현대 교회교육의 과제

The Subject of Church Education in Modern Society - Focused on Calvin's Educational Thought -

In the 21st century, Christianity is faced with two problems. One is the postmodern thought, another is the life scientific technology. The postmodern thought claims to stand for the deconstruction of universality, the respect for difference and individuality, and its world view is to refuse Absolute or the Absolute and to take relativity. Moreover, the postmodern thought claims to stand for the religious pluralism theologically, that is, the religion is not only one, but a large number, and there is no the absolute religion, but all religions are relative. The life scientific technology nourishes the human life by studying the existing state of life and making use of it for energy, environment, resource, and medical treatment. On the other hand, as a result of giving artificial birth to life by gene manipulation, it is risky to make light of the value of human life and destruct the creative order of God and affect the dignity of human life and identity. In this era, Christianity is faced with the task of showing the absolute sovereignty of Christ in every fields of human life as only Christian truth is faithful and absolute. That is to say, based on the Bible, Christianity should stand against the diversity and relativism from the norm of Postmodernism and draw out the human dignity and the valuable human being according to the creation of God from the biblical principles. Thus, through the education based on the Bible, it is necessary to apply the biblical principles to human being and living. Especially, Calvin's educational thought and the practice of the church education gives substantial aid to modern church education. Calvin asserted that the most important thing as for the education is human understanding. The reason that the postmodern thought and the life scientific technology cannot but be opposite with Christian truth may be the lack of substantial and essential human understanding. Thus, Calvin's human understanding is positively necessary to explain modern anti-Christian thoughts and scientific technology, etc. Calvin's human understanding gets achieved within the biblical structure of creation, fall, salvation, and holiness. The important purpose of human life is to know God who create man, and its reason is God create man for the purpose of receiving the glory from him. Hereby, the ultimate purpose of education that Calvin thought and insisted is God's glory, and this is just the ultimate purpose of human life. The principles appliable to modern church education are able to draw out based on Calvin's educational thought. Church should obviously teach the biblical understanding about man. The obvious teaching as for 'Man created in the image of God', 'Man fallen due to sin', 'Man getting salvation by the grace of Jesus Christ', 'Man taking after Jesus Christ' should get achieved in the field of church education. Besides, it should be made clear that the purpose of chuch education makes people lead a holy life for God's glory. The devout discipline corresponds to the key duty of church education as the educational act for applying Christian truth to human life based on the right understanding about Christian dogmas. The reason that church education is necessary is to become mature attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. God teach the Bible through His church, man learns the Bible through His church. Calvin regarded God's image as the teacher to guide and teach foolish man, and he compared such God's image with motherlike attention, so he asserted church should carry out such education. Moreover, Calvin said the reason for the existence of church is to teach the Bible as God's instrument and show Him through the education. Up to now, church has taught the Bible enthusiastically, but now it should make people be able to see God through the Bible and show the knowledge for knowing God.