"Love" and "Righteousness" in Uchimura Kanzo's A Study of Romans

概要

論文の詳細を見る
In order to uncover if Uchimura Kanzo's A Study of Romans is primarily about righteousness or about love, I carried out an analysis of three key words: love, righteousness, and faith. The results were intriguing. Uchimura considered the most important messages of "Letter to the Romans" to be in chapters 1-8, and he uses the key words righteousness and faith at a high frequency in the sections of A Study of Romans in which he addresses those chapters. However, the key word love occurs in the highest frequency in the sections about chapters 9-16 of Romans, precisely those chapters that Uchimura termed an "appendage" to the first half of Romans. In addition, in A Study of Romans,Uchimura considers love to be included in and dependent on righteousness, which in turn is completely dependent on faith. Therefore Uchimura's emphasis on righteousness and faith is internally consistent. His thoughts on love, however, are concerned with human relationships,are mainly moralistic and lack the transcendental quality of Christian love. Love, seen as a moral by Uchimura, is consistent with the findings of the previous research. Based on the above factors, the author concludes that A Study of Romans is mainly a book of faith and righteousness, not of love.