• Journal of the Daesoon Academy of Sciences
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• v.21
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• pp.1-28
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• 2013

The intention of this article is to check for the believers in Daesoonjinrihoe how to perceive the gods who they believe in. For that intention, I explained how the perception of gods in Daesoonjinrihoe is different from the perception of gods in other religions. To make a long story short, because of its polytheism the idea of god in Daesoonjinrihoe is different from monotheism such as Christianity, Islam. In addition, in spite of its polytheism it is different from other polytheism such as the religion in ancient India, especially rig-vedicreligion. In this article it is said that the believers in Daesoonjinrihoe have understood the distinction between Shin(神) and Shinmyung(神明). Nowadays Shin that has been used in Korea, China, Japan, is the word that was translated from English god. Therefore we need to reappraise the meaning of the word Shin. Anyway Shin that is being used in general means Shinmyung in Daesoonjinrihoe. Instead when they say the name of functional gods and the name to which the meaning of its origin affixed, the word Shin is used. Meanwhile, it has the advantage of classifying the ideas of god, but we can't explain all of them through the use of those classifications. I checked some classifications in this article and tried to apply the idea of gods in Daesoonjinrihoe. As a result, each classification has some critical points. There fore in this article I explained the distinguishing ideas of god in Daesoonjinrihoe from that in other religions, instead of the explaining fitted those classifications.

• Journal of Daesoon Thought and the Religions of East Asia
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• v.1 no.2
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• pp.61-87
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• 2022

This article compares the concepts of divine incarnation as expounded in Daesoon Thought and in Christianity and questions the essence of the divinity in both traditions. In Daesoon Thought, The Supreme God, Sangje, saw major disorganization leading to extreme violence and doom and decided to incarnate on earth under the human form of Kang Jeungsan (1871-1909). Then the living God taught the solution to human suffering through the revelations he sent in 1917 to Jo Cheol-Je, or Jo Jeongsan (1895-1958) and the revelations were passed on to Dojeon Park Wudang who in 1969 founded Daesoon Thought. In Christianity, God incarnated in his son, Jesus Christ, who allowed for the radical transformation of the condition of man through his physical sacrifice. Daesoon differs in that Sangje did not offer himself as sacrifice when he came on earth but reorganized the world and taught how to apply benevolence to establish the Earthly Paradise. The affirmation that Daesoon Jinrihoe is both monotheistic and polytheistic is then analyzed. If the concept of monotheism seems to differ vastly between the two traditions, it appears that biblical monotheism is itself relatively young in the history of world religions so that Christianity has ancient roots germane to those of Daesoon Jinrihoe. The article concludes on the originality of this religion: though it is built on Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism, it has transformed their vision of the deity and of its message in a most convincing manner.