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.
Why Images?
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From the course by Yonsei University
Re-imaging God in Korean Context
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From the lesson
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.
Meet the Instructors
Soo-Young KwonProfessor
College of Theology
You might wonder why I emphasize images of God in this course.
What image comes to mind when you think of God?
The Creator, the ruler of the universe,
Jesus Christ or the judge on the last day of this world?
Even among Christians who read the same Bible,
they may have different images of God.
For example, while you read the first part of the book of Genesis,
the image of the Creator may come to mind.
When you pass through the Torah and arrive at the book of Judge and the Books of Kings,
you may imagine that God is a create ruler who handled the destiny of nations.
How about the New Testament?
As you read the gospel of the New Testament,
God is often overlaid with images of Jesus Christ,
Son of God, Son of Man.
If so, does the image of God as a man,
Jesus maintained to be a single image to every Christian? I don't think so.
Sometimes it feels like a Rabbi to a Christian and sometimes a revolutionary to another.
Even when people look at the same object,
they naturally tend to have different images of the object.
In other words, it is somewhat inevitable that Jesus disciples, Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John had to write the gospel a little differently,
since they all had different images of Jesus.
The Beatitudes in the Gospel is a good example.
You can find the Beatitudes in the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew.
Another name for it is the Sermon on the Mount.
Also, you can see the Beatitude in the Gospel of Luke as well.
Strangely enough though, it was recorded in the Gospel of Luke,
that the Sermon on the Mount was delivered on the plains not on the hill.
Whose statement is true, Matthew or Luke?
Who do you believe?
Do you believe in Jesus preaching on the mount or Jesus preaching on the plains.
So, my guess that Jesus preached twice.
Once on the mount and once again on the plains.
It could have happened twice. Here's my thought.
Apparently it is highly likely that Matthew and Luke listened to Jesus sermon together.
The chances are that the image of Jesus that they formed was very different.
Matthew was a good scholar of the law.
To Matthew, Jesus was often seen as a great Rabbi.
It is not a coincidence that there is a lot of talk
about discipleship in the Gospel of Matthew.
He might have attached the image of a Rabbi teaching on a high platform with Jesus.
What kind of person was Luke compared to Matthew?
He was very interested in the underprivileged in his society.
The parables of the lost sheep,
of the lost coins,
and of the prodigal son are found only in the Gospel of Luke.
He cared for the marginalized and the so-called sinners of the society.
Can you picture the image of Jesus that Luke had? Let's imagine this.
This is a painting entitled,
The Sermon on the Mount,
painted by Cosimo Rosselli in Italy.
It has been displayed on the wall of
a Sistine Chapel in Vatican City since the late 15th century.
The Sistine Chapel is a place where famous Fresco paintings like,
The Creation of Adam by Michaelangelo,
have been placed on the ceiling.
Imagine that Jesus preached a sermon on this height of a hill, just this much.
No more no less. See, don't you get it?
This is exactly why Matthew and Luke describe the scene little differently.
To Matthew, Jesus was a Rabbi teaching on a little high platform.
In contrast, Jesus might look to someone like Luke as
a very fair man who treated the weak and sinners equally as he would treat any others.
From Luke's point of view,
Jesus was probably preaching on
almost the same height of the hill as his audience stood on.
It is clear that Luke does not imagine Jesus preaching like a noble,
upper class Rabbi who is hard to associate with.
Accordingly, neither Mathew nor Luke lied to us about the Beatitudes.
The difference in their relational experiences drew a difference in their images
of Jesus and they eventually drew a difference in the illustration in the Bible.
Thus, each image later constitutes a unique set of beliefs.
Surprisingly, images play an important role in theology.
This does not apply only to Mathew and Luke.
Those who believe in Jesus today should also never
ignore the role of images in the formation of Christian faith.
In the multifarious development of a contemporary theology in the United States,
an important matter of the logical shift has been seriously
discussed from conceptual intellect to the imagination.
That is, many American theologians began to
shift their attention from conceptual matters to the foundational,
current of formative experience.
Many theologians are beginning to believe that human experience of the world were of God,
is mediated using imaginative constructions.
And yet, this emphasis on the role of imagination in fact is not a contemporary idea.
Thomas Aquinas in the mid 13th century already said,
"The image is the principle of our knowledge...
When the imagination is choked,
so also is our theological knowledge."
At this point, we will have to raise an important question.
How does image function for theological thinking,
for the religious imagination,
and for spiritual formation?
To answer this question,
I would first pay attention to
Gordon Kaufman's emphasis on
the imagination in relation to constructing a theological method.
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