[KS] Again, Haneunim (and the Trinity)

Baker Don ubcdbaker at hotmail.com
Sun Dec 14 18:09:14 EST 2003


Sorry, but I can't keep myself from again jumping into this discussion over 
the possible antiquity of an indigenous Korean term for the Lord of Heaven, 
and the subsequent discussion over a possible indigenous  Korean 
trinitarian theologyl

Regarding the argument that in the late 19th century, a translator of the 
Bible into Korean discovered that Koreans already had a vernacular term for 
God, which he spelled as "hananim,"

If a vernacular term for the Lord of Heaven was well known to Koreans in 
northern Korea and southern Manchuria in the last quarter of the 19th 
century (as Ross claims), yet we don't see any use of this term for an 
indigenous supreme Korean deity in pre-19th century Korean documents, that 
would suggest that Catholic and Tonghak ideas had penetrated Korean 
communities all over and around the peninsula, not that that term had long 
been a part of Korean indigenous spirituality. (We know that there were 
both Catholics and Tonghak believers in the northern part of the peninsula 
by the last quarter of the 19th century.) In other words, in the century 
between when Catholics first began preaching in Korea about the Lord of 
Heaven and  Ross queried Koreans about a vernacular term for the Supreme 
God Above, this notion of a  Lord of Heaven  must have spread beyond both 
Catholic and Tonghak communities and become known to other Koreans as well. 

That would explain why the term "Haneunim" or "Hananim" did not seem 
strange to the Koreans Ross talked to, though it would have seem strange to 
Koreans a century or so earlier. 

On the point raised by Tim Lee regarding the  God of the Tonghak, it is 
quite clear that Ch'oe Cheu encountered a God who was separate and distinct 
 from ("transcended") human beings. In other words, Ch'oe's God in some 
ways resembled the Catholic God. That's why Ch'oe called him Ch'oenju.  
Only later did Tonghak theologicans, under the lingering influence of 
Neo-Confucianism, reinterpret Ch'oe's revelation to emphasize an immanent  
God. Tonghak writings also make clear, by the way, that the term Sangje was 
not as foreign to Koreans as Ross thought it was. It pops up all over the 
place in early Tonghak texts, in which it is almost as common on Ch'eonju.  
Moreover, even though Daoism as a religion did not have much of an 
institutional presence in Korea, Daoist gods sometimes show up in the 
pantheon of the folk religion. One of those gods is Okhwang Sangje, so the 
term Sangje would not have sounded as unfamiliar to even uneducated Koreans 
as Ross thought it would.

A number of people have brought up the possibility that Hwanin, Hwanung, 
and Tan'gun somehow are a trinitarian manifestation of the one  traditional 
Korean God, Haneunim. That is a twentieth-century interpretation, pioneered 
by Taejong-gyo (the religion which worships Tan'gun) and early Protestant 
missionaries. I have seen no references to a trinitarian God in any  
non-Christian pre-20th century Korean sources. It is true that Hwanin, 
Hwanung, and Tan'gun were sometimes called the Three Sagely Ones 
(Samseong), but  they were never, until the twentieth century, treated as 
three persons in one God, nor where they ever linked to Haneunim or any 
other separate and distinct Lord of Heaven, not even to the Confucian 
Heaven (Ch'eon). 

Don Baker
Associate Professor, 
Department of Asian Studies
Director, Centre for Korean Research
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z2
dbaker at interchange.ubc.ca

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