On history

The original korean text: http://blog.naver.com/stevision/50025417396

 

(donga.com's netizen forum, May 28, 2005)

 

 

As far as I know, King Sejong did not leave his autobiography. Then it can be said that the record about him was recorded by others and that the history about him was written according to others' view of history. Then, is the history of King Sejong, written by others, entirely worthless? Then, we must say that there is no objective story and that the subjective views of history written by any other historians is of no value. But is this true?

 

There is no historian but admits that the history is an interpretation of the recorder (the writer) about the historical events. However, the history that is interpreted by the historian has its own value. Rather, an interpreted history can have more value than an objective history. Because the interpreted history lets the readers know the true meaning of the objective history and enriches their life.

 

A devotee of the Unification Church (통일교, a heretical sect) who are expressing his thought here (in donga.com), using theological terms such as ‘historical Jesus’ and ‘kerygmatic Christ (Jesus)’, maintains that it is wrong to believe Jesus as the Son of God. But he should know that the kerygmatic Christ couldn't have existed but for the historical Jesus and that the kerygmatic Christ was in the religious perspective of those who were the disciples of Jesus. Therefore, kerygmatic Christ (Jesus Christ) is not a fabrication. If Jesus had not been omnipotent and not risen from death after the death of cross, could the history of the kerygmaitc Christ have appeared?

(Kerygma is the message of the disciples of Jesus about the Lord Jesus.)

 

This devotee of the Unification Church criticizes that, unfairly, Christians had made Jesus a God (in that this Jesus was but an interpreted Jesus). But Jesus claims that he is one divine substance with the Father, by saying, "I and the Father are one (Joh 10,30)." And in Joh 20,28, Thomas saw the Lord, who had resurrected, and confessed, "My Lord and my God!" Joh1 5,20 reads, 'He (Jesus) is the true God and eternal life.' Jesus' divinity already became a problem among the people even when he lived here on earth, and later the Christians established the doctrine of the Trinity while they, referring to the Bible, were setting up the relationship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And the doctrine of Jesus Christ is not a fabrication of the Christians of later generation but an easy summary of the Bible.

(One substance means 'one being', or 'one existence', or 'one life'. The Trinity means: 'The Father is the perfect God. So is the Son, and so is the Holy Spirit. Yet they are not three Gods but one God, one divine life. In other words, the only one God has three divine Subjects (or three divine Selves: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit), which a man has not for he is only a(one) human subject. God is different from man in respect of the mode of the existence of a life. The God is one substance of three Persons while a man, one substance of one person.')

 

All Christians are saved by believing that the God is the Trinity and that Jesus, the Son of God the Father, is the Savior of the mankind. So the important thing is this confession, not theological thoughts of some theologians. Therefore, the believer of Tong-Il-Gyo (the Unification Church) at this forum should raise questions to the orthodox confessions of Christianity if he really want to discuss the problem of Christianity; he should not criticize Christianity by criticizing some theologians' one-sided arguments.

 

I can not help but talk about the history of Sun Myung Moon, the leader of the sect Tong-Il-Gyo (the Unification Church), because the believer of the sect at this forum has raised a question about the historicity of Jesus. This is based on an obvious objective fact. Moon declared in front of about 300 people including about 80 politicians at a meeting in Washington, D.C., on March 23, 2004, "I came to Earth to save 600 million people. I am a messiah, a savior and a true father. Throughout human history, the founders of the five major religions, many leaders of the spiritual world, communist leaders such as Marx and Lenin, dictators such as Hitler and Stalin, all of them discovered power in my teachings and became new men through me."

 

Is this an argument of a man of sound mind? How can a man serving such a man as the leader of the sect criticize other religions?

(Sun Myung Moon died on September 3, 2012, forever!)