기독교 신앙과 양심의 인간주의 - 김현승의 시를 중심으로

Abstract

Conscience is an internal idea from which one's ability to make rational judgment and reflective consciousness originate. Human being establishes his or her identity as one with personality through the process of discerning good from evil and freely deciding and realizing one's will. Constituting the core of self-identity, conscience is an idea being formed within one's surroundings rather than from one's full spontaneity. Different from conscience of common people, being formed from the relation with social ethics or norms through various processes of education, the conscience of people who have internalized Christianity is a priori and fundamental in that it greatly influences one's judgement and thought on life. Generally, christian conscience functions as an internal idea which intensifies the purity of one's religious belief over universal ethics. Kim Hyeon-seung's poetry reveals the essence of such christian conscience very obviously. To him, christian conscience functions as very strong ethical consciousness which watches and censors not only one's behavior but also one's inside. Yearning for puritan rigorism and firmness expressed in Kim Hyeon-seung's poems had its origin in religious conscience supporting christian beliefs. This conscience acts as internal basis for clearly expressing religious conflicts in the period when his belief became skeptical. In poems of his early period when he firmly believed in Christianity, conscience took the reflective function of asking the meanings and limits of life, while in his poems of later period when he had religious conflicts, conscience functioned as a base of declaring the place of human being. So-called ‘absolute solitude’, that is ‘solitude of giving up salvation’ is caused by his change in conscience toward humanism and this means that conscience is the decisive basis of supporting the abandonment of his christian view of the world. Of course, in his last few years, Kim Hyeon-seung came back to Christianity and his conscience was converted into internal idea which fully supported his christian belief. At this time, conscience completely coincided with christian conscience of ‘spirit of God’ safely arrived at one's mind - ‘pure mind’ voluntarily obeying God. In conclusion, change in Kim Hyeon-seung's poetry is the process of change in the character of his conscience and the geography of conscience in his poetry can be called as the scene where Christianity and literature encounter. In his poetry, one witnesses the conscience as a internal basis of revealing human identity.