The Liberative Cross: Korean-North American Women and the Self-Giving God

The Liberative Cross offers a theological grounding of the orthopraxy that calls North American Korean women to live as imago Dei mirroring the perichoretic fellowship of the triune God in contemporary social relations through living in imitatio crucis and imitatio relationis. In so doing this book emphasizes three elements. First an appropriate theology of the cross meets the challenges or concerns of developing reality. Second it is a feminist theology in the sense that it seeks to retrieve a theology of the cross that is life-giving and liberating for women. Third it is a social trinitarian approach to the theology of the cross that can reveal the essence of God to be in relation mutuality and community in diversity. The constructive work achieved in this book makes a great contribution to pastoral and ecclesial praxis and imagination. The originality of Hye Kyung Heo (Han)s thinking and her insight is impressive. Even as this project is a contextual theology particularly focused on the experience of Korean women who find themselves as immigrants or children of immigrants in North America it also renders more general insights on the theology of the cross feminist critiques and the way those meld with different contexts. This book also critiques much of what has been produced around the Korean experience of han in the light of a changing cultural context in immigrant communities. I consider this an original important contribution to the field. --Charles Fensham Professor of Systematic Theology and Missiology Knox College University of Toronto Toronto ON Canada This thesis offers a constructive feminist theology that reopens engagement with theology of the cross and thus with the received doctrine on atonement in the face of feminist critique. A social Trinitarian theology of the cross is thus shaped to a new prophetic purpose for the Korean-North American context particularly for younger generations of Korean-North American women. . . . The work demonstrates the potential for mobilizing doctrine to envision a pastoral church egalitarian in its service of Gods kingdom and open to the world in solidarity with the poor. --Nik Ansell Professor of Theology Institute for Christian Studies Toronto ON Canada All Christian theology is pastoral theology as even the most theoretically developed (or conceptually abstract) theologizing can be aptly evaluated in terms of its pastoral implications. This thesis is pastoral theology in a more explicit sense. This is not to imply that its pastoral concerns are developed at the expense of conceptual clarity and theoretical insight. But the book clearly invites evaluation with respect to an ecclesial context and with respect to issues of communal witness to the surrounding culture. . . . Hye Kyung Heo (Han)s theology comes out of pastoral experience and concern and is allowed to make its contribution to pastoral and ecclesial praxis and imagination. --Jenny Daggers Professor of Theology Liverpool Hope University Liverpool England Hye Kyung Heo (Han) has been in pastoral ministry for English-speaking Korean-North Americans and other ethnic people since 1986. She was ordained by the KECA (Korean Evangelical Church of America) in 2007 as one of the first ordained woman ministers. She graduated from Knox College University of Toronto with a ThD in May 2014 and lectures in systematic theology.