Traveling many Latin American countries during my business career, I learned a great deal about our "common" humanity residing in differences. With a new vocation, I had another move to a seminary education -- one in which our family have taken great risks of ups and downs. With much time passing by, now I ask: What does it mean to live in this world in relation to each other (meaning of "Other" -- which resonates, for example, Paul Ricoeur's narrative identity or Jacques Derrida's relationless relation), and 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?

I have a passion for human transformation rooted in self-knowledge and self-criticism.

I am good and bad. I am not either good or bad. So don't judge me that I am good, because I am also bad. Don't say to me that I am bad, because I am also good. Who I am may not fall into your judgment. As such, I want to say that I come from heaven and earth, having both things from above and things from earth. That is what I am. My goal of life is not a perfection but a transformation with a recognition that I am both good and bad.

I am the same as yesterday and yet I am not the same from yesterday. I am unique, different from others. If somebody asks, Who are you? or What is your name? the best answer will be "I am that I am." This answer recalls God's answer to Mose's question about God's name. Simply, God's name or identity cannot be known or rightly explained by words. That is why we find God's answer "I am what I am." Nothing suffices to explain who God is. In the same token, if we are God's masterpiece, we also reflect the image of God. Thus I boldly say, I am that I am. Otherwise, nothing or nobody can answer or explain about who I am. This being (I) is unique and nothing can replace "I." Why is this idea of "I am that I am" is important? The answer will be that I must honor myself (self-knowledge) and others as well. But our efforts cannot stop here because I am imperfect or bad. This requires me to engage others (self-criticism) and I can learn from others. When these two things (self-knowledge and self-criticism) are balanced, a desirable human transformation, in my view, can take place.

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY
I foster and teach to engage in the knowledge of who we are in this world in which we see each other so diverse and different. In my teaching, diversity is not a given but a source of critical engagement with each other. I value both a critical and self-critical stance toward any claim of knowledge, truth, and reality. I emphasize the following as pedagogical goals: learning from others, challenging each other, affirming who we are, and working for common humanity in differences. In my teaching, all in all, I communicate critical diversity and transformative identity in a variety of life contexts.

PERSONAL BLOGs
Critical Dialogue
Soma Christou
Hankyoreh (Korean)

*Speaking engagement on Ecclesiology of the New Testament (English, Korean).

FAVORITE TOPICS for spiritual reflections and food
1. The Eighth Century BCE prophets and Today: justice and righteousness
2. Paul’s body metaphor and Christian life
3. Diversity and hermeneutics: celebration and challenge
4. Jesus’ death in context (diversity of the Gospels)
5. Paul’s theology and ethics: then and now (two pillars)
6. Reading Hannah through the perspective of Han: public transformation
7. Abraham’s faith and righteousness (Gen 15:6) and Paul’s letters
8. Sarah and Hagar: sorrows and tears contrasted
9. Job: conflict between theology and wisdom
10. Reading John 14:6 in a context of pluralism
11. Biblical anthropology: history of “dust”
12. Theodicy and survival in apocalyptic literature
13. Multiple interpretations and education (ministry)
14. Historical Jesus and today: challenge of diversity
15. Kingdom and righteousness in Matthew (6:25-34)
16. Yuprakboonbon and Paul’s theology of “die and live”
17. Uses of “death” in the Bible: context and meaning
18. Questions of Identity in John’s Gospel: Nicodemus, Pilate and Jesus
19. Psalm 13 and transformation: lament, search and trust
20. Law and gospel in Romans and Galatians
21. Three figurative body discourses in 1 Corinthians: embodiment (Christic body)
22. The lost gospels: Q and community
23. Women in Paul’s letters and Pastoral Epistles
24. John’s cosmos: life and light
25. John Bunyan and Abraham: different kind of piety
26. A new reading of Lot’s wife becoming a pillar of salt: nurturing risk
27. Marxist reading of Monarchic Israel
28. Retaliation law (lex talionis) in context
29. Jesus and Paul: continuity and discontinuity
30. Shamanism and Jesus
31. Biblical hermeneutics today: limits and hopes
32. Paul and stoicism: Whose Paul?
33. The origin of “afterlife” in Rabbinic Judaism
34. The “Gospel of God” in Romans
35. Christianity in South Korea: history and social change
36. Theology of marginality and beyond
37. Common humanity in difference: solidarity and diversity
38. Power (“I know”) and conversation: Eli, Nicodemus

Interesting stroies: Kenotic life | A Mystery