마태오 릿치와 탁사 최병헌의 보유론(補儒論)적 기독교 이해의 차이와 한계

Abstract

This is a comparative study between two theologians', M Ricci's and Choi Byunghun's(崔炳憲) understanding of Confucianism. M. Ricci was the first Catholic missionary in China and wrote the famous book『天主實義』. In this book, M. Ricci brought his positive interpretation of classical Confucianism in the point of Catholic theology. For him, Catholic 天主 is not different from Confucian 上帝. Choi Byunghun wrote the book 『萬種一臠』as the first theologian in Korea. In this book he also evaluated positively the Confucianism. He tried to understand Christian truth based on his Confucian experience. He said, "東洋之天 卽西洋之天“, because he believed that all religions have almost the same taste. In addition to this, these two thinkers agreed with each other in the point that Christian truth will accomplish the Confucianism(補儒論). However, they were different in the way to reach these common result. As a Catholic missionary M. Ricci used the framework of thomistic natural theology in order to read Confucian Texts. But the protestant pastor, Choi Byunghun started to make dialogue in terms of Christology. In fact,『天主實義』had not reference to Christology. In this article I will try to show that Choi's attempt will be more sustainable for the Confucian-christian dialogue. However, I also will criticize Choi's 補儒論 and point out the limitation of his understanding of Neoconfucianism. It is the reason that I believe the cosmology of Neo-confucianism can make an appeal for a paradigm change of Christian theology.