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영어

“Is Christianity a Korean religion?” or “Is it still a imported religion?” The process to find an answer for these questions is the road to introspect whether Korean Christianity is a substantial subject and to seek for potentialities of thought history in Korean Christianity. First, I tried to think over current point of the theories on Taksa Choi Byung-hun in this essay. Choi Byung-hun left his great footprints as a pioneer of Korean theology, the founder of religious history of Korea, a leading pastor of the early Korean church, a church administrator, and a social activist. Above all, his position in Korean thought history is huge in that he is the father of 'Korean theology' by accepting Christianity with independent point of view. I arranged the current position of theories on Choi Byung-hun focusing on themes such as potential form of Taksa's theological thought, his consciousness of the times and ideology of social activities, the recognition and its context of religious-cultural transition in this essay. And I tried to find out the possibility of describing thought history on the basis of the above mentioned issues. First, we need even deeper and context-embedded research on the background of Taksa's thought. Second, we need much stricter biographical study on his life and activities. Third, we need highly comparative study to make clear the status and meaning of Taksa's thought. Fourth, we need to face the difference between the Methodist Church and neighboring orders, furthermore, between in and out of the whole field of theology. I attempted to find out a road to the description about thought history of Korean Christianity on the basis of current situation of the theories dealing with Choi Byung-hun. The above mentioned four proposals seem to be useful for another examination on other persons' thought as well. In this process of discussion one of the core proposals emphasized here is 'context-embedded approach'. It means that a new description of thought history in Korean Christianity has to be carried out through reinterpretation of texts considering context seriously.