According to the Divine Principle, God is the invisible vertical Parent of humanity — a personal being with heart, will, and longing, who harmoniously contains dual characteristics and who stands as the eternal root of love, life, and lineage. He is not an abstract force or an impersonal ground of being, but a Parent whose identity is inseparable from His desire to be known and loved through a family of true children.
This identity is unfolded in the Exposition of the Divine Principle, particularly in the Principle of Creation, and expanded in Cheon Seong Gyeong and Cham Bumo Gyeong through Rev. Moon's direct teaching.
Divine Principle Basis
The Exposition of the Divine Principle, in the Principle of Creation, identifies God through four interlocking dimensions: His essential mode of being (invisible and formless); His internal structure (the harmonized unity of dual characteristics — internal nature and external form, masculinity and femininity); His attributes (absolute, unique, unchanging, and eternal); and His relational identity (the vertical Parent whose purpose is a family of true love).
The Divine Principle insists that God is not defined abstractly but relationally. “Who is God?” is answered in terms of whom God is for — and that answer is consistently the same: God is Parent, and humanity is meant to be His true sons and daughters.
Key Concepts
Vertical Parent (jongjeok bumo) — God as the invisible, primordial Parent whose relationship to humanity descends vertically through every generation, in contrast to the horizontal parenthood of human mothers and fathers.
Dual Characteristics (iseong seongsang) — The harmonized unity within God of internal nature (sungsang) and external form (hyungsang), and of masculinity and femininity.
Heart (shimjeong) — God's emotional core: the irrepressible impulse to love and be loved. Shim-jung is what makes God a personal being rather than an impersonal principle.
Three Great Roots — God as the source of the three elements transmitted through parenthood: love as the relational bond, life as existence itself, and lineage as the continuity of generations.
The Everyday Picture
Rev. Moon repeatedly described God using the image of a root. In a message delivered on June 13, 2007, he stated plainly that God is “the root of love, the root of life, the root of lineage” — the invisible source from which the visible tree of humanity grows.
Just as a tree cannot be separated from its root without dying, and just as a child cannot be understood apart from the parent who gave them their face, their name, and their blood, so no human being is complete without knowing the invisible Parent from whom their love, their life, and their very existence come.
When the Divine Principle asks “Who is God?” it answers not with a philosophical definition but with a family relationship: God is the root-Parent, and every person is a branch of a tree whose source they have largely forgotten.
More in-depth Context
The Divine Principle begins its answer to the question of God's identity by establishing that God is a personal subject, not an impersonal force. This is already implicit in the foundational teaching that God harmoniously contains dual characteristics—internal nature and external form, masculinity, and femininity—a being with an inner life, not merely a first cause or a cosmic principle.
God divides Himself into dual characteristics, becoming the substance of original internal nature and original external form, and the substance of original femininity and original masculinity, appearing on earth. God is a neutrally harmonized being of dual characteristics, and in terms of position and dimension is the masculine subject.
— Sun Myung Moon (602-258, 11/16/2008)
Cham Bumo Gyeong, Book 2
Because God harmoniously contains both masculinity and femininity, He is not adequately described by either gendered metaphor alone. He is, in the Divine Principle's precise formulation, the “neutrally harmonized subject of dual characteristics” — a personal being whose identity can only be expressed fully through a conjugal pair of true sons and daughters. This also means that God's personhood is not a late addition to a bare metaphysical concept. It is primary: God is a subject who longs, acts, and relates, and everything else about Him follows from that fact.
This leads directly to the Divine Principle's signature teaching: God's identity is that of a Parent.
God is the root of love, the root of life, the root of lineage, and the root of the earthly Kingdom of Heaven and the heavenly Kingdom of Heaven. Had there been no Fall, when Adam and Eve married, God would have entered into their hearts and formed a unified love with them. Thus God would have been the vertical True Parent, and Adam and Eve the horizontal True Parents.
— Sun Myung Moon (565-315, 06/13/2007)
Cham Bumo Gyeong, Book 2
The word "Parent" here is not metaphorical. The Divine Principle holds that parenthood in human families is a reflection of God's prior, vertical parenthood — not the other way around. God does not resemble a parent because parenthood is a useful image; human parents resemble God because their role is derived from His.
This is also why the Divine Principle insists on two axes of parenthood — vertical (God) and horizontal (perfected Adam and Eve) — that meet at a right angle in every human life. When these two axes fail to connect, the human being is effectively an orphan, however loved by human parents they may be.
A third dimension of God's identity emerges in the Divine Principle's explicit teaching that God is a personal being who cannot exist in solitude.
The designation "personal God" is truly remarkable. Even a personal God cannot continue to exist without a counterpart. The purpose for which the personal God created human beings was that He needed an object of love.
— Sun Myung Moon (435-154, 02/03/2004)
Cham Bumo Gyeong, Book 5
This passage carries enormous theological weight. It frames the purpose of creation itself as an answer to the question of who God is: God is a personal being whose identity involves love, and love by definition requires an object. Creation is therefore not a gratuitous self-expression but the necessary structure of a love that must have a counterpart.
This distinguishes the Divine Principle sharply from classical theism's doctrine of divine aseity — the idea that God is entirely self-sufficient — and brings it closer to Jewish and process-theological emphases on a God who genuinely relates to the world.
Finally, the Divine Principle's most distinctive contribution to the question “Who is God?” is the doctrine of shimjeong — the heart of God, a genuine emotional core that has suffered since the Fall.
People live not through the bond of truth but through the bond of heart. Truth is a guide, a bridge for relating to substance — an intermediate form for conveying heart. God's heart is the sorrow of not having found the individual, the family, the tribe, the nation, the world, and the universe that He could truly love.
— Sun Myung Moon (014-181, 10/03/1964)
Cham Bumo Gyeong, Book 2
This is the Divine Principle's most distinctive claim about God's identity, and it stands in sharp contrast with the classical doctrine of divine impassibility (the teaching that God cannot suffer).
For Rev. Moon, God is not a serene first cause but a grieving Parent whose deepest wish is liberation from the sorrow He has carried since the Fall. To know who God is, in the Divine Principle, is to know this heart — and to take responsibility for helping to console it. This is why the Divine Principle speaks of the “liberation of God” as humanity's ultimate vocation: we do not merely seek God's salvation for us; we participate in His own restoration.
Comparative Religion
Christianity — Classical Christian theism, as developed by Thomas Aquinas in the Summa Theologica, identifies God as ipsum esse subsistens — subsistent being itself — from whom all finite things derive existence. God is personal, triune, and love (1 John 4:8), but is classically understood as impassible and as having no real relation to creatures (only creatures have a real relation to God).
The Eastern Orthodox tradition, drawing on the Cappadocian Fathers, emphasizes divine personhood through the three hypostases of the Trinity. In the twentieth century, theologians such as Jürgen Moltmann in The Crucified God pushed back against classical impassibility in ways that converge with the Divine Principle's teaching on God's suffering.
Judaism — The Hebrew Bible identifies God primarily through the divine name revealed to Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:14), traditionally translated “I AM WHO I AM.” God is the personal covenant Lord — the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob — whose relational fidelity (chesed) defines Him. Abraham Joshua Heschel, in The Prophets, argues that the biblical God is above all a God of pathos — a God who feels, who is wounded by injustice, who rejoices in righteousness.
This is the closest traditional parallel to the Divine Principle's doctrine of shim-jung. Jewish liturgy frequently addresses God as Avinu Malkeinu (“Our Father, Our King”), combining parental intimacy with royal transcendence.
Islam — The Qur'an identifies God primarily through the ninety-nine “most beautiful names” (al-asma al-husna) — al-Rahman (the Compassionate), al-Rahim (the Merciful), al-Wadud (the Loving), and so on. Al-Ghazali devoted a major work, al-Maqsad al-Asna, to expounding these names. Islamic theology strongly affirms God's personhood as a relational being who responds to prayer, while simultaneously insisting on His absolute transcendence (tanzih) and unity (tawhid). Father-language for God is generally avoided in Islam, which marks a significant point of divergence from the Divine Principle.
Buddhism — Theravada Buddhism does not posit a creator God, and the early Pali canon is famously reticent or dismissive regarding metaphysical questions about a divine person. Mahayana traditions develop the concept of Buddha-nature (tathagatagarbha) — a universal innate capacity for enlightenment — and the figure of the compassionate bodhisattva, who postpones nirvana to help all sentient beings.
The Divine Principle's identification of God as a relational Parent has no exact Buddhist parallel, but the bodhisattva's self-giving compassion has real affinities with the Divine Principle's emphasis on shim-jung.
Across all four traditions, there is broad agreement that the ultimate reality is more than an object to be contemplated — it must be encountered, loved, or realized in relation.
What the Divine Principle adds is a distinctive insistence that this relation is parental at its core: not sovereign-to-subject, not master-to-servant, not absolute-to-contingent, but Parent and child. And uniquely among the major traditions, the Divine Principle holds that this Parent has suffered — and awaits liberation through humanity's mature response of love.
Key Takeaway
- God, in the Divine Principle, is the invisible vertical Parent whose identity is inseparable from His relationship to humanity as His sons and daughters.
- God is a personal being with a heart (shimjeong) — a subject who longs, wills, and relates — not an abstract force or impersonal ground of being.
- God harmoniously contains dual characteristics (internal nature and external form, masculinity and femininity) and is the source of both male and female, husband and wife.
- God's heart has suffered since the Fall; knowing who God is, therefore, includes taking responsibility for the liberation of His heart from sorrow.
- In plain terms: God is the original Parent — the invisible root from which every person's love, life, and lineage has grown — and every human being is meant to know Him as Father and Mother, not only as Creator.
Related Questions
Why did God create human beings?
The Divine Principle teaches that God created because He needed an object of love, a body through which to appear in the visible world, and descendants through whom to multiply His family. Creation was not gratuitous self-expression but the necessary structure of a love that must have a counterpart.
Is God our Heavenly Parent — and what does that mean?
Yes. The Divine Principle holds that God is the vertical Parent of humanity, standing at the source of every human life, while perfected Adam and Eve stand as the horizontal Parents. Human parenthood is a derivative reflection of divine parenthood, not the other way around.
Does God have emotions? Can God feel pain?
Yes. The Divine Principle teaches that God possesses shimjeong — a real emotional core — and that His heart has suffered deeply since the Fall of Adam and Eve. This contrasts sharply with classical theism's doctrine of divine impassibility.
In Their Own Words
God's attributes are absolute, unique, unchanging, and eternal. The supreme masterpiece created by fully inheriting these attributes of God is the human being.
— Sun Myung Moon (501-032, 07/14/2005)
Cham Bumo Gyeong, Book 2
This passage names the Divine Principle's four classical attributes of God. These are not merely philosophical descriptions; each corresponds to a dimension of true love — love that is absolute in its commitment, unique in its object, unchanging in its loyalty, and eternal in its duration.
For the Divine Principle, to speak of God's attributes is to describe what love itself looks like when it is divine. And because these attributes are transmitted to human beings in creation, knowing who God is also tells us who we were meant to become.
The True Parents are like a body to God. The True Parents are the perfected Adam and Eve. To be perfected means that the vertical God and the horizontal Adam and Eve have become one. In this way, Adam and Eve become the body of God, and God becomes like the mind of Adam and Eve.
— Sun Myung Moon (338-212, 10/29/2000)
Cham Bumo Gyeong, Book 2
This striking image — that God is “like the mind” and the True Parents are “like the body” — captures the Divine Principle's distinctive understanding of God's relational identity. God is not a distant sovereign reflected in creation from afar; He is the inner subject whose full identity requires a substantial pair of true children to become complete. To know who God is, then, is not only to recognize an eternal, invisible Parent but also to understand that this Parent has always intended to be seen, known, and embraced through the love of His perfected sons and daughters.