Minjung Theological Aesthetics

This essay explores the possible confluence of minjung and inculturation theologies into a ‘minjung theological aesthetics.’ To demonstrate this possibility, the paper offers six theological suggestions. First, minjung must be understood in their political-economic as well as cultural- aesthetic dimensions. Second, minjung theology’s hermeneutics of suspicion and inculturation theology’s hermeneutics of retrieval are to be creatively fused as a dialectic of resistance and poeticity. Third, the analysis of minjung art is to be needed as minjung’s self-expression of their poeticity and transcendentality. Fourth, theology itself is a form of art and a product of human imaginative construction. Fifth, a historical incarnation of God in Jesus of Nazareth needs to be coupled with an aesthetic incarnation of God in beauty and art. Lastly, the rightful use of art for minjung theology must not be excluded due to its possible misuse.