Kim Jae-jun

Life

Kim was born in 1901 in Gyeongheung, North Hamgyong Province. As a child he studied the Four Books and Three Classics and other East Asian classics under his father, a Confucian scholar. As a young man he embraced Protestant Christianity after attending a revival meeting led by Kim Ik-du. He later described this experience as having been "seized by the fire of the Holy Spirit."

He studied in the theological department of Aoyama Gakuin (靑山學院) in Tokyo, where he is said to have been influenced by the Japanese Christian social activist Toyohiko Kagawa. He went on to study at Princeton Theological Seminary and Western Theological Seminary (now Pittsburgh Theological Seminary) in the United States, earning a Master of Sacred Theology (S.T.M.) degree in Old Testament studies. In 1933 he taught the Bible at Soongin Commercial School in Pyongyang, serving as both school chaplain and teacher.

In 1974 he emigrated to Canada, where he continued his work for human rights and democratization from abroad. He died in Seoul on January 27, 1987.

Ministry and Achievements

Founding of Chosun Theological Seminary

When the Presbyterian Theological Seminary, established by missionaries in Pyongyang, closed after the Japanese colonial authorities pressed Christians to perform Shinto shrine worship, Chosun Theological Seminary was founded in 1940 as a seminary where Koreans would both teach and study. Kim handled the practical work of its establishment. The school later became Hankuk Theological Seminary and is today Hanshin University. He served as its president in 1961 and, upon retiring in 1963, was named president emeritus.

Pastoral Ministry and Theological Controversy

In 1945 Kim founded Kyungdong Church. He accepted and taught biblical criticism, a scholarly method that analyzes how the biblical texts came to be written and the historical background in which they arose. This brought him into conflict with the Presbyterian mainstream of the time, which held to verbal inspiration, the view that every word of Scripture was written under divine inspiration. From around 1947 the orthodoxy of his theological position became a matter of controversy. In 1953 the 38th Presbyterian General Assembly declared him deposed from the ministry under the Book of Discipline, on the grounds that he had violated a resolution of the 36th General Assembly by teaching the "errancy of Scripture" (the claim that the Bible may contain errors). Those who opposed this decision organized a separate General Assembly, which marked the beginning of the Presbyterian Church in the Republic of Korea (PROK). In 1965 Kim served as moderator of the PROK General Assembly and as chairman of the board of Hankuk Theological Seminary.

Social Engagement

Kim took part in the democratization movement during the period of military rule. After moving to Canada, he held positions including chairman of the North American Council for Human Rights in Korea and chairman of the North American Korean National Alliance for Democracy and Unification.

Influence on the Korean Church

• He is regarded as a first-generation theologian who opened the progressive theological stream within Korean Protestantism.
• The school and denomination he founded later became major arenas for the democratization movement and for socially engaged theologies such as minjung theology.
• His 1953 deposition and the formation of the PROK represent one of the major lines of division in Korean Presbyterianism.
• Biblical criticism, which was controversial in his day, is now taught at many seminaries as one method of biblical study.

Assessment

Within the PROK and progressive theological circles, Kim is regarded as a pioneer who defended freedom of theological inquiry and led the church to engage with social realities. He held up three models for the minister: the reformer who corrects an unjust society, the person who lives in honest poverty, and the poet. He is said to have lived simply himself, in a small, modest government-built house in Suyu-ri, Seoul. In December 2002 he was posthumously awarded the Order of Civil Merit, Mugunghwa Medal, for his contributions to the democratization movement and to the development of theology in the Korean church.

By contrast, conservative Presbyterians and fundamentalist groups that emphasize biblical inerrancy (the doctrine that the Bible contains no errors) have criticized his acceptance of biblical criticism as undermining the authority of Scripture. They regard the 1953 General Assembly decision as a measure taken to preserve orthodox faith. Some in conservative church circles have also criticized the socially engaged theology he influenced as ideologically biased.