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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Dear List:</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT face="Times New Roman" size=3>Thanks to Mr. Ruediger for initiating this interesting thread.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Messrs Driscoll and Underwood’s replies have prompted me to contribute my own two cents.</FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">First, I don't think Mr. Driscoll’s reply is well informed.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>For one thing, it would come as a surprise to Korean Catholics if they were told that they didn't count among the Christian population, since they are not so ignorant as to not know that Catholicism is a species of Christianity—though I would not rule out some exceptions.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>No Korean scholar of religion worth his or her salt would reckon Korean Catholics in such a way, either.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>To be sure, a Korean Catholic wouldn't call herself <I>kidokkyoin.</I> But that's not because she doesn't consider herself to be Christian but because the word has become so identified with Protestants—especially the Evangelical Protestants, who comprise upwards of ninety percent of South Korean Protestants—that to refer to herself in such a way would be to invite misunderstanding.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>One can verify how widely the Protestants now monopolize <I>kidokkyo</I> just by perusing some Korean newspaper reportage on Protestantism.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>True, Korean Catholics generally refer to themselves as <I>ch’ŏnjugyoin</I>, but they also have another term—<I>kŭrisdokyoin—</I>that they use as a more comprehensive term to refer to themselves and Christians of other communions.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Indeed, the trend among Korean religion scholars is to shun <I>kidokkyo</I> when referring Christianity in favor of <I>kŭrisdokyo</I>, regardless of what the dictionary says.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
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<H3 style="MARGIN: 12pt 0in 3pt; LAYOUT-GRID-MODE: char"><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: normal; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Mr. Driscoll’s account of how the Catholics ended up with <I>Ch’ŏnju</I> and the Protestants with <I>Hananim</I> is problematic.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>One of the best authorities on this subject outside Korea is Dr. Oak Sung Duk, currently a research scholar at UCLA.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In this year's Association for Asian Studies meeting at New York, in a session entitled Koreanizing Protestantism, Dr. Oak presented a paper entitled “<I>Hanănim</I>: The Term Question in Korea, 1881-1911.”<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>In it he persuasively showed that during the first twenty years of Protestant missionary work in Korea, the missionaries could not reach consensus on what Korean term to use for God.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The first widely used term was <I>hanŭnim,</I> due to the efforts of<I> </I>John Ross, the Scottish missionary to Manchuria who was the first Western missionary to make a lasting contribution to building a Protestant church in Korea, through the gospels of Luke and John that he, Yi Ŭngch’an, and other Koreans translated in 1882 and had secretly distributed in Korea. <I>Hanŭnim</I> later came to be pronounced <I>hananim</I>, not because it had much to do with <I>hana</I>— “one”—but because that's how the old hangŭl word for <I>hanŭnim </I>was pronounced by Koreans of Pyongyang and its environs, and since this area constituted the “Jerusalem of Korea” (I am more familiar with this expression that the other one that got this thread started), <I>hananim </I>became the normal pronunciation for the term.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Both <I>hanŭnim</I> and <I>hananim</I> did not initially have much to do with the notion of “one,” though such a notion may have been one of its more faint connotations.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The terms referred to what anthropologists call a high god—the god who is at the top of a hierarchy of gods—and had associations with the sky.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Thus in its original form, <I>hananim</I> hardly denotes a transcendent monotheistic deity.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></H3>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">From the start, many missionaries followed Ross’s recommendation and used <I>hanŭnim/</I> <I>hananim</I> to refer to God, since the word provided enough of a conceptual base to develop their notion of God and was readily understood by Koreans.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But a minority of them resisted this usage, bothered by the term's polytheistic associations.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>And this was a powerful minority since its leader was none other than the venerable Horace G. Underwood.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Guess what term Underwood preferred instead?<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It was <I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">T’yŏnjyu,</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic"> the older form of </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Ch’ŏnju.</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic"><SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>It was only in 1904 that Underwood also switched over to </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">hananim</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic">. <SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This happened only after his colleagues James S. Gale and Homer B. Hulbert had done some creative exegeses on </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">hananim </I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic">and the </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Tangŭn</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic"> story.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Gale persuade Underwood that the original meaning of </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">hananim</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic"> was indeed the “One Great One” that the Koreans had lost sight of; Hulbert that </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Tangŭn </I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic">story was really a reflection of the Trinity, with </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Hwanin</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic"> as the Father God, </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Hwanŭng</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic"> as the Spirit, and </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Tangŭn</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic"> as the Messiah—the bear woman then had to stand in for the Virgin.<o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman"><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic">It is also wrong to assume that Korean Catholics use only </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">Ch’ŏnju</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic"> to refer to God.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>They quite openly use </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">hanŭnim </I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic">as well.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Anyone in doubt should check out the Catholic Bible, </SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">kongdongbŏnyŏk sŏngsŏ, which</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic">, by the way, was published in 1971 as a result of an ecumenical translation project undertaken with the more liberal segment of Korean Protestantism.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Consequently, given that “</SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">hanŭnim”</I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic"> is truer to the original native meaning of the word than what “</SPAN><I style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal">hananim” </I><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic">has now come to mean, one can argue that nowadays the Catholics’ term for God is truer to Korea's tradition than the Protestants’ term. <o:p></o:p></SPAN></FONT></FONT></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Now, a few words on Mr. Underwood’s reply.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Christians, be they Korean or not, should deplore that “Jesus Presbyterians” wouldn't speak with the “Christ Presbyterians.” (Actually, these days a great many Presbyterians from both camps get along quite well with each other.)<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But that Christians split into groups is neither anything new nor anything peculiar to Korea (I am aware this is not what Mr. Underwood implies).<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Well into the mid twentieth century, Catholics and Protestants tended to deprecate each other.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Even among the Protestants, the division occurred from early on.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The year 1529 is an infamous year for Protestant solidarity, in that that year—just twelve years after the outbreak of the Reformation— Martin Luther and Urlich Zwingli, the founder of the Reformed/Presbyterian tradition along with John Calvin, split over their inability to agree on the meaning of a single verse in the Bible, Matthew 26:26, which dealt with the Eucharist.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>This split had grave consequences since it prevented the Lutherans and the Reformed from forming a common front against the Catholic Counter Reformation. Even in more recent periods, examples of split among Protestants abound.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> It could be argued that the</SPAN> alleged Jesus Presbyterian–Christ Presbyterian split in Korea, for example, started out as a reflection of a similar theological split that had occurred in the United States, between the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Presbyterian Church of America (later renamed the Orthodox Presbyterian Church).<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>Isn't a little pun in order here as well?: How deplorable is it that the Presbyterians of the USA wouldn't talk to the Presbyterians of America!<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN><o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-style: italic"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Finally, until 1965 or so, I don't think Korean Catholics were any more tolerant of other religions than their Evangelical counterparts were.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>But the Second Vatican Council, which ended that year, changed all that. This council's inclusive stance towards non-Catholic Christians and other religions enabled Korean Catholics, for example, to participate in ancestral rites that they had shunned previously for fear of committing idolatry.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>They also actively pursue interreligious dialogue, even as their Evangelical counterparts continue to belittle the native religions.<SPAN style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </SPAN>The council's activist stance on social justice was also significant since it enabled the Catholics—formerly living a more or less ghettoized existence—joined their liberal Protestants (the Minjung Protestants) in overthrowing the dictators of the 1970s and 1980s, with the Myŏngdong Cathedral and Cardinal Suhwan Kim emerging as icons of the Korean democratic movement.<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-style: italic"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Sincerely,<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
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<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-style: italic"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Timothy S. Lee<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P>
<P class=MsoNormal style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><SPAN style="mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-bidi-font-style: italic"><FONT size=3><FONT face="Times New Roman">Brite Divinity School (TCU)<o:p></o:p></FONT></FONT></SPAN></P></BODY></HTML>