Kim's Asian Chritianity By Heup Young Kim

755 Words2 Pages

In Asian Chritinaity by Heup Young Kim, he doesn’t want a dialogue, he wants a trilogue which includes East Asian religions and the natural sciences. I am a Christian and Korean, and I also belive in tradational religions(confucianism). Western christians do not have to need their own type of Christianity. My Christian faith is based on my own cultural belief which includes cultural past, which is the collective context of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The significance of Western Christianity can’t be neglected, but as the author claims, Western christianity is based on their own religious and cultural context, and as gradual increase of number of Asian christian, it is become more significant to establish the christianity based on oriental ideas. The importance of trilogue among western, eastern, and science is inevitable phenomenon, and the task should be diffrent from the past debates between western religion and science.
In Korea, more than half of christians are practicing Confucians, and people argues about that it creates a conflict of one’s religious belief. However, I think having two religion is not a problematic issue, it is possible to be both Christian and Confucian at the sametime without compromising the faith. By being both, people can be a better Christian and a better Confucian at the same time because being christian is related to faith and being confucian is related to ethics of life.

Contemporary dialogue between religion and science still needs to be more globalized due to the fact that it is only focused Western thoughts and circumstances. Oriental religions such as Confucianism and Taoism can contributes to discuss ongoing basic conflict between western religion idea and science. Contemporary religi...

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...ve the sensitivity, the knowledge of the nature itself is basic element, and collective natural sciences provides such knowledge. To fully understand the natural science, not only the scientific knowledge is necessary but also wisdom, which is collective cultural knowledge throughout century, is necessary. The significance of the Taoist notion of wu-wei, that highlights the attitude to identify the movement of the universe and participate in nature rather than to try to revise and control with human-centered point of view.
The Eastern religion should not be considered as secondary source of western religion, and the collective knowledge of eastern religion is reasonable to conduct trilogue along with western religion and science. The significance of the oriental ideas such as Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism is that they can bring new approches in humanistic view.

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