This remarkable study articulates a Korean Confucian-Christian theory of human nature, encompassing the theory of justification, sanctification, and salvation by means of a reformed concept of filial piety. The book presents the theological anthropology of Robert C. Neville and the inclusive humanism of Tu Wei-ming as critical guides for the creation of a comparative, contemporary Korean theology.

The concept of self-sacrifice is highly important to Korean Americans. With hierarchy of age, social status, and gender-defined roles taking primacy over equality and justice, self-sacrifice becomes instrumental in maintaining family and social relationships. Unfortunately, in family relationships, sacrifice has more to do with submission and endurance than it does with sacrificial service that is redemptive and mutually beneficial. When self-sacrifice carries hidden motives--coercive responsibility, obligation, shame, guilt, or one's reputation--that "self-sacrifice" is not self-giving, neither serving nor being of mutual benefit. In this context, it is important to explore the attitudes and motives of self-sacrifice in Korean American families. In unlocking and exploring the dynamics of the theology and practice of self-sacrifice for Korean Americans, this book explores cultural virtues, marital relationships, gender inequality, domestic violence, and their theological implications. The author introduces a new approach and model with a proposal for a healthier and a more judicious understanding of self-sacrifice for Korean American family relationships. The element of "equal regard" as pertaining to self-sacrifice offers Korean Americans a refreshing hope in the perspective of familial relationships and a liberating casting-off of culturally and religiously imposed burdens. The Korean American family ought to be grounded on a love ethic of equal regard and place its value on mutuality, self-sacrifice, and individual fulfillment. When this is done, sacrificial love can be understood as justly appropriated for both husbands and wives, males and females, and parents and children. Thus, Christian teaching and theology may deliver a more transparent message of true agape and its liberating effects for the marginalized, especially women and children.

Cultural Blending in Korean Death Rites examines the cultural encounter of Confucianism and Christianity with particular reference to death rites in Korea. As its overarching interpretive framework, this book employs the idea of the 'total social phenomenon', a concept first introduced by the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872-1950). From the perspective of the total social phenomenon, this book utilizes a combination of theological, historical, sociological and anthropological approaches, and explores Korean death rites by classifying them into three categories: ritual before death (Bible copying), ritual at death (funerary rites),and ritual after death (ancestral ritual). It focuses on Christian practices as they epitomize the complex interplay of Confucianism and Christianity. By drawing on a total social phenomenon approach to the empirical case of Korean death rites, Chang-Won Park contributes to the advancement of theory and method in religious studies.

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The theory of integral dynamics is based on the view that the development of individual leaders or entrepreneurs requires the simultaneous development of institutions and societies. It seeks a specific way forward for each society, fundamentally different from, but drawing on, its past. Nearly every natural science has been transformed from an analytically-based approach to a dynamic one: now it is time for society and culture to follow suit locally and globally. Each culture, discipline and person is incomplete and is in need of others in order to develop and evolve. This book sets out a curriculum for a new integral, trans-cultural and trans-disciplinary area of study, inclusive of, but extending beyond, economics and enterprise. It embraces a trans-personal perspective, linking self with community, enterprise and society, and focusing on the vital relationship between local identity and global integrity. For the government policy maker, the enlightened business practitioner, and the student and researcher into economics and enterprise, the new discipline is set out here in complete detail by a multi-national team of Gower's Transformation and Innovation Series authors. Illuminated with examples relating the conceptual to the practical, this is a text, not for a pre-modern, modern, or even post-modern era, but for what has been called our trans-modern age.

This pioneering book presents thirteen articles on the fascinating topic of emotions (jeong 情) in Korean philosophy and religion. Its introductory chapter comprehensively provides a textual, philosophical, ethical, and religious background on this topic in terms of emotions West and East, emotions in the Chinese and Buddhist traditions, and Korean perspectives. Chapters 2 to 5 of part I discuss key Korean Confucian thinkers, debates, and ideas. Chapters 6 to 8 of part II offer comparative thoughts from Confucian moral, political, and social angles. Chapters 9 to 12 of part III deal with contemporary Buddhist and eco-feminist perspectives. The concluding chapter discusses ground-breaking insights into the diversity, dynamics, and distinctiveness of Korean emotions. This is an open access book.

This book reconstructs the legacy of Korean minjung theology by reformulating its essential ideas in a dialogue with process thought. In a minimal sense, this study is a theological reinterpretation of the doctrine of the minjung messiah, an idea which historically suffered from a misunderstanding that minjung theology created a 'messianic confusion' while replacing christology and soteriology by a radical anthropology. This erroneous conception occurred when the idea was placed within the philosophically dualistic framework of traditional doctrines in which the work of minjung is totally separated from the work of Christ. In order to avoid such a dualistic understanding, the author critically adopts process panentheism and makes minjung ideas more communicable and more comprehensive in current theological, religious, and philosophical debates. Beyond defending the idea of the minjung messiah, he also argues for an inclusive minjung hermeneutics that promotes the fundamental insight of minjung theology, in philosophical clarity. Through minjung hermeneutics, minjung theology expands its practical concern and overcomes the theoretical nihilism in postmodern studies.

Schools of Faith represents a diversity of essays from scholars in several continents. The contributors, all leading theologians and ethicists, offer reflections on historical and contemporary themes which are significant for wider debates in theological education and church life in today's world. The range of contributor and content provides a fitting tribute to the work of Iain R. Torrance over many years. Amid the numerous subjects discussed, the authors focus on liturgy, textual criticism, public theology, the ethics of war, Christian doctrine, divine action, ecumenism, inter-faith dialogue, spiritual formation, the office of the minister, and the interface between religion and literature. The multi-faceted nature of this collection signifies its importance for historical, systematic and practical theology

"Korean Christianity is renowned for its rapid growth and conservative theological orientation. This phenomenon is inextricably tied to Korean appropriation of the Bible in their religio-cultural and socio-political context since the 18th century. Less understood, however, is the complex tapestry of Korean biblical interpretation that emerged from being missionized, colonized, internally divided, and incorporated into global norms. These countervailing forces proffer a distinctive Korean-ness of biblical interpretation. On the one hand, it tracks closely the influence of conservative western missionaries. On the other hand, it reflects God's liberating intervention for Koreans and the Korean diaspora. Both of these movements respond to and move beyond distinct histories of oppression. This introduction coheres twenty-four papers by grouping them into four waves of reciprocal interpretive encounters shaping Korean appropriation of the Bible and Christian practices. While some conservatively align with received western orthodoxy, others embrace a sense of complementarity that informs the spectrum of Korean Christian thought and practice, the long-standing religious traditions of Korea, the diversity of Korea's global diaspora, and the learning of non-Koreans who are attentive to the impact of the Bible in Korea"--