Korean Religions in Relation: Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity ed. by Anselm K. Min

Korean Religions in Relation: Buddhism, Confucianism, Christianity, ably edited by Anselm Min, presents a host of thought-provoking articles that focus on the relationship between different Korean religions. As such, this work makes an important contribution to English-language scholarship worthy of the scholar to whom it is dedicated, Professor Wi Jo Kang, a pioneer in the study of the relationship between religion, particularly Christianity, and politics in Korea. Min highlights the importance of such scholarship, noting in his introduction to this volume that “relations among religions are so critical to peace in society and the world” (1). At the same time, Min emphasizes that this volume is a beginning, not an end, and expresses his “hope that more comprehensive studies will follow that will also include Tonghak and other religions of Korean origin” (2).

Despite this acknowledged limitation and a focus on only three religions, this is still a hefty volume chocked full of both rich detail and provocative arguments. Helpfully, the ten chapters that follow the introduction are paired together into five dyads that share important themes: Buddhism and Confucianism during the Koryŏ period; Catholicism and Confucianism during Chosŏn; Protestantism and traditional Korean religions; Christianity, Confucianism, and feminism today; and finally the relationship between Christianity, other religions, and politics. This collection can therefore boast of managing to be coherent while providing diverse, scholarly perspectives.

The first article of the Koryŏ pair is Jongmyung Kim’s “Interactions between Buddhism and Confucianism in Medieval Korea,” in which Kim contends that “Confucianism was the dominant ideology which often exploited the potential of Buddhism to serve the preservation and prosperity of the ruling dynasty, Confucianizing Buddhism in many important respects in the process” (20). For instance, under Confucian influence, Koryŏ Buddhism came to serve the dynasty by offering rituals for the longevity of the monarch, making Buddhism into a “political tool to support Confucianism” (28) that, according to Kim, departed from the Buddha’s original teaching as set forth in the Four Noble Truths.

Charles Muller continues this examination of religion in Koryŏ with his “Philosophical Aspects of the Goryeo-Joseon Confucian-Buddhist Confrontation: Focusing on the Works of Jeong Dojeon (Sambong) and Hamheo Deuktong (Gihwa).⁶ Muller carefully places the dialogue between Jeong, who was anti-Buddhism and pro-Neo-Confucianism, and Gihwa, an apologist for Buddhism who had a relatively open attitude towards Confucianism, in its late Koryŏ context, noting how Buddhism was closely connected with a dynasty in decline, with Neo-Confucianism providing a new worldview that could be used to criticize the corruption of the old order. In his study, Muller finds an interesting near-parallel between these thinkers in that both criticized the other’s worldview for inconsistency but in different ways—Jeong finding Buddhist teachings self-contradictory and Gihwa observing contradictions between how Confucians believed they should act and what, according to him, their tradition actually required. Gihwa even went so far as to argue that Confucianism had been misunderstood “by even the most important figures of their own tradition” (71) and that if they truly understood it, their ethics would align with those of Buddhism. A particularly important insight of Muller’s is that these polemics were made possible only by the fact that both men believed in “the existence of a good mind that can be developed to a high level of purity and wisdom by engagement in a given set of practices” (77).

The second pair of chapters examines the relationship between Catholicism and Confucianism, with Don Baker’s “Catholic God and Confucian Morality: A Look at the Theology and Ethics of Korea’s First Catholics” seeking to answer the question, “Why did a group of young Confucians become Catholics before they had even met a Catholic missionary?” (89). As Baker shows, what makes this question particularly significant is the extraordinary differences between these two worldviews in terms of the existence of God and an eternal human soul, the grounds of morality, and the importance of belief. Baker argues that while there is a tendency to emphasize social or political movements in answering this question, often understood as representing a Korean embrace of modernity, they cannot on their own account for such a shift in fundamental understandings of the universe. Rather, Baker argues that an increased death rate in the eighteenth century and a gap in the idealism of Neo-Confucianism and the ability to live up to its expectations made some Korean scholars receptive to a Confucianized Catholicism that offered the promise of eternal life, grace to follow Confucian morality, forgiveness when one failed, and an explanation of why it was so difficult to be good in the first place. Despite this radical shift, the focus of these Catholics on Confucian morality showed that they continued to adhere “to core ethical values of their culture,” and therefore remained Korean despite their embrace of a new religion (112).

Yong-bae Song in his, “On the Family Resemblance of Philosophical Paradigm: Between Dasan’s Thought and Matteo Ricci’s Tianzhu shiyi” compares the writings of these two scholars, paying particular attention to how the former introduced Aristotle’s teaching in such areas as matter, the soul, and the idea of God to the latter. This exposure led Dasan to develop his own Catholic-Confucian synthesis which included a rejection of much of the i-gi metaphysics in favor of belief in a moral, personal God, though one that did not judge as in the Catholic understanding. For Song, historically speaking, Dasan’s synthesis “marked the beginning of a modern understanding of nature” (145).

The third dyad examines the relationship between Protestant Christianity and other religions in Korea. The first of these articles, Sung-Deuk Oak’s “A Genealogy of Protestant Theologies of Religions in Korea, 1876–1910: Protestantism as a Religion of Civilization and Fulfillment,” provides a fascinating overview of how Koreans and missionaries serving on the peninsula developed a theology for how relate to other religions through their interaction with Anglo-American scholarship and Christian experience in China. Through his fascinating survey of the texts these different groups produced, Oak shows that rather than “militant fundamentalists determined to destroy traditional religions” these Protestants were “moderate evangelicals who were open-minded enough to seek points of contact between Christianity and traditional Korean religions” (156), a position Oak believes should be revisited by contemporary Korean Protestants.

Young-Ho Chun, in his “What Can Christianity Learn from Korean Religions? The Case of Ryu Yongmo,” examines the life and thought of a self-identified Christian who was radically open to other religions. Chun focuses particularly on Ryu’s concept of “eol” (a complex term meaning something like “core” or “substance”), which played a key role in his theology, and helped him to bring Christianity into conversation with Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. While willing to enter into critical dialogue with Ryu, for instance, noting that he tended to obscure differences between religions instead of acknowledging them (204), Chun also praises Ryu as someone who “did not lose his identity and language as a Korean, as so many others have…In his attempt to indigenize Christianity, he was a quintessentially Korean thinker. In both he proved to be indeed a great and original thinker” (206).

The next two chapters, focusing on the triangular relationship between Confucianism, Christianity, and feminism, take opposing views. Namsoon Kang, in her “Resurgence of Asian Values: Confucian Comeback and Its Embodiemt in Christianity” criticizes the Confucian revival under the “guise of the noble Asian values” and how it has led to the “creation of male homosocial reality in Korean society and Christianity” (216). Kang is particularly concerned that in the name of Asian values (Confucianism), inequalities, particularly ones related to gender, are ignored, while feminism itself is rejected as foreign and therefore unsuitable for Asians (219). While Kang holds out little hope for the reformation of Confucianism, she does believe that its baleful influences can be purged from Christianity as “A large number of feminist theologians have attempted to recover the egalitarian principles and practices in Christianity and reconstruct Christianity as a more just religion” (233).

In contrast, in her “Korean Confucianism and Women’s Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century,” Un-sunn Lee sees an unwillingness to participate in the public sphere as the central problem facing Koreans, and that Confucianism can act “as a source of inspiration for developing women’s subjectivity in the twenty-first century.” In particular, Lee believes that women, in part because of their nurturing qualities, can develop a “life-giving and caring” (241) Confucian spirituality that does not demarcate between the sacred and profane, but instead sacralizes the world, thereby restoring the concern for public affairs that she fears is being lost. Particularly noteworthy is that Lee points back to two Chosŏn Confucian women scholars, Im Yeon-ji-dang and Gang Jeong-il-dang, to show how though “they were restricted in their family life” they performed their “obligations with a strong sense of public responsibility and a sense of justice” (245).

The fifth dyad shares some themes with the fourth, examining the political implications of Christianity and Confucianism. Young-chan Ro, in his “Confucianism at a Crossroads: Confucianism and Democracy in Korea” calls for a reinterpretation of “the basic assumptions of the Confucian worldview and values in light of the contemporary social, political, and philosophical discourse” (264). Ro is particularly interested in the question of why Confucianism has been used to justify authoritarian politics in Korea despite the fact that there are humanistic and democratic ideas in the tradition. Ro’s answer is that Confucianism was so optimistic about human nature and the possibility of sage rule that sufficiently strong institutions did not develop that could keep bad rulers in check. In contrast, the Christian West’s understanding of a basically good human nature marred by sin meant that it was optimistic enough to trust human beings with democracy, but not so optimistic as to trust them completely, leading to institutional checks and balances that allowed democracy to flourish.

While Ro focuses on the positive benefits brought by Christianity through historical reflection, Anselm Min, in his “Between Tradition and Globalization: Korean Christianity at a Crossroads” describes the challenges facing Korea, particularly in terms of the environment, the economy, and migration, and the difficulties Korean Christians must overcome in order to help meet them. For Min, of key importance to addressing these issues is developing a positive relationship between Korean Christianity and “traditional Korean religions and cultures” (285). While Min recognizes the importance of theological discussion, he makes the important point that even as Koreans became Christians, they maintained “all the ontological, religious, and ethical assumptions particular to the culture that” shaped them (290). It would seem then that these cultural forces could then help act as a grounds of dialogue and that there is more real unity among different Korean religions than is generally recognized. Min also believes that to deal with the challenges facing Korea, Protestants need to work to overcome their divisions by finding some authority to unify them on issues of morality, and that the clericalism that dominates the Korean Catholic Church needs to be reformed to unleash the energy of the laity.

I found the studies in this edited-volume fascinating and thought provoking. At the same time, critically speaking, I notice that one commonality amongst some of these works is the idea of returning to ancient texts or traditions to find inspiration for the present. I believe that this is in itself a worthy goal. However, at times, some of these attempts seemed to be built upon problematic premises, one of which being that the people who followed these texts and traditions in the past had somehow misunderstood or corrupted them, necessitating their rescue. However, treating such mediators in this way risks us losing the opportunity of learning from them (for instance, we would miss out on the insights of Gi-hwa presented by Muller with this approach). Another related premise is the idea that we can even obtain unmediated access to these texts and traditions that would make this rescue possible, something the reviewer doubts. Moreover, removing a text or tradition from the context in which it was produced makes it easier to impart meanings that do not do justice to the text (I believe this is summed up in the old saying “A text without a context is a pretext for a prooftext”), in which case, why appeal to the text at all? Thus, while a “hermeneutics of suspicion” (302) is warranted, I believe so too is a “hermeneutics of reform”⁷ that takes seriously the wisdom of the mediators who have handed ancient wisdom on to us.

I would also like to raise a few issues that might be useful for consideration by those who continue this work (and I hope that Min and his co-authors will be among them). One such issue is what makes a religion “Korean.” For instance, should Islam be included? There are ethnic Korean Muslims and an increasing number of Muslims on the peninsula, so it seems to me that the answer is yes. Similarly, it would be helpful to include religions outside of the chronologies they are normally assigned to. For instance, what of Buddhists and Catholics today? That being said, Korean Religions in Relation is an excellent, thought-provoking work that explores areas of particular importance not only for Korea, but for the world. In particular, this work is to be praised not only for the quality of the individual chapters, but for how they fit together so coherently, no easy thing for an edited volume. One fascinating aspect of this work is that it is not simply descriptive, but also normative, with scholars not simply discussing what is or what was, but what should be, and it therefore seems to me to be particularly suited not only for scholars, but for classroom use as well, as it would provide an efficient way of introducing students to the richness of Korean religions, how they are both historical and lived traditions, and the complex and fascinating ways they interact with each other.