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The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin
Traditional doctrines of sin and salvation center primarily on the moral agency of the sinner. Andrew Sung Park addresses the relational consequence of sin--the pervasive reality of victims' suffering and the scar from the sins of others who have wronged them. He asserts that one cannot grasp the full meaning of the sin and guilt of siners until one has looked at the concept han or the shame of the victims. If reconciliation with God and with other humans is to take place, not only must one's sin be repented and one's guilt forgiven, but the han of those who have been wronged must be healed.
204 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
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176 people want to read
About the author
Andrew Sung Park
9 books10 followersAndrew Sung Park is a Korean American Methodist theologian. Park teaches at United Theological Seminary in Trotwood, Ohio. He specializes in systematic theology, global theology, cross-cultural theology, Asian American liberation theology, Christian mysticism, and the relationship between religion and science. He has expanded the theology of emotional pain by exploring the Korean concept of han.
Park was born in South Korea. His family emigrated from South Korea to the United States in 1973. He lives in Beavercreek, Ohio with his wife Jane Myong, and has two children, Amos Park and Thomas Park.
In 1973, Park received a B.A. at Methodist Theological Seminary. At Iliff School of Theology in 1978, he received M.Div.. Then he attended Claremont School of Theology and obtained a M.A. in 1981. Park finally received a Ph.D. at Graduate Theological Union in 1985; his dissertation there discussed minjung theology. He would go on to join United Theological Seminary in Ohio in 1992.
Park was born in South Korea. His family emigrated from South Korea to the United States in 1973. He lives in Beavercreek, Ohio with his wife Jane Myong, and has two children, Amos Park and Thomas Park.
In 1973, Park received a B.A. at Methodist Theological Seminary. At Iliff School of Theology in 1978, he received M.Div.. Then he attended Claremont School of Theology and obtained a M.A. in 1981. Park finally received a Ph.D. at Graduate Theological Union in 1985; his dissertation there discussed minjung theology. He would go on to join United Theological Seminary in Ohio in 1992.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
December 14, 2025
Grounding breaking work in Asian American theology. I’ve read this book twice, an even better read the second time through. It has deeply influenced my theology and practice.
June 4, 2021
Park provides a much-needed critique of the Christian doctrine of sin. He points out that it has historically been viewed from the perspective of the sinner. By exploring the Asian concept of han (trauma, bitterness, guilt associated with being harmed or oppressed) he provides a new way to envision sin from the perspective of both oppressor and oppressed, and argues that notions of salvation and Christian community must incorporate the reconciliation of the sinner and the sinned-against. A thoughtful and creative expansion of Christian notions of sin and salvation, with emphasis on transforming personal and social relationships.
March 6, 2017
The Wounded Heart of God is Dr. Andrew Sung Park's first seminal work (1991) on challenging and expanding traditional Christian doctrines--specifically in this case, the Doctrine of Hamartiology (Sin)--with the concept of Han (or Haan). Park is extremely critical of the West's (especially, post-Reformation/Enlightenment's) historically individualistic and sinner-centric assessment of sin, repentance, forgiveness, and reconciliation. The fundamental problem Park has is that the perspective of the sinned-against is (mostly) excluded from consideration in these doctrines. In other words, sinners are solely concerned about absolving their personal sins without taking a second thought about what their sin has done against others and what they should do in light of that. Therefore, the concept of Han acts as a corrective because Han is sinned-against-centric. Han, in short, is the pain, suffering, and sorrow in the aftermath of being sinned against. When Han expands reconciliation beyond the mere individual-God vertical to include the individual-individual/society horizontal, then dissolving Han and Han-producing forces start to reflect God's cosmic vision for New (re)Creation.
However, what's interesting about Park's work is his lack of Christological and Pneumatological considerations in dealing with Han and the Han-healing affects of God. His strongest and most visible Christological contemplation is in his adoption of Luther's theologia crucis (theology of the cross), but, beyond that, there's not much else.
cf. www.sooholee.wordpress.com
However, what's interesting about Park's work is his lack of Christological and Pneumatological considerations in dealing with Han and the Han-healing affects of God. His strongest and most visible Christological contemplation is in his adoption of Luther's theologia crucis (theology of the cross), but, beyond that, there's not much else.
cf. www.sooholee.wordpress.com
June 5, 2021
Jesus related with notable interest and compassion toward people who, as Howard Thurman famously said, “had their backs against the wall.” He also envisioned a collective life of grace, justice, wholeness and love that he called the Kingdom of Heaven. Yet Christiantiy developed teaching and liturgy that redefined Jesus’ gospel almost entirely in terms that speaks to our offenses, not harm done to us. And it has had little power to promote healing and justice in our personal and collective pain and grief.
Andrew Sung Park seeks to redress this hollowing out of the gospel. He writes as both a liberation and process theologian, giving particular attention to the minjung theology movement that began amongst working class South Koreans, amidst political oppression and in the shadow of national trauma.
Park focuses on the condition of han. It is a Korean word that describes “the depths of human suffering”, “the abysmal experience of pain.” (15) It is the condition of the sinned against, the victim, the abandoned, the oppressed, or the otherwise harmed. Han can be expressed actively in hatred and aggression, as the will to revenge. More commonly, it is expressed passively, through resignation. “Self-denigration, low self-esteem, self-withdrawal, resignation, and self-hatred are conspicuous marks of passive han. (33) It can be unconscious, actively as bitterness or passively as helplessness. (34-35) Or it can be conscious, actively as the corporate will to revolt or passively as corporate despair. (36-37) It can even characterize collective experiences, as active racial resentment or passive racial lamentation. (39-41) Even nature itself experiences han. We consider severely befouled landscapes or the state of animals in factory farms. (42-ff.)
While han is the result of individuals’ sins against another, Park emphasizes the “demonic structures” that produce widespread han: the capitalist global economy, patriarchy, and racial and cultural discrimination. (Ch. 3)
Many ancient as well as modern theologians have described pride as the chief sin or the root of all manner of sin. I’ve read some feminist theologians recast sin as often being rooted in either pride of self-abengation. This understanding doesn’t consider sin as inherently blameworthy, and certainly not deserving of shame or punishment. It understands sin literally as “missing the mark” a life misaligned with God’s good, shalom purposes. Park argues forcefully that han, which includes self-abnegation, be considered as a category separate from sin. This helps us more consciously speak to patterns of offense and offended against, the one harming and the one harmed, separately. It also clarifies the different between guilt, which accompanies sin, and shame, which emerges and grows with han. Park writes movingly in Chapter 4 about the various forms in which shame is manifest.
Park proposes that Christian theology and teaching expand to include God’s love and power for the whole world, not just for parts that sin. He writes of the limits of the doctrine of many traditional Chrsitian doctrines:
Catholic and Protestant teaching on repentance needs to address “social implications,” not just personal ones. Repentance is only complete when it is not merely cognitive but social - making amends, seeking to right wrongs, “returning to God and obedience” as we see with Zacchaeus. (89-90) “Only by partaking in changing the reality of the victims’ world (han) can sinners experience true interior transformation, turning away from sin toward God.” (90)
To include the experience of han in salvation, we need to address the forgiveness of sinners but also “the forgivingness of victims.” (91) Volf writes movingly of this dynamic in Exclusion and Embrace.
The doctrine of justification by faith is limited as well. It focuses on the problem of human wrongdoing, but des not address “the salvation of the wronged” or “the significance of our relationship with our neighbor”, and I would add, with creation. (95) Park proposes that a more grace-centered approach, that also honors the victims of sin and values human responsiveness, would be to exchange this doctrine for that of “justification by love.” (97-98)
Park expands on justification by love in chapters on salvation and the wounded heart of God. Salvation typically focuses on “freedom from death and error” (Orthodoxy), “freedom from guilt and its outcomes (Catholicism), and “freedom from the law and its anxiety-producing and condemning power” (Protestantism.) (99) Park suggests that salvation is not static or substantive. “Salvation is a relational event. It is a process of healing and freedom which transpires between sinners and their victims, and sinners and God.” (103) Salvation involves relational repair throughout creation, not just between sinners and their God. “Han-thinking proposes salvation as ‘freedom from sin and han’ and ‘freedom to eternal life.’” (109) To distinguish it from a transactional understanding of accessing a passive afterlife, Dallas Willard used to frame this understanding of eternal life as “the eternal kind of life.”
On the wounded heart of God, Park challenges doctrines of impassibility, as do all open and relational theologians. He describes “the wounded God”, including God’s experience of han in the life of Christ. Park’s open and relational, wounded God redefinitions of the classic “omni-” claims about God are helpful. “Jesus Chrsit has taught us that God is crucified everywhere we are oppressed (omnipresence); God knows our deepest sorry (omniscience); God’s vulnerable love shown on the cross and in the death of JEsus is more powerful or persuasive than anything known to us (omnipotence).” (126)
Park acknowledges that han can be a very helpful framework for a liberationist interfaith dialogue. I like his introduction of “liberationist” as a category of interfaith understanding, beyond the classics exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist, and even beyond Cobb’s transformationist understanding. (129-131)
Park closes writing extensively about a human partnership with God in unraveling han, and so in a way, seeing into being the Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community. He discusses awakening, understanding, envisagement, and enactment. I find his hopes for the role the global church will play in upending han-producing systems to be a lovely aspiration, but both dated and unlikely.
As a result the end of Park’s work disappointed me, but his lexicography of han and its implications for broader understandings of repentance, forgiveness, justification, salvation, and the nature of God is ground-breaking and critical.
Andrew Sung Park seeks to redress this hollowing out of the gospel. He writes as both a liberation and process theologian, giving particular attention to the minjung theology movement that began amongst working class South Koreans, amidst political oppression and in the shadow of national trauma.
Park focuses on the condition of han. It is a Korean word that describes “the depths of human suffering”, “the abysmal experience of pain.” (15) It is the condition of the sinned against, the victim, the abandoned, the oppressed, or the otherwise harmed. Han can be expressed actively in hatred and aggression, as the will to revenge. More commonly, it is expressed passively, through resignation. “Self-denigration, low self-esteem, self-withdrawal, resignation, and self-hatred are conspicuous marks of passive han. (33) It can be unconscious, actively as bitterness or passively as helplessness. (34-35) Or it can be conscious, actively as the corporate will to revolt or passively as corporate despair. (36-37) It can even characterize collective experiences, as active racial resentment or passive racial lamentation. (39-41) Even nature itself experiences han. We consider severely befouled landscapes or the state of animals in factory farms. (42-ff.)
While han is the result of individuals’ sins against another, Park emphasizes the “demonic structures” that produce widespread han: the capitalist global economy, patriarchy, and racial and cultural discrimination. (Ch. 3)
Many ancient as well as modern theologians have described pride as the chief sin or the root of all manner of sin. I’ve read some feminist theologians recast sin as often being rooted in either pride of self-abengation. This understanding doesn’t consider sin as inherently blameworthy, and certainly not deserving of shame or punishment. It understands sin literally as “missing the mark” a life misaligned with God’s good, shalom purposes. Park argues forcefully that han, which includes self-abnegation, be considered as a category separate from sin. This helps us more consciously speak to patterns of offense and offended against, the one harming and the one harmed, separately. It also clarifies the different between guilt, which accompanies sin, and shame, which emerges and grows with han. Park writes movingly in Chapter 4 about the various forms in which shame is manifest.
Park proposes that Christian theology and teaching expand to include God’s love and power for the whole world, not just for parts that sin. He writes of the limits of the doctrine of many traditional Chrsitian doctrines:
Catholic and Protestant teaching on repentance needs to address “social implications,” not just personal ones. Repentance is only complete when it is not merely cognitive but social - making amends, seeking to right wrongs, “returning to God and obedience” as we see with Zacchaeus. (89-90) “Only by partaking in changing the reality of the victims’ world (han) can sinners experience true interior transformation, turning away from sin toward God.” (90)
To include the experience of han in salvation, we need to address the forgiveness of sinners but also “the forgivingness of victims.” (91) Volf writes movingly of this dynamic in Exclusion and Embrace.
The doctrine of justification by faith is limited as well. It focuses on the problem of human wrongdoing, but des not address “the salvation of the wronged” or “the significance of our relationship with our neighbor”, and I would add, with creation. (95) Park proposes that a more grace-centered approach, that also honors the victims of sin and values human responsiveness, would be to exchange this doctrine for that of “justification by love.” (97-98)
Park expands on justification by love in chapters on salvation and the wounded heart of God. Salvation typically focuses on “freedom from death and error” (Orthodoxy), “freedom from guilt and its outcomes (Catholicism), and “freedom from the law and its anxiety-producing and condemning power” (Protestantism.) (99) Park suggests that salvation is not static or substantive. “Salvation is a relational event. It is a process of healing and freedom which transpires between sinners and their victims, and sinners and God.” (103) Salvation involves relational repair throughout creation, not just between sinners and their God. “Han-thinking proposes salvation as ‘freedom from sin and han’ and ‘freedom to eternal life.’” (109) To distinguish it from a transactional understanding of accessing a passive afterlife, Dallas Willard used to frame this understanding of eternal life as “the eternal kind of life.”
On the wounded heart of God, Park challenges doctrines of impassibility, as do all open and relational theologians. He describes “the wounded God”, including God’s experience of han in the life of Christ. Park’s open and relational, wounded God redefinitions of the classic “omni-” claims about God are helpful. “Jesus Chrsit has taught us that God is crucified everywhere we are oppressed (omnipresence); God knows our deepest sorry (omniscience); God’s vulnerable love shown on the cross and in the death of JEsus is more powerful or persuasive than anything known to us (omnipotence).” (126)
Park acknowledges that han can be a very helpful framework for a liberationist interfaith dialogue. I like his introduction of “liberationist” as a category of interfaith understanding, beyond the classics exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist, and even beyond Cobb’s transformationist understanding. (129-131)
Park closes writing extensively about a human partnership with God in unraveling han, and so in a way, seeing into being the Kingdom of God, the Beloved Community. He discusses awakening, understanding, envisagement, and enactment. I find his hopes for the role the global church will play in upending han-producing systems to be a lovely aspiration, but both dated and unlikely.
As a result the end of Park’s work disappointed me, but his lexicography of han and its implications for broader understandings of repentance, forgiveness, justification, salvation, and the nature of God is ground-breaking and critical.
July 19, 2020
i'd give 3.5/5 stars.
Lot to like in the book, but in the end, the end wasn't that great.
He does a great job explaining han and revealing the need to explore not just sin but the effect of sin on others- the han. He reveals how sin not only affects us when we sin but has big effect on those who are sinned against- which often gets multiplied.
He also speaks to those who have been sinned against and how we need to be healed.
This gave me greater insight and understanding to those from Asian communities and Black communities in particular as well as other who have experienced trauma.
He does a great job upacking racism and oppression.
Unfortunately he does very little Biblical expostion to support his points about God or Jesus or even sin. He seems to ignore or neglect parts of Scripture to make his points. Maybe it is because i just finished studied Galatians but it feels like he is trying to add something or make this out to be more than what the Bible says. He tries to be careful with words but he is also using words pointedly- so i can't just ignore it.
I think there is a lot to learn from the book. I think different cultural experiences can help us in understanding the Bible and this also reveals ways my own cultural experience can shape how i interpret God's Word- so for those things i am thankful for those things.
But the end missed - exaltation of Jesus was lacking.
Lot to like in the book, but in the end, the end wasn't that great.
He does a great job explaining han and revealing the need to explore not just sin but the effect of sin on others- the han. He reveals how sin not only affects us when we sin but has big effect on those who are sinned against- which often gets multiplied.
He also speaks to those who have been sinned against and how we need to be healed.
This gave me greater insight and understanding to those from Asian communities and Black communities in particular as well as other who have experienced trauma.
He does a great job upacking racism and oppression.
Unfortunately he does very little Biblical expostion to support his points about God or Jesus or even sin. He seems to ignore or neglect parts of Scripture to make his points. Maybe it is because i just finished studied Galatians but it feels like he is trying to add something or make this out to be more than what the Bible says. He tries to be careful with words but he is also using words pointedly- so i can't just ignore it.
I think there is a lot to learn from the book. I think different cultural experiences can help us in understanding the Bible and this also reveals ways my own cultural experience can shape how i interpret God's Word- so for those things i am thankful for those things.
But the end missed - exaltation of Jesus was lacking.
October 21, 2020
It took me years to get around to reading this book in its entirety, but I had always been impressed by its thesis - that the Christian theology of sin is troublingly incomplete as it focuses purely on the sinner and ignores the experience of the one who has been sinned against.
Park does an excellent job summarizing various Western theologies of sin and salvation and demonstrates how shortsighted they are in addressing han - the complex understanding of suffering found in many Asian cultures. Essentially, the individualistic, transactional conception as salvation as a commodity to possess - independent of reconciling the relationships in which individuals or communities have been harmed - is a perversion of the gospel. It is through the dynamic interchange between sinner and those harmed, and the growth and transformation that occurs in each party (e.g., accountability and change, true forgiveness and the release of han), that salvation happens.
Park does an excellent job summarizing various Western theologies of sin and salvation and demonstrates how shortsighted they are in addressing han - the complex understanding of suffering found in many Asian cultures. Essentially, the individualistic, transactional conception as salvation as a commodity to possess - independent of reconciling the relationships in which individuals or communities have been harmed - is a perversion of the gospel. It is through the dynamic interchange between sinner and those harmed, and the growth and transformation that occurs in each party (e.g., accountability and change, true forgiveness and the release of han), that salvation happens.
May 1, 2021
Park’s book is insightful, powerful, and prophetic. This is a must read for people who are hopeful of Gods redemptive work for both the sinner and the sinned against. The wounded heart of God expresses a deep solidarity with those who are hurting, oppressed, and pushed aside by the powerful and privileged. I could not recommend this book enough to anyone ans everyone willing to sit and wrestle and ask important questions for what a Christ centric worldview should look like today.
March 1, 2018
Copernican. Incredible.
September 4, 2023
A brilliant addition to traditional western thought on sin and atonement. Highly recommended.
October 25, 2022
A challenge to western theology which focuses on restoring the one who has harmed others. Park challenges us to consider another perspective in the idea of salvation and reconciliation, which involves a path of healing for those who have been abused or harmed, based on the concept of han. Resolving han should be an integral part of our Christian process of rupture and repair.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews