피어리스 신학에서 ‘가난’이 갖는 신학적 의미

Abstract

Aloysius Pieris has been well known as a representative theologian of Asian Liberation Theology. He has eagerly tried to build an “authentic Asian theology” based on the Asian realities and context as he has showed in his representative work, “An Asian Theology of L i b e r a t i o n.” He is also the founder and director of Tulana Research Center in Kalaniya, Sri Lanka for doing Asian theology. He points out that Asian people and churches are in the context of people with a long time history of authentic religiousness and crushing poverty. In that sense, Pieris insists strongly that theological reflection in Asia must take poverty and religiousness together as its starting point. In this essay, especially, I focused on Pieris’ theological view about “poverty” for our understanding of poverty in Korean context as well as that of Asia today. To clarify Pieris’ theology, I briefly researched the biblical view of poverty and view of Latin America Liberation Theology and Minjung Theology about the same topic. In the Bible, the poor has been consistently considered God’s beloved people and sons and daughters both in the Old and New Testaments. Especially, in the New Testament, Jesus promised them a blessing of having the kingdom of heaven. While Matthew expressed the “poor in spirit”(Mt 5:3), Luke “the poor”(Lk 6:20). Then, I reviewed Latin America Liberation Theology and Minjung Theology in terms of poverty. Both started from the poor and oppressed people’s context in Latin America and Korea. Therefore, both are deeply interested in people or M i n j u n g’s socio-political and economic context and their liberation. In both theologies, the poor has been considered the subject of struggle for liberation (Latin America Liberation Theology) and history (Minjung Theology). Pieris suggests to see poverty in two ways: forced and voluntary. He believes that the former is the result of oppression and evil power while the latter is the seed of liberation. He strongly insists that the Asian churches should be the churches of Asia not in Asia through seeing poverty as their reality. In his theology the voluntary poverty can work as a liberative way to defeat the forced poverty and the power of Mammon. To build and find an authentic Asian theology and view of poverty, we also should recognize the poor context of Asia as a reality for doing theology in present Asia and Korea.