대순진리회 신관념(神觀念)의 특성

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-vedic religion.

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. Therefore in this article I explained the distinguishing ideas of god in Daesoonjinrihoe from that in other religions, instead of the explaining fitted those classifications.