한국적 신학을 향한 여정 : 춘계 이종성의 3단계 토착화론에 대한 소고

Abstract

In August 1962, Daniel T. Niles, bishop of the Sri Lankan Methodist Church, visited Korea and insisted on the need of indigenization — that is, the seed of the gospel should be rooted in the soil of each national culture to grow into a characteristic plant. Inspired by Niles’s lecture, Dong-sik Ryu, who had already been deeply interested in the idea of indigenzation, interpreted the incarnation as an indigenization of God’s Word and argued for the de-mythologization and de-westernization of biblical interpretation for the sake of the indigenization of the gospel. Objecting to Ryu’s argument, however, Gyeong-yeon Jeon insisted that the idea of indigenization which ignores the history of Christianity means simply the primitivization of the gospel, and asked for prudence on the issue of indigenization. It is generally assumed that since then there have been two prominent streams of indigenous theology in Korea — one focusing on the indigenization of the gospel in the traditional religious culture, and the other focusing on the indigenization of the gospel in the political and economic realm. In my judgment, however, there is another important stream which has thus far been relatively ignored in the discussions of indigenization — that is, one that has developed the theological heritage of Jong-sung Rhee, who sought a third way between Ryu's idea of indigenization and Jeon’s call for prudence. The former two streams, which dominated discourses on indigenization for the past fifty years, have largely remained away from general Korean congregations. On the other hand, the third stream that has developed Rhee's proposal of the three-stage indigenization (indigenization, de-indigenization, re-indigenization) began to speak a unique voice in the 1980s. This paper introduces Rhee's unique position on the issue of indigenization and explores the possibility of a new indigenous theology that can contribute to the integration of Korean churches and Korean society both of which are suffering from severe divisions.