Re-imaging God in Korean Context

This course will be an overview of a development of the theological methods in relation to Korea’s cultural context. Completing the course, the learners can understand cultural influences on the dynamic development of Korean churches and indigenous theology; they can also gain an insight into their own image of God and theological imagination in their own cultural context.

• Image Matters to Theology (and You)
• The chief goal of the course will be to understand a rapid growth and dynamic development of the Korean Protestant churches and indigenous theology by exploring various images of God in Korea. The first module will focus on an important methodological shift in contemporary theology from conceptual intellect to the human imagination.
• God as Father: Psychoanalytic Approaches to God-Image
• The second module will discuss one’s formation of God-image as a Father with a comprehensive understanding of Freud’s psychoanalysis since many psychoanalytic theorists have argued that one’s early experience of parental relationship has an unavoidable, unconscious impact upon the formation of one’s own God-images.
• God as Heaven: Korean Confucian Culture and God-Image
• The module 3 will examine the image of a heavenly God in the cultural context of Korea with the emphasis on Korean Confucian understanding of the "Chon" (heaven). Noting the collective (cultural) representations of the "Chon" (heaven), the interplay among transcendental and immanent images of God in the formation of the Korean Protestant churches will be discussed.
• God as Rice: A Dialectical Imagination of Minjung Theologians
• The module 4 will focus on Kwok Pui-lan’s proposal of biblical interpretation as “Dialogical Imagination” in which the Korean Minjung theology strengthens the power of theological imagination. This module will demonstrate how the immanent image of God as rice to the Korean Minjung theology became the central theme of the Christian social movement in Korea.
• God as Spirit: Where Pentecostal Spirituality and Liberationist Spirituality Meet
• The last module will first examine how shamanistic beliefs affected the healing ministry of Christianity through the Pentecostal movement in Korea. The module will show that both the Korean Pentecostal group and the liberationist group can commonly interpret God as Spirit to be a fundamental base for their theological imagination.