Between the Dimensions: Dr. Yonggi Cho’s Doctrine of the Fourth Dimension and Its Ontological Understanding

Abstract

One of the most distinctive teachings and doctrines of Dr. Yonggi Cho is discussed in The Fourth Dimension in regard to defining God’s presence and His existential communion with human beings. He gives a lucid epistemological and ontological insight into meaning and use of “dimension” in dealing with Christian faith and Christian way of being. For Dr. Cho, in explaining the presence of God and His kingdom was very important issues to the people who suffered and underwent daily predicaments. It is not an easy task to convince God’s existence and His coming Kingdom in a distant future to the non-believers who were struggling with daily matters. People who are living in this world placing their feet on the ground demand concrete and tangible evidence in believing. Their epistemological framework is quite materialistic and phenomenological. Dr. Cho’s immediate task in preaching the gospel and the coming kingdom of God was to explain God and His kingdom in an existentially convincing manner. He had to explain God here and now, not yesterday or tomorrow somewhere over the rainbow. Dr. Cho realized that the Word of God is the Point of Contact in the midst of the wholly otherness between respective dimensions. It is the communal nexus between the visible three dimensional realm and the invisible four dimensional realm. As the Bible testifies, to be (to exist) is to know (to hear) the Word that is of God in us. As Jesus says, eternal life is to know God and His Son who is the way and the truth and the life. Believing in the Word of God is a living in a higher dimensional world. Faith in God’s will in this sense is a higher form of real and eternal existence.