User:Youaregood/Yung Suk Kim

Yung Suk Kim is a biblical scholar specializing in theories of biblical interpretation and early Christianity. Born in South Korea, now living in Richmond, Virginia, he is teaching at Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology of Virginia Union University in Richmond, VA. He holds the following degrees: a PhD degree in the area of New Testament studies from Vanderbilt University, an M.Div from McCormick Theological Seminary, and a B.A from Kyungpook National University, Korea. Before this theological career, Kim has a long period of transformative experience as he moved away from his first career in international business (LG Electronics Miami, FL and Panama, Panama) as a marketing manager to a new business of the gospel – a vocation he considers most serious due to its profound impact on our contemporary lives today. Bringing his personal cultural experiences to the classroom and his research, Dr. Kim asks: “What does it mean to live in this world in relation to each other? How can we do theology in our thoughts, deeds and action, while moving pointedly away from individualism? How can we read biblical stories with each other in a critical context? What are some viable definitions of cross-cultural hermeneutics, if any, by which we can improve the sense of living together in difference?”

One of his earlier attempts to answer this kind of questions is being made in his first book, Christ's Body in Corinth (Fortress Press in 2008):

Reading as a citizen of an increasingly diverse postcolonial world, Yung Suk Kim protests the scholarly consensus that reads Paul's language of the "body of Christ" in 1 Corinthians as a metaphor for social unity, current in Hellenistic and Roman philosophical and political discourse, in which the integrity of the social body required the vigilant maintenance of group boundaries and the harmony of its members. Kim points out the potential of this reading to promote coercive patterns of enforced unity in the contemporary world. Kim argues instead that in speaking of the church as Christ's body, Paul relies upon the metaphoric language of embodied vitality and growth, seeking instead to nourish the life-giving practices of a diverse community and to oppose the ideology of a powerful in-group that threatens to "disembody" the Christic body in Corinth. Reading the language of soma christou exclusively from a sociological lens fails to comprehend the important christological coordinates of Paul's thought, which nevertheless have clear and urgent social and political implications. Paul's exhortation is a message of particular importance, Kim suggests, for us who seek to discern the true value of difference in the contemporary world.

Selected Works

Christ’s Body in Corinth: The Politics of a Metaphor (Paul in Critical Contexts), MN: Fortress, 2008.

The Bible, Culture and Interpretation (Korean edition), CA: CreateSpace, 2009.

“The Story of Hannah (1 Sam 1:1-2:11) from a Perspective of Han: The Three-phase Transformative Process,” The Bible and Critical Theory Vol. 4 No. 2 June 2008.

“Lex Talionis in Exod 21:22-25: Its Origin and Context,” Journal of Hebrew Scriptures Volume 6: Article 3 (2006); also appears in ed. Ehud Ben Zvi, Perspectives on Hebrew Scriptures III. Gorgias Press, 2007.

"'In Christ' as a Hermeneutical Key for Diversity," Journal of Biblical Studies 6.1 (2006): 34-54.

“Jesus' Death in Context,” The Living Pulpit Vol. 16 No. 2 Apr-Jun 2007.

“A Lesson from Studies of Source Criticism: Contradicting Stories and Humble Diversity in Creation Stories (Gen 1-2),” The SBL Forum Vol. 5 No. 9 October 2007.

“Korea, South, Christianity in,” Cambridge Dictionary of Christianity, Cambridge University Press, 2010 (forthcoming).

References:

Virginia Union University

Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology, Virginia Union University