The Holy Quran with Divine Principle commentary
Ali 'Imran centers on the purity of God's covenant transmitted through a chosen lineage, tracing divine election from the family of Imran through Mary to Jesus. It calls believers to hold firm to God's rope together, warning against division and affirming that those who persevere in God's cause will find His mercy and ultimate victory.
An-Nisa addresses the rights and responsibilities that structure the human family — inheritance, marriage, the treatment of orphans and the vulnerable, and the obligations of justice within community. It grounds ethical life in the recognition that all humanity descends from a single soul, making equity and protection of the weak a divine command rather than mere social convention.
The opening verse of An-Nisa — that all of humanity was created from a single soul and its mate — resonates deeply with Divine Principle's teaching on the original ideal of creation. God created man and woman as complementary polarities meant to form a family, and through that family to reflect the dual characteristics of God Himself. The original family was designed to be the school of true love: a place where individuals learn to live for the sake of others — husband for wife, parents for children, and children for parents — expanding outward into society and the world.
The surah's detailed legislation protecting women, orphans, and the vulnerable reflects God's parental heart toward those who suffer most from the consequences of the Fall. True Father taught that God's grief is greatest over those who bear indemnity that was not originally their own — those who inherit suffering through broken families and broken societies. Restoring true families, with genuine love and mutual responsibility at their center, is therefore not merely a social good but the very substance of God's providential mission for this age.
Al-Ma'idah calls believers to honor their covenants — with God and with one another — and to uphold justice even when it cuts against one's own interests or the interests of one's group. The surah addresses the relationships among the Abrahamic faiths and closes with the image of the heavenly table spread, a sign of God's ultimate provision for those who remain faithful.
The covenant theme that runs through Al-Ma'idah reflects what Divine Principle calls the "condition of indemnity" — a sincere and costly commitment made before Heaven in order to reverse the conditions established by the Fall. God cannot simply overlook broken promises; history advances only as individuals and nations fulfill their portion of responsibility by honoring what they have pledged to God. True Father's life was itself a monument to covenant-keeping, maintaining his mission through decades of suffering because he understood that breaking faith with Heaven would halt the entire providence of restoration.
The table spread sent down from heaven carries deep resonance with the Divine Principle vision of the Kingdom of Heaven as a world of abundance flowing from the invisible realm into the visible. When human beings align themselves with God's truth and love, the resources of the spiritual world pour into the physical world, and what seemed scarce becomes sufficient. Rev. Moon taught that the original world — before the Fall — was one in which Heaven and Earth were open to each other, and that restoring that openness through obedience and true love is the ultimate goal of providential history.
Al-An'am confronts the deep human tendency toward idolatry — the substitution of created things for the living God — and traces the prophetic lineage from Abraham onward as a continuous divine effort to recall humanity to pure monotheism. It emphasizes God's sovereignty over all of creation and the human accountability that arises from the gift of reason and revelation.
Idolatry, in Divine Principle's understanding, is not merely the worship of carved images but the broader human tendency — born from the Fall — to center one's life on something other than God. When the original parent-child relationship between God and humankind was severed, human beings lost their internal compass and began to fill the void with possessions, power, ideology, or pleasure. Rev. Moon taught that fallen human nature is characterized by this fundamental displacement: we were designed to place God at the center of our hearts, and the entire history of religion is God's patient effort to reclaim that center position in human consciousness.
The long account of Abraham's journey from idol-worship to pure faith models the internal revolution that Divine Principle calls "the conversion of heart." Abraham did not simply change his religious affiliation; he dismantled the false center of his life and rebuilt everything around his relationship with God. True Father described his own early spiritual journey in similar terms — a period of relentless searching and suffering until he arrived at the truth that God is a being of absolute love, and that aligning completely with that love is the only path to genuine freedom and joy.
Al-A'raf opens with the primordial drama of Adam and Eve in the Garden — their temptation, fall, and expulsion — and draws from that event the entire logic of prophetic history: God repeatedly sending messengers to recall fallen humanity to its original dignity. The "heights" of the title refer to a liminal place where souls await their final destination, symbolizing the profound seriousness of each human life's trajectory.
No surah in the Quran more directly parallels the Divine Principle account of the Fall than Al-A'raf. The narrative of Adam and Eve, their temptation by Iblis, their premature grasping at knowledge before they had achieved spiritual maturity, and their consequent expulsion from the garden of divine intimacy — all of this maps precisely onto what Rev. Moon revealed as the core tragedy of human history. The Fall was not a trivial disobedience but a catastrophic severing of the love relationship between humanity and God, one whose consequences have rippled through every generation since.
The parade of prophets that follows in the surah — Noah, Hud, Salih, Lot, Shu'ayb, Moses — each rejected by the very people they came to save, reflects the heartbreaking pattern Divine Principle calls "the providential history of restoration through indemnity." God sends His messengers; fallen human beings, whose spiritual senses are dulled by generations of separation from Heaven, fail to recognize them. True Father taught that understanding this pattern is essential to receiving the Lord of the Second Advent, so that humanity does not repeat the tragedy of rejection that has prolonged God's sorrow across the centuries.
Divine Principle Reflection
Divine Principle teaches that God's providence moves through chosen families, restoring the original lineage that was lost through the Fall. The family of Imran stands as a model of this providential preparation — a lineage purified through generations of devotion so that a central figure, in this case Mary and then Jesus, could emerge as a vessel for God's deepest hope. Rev. Moon taught that God is above all a Parent, and that His longing to restore His children has been the hidden current beneath all of history's suffering and striving.
The surah's insistence that believers hold together without division mirrors the Divine Principle principle of unity as the foundation for God's power to work. Satan exploits disunity; God can only act where the hearts of people are aligned around His Word. True Father repeatedly emphasized that the path of restoration requires individuals, families, and nations to overcome their self-centered perspectives and unite under Heaven's direction — only then can God's providence advance and the world move toward the original ideal of creation.