Journeying into the Heart of God: Rediscovering Spirit-Christology and its Soteriological Ramifications in Korean Culture

Abstract

AbstractAn enduring problem in Christian theology has been the so-called `double-edged' crisis1 (i.e. the crisis of identity and relevance) that has to do with the particularity of Jesus Christ and his final significance to our ultimate concern, salvation. As a modest attempt to engage issues emerging from this broad line of questioning, this study takes a close look at the theological merits of Spirit Christology and notes how they yield helpful insights to deal with some critical aspects about human salvation. When juxtaposed in a complementary relationship with Logos Christology, Spirit Christology helps present a holistic paradigm of human salvation embodied in the messianic way of life in Jesus Christ. Reading pneumatologically the entire macro-narrative of Jesus Christ—his birth, life, passion, resurrection, ascension and promised return—reveals a holistic vision of God's salvation for humanity inasmuch as it represents God's own purposeful journey into the concrete reality of the human condition to recapitulate all that was lost in humanity. Theological reflections provided here should also have in view their adequacy to engage complex realities of life particularized in a given culture. For this reason, this study analyses han as a dominant cultural ethos in Korea that addresses the profundity of human brokenness distinctively engraved in its historical narratives. A careful study of han then unveils a theological need for a larger soteriology that the theological construct of Spirit Christology seems to answer in the direction of the Wesleyan-Pentecostal tradition. Salvation entails living in the Spirit wherein love functions as the ruling affection that constantly nurtures and governs one's head (orthodoxy), heart (orthopathy), and hands (orthopraxy). It takes on a distinctive formation process through which one journeys into the very heart of God.