Earticle

The purpose of this article is to show the ways in which the Old Testament took up the concept of true and false prophet, enlarged its connotations, and adopted it as one of the more available and important means in order to preclude particular social and religious behaviors, from the perspective of redaction criticism.

Even though in pluralistic situation that doesn ’ t allow a certain religion to evangelize one-sidedly with coercion in a society, the mission of ‘transforming cu1ture ’in the world is not optional for Christians and churches but is a kind of given imperative. How could they do such a mission in this pluralistic world without coercion to others or alienation from society? So it is requested that the concept of ‘transformation of cu1ture' have to be reinterpreted theologically to reflect changing conditions in society. Recently the discussions on that issue are proceeding with a rethinking of H. R. Niebuhr’ s theology especially in concem with his concept of ‘ transforming cu1ture ’ in Christ & Cu/ture. There are scholars to criticize it for a tendency to be inc1ined to ‘ the Christendom ideology' which was abolished in modem world. Yet most of those challenges have a reference just only to Christ & Culture which was published in 1951. For the more appropriate research of that we need to dig down in Niebuhr’ s theology with reference to other works. In fact for Niebuhr the concept of ‘transforming cu1ture' is related to the responsibility of responsible self who interprets every events and relations hermeneutically in this world according to the loyalty to God. The purpose of this research is to contribute to propose a public role of Korean Churches with a cultural communication strategy in pluralistic and multicultural society. From Niebuhr’ s theology, we could find out the real meaning of ‘transformation’ and grope for its possibility to be practiced in Korean society.