by Lee Hong Jung

In the present Asian situation, a resurgence of religious fundamentalism and its virulent impact is based on a curious mixture of religion, politics and culture. Using the language of faith to legitimize radical reformist programs, it appeals to a selective and arbitrarily interpreted past tradition and text to ground its vision of humanity and the future. The result of such revivalism, however, is that “the more one faith tradition asserts its distinctiveness, the more it alienates other faith communities,” that is, it causes communal tension and disunity. In this situation, what one should look for is alternative images of human solidarity that would mediate hope in the midst of communal tensions, religious bigotry and social disruption. To refrain from commending the power of Jesus’ name competitively among the other diverse names does not make it less effective.

Hermeneutically speaking, humanity is open-ended to the world, and the world is open-ended to God, the Ground of being. Thus the people are open-ended to God. God is the ontological power of the world-experience, the ontological ground of the linguisticality of existence, and the hermeneutical foundation for interreligious dialogue. In the theology of the Korean minjung religions such as Tonghak and Chungsan, however, this is reversed: God and the world are open-ended to the people. The people are the center for God’s encounter with the world and for inter-ideological and interreligious dialogue seeking the common ground for God-praxis.

The final result of a fusion of horizons in Tonghak, a liberation-centered sycretism in a mutually critical correlation between the given context of Tonghak and the great religious traditions of the East, was Innaecoh’on, literally meaning “the people are Heaven.” For Tonghak, the resolution of han only becomes possible when Heaven is united with the people. It is the norm of egalitarian justice. The people and Heaven (God) are identical. Justice and equality as essential to the nature of God reveal one of the central notions of Tonghak, Minsim ch’onsim (People’s mind and Heaven’s mind are identical). Heaven’s mind is in the collectively integrated mind of the common people, and therefore the people’s mind is the channel for the Heavenly Mandate, Ch’onmyong. As a result, all people should be treated as God is treated (Sainnoch’on): doing harm to others is to do harm to the Heavenly Lord. The people are the locus in which Innaech’on is realized, and where the apocalyptic transformation of the world, Huch’on’gaebyok, springs up. The logic of Innaech’on therefore rightly implies that it is the people who are the direct medium through which the Heavenly Mandate is revealed. The intermediaries between God and humans belong to the former age; in the present era the spirit of Heaven directly descends to humankind and becomes one with us. This is what Suh Namdong calls pneumatologico-synchronological theology. The people see or find God face to face. The messianic vision and praxis of Huch’on’gaebyok is realized in this concrete world by the people with the people, realizing the true meaning of the oikoumene as the household of life, the whole inhabited earth.

In Chungsan tradition, a people-centered missio Dei is addressed by a key notion, Chohwajongbu, the Government realizing the harmony between the way of Heaven and the affairs of human beings. The subjects of the building of Chohwajongbu are the Namjoson, a collective symbolic image of the minjung and minjok. Therefore the strategy and method which will save all nations will come from Namjoson, and the locus of salvation - the salvation of the whole society, of the whole of humankind, and of the whole universe - will be the locus of Namjoson, the locus of the minjung, where the spirit world and human beings are unified in a concrete term. Huch’onsongyong (Paradise of the Latter Heaven) would therefore be the time and space of the han-puri of Namjoson, the lower people (Ssangnom), the nameless land and people. Namjoson will achieve the new life force through Haewon’gongsa (Work of Resolving Han) and Ch’onjigongsa (Work of Heaven and Earth).

The locus of the people is the locus where the principle of Sangguk, “being mutually destructive,” (i.e. ‘distortion, confrontation and struggle between individuals, ethnic groups, nations, humans and the gods of religions) is shifted to the principle of Sangsaeng, “being mutually constructive or living mutually,” through Haewon’gongsa and Ch’onjigongsa, a total han-puri. This transformation, the core of missio Dei, is, in my view, a chairotic event which happens in the midst of the people. In this light, the subjectivity of Huch’on’gaebyok shifts from God to the people, Mosajaein songsajaech’on (Man proposes, God disposes) to Mosajaech’on songsajaein (God proposes, man disposes). The people arouse God’s compassion, the people know God’s will through compassion, and the people realize God’s will with God’s compassion.

In Korean Buddhism, Wonhyo understands the oikoumene from the people-centred perspective. The common ground of Wonhyo’s ecumenism is the people. His Buddhist ecumenism, T’ong Pulgyo (One Unified Buddhism) or Ilsung Pulgyo (One Vehicle Buddhism), was concretized in the praxis of minjung Buddhism. Wonhyo experienced a conversion from church-ecumenism to people-centred ecumenism. He embodied a Boddhisattva through working for the liberation/salvation of the minjung because the people themselves are Boddhisattva. The people are the centre which integrates the sacred and the secular. The Sirhak scholars’ conversion from orthodoxy to orthopraxis made them concerned to illuminate the situation of the people. This was a transition from Chu Hsi metaphysics down to the concrete reality of the people. With painstaking scholarly inquiries and praxis among the people, they advocated a form of proto-democracy (Kyongse) and the idea of administering the state to relieve the suffering of its citizens (Chemin); they also investigated facts as a means of attaining truth (Silsagusi) and of improving the living conditions of the people (Yiyonghusaeng).

Missio Dei in the oikoumene forms an inseparably interrelated web of mission which takes as its center the people who are the subjects. A web of mission following the interrelational network of the oikoumene is premised upon the participation of the people in a life-giving mission to the death-sentenced oikoumene beyond their particular tradition. A web of mission is not innocently organic and dialogical, but conflictive and dialectical. It is somehow often revealed as a confrontation between life-giving force and death-giving power, even within the same particular tradition. The fragmented reality of the oikoumene bears an eschatological hope in missio Dei which is not futuristic but present. This shared transformative hope sees that the historical center would be this present life, and is not limited to a particular tradition but open-ended to the people in the oikoumene. The household of life, the whole inhabited earth, is the present life-world actualizing itself through a people-centered life-giving mission. The people fill the oikoumene with affirmative life starting from this present life. For the people, the mutual, interpenetrating, living life of here and now is the beginning of religion, the center of faith-praxis, and the core of web of mission.

The authentic memories of God’s people were not completed two thousand years ago, and they cannot be imprisoned within the Christian canon. The text of God’s revelation was, is, and will be written in the people’s life in their everyday struggle for survival and liberation. The location of God’s ever-growing truth in history is the people’s life itself. The people are the text of doing theology of mission, and the Bible and church tradition are a horizon of the context which sometimes becomes the reference for the people’s own on-going search for God. Any christological formulations that may alienate people from their own cultural heritage can be dangerous. More acceptable christologies might be those that adduce mutual criticism, mutual learning and mutual well-being, both of humankind and of the ecological order.