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.
Concept of God vs. Image of God
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Do curso por Universidade Yonsei
Re-imaging God in Korean Context
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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.
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Soo-Young KwonProfessor
College of Theology
Human images are ambiguous because every human being imagines in his or her own way.
We sometimes think that concepts are less ambiguous than images.
As we all learn mathematics and science,
we are likely to use more concepts rather than images.
A little child might have a hard time explaining a circle with concepts.
The child may be good at using some images though.
The child would explain the circle,
"hey, it's like a doughnut".
Images are thus primitive.
In contrast, concepts are more intellectual.
A more educated high school kid will explain the concept of circle as,
circle is a closed plane curve
consisting of all points at a given distance from a point within.
The scholars in the field of pastoral counseling
have attempted to distinguish the image of God from the concept of God.
What is the big difference between the concept of God and the image of God?
Let me give you an example.
I'm a professor who teaches pastoral care and counseling.
A couple came for counseling when I served
as an intern counselor at the pastoral counseling center a long time ago.
The husband was a lawyer and an elder at his Presbyterian church.
The wife worked as a schoolteacher at
a Catholic high school where the principal was a Catholic nun.
They were both in their all late 50's.
At first glance, their situations seemed awful.
As soon as they sat down in the counseling room,
they complain about each other.
The husband seemed to have had felt strongly that he had been ignored by his wife.
He told me that his wife never listened to him.
He said, "My wife thinks she is special,
and I'm nothing to her".
Guess what his wife complained about his husband.
Always the same complaint came out of her mouth.
She shouted, "My husband is so arrogant.
He thinks he's God.
I'm sick of him pretending to be a saint when he is in a church".
Without having to ask them what their religion was,
I could easily know that they were Christians.
I asked whether the wife also went to church as her husband did.
She said, "I am originally Catholic.
I went to the Presbyterian church briefly after getting married,
but lately came back to my own Catholic church again".
I was curious about each of their understandings of
God because they both identified themselves as Christians.
I first asked the husband,
"What does your God look like"?
He seemed bewildered by my abrupt question,
but he answered like this,
"God is a creator.
And he is the ruler of the whole universe.
Why are you asking"?
I could catch a glimpse about his theology,
namely, his concept of God.
I explained to him by saying, "Sometimes,
our notion of God works as an important lens through which we see others". He nodded.
I also asked the same question to his wife,
"What does your God look like"?
Then she started telling quite a long story about her first journey.
He went to a special junior high school founded by a Catholic foundation.
Her main teacher was a nun.
She was a kind and loving person,
and she cared for all of her students.
My client said her teacher was like her guardian angel,
and she came to be interested in the Catholic church more and more,
and eventually became a Catholic.
In the end, she answered my initial question,
"My God looks like my teacher,
sweet and loving, so gracious to everyone".
And she went on to mention, "Counselor,
I just found the reason why I had to leave my husband Presbyterian church.
I disagreed with my husband's notion of God".
Now, can you see what happened to this couple?
Their perceptions of God collided with each others.
The husband who confessed the creator and
ruler God probably wanted to be treated like a king,
while his wife who imagined warm maternal God might have wanted warm care.
You cannot say that either of their concepts of God was wrong.
It is just another concept of God.
Yes, as we know,
the Bible shows both aspects of God.
The power of creating and heart of caring.
Then, is this simply that the man and
woman read different parts of the Bible? I don't think so.
Through their difference in their concept of God,
we can assume their difference in human experience,
not which part they read in the Bible.
A pastoral theologian named Merle Jordan made an interesting distinction.
All Christians believe in both confessional theology and operational theology.
We'll learn about doctrines and confess them to others when asked.
This is the confessional theology.
What is the operational theology?
While confessional theology relates to what we learn,
operational theology relates to what we individually experience.
Our different human experiences influence our theology
implicitly to operate differently from the doctrinal theology,
or in other words, confessional theology.
To sum up, confessional theology is of
concepts that we learn and experience in human life
while operational theology is of underlying images that we unconsciously experience.
To explain easier, confessional theology is a theology with the head,
and operational theology is a theology with the heart.
So, we've been talking about different concepts of God through the example of the couple.
The concepts of God here,
which were God as a creator and God as a caring figure,
are related to confessional theology.
But we will attempt to go further.
Let's further investigate into what their operational theologies were,
or in other words,
what their images of God were.
Back to the story of the couple.
The confessional theology of the wife was
viewing God as a maternal God of grace and caring,
but actually, unconsciously, God wasn't much of a counting figure to her.
What is the reason the confessional theology of the wife did not
act primarily as the grace in her marital life?
The implicit theology within the wife's deepest heart,
that is the operational theology,
reveals that the internal fact is different from the concept of God confessed.
This is why we need to distinguish between the concept of God and the image of God.
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