Paul Beirne, Su-un and His World of Symbols. The Founder of Korea’s First Indigenous
Religion, Ashgate, 2009
Charles Sherlock
Why would an Irish-heritage,
Australian-accented Anglican Christian of evangelical conviction be reviewing this
book? Not long ago, all I knew of Korean history, culture or religion was that being
Presbyterian went with being Korean, and that they liked Karl Barth.
Paul Beirne and I worked together at the Melbourne College of Divinity office
for some years. Such an office without theological reflection is not a happy
place, and Paul began to share his
doctoral work with me, lending me the draft to read. I began to understand what
fascinated him about reflecting on faith beyond one’s heritage, and
specifically, things Korean. In particular, I was hooked by the account of the
author’s search to find the mysterious Jeong-Bu.
The subject of this book, Ch’oe
Che-u, or Boksul, was born in South Korea in 1824. His first 36 years were those
of a poor scholar, struggling to support a family but doomed to insignificance
as the son of a remarried widow. Through a remarkable experience at home on May 25, 1860, his
life was transformed. He entered an intense three-year ministry of teaching and
healing among the poor and desperate – men, women and children alike. His
followers called him ‘Su-un’, ‘Water cloud’, and his movement was known as
Donghak, ‘Eastern Way’.
Its egalitarian ethos was seen as a threat by the state, and Su-un was tried
and executed for heresy in 1864, aged 39. This small movement would have faded
were it not for the hard, sacrificial work of his itinerant successor, Haewol,
who retrieved Su-un’s writings from their oral sources. A canon of scriptures
emerged, along with a pattern of Sunday worship involving chants, teaching and
water. In time, some Donghak leaders led a rebellion: though this failed, it drew
China and Japan to intervene in Korea, and the rest, as they say, is East Asian
20th century history.
Beirne’s aim in his research was “to postulate
Su-un’s self-image at the end of his life”. While the ‘external’ history of the
Donghak movement has been well covered, there has been no study like this of
Su-un in Korean, let alone English. I am no expert here, but found the exegesis
of the Korean context, culture, literature and above all the Donghak Jumun
and scriptures to be exemplary, and the argument both convincing and
attractive.
Three features of this book beguiled me.
First was its unfolding structure: Beirne leads the reader by the hand with consummate
skill, so that even the novice in the subject can follow its development – and
more, to have a growing sense of excitement as the story and theological
analysis unfolds.
Secondly, I have long been committed to
the general thesis that if you want to change the world, shift people’s
imaginations . This is Beirne’s conclusion about the long-term consequences of
the life and ministry of Su-un, whose way of seeing the cosmos was transformed
by his heart-to-heart encounter with the Lord of Heaven, and drew him into a
ministry of empowering the imaginations of others.
And thirdly, the way Beirne opens up the
hermeneutics of visual meaning is impressive. Some 35 years ago, learning Mandarin
in a Chinese-speaking context, I heard sermon after sermon whose scriptural
exegesis depended less on biblical studies than on the visual interplay present
in Chinese characters.
For English-speakers/readers, hermeneutics revolves
around sentences made of words made of syllables made of letters: the alphabet,
spelling and word-plays are foundational. In the ideographic world of Korean
and Chinese, meaning emerges from image groups made of characters made of
symbols, each of which has a visual root – and dictionraries are a challenge!
Berne brilliantly explores this visual dimension
of linguistic meaning. To give one example, he notes that the character for
heaven, tyan (in Mandarin) is like a roof over the character for
great, da, which is a stroke crossing
the base character, ren, human. This
in viewing the character for ‘heaven’ the reader ‘sees’ a subliminal message - that
to be human is to be great, made for the heavenlies.
Beirne’s analysis of visual character
concepts lies at the heart of his detective work in recovering the key symbol
which Su-un was given, the Jeong-Bu. His practice was to draw this in
meditation, then eat it, and so celebrate (not
initiate) communion with the Lord of Heaven. When imitators distorted this into
manipulative magic, Su-un withdrew the symbol, hence its disappearance from the
Donghak. Beirne’s patient retrieval of it, through an analysis of the gung-eul motif, is brilliant. He argues
convincingly that Su-un’s lost symbol was half of the double-character for
‘weak’, gung (ruo
in Mandarin) which also contains the character for ‘two,’eul (er in Mandarin).
When split, the character has no meaning, but evokes the sense of power through
weakness which lies at the heart of the Eastern Way.
Two other aspects of this book should be
mentioned.
First, Beirne’s acceptance of Su’un’s
repeated repudiation of the ‘Western
Way’ (the Roman Catholic faith) I found puzzling.
The similarities between them are many – e.g. Ezekiel’s experience of God, the
notion of incarnation and heart-to-heart communion, the dangerous effectuality
of sacraments, the transforming character of a message, power in weakness, the
subtle interplay between movement and institution and so on. A hypothesis which
came to mind for testing was, ‘Donghak’s ability to transcend neo-Confucian
confines was in part due to its blending the Korean heritage with elements of
Catholic faith, rejecting the latter because it was seen as part of Korea’s
downfall’. Exploration of this approach may sharpen this book, or enable Beirn
to take his research further.
On the other hand, I was impressed by the
structural similarities between Jewish and Christian experiences of graced,
personal encounters with the living God, and that of Su-un. The delicate
balance of divine and human initiative, being simultaneously overwhelmed and
empowered, struggling with wanting to communicate yet serve – this is
awe-inspiring stuff. Beirne makes no claim to a false objectivity, but writes
with integrity, acknowledging this ‘gracing’ of himself in and through his fine
exploration of different faith tradition to his own.
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