민중'에서 '생명'으로 - 한국신학 발전에서의 김지하의 영향

Abstract

Kim Jiha is one who brought one of the most serious controversies into the Korean modern history of social and religious thought. His ballade, "Chang Il Tam Story" gave much influence on the development of Minjung theology in 1970's. His proposition, "Minjung is the agent of historical reformation," helped theologians to set up the Minjung concept. His theory of "dialectic of Han(suffering) and Tan(extinction)" clarified the point of Minjung theology, "self-transcendence of Minjung."After a long period of imprisonment, Kim Jiha converted himself from Minjung-centered thought to Life-centered thought. He tried to comprehend Minjung with Life. According to him, Life is soaked into all lives, from animals to plants, from inorganic matters to machinery. Human beings are the end of naturalistic evolution and also should be perfectly harmonized with nature.I believe there are some serious defects in Kim Jiha's Life thought. ① When he says that Life is in everything in the world without distinction, lives could be endangered, because the circle of life is destroyed. ② The relationship between nature and man, who practises ethic, language, science with his self-consciousness, is obscure. I suggest that the view of life and man in traditional Christianity can provide wisdom for solving such problems.