Faith & Spirit Quote by Sun Myung Moon

Moon’s rhetorical trick here is to concede the charge while quietly stripping his accusers of jurisdiction. “I can understand why Christians call us heretics” sounds like humility, but it functions as a setup: he grants mainstream Christianity the right to be scandalized, then pivots to a higher court where their verdict doesn’t bind. The real authority is not councils, creeds, or denominations, but God’s perspective - conveniently accessible through Moon’s “revelation.”

The key word is “who.” It reframes heresy from a communal, historical judgment into a private, eschatological one. Heresy, in Christian tradition, is partly about continuity: doctrine measured against apostolic teaching, guarded by institutions precisely because anyone can claim divine insight. Moon’s line short-circuits that process. If God alone can finally label heresy, then present-day orthodoxy becomes provisional, even petty - a bureaucratic squabble compared to cosmic adjudication.

“Deeply orthodox” is the masterstroke: he doesn’t accept the outsider label; he attempts a reversal, positioning his movement as the true continuation of God’s plan, with existing churches cast as mistaken caretakers of an incomplete story. That logic fits the postwar religious marketplace Moon entered in Korea and later the U.S., where new movements had to explain both their break with tradition and their claim to ultimate legitimacy. The subtext isn’t just defense; it’s recruitment. He’s telling seekers: yes, the establishment will call this heresy - that’s what establishments do when a rival revelation threatens their monopoly on the sacred.