Choi Tae-yong

Life

Choi was born on December 18, 1897, in Yeongheung, South Hamgyong Province. He became a Christian in 1913 while attending Suwon Agricultural and Forestry School, and he reportedly received spiritual guidance from ministers such as Jeon Gye-eun and Hyun Soon. In the early 1920s he went to Japan to study theology. There he met Uchimura Kanzō, leader of the Non-Church movement, and studied under him. The Non-Church movement was a Japanese Christian movement that sought to center the life of faith on Bible study gatherings rather than on the church as an institution.

After returning to Korea in the mid-1920s, he founded a personal magazine, Voice from Heaven (天來之聲), and later Spirit and Truth, in which he published articles criticizing the Korean church. He is known to have issued a "Declaration of Faith Revolution" in December 1925 in the auditorium of the Seoul YMCA. Scholars hold that from around this time he gradually moved away from the Non-Church movement. He later returned to Japan and studied theology in the theological department of Meiji Gakuin (明治學院). After coming home, he is said to have traveled throughout the country arguing that Korea needed "a Korean theology and a Korean theological seminary."

On December 22, 1935, he founded the Korean Evangelical Church of Joseon in Sogyeok-dong, Seoul, and became its first bishop. After Korea's liberation, he organized the Sinsaenghoe (New Life Society), a religious association. After the South Korean government was established, he reportedly devoted himself to the rural movement, serving as vice president of the Farmers' Association and director of the Farmers' Training Institute. In 1950, during the Korean War, he was abducted and killed by North Korean forces; the date is reported as September 11.

Ministry and Achievements

• Criticism of the church and evangelism through publications: In articles such as "Institution or Faith?" and "Enterprise or Life?" he criticized the church for having become preoccupied with institutions and programs. He argued that the essence of the church is not institution but living faith.
• From Non-Church to institutional church: According to scholars, he came to feel the limits of calling for church reform from outside the church, and so abandoned the Non-Church position and embraced the institutional church.
• Founding of the Evangelical Church: At its founding, the church comprised eight congregations. It set forth three guiding principles: "Let faith be evangelical and living; let theology be thoroughly scholarly; let the church be the Korean people's own church." These principles expressed the aim of establishing a church that was politically, economically, and spiritually independent of Western churches and missionaries.

Influence on the Korean Church

The Korean Evangelical Church of Joseon is described as an indigenous denomination founded directly by Koreans rather than by a foreign mission board. It continues today as the Korea Evangelical Church, a member denomination of the National Council of Churches in Korea. His vision of a "small and pure national church" and his advocacy of a "Korean Christianity" are sometimes cited in discussions of indigenization theology. The denomination has held a memorial lecture series in his name to reflect on his ecclesiology.

Assessment

• Theological controversy: Choi advocated the so-called "pure flesh" doctrine, which held that Jesus, while on earth, was wholly flesh (fully human). He also criticized the Korean church for having fallen into "biblicism," a veneration of the Bible itself. These views were at odds with the Christology and view of Scripture generally held in the Korean church at the time, and the scholar Jeon In-su notes that for this reason he was even criticized as a heretic. Choi himself regarded his theology as a "new gospel" for the reform of the church.
• Pro-Japanese activities: The Evangelical Church states that, as a denomination, it refused Shinto shrine worship. Choi personally, however, wrote pro-Japanese editorials in the final years of colonial rule. On the occasion of its 70th anniversary, the Korea Evangelical Church issued a confession disclosing and repenting of its founder's pro-Japanese activities. The press reported this as the first instance of a Protestant denomination repenting of pro-Japanese collaboration. Jeon In-su traces the intellectual basis of these writings to Choi's abandonment of political nationalism after he received his call to evangelism in 1916.