The Liberative Cross

Korean-North American Women and the Self-Giving God

Hye Kyung Heo

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN:
  9781498200646
  9781498227001
• eBook ISBN:
  9781498200653
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

The Liberative Cross offers a theological grounding of the orthopraxy that calls North American Korean women to live as imago Dei, mirroring the perichoretic fellowship of the triune God in contemporary social relations through living in imitatio crucis and imitatio relationis. In so doing, this book emphasizes three elements. First, an appropriate theology of the cross meets the challenges or concerns of developing reality. Second, it is a feminist theology in the sense that it seeks to retrieve a theology of the cross that is life-giving and liberating for women. Third, it is a social trinitarian approach to the theology of the cross that can reveal the essence of God to be in relation, mutuality, and community in diversity. The constructive work achieved in this book makes a great contribution to pastoral and ecclesial praxis and imagination.

1

Theology Always Lives in Context

In exploring various understandings of the cross to find one that properly addresses both the first and the second generation Korean-North American women, I will first look into their socio-political, religious, and cultural circumstances. In doing a contextual theology, it is necessary to respond creatively in every new situation and continually reinterpret the Christian message. Douglas Hall in his book, Cross in our Context emphasizes the importance of contextuality by stating, “Entering into the specificity of one’s own time and place is the conditio sine qua non of real theological work.”1 Contextuality, according to him, conditions the manner in which the Christian message, centered on Christ and his work, is to be articulated and received. In this sense, the cultural and religious context of the first generation Korean-North American women need to be analyzed because Korean traditional religions have played an important role in their lifestyles, worldviews, and value systems. Whether they are aware or not, especially first generation Korean-North American women have been brought up with the nurture of Korean traditional religions in their spirituality and morality, and hold certain paradigms fostered by their traditional religions. They go through a paradigm shift and come to view and judge the world as they convert to Christianity and live in a new life situation.

This concept of a paradigm shift is a concept borrowed from a philosopher of science, Thomas Kuhn (1922–96). In his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolution, Kuhn speaks of paradigms as patterns of understanding shared by members of a scientific community. Many scientists may resist and oppose a new theory or a discovery that breaks through the old paradigm and exposes its inadequacy because it does not fit the established paradigm.2 However, eventually a widespread shift may occur. The new paradigm will also pass away from its commanding position when another paradigm takes its place through a new theory or discovery. According to Kuhn, new paradigms make scientists look at the world from different perspectives.3

If we adapt Kuhn’s theory of a paradigm change to the religious situation of Korea in the end of the nineteenth century when Protestant Christianity was first introduced to Korean people, they needed a new paradigm of salvation to adapt to a situation in which they were emotionally and spiritually bankrupt on both a national and private level. At the time, they faced a socio-political crisis and found that the existing paradigms of traditional religions like Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shamanism were unable to accommodate the drastic changes occurring in modern society. The traditional religions lacked a historical consciousness and did not have a scientific approach to the rapidly changing world. When Korean people encountered Christianity, they accepted it in hope that it would meet their needs. Kyoung Jae Kim affirms that they found in Christianity the elements they needed and looked for:

the personal faith in a Sovereign God, the faith in Christ who deals with sin and suffering, the faith in the Holy Spirit who supports the community of freedom, love, and justice, the eschatological faith in the kingdom of God, and the dynamic organization and activity of the Christian church. All these are dynamic elements making Christianity the sort of creative institutional organism that the other religions were not.4

Kyoung Jae Kim explains further how the early converts understood and accepted the new salvation paradigm of Christianity. For instance, in turbulent situations when they were attacked by foreign countries and finally colonized by Japan, the suffering Korean people accepted and depended on the absolute God as the Lord, the One who ruled the world with divine freedom, justice, and mercy. They also accepted and believed that evil would finally be judged. Kim also insists that “the eschatological faith in the Kingdom of God” which puts much emphasis on the transcendental other world or heaven often caused believers to fall into the danger of escapism, escaping particularly from the present realty to “the futuristic next world.”5

By employing Kuhn’s theory of paradigm change to the religious situation of Korean people, we come to see how Christianity as a new religion brought about a paradigm change in their view of salvation, human history, and value systems. When they accepted Christianity, they did not receive it in a vacuum but with a particular culture-shaped understanding. In order to unpack further the fact that Korean women’s spirituality has been culturally shaped we will now turn to Gadamer’s phenomenological hermeneutics, focusing on his ideas of “historically influenced consciousness” and “fusion of horizons.”6 The argument in this chapter will proceed as follows: Since religion plays a major role in shaping culture, I will first look into how the pre-Christian traditional religions like Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shamanism were fused with one another to create a unique form of spirituality in the Korean mind. I will also investigate how the traditional religions as “prejudice” (used here in the same way Gadamer uses this term without pejorative implications) shaped the understanding of Christianity. Finally, I will discuss how their immigration life experiences in the multicultural context of North America influenced their understanding of the Cross.

Gadamer’s Concept of “Fusion of Horizons”

People encounter new religions with particular cultural understandings. Before Christianity was introduced to Korea, Korea had been a religiously pluralistic society where traditional religions, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shamanism thrived together. Even though there had been conflicts and tensions between them, the traditional religions influenced one another and formed a religious seedbed for Korean people. This phenomenon can be explained by Gadamer’s fusion of horizons. Gadamer, following Heidegger, thinks of humanity as “the being-in-the-world,” immersed in historical traditions.7 The world for Heidegger and Gadamer is neither the cosmos as the natural environment nor objective reality in opposition to subjective self-consciousness. It is rather like a huge web of life in which human beings have their existence and find their meaning. Therefore, the world is a life-world for humanity. This life-world is where they draw their own experience and understanding.

According to Gadamer, human beings as “beings-in-the-world” are found and influenced by their historical reality.8 They always find themselves within a particular situation. It means that they are not standing outside a situation and are, therefore, unable to have any objective knowledge of it. All self-knowledge, therefore, arises from what is historically pre-given and underlies all subjective intentions and actions. It both prescribes and limits every possibility for understanding any tradition.9

In this regard, Gadamer uses the unique term, “prejudice.” For him, the term, “prejudice” is not an arbitrary or illogical judgment that people make to understand the objective world but rather a vor-struktur (fore-structure) of understanding or a condition of understanding which constitutes the historical reality of their being.10 Understanding, according to Gadamer, does not begin from a neutral standpoint but unavoidably from some initial presupposition and expectation. Understanding, true or false, is prejudiced because the subject of history does not possess a pure consciousness but is affected by history. The reality of history (Die Wirklichkeit der Geschichte) is then the unity between history and an understanding of it, which Gadamer calls Wirkungsgeschichte (effective history).11 This history, Wirkungsgeschichte, at both the personal and cultural level, affects the individual’s understanding of the world. Gadamer calls this phenomenon Wirkungsgeschichtliches Bewusstsein (historically effected consciousness).12 It means that it is impossible for people to totally remove themselves from their cultural, historical backgrounds. They understand different cultures, traditions, and beliefs on the basis of pa...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Theology Always Lives in Context
• Chapter 2: A Critical Evaluation of Feminist Theologies
• Chapter 3: Toward a Social Trinitarian Theology of the Cross
• Chapter 4: Social Trinitarian Understanding of the Cross and Its Praxis for Korean-North American Women in the Multicultural, Multiracial, Pluralistic Context
• Conclusion
• Bibliography