| This project, written under Dr. Richard Bliese (the former director of graduate studies in Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago), is a comparative study between two important theological ethicists: Hideo Ohki and John Howard Yoder. The purpose is to seek a promising way of theological ethic in Japan today. Ohki, a representative theological ethicist in Japan, is one of the final students of Reinhold Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary in New York, but he does not reproduce a mere copy of Niebuhr's thought but differs from it in a significant way in terms of a Japanese context. Yoder, a notable theological ethicist in ecumenical conversations regarding the church's peace witness, is critical of Niebuhr and develops his theological ethic along that critique. Interestingly, the points of Ohki's difference from Niebuhr coincide with the points of Yoder's critique of Niebuhr. That is, unlike Niebuhr both thinkers do not presuppose the universal and neutral arena between the church and the surrounding world but value the church's own narrative and formation in order to construct a theological ethic, so that their thoughts can be counted as options of ecclesial ethic. Also, their backgrounds from which such coincidence emerges are also analogous to each other. In short, reflecting on their backgrounds, both thinkers want the church to recover its own ability to challenge society exactly on the basis of its own particular narrative. This coincidence shows that a theological ethic in Japan must go in the direction of ecclesial ethic emphasizing the church's particularity in its narrative and formation and can learn many things from Yoder. As the key of my comparison between them, therefore, I focus on the coincidence and pay attention to their degree of emphasis on the direction which the coincidence suggests. Also, drawing the criterion of my comparison, I focus on a significant socio-cultural issue in Japan today, the background narrative of the amendment of the postwar constitution. Developing my comparison in view of this contextual matter, it is clarified that Yoder's radically ecclesial approach is more promising than Ohki's mild approach in clearly presenting the church's meaningful particularity. |
