마삼락(Samuel H. Moffett)의 역사 이해에 대한 비판적 성찰

The purpose of this article is to reflect critically on the history understanding of Samuel Hugh Moffett (1916-2015) focusing on Asian context. Samuel H. Moffett was the third son of Samuel Austin Moffett (1864-1939) and Lucia H. Fish. He studied at Pyongyang Foreign School, Wheaten University, and Princeton Theological Seminary, and received his doctorate from Yale university under the guidance of Kenneth Latourette. Samuel H. Moffett’s evangelical ecumenism emphasized evangelism, church unity, and social engagement. He concerned about that if the church strengthened the tendency of self-containment, it would result in a lack of contact with the non-Christian world. He researched the early Asian history and contrasted the thoughts of Tatian with Bardaisan. He also presented the four models of the hem1it on his holy hill, the bishop in his blessed city, the teacher in his school, and the patriarch in his Christian ghetto. He put stress on the ultimate model of the missionary to the ends of the earth. His frontier mission theology emphasized the center of Jesus Christ, rather than distinctive boundaries between the center and the edge, the church and the world, unity and mission, inside and out, and the West and the East. He analyzed the factors of the success and failure of Asian churches and argued that the church should maintain a distance from ideology and power by studying Nestorian missionary. He insisted on restoring the church’s essence of the unity and mission. He pointed out the distorted history of the beginning of Christianity from the West, described the history of church in Asia and asserted the balance of the history of church in East and West.