed by individual repentance or moral effort alone; it requires a change of lineage through True Parents.

2. Hereditary Sin — Sin inherited from one's ancestors through the bloodline. As stated in the Ten Commandments: "The sins of parents will be visited upon their descendants." This is not a punishment arbitrarily imposed by God but a natural consequence of the contaminated lineage.

3. Collective Sin — Sin for which a person is responsible as a member of a group, even if they did not personally commit the act. The crucifixion of Jesus is cited as the primary example: all of humanity shares in the responsibility for the failure to receive the Messiah.

4. Individual Sin — Personal transgressions committed by an individual in their own life, in violation of divine law or conscience.

Of these four, Original Sin is the root from which the other three grow. Rev. Moon described it as the sin that cannot be resolved without fundamentally addressing the lineage itself:

"What is sin? It is a violation of heavenly law which is committed when a person forms a common base with Satan." — Sin, World Scripture and the Teachings of Sun Myung Moon

Original Sin and the Lineage of Satan

The most distinctive feature of the Unification teaching on Original Sin is its insistence that the Fall was not merely a change in moral behavior but a change in lineage. Before the Fall, humanity was intended to be born as the direct children of God — heirs of His love, life, and blood. Through the Fall, humanity instead came to be born as the spiritual children of Satan.

Rev. Moon pointed to the Gospel of John as biblical confirmation:

"In chapter eight of the Gospel of John, Jesus states clearly that the father of humankind is the devil. The adulterer who deprived God of His ideal of love, which God intended to realize through Adam and Eve, as His external body, is indeed the devil, Satan." — The Fall Means the Father's Place was Taken by Another

The passage in Romans 8:23 is also interpreted in this light:

"We ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly, as we wait for adoption as sons."

An adopted child, by definition, does not share the lineage of the parent who adopts them. Rev. Moon identified this as a description of humanity's actual condition — not natural children of God, but those waiting to be restored to that position.

God's Heart and the Grief of the Fall

To understand Original Sin fully, one must not only analyze the mechanics of what happened in the Garden of Eden but also feel the weight of what it meant to God. In Unification theology, Original Sin is not merely a theological problem — it is the source of God's unimaginable personal grief. Rev. Moon spoke about this dimension of the Fall with great emotional depth throughout his ministry, drawing directly from his own spiritual experience of God's heart.

From God's standpoint, Satan is not simply a cosmic adversary. Satan is the adulterer who violated the one whom God loved. Adam and Eve were not just the first human beings — they were God's only son and daughter, the culmination of His entire creative intent:

Adam and Eve were born as the only son and daughter for billions of generations. Thus, the relationship of the Parent and child were not consummated. God lost the only son for billions of generations, so the only way to find that son again is to overcome the pain lasting for billions of generations. We have not known that we have such a Heavenly Parent.

— Sun Myung Moon (301-100, 04/20/1999) Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book 8

What makes this grief so profound in Unification theology is that God — who is the source and standard of all love — was compelled to continue loving even through the most devastating violation of love imaginable. Satan had, in effect, taken God's beloved daughter and made her his own. Yet God could not abandon her, nor could He abandon the descendants born from that fallen lineage. He had to love them as if they were sinless:

God cannot be God if He treats the sons and daughters of the devil, the enemy of His love, as the children of an enemy. God has to set up the standard by loving them with the same heart He would have loved His original sinless sons and daughters.

— Sun Myung Moon (208-291, 11/20/1990) Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book 8

This is the theological logic behind the entire providential history of restoration. God's grief over the Fall is not passive — it is the driving force behind six thousand years of effort to find and establish True Parents who could finally resolve the root cause of sin. Original Sin, in this reading, is inseparable from the question of God's suffering heart (shimjeong). The Unification teaching is thus not simply a doctrine about human corruption but a revelation about the interior life of God and His unceasing longing to reclaim His children.

Original Sin, the Mind-Body Conflict, and Fallen Nature

One of the most observable consequences of Original Sin, according to Rev. Moon's teaching, is the internal conflict between mind and body that every human being experiences. The mind seeks goodness; the body pulls toward selfishness.

This is not a natural feature of the human constitution as God designed it, but the direct result of the Fall:

"Adam and Eve fell by the sin of illicit love, a transgression that violated God's ideal of true love... Consequently, all humankind, ever since, as descendants of fallen Adam and Eve, has been born with original sin, from generation to generation. The reason why every person experiences inner conflict between the mind and the body is due to the Fall." — The Human Fall, April 16, 1996

This inner disunity is understood as the microcosmic reflection of the macro-level problem: humanity is internally divided because the original family was divided from God. The reunification of mind and body within each individual is therefore not merely a personal spiritual discipline — it is a participation in the restoration of the entire created order.

Rev. Moon also identified fallen nature as the pattern of behavior inherited from the archangel's original transgression. The four aspects of fallen nature are: failing to take God's viewpoint, leaving one's proper position, reversing dominion, and multiplying sin. These are not individual character flaws but structural features of a lineage that began outside of God's love.

Original Sin and Restoration: The Path to Resolution

Because Original Sin is rooted in the lineage, it cannot be resolved through individual repentance, prayer, or moral reform alone. The history of religion — including the entire providence of the Old and New Testaments — is understood in Unification teaching as God's long effort to prepare the conditions under which Original Sin could ultimately be eradicated.

This is why Indemnity is necessary: the Fall was a specific act that violated a specific portion of responsibility, and restoration requires that fallen humanity set conditions that reverse the direction of the Fall. As Rev. Moon taught:

"Indemnity means going the route opposite to that of the Fall. It means going the reverse way." — The Way of Restoration Is the Inevitable Course for Humankind

But indemnity alone, however sincerely practiced, cannot change the lineage. The ultimate resolution of Original Sin requires True Parents — a man and woman who have not fallen, who stand in the position of the original Adam and Eve, and through whom a new, unpolluted lineage can begin.

Rev. Moon taught that the Blessing Ceremony is the practical mechanism through which this lineage change is enacted:

"Those people who have received the Blessing in the Unification Church have changed their lineage. The Blessing is the change of lineage." — Cham Bumo Gyeong, Book 4

The Holy Wine Ceremony that precedes the Blessing symbolically cleanses the inherited lineage, establishing the spiritual foundation for the couple to enter into God's bloodline rather than Satan's. Through successive generations of Blessed Families, the inheritance of Original Sin is progressively overcome.

The Messiah, True Parents, and the Grafting of the Lineage

The resolution of Original Sin requires more than a spiritual savior who forgives guilt — it requires someone who stands in the position of unfallen Adam and Eve, receiving God's direct love and Blessing, and through whose lineage all of humanity can be reconnected to God. This is precisely the Unification definition of the Messiah:

Unless the True Parents — the Messiah — appear, fallen human beings will not be able to eliminate their original sin or be liberated from sin and receive the Blessing at the completion stage.

— Sun Myung Moon (35-215, 10/19/1970) Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book 8

The image Rev. Moon returned to repeatedly to describe this process is that of a graft. A branch from the fallen tree of humanity must be cut off and grafted onto the new tree — the lineage of True Parents rooted in God's love:

Why do we need True Parents? It is because we must take root in the realm of the heart. Now the root is different. Through the Fall, all the trunks and branches have become different. Here a new root started with True Parents and what emerged from that? A trunk and branches grew. These you must engraft to yourselves. You should cut yourself down and have the new branches grafted onto you. After the engrafting, you will join the great mainstream of the universe.

— Sun Myung Moon (164-155, 05/10/1987) Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book 8

This grafting is not a metaphor without concrete content. It is precisely what the Blessing Ceremony accomplishes. When a couple receives the Blessing from True Parents, they are — spiritually and providentially — being detached from the fallen lineage and connected to God's lineage.

The Holy Wine Ceremony that precedes the Blessing is the ritual enactment of this transition. The consequence unfolds over generations: Blessed couples raise their children within God's lineage, their children raise their own children likewise, and in this way, Original Sin is progressively overcome within each family line.

The Fall was, at its root, a wrongful marriage. Its resolution is therefore a rightful marriage — one conducted under God's direct Blessing through True Parents:

The Fall was a wrongful marriage that took place in the Garden of Eden. This has been reversed through the True Parents enabling rightful marriage. Hell was abolished by the True Parents clearing up the wrong perpetrated by the false parents.

— Sun Myung Moon (300-222, 03/14/1999) Cheon Seong Gyeong, Book 8

This is the most practical dimension of the doctrine: Original Sin is not resolved by faith alone, nor by moral virtue alone, but through participation in the providential family structure that True Parents have established. The Unification Church's entire practice — from the Matching and Blessing to the raising of children in a culture of absolute sexual ethics — is the direct application of this understanding of Original Sin and its remedy.

Comparison with Other Christian Traditions

The Unification teaching on Original Sin shares certain features with the broader Christian tradition but differs significantly in its content and resolution:

Augustine of Hippo (354–430 AD) was the first theologian to use the phrase "original sin" (peccatum originale). He taught that Adam's sin was transmitted to all humanity through sexual concupiscence and that all humans inherit both the guilt and the corrupted nature of Adam. Baptism, in this view, removes the guilt but does not fully restore the original nature.

Eastern Orthodox theology speaks instead of ancestral sin (Greek: amartia), emphasizing that what is inherited is not Adam's guilt but the consequences of his sin — mortality, corruption, and a weakened will. Eastern tradition does not hold that humanity inherits Adam's personal guilt.

The Unification teaching agrees with the Augustinian tradition that something transmitted through the bloodline is the root problem, and agrees with the Eastern tradition that this is primarily a matter of nature and condition rather than personal guilt.

However, it goes further than either: identifying the specific act that caused the Fall (illicit love rather than disobedience in the abstract), specifying the mechanism of transmission (the lineage itself), and providing a concrete path of resolution (the change of lineage through the Blessing of True Parents).

In this sense, the Unification teaching presents itself not as a rejection of prior Christian doctrine but as its completion — answering the questions that prior theology left unanswered.

Original Sin in the Context of Universal History

The Exposition of the Divine Principle teaches that all of human history — from the rivalry of Cain and Abel to the rise and fall of civilizations, from the crucifixion of Jesus to the Cold War — is comprehensible only against the background of Original Sin and its providential resolution. Satan's claim over humanity is the invisible force behind every historical conflict; the advance of the Providence of Restoration is God's long effort to reclaim what was lost.

As the Human Fall article on tplegacy.net summarizes across traditions:

"The human fall explains the discrepancy between the cosmos' pure origin and its present state of suffering. It is logically necessary for religions in which God is the only Creator, the Creation was purposed to be good, and evil is regarded as real and contrary to the purpose of creation." — The Human Fall

The resolution of Original Sin — through True Parents, the Blessing, and the establishment of ideal families across all nations — is therefore not merely a religious event. It is, in Unification teaching, the culmination of all history: the restoration of God's original dream for humanity.

Original Sin in New Religious Movement Scholarship

Scholars of New Religious Movements and scholars of the Unification Movement specifically have consistently identified the doctrine of Original Sin as one of the most theologically distinctive and sociologically consequential features of Unification thought.

Early academic treatments, such as Frederick Sontag's Sun Myung Moon and the Unification Church (1977) and the essays collected in M. Darroll Bryant and Herbert W. Richardson's A Time for Consideration (1978), noted that the Unification reinterpretation of the Fall as sexual in nature was both the most controversial and the most structurally central element of the movement's theology. Sontag, conducting interviews directly with Rev. Moon and senior members, observed that the entire edifice of Unification soteriology — indemnity, the Blessing, True Parents — is logically dependent on this specific diagnosis of what the Fall was and what it introduced into human history.

Later scholarship in the sociology of religion drew attention to the practical consequences of this doctrine for community formation. The insistence that Original Sin is transmitted through lineage and that the Blessing of True Parents is its remedy gives the Unification community a logic of exclusive access to restoration that distinguishes it sharply from Protestant Christianity, where individual faith is sufficient. As sociologist Eileen Barker noted in The Making of a Moonie (1984), the movement's emphasis on family as the central unit of salvation — rather than the individual soul — is directly derivative of this lineage-centered soteriology.

The doctrine also attracted commentary from comparative religion scholars for the way it addressed what theologians call the privatio boni problem: if God is good and omnipotent, why does evil exist?

The Unification answer — that God deliberately gave humanity a portion of responsibility (bundan), and that the Fall was the result of the misuse of that freedom rather than a divine mistake — was analyzed by scholars including Gordon Melton and James Lewis as a sophisticated theodicy that maintained both God's goodness and humanity's genuine moral agency.

Contemporary NRM scholars working in the post-Nansook Hong period (following the publication of In the Shadow of the Moons, 1998) have examined the tension between the idealized doctrine of lineage purity and the complex realities of Blessed Family life. This body of work, represented in journals such as Nova Religio and Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, underscores that academic engagement with the doctrine of Original Sin in Unification theology is no longer limited to internal theological analysis but has expanded into lived-religion and ethnographic approaches.

For the purposes of archival scholarship, the primary doctrinal source remains Exposition of the Divine Principle (1996 English edition), specifically Part I, Chapter 2: "The Human Fall." Secondary sources for academic inquiry include the works listed in the Further Reading section below.