Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums

Etudes D’ Histoire Interculturelle du Christianisme

Studies in The intercultural History of Christianity
begründet von / fondé par / founded by
Richard Friedli, Walter J. Hollenweger und/et/and Hans J. Margull†
herausgegeben von / édité par / edited by
Mariano Delgado, Université de Fribourg
Jan A. B. Jongeneel, Universiteit Utrecht
Klaus Koschorke, Universität München
Frieder Ludwig, Hermannsburg
Werner Ustorf, University of Birmingham

Vol. 156

Peter Lang
Frankfurt am Main · Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Wien
 John Parratt

The Other Jesus

Christology in Asian Perspective

Peter Lang
Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften
Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche
Nationalbibliothek
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Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is
available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Publication of this book has been supervised

by Professor Werner Ustorf.

ISSN 0170-9240
ISBN 978-3-631-62607-8 (Print)
ISBN 978-3-653-02410-4 (E-Book)
DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-02410-4

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 In memoriam
Arambam Saroj Nalini
Acknowledgements

Some of the material contained in chapter IV appeared in the Festschrift for Theo
Sundermeier Mit dem Fremden Leben (Erlangen, 2000), and in the Scottish Jour-
nal of Theology (64/2, 2011). I am also grateful to Brian Stanley for the invitation
to present the material on ‘identification christologies’ (chapter VI) at a seminar
of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, University
of Edinburgh. My debt to the writings of Robin Boyd, R.S. Sugirtharajah, and
Theo Sundermeier will be evident. I would also like to thank Kirsteen Kim for
advice on Korean writing, and Karen Kilby, Kate Brett, and Werner Ustorf for
their encouragement of this project. I am especially grateful to the School of
Theology, University of Edinburgh for granting me a Visiting Fellowship, which
enabled me to make use of New College’s extensive collection of materials on
Asian theology. Finally I must thank Ute Winkelkoetter of Peter Lang Verlag for
so helpfully facilitating the publication.
John Parratt
Carlisle, August 2012.

7
 ‘When we speak of an Eastern Christ we speak of the incarnation of un-
bounded love and grace; and when we speak of the Western Christ we speak of
the incarnation of theology, formalism, ethical and physical force.’
(P .C.Mozoomdar The Oriental Christ, 1883)

9
Contents

Introduction ...................................................................................................... 13

I. Jesus Outside Christianity ....................................................................... 17

II The Jesus of Worship and Devotion . ....................................................... 29

III. Jesus, Incarnation and Raw Fact . ............................................................ 45

IV. Jesus, the Cross and Emmanuel ............................................................... 63

V. Jesus and the Saviour Figures .................................................................. 83

VI. Jesus, Dalit and Minjung . ........................................................................ 101

VII. The Jesus of Asian Women ...................................................................... 121

Epilogue: The Other Jesus . .............................................................................. 137

Bibliography and References . .......................................................................... 143

11
Introduction

John McIntyre ends his book The Shape of Christology with the following words:
‘Though we develop metaphysical theories which reject Aristotelianism (by
which he means the two-nature doctrine of Christ enshrined in the Chalcedonian
definition) there comes a point in their development when we find ourselves –
perhaps involuntarily – using logical grammatical structures initially so closely
associated with it. This would itself account for the normative and prescriptive
role which it, almost hauntingly, continues to play in other Christologies which
we have considered. Whether we would expect to find the same influence which
Chalcedon exerts upon Western Christology if we embarked upon a Japanese
Christology, with a different metaphysic related to a different structure of con-
cepts, syntax and logic, is quite another matter’ (1988:336).
McIntyre’s openness to the possibility of a different metaphysic and structure
which might be found in non-western cultures and which does not carry the same
baggage of Greek philosophy as creedal statements in perhaps unusual is west-
ern theologians.1 Most studies of christology published in the West (by which
I mean primarily Europe and America) content themselves with the problem
raised in the first part of this quotation, namely of how modern christology can
think outside of the parameters of the Chalcedonian ‘definition’ without being
dominated by its logical grammatical structures. If there is any justification for
adding to the already overloaded library of volumes on christology it will proba-
bly be to examine more closely understandings of Christ which come from those
Christian churches where Chalcedon has not had such a stranglehold, and the
most fruitful geographical area for this kind of exercise has to be Asia. Histori-
cally neither the Syriac tradition of the earliest churches in India, not the Nesto-
rian tradition of further Asia accepted Chalcedon. While it is, of course, true
that the later advance of missions from the West from the 16th century onwards
brought with it orthodox Catholicism and later more radical Protestantism, it
would probably be true to say that for the churches of Asia the earlier decrees

1 He even wonders earlier in the book whether Barth might have modified his condemnatory
stance regarding (other) religions if he, like Brunner, had done a stint in Japan – though in fact
towards the very end of his life Barth did recognize the need to do theology from an Asian
perspective (see his letter in South East Asian Journal of Theology 11 1969 p.3). Tillich, who
briefly visited Japan late in his career, is reported to have remarked that he would now have to
go back and rewrite his Systematic Theology.

13
of the so-called ‘ecumenical councils’ (which ironically themselves took place
in what we now call Asia) were much less determinative than for the western
churches. As Asian theologians never tire of pointing out, Jesus Christ him-
self was Asian and not western. The earliest Asian kind of Christianity – the
Jewish Christians– was very soon sidelined and subsequently demonised by the
more powerful Greek-speaking church.2 Its most important descendant, Syriac
Christianity, though producing its own outstanding theology and spirituality,3
seldom receives much attention from Western scholars. One could be forgiven
for concluding from a reading of most volumes on christology that Jewish and
Syriac Christianity never existed.
It is not the aim of this book to examine these early forms of christology. It is
not meant either as a preliminary survey (as is Küster 2001), or a detailed source
guide to theology in Asia (as has been comprehensively done by John England
and his colleagues, England 2002-4). Rather I have tried to select those Asian
theologians who, since the beginning of the 20th century have, it seems to me,
made a substantive contribution to the problem of a modern christology. This
selection is, of course, a purely personal one – others with a familiarity with the
general field may justifiably be dissatisfied with some of those I have included,
and perhaps more so by some I have left out. However I do believe that the theo-
logians discussed here, along with a smaller number of contemporary ‘people
movements,’ are important enough not to become mere footnotes in a volume of
historical theology.
Any book of this kind operates under certain constraints. The most obvious
one is the availability of primary sources in European languages. It is fortunate
that a very substantial amount of Asian theological writing has been done in
English, especially in India. In the case of Japan, the fact that several of its lead-
ing theologians studied in Germany has resulted in a good deal of their writing
being done, or translated into, German. But if I have given undue space to India
and Japan it is not just because of the easier availability of sources. After the mis-
sion expansion from the West indigenous debate about Christ arose very quickly
in India, often with those outside the church (chapter 1). And it would not be an
exaggeration to claim that India still dominates theology produced in Asia. Both
in India and Japan the impact of Christianity was far greater than its numerical
strength, and it entered quickly into national ethical and social awareness. Both
countries, in their different ways, demonstrate how Christianity can be reinter-
preted in very different cultural and social contexts. A similar debate, as Edmond
Tang has shown, is now going on in China in the interest in Christianity as an

2 See Marcel Simon Verus Israel, a study of relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman
Empire 135-425AD (OUP 1986, ET of French of 1964).
3 See especially S. Brock The Luminous Eye (Kalamazoo, 1992).

14
intellectual system and in Christ as a cosmic figure (Tang 1995, 2004). That story
remains to be be critically assessed.
Another, this time self-imposed, restriction is that I have limited myself to dis-
cussion of theologians who are actually domiciled and working in Asia, or to the
work which they produced while doing so. Within the past decades an increasing
number of leading Asian theologians have migrated to the West, in particular to
America. Contextual theology, however, in its proper sense, necessarily implies
a specific context. To remove oneself from the Asian context permanently is to
miss an essential ingredient of doing Asian theology, for context determines the
way one experiences, reacts and thinks. Consequently several Asian theologians
who are fairly well known in the West and are domiciled there have not been
included.4
Any writer who seeks to engage in a sympathetic, but critical, analysis of other
cultures has to recognise his or her own perspective. My theological genealogy
is western, even though I have been privileged to have lived outside the West
for the bulk of my working life, an experience which has profoundly altered my
theological perspective. The effort to try to look at the world, or in this case to
look at the central figure of the Christian faith, through the eyes of other cultures
and to enter into their different perspectives, is never easy. But it is surely a task
with which privileged western theologians must seek to engage. For, as Molt-
mann once remarked, ‘the more the Christian West disintegrates culturally and
geographically, the more the church will find its self-understanding in the context
of the whole world’ (Moltmann 1992:8).

4 Veli-Matt Karkkainen’s Christology, a global introduction (2003) deals with several Asian
theologians, but only M.M.Thomas and Pieris were or are permanently domiciled in Asia.

15
I. Jesus outside Christianity5
‘The lives of all of us have, in some greater or lesser degree, been changed by his presence,
his actions and the words spoken by his divine voice … and because the life of Jesus has
had the significance and transcendence to which I have alluded, I believe that he belongs not
solely to Christianity but to the entire world’
(Mahatma Gandhi Modern Review, Calcutta 1941).

Paradoxically the earliest explorations of the significance of Christ in India came

not from an Indian converts but from westernised Hindus who had been con-
fronted with the person of Jesus through missionary outreach, and who struggled
to encompass him within their Hindu world-view. The fascinating story of ‘Christ
within Hinduism’ has been comprehensively examined in M.M. Thomas’ classic
The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance and my task here is not to re-
peat his work. However the development of Indian christologies cannot be prop-
erly understood without some consideration of the prologue to Indian Christian
theology in the writings and work of Ram Mohan Roy and of his successor Kes-
hab Chandra Sen. United in their attraction towards the person of Jesus (though
not towards institutional Christianity) their responses to him were very differ-
ent. Roy was a self-confessed ‘ethical monotheist’ whose approach to religion in
general and to Christianity in particular veered towards rationalism. Sen’s was a
much more personal and emotional approach to Jesus, which deeply influenced
several subsequent Christian theologians.

Christ within Hinduism: Ram Mohan Roy

Ram Mohan Roy6 (1772-1833) was one of the most significant figures in the mak-
ing of modern India. His story has often been told, and numerous attempts have
been made to assess his achievements. Here I am concerned primarily with his
contribution towards the understanding of the figure of Jesus within the Indian
religious world-view. Roy was born into a high caste Bengali brahmin family,
and had a varied career in which he distinguished himself through his work and

5 A collection of the ‘classic texts’ may be found in Jesus Beyond Christianity eds. G.A. Barker
and S.E. Gregg (OUP, 2010).
6 His name is spelt in several different ways, see Killingley 1993:1. The honorific ‘Raja’ was
given to him by Akbar II (the penultimate Moghul Emperor) when he sent him as an ambas-
sador to England. Roy died in London in 1833 while visiting Unitarian friends. For information
on Ram Mohan Roy see especially Thomas (1968), Killingley (1993), Boyd (1991), Farquhar
(1967), Nag (1968) and more generally, Hay (1992).

17
writing in many different fields including education, law, politics, and advocacy
for higher status for women, as well as his innovations in religion. His knowledge
of Sanskrit enabled him to study the ancient Hindu writings, and his grasp of Per-
sian (the language of diplomacy of the time) and Arabic also gave him an under-
standing of Islam. His contact in Calcutta with the missionary William Adam,7
whom he assisted in translating the New Testament into Bengali, also gave him
a working knowledge of Koine Greek. Despite learning English comparatively
late in life he became the first Indian to write extensively in it, sometimes under
pseudonyms. Though he was largely sidelined during his lifetime, he has subse-
quently been ackowledged not only as one who laid the foundation of Bengali as a
literary prose medium, but even more as the ‘Father of Modern India’ (Hay 1992:
15ff.) He was brought up in a polytheistic Hindu family but soon reacted against
the use of images in worship. His study of the ancient Hindu sacred writings,
especially the Vedantic literature, convinced him that they taught belief in One
God, but that this belief had been debased in their own interests by the priestly
brahmin caste. God, he believed, being without form, could not be identified with
any image or living being. This conviction was reinforced by his knowledge of
the rigid monotheism of Islam and by his association with western Unitarians. All
this led him to a strict ethical monotheism. As Thomas (1969:2) puts it his basic
conviction was that the essence of religion consisted in monotheism, rationality,
and morality. Roy is important in the story of reformed Hinduism for his found-
ing of the Brahmo Sabha (subsequently the Brahmo Samaj), an association of
educated Hindus dedicated to ethical monotheism.
Roy’s involvement in the Bengali translation of the New Testament awakened
his interest in Jesus, and he was later to remark how attracted he was to ‘the
sublimity of (Jesus’) precepts.’ Consequently in 1814-158 he published anony-
mously a little book which he called The Precepts of Jesus, a Guide to Peace
and Happiness. It was not a commentary, but a collection of some 84 pages of
selected sayings of Jesus of an ethical nature, mostly taken from the Synoptic
Gospels. The collection was intended, as he himself says, ‘to set the morality of
the Gospel against its mysteries.’ The implication was that the teaching of Jesus
as he saw it emphasised conduct over against dogma. This approach led to con-
troversy in the public press with one of Carey’s colleagues in Serampore, Joshua
Marshman. Marshman, as a good evangelical Baptist, saw Roy as attacking the
fundamentals of the Christian faith – the divinity of Christ, the Trinity, salvation
and atonement. It is not our purpose to follow this controversy here, though Roy
probably got the better of it (see Thomas 1969:8-29 and Killingley 1993:141-3
for the details of the exchange). What is so significant about it is that for the first

7 Adam later became a Unitarian.

8 Some authorities date it 1820.

18
time an articulate but sympathetic Indian was examining the claims of Christi-
anity on the basis of its own primary source, the New Testament. Roy showed a
remarkable grasp not only of the Gospels but also of Paul’s epistles. He pointed
to what he saw as a mismatch between the teaching of Jesus and his perceptions
of the activities of the western missionaries. ‘I regret,’ he wrote ironically, ‘that
the followers of Jesus, in general, should have paid greater attention to enquiries
after his nature than to the observances of his commandments.’ He believed that
the missionaries had misrepresented Jesus, who now should be rediscovered as
what he really was, an ‘Asiatic.’9 Killingley comments (1993:126) that ‘he took
the Person who was the centre of the missionaries’ teaching out of their hands,
seeing him not as a Person of the Trinity, but as a teacher of morality, and of the
true knowledge of God.’
Roy’s starting point is his deep conviction that the true religion is ethical mono-
theism. Since God is ineffable and incomprehensible he cannot be identified with
any outward form, whether an image (as in popular Hinduism) or in a person (as
in Christianity). Jesus therefore cannot be called God. Consequently he accepts
neither the deity of Christ, nor the idea of a Trinity. Both in his view contradicted
ethical monotheism and were contrary to the teaching of the New Testament. His
reason for publishing the Precepts was to try to separate the teaching of Jesus
from the later speculative dogmas about him. Jesus himself recognised One God,
but later Christianity identified God with a human person, Jesus. Jesus was a
teacher of morality, who has been misunderstood and misinterpreted by Euro-
peans. Nor can there be any atonement through the death of Jesus. Roy rejected
the idea of sin and believed that men were not inherently depraved, they were
only misguided (Killingley 1993:119.123). Consequently salvation depended not
on atonement but on right conduct and repentance. Roy, in fact (and in common
with many Indian thinkers), has very little interest in the historical life of Jesus.
For him Jesus’ oneness with God is moral, not in any sense metaphysical. He
shows from the Gospel and epistles that Jesus received his authority from God
and therefore must be subservient. Thus, while he is the Messiah, Christ, and
anointed Son, he is not to be identified with God. The unity is entirely a moral one
‘a subsisting of concord of will and design … not an identity of being’ (Thomas
1969:18). He accepts the superiority of Christ over all created beings, even over
angels, and that he was in some sense pre-existent before being sent by God as

9 Killingley (1993:117) points out that ‘Asiatic’ was often used in the 19th century to designate
South Asia, though technically of course Jesus did not fall into that category. Roy, no doubt
for the sake of polemics and in order to distance the origins of Christianity from the West, was
ready to class all ancient Jews as such: ‘Almost all the ancient prophets and patriarchs vener-
ated by Christians, nay even Jesus Christ himself, a Divine incarnation and founder of the
Christian faith, were ASIATICS’ (quoted in Killingley 1993:118).

19
the Christ. However in his view the New Testament teaches that he is ‘produced
by the Supreme Deity among created beings’ (referring to Jn. 5.26, Col. 1.15). The
Son must therefore be ‘naturally inferior’ to God. Though he does occasionally
use the term ‘incarnation’ it is not with the meaning of the Hindu avatar. Incarna-
tion in the orthodox Christian sense is for him an attack on the immutable nature
of God for, he asks, ‘how could circumstances exist that God should be divested
of his glory for thirty years?’ Furthermore he can find no evidence that the divine
attributes of omnipotence, omniscience and so on are ascribed to Jesus in the
New Testament. In one of his responses to Marshman he writes:
‘I shall entreat the Editor (Marshman) to show me any authority of the Scrip-
tures, distinguishing one class of sayings of Jesus Christ as man, from another set
of the same author as God. Supposing Jesus was of a two-fold nature, divine and
human, as the Editor believes him to be, his divine nature in this case, before his
appearance in this world, must be acknowledged perfectly pure and unadulter-
ated by humanity. But after he had become incarnate, according to the Editor,
was he not made of a mixed nature, God and man, possessing at one time both
opposite sorts of consciousness and capacity? Was there not a change of a pure
nature to a mixed one?’ (Thomas 1969:21-22).
Incarnation in the Christian sense is to Roy idolatry, violating the ‘immense
distance between God and man.’ The idea that God can be born, grow, eat, drink,
and even die he regards as a ‘gross’ perversion of the divine nature. Repeating the
Arian argument, he comments that ‘every son, whatever may be his nature, must
have existence originating subsequently to that of his own father.’ The Trinitarian
doctrine is, be believes, a return to polytheism, and no Hindu who (like himself)
has given up on the plurality of gods in his own religion can be expected to accept
such a plurality from Christianity.
Ram Mohan Roy was probably the first Hindu to debate with Christianity,
especially in the area of christology, on the basis of the scriptural and philosophi-
cal foundations of the Christian faith itself. His examination of the New Testa-
ment (probably more scientific than that of his antagonist Marshman) led him
to ‘unorthodox’ conclusions in rejecting the divinity of Christ and the Trinity.
But he came to these conclusions from his own reading of the New Testament,
and from his conviction of an ethical monotheism which owed much to western
rationalism.10

10 It is instructive to compare Roy’s view with those of his rationalist contemporary Thomas Jef-
ferson, third president of the United States. Jefferson also extracted the ethics of the Jesus from
the the Gospels while rejecting the dogma of the Trinity (see futher Pelikan 1985:189-93).

20
The Divine-Humanity of Christ:
Keshab Chandra Sen11
If Ram Mohan Roy saw Jesus through the eyes of a westernised rationalist Hin-
du, his most famous successor Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884) was drawn into
a deeply devotional relationship with Jesus, which brought him to the edges of
the church. Roy perceived Jesus as an ethical teacher who appealed to rational
thought, Sen saw him as a human-divine figure to be worshipped with the heart.
He owed to Roy however his first introduction to a Indian perspective on Christ.
Born into a well educated Vaishnavite family, Sen joined the Brahma Samaj in
1857 while still a very young man, and quickly became one of its most eloquent
advocates. However he soon became dissatisfied with what he saw as the conser-
vatism of the Samaj and withdrew, along with several other younger members,
to form the ‘Brahma Samaj of India.’ This new organisation was more open to
the influence of non-Hindu religions. But more important it adopted in its meet-
ings the typically Vaishnavite enthusiastic and emotional style of worship. The
influence of Christianity upon him was strengthened by a visit to England. Like
Roy before him he became a vocal advocate of social reform, especially for an
improved status for women. His main religious ideas were set out in a series of
annual lectures he gave in Calcutta. The first, given in 1866, was significantly
entitled ‘Jesus Christ, Europe and Asia.’ Towards the end of the next decade many
of his followers were alienated by his marrying off his daughter to the hier of
the small princely state of Kooch Bihar, when both under legal marriageable age
and in violation of a ban on a Brahmo marrying a Hindu. 12 At the same time he
was coming increasingly under the influence of the Bengali Hindu Reformer Ra-
makrishna.13 He had also become convinced that he was the recipient of a special
divine revelation (adesha, divine inspiration). In 1878 he formed his Church of
the New Dispensation, in which he declared that all religions were harmonised,
though with an emphasis on Christ. ‘The Old Testament is the first dispensation,’
he claimed, ‘the New Testament is the second; unto us in these days has been
vouchsafed the Third Dispensation.’ At the same time his reverence and devotion
to Jesus Christ seems to have increased rather than diminished. Several commen-
tators have remarked on this inconsistency. However it is perhaps only inconsis-
tent from the point of view of Christian exclusivism. To one brought up in a Hindu
Vaishnavite tradition there would have been little contradiction in holding to what

11 On Sen see especially Mozoomdar (1887), Farquhar (1967), Parekh (1931), Thomas (1968),
Boyd (1991) and Lipner (1999).
12 For details see Farquhar (1967:52ff.)
13 On Ramakrishna see Brockington (1996:181-3), Thomas (1969:150-92), and the symposium
Neo-Hindu Views of Christianity ed. Arvind Sharma (Brill, Leiden 1988).

21
he called ‘God-manhood’14 of Jesus and giving him devotional worship (bkakti)
while at the same time admitting other religious realities. Be that as it may, his
devotional passion for Christ was undoubtedly genuine and, as we shall see, had
a quite profound influence on some later Indian Christians.
Sen had no doubt that Jesus had been reinvented by the missionaries in their
own European image. ‘And was not Christ an Asiatic?’ he asks. ‘Yes,’ he affirms,
‘and his disciples were Asiatics. In fact Christianity was founded and developed
by Asiatics and in Asia.’ It was the very oriental character of Christ which made
him so attractive to Sen. ‘When I reflect on this,’ he continues, ‘my love for Jesus
becomes a hundredfold intensified. I feel him nearer to my heart, and deeper in
my natural sympathies’ (Lecture Jesus Christ, Europe and Asia). Because Chris-
tianity began in Asia, he believed, it was to be expected that Asiatics like himself
would be able to understand and appreciate it better, piercing through the façade
with which Europeans have clothed it. Christ therefore must not be confined
within western culture. England might excel in science and teach it to India, but
she has to ‘learn ancient wisdom from India’ (Hay 1991:48). Christ must be indi-
genised within India.
M.M.Thomas (1969:57) heads his discussion of Sen’s thought ‘the doctrine of
divine humanity.’ While one might perhaps question whether ‘doctrine’ is the
right term for so unsystematic a thinker as Sen, there can be no doubt that his
concept of ‘divine humanity’ is key to his understanding of Christ. Sen expresses
his devotion to Christ in deeply emotional and sometimes extravagant language,
in harmony with Vaishnavite bhakti. The form Vaishvanism which was popular
in his native Bengal was founded by Chaitanya,15 which expressed devotion to
Krishna as the supreme incarnation (avatar) of Vishnu in ecstatic worship. Sen,
however, was reluctant to apply the term avatar to the incarnation of Christ, since
he (like Ram Mohun Roy) regarded this as idolatry – implying the One God had
become a human person. Indeed he condemned the progressive incarnationism
of the Hindu Puranas, in which the deity appears in the guise of animal avatars,
prior to his incarnations as Krishna and Rama, as ‘crude representations.’ He
appears to have had a modalist conception of incarnation. This led him to a view
of the Trinity, which he called in his lecture of 1882, ‘that marvellous mystery’ as
‘Uni-Trinitarian’ by which he meant ‘something between the orthodox doctrine
and that of the Unitarians’ (Thomas 1969:62). While he rejected the formula of
One God in Three Persons, he nevertheless ‘recognises divinity in some form in
Christ in which the Son partakes of the Father’s divine nature.’ Unsurprisingly
he sought to understand the Trinity against the background of Hindu thought. He

14 According to (MacIntosh (1913:419n) Harnack also regarded God-manhood as the only correct
term for Jesus.
15 On Chaitanya see Brockington (1996:162-5), Lipner (1994:257-8).

22
seems to have been the first to apply to the Christian Trinity the Vedantic descrip-
tion of Brahma (the Supreme Deity) as saccidananda. This term was probably
originally more an attempt to define Brahma’s attributes than its ontology. Sat
(which may also be used of ‘being’) is ‘truth’, chit is ‘intelligence’, and ananda
‘bliss.’ On this model Sen finds in the Christian God what he calls three ‘condi-
tions’ or ‘manifestations’ of Deity. ‘Yet there is One God,’ he writes, ‘one sub-
stance and three phenomena. Not three Gods but one God … the same identical
Deity whose unity continues indivisible amid multiplicity of manifestations.’ But
for him Trinity is no mere academic construct, but an object of worship before
which to ‘close my eyes and, lost in wonder and rapt in solemn silence acknowl-
edge the Father above, the Son below, and the Spirit within.’ Sen seems here to
to be struggling to find language to describe what can only be be comprehended
in worship. If it hints at an amalgum of several dubious early heresies we must
remember that Sen is coming at this most difficult of Christian doctrines not by
way of Greek philosophical terminology but from his heritage in Hinduism. His
primary purpose is not to define the Trinity systematically or rationally but to
stand in awe in the presence of the Holy.
‘Divine-humanity’ lies at the heart of Sen’s conception of Christ, and for him
expresses God’s self-manifestation among men. Sen, like Roy, is little interested
in the historical research into facts of Jesus’ life, though he does not hesitate to
make use of the Gospels in the interests of his devotional approach to Jesus. Al-
ready in his lecture of 1866 he had spoken of Jesus’ ‘lofty ideal of moral truth’ and
his tenderness and humility which (he says) placed him above ordinary humanity.
But it was in a later lecture (1879), in which he raised the issue of who Christ is
for India, that he developed the idea of divine-humanity. He alludes to the text
in John’s Gospel which has attracted many Indian theologians, ‘I and the Father
are One’ (Jn. 10.30), though he is quick to qualify it by the subordination text, ‘I
can do nothing of myself’ (5.30). The first text, he claims, is ‘the keynote of his
doctrine where he announces his duty.’ The oneness of Christ with God is not
metaphysical. While he is in agreement with Roy that it is a moral unity of will,
this is not for Sen the essence of the saying. Rather it affirms a mystical unity,
for Christ is the ‘transparent crystal reservoir in which are the waters of divine
life,’ the one in whom the holiness of God dwells. Jesus is the unique example of
one who had surrendered himself wholly to God, and by this self surrender fulfils
God’s mission. ‘He destroyed self. And as self ebbed away Heaven came pouring
into his soul … as soon as the soul is emptied of self Divinity fills the void. So it
was with Christ. The Spirit of the Lord filled him, and everything was this divine
in him.’ This seems, as Boyd suggests, an early Indian version of kenotic theology
or an adoptionist Spirit-christology. But Sen has little interest in such theories.
Perhaps inconsistently elsewhere he can speak of Christ as the pre-existent Lo-

23
gos, the second person of the Trinity. Christ is thus a manifestation on earth of an
‘Idea’ in the plan of God – ‘Christ was nothing but a manifestation on earth, in
human form, of certain ideas which lay beforehand in the Godhead …There is an
uncreated Christ and also a created Christ, the idea of the son and the incarnate
son drawing all his vitality and inspiration from the Father. This is the true doc-
trine of the incarnation.’
Christ’s divinity is brought into connection with his death, for the cross is the
supreme example of the self-surrender of divine humanity, ‘a beautiful emblem
of self-sacrifice to the glory of God’ which has a profound impact upon human-
ity as a whole. However in his lecture of 1883 he seems to be moving towards a
more substitutionary theory of atonement in which the cross is seen as the means
of reconciliation between God and man. ‘He substituted himself for the world
and the world became one with God ….In his atoning blood the most polluted
of all ages and climes finds a place. I am reconciled to him through the blood of
the crucified.’ Sen does not separate the the event of the cross from its moral and
spiritual impact on the disciples, the line between objectivity and subjectivity is
never deeply drawn. In the same way a few years earlier (1880) he emphasised not
so much the objective fact of the resurrection of Jesus than its benefits in the life
of the believer. Proof of the resurrection is to be found within the heart for ‘that
glorious fact, the resurrection of Christ, every true believer can feel and realise
within himself every day.’
Sen’s conception of Jesus Christ clearly developed during his short life (like
Roy he died in his mid-forties). But running through his thought is the theme
that christology is not a matter of static definition but of a dynamic and creative
process or, to use his own word, evolution. He can thus speak of the Logos as the
‘dormant will of God’ stirring itself to become active in the world in the dynamic
ebb and flow of ‘creating fresh forms of life and light.’ Creation and incarnation
are not single events but a continuing process. The latent power of the prexistent
Logos thus finds its ‘culmination’ in the divine-humanity of the Son. So the final
expression of Divinity is divine-humanity. Although Christ remains man, he is
the ideal man, the divine man. ‘He is humanity pure and simple in which Divinity
dwells,’ asserts Sen. Christ is human nature brought to perfection by combination
with divinity. His essential humanity is perfected because it is united with the
Divine nature, not in an ontological sense, but in a creative evolutionary process.
While remaining a human figure, Christ transcends ordinary humanity into a
new category of divine-humanity. It is a deep mystical, not a metaphysical, union.
The mystical union of Christ with God provides the model and basis for the
believer. The creative force of Logos-Christ continues in the evolutionary process
of recreating and universalising in the disciple the same divine-humanity. This
creates not one Christ but ‘many Christs’ by ‘illuminating and sanctifying all

24
generations with the radiance of divinity.’ This action is the work of the Holy
Spirit which ‘makes Christ, otherwise a historical character, a sanctifying power
within us.’ The end of this evolutionary process is the eschatological expecta-
tion of ‘the multiplication of Christs.’ One is reminded of Irenaeusʼ statement
that ‘Jesus Christ in his infinite love has become what we are, in order that he
may make us entirely what he is.’ But it is not entirely clear in what way, if at
all, Christ’s Divine-Humanity (always capitalised) differs from that to which we
aspire through the Holy Spirit.
Sen was not a systematic thinker. His ‘lectures’ are less academic exercises
than sermons which popularise his ideas. He was clearly a persuasive speaker,
fluent in English and not averse to florid oratory. He was also a highly emotional,
and perhaps somewhat unstable, character with a profound conviction of his own
God-given mission and inspiration. ‘If I ask,’ he writes, ‘O Self, in what creed
thou wast baptised in early life? The Self replies in the baptism of fire. I am
partial to the doctrine of enthusiasm … Around my life, around the society in
which I lived, I have always kept burning the flame of enthusiasm’ (quoted in Hay
1992:46). Sen was not so much ‘partial’ to enthusiasm and consumed by it. The
‘baptism of fire’ may refer to his attachment to Christ. But it goes back to his early
experience of Vaishnavism and of bhakti towards a personal avatar characteristic
of that form of Hinduism. Krishna bhakti could be highly emotional, and it is this
type of devotion that Sen came to direct towards the figure of Jesus. But this is
no reason to doubt the sincerity of his devotion to Christ, even though it owed its
form to Hindu bhakti. If Sen’s orthodoxy as judged by western canons might be
suspect his attachment to Christ is not. ‘My Christ, my sweet Christ, the brightest
jewel of my heart, the necklace of my soul’ ‘I have found sweetness and joy unut-
terable in my master Jesus’ ‘What moral sincerity and sweetness pervade his life
…His heart was full of mercy and kindness.’ Such language might seem extrava-
gant (though no more so than western mystics and pietists) and not of the kind
usually found in constructing an academic christology. But this also raises the
serious issue for the theologian, of whether the neglect of such Christ-devotion
has not had a damaging effect upon western christological thinking. I shall return
to this when discussing the Christ-bhakta par excellence, Sundar Singh. Though
perhaps not its earliest exponent, it was Sen who put bhakti firmly on the agenda
of India Christian theology.
We should see Sen’s writings not in the nature of ‘academic theology, but
rather as something much more spontaneous, as an attempt to give expression
to a deeply emotional commitment to the figure of Jesus as he understood him,
and to verbalise that experience in rhetorical language – as sermons rather than
philosophical expositions. One might question, however, whether the concept
of divine-humanity presents us with a more viable solution to the mystery of

25
Christ’s person than the traditional doctrine of the two natures. How convincing,
furthermore, is Sen’s understanding of his humanity if to be human includes also
(as it surely must) to share in sin and alienation? There is perhaps in Sen more
than hint of the Vedantic idea that what Christianity calls sin is really simply
ignorance, failure to see the true nature of reality, and perhaps also of the neo-
Hindu interpretation of avatar as the human person who because of his exem-
plary life becomes a ‘great soul.’ This latter conception features prominently in
Gandhi’s perception of Jesus.16 For Sen Christ’s humanity is an ideal, and as ideal
also partakes divinity. This is surely to blur the distinction between God and man.
While there may well be a case for understanding ‘divinity’ as applied to Jesus in
a different way from it is in the Chalcedonian tradition (as did Chakkarai among
others), Sen’s idea of Christ’s divinity sounds suspiciously like saying man in a
loud voice. Nor is his acceptance of the pre-existent Logos very easy to fit in with
his progressive evolutionary christology. But these problems only underline the
fact that with Sen we are not dealing with a systematic philosophical thinker. We
find in him not a wholly consistent christology but rather different possibilities
and seminal ideas which opened up for subsequent Indian thelogians new ways
of seeing Christ against the backcloth of Hindu culture. This alone should assure
him a place in the story of Indian christological exploration. To some of those
who took up his ideas we shall return in more detail in the following chapters.
Chakkarai, for example, rejected metaphysical models and attempted to rethink
the christological categories of divinity and humanity, and sought to understand
Christ’s kenosis as the self-emptying of his Ego. Chenchiah followed Sen in un-
derstanding the incarnation not as a once for all event but as a continuing evo-
lutionary process. M.M.Thomas recognised and developed Sen’s conviction of
‘the finger of special providence in the progress of nations’ and ‘his embracing of
Christ as the fulfilment of India’s devotional striving (Hay 1992: 49.47). His most
immediate influence, however, was on one who was possibly the most remarkable
figure of early Christian theology in India, Bhavani Charan Banerji, better known
by the name he adopted after his conversion, Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya, ‘the
Friend of God’. We shall consider his Trinitarian christology in the next chapter.
The contributions of the two Bengali thinkers discussed here, one of whom
was committed to the moral stature and authority of Jesus, the other to devotion
to his person, are a reminder that there is another Jesus, who exists in the minds
and experience of those outside the formal boundaries of Christianity. In other
words, Christ cannot be restricted to within the Christian church, still less within

16 For a useful collection from Gandhi’s voluminous writings see K.Swaminnathan and C.N.Patel
A Gandhi Reader (Orient Longman, Hyderabad 1983), and for critique of his religious views
see Margaret Chatterjee Gandhi’s Religious Thought (MacMillan, London 1983), Thomas
(1969:193-238).

26
the boundaries of what might pass as traditional orthodoxy. Nor perhaps can the
sincerity of other professed Hindus, who at a popular level see Jesus as another
Hindu avatar, be entirely dismissed.17 Jesus Christ is a figure who has the ability
not only to attract but to affect the lives of those who do not belong, or wish to be-
long, to the Christian community. In the lives and writings of Roy and Sen we are
obliged to recognise that this particular historical figure of Jesus has the power
to penetrate and transform the religious experience of those who stand outside
the formal Christian body in a way that no other religious founder has been able
to do. If the criterion of true religion is that it is not only intellectually coherent
but, more important, is transformative of human experience and societies, then
we have seriously to question the monopoly of Jesus which the church lays claim
to. The church does not ‘own’ Jesus. This is an issue which is most poignant, of
course, with regard to the Jewish faith which has the original claim to him.18

17 As Killingley (1993:127) comments, ‘Jesus as an object of devotion is now in the hands of

countless Hindus who do not accept him in traditional terms.’
18 It cannot be accidental that many of the most convincing studies of the Jesus of history within
the last decades have been written by Jewish scholars.

27
II. The Jesus of Worship and Devotion

As Christian theology began to take shape in modern India we may discern sever-
al different, though at times overlapping, approaches. The earliest efforts leaned
heavily upon western models, whether evangelical or Catholic. Perhaps the best
example of this is the saintly Nehemiah Goreh, whose writings aimed at what
Boyd has called a ‘rational refutation of Hinduism’ from a profound knowledge
of the both Christian doctrine and the Hindu sacred writings. Though his spritu-
ality was deeply Indian, there was no real contribution to innovative indigenous
Christian thinking. A later trend went further, and adopted the sanskritic termi-
nology of Hinduism to try to bring some clarity to the obscurity of the language
of western theology. Pioneers in this respect were Brahmabandhab Upadhyay,
and later on Vengal Chakkarai. Both went far beyond a mere translation of ter-
minology from one context to another, and sought to penetrate deeply into the
religious meaning of the Hindu terms they used. It needs to be stressed , however,
as Killingley has clearly pointed out, that ‘Hindu’ at this time was less a religious
term than a cultural and ethnic one. ‘It was possible,’ he comments, ‘to speak of
a Hindu Christian, meaning a Christian who belonged by ancestry and culture
to that majority of the South Asian population who were not Muslims or mem-
bers of otherwise recognisable minorities’ (Killingley 1993:61). Brahmabandhab
Upadhyay’s usage of the term ‘Hindu Christian’ was then not as revolutionary as
it sounds today. It was less a plea for diluting Christianity with Hindu religious
ideas than for the Christian faith to be contextualised within mainstream Indian
culture.19 An interesting recent confirmation of this may be seen in the rejection
of sanskritic terminology and models by those Christian Indians, the Dalits and
Tribals, who have either never been part of mainstream Hindu Indian culture or
who have experienced it as oppressive.
Other Indian Christian thinkers saw in their Hindu heritage not only helpful
terminology and concepts, but also models to which Christian doctrine and ex-
perience can relate. Chakkarai, as we shall see, attempted to explicate his under-
standing of Christ against his background of Saiva Siddhanta, though he did not
go the whole way to using it as a framework for his theological thought. Brahma-
bandhab Upadhyay in his maturer years went further. He had almost from the

19 Similarly ‘Hinduism’ as a description of the religion of India is a late term: though Ram Mohan
Roy used it, he did so only in his English writings, which were meant for foreigners and west-
ernized Indians.

29
time of his conversion to Christianity seen Thomism as the only way to under-
stand Christian doctrine aright. He later on came to view the advaita philoso-
phy of Sankara as almost a parallel system, through which Christianity could be
interpreted in the Indian context. Sundar Singh followed a similar methodology,
but adopted and christianised a very different school of Hinduism, the bhakti
which derived from the great Epics, the Mahabharata and Ramayana. In these,
and the subsequent Puranas, salvation comes through devotion to the incarnation
(avatar) of God in a personal form.

Bramabandhab Upadhyay: Christ in Indian clothing

‘Indian thought can be made just as useful to Christianity as Greek thought has been in
Europe … The European clothes of the Catholic religion should be laid aside as soon as
possible. It must assume the Hindu garment which will make it acceptable to the people of
India’ (Brahmabandhab Upadhyay20).

Bhanavi Charan Banerji,21 (1861-1907) to give him his birth name, is one of the
most charismatic and complex figures of Indian Christianity. An inveterate writer
and controversialist, not least with the Catholic Church of which he became a
member, he was also a leading figure in the nationalist movement in Bengal. He
was born into a Brahmin Bengali family, and very early in his life became a fol-
lower of Keshab Chandra Sen.
He worked for a time for the Brahmo Sabha, and his contact with Anglican
missionaries resulted in his baptism in 1891. According to Lipner, it was his read-
ing of a volume of Catholic theology, which had come into his hands shortly after
the death of his father three years earlier, which ‘crystalised his inquiries into the
theological status of Jesus’ (1999:78-9).22 He became convinced not only of the
moral superiority and divine nature of Jesus but also of the orthodox doctrine
of the Trinity. He quickly became a formidable advocate of a specifically In-
dian style of ‘Hindu-Christianity’ in reaction to that of the western missionaries.
However this did not extend to doctrine. Brahmabandhab Upadhyay embraced
Thomism as a theological model, and made little attempt to reinterpret Christian
doctrine. Aquinas’ teaching on natural religion and his strict propositional ap-
proach especially appealed to him. He was not a radical doctrinal innovator, and

20 Quoted in Boyd (1991:64).

21 On Brahmabandhav Upadhyay see especially Lipner (1999), also Boyd (1991) and Thomas
(1967).
22 He was also influenced by his uncle, Rev. Kali Charan Banerji, one of the first Christian Ben-
gali nationlists.

30
sought in Hinduism a system which would act as a structural model for Indians in
the same way as Aquinas had for Catholics. The conclusions of Catholic theology
were not in question for him, it was rather a matter of finding in Indian tradition
a similar ladder by means of which he could reach them.
Earlier in his career he had found in the Hindu writings a ‘Vedic theism’ (fol-
lowing Ram Mohan Roy’s lead), which he regarded as a praeparatio evangelica.
As his thought developed he turned to the advaita (non-dualist) Vedanta system
as expounded by Shankara (c. 850 AD). The essence of Shakara’s interpretation of
the Upanishads was that they taught pure monism.23 Brahmabandhab saw Shan-
kara’s philosophy as almost parallel to Aquinas. As Lipner has it: ‘He does this
not by seeking to implant Christian concepts within Vedanta soil, so as to arrive
at a first-order indigenisation of the Christian faith, but rather constructing more
or less exact correspondence between Vedantic ideas and Thomistic ones, so that
the Vendanta may be seen as a kind of crypto-(neo)-Thomism and Shankara a St.
Thomas in disguise’ (1999:188)24. Lipner sees this as fullfilment theology, which
in one sense it is. However it not so much that advaita is fulfilled in Christ than
its use as a model to arrive at Catholic doctrine.
How does this methodology impact upon Brahmabandhab Upadhyay’s chris-
tology? Most obviously in that it is stated in sanskritic terminology which is
resonant with the philosophical overtones of the Vendanta. It must, of course, be
remembered that he is not addressing the western reader but his own compatri-
ots. His audience is two-fold: Indian Christians on the one hand but also (as with
much of his writing) at the same time westernised and educated middle-class
Hindus who would have had an understanding of the Vendanta and perhaps also
some idea of Christian teaching. However Brahmabandhab Upadhyay’s explica-
tion of Christ, and later of the Trinity, is not merely an intellectual theological
enterprise. It is significant that his profoundest doctrinal statements are enshrined
not in the contentious prose writings of Brahmabadhab the controversialist, but
in hymns which bow before the wonder and adoration of God. The nature of God,
Christ and Trinity are for him most clearly apprehended in worship,25 and the best
examples of this are seen in his famous hymns in Sanskrit.

23 Shankara’s advaita system taught that all plurality is ultimately maya, unreal, illusion, which
can be overcome only by knowledge. Upadhyay however finds it necessary to reinterpret maya
as a kind of potentiality and even more to relate it to shakti, divine (feminine) power. On Shan-
kara see Radhakrishnan (vol 1, 1962:445-655), Brockington (1996:107-112).
24 Similarly Boyd (1991:70) ‘his penetrating and fascinating use of Vedanta is based ultimately
on a theological substructure which is little different from scholasticism.’ Thomas (1969:108)
thinks his theology looks like Catholicism in its entirety.
25 One is reminded of the Syriac tradition of Ephraem: Brahmabandhab had worked in the South
for the Brahmo Samaj and it is possible he may have come across the Syrian church.

31
 The Hymn of the Incarnation was first published in 1901. Boyd (1991:77)26
comments that Brahmabandhab is attempting in this hymn to use Vedantic termi-
nology to set out what is essentially Catholic orthodox christology, and believes
that he is quite successful in avoiding the pitfalls of monophysitism and Apol-
linarianism – though he thinks he veers towards the latter. Lipner (1999:278-9)
gives his own translation of the Sanskrit version of the hymn with numerous
illuminating footnotes on the terminology. In his view the language and style
(of the refrain) are typical of secular hymns in the Hindu tradition. While he
agrees that the Christian connotations are ‘easily intelligible’ he also thinks that
they would not have been unacceptable to Hindus. A comparison of the two texts
suggests that while the English version given by Boyd would have reflected lan-
guage familiar to Indian Christian, Lipner’s commentary on the Sanskrit version
emphasises more the Hindu resonances. This may be seen if the two versions are
set out together:

‘The transcendent Image of Brahman,

Blossomed and mirrored in the full-flowing
Eternal intelligence –
Victory to God, the God-man.
Child of the pure virgin,
Guide of the Universe, infinite in Being
Yet beauteous with relations –
Victory to God, the God-man.
Ornament of the Assembly
Of saints and sages, Destroyer of fear, Chastiser
Of the Spirit of Evil –
Victory to God, the God-man.
Dispeller of weakness
Of soul and of Body, pouring out life for others,
Whose deeds are holy –
Victory to God, the God-man.
Priest and Offerer
Of his own soul in agony, whose Life is Sacrifice,
Destroyer of sin’s poison –
Victory to God, the God-man.

26 The English version given by Boyd is taken from C.F. Andrew’s The Renaissance in India
(1912).

32
Tender, beloved,
Soother of the human heart, Ointment of the eyes,
Vanquisher of fierce death –
Victory to God, the God-man. (Boyd 1991:77-8).

Lipner’s translation shows several variations of meaning, as well as omitting the

final two verses of the above:
(You who are) the blossoming of the abundance of eternal Knowledge,
The reflected One, the transcendent form of the Absolute,
Conquer, O God, Conquer, O God, Conquer O God, Man-God.
(You who are) the child of the golden Virgin,
Ruler of being, delightfully related yet without relations,
Conquer, O God …
(You who are) the Ornament of the Assembly of the learned,
Destroyer of fear, Scourge of the wicked,
Conquer, O God …
(You who) remove all kinds of suffering,
Serving others, sanctifying all by your doings,
Conquer, O God … (Lipner 1999:278).

The version given in Boyd is clearly versified as a hymn for congregational wor-
ship, and the English wording has been chosen to reflect Christian orthodoxy.
On the other hand Lipner is clear that the Sanskrit ‘words are replete with Hindu
resonance’ so situating Christ within the world of Hinduism, and indeed he finds
it a more Hindu composition than Upadhyay’s better known Hymn to the Trinity
(1999:279). Upadhyay seems here to be trying to demonstrate his self-identity as
a ‘Hindu-Christian’ with a foot both in both worlds of Hinduism and Catholicism.
Upadhyay’s christology is then quite orthodox. Jesus Christ is God in his essential
being but has become man by choice. He is ‘perfectly Divine and perfectly human’
and as Logos has united himself with human nature. The purpose of the incarna-
tion is the union of God and man – ‘this act of divine condescension, this at-one-
ment of goodess and humanity, this sweet mingling of the joy of holiness with the
sorrow of compassion.’ His understanding of atonement is less a penal view than
one of God identifying himself in Christ with human sorrow, and Jesus is ‘the
incarnate diety suffering in union with human nature’ and inviting humanity to
believe in him and share his sorrow by being one with him (Thomas 1969:105-6).
Upadhyay set out his Trinitarian theology in his The Hymn to the Trinity
in which he takes up the Vedantic description of Parabrahman, the Supreme

33
Being, as sat, chit, ananda (meaning being, intelligence and bliss, often com-
bined in one word, saccidananda).27 He probably derived this from Keshab
Chandra Sen, though Sen did not develop it theologically. This hymn is a more
complex and perhaps a more profound poem. Sat is Aquinas’ necessary Be-
ing, infinite, eternal and immutable. But for the Supreme Being to be is also to
know, involving both internal as well as external knowledge (cit). The former
is self-knowledge, that is, the Son as the reflection and image of the Father.
Parabrahman is also ananda (bliss) since his self-knowledge takes delight in
his self-reflection as knowledge. This is the Holy Spirit. Though this under-
standing of Trinity might seem unduly scholastic, it is for Upadhyay a source
of wonder and worship.
As before I give first the English version given by Boyd 28 and then that of
Lipner.

I bow to Him who is Being, Consciousness and Bliss,

I bow to Him whom worldly minds loath, whom pure minds yearn for,
The Supreme Abode.
He is the Supreme, the Ancient of Days, the Transcendent,
Indivisible Plenitude, Immanent yet above all things,
Three-fold relation, pure, unrelated,
Knowledge beyond knowledge.
The Father, Sun, Supreme Lord, unborn,
The seedless Seed of the tree of becoming,
The Cause of all, Creator, Providence, Lord of the Universe.
The infinite and perfect Word,
The Supreme Person begotten,
Sharing in the Father’s nature, Conscious by essence,
Giver of True salvation.
He who proceeds from Being and Consciousness,
Replete with the breath of perfect bliss,
The Purifier, the Swift, the Revealer of the Word.
The Life-Giver. (Boyd 1991:70)

27 For detailed discussion see Lipner 1999:191ff.

28 Boyd states his English translation is ‘with slight alterations, that printed in the Prayer Book
and Hymnal published for the 38th International Eucharistic Congress in Bombay, 1964’ (Boyd
1991: 70 note 1). Upadhyay’s own English version was published in his journal Sophia October
1898, but is not given either by Boyd or Lipner, and is unfortunately not available to me.

34
Lipner claims that Upadhyay’s own English translation ‘errs generously on the
side of Christian terminology,’ though he unfortunately does not quote it. His
own translation from the Sanskrit reads:

I worship (the One who is) Being, Knowledge, Bliss,

The Highest Goal, whom ascetics yearn for but the worldly dismiss.
(Refrain).
The Supreme, Ancient, Higher than the high.
(Who is) Fulness, Wholeness, Beyond yet nigh.
The Pure Threesome, unrelated Wisdom, Hard to Comprehend.
The Father, Impeller, Highest Lord, Unborn.
The Seedless Seed of the tree of being.
The universal Cause, who a watched-over creation doth tend.
The Word unsounded, Infinite.
The Person begotten, supremely Great.
The Substance of the Father, Form of knowledge, our saving Friend.
The One from whom the union of Being and Knowledge doth flow,
The Sacred Breath and Cloud of Joy, Who Cleanses, Moves swiftly,
Speaks the Message and life intends.

The innovation in these hymns does not consist in any new interpretation of doc-
trine, but solely in the imagery in which they are expressed. Upadhyay has taken
his own advice seriously – here is Christian doctrine dressed up in the garments
of Vedanta. Its orthodoxy is not in question (the Catholic hierarchy apparently
had no problems with it). It is the mode of expression, culturally Indian-Hindu
which marks out Upadhyay’s theological innovation. He has successfully con-
veyed orthodox Catholic dogma in a new way which would resonate with his In-
dian compatriots. His use of Hindu imagery though is quite daring. In the Hymn
to the Incarnation he can apply to Jesus the title Narahare, which Hindus applied
to the Hindu god Vishnu,29 and apply to Christ the phrase ‘destroyer of sin’s poi-
son’ which recalls the myth of Siva’s drinking poison to save the world. Lipner
(1999:199-204) has shown in detail how in the Hymn to the Trinity Upadhyay
skilfully applies Vedantic material to Christ. He comments that Upadhyay dem-
onstrated how a language like Sanskrit, with a history and tradition quite differ-
ent from that of the ecclesiastical languages of Greek and Latin, could become an
effective medium for conveying contextually the teaching of the Catholic church.

29 Vishnu is the ‘Preserver’ of the trimurti Brahma-Vishnu-Siva, and incarnates himself periodi-
cally to save the world.

35
Christian doctrine has been restated in a medium with no Christian history and
tradition. This in itself was a remarkable achievement.
Upadhyay however had not arrived at the point where he could question
whether doctrine and tradition were not themselves in need of reinterpretation in
a cultural world so different from that of their origins. He was so much a Thomist
in the deepest levels of his philosophical and theological thinking that he could
think of an indigenous expression of faith only within a Thomistic framework and
through a Thomistic evaluation and transformation of Indian philosophy and reli-
gion (M.M. Thomas 1969:108). He himself acknowledged as much. ‘We are Hin-
dus,’ he wrote, ‘and shall remain Hindus will death. But as dvija (twice-born)30 by
virtue of our sacramental rebirth we are Catholics . . . We are Hindu-Catholics’
(Thomas 1969:107).

Sundar Singh: Christological Mysticism

‘We Indians do not want a doctrine, not even a religious doctrine; we have had more than
enough of that kind of thing. We need the living Christ. India wants people who will not
only preach and teach, but workers whose whole life and temper is a revelation of Jesus
Christ’ (Sundar Singh).31

Robin Boyd, in his survey of India theology, describes Sundar Singh as ‘per-
haps the most famous Indian Christian who has yet lived, and whose influence
has been widespread and prolonged’ (1991:92). The story of Sundar Singh’s life
(1889-1929) reads like the stuff of legend, comparable to the lives of the medieval
saints. It produced a plethora of devotional hagiographies from his followers, as
well as a number of polemical writings from his detractors, and at the same time
critical attention from prominent Christians both in India and the West. One who
could impress men like von Hügel, Nathan Soderblom, and Anders Nygren, and
inspire detailed sympathetic studies of his work and teaching by scholars such
as Friedrich Heiler (1927)32 and Canon B.S. Streeter (1921)33, as well as a full

30 ‘twice-born’ in Hinduism refers to the higher castes (Upadhyay as a Brahmin never questioned
caste distinctions). Here he applies it to baptismal rebirth.
31 Quoted in Heiler (1927:266).
32 Heiler thought Sundar Singh an important enough figure for the phenomenology of religion to
include references to him in his Das Gebet:eine religiongeschichtliche und religionspsycholo-
gische Untersuchung (Munich 1923) and Ercheinungformen und Wesen der Religionen (Kohl-
hammer, Stuttgart, 1979). Comments on Sundar Singh by other contempories can be found in
Appasamy 1958:189-90,192,198,203.
33 Best known for his The Four Gospels: a study of origins (1924), but he also edited volumes – clos-
er to the experience of Sundar Singh – on prayer and the Spirit, and wrote a book on Buddhism.

36
length biography from his one time companion and later Bishop of Coimbatore
(Appasamy 1958) must have possessed an unusual spiritual presence. Nor was his
influence limited to Christians. Both Rabindranath Tagore and Mahatma Gan-
dhi knew him and admired his peculiarly Indian approach to Christian faith and
practice.
At the same time there is a paradox about Sundar Singh which makes it diffi-
cult to treat him as a theologian in the same way as most of the others in this book.
Boyd, though convinced of his pivotal importance for the story of Indian theol-
ogy, believed he ‘could not be called a theologian in a technical sense’ (1991:92).
Perhaps the stress should be on the word ‘technical.’ Sundar Singh’s theology is
essentially a theology of experience rather than intellect. His comment which
stands at the head of this section – that ‘we Indians do not want a doctrine’ –
might suggest that Sundar Singh was indifferent to Christian dogma. This would
however be incorrect. A perusal of his sermons and devotional writings indicates
quite the opposite. In the fundamental doctrines of the creeds Sundar Singh was
almost entirely orthodox, especially in understanding of the person of Christ.
It is not that he rejects dogma as unnecessary, but rather that he finds dogma in
and of itself unable to transform the individual. Like all evangelical reformers
he places life and experience above knowledge and confessions. He hardly chal-
lenges orthodox doctrine, he rather assumes it and concentrates on the outwork-
ing of belief in experience. He does not play by the rules of academic theology.
Implicit in his writings is the question whether theological systems might not be
philosophical inventions which have dominated Christian thinking in the West
for far too long and have obscured the essence of what the Christian faith really
means, that is, experience of Jesus Christ. Indeed at times he even seems to reject
the very term ‘theology’ (though he does employ ‘religion’ more positively). For
Sundar Singh theology is less important than spirituality or piety, and dogma less
important than prayer. ‘I will never send anyone to the theologians,’ he is once
recorded as saying, ‘for too often they have lost the sense of spiritual reality’
(Heiler 1927:260). Part of this aversion was no doubt due to what he regarded as
the inroads critical liberalism had made into the traditional doctrine of the deity
of Christ, and Heiler himself agreed with Sundar Singh that the balance between
research and piety had largely been lost. What Sundar Singh was doing here was
to challenge the (largely western) view of theology as an academic and intellec-
tual discipline divorced from the experience of faith in Christ.
What was the origin of Sundar Singh’s Christ-mysticism? It is true that later in
his life he read fairly extensively the works of Christian mystics, including Fran-
cis of Assisi and Thomas a Kempis, and that devotion to Christ was the mainstay
of his Christian experience. However the origins of this devotion must lie further
back, and we cannot understand his approach unless we look more closely at his

37
pre-Christian religious background. His family were Sikhs, but his mother, who
very deeply influenced his childhood piety,34 was immersed in those Hindu scrip-
tures which came out of the movement known as bhakti. The roots of bhakti lie
in the transition away from the impersonal Brahman to its manifestation in per-
sonal gods, especially Vishnu and Siva,35 which found its clearest popular form
in the two great Sanskrit epics, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana. The most
influential scripture of the bhakti movement was the Bhagavadgita (The Song
of the Lord), which probably had a separate existence before being incorporated
into the Mahabharata.36 The last section of the Gita introduces the concept of
bhakti marga (the way of devotion), devotion to a personal god, as the way of
salvation alongside the way of knowledge ( jnana) and the way of works (karma).
Though, as Brockington points out, bhakti in the Gita is much more austere than
its later development at the hands of Vaishnavism, it repositions salvation or re-
lease from the cycle of rebirths (moksha) ‘away from a distant future to an im-
mediate and direct relationship with the deity’ (1996:59). For Ramanuja (c. 1137)
relationship to the deity was through bhakti as intense devotion and submission to
Narayan (Vishnu), whose qualities are grace and compassion. Both Vaishnavite
and Saivite sects engaged in emotional worship in the belief that the god also
resided in the heart of the devotee. In a later Vaishnavite work, the Bhagavad
Purana, this relationship is portrayed in explicitly erotic imagery. Sikhism too, in
its earlier stages, was influenced by bhakti and this is reflected in the songs of its
founder Guru Nanak (see Heiler 1927:20ff for a useful discussion).
Sundar Singh, then, grew up in an atmosphere of religion as deep devotion to a
personal god, and it is not surprising that this should have shaped his approach to
the Christian faith. His conversion experience is ample testimony to this. While
it is true that even at this stage (he was only fifteen at the time) he did have a
rudimentary knowledge of some parts of the New Testament, he had reacted vio-
lently against it, even destroying a copy he had been given by a well-intentioned
Christian. Sundar Singh gave his own account of the dramatic vision which led
to his conversion several times (they are not always entirely self-consistent). Per-
haps the most authentic version is recorded by Appasamy (1958:20-1). The key
elements in it – a deep adolescent angst, agonised despair at his life leading to
suicidal tendencies, a night spent in prayer, a vision of light and an audible voice
– are not perhaps altogether unusual in accounts of dramatic conversions. But the

34 On the devotion of his mother see Appasamy 1958:17-19,47.

35 On Vaishavism (the cult of Vishnu) see Gonda (1963:115-187), Eliot (1921:228-161,Brockington
(1996:51ff), and on the bhakti tradition Brockington (1996:130-40),Embree (1991:274-95,319-
331).
36 There are many translations of the Bhagavadgita. The standard edition with the Sanskrit text by
Radhkrishnan (1949) gives it a monistic advaita interpretation.

38
significant thing with Sundar Singh is that he was not expecting to see a vision
of Christ, but if anything one of Krishna, Buddha or some other Hindu avatar.
There can be little question that his conversion, authentically Christian though it
certainly was, was mediated through the forms and symbolism of his Sikh-Hindu
early experience. And when he subsequently set out on his life’s mission it was in
the dress of the Hindu sadhu (holy man) – which he never gave up – and to follow
the sadhu’s itinerant way of life. This was, as he later was to put it, the Christian
water of life in an Indian cup.37 Furthermore, like so many Indian Christians be-
fore and after him, he had little time for the institution of a formal church.38
Sundar Singh raises some fundamental issues about the Christian faith, which
indeed have a long history. Primarily he raises the question of the relationship be-
tween confession of belief in Christ and personal experience of Christ. This is not
an issue which has attracted a great deal of serious attention from academic theo-
logians in the modern period, though recently Larry Hurtado’s writing on Christ-
devotion in early Christianity has opened up the debate at a more fundamental
level. The experiential nature of Sundar Singh’s religion is also reflected in the
way in which his ideas were communicated. He wrote no ponderous theological
tomes, no theoretical explication of his christology or anything else. In Streeter’s
words (1921:viii) he was ‘no metaphysician, no scientist, no higher critic.’ He
was a preacher seeking to stir the soul of his hearers through narrative, parable
and vision rather than through doctrinal argument. The records of his addresses
and his own writings run into several volumes and (like those of most prolific
theologians) are not always self-consistent, though the theme of ‘christological
mysticism’ (to use Streeter’s phrase) runs like a translucent leit motif throughout
them all. Passing from Brahmabandhab Upadhyay to Sundar Singh is rather like
passing from the New Testament epistles to the teaching of Jesus in the Synoptic
Gospels. But as Westcott once remarked ‘the Synoptic narratives are implicit
dogmas’ as well. In analysing Sundar Singh’s thought then our task is not a simple
one. It is to try to distill a more coherent christology (in the traditional sense of
that word) from material which is homiletic, devotional and unsystematic, and
which usually addressed specific contexts. This approach, combined with a nar-
rative of his remarkable life, was broadly that adopted by Streeter and Appasamy,
and by Heiler.
Streeter and Appasamy’s The Sadhu: a study in mysticism and practical re-
ligion (1921) was the first critical account of the life and teachings of Sundar

37 I can only find a recorded saying which puts this negatively: ‘Indians greatly need the water of
life, but they do not want it in European vessels’ (in Boyd 1991:109).
38 Though he retained fairly cordial relations with the Anglican church and accepted the
sacraments,he felt he could not limit his ministry to it nor be circumscribed by its ecclesiastical
structures.

39
Singh.39 It was the result of intensive contact and interviews with Sundar Singh
during his first visit to Europe in 1920, as well as research into records of his
addresses. Streeter’s insights are especially valuable not only for his critical yet
sympathetic theological stance, but also because he was also trained in psychol-
ogy and therefore able to assess Sundar Singh’s accounts of his ecstatic experi-
ences from the more scientific standpoint of the time. Streeter seems to have been
the first to coin the term ‘christocentric mysticism’ and referred to Sundar Singh
as a twentieth century St Francis (1921:vii). Heiler (1927:222) agrees and cites as
evidence of Sundar Singh’s belonging to ‘the great family of Christian mystics’
his love of solitude, his practice of meditation, his theocentric prayer, and his
visions and ecstasies, especially of heaven. The source of all this was his devo-
tion to the person of Jesus. However Heiler goes on to point out that he was no
other-worldly contemplative, but one who exercised a relentlessly active practical
Christian ministry of preaching and evangelism, who ‘combined the vita contem-
plativa with a vita activa.’ As Sundar Singh himself put it ‘God did not create us
to live in caves but to go out amongst men and help them.’ In what follows I shall
allow Sundar Singh to speak for himself from the sayings taken from his writings
and addresses.
Central to Sundar Singh’s christology is the notion of real experience of Christ
through Christ-union. Though he has no problem with the reality and truthful-
ness of the Gospels, Christ is not simply an historical figure. While he sharply
rejected the biblical criticism of his time, he was no fundamentalist. It was not
the actual words of scripture which were inspired but its meaning: ‘Just as my
clothes are not myself so words are only human language: it is not the words but
the inward meaning that is important.’ The written testimony of the Gospels then
is is of secondary importance to the real experience of Christ. First and foremost
Jesus is one who lives and works within the disciple today. ‘He was not merely
in the Bible, but He is in our hearts.’ Thus he can claim that the Bible speaks of
a Saviour who ‘is independent of history’ because he is eternally with us.40 His
continual emphasis is on the ‘Living Christ.’ The Christian ‘religion’ (his term) is
internal, and knowledge is spiritual and intuitive, not based on external evidences
or on theological learning. Religion then is ‘a matter of the heart… if we give our
hearts we can understand its truth.’ Thus ‘to know Jesus does not require book
knowledge, but you have to give your heart.’ He argues that he did not believe in
Jesus because he read about him in the New Testament but because ‘I saw Him
and experienced Him and know Him in my daily experience.’ While this is an

39 There were at least two popular devotional accounts prior to this. Rebecca Parker’s was first
published in Travancore in 1919, and reprinted later (see 5th edition, Sundar Singh, called of
God CLS, Madras 1924); Alfred Zahir published The Apostle of Bleeding Feet in Agra in 1919.
40 Perhaps ‘independent of’ is misleading, his meaning is rather Christ transcends history.

40
oblique reference to his conversion vision, that for him was but the beginning of
the continual presence of the living Christ. ‘I feel the presence of Christ without
seeing Him either with my physical eyes, as in the case of my vision before my
conversion, or with my spiritual eyes, as in the case of my ecstatic experiences.’
This is the continual presence of Christ in the heart ‘who is ever with us and
goes on living in the lives of Christians.’ He was in fact very reluctant to speak
in public about his visions, for he understood them as simply a heightened aware-
ness of the presence of Jesus as ‘a living reality which must be experienced.’ An
important part of this christological mysticism was the suffering which became
a hallmark of his evangelistic ministry, especially in his missions to Tibet. He
frequently remarks that the presence of Jesus Christ was most real to him dur-
ing times of persecution and physical hardship, for this to him was to share in
the suffering of Christ’s cross. Streeter (1921:78) indeed comments that Sundar
Singh had what could only be called an ‘enthusiasm’ for suffering because it
meant a deepened ‘companionship with the Beloved.’ Suffering for him signified
the assurance of the love of God. ‘Through suffering God strikes us in love …
His presence can turn hell into heaven.’41 Again: ‘In suffering I have always had
such a strong sense of the presence of Christ that no doubt could cross my mind.’
The cross is understood as the supreme demonstration and key to God’s love, for
‘without the cross we should know nothing of the love of our heavenly Father.’ At
the same time he uses the conventional language of the atonement as redemption,
though his emphasis is on salvation as realised through union with God in Christ.
‘The Atonement,’ he writes, ‘achieved a union which was not there before. He in
us and we in Him.’ For Sundar Singh Christ-union was sustained by prolonged
prayer and meditation, often resulting in ecstatic and visionary experiences. He
regarded prayer less as intercession than as communion – ‘ask not for the gifts
but for the Giver.’ His out-of-body experiences are perhaps the most problematic
aspect of his spirituality for the western reader, and Sundar Singh tended to share
them only with those who were sympathetic to his mysticism. Not all of his vi-
sions were of Christ himself, and some of his visionary experiences of heaven are
not dissimilar to shamanist ecstasy.42
Sundar Singh was clearly one whose experiences were beyond the boundar-
ies of normal Christians, which makes it difficult to assess his position in the
development of christology. He himself in fact acknowledged on more than one
occasion that not all Christians were called to engage in prolonged prayer and

41 The Cross is Heaven is the title of a collection of his sayings published by Appasamy.
42 For a sympathetic but critical discussion see Appasamy (1958:211ff.) Streeter aptly commented
that since ‘any revelation of the Divine must be conditioned by the mental outlook, culture, and
general experience of the recipient … we shall not be inclined to deny that the visions may be
a general revelation of truth’ (1921:114).

41
meditation or receive ecstatic visions, and that these were reserved for the very
few. Indeed there is a strand of spiritual elitism which runs through his whole
story, even if this elitism is moderated by his intense humility. There is an inevi-
table distance between the spiritual athletes like Sundar Singh (and other mys-
tics) and us, which raises doubts whether his very exceptional and individual
christological mysticism can ever become part of mainstream christological
reflection (Boyd 1991:106). If we accept Sundar Singh’s conviction that knowl-
edge of Christ (he would hardly have used the term christology) must be based
primarily on deep personal experience, we shall logically also have to ques-
tion whether theology itself can be mainly propositional, and indeed perhaps
question the whole enterprise of ‘systematic theology.’43 Larry Hurtado’s recent
work on early Christianity (2005, 1998) has however, I believe, made the idea of
‘Christ-devotion’ historically and theologically respectable. Hurtado argues that
intense devotion to Christ was probably the main characteristic of the earliest
Christians, and that the high claims for Jesus in the New Testament writings,
including his deity, are a logical corollary of this devotion. This would be a kind
of doxological approach to christology, devotion and worship crystallising into
doctrine. On this view christology (and all theology) is essentially the verbalisa-
tion of Christian experience rather than rationalisation from ‘objective’ sources.
What we have in the New Testament (later theology’s objective sources) would
then be the record of the Christ-devotion (the experience) of the earliest Chris-
tians.
For Sundar Singh doctrine had much less value than experience, though in
fact he was much more conservative theologically than this might suggest. He
broadly accepted the doctrines of the church of his time rather than reaching
conclusions on the basis of his own personal experience of Christ. There can be
little doubt that the nature of this experience was moulded by the bhakti tradition
which so much shaped his early years. But his christological mysticsm differed
sharply from Hindu bhakti at two crucial points. For him union with Christ did
not obliterate the human personality, it was not absorption into the Absolute, the
atman into the Brahman, as in Vedantic Hinduism. However one with Christ
he felt himself to be this union did not swallow up his individual consciousness.
Secondly, there is absolutely no trace in Sundar Singh’s writings of the kind of
eroticism which characterise the Bhagavat Purana’s portrayals of the ecstatic
union of the soul with the god. While the bhakti tradition must have been at the
root of his perception of Christ it was profoundly modified by what he learned as
a Christian.

43 I am inclined to agree that ‘systematic’ theology is a concept derived from Greek philosophical
tradition and not necessarily at root a ‘Christian’ concept, though that does not entirely invali-
date it.

42
 Doctrinal theology has always been more than a little uncomfortable with the
Christ-devotion of the mystics, perhaps because it appeals to emotion rather than
to rational thought, but mainly because it is notoriously difficult to pin down in
precise theological terminology. How to formulate systematically the kind of
Christ-experience of a personality of Sundar Singh’s sensitivity is undoubtedly
problematic. However if Hurtado is right, not to attempt to do so is to leave a
substantial gap in any comprehensive analysis of the meaning of the person of
Christ.44

44 I am reminded of D.M.Bailie’s comment that ‘God cannot be comprehended in any human

words or categories of our finite human speech. God can only be known in a direct personal re-
lationship, or ‘I-Thou’ intercourse, in which he addresses us and we respond to him’ (1948:108).

43
III. Jesus: Incarnation and the Raw Fact

Among the successors of Brahmabandhab in his rejection of the ‘western clothes’

of Christian theology were a group of South Indian Christian thinkers. They were
already well known within the Madras church for their writing in journals and
papers by the time they came to wider attention through the publication of a
collection of essays to which they gave the provoking title Rethinking Christian-
ity in India. Consequently they became known as the ‘Rethinking Group’. The
book received considerable attention as it was released on the eve of the Inter-
national Missionary Council’s conference in Tambaram, Madras in 1938. On the
agenda for this meeting was Hendrik Kraemer’s The Christian Message in the
Non-Christian World, in which he espoused a Barthian negative position towards
non-Christian religions. Rethinking Christianity was partly a counter to Barthian
absolutism, but it was at the same time a plea for Christian thinkers in India to
explore the use of sanskritic categories and Hindu religious values.

Vengal Chakkarai: Jesus and Incarnation

‘Dogmas are a knowledge of feeling, and in no way an immediate knowledge about opera-
tions of the universe that gave rise to feelings’
(Friedrich Schleiermacher On Religion, Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, 1799).

The two leading members of the Rethinking group were Vengal Chakkarai (1880-
1958) and Pendipeddi Chenchiah Chetty (1886-1959). They had a number of
things in common and were in fact brothers in law45. Both were born into higher
non-Brahmin castes, and both had studied at Madras Christian College under
Dr William Miller,46 where they received a western style education. Neither was
formally trained in theology, but their writings show a remarkably thorough ac-
quaintance with the western philosophical, theological, and scientific scholarship
of the time. Both attained to prominence in public life.47 More significantly, nei-
ther was willing to surrender his Indian cultural heritage to western intellectual
and Christian imperialism. Together they edited the Christian Patriot, in which

45 Chakkarai’s first wife was Chenchiah’s sister.

46 Miller espoused a fulfillment theology, Hinduism finds its fulfillment in Christianity.
47 Chenchiah became a chief judge, and Chakkarai was Mayor of Madras.

45
they advocated a Christianity which would be truly Indian. Chakkarai especially
was influenced by Gandhi earlier in his career, and had engaged in the nationalist
struggle and the non-cooperation movement. In politics he was a strong socialist,
at one time becoming the chair of the All India Trade Unions, and subsequently
after independence supporting the Communist opposition in Tamilnadu. These
social and political convictions influenced his opinion on the shape Christianity
should take in India.48 M.M.Thomas comments that for Chakkarai theology was
two-sided in that the ‘union of the believer with God can never be without its out-
working on the political scene’ (1992:95). His social activism had its basis in his
emphasis on the cosmic dimensions of the work of the Spirit and his conviction
that Indian Christians needed to grasp afresh the meaning of Pentecost in order to
address contemporary challenges. Like so many prominent Indian Christians of
the time he was not enthusiastic about the institutional church, which he consid-
ered too western, and he favoured rather the ashram model. Chakkarai contrib-
uted widely to journals and papers, but the main thrust of his theology however is
summed up in two longer works, Jesus the Avatar (1927) and The Cross in Indian
Thought (1932),49 and in the papers he contributed to Rethinking Christianity in
India (1938). As Boyd comments (1991:167) for both Chakkarai and Chenchiah
theology begins with christology.
Chakkarai’s theology rests on two assumptions. The first is that revelation,
though consummated finally in Christ, is not unique to Christianity. Revelation,
and indeed the concept of incarnation, is to be found also in other faiths, espe-
cially in Hinduism. This is ‘the background of Indian Christianity’ (1981:43). In
his own summary of the argument of Jesus the Avatar (with which he introduces
his second book, The Cross in Indian Thought) he says his aim was to explicate
the meaning of Jesus using ‘the resources of Indian thought and the heritage
of Indian religions.’ For him, while Christianity is unique, it still ‘has to be re-
lated to pre-Christian religious thought’ (1981:199). The reason for this is simply
that we cannot write Christianity on a clean slate, ‘because the slate isn’t clean’
(1981:201), nor can it be. For the Indian it has already been written on by the ex-
perience of Hinduism. He does not want to dismiss Judaism (as Chenchiah did)
since it was the context of historical Christianity, and was the world-view of the
first Jewish disciples. But for him it is Hinduism which is the valid route through
which Indians can enter faith in Christ. Thus Christianity in India is fundamen-

48 Though his socio-political convictions are not much in evidence in his two main works, they
are clear from the articles he wrote in the Christian Patriot and Madras Guardian between the
years 1919-26.
49 These two works were reprinted in Vengal Chakkarai vol. 1, together with an introduction to
his life and theology by P.T. Thomas (Avatar pp. 42-198, Cross 199-384, CLS, Madras 1981):
page references are to this edition.

46
tally different from what it is in the West. ‘Our minds,’ he argues, ‘are full today
of theological ideas, and even forms of the religious life, imported into India by
representatives of Western Christianity.’ (1981:203). These need to be replaced by
indigenous thought forms. ‘Hindu thought,’ he claims, ‘has a noble function and
mission in the reinterpretation of Christianity’ (1981:202). This applies especially
to christology. For him the system of Hinduism which provided the ‘background’
for his conversion was Saiva Siddhanta50 of south India. The manifestations of
Siva in the world are always for a specific work and purpose, but unlike the incar-
nation of Christ they are simply appearances, ‘appearance with reality’ as Chak-
karai puts it (1981:45). (In terms of Christian concepts the avatar has often been
described as docetic). It is in his view not only legitimate but necessary to replace
the traditional western theological language with terminology drawn from the
sanskritic Hindu tradition. So not only does he embrace the term avatar for the
incarnation of Christ, but language borrowed from the realm of yogic religious
philosophy abounds in his work, especially terms such as atman (soul, being) and
its derivatives, bhakti (worship, devotion), antaryamin (the indwelling of God),
samadhi (deep contemplation of God), and so on.51 This feature of his work can
perhaps be somewhat alienating to the western reader. What Chakkarai is doing
here is to reposition theology and Christian experience within the context of the
Hindu tradition which would have been familiar to his Indian readers, and away
from received western theological language. He is inculturating the language and
concepts of the Christian faith within his own national context.52 He also believed
that God was at work in the explorations of Hindu thinkers and holy men of the
past. ‘It is the same paratman (Supreme Spirit) that was in the rishis, and by
whom they spoke at different times and degrees, who is the secret of Christian
consciousness’ (1981:155). Like the Old Testament prophets, the Hindu saints had
a partial foreknowledge of the Messiah. The commonality between Christianity
and Hinduism is in what he terms the ‘Spirit’, a key concept for him.
The other, and perhaps the dominating, foundation of his theological method
is the primacy of religious experience, which is effected by the Holy Spirit. It is

50 The Saiva Siddhanta school regards Siva as the ultimate Being. Avatar is not an actual incarna-
tion of the diety in physical form since Sivam (the impersonal form of Siva) is formless and can-
not be involved in the material process. Sivam manifests itself in different forms to free the soul
from bondage to impurity, matter and egocentricity (the last is key for Chakkarai). This school
especially stresses shakti (divine energy associated with the feminine principle) and the role of
the guru whose teaching and example dispels ignorance. It generally adopts the philosophical
system of advaita, non-dualism. See further Radhakrishnan (1962:722-37), Gonda (1963:188-
252), Eliot (1921:206-227, 274-290), Brockington (1996:140-45).
51 As Boyd remarks ‘of all Indian theologians he makes the most extensive use of Hindu terminol-
ogy’ (1991:166).
52 Which of course is precisely what the Greek fathers did.

47
only religious experience which can give solid ground for the knowledge of God,
not philosophical argumentation or historical research. ‘All thinking should take
account of the chief element in Christian experience,’ he argues, ‘that is the living
power of the Spirit of Jesus’ (1981:202). The emphasis on the Spirit opens up a
whole range of ideas, not least with regard to Jesus himself. Though eschewing
the discussion which was then current of the ‘self-consciousness’ of Jesus, he
is nevertheless interested in the inner experiences of Jesus as portrayed in the
Gospels. He sees the earthly life of Jesus as a dynamic process of growth from
the incarnation proper, deepened by his life of prayer and communion with God,
through to the death, resurrection and ascension, and continued in the impact of
the living resurrected Jesus upon the world through the Spirit. The Spirit is really
the key to his theology. Indeed one might say that Chakkarai is more interested
in the post-resurrection Spirit of Jesus than he is in the earthly life. The Spirit is
the Spirit of Jesus, which leads Chakkarai to a blurring of the Persons within the
Trinity (a concept which he rejects in its traditional form). Religious experience
is not easy to discuss in specific and logical language, and Chakkarai in places
embraces poetic and rhetorical expression which does not always serve for clari-
ty.53 But this is perhaps also an aspect of his protest against what he sees as the
paucity of western theological discourse.
As M.M. Thomas commented, christology stands in the centre of Chakka-
rai’s theology (1992:95), but it is a christology which is inseparable from the re-
lated theme of the Spirit. He believes that only through Incarnation can we come
fully to know God. God in himself is unknowable to the human mind. We know
only the fringes of his ways with the imperfect and incomplete knowledge of the
prophets and seers. This unknown God can only be known through the ‘some-
what known Jesus’ (1981:162). Christian theology then has to begin with Jesus.
The question as to whether Jesus fully and completely reveals the Absolute God is
an irrelevance, for all that we can possibly know is the manifest God (Christ), not
the unmanifest (1981:192), and it is only that which can be the content of theology.
‘Whatever else may be in the unknown God besides the life that pulsated in Jesus
human thought cannot say, but to us it is enough that God is as Jesus’ (1981:197).
What we know about Jesus is pre-eminently known through human religious
experience. Knowledge of God is thus experiencial, not logical or speculative.
‘Incarnation’ is always capitalised by Chakkarai and his understanding of it is
far more comprehensive than what is normally understood by the term. Under-
standing the incarnation comes from our religious experience of which Christ is
both the origin and the focus. His point is that christology does not begin with the
statements of the church (which start from the assumption of his deity within the

53 Boyd (1991: 1666) comments with justification that his ‘purple’ language sometimes leaves the
reader with the feeling that it is difficult to see the wood for the trees!

48
Trinity), nor even from the New Testament scriptures, which are in themselves
simply the reflection of the original experience of its several authors and which
are not uniform. Experience of Jesus is conveyed to us by the Spirit effecting the
union with Christ which reveals him to us and in us. ‘It is only by organic and
mystical union with Jesus,’ he writes, ‘that the jivatman (individual soul) attains
the revelation that he wrought’ (1981:162). This is a very christocentric view of
revelation, but not one which (like say Barth) begins by assuming the dogma of
the Trinity. Rather it begins with the Christ who is mediated to Christian experi-
ence through his everliving Spirit.
Chakkarai described his Jesus the Avatar as ‘an attempt to explain the sig-
nificance of the Personality who was, has been, and is the fountain of light in the
Christian consciousness’ (1981:199). In the incarnation God speaks through his
Word directly, which supersedes the written Torah, as the living word replaces
the ‘dead’ word. Incarnation is not simply the earthly life of Jesus. It is a much
more wide ranging concept of which the taking of flesh and blood is only the
beginning. Incarnation is a process of growth and development, spanning the
earthly life which culminated in the cross, and going on to embrace the resur-
rection, ascension and the coming of the Holy Spirit by which Jesus continues to
impart himself to his followers.
The need to assert the humanity of Christ, Chakkarai points out, is in itself
quite strange, for in the case of no other figure in history has it been necessary to
demonstrate that he was a human being. But in Jesus the idea of humanity goes
beyond what we normally understand it to mean. Indeed, in Chakkarai’s view,
we should rather judge our humanity by that of Jesus, not vice versa, for he alone
not only ‘conforms to to our idea of what a man is … but he raises it to a higher
level’ (1981:63). His perfect manhood is seen in his life of prayer and in his sense
of his intimate relationship to God. The sinless perfection of Jesus’ life reveals to
us the possibilities of what humanity was really meant to be, and it is ‘his human-
ity (which) lays down the measure and norm of our humanity’ (1981:93), for he is
the ‘original pattern in the mind of God after which all men have been fashioned’
(1981:130). He is sat parusha (true, real person) ‘the miracle of humanity’ whose
existence is not flawed by any taint of unreality (maya). His perfection is summed
up in his relationship to God which is manifested especially in the intimacy of
his prayers. He compares this ‘prayer-consciousness’ of Jesus to the yoga (sa-
madhi, absorbed contemplation) of the rishis, by which they sought union with
God, but his is ‘the yoga of prayer of the loftiest kind’ (1981:64,66). If we would
understand the nature of this intimate relationship then we too must enter into
this yogic prayer, which is not only contemplation but also communion. Prayer
and communion with God is the means to attaining our true humanity. ‘Prayer is,
in the deepest sense, the realisation of our being … (in which) we get a glimpse

49
of what we are’ (1981:68). The prayer consciousness of Jesus was such that it
defined him as the true man, the fulfilled ideal of humanity, to which we can
hardly approximate. While Chakkarai does discuss several aspects of the earthly
life of Jesus (for example the miracles) one suspects he is less interested in the
historical figure of Jesus than in Christ as the perfect Man in whom the Spirit was
supremely manifested.54 For the earthly Jesus is for him only the beginning of
his continuous ‘Incarnation.’ Thus what the resurrection appearances confirmed
for the disciples was ‘the simple truth … that the Lord had not left them but by
some mysterious process had come to live in their hearts.’ The life of the incar-
nate one is transformed, but at the same time continued in the resurrection and
ascension: this brings about the gift of the Spirit of Jesus at Pentecost, to fill the
hearts of his devotees (bhaktas) and his community (sangha). Thus Jesus has be-
come ‘universalised’ by the Spirit by which God had made himself real to human
beings (1981:147-51). So he can quote with approval (though with a somewhat
different import) the words of Schweitzer that ‘Jesus means something to our
world because a mighty spiritual force streams forth from him and flows to our
time also.’ When the early Christians spoke abut Jesus, Chakkarai argues, they
did not mean the historical figure of Jesus but ‘the living Christ whose presence
was felt residing in them’ (1981:150). Thus the historical Jesus and the spiritual
Jesus – that is, the Spirit of Jesus dwelling in the bhakta – are ‘two sides of one
reality’ (1981:181). The incarnation (in this comprehensive sense) has released a
new energy and power (shakti) in which a new relationship between God and man
has been established. This he calls the ‘emergence of new forces’, a fresh stage in
the ‘evolution’ (Chakkarai’s word) of the creative energy of God, Jesus himself
being the ‘first-born of a new creation.’ In Chakkarai’s interpretation of Incarna-
tion the Jesus of history is but the starting point of a dynamic process in which
‘his historical Personality is continued even today and has the cosmic energy of
cosmic reality’ (1981:287, 292). Incarnation is for him a long process, which takes
in not only the earthly life, but the resurrection, ascension, and the parousia, by
which he means the immanent Christ mediated by the Spirit.
The knowledge of God for Chakkarai, then, is mediated by the continued pres-
ence and operation of Christ in the indwelling of the Spirit, through which the
soul of the disciple in devotion and insight are fully in union with the soul of
the Lord (1981:117). This transcends the merely human and therefore has an ele-
ment of mystery about it (1981:50-51). In this indwelling ‘the living and eternal
atman (soul) of Jesus energises the jivatman (individual soul)’ (1981:116). While

54 He accepts what he calls the ‘essential historicity and genuineness’ of the Synoptic Gospels,
while also allowing for later additions to them (1981:55). But he believes that historical research
is like ‘seeking the living among the dead’: it might discover facts but for him the real issue is
the effect Jesus had and continues to have on human lives (1981:130).

50
the Synoptic Gospels may give us external information about Jesus (which he
calls the ‘phenomena’), in common with many Indian Christians he believes it is
the Fourth Gospel which speaks most clearly to the Indian heart.55 John’s medi-
tative theology is ‘the quintessence of the religious spirit and the goal of yogic
aspirations and the communings with antaryamin’ (1981:116). Antaryamin is a
key word for Chakkarai and implies ‘the one who dwells, rules, guides, within.’
It is the indwelling of God within the disciple. Indwelling is effected through the
Spirit, ‘the Antarama, who becomes the life of all Christian bhaktas.’ The clas-
sic text for this is Gal. 2.20, which shows Paul was not interested in ‘Christ after
the flesh’, but rather that the historical Jesus is subsumed into the present, living
spiritual Christ (1981:122, 135). Pentecost is thus the ‘third stage in the history
of the Incarnation’ after the earthly life and the resurrection. For the disciple
the Spirit is in fact Jesus himself, and as Jesus is the avatar of God so the Holy
Spirit in human life is the incarnation of Christ. Western theology, he claims, has
neglected the Spirit and because of this has actually misrepresented Jesus. For
western thought history is primary, whereas for Indian thought it is the Spirit
which is the point of entry (1981:122-5). The experience of the Spirit of Christ
dominates the theology of both Paul and John. While the nature of the Spirit is
indeed difficult to grasp intellectually (as Jn. 3 shows) nevertheless the believer is
conscious of the experience of the Spirit of Jesus, which reveals Him to and in us.
One might question whether Chakkarai does not play down the death of Christ
in the interests of his comprehensive and inclusive understanding of incarnation.
This was, however, scarcely true of his own experience, since he acknowledged
that his conversion came about mainly through a contemplation of the cross
(M.M.Thomas 1992:93; Boyd 1991:165). He admits that the crucifixion is to us
a mystery beyond human vision that cannot be explained by human reason, but
believes it was necessary to establish the Kingdom (1981:301, 86-7). In his later
book, The Cross in Indian Thought, he argues that atonement is many sided. In
places his concept of sin leans towards regarding it as illusion (maya), non-being
or unreality, which the cross enables us to overcome. Elsewhere he understands
the death of Christ within the categories of Hindu sacrifice (yajna), through which
divine power (shakti) is released.56 He recognises the cross as a symbol of grace
and leans towards a moral influence theory. ‘The cross,’ he writes, ‘stands where
the turbid ebb and flow of human life and the unresting stream of Divine grace
meet to be transformed in the Person of Jesus’ (1981:208). More significantly it
demonstrates that God is a suffering God for ‘after the cross it is hardly possible

55 Westcott once commented that the ultimate commentary on John would have to be written by
an Indian.
56 This is a view of sacrifice widespread in the history of religions, and similar to the Hebrew
concept that the shedding of sacrificial blood releases life.

51
for the bhakta to envisage a God without suffering’ (1981:312).57 The suffering of
the cross was, he believed, the suffering of the Godhead not of the human Jesus
alone. Such a view seems to envisage a change within the very nature of God, and
for Chakkarai God is not static and unchangeable, any more than he is impassible.
Through the process of incarnation an element of humanity has, as it were, been
absorbed into the Godhead. So Chakkarai can claim that ‘Incarnation has raised
human nature to the very height of God, as it has enriched the Divine mind with
the very texture and hues of man’s life on earth’ (1981:197). Incarnation then is a
dynamic new movement – an ‘evolution’ – of the creative energy of God.
There also a cosmic dimension to this which enabled Chakkarai to link his
christology to the social and political action that characterised him throughout his
life. Christ acts not only on the individual soul of his bhaktas, but also through
them upon the whole world. ‘To find Christ,’ he argues,’is to find the harmonis-
ing principle that will reduce the chaos of facts in the universe’ – that is, awaken
the conscience to the fact that we find in Christ ‘liberator, friend of the poor and
outcastes, and oppressed’ (1981:50). Thus Christ’s influence is a universal one.
In the appearance and continuing presence of Christ in the Spirit he draws us to
‘new heights of humanity’. The death and resurrection are themselves ‘a new step
in evolution’ (1981:112). In The Cross this dynamic process is applied also to the
world of nature: ‘He who is the redeemer of man is also the redeemer of nature’
(1981:361). God is thus continually active, and the incarnation is the initiating of
a process which will lead to its consummation in what he calls ‘the completion
of the plan in God’s mind’ (1981:295). Incarnation is not just an event in the past,
nor even only in the continued presence of Christ in his disciples and in the world
through the Spirit, but it is also a cosmic eschatological process.
How does he then envisage the relationship between God, Christ, and the
Spirit? Chakkarai scarcely uses the term Trinity, and only rarely does he talk
about the ‘personality’ of God. When he does use this term it is to emphasise
God’s inscrutable transcendence.58 Chakkarai notes that the Synoptic Gospels
show that Jesus believed he had a unique relationship with God (Mt.11.26//Lk.
10.22). The realisation of his sonship was, he argues, ‘the real structure of his
deepest consciousness’ (1981:71). This closeness is seen most clearly in the narra-
tives of the baptism and transfiguration and, as we have noted, pervades his life
of prayer. But unlike saviour figures in the pagan world he not only remains fully

57 This is an earlier challenge to the dogma of the impassibility of God than that of Kitamori’s
The Theology of the Pain of God (1947). Already in 1932 another South Indian, C.T. Paul, had
published a book with the title The Suffering God.
58 ‘God is personal, and his Personality is the greatest fact we can have any true knowledge of’
(1981:361). This is rather like his use of ‘humanity’ – our humanity and personality are a flawed
reflection of God’s.

52
man, but also taught that he would return in Spirit in the hearts of his disciples
(1981:140, 133). Chakkarai argues that ‘Jesus in his earthly career, claimed to be
a full manifestation of God … based on unity of nature and function’ (1981:197).
We cannot then think of God without also thinking of Jesus Christ, and through
him both ‘our knowledge of God and our spiritual relationship to God has been
profoundly altered’ (1981:159). Jesus shows the rupa (form, splendour) of God
and removes the veil from his face (1981:164-5). The incarnation has made God
immanent in a ‘human immanence by which God takes his place among man for
the salvation of souls, for the destruction of the wicked and the protection of the
righteous (1981:182).59 The life of Jesus then represents what he calls ‘the expla-
nation of the working of the mind of God’ (1981:196). Behind this argument is
the assumption of the ultimate unknowability of God: the human mind can never
grasp God as he really is in his essential Being (Nirguna Brahma, God without
attributes) (1981:182, 287). All we can know is God as he appears and reveals
himself to us, and as he is perceived in human experience (Ishwara Brahma). He
is thus sceptical of the doctrine of the Trinity, for this is only a rationalisation of
the Godhead, not its reality. To claim that the ‘Godhead is a society of distinc-
tions’ is not to look in ‘the Divine abyss’ but is merely our perception on the basis
of our religious experience.
How can Chakkarai disallow the traditional Trinitarian distinction between
the ‘persons’ and yet hold to the continued existence of Jesus in the Spirit? In
a provocative paper published later in his life he addressed the concept of ‘per-
sonality’ or ‘personhood’ in an innovative way.60 This paper shows both his con-
tinuing indebtedness to Keshab Chandra Sen, as well as his eagerness to adopt
sanskritic categories in which to rethink christology. He takes his cue from Sen’s
comment that Jesus was ‘the most ego-less person in history and the most univer-
sal of all.’ In Indian thought the human ego, individual personhood (aham, self or
ego; anavam, individual self) is not something completely positive, but rather it is
in some sense a limitation.61 Personality in God, therefore, cannot be compared to
or reflect personality in man. In man the human ego is ambivalent, it is his worst

59 This is virtually a quotation from the Bhagavadgita IV 7-8 describing the avatar of Vishnu as
Krishna: ‘Wherever there is a decline of righteousness and rise of unrighteousness, O Bharata
(Arjuna), then I send forth (create, incarnate) Myself: For the protection of the good, for the
destruction of the wicked, and for the establishment of righteousness, I come into being from
age to age’ (S. Radhakrishnan’s translation, 1960 p. 154-5).
60 The paper was first published in the Madras Guardian xxii, 1944. It has been reprinted as The
Historical Jesus and the Christ of Experience in Readings in Sugirtharajah and Hargreaves
(1993: 78-82). Page references are to this version.
61 Compare the description of the perfect man in Bhagavadgita XII 13, ‘he who is friendly and
compassionate, free from egoism and self-sense’ (Rhadakrishnan’s trans.) Hence moksha (sal-
vation, release) is in classical Hinduism the absorption of the soul into Brahman.

53
enemy and (possibly) his best friend (1981:78-9). Nirguna Brahma, God without
attributes, implies that God is also without personality (as an attribute). Jesus,
Chakkarai argues, claimed nothing for himself and was never conscious of his
own ego – ‘his life as a man, or the Man, was supremely not merely unselfish but
ego-less’ for his purpose was to reduce his ‘I’ to nothing and to destroy ‘human
egoism, the personal self’ (1993:80). The cross represents the ultimate kenosis of
Christ’s ego. It was the nadir of his personhood, a final self-emptying at which
point only the indwelling God remained. After the cross came the resurrection
when ‘he became the divine human, indwelling Christ … out of the nothingness
of the Jesus of history the Christ arose.’ This ‘negation’ was not extinction, but
‘the emergence into a more positive being’ than even the historical Jesus. So this
‘Jesus plus Christ combination is a new thing in the relations between God and
man’ which is no longer ‘personal’ (1993:81). Since we worship Christ as God,
he argues, ‘we cannot meet the difficulty that we are worshipping the creature
instead of the Creator unless Christ is not a human individuality any more. The
historical Jesus was a man with an ego, but when he rose from the dead and
entered into the essence of God he ceased to be a human being, but became a
universal spirit, though with the experience of his human history.’ What Chak-
karai is trying to do here is to free theology from its insistence on the traditional
language of ‘person’62 and to use Hindu concepts to formulate a new perspective
on christology not constrained by the language of an inherited western tradition.
How may we assess Chakkarai’s christology? Positively it is a brave attempt
to replace traditional creedal language and concepts with those drawn from the
Hinduism with which his readers would be familiar. He freely admits that this
terminology does not always fit – avatar, which he uses as the title of his first
book, for example, turns out in his interpretation to be very different from the in-
carnations of Vishnu in popular Hinduism, though it is also much fuller and more
comprehensive than incarnation as traditionally understood in Christian theol-
ogy. Chakkarai is quite ready to modify the content of sanskritic terms if need
be. As Boyd points out (1991:185) Chakkarai does not simply replace Greek terms
with Sanskrit ones, but rather he tries to work out a ‘new expression’ of Chris-
tian theology through by-passing classical terms. Whether his sanskritisation of
Christian discourse resonates with western theologians is not the point here. His
methodology is actually quite legitimate in doing what contextual always does by
adopting language and concepts which are familiar to its audience.
The bigger problem with Chakkarai (and it applies also to Christian bhakti
generally) seems to me one of authority. For Chakkarai ultimate authority is not
found in scripture or tradition, but comes from the Spirit of Jesus within the heart
of the believer. (It is of course true that there has been a similar trend in western
62 Which he regards as modern Protestant imposition – ‘the sickly growth of the ego.’

54
Christianity, in pietism, and indeed to some extent in the Reformed tradition).
For Chakkarai scripture plays a subordinate role. It reflects the religious experi-
ence of its writers and, while this may be important, it is not objectively authorita-
tive. I think there is a serious difficulty here. Whatever the literary and historical
problems there may be with the New Testament Gospels they provide us with the
only information about Jesus which is in any sense objective. That the ‘Spirit of
Jesus’ gives the believer a deeper knowledge of Christ and God is no doubt true,
but this is a different kind of knowledge from that which the New Testament writ-
ings afford us, and one will almost certainly differ from one believer to another.
It is hard to see how such spiritual knowledge could be judged other than by what
we can learn from the Gospels themselves – and in that case it can no longer be an
ultimate authority. Chakkarai might no doubt respond that objectivity in theology
is a chimaera and an obsession of the western intellectual tradition!
His proposal for an ego-less Christ may well be derived from his Saiva Sid-
dhanta background, and raises the problem of whether we can really dispense
with the ‘personhood’ of Jesus in quite so drastic a way. Can we regard ‘personal-
ity’ as a detachable attribute rather than an essential aspect of existence? Provoca-
tive though his attempt to solve the problem of the distinctions within the God-
head by removing the personal ego altogether, it is difficult to conceive of a God
without personality in some sense who could be an object of faith and worship.
The distinction between Nirguna Brahma (God without attributes) and Ishwara
Brahma (God as perceived) reflects the advaita (non-dualism, monism) system of
Sankara. This is indeed a common theological stance, that is, that God in him-
self is unknowable, and he can only be known insofar as he manifests himself
to us. However in Hinduism Ishwara Brahma is generally assigned to the realm
of maya (unreality, illusion). It would be difficult to press the analogy too far,
for though the Christian God is ultimately unknowable our knowledge of him,
especially through the incarnation, is nevertheless real knowledge, if incomplete.

Pandipeddi Chenchiah: The Raw Fact of Christ.

‘The task of Christology is prescribed ab initio by the specifically Christian experience’
(H.R. MacIntosh The Person of Christ, 1913)

Chenchiah (1886-1955) has been described by M.M.Thomas as ‘the most original

thinker of the Rethinking Group.’ Like Chakkarai, Chenchiah was a layman and
was also influenced by DrWilliam Miller at Madras Christian College. A lawyer
by profession, he served for time as chief judge of a small state in south India.
His writings are scattered in various journals and papers, and he contributed to

55
the book Rethinking Christianity in India. Much of his writing is polemical in
nature, and he was especially critical of the institution of the western-founded
church. Chenchiah was a convert from Hinduism, and it is not surprising that
he advocated a kind of Christian faith which would seek to retain as much as
possible of Indian culture. Like Upadhyay he believed Christian theology could
derive as much benefit from Hindu culture as in it had in earlier times drawn
on Greek philosophy. For him the Jewish contribution (personified in Peter) and
Greek contribution (personified in John) had been made in the first century: now
it was time for the Indian contribution. Chenchiah was also influenced by new
Hindu movements of his time, and especially by Aurobindo and Kanchupati Ven-
kata Roa (papularly known as Master CVV). However his theology adopted no
particular Hindu religious sytem or philosophy. He rejected Sankara’s monism,
but neither did he embrace bhakti. If anything his thinking tended towards the
Saiva Siddhanta which was popular in the south.
For Chenchiah religion in general, and what he called the ‘spiritual disci-
pline’ of Hinduism in particular, was a means of pointing to Christ. Non-Chris-
tian religions are a preparation for realising God’s new purposes in man, and
all religions lead ‘to the central power of all religion, which is Christ.’ But the
fulfilment of all religion in Christ did not for him imply the obsolescence of
other religions. Faith in Christ does not require us to jettison all pre-Christian
religious experience, for this is part of a creative energy which finds its highest
fulfilment in Christ. The special point about Christianity is that it proclaims that
a completely ‘new kind of creative energy has entered into creation (which) will
work itself out in the advent of a new heaven, a new earth, and a new man.’ This
new power in Christ ‘enters into the very heart of Hinduism and emerges as a
new power that moulds and changes from within’ (1966:59). In words which
reflect his own experience he speaks of Hinduism as a spiritual mother who
nourishes the values of the spirit. Thus the convert from Hinduism ‘discovers
the supreme value of Christ, not in the spirit of Hinduism, but because Hindu-
ism has taught him to discern spiritual greatness’ (1938:49). Loyalty to Christ
does not involve ‘surrender of a reverential attitude towards the Hindu heri-
tage.’ What is common to and central to both Christianity and Hinduism is the
doctrine of the indwelling Spirit and the concept of the incarnation (avatar) of
God (1993:90). Chenchiah’s defence of Hinduism is partly due to his opposition
to the kind of Barthian absolutism presented in Kraemer’s book, which would
consign all religion to sinful unbelief.63 For Chenchiah such a stance is not one
which an Indian Christian could accept, nor is it true to experience. But Barth
is not the only object of his criticism of western Protestant Christianity. As he

63 See besides his contributions to Rethinking Christianity the section ‘Protest against Barthian-
ism’ reprinted in 1966: 86ff.

56
sees it the western missionary church has an unhealthy obsession with dogma
which it deems as universal and final. For Chenchiah there is no ‘common faith’
– ‘common faith is what you get when you perform autopsy over dead churches,’
he comments caustically (1966:59). For him to accept Christ is to accept that
only his demands are essential. This allows the believer to set aside the dogmas
which are part and parcel of the tradition of the church and would ‘give freedom
to study the significance of Jesus untrammelled by doctrine and dogma.’ There
can be no final and absolute dogmas, and indeed (according to the conflict stories
in the Gospels) Jesus himself ‘fought a relentless battle against the absolutisa-
tion of doctrines and dogmas, worship and ritual, and ceremonial’ (1966:1). The
ecumenical creeds are not final and universally binding, for ‘we cannot draw a
line in the 4th or 5th centuries and hold that faith has reached its completion and
it could grow no further.’ Only Christ himself is ultimate and final revelation;
all else is merely our human interpretation and understanding of him, and no
interpretation can ever be final (1966:173). It is simply the result of human effort
and ingenuity, and it has overlaid the ‘bright nucleus’ of the original revelation
in Christ. Institutional Christianity has become a failure since it has made the
new creation in Christ into a new religion.The church has thus presented Jesus
as a second hand image to be worshipped rather than a living companion to the
believer (1938:52). It will be seen from this that Chenchiah, in common with
other Indian Christian thinkers of the period, had a deep suspicion of the insti-
tutional church. Though he did not reject its rituals, he believed the function
of the missionary church should be to allow Indian Christians themselves to
determine what shape Indian Christianity should take. He saw the way forward
rather as ‘Christianity as a movement within the Hindu social fold rather than
a solid society outside it.’ Hinduism is the umbilical cord for Christianity in
India and it can only spread by interpenetration into Hindu society. Thus Indian
Christianity should not only use Hindu thought forms and symbols, but it must
also become an integral part of the Hindu social structure.
This concern for the place of Hinduism for the Indian Christian leads him
to downplay the importance of the Bible. He has an almost Marcionite attitude
towards the Hebrew scriptures, which for him are not necessary to understand
and receive revelation in Christ. ‘Why should it be necessary to undertand the
Old Testament in order to grasp the Sermon on the Mount?’ he asks. While the
Old Testament might be useful it does not, for Chenchiah, illuminate the essence
of the Gospel, the central point of which is incarnation, which is alien to Judaism
but familiar to popular Hinduism. He claims he can construct his own Old Testa-
ment from the ancient Hindu writings as a preparation for Christ. ‘Hinduism is
our spiritual eye,’ he writes, ‘but for its existence the Hindu convert could have
passed by Christ. The Hindu heritage constitutes God’s provision of an eye of the

57
Hindu to see Christ.’ As M.M. Thomas comments, Chenchiah wanted to relativ-
ise all scripture and church traditions.
If scripture and church dogma are inadequate tools for an Indian Christianity,
on what can it be built? Chenchiah is clear: it must be based on the experience
of the living Christ. ‘Indian Christian theology has for its province the whole
range of experience that arises out of contact with Jesus.’ This for him is ‘the
raw fact of Christ.’ This ‘raw fact’ is neither the Jesus as we read of him in the
Gospels, not the Christ who is presented in church dogma. It is rather the ‘direct
experience of Christ’ (1966:57). While the event of Jesus does not change, our
experience of him does. In this respect the experience of Jesus in India may well
be different from that of the West, for while the fact is a once for all given event
‘our experience of Jesus progressively expands and varies, our discovery of him
belongs to (our) time’ (1966:56). Different experiences of Jesus will open up new
perspectives, new understandings, which cannot be found in traditional christol-
ogy. The task of theology then is to ‘review’ the direct experience of Jesus, that
is, to subject it to critique. Such experience, while deeply personal, is not, Chen-
chiah thinks, entirely subjective. Rather it is direct and unmediated. It cannot
be mediated even by scripture or the church. ‘Why,’ he asks, ‘do churches and
books intervene and bring Him to us like water from a distant fountain?’ So ‘if
there could be direct contact with Jesus, why should we seek it through bread and
wine? If God speaks to us today, why hear his words through a book written about
twenty centuries ago?’ (1966:72,70). Scripture contains not a direct and authentic
norm but only a record of the spontaneous experiences of others (1966:66). And
if Jesus appeared to the apostles and to Paul after the resurrection, then why can
he not also appear directly to us? Thus our own experience of Christ is superior
to the written accounts in the NT of his appearances to others. It is the primary
source, above even the witness of the Gospels, though in traditional Christianity
it is given much less credibility. Experience in Chenchiah’s thought, is not simply
bhakti, as with Sundar Singh, which tends to emphasise devotion. Rather it is
pratyaksha, a term which implies spiritual knowledge, immediate perception,
enlightenment, involving the mind as much as the heart. This can come only
through a rediscovery of the immediacy of the Holy Spirit within the believer.
Chenchiah is very critical of the way the Holy Spirit has been neglected, and sees
the Spirit as having been replaced by the institutional church. ‘When the Holy
Spirit became a distant reality and then a dogma,’ he writes, ‘when Jesus went
into heaven and did not return, we thought of a church and built one.’ Thus the
church has invented its own, different, Christ, a Christ of church altars and not the
Christ of experience (1938:53). In sum we cannot find the real Christ in anything
external to us, however ‘Christian.’ He reveals himself only in the experience of
the believer.

58
 Chenchiah’s theology can rightly be described as christocentric. But it is not
the Christ of scripture or dogma who stands centre stage, but the Christ of human
experience. And since our experience of him is ever changing and developing it
cannot be possible to formulate any final christology. The ‘raw fact of Christ’ is
not a quest of the historical Jesus. The ‘Jesus of history’ does not mean trying to
reconstruct the life of one who lived two thousand years ago. Rather it precisely
because Jesus has his own history, that he is a person with a history, that he can
act upon and within us today. He is not like a docetic avatar of the Hindu ep-
ics, but a real human person. Chenchiah makes a clear distinction between the
two concepts. Avatar is ‘a power that descends’ whereas incarnation ‘indicates
the history of a new power after it enters evolution’ – by which he means the
processes of this world (1966:1,23). The life of Jesus is then not just a historical
event, it is something which continues to happen in the experience of his follow-
ers throughout the generations. The raw fact of Christ is the historic Jesus present
within the experience of the believer.
Though this may seem a very personal and subjective approach, Chenchiah
is prepared to expand on what one might regard as ‘objective’ christology. He
accepts in broad terms the humanity and divinity of Christ, though his interpre-
tation of these terms is by no means Chalcedonian. The human nature of Jesus
remains as a constant, despite his dynamic view of christology. Jesus is the Son
of Man (understood of his humanity rather than of divinity), and his human na-
ture is retained after the resurrection. So he can affirm (somewhat provocatively)
that ‘after the ascension the Trinity is no longer Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but
Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit’ (1966:73) – and he might well have modified
this to ‘Spirit of Jesus.’
Incarnation then is not a single act, but the starting point of a process. It is a
new beginning, the inbreaking of God into human life. ‘Christianity,’ he affirms,
‘is the conviction that with or in Jesus of Nazareth Humanity has witnessed the
birth of a new man, a new spirit, that is that this humble Jew is the fulcrum on
which the old world swings into the new.’ It is God identifying himself with man
in the person of Jesus (1993:89). The uniqueness of Christ is not that he descends
from heaven in his deity but because he ‘issues forth from the heart of Man.’ Je-
sus is humanity as it was meant to be, the ideal man,’ the adiparusha 64inserted
into time, and continuing to act in the present. Jesus is the appearance of God
within human history which has inaugurated a new power, he is a new ‘evolu-
tion’, ‘the latest revolution in the creative process’ in whom humanity reaches
its highest point and fulfilment, its ‘crown and culmination.’ Jesus is the ‘New
Man, the prototype of new creation, the first and last of a new race of the children
of God … the latest form in the creative process… the earnest of the new order
64 The original cosmic man.

59
(1966:115,127).’ This is almost an evolutionary christology, and indeed Chen-
chiah does not hesitate to characterise the incarnation as ‘the history of a new
power (which) enters evolution, and a new order of cosmic power infusing into
the biological stream’, a new ‘mutation’ and ‘the origin of the species of the sons
of God.’ ‘Jesus, he writes, ‘is a new jump from man enslaved to sin, karma and
death, towards the new manhood triumphant and glorious and partaking in the
immortal nature of God.’ No true concept of incarnation, he believes, can avoid
identifying God with the creative process, and as process the incarnation has es-
chatological implications, it initiates the renovation of the whole universe.
Such a dynamic view was perhaps influenced as much by Chenchiah’s Hindu
background as by the evolutionism which was part of his secular world. Long
before Asian feminist theologians discovered in shakti a model for christology
and pneumatology Chenchiah had already embraced it as a model for his christic
dynamism. He thus designates Jesus as ‘the manifestation of a new creative effort
of God, in which the cosmic energy, or sakti, is the Holy Spirit, the new creation
in Christ and the new life order, the Kingdom of God.’ Given this emphasis on the
new dynamic humanity which has appeared in Christ, it is not surprising that he
rejects traditional understandings of the atonement. In a rhetorical passage which
merits full quotation, he sees the death of Christ as a struggle between the new
humanity and the old, between love and hate, between truth and falsehood:
‘In the moving tragedy of the cross for the first time in history all power, all
might, arrogant aggression of imperialism allying itself with fanaticism, conser-
vatism, and obscurantism of the priest, was arrayed against a single man facing
life with no other armour than love. Both in the incidents that led to the Cross and
the Cross itself we are presented with the history in which the powers of the world
grappled with the reserves of love, and the power of the flesh with the power of
the Spirit … (the resurrection) is the triumph of satyagraha 65 over the passion of
the warrior and ruler’ (quoted in Boyd 1991:154).
Elsewhere he can regard the resurrection not as miracle but as a necessity in
the process of establishing a new order (1966:127). This understanding of the
work of Christ has clear ethical implications. If the Raw Fact of Christ is the ‘pro-
totype of new creation, the first of a new race of the children of God’(1966:115),
then Christ’s followers too must share in this process to realise the new creation
within the world. Chenchiah sees this task as mediated through the indwelling of
the Holy Spirit, for the Holy Spirit is the new cosmic energy, and creator of this
new life (1966:127, 1938:54). To seek to establish the Kingdom of God means
to ‘reproduce’ Jesus by being begotten of the Holy Spirit. 66 If we are fully to

65 The Gandhian term ‘contending non-violently for truth’ is significant here

66 There is a similar christology in the work of the Camerounian theologian Christianism sans
fetiches (Paris 1981).

60
comprehend the Spirit, he argues, we must develop what he calls the ‘Yoga of the
Spirit.’
Chenchiah’s christology has little regard for the metaphysical definitions of
traditional Christian doctrine. He consistently seeks to distinguish sharply be-
tween God (the Father) and Christ. ‘Jesus is not God the Absolute but God stand-
ing in relation to man.’ Jesus is of a different order from both God and man. Boyd
pertinently comments: ‘Although Chenchiah frequently uses the terms ‘Son of
Man’ and ‘Son of God’ he primarily thinks of Christ as a new living entity, the
God-Man, the ‘bridge’ between God and Man’ (1991:150). His understanding of
Trinity is innovative. God, the Absolute is, as in Upanishadic philosophy, beyond
all human thought and cannot be fully known. Jesus, as God standing in relation
to man, has permanently assumed our humanity. The Holy Spirit is the ‘univer-
salised Jesus’ within his followers and in the world. Thomas has well summed up
Chenchiah’s christology in the following words:
‘As revelation Jesus Christ is not just word or idea or past history, but a new
creation which is the living stream of the Risen Christ and the Spirit. Therefore
the finality of Jesus cannot have a final interpretation ever. Indian Christians are
required to get into direct contact with Jesus, commune with God through Jesus
and receive rebirth into the sons of God in the image of Jesus, and then formulate
their understanding in the context of the spiritual urges of contemporary history
regarding the future of humanity’ (1992:97).
If, as Thomas and Boyd argue, there is much in Chenchiah’s theology that is
genuinely innovative, there is also much to which western theology can relate.
The idea that there can be no final theology (and therefore no final christology)
is not new (MacQuarrie 1977:64), though it may well have needed emphasising
in Chenchiah’s context. His dynamic conception of Christ as New Man, a new
creative event, bears some similarity to what Tillich (1957:87) would later call
‘New Being (as) divine power.’ 67 He would no doubt too have agreed with Schlei-
ermacher’s concept of Christ as the productive archetype of redeemed humanity.
His progressive dynamism also reminds us of Teilhard de Chardin (and perhaps
of Bergson). Chenchiah’s dismissal of the Old Testament is probably too drastic
(it is of course necessary to have some understanding of the Hebrew scriptures
to understand fully the Sermon on the Mount!) The recurring emphasis of ‘direct
access to Christ’ in experience of him through the Spirit has always been part of
Christian faith, though too often in subservience to dogma. The difficulty for the
theologian is perhaps that experience is often so personal as to be tantalisingly
difficult to rationalise as a source for a christology which can be shared.

67 Tillich saw this as part of a universal quest in western culture as Chenchiah saw it in Hinduism.

61
IV. Jesus, the Cross and Emmanuel

Topass from the religious world of India to that of Japan is to move from amonis-
tic world view to an avowedly polytheistic one. Hinduism can comprehend dei-
ties as refractions of an unknowable Absolute, but the original religion of Japan
shares in the primal world view generally in its concept of kami. Japanese reli-
gions put to monism and monotheism the question, ‘Why should there be only
one God?’ There is another difference also. Hinduism is a religion which absorbs
all other world views and claims them for itself so that they become part of the
complex fabric of social as well as religious Hinduism. Japan, though it has in the
past instigated periods of vicious persecution of both Buddhism and Christianity,
seems now content to allow other religions to coexist without amalgamating them
into one system, without exclusivity of claims or (generally) practice. Catholic
missions were introduced into Japan in 1549, but effectively obliterated by perse-
cution. It was three hundred years before they, along with Protestants from Amer-
ica, were able to return. Japanese Christian theology began to emerge in the latter
half of the 19th century, and chistology was at the centre of the first real theologi-
cal debate (see Dohi 1997:24-35 on the controversy between Ebina and Uemura).
From the beginning of the 20th century the influence of German liberalism and
subsequently neo-orthodoxy began to be felt, and a number of leading Japanese
theologians studied in Germany and later in America. In this chapter I shall con-
sider the contribution to christology of the two influential theologians during the
second half of the 20th century, Kazok Kitamori and Katsumi Takizawa.68

Kazoh Kitamori: the Cross as the Pain of God

‘He is rightly called a theologian who comprehends …
what is set forth in the passion and in the cross.’
(Luther Heidelberg Disputation 1518)

Kitamori’s The Theology of the Pain of God was perhaps the first sustained work
by a non-Western theologian to attract international attention. As well as becom-

68 Japanese, Chinese and some other East Asian cultures put the family name first: I have adopted
western usage.

63
ing a theological classic in a country were Christians numbered only one per cent,
it presented a fresh voice to neo-orthodoxy in the years following the Second
World War. Today Kitamori’s fate is largely as a footnote in the works of those
who have taken divine pain on to their agenda. I suspect that many of them are
more indebted to Kitamori, directly or indirectly, than they recognise.69 Largely
shunned in his home country after the initial fervour surrounding the early edi-
tions of the book, Kitamori is now, however, becoming more appreciated in Japan
and influencing theologians in some other Asian countries. In respect of Christol-
ogy, The Theology of the Pain of God is an important contribution to the question
of the relationship within the Godhead between Father and Son. Some critics have
accused him of patripassianism, a charge which he denied and which seems to
me unfounded.
Somewhat surprisingly the concept of pain does not seem to have played a
major role in Japanese theology prior to the appearance of Kitamori’s book. Given
the devastation of Japanese Catholics during the 17th century one might have ex-
pected a genre of persecution literature might have emerged.70 Kitamori does not
stand within the Catholic tradition, but stems from the missionary Protestantism
which entered Japan after the opening up of Japan to the West in 1858. Despite
an inherent conservatism this soon took on aspects of Japanese dress. Japan had
several articulate theologians during the first half of the 20th century, but divine
suffering does not seem to have played a role in their work.71 The impact of Neo-
Orthodoxy began to be felt in Japan itself by the 1920s, and with the publication of
Barth’s Church Dogmatics Barthianism became the dominant force. In Furuya’s
view it was not until the 1960s that what he calls the ‘Germanic captivity’ was
seriously challenged. Seen in the light of this history, Kitamori was well ahead of
his time in his criticisms of some aspects of Barth’s theology. Though, unlike sev-
eral of his contemporaries, he did not himself study in Germany, his knowledge
and grasp of the German intellectual and theological traditions is substantial.
Kazoh Kitamori was born in 1916, and was educated at Kyoto Imperial Univer-
sity (where he studied philosophy) and the Lutheran School of Theology. It is not
clear whether his Lutheran background first interested him in the ‘suffering God’
– a theme which appears in the Reformer’s writings. However as early as 1938,

69 P.S. Fiddes (1988, p.16) regards divine impassibility, enshrined into orthodoxy at Chalcedon,
as now largely overturned. If this is so then some of the credit at least belongs to Kitamori.
Sundermeier (1995:192 note 348) believes that Moltmann (whose The Crucified God, contains
only two passing allusions to Kitamori) has misunderstood him and too readily imposed his
own ideas on Kitamori’s work.
70 The portrayal of the pains of these early persecutions has been left to the novelist Shusaku
Endo, especially in his Silence.
71 Even the social Christianity of men like Kagawa and Nakajima hardly touched on the concept
of God’s suffering.

64
while still a student, he had written an essay on the theme of the pain of God,
and two years later he published in Japanese The Lord of the Cross, an attempt
to bring together Paul’s theology of the pain of God in the atonement with Jesus’
teaching on the love of God. By the time first edition of The Theology of the Pain
of God appeared Kitamori was already an associate professor at Japan Theologi-
cal Seminary. The book was published in 1947, in the aftermath of Hiroshima
and the occupation of Japan by the allies. In the words of Seiichi Yagi it ‘caused a
sensation among the Christian readership in Japan’ (1997:87). It went through five
editions in ten years, and indeed in the preface to the second edition the author
already expressed his fear that ‘the pain of God’ was becoming too fashionable.
The English translation (published in America) came out in 1958, and Kitamori
became known as the theologian of Japan. This was doubtless an overstatement
but for a time Kitamori’s work not only achieved wide circulation in Japan but
also came to have a substantial, though not always acknowledged, impact on the
West. It remains a profound contribution to the theology of the relationship of the
suffering of Christ to God the Father.
The title of his book is taken from a phrase in Jer. 31.20, which Kitamori ren-
ders ‘therefore My heart is pained for him’ and we may perhaps regard the book
as an extended theological sermon on the text. In a passage set within the context
of the misery of the people in exile and the promise of restoration, Ephraim is
described by the prophet as repenting that it had turned away from God (v. 19).
In response, God affirms in a series of rhetorical questions, that Ephraim remains
his child and ‘therefore My heart is pained for him’ and He will have mercy upon
him (v.20). The resolution of the tension between God’s justice and love takes
place through divine pain. Whatever the exact implication of the term,72 it clearly
conveys a typically Jeremian depth of emotion in highly charged pictorial lan-
guage. It is perhaps strange that in a book primarily concerned with the pain of
God especially in relation to the crucifixion Kitamori should have gone to the Old
Testament for his point of departure. However, as he sees it, this text is a strik-
ing epitome of the theology of the pain of God in redemption. Jer. 31.20 ‘literally
agrees with the truth of the cross …no more appropriate words could be found to
reveal the truth of the cross’ (1958:59). Jeremiah is for him the ‘Paul of the Old

72 Kitamori devotes an extended appendix to a linguistic analysis of the terminology in Jer. 31.20
and the related passage in Is. 63.15 (1958:151-167). The Hebrew is hamu me’ay lo: AV and RV
have ‘my bowels are troubled’, RSV,NEB and JPS have ‘my heart yearns’, JB ‘deeply moved.’
The verb hmh is variously translated in the English versions, but the basic meaning seems to
be of howling or wailing, and it is also used of musical instruments used in lamentation (Jer.
48.36; Is. 59.11). The common element in most of the uses in the Hebrew Bible seems to be the
loud inarticulate noise characteristic of deep emotion or agony. This suggests that ‘yearns for
him’ is much too weak and that Kitamori’s ‘my heart is pained for him’ has caught the Hebrew
meaning rather better.

65
Testament’ whose ‘God on the cross’73 becomes in the prophet ‘God in pain, who
resolves our human pain by his own’ (1958:20).
There are two main aspects to divine pain: pain as the essence of God and pain
as relationship. While early on in the book Kitamori rejects the idea that pain can
be thought of as substance, nevertheless a main platform of his argument is that
pain is part of what he terms ‘God’s essence.’ The sense in which ousia was used
by the Fathers is for Kitamori very remote from the biblical idea of God.74 He is
here rejecting metaphysics in speaking about the Godhead. If ousia is to have any
meaning for us then it must be reinterpreted as God’s pain, specifically the pain
of God as reflected in the cross of Christ (1958:44). Similarly he reinterprets the
‘begetting’ of the creeds in non-metaphysical terms. The Father’s begetting of the
Son is interpreted as the Father ‘causing the Son to die’ for the ‘the God of the
Gospel causes his Son to die and suffers pain in that act’ (1958:48). Thus pain,
as the essence of God, can only be grasped in the light of the cross of Jesus, that
is in the relationship of Father and Son. The theologia crucis of the Gospel is the
pain of God in allowing his Son to die for us (1958:47). God is the ‘wounded Lord,
having pain in himself.’ Kitamori’s quarrel with the 19th century liberalism of
Schleiermacher, Ritschl and Harnack is that it made the love of God too easy –
reconciliation needed no cross and no passion, and thus denied pain, the essence
of God. In his poetic words ‘they do not have ears to hear the bass (of the melody)
which is the pain of God sounding out in the depths’ (1958:24). Neither did Neo-
Orthodoxy come any closer to discerning God’s essence as pain. He is highly
critical of Barth’s apparently impassible God as one ‘without tearing and without
pain’ (1952:612).75 For Kitamori this would imply the rejection of ‘the all embrac-
ing God’ and would make him an exclusive deity. ‘It is obvious,’ he comments,
‘that a God who does not embrace is a God without pain’ (1958:23). So neither
Liberalism nor Neo-Orthodoxy has the tools to get at the divine ousia as pain.
The essence of God as pain is manifested in relationship. This relationship is
two-fold. It is (as in Jer. 31.20) ‘the pain of God in loving those who should not be
loved’, that is, pain caused by God’s love for those who are rebellious against him.
Thus pain ‘reflects (God’s) heart, allowing his Son to die’ (1958:90,120,138). In
this sense the pain of God is ‘internal’, it is the conflict, the agony, between God’s
wrath and his love, or rather, the overcoming of wrath through love. ‘When the

73 Though Paul does not use this exact term.

74 Kitamori allows for the importance of what he calls ‘Greek theology’ in giving birth to later
orthodoxy. At the same time he sees it as open to question since it is a ‘particular theology’
because it belongs to a particular and unrepeatable historical and cultural context. This is really
an oblique plea for what was later to be called contextual theology.
75 This meaning is obscured in the ET: Barth’s words were zerissen and Schmerz. Kitamori re-
sumed his debate with Barth in his paper ‘Is Japanese Theology Possible?’ in North Eastern
Journal of Theology, Tokyo, 1969.

66
love of God is trying to conquer and pierce through his wrath,’ he argues, ‘this
is called the pain of God’ (1958:109). At the same time this internal pain within
God, while it arises from his relationship to mankind, is effected through the re-
lationship of the Father to the Son. It is essentially then pain within the Godhead.
The efficacy of the Pain of God in the overcoming of wrath by love is the for-
giveness of sin, in the incarnation and supremely in the cross. The pain of God,
as it were, enters human history in the historical Jesus. The life, death and resur-
rection of Jesus are for Kitamori a ‘necessary constituent’ of the pain of God, for
the cross demonstrates that ‘the love of God has conquered the wrath of God in
the historical world.’ Indeed he argues that the pain of God must necessarily enter
the historical plane as person who is ‘the personification of God’s pain’ (1958:33).
This manifestation of the pain of God in concrete human history in Christ brings
about forgiveness and reconciliation by cancelling wrath against sin. But Kitamo-
ri is not especially interested in penal theories of the atonement. His originality
lies in his attempt to deal with the pain of mankind through the pain of God. God
in pain is the one who resolves our pain. The pain of God is communicated to
us in the human suffering of the man Jesus. At the same time ‘the pain of God
gives meaning and value to human suffering’ (1958:147).We know the pain of
God through our pain, which becomes the ‘symbol’ of God’s pain (1958:60). It is
in this sense that he understands those passages in Paul which speak of mystical
union (Rom. 6.3-6; Gal. 2.20 and 5.24; 2 Cor. 1.5; Phil.3.10; also 1 Pet. 4.13). Hu-
man pain is not an end in itself, rather it is meant to lead to practical action in the
service of the pain of God (1958:11).76
It is at this point that Kitamori comes closest to interacting with his own Japa-
nese cultural and religious traditions, and indeed another Japanese theologian,
Koyama, has gone so far as to claim that Kitamori’s fundamental concern is to
re-root the Gospel of Christ for the Japanese mind. It could be argued that pain, as
Kitamori understands it, is an interpretation of the Buddhist concept of dukkha.
Kitamori refers to Prince Shotoku Taishi, who was credited with playing a major
role in the introduction of Buddhism into Japan in the 7th century. Kitamori finds
that his Interpretation of Yaimakyo closely resembles his own understanding of
the pain of God. According to this text the Buddha, through his mercy, saves
the people from sickness by absorbing their sickness as his own.77 Nor is this
theme confined to Buddhism. The Shinto teacher Norinaga Motoori in the late
19th century also taught that the Japanese way is (in Kitamori’s words) ‘to weep
and grieve over those things which should be grieved over.’ Significantly a run-
ning theme of Japanese theatre has been tsurasa, a feeling of the inevitability of

76 From the 3rd edition, perhaps intending to correct a misreading of earlier editions.
77 Though the issue of whether the boddhisatva concept might not itself have been influenced by
Nestorian Christianity remains an open question.

67
fate and of the sorrow that pervades human life. Tsurasa is realised in the tragic
hero, who suffers and dies, or makes his beloved son suffer and die, for the sake
of loving and bringing life to others (1958:125).78 This positive embracing of non-
Christian Japanese traditions was a dangerous path to tread at the time, and was
one of the criticisms levelled at the book on its first appearance. More than half a
century on, few theologians outside the western world (and a substantial number
within it) would have much hesitancy in enriching their theology by drawing
upon other religious traditions. This element in Kitamori’s thought should not be
seen as a weakness but rather as prophetic.
More telling perhaps was the accusation that Kitamori was a modern patripas-
sian, and that his theology implied that God the Father had suffered on the cross.
This was a charge which he categorically denied. In the preface to the 3rd edition
he insisted that he made a distinction between the Son, who suffered pain and
died on the cross, and the Father who suffers pain because of the suffering of the
Son. While there seems to me no substance in this criticism, there are certainly
some sentences where Kitamori’s language could be so understood. Moltmann
(1974:204) suggests that there may be the possibility of potential confusion when
the word ‘God’ is used indiscriminately both of the first person of the Trinity (the
Father) and of the Trinity itself. His point is that when we speak of the death of
Jesus in relation to God we are entering what he calls ‘the inner-trinitarian ten-
sions of God,’ Father, Son and Spirit. In this case, he argues, it is ‘inappropriate to
speak simply of ‘God’ in connection with the cross event … The more one under-
stands the whole event of the cross as an event of God, the more the simple con-
cept of God falls apart.’ This caveat, it seems to me, could be applied to Kitamori.
There are places in which Kitamori’s language invites confusion over whether
his use of ‘God’ means the Father or the full Trinitarian Godhead.79 It is possible
that he adopted this manner of speaking, so to say, rhetorically of God from his
reading of Luther.80 Sundermeier (1995:188,168) is clear that Kitamori’s emphasis
on pain defines God as the Trinitarian God, because pain must be expressed in
terms of relationship. The point is well made. However he then goes on to argue
that, for Kitamori, Jesus the Son is simply the ‘persona’ of God in its literal sense
of ‘mask’ (as in Kabuki drama), and the ‘personification’ of the pain of God. This

78 Kitamori regards this theme as peculiarly Japanese, though he refers elsewhere in the book to
the ‘akedah, the offering of Isaac in Gen. 22. It reappears also in the Jephthah story of Jud. 11.
It is also witnessed in the Greek tradition (Agamemnon ‘s sacrifice of Iphegeneia, and Idome-
neus’ of his daughter – or son according to Mozart’s librettist).
79 Eg. When he speaks of the cross being ‘in no sense an external act of God, but an act within
himself’ he must be using ‘God’ to designate the Trinity.
80 Moltmann (1974:234) criticises Luther for exactly this. Elsewhere Moltmann asserts
(1981:25,40) that we can actually only talk of God’s suffering in Trinitarian terms, and that a
simple monotheistic concept is inadequate in this respect.

68
seems to me to be overstated. Far from reducing the Son to a persona Kitamori is
careful to emphasise the real individuality of the Son in the incarnation. For him,
the pain of God means the recognition of ‘the historical Jesus as a necessary con-
stituent factor in the pain of God’ for ‘the concept of pain cannot be established
without the historicity of Jesus’ (1958:34). The historical figure is ‘real man’ and
‘in the flesh.’ A statement such as ‘The pain of the Father is neither merely the
pain of God the Son, nor merely the pain of the Father, but the pain of two persons
who are essentially one’ (1958:115) must exclude modalism and docetism. Pain
is essentially understood as relationship between two parties. It might perhaps
have helped if he had called his book ‘The Theology of the Pain of the Trinity’ –
though he has only little to say about the Spirit. Kitamori’s problems and those of
his critics are inherent in using a model of ‘Three Persons in One Substance,’ a
concept so paradoxical that it defies strict logic!
The greater difficulty it seems to me is not with Kitamori’s emphasis on
Christ’s incarnation as ‘real man’, but rather because of it. He insists that the
incarnation is a ‘necessary constituent’ of the pain of God. However paradoxi-
cally he does not begin his exploration from the incarnation: the text from which
his argument begins is not taken from the Gospels or the Epistles but rather from
Jeremiah,81 which he argues most succinctly sums up his thesis of God in pain.
The question raised here is a very fundamental one: if the pain of God is most
adequately expressed in the words of the prophet how can then incarnation be
a ‘necessary constituent’? Do we need God to be manifested in human form to
apprehend divine pain when that pain is set out so convincingly in the Hebrew
Bible? This point has not been lost on Jewish writers, of course, who have written
frequently of God’s suffering in the sufferings of his people. So, from a Christian
perspective, what does the incarnation add to our understanding of ‘God in pain’?
We might perhaps argue that that incarnation and crucifixion demonstrate the
pain of God very concretely in human history. On the other hand, there could be
a danger that the very physicality of the passion could obscure the real meaning
of the pain of God as Kitamori understands it, that is, of internal grieving over
sin.82 This would seem to suggest that the incarnation is not a necessary constitu-
ent of the pain of God, though it may well be the most appropriate one. In arguing
that pain is of the essence of God Kitamori is led into a logical fallacy. Pain, in
his view, is the outcome of the conflict of love and wrath within God, and wrath
results from God’s reaction to human sin. Unless one argues that sin was inher-
ent in creation from the beginning, Kitamori’s argument leads to the conclusion

81 He also in an appendix discusses Is. 63.15, and he might equally well have chosen a text from
Hosea.
82 Rosenweig (1971:350) argues that Christianity, like paganism but in absolute contrast to Juda-
ism, has an inherent need for God to become man.

69
that wrath, and therefore pain, is contingent on human sin. If it is contingent it is
difficult to see how it can be essential to God’s very nature.83 The problem (rather
more than in any theological discussion) is one of what kind of language we can
appropriately apply to God. Most writers on the subject begin with the disclaimer
that, of course, in speaking of the pain of God we are dealing in the language of
symbol, metaphor, analogy or whatever. The issue cannot surely be ‘does God
suffer pain?’ but rather, is pain an appropriate metaphor for human speech about
God? Viewed in this light a good deal of criticism of Kitamori seems to me beside
the point. As has often been pointed out, if love is an appropriate term to use when
speaking of God then there is no reason why pain should not be also. Problems
arise only when the terminology is pressed into an unwholesome literalism.

Katsumi Takizawa: Jesus as Immanuel

‘As for us, when we read the New Testament we cannot bring ourselves to deny what many
present day commentotars have denied – that what might not be an historical fact can still
be truth for our soul’
(Shusako Endo A Life of Jesus, 1973).

Our second Japanese theologian also interacted with German Neo-Orthodoxy,

though in his case directly as a student of Karl Barth. Like Kitamori, Katsumi
Takizawa also develops his understanding of Christ in relationship to the God-
head, though unlike Kitamori he has little interest in the human life of Jesus.
Rather he elaborates his position in a more abstract way which has resonances
with early Logos christology.
Takizawa was born in 1909, into a Zen Buddhist household near to Tokyo, the
son of a lacquer worker. After a brief period studying law, he enrolled at Kyusu
Imperial University in 1929 to study philosophy, and was appointed to an aca-
demic post on graduation. During this period he came under the influence of the
leading Japanese philosopher of the period Kataro Nishida. He later claimed that
after struggling to understand Nishida’s work he experienced a sudden insight
(characteristic of Zen) in which all became clear. The result was the publica-
tion of a paper on Nishida’s philosophy which deeply impressed the latter. On
Nishida’s 84 recommendation he went to Berlin on a Humboldt scholarship in 1935
to study under Barth. His first experience of Barth was hearing him lecture on
the virgin birth, which profoundly affected the later development of his thought.

83 For a discussion of other relevant views see Parratt (2000).

84 Although Takizawa had never studied under Nishida he sought his advice. Nishida (a Zen Mas-
ter) advised him to study theology since ‚there is something required for truth, that is God.‘

70
After Barth came into conflict with the Nazi authorities Takizawa transferred to
Marburg to study with Bultmann. On his return to Japan he taught philosophy at
Kyusu. Despite his attraction to Christianity he was not baptised until 1958. From
the 1960s he returned several times to Germany to lecture at various universities,
and much of his work which is available to European readers comes from this
period. In 1984 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Hei-
delberg, but died of leukemia in the June of that year. Takizawa was unusual in
that he attempted to bring Barth into dialogue with Japanese Buddhism. Indeed
Odagaki (1997:117) describes him as the first person to compare Christianity and
Buddhism ‘on the level of the being of religion.’ His point is that with Takizawa
we are not dealing with simple phenomenological parallels but with a comparison
of the deeper structures of the religions, so to say the ontology of religion (though
Odagaki would prefer the term ‘me-ontology,’ the ‘ontology of nothing, of the
void’ used in Heidegger’s sense).
It is regrettable that Takizawa’s writings are not easily accessible to the non-
Japanese reader. His study in Germany before World War II and his visits there
afterwards, however, resulted in several of his shorter writings and lectures be-
ing published in German edited by German scholars (Takizawa 1980 and 1987).
Some of these papers are translations from the Japanese, but the majority were
written by Takizawa himself. Takizawa’s German style is somewhat idiosyn-
cratic, and fluctuates between the poetic and the pedantic. His use of words with
double meanings, his love of paradox, the complexity of some of his grammatical
constructions (of which Barth himself would surely have been proud), and the al-
most complete absence of referencing, sometimes obscures his intentions (I have
noted some of his key German terms in brackets). And since most these are short
papers given over a couple of decades there is inevitably some repetition as well
as development of ideas. Added to this, as Sundermeier (in Takizawa 1987:11)
has pointed out, is the fact that Japanese Buddhism is itself quite unfamiliar ter-
rain to most western readers, as is the paradoxical nature of Nishida’s philosophy
which influenced Takizawa so profoundly. However Takizawa can only be under-
stood within this Buddhist tradition, which was for him the point of entry into
Christian theology and the basis on which he interpreted it. The influences which
shaped Takizawa’s thought then are two-fold: Buddhism as received in the Japa-
nese schools of Jodo-shin (Pure Land) and Zen, and in the philosophy of Nishida,
and Christian theology as set out by Karl Barth. As Sundermeier put it, Takizawa
wanted to relate the Christian thought which he encountered from Barth to the
Japanese Buddhism which remained important to him (1987:7). In the process he
subjected both to his own quite substantial modification.
The two schools of Buddhism which influenced Takizawa, Pure Land (Jodo-
shin) and Zen are both technically ‘exclusive’ sects. Both entered Japan from

71
China. Pure Land is essentially a saviour cult: there are many buddhas who have
obtained enlightenment, but who voluntarily renounce their blessedness. They
are boddhisatvas who rule over their own ‘pure lands’ – other worlds than ours
– and take a vow to save all intelligent beings. The Pure Land is not a perfect
heaven but a kind of intermediate paradise. All those who call upon them in
faith will be reborn in the Pure Lands. The most famous of the boddhisatvas is
Amitabha (Amida, in Japan Amidabutsu) whose Pure Land is in the west and
who is identified with the historical Buddha, Sakyamuni. The initial vow’85 of the
boddhisatva (a key concept in Takizawa’s philosophy) is thus a means of chan-
nelling merit through successive generations until the vow is fulfilled. Its essence
depends on the saving grace of the Buddha figure, and merit is received as a gift
by the repetition of his Name. Pure Land is a democratic and popular form of Ma-
hayana Buddhism in that it is not restricted to the religious elites who are able to
practice meditation and asceticism, but is freely available to all solely on the basis
of faith in the merit of the boddhisatva. The parallels with Christianity have often
been remarked, and Takizawa himself admits the possibility that Pure Land may
have been influenced by the Nestorian Christianity which reached China in the
5th century. Pure Land became popular in Japan during the 11th and 12th centuries
both among the commoners and the elites, especially through Honen (1133-1212)
and his disciple Shinran (1173-1262). The essence of their teaching, as Blacker
(1971:525) puts it, is that there is ‘nothing we ourselves can do to escape the hor-
rors of the ordinary human state or from the horrors of rebirth somewhere worse.
Our only hope of salvation lies in the grace of Amida to save all those who call
on his Name’ (1971:525).
Whereas for Pure Land salvation from incessant rebirth is only to be found
outside the individual in the grace of the boddhisatva, Zen focuses on the inner
nature of the person86. For Zen the buddha-nature is within, it does not have to
be attained or even expected: it lies within each individual and simply needs
to be recognised. It brings to light what is already latent by means of a sudden
insight or awakening (satori). Such insight may come through meditation or by
intense concentration on paradoxical concepts or sayings (koans) which raise the
mind beyond normal levels. By such insight the duality of subject and object is
transcended and the true nature of reality is perceived, characterised as void or
nothingness (sunnyata) 87.
85 I adopt Conze‘s rendering ‚initial vow‘ in his translation of the Diamond Sutra (1984:164).
Takizawa‘s terminology might better be translated as ‚original vow.‘
86 The term derives from the Sanskrit dhyana meaning meditation, through the Chinese ch’an.
Zen was introduced into Japan around 1200AD by Dogen and Eisai, and its appeal lay more
with the military classes and the educated.
87 A good illustration of this concept is the following stanzas from On Believing in Mind by the
Chinese Ch’an (Zen) master Seng-Ts’an (translation in Conze 1984:p.172).

72
 Takizawa experienced both Jodo-shin and Zen during his early life. His take
on them however is innovative, in that (in good Zen fashion) he attempted to
bring the two together by arguing that at root both were saying the same thing.
That Takazawa can do this with a fair degree of conviction is due to his adop-
tion of the philosophical approach of Nishida. In
���������������������������������
his paper ‘Die Kraft des Ande-
ren und die Kraft des Selbst im Buddhismus verglichen mit dem Christentum’
(1980:46-65) 88. Takizawa starts by pointing out the common view of salvation
in the two sects. For Jodo-shin, in the teaching of Shinran, salvation is usually
taken to be grounded in the power of the Other, that is in Amitabha, Amida Bud-
dha. In Zen on the other hand, as taught by Dogen, it is regarded as grounded in
the Self. Takizawa questions this simplistic reading. He believed that there was
another dimension to Shinran‘s teaching, namely that for him the Self cannot be
envisaged without at the same time understanding the initial vow of Amida as the
only essential source and underpinning of the Being (Dasein) of the individual
Self. Thus the relationship between Amida and the Self is a ‚given‘ which cannot
be shattered even by the individual‘s worst sins. So faith according to Shinran
is nothing less than the awakening of the Self to this fact as ‚the indestructable
truth which lies and lives in his own Self‘ (1980:49). Faith thus does not come
from the Self immediately, but has its real source in the Buddha-nature which
lies at the ground of Being. In Takizawa‘s view, for Shinran the wholly Other is
the boddhisatva, who through his initial vow has bound himself irrevocably to
all people. The relationship between Amida Buddha and the Self lies in the very
being of human nature itself, irrespective of what we do, and is manifested in
the Self calling upon the Name of Amida (the cry ‘Nametsu’ (ie. Namu-Amidha-
Buddha) (1980:56).
In Zen satori (enlightenment) is the awakening of the person to the truth of
his own Self. Again Takizawa finds this too simplistic. He argues that Dogen
does not reject the wholly Other (Dharma). While the boundary point between

Abide not with dualism,

Carefully avoid pursuing ;
As soon as you have right and wrong,
Confusion ensues and Mind is lost.
The object is an object for the subject,
The subject is a subject for the object;
Know the relativity of the two
Rests ultimately on one emptiness.
88 see also ‚Religion als Sache der Gegenwart‘ pp.28-39 in the same volume, and ‚Rechtfertigung
im Buddhismus und im Christentum‘ (in 1987:181-96) where the issue is also discussed. In his
book published in Japanese in 1964 Buddhism and Christianity he had already explored the
relationship between the two religions. In response the Hisamatsu’s defence of Buddhism as
atheism, Takizawa argued that there is a deep structural similarity in the ontology of human
nature in Buddhism and Christianity (see Kenzo Tagawa 1969:41-60).

73
the Other and the Self is in fact uncrossable, Dharma belongs to the structure of
Being of the person himself. It is both a boundary and also a unity, and the indi-
vidual has to awaken to it. It is a paradox of separation and identity. In Nishida’s
phrase it is ‘the absolutely contradictory self-identity’ or better ‘the self-identity
of the absolute contradiction.’ In Takizawa’s view both religious leaders tended to
absolutise their positions rather than seeing them as contingent forms of absolute
truth, and as complementary rather than contradictory.
It is beyond my competence to comment on the validity of Takizawa’s inter-
pretation of these two Buddhist sects. For our purposes we need only note the
thrust of Takizawa’s argument, namely that the Buddha-nature lies at the ground
of being of the individual Self. This relationship with the wholly Other is funda-
mental, original, and ineradicable. ‘The initial vow of Amida,’ writes Takizawa,
‘means for Shinran, the true salvation and underpinning (Stütze) of life which
precedes all human thinking and feeling.’ Similarly Zen has nothing at all to do
with a western individualism which isolates the Self from its real ground. It is
rather that the Self and the Buddha-nature are fundamentally one whether this
is realised or not (1980:29, also 1980:66-110). Takizawa’s debt to Nishida is very
clear (1980:127-71). Indeed the whole thesis might be summed up in a poem by
Kokusi Daito which Nishida was apparently fond of quoting:

For ever divorced

Yet not for a moment separated,
The whole day together
Yet not for a moment one;
This Logos dwells in every person89.

Takizawa is here, like Nishida, questioning the concept of the autonomous Self.
To assume the autonomous subjectivity of the individual and define ourselves
only by it only leads to life becoming an incomprehensible absurdity. The solu-
tion to this absurdity is found in Nishida’s ‘absolutely contradictory self-identi-
ty’, which is not an academic construct but – assuming one accepts that there is
something ultimate that really exists – the unavoidable basic structure of life and
being. All human life is dependent upon Being, separated from which man can
neither live, speak, create, or even die (1980:144-6). ‘The finite Ego (Ich-Selbst),

89 in Takizawa‘s German:
Für ewig gescheiden,
Jedoch keinen Augenblick getrennt;
Den ganzen Tag zusammen,
Doch keinen Augenblick in eins;
Dieser Logos wohnt in jedem Mensch.

74
which is simply a finite thing and not a subject, is directly one with the absolute
infinite Subject (but) without in the least ceasing to be a finite thing’ (1980:160).
This is the ‘self-identity in the absolute contradiction’, the Ego (the individual)
is one with the Absolute Self, yet in a unity which at the same time embraces a
division, a contradiction. While the ‘Logos’ exists in all, this does not mean that
all are identified with the Logos. Unity and distinction exist paradoxically at the
same time.
The reliance of this position on Zen seems fairly clear. Takizawa, though,
claimed that Nishida’s concept of unity in contradiction was not so much strictly
Buddhist as universal, and he sought to demonstrate that there was a structural
agreement with this concept in the anthropological ontology found in religion as
such, and specifically in Christian theology. So he finds a structural equivalence
between Buddhism and Christian faith. And to explicate this he introduces the
concept of ‘Emmanuel’ in a unique philosophical Christology.
This leads us to the second major influence on his thought, Karl Barth. It
might indeed seem curious that one who had such an intimate commitment to
and understanding of two of the most experiential forms of Buddhism should be
attracted to the hard dogmatism of a theologian of Barth’s stature. Takizawa’s un-
derstanding and interpretation of Karl Barth are certainly not without their prob-
lems, and Takizawa is not averse to disagreeing with Barth. None the less it is
true, as Terazono commented, that in dealing with Christian theology Takizawa
always takes Barth as his point of departure (1988:12).
Takizawa’s acknowledgment of his debt to Barth is generous and frequent
(1980:170-1) and his use of the concept of Emmanuel, is taken directly from
Barth. Takizawa’s main problem with Barth (as one might expect) is his ‘ab-
solutising’ of the Christian faith. He devotes a whole paper to Barth’s note on
the similarity of Jodo-shin, as a salvation religion, to Christianity (1980:66-110).
This volume of Church Dogmatics appeared in 1927 well before Takizawa met
Barth, and is one of few excursions by Barth into the field of comparative religion
(Barth 1952:372-7). Barth’s grasp and appreciation of non-Christian religions was
limited. His much vaunted diatribe against religion as a form of unbelief should
not be seen in the context of what today would be called religious dialogue but
rather against the background of religion as understood by 19th German liberal-
ism. If his foray into Japanese Buddhism was unfortunate, it did at least provide
Takizawa with an Anknüpfungspunkt to latch on to. Barth regarded Jodo-shin
as the nearest parallel to the Reformed concept of grace in what he calls hea-
then (Heiden) religions. While he sees several differences between Jodo-shin and
Christianity, the main distinction – as one would expect given the christocentric
nature of his dogmatics – is the fact that ‘the truth claim of Christianity is con-
tained in the one Name Jesus Christ and nothing else.’ Other religions may share

75
the same structure and the ‘symptoms’ of Christianity as a religion of grace,
but because they are not grounded in Jesus Christ their adherents remain ‘poor
quite lost heathens.’ In other words the truth of Christianity is not found in its
structures and systems – even its way of salvation – but in the Person and Name
Jesus Christ90. Takizawa, I think correctly, sees this as absolutising Christianity
to the exclusion of any other world-view. However, rather than dismissing Barth
he goes on to ask a deeper question: what exactly does Barth mean by ‘the Name
Jesus Christ?’ In 1936 Takizawa had already commented that whoever listens to
Karl Barth’s preaching should not measure it by his own picture of Christ, ‘to
praise or condemn it’, but simply try to hear which Christ Barth preaches in the
whole correlation (Zusammenhang) of his preaching (1980:72). For Barth, argues
Takizawa, the Name Jesus Christ is something completely independent of our
thinking or actions, and absolutely different from the ‘religious’, whether Chris-
tian or not. This ‘Something’ (Etwas) which Barth calls the name Jesus Christ,
‘exists where the person really exists’ irrespective of who or what that person is,
whether he recognises it or not. It is something that exists for each of us and from
which we cannot for a moment be separated. This fact (Faktum) is on an entirely
different plane from all else in human life and experience. It is an original primal
relationship (ursprünglich Beziehung), an undeserved gift of grace, a sure and
indestructible foundation (Stütze) of the individual life. This original relation be-
tween the ‘Something’ and the existing person is a simple given, a fact. But we
are unaware that this fact lies at the basis of our human life until we are awakened
to it (1980:73-4). So, argues Takizawa, what is important for Barth is not doctrine,
church practice, or even ethics but the primal relationship between God and man,
‘the absolutely individual yet at the same time universal living word’ which is the
Name Jesus Christ. Religion – whether Christianity or any other – is simply an
appearance (Erscheinung) which mirrors the truth of this relationship (1980:76).
False religion is to take this appearance for the reality.
In this way Takizawa can claim that in Barth ‘absolutism has nothing to with
the general widespread western absolutism’ or exclusivism (though later Barthi-
ans, misunderstanding Barth, thought it did!). Rather the Name Jesus Christ turns
out to be a kind of light that lightens everyman, or rather the ground structure of
human Being which Takizawa (taking his cue from lectures he heard Barth give
on the virgin birth) prefers to call ‘Emmanuel’, which becomes a key term for
him.91 Barth’s fault, according to Takizawa, is that he did not make sufficiently

90 I find this type of argumentation unconvincing and circular: given the premise of the essential
centrality of Christ, any system which does not share this must of necessity be false. This is
hardly a helpful basis for fruitful interaction with other religions or indeed with Christian the-
ology that comes out of a non-Christian context.
91 It is hardly a key term for Barth himself and Barth‘s use of the term is quite different from the
meaning Takizawa gives it.

76
clear the distinction in his use of the phrase ‘the Name Jesus Christ’ between
the original fact (Urfakt) of human Being on the one hand, and the outward ex-
pression of that same fact in the historical world in the life of Jesus on the other.
In Takizawa’s terminology these are respectively the ‘ first Emmanuel’ and the
‘second Emmanuel.’ The latter is a symptom, a manifestation of the first. Conse-
quently, despite Barth’s emphatic denial of natural theology ‘there still remains
in him a platform (Bodensatz) of theologia naturalis’ (1980:85). The convinced
Barthian might be somewhat perplexed by this interpretation. On the other hand
one can see where Takizawa is coming from. Given his immersion in both Jodo-
shin and Zen and his interpretation of these forms of Japanese Buddhism, it is
perhaps not too surprising that he should have read into the work of Barth, his
second teacher, a similar religious structure.
There are a number of assumptions which underlie Takizawa’s theology, the
most important of which seem to me his conception of the basic structure of
religion, his view of reality and anthropology, and his understanding of Christ.
In Takizawa’s view all religions, regardless of the form in which they are
manifested (Erscheinungsformen) have as their centre the unity of God and man
(1980:18). His use of the term Emmanuel provides a christological (in its broad-
est sense) basis for his general theory of religion and of anthropology. This theo-
ry is most clearly discussed in his lecture ‘Religionen als Sache der Gegenwart’
in which he poses the question, ‘Where can one find the ultimate underpinning
(Stütze) in life?’ He suggests a definition wider than the usual understanding
of religion as the relation between God and man. For him the basic question
is where man finds a basic grounding for his relationship with other people
and inanimate things. This for him is essentially a question of religion as such,
not simply of individual religions – whether Buddhism or Christianity. It is
something which concerns each person in his or her inner being (Lebenskern),
whether he or she is consciously aware of this or not. Where does one find this
ground (Stütze)? There are two possibilities: either in the Ego (Ich-Selbst) or in
something outside of it (we have met this duality already in his interpretation
of Jodo-shin and Zen). He rejects the suggestion that the underpinning is to be
found outside the Self for, he argues, ‘nothing that is not unconditionally one
(eins) with our Ego and which is separate from us can hold fast (fassen) our
Ego and support (stützen) the whole life of the individual’ (1980:6). The other
possibility, which assumes the autonomy of the Ego, is likewise rejected since
he believes no one can deny that the Ego is like a yawning chasm of endless
solitude that nothing can completely satisfy. Is there then no alternative but for
the individual to be torn asunder between the two poles of autonomy and het-
eronomy? This tearing apart is called in Buddhism ignorance and in Christian
theology it is called sin.

77
 A way out of this dilemma, however, exists through which a person may find
a new existence. This comes not by logic, instinct, piety or mysticism, but is nev-
ertheless near to everyone. It stems from the basic structure of human Being (die
Grundstruktur des menschlichen Seins) both in its origins and in its existence
(Entstehen und Bestehen – one of Takizawa’s favourite phrases). It is a funda-
mental fact (Urfaktum) of man’s existence, whether he realises or deserves it or
not. It is the absolute contingency of human existence which nothing can annul92.
There is, at the point of this world where a true Person arises and exists, al-
ready and always a ‘Something’ that is in no way his Ego, but exists and lives
for ever. The connection between this Something – which in the beginning (and)
here and now exists in the foundation (Grund) of the arising and existing of the
Ego – and the human Ego, is not a relationship which it (the Ego) initially, after
it has arisen as a human subject, establishes with other things and people … It is
the truly near and inward relationship, which underpins him in the deepest foun-
dation of his life and thus enables him at once to rise up (aufzustehen). ... This
Something which, despite and in absolute distinction (from the Ego) and just by
distinguishing itself from the Ego, is directly one (eins) with the Ego (1980:10).
This ‘Something’ is called in the Bible Jahwe, God Almighty, and in Buddhism
is called the Self. However this does not mean the identity of the Ego with God in a
pantheistic sense, for there is an absolute boundary line (Grenzlinie) between God
and man which cannot be obliterated. The essence of religion is the recognition of
this simple but decisive relationship – that man is not identified with God but is
none the less one with Him in a ‘living, indivisible, yet unconfused irreversable
relationship’, a ‘self-identity in absolute contradiction,’ man is one with God but
at the same time is not identified with God93. For Takizawa this self-identification
in contradiction is universally valid and applies to all men and women (not just to
Jesus) whether each individually awakens to it or not. It lies at the basis of the exis-
tence as such of the human subject and is the universal basic structure of all religion.
The thesis of the ‘unity in difference’ between God and man as the basic factor
(Urfaktum) in human existence Takizawa derived from Nishida. And it was from
this perspective that he came to hear Barth’s lectures on the virgin birth (1980:34).
The concept of Emmanuel, God with us, seemed to him to correspond to and con-
firm this basic theo-anthropology he had discerned in Buddhism. Consequently
Takizawa developed a kind of Christian form of this thesis. The deep structure
which underpins human existence is ‘God-with-us, Emmanuel.’ However (as in
his interpretation of Buddhism) this unity with God as a basic structure of hu-

92 a point developed in his paper on Gen. 2.23-4, ‘Die Einzelne und die Gemeindschaftʼ (1987:43).
93 As Sundermeier remarks this language is reminiscient of the creed‘s definition of the dual na-
tures in Christ as ‚without confusion, change, division and separation‘ , and Takizawa is ready
to apply this christological statement to all humanity.

78
man existence is as yet unconscious, the Ego needs to be awakened to this fact.
Takizawa calls this second stage ‘Emmanuel 2.’ And it is in connection with this
‘second Emmanuel’ that he explores christology. His interpretation of the human
figure of Jesus is not entirely consistent or systematic, nor is his use of the New
Testament very critical. This should not perhaps surprise since he approaches the
figure of Jesus from a religioun which is less concerned with history than it is
with tradition and religious experience. Nor should we expect sharp metaphysi-
cal definitions such as characterise the creeds. Jesus, for Takazawa, is (like the
Buddha) the ‘enlightened one’ who is saviour-example. He is the one who is con-
scious of being one (eins) with God. The Jesus of Nazareth of the Gospels is for
Takizawa one who ‘in his words and deeds is the figure (Gestalt) in which God,
who exists only in and for himself, has clearly revealed himself in the midst of
the world of men which stands against him, and which is rushing into an empty
abyss’ (1980:32). While Jesus claims authority he does not wish to set himself up
as the final foundation (Stütze) or source of life (1980:59). Rather he manifests
what is (ideally) true of all of us. Takizawa agrees that Jesus was from the begin-
ning ‘one with God,’ but this does not mean that the boundary between God and
man, between the mortal human person and the omnipresent God, is transcended.
On the contrary it means that Jesus of Nazareth is not a self-sufficient individual
(selbstständiges Selbst) but is a contingent being, whose ground of Being lies
outside his self. In so far as he lived selflessly and faithfully his life ‘is nothing
other than the life in which God himself has revealed his will over against men’
(1980:60) It is in this sense that he can be called Christ, in that his human life is
a manifestation of the divine ground of Being (God) which underpins us all. The
confession ‘Jesus is Christ’ then indicates for Takizawa the ‘double-sidedness’ of
the visible man Jesus. The figure Jesus is the exact expression of the boundary be-
tween God and man, firstly as the self-expression of God through a human being,
and secondly (as the reverse side of this) as the reflection of God through a man in
Jesus’ words and deeds. Put another way: the word of God, the command of God,
sounds within us all, even when we do not hear it. The man Jesus, however, heard
the word of command that dwelt within him, the word which was the ground of
his Being, and he then proclaimed it. In Takizawa’s view the same word of God
also dwells in and is the source of being of all people, in the same concrete way
as in Jesus. Thus a ‘clear echo’ of this word of command should be evident even
in those who never saw nor have ever heard of the man Jesus. Jesus as a flesh and
blood man of history is thus to be distinguished from the ‘Name Jesus’ (Mk 1.23;
Lk 1.28-35). The Name – Emmanuel 1 – signifies the true essence, the genesis and
ground of Being (Entstehenspunkt) common to all but fully realised in Jesus the
man (1980:79). The Name is the original contact point between God and man, the
common ground of life of the whole human race (1980:102). The earthly life of

79
Jesus is not the same thing as Emmanuel. What was affirmed from eternity (Em-
manuel as the Urfaktum) is in Jesus eternally present (1987:530).
Takizawa finds no ground for thinking that Jesus’ disciples ever believed that
the boundary point between God and man had been crossed in Jesus, that is, in
traditional terms, that he shared the two natures of God and man. His relevance
for us is quite different, it is as our example (Vorbild). In so far as he was com-
pletely obedient to God he awakens us also to the awareness of God as the ground
of Being which is within each one of us. This is possible only because Jesus – our
example and teacher of truth – and we share the same common ground of Being
in God (1987:62). Jesus is a ‘living symptom’, a reflection (Widerschein) within
this world which demonstrates the original and basic relationship between God
and man (1987:79, 91). The confession ‘Jesus is Christ’, which has been transmit-
ted through the Bible and the church, becomes for us an existential experience
which ‘breaks out within ourselves from the true ground of our Self.’ This was
the realisation of the disciples, who though they had known him ‘after the flesh’
in his human life, only subsequently came to see the truth through the Holy Spirit.
For the disciples the resurrection is not physical (1987:62) but rather the joy of the
realisation that Jesus still lived with and in them. The idea seems to be that the
flesh and blood Jesus, who taught and acted and on whom the disciples relied,
is only a mirror of Emmanuel, the Urfaktum ‘God with us.’ By the cross Jesus
put to death his Ego and thereby revealed the Emmanuel, which is God as the
ground of being of all men. The disciples awakened to this fact of Emmanuel.
‘Through the words and deeds, life and death of this concrete man Jesus, we are
all awakened to the same Christ …his Spirit commands each of us to hold fast
to the absolutely concrete, but at the same time universal, Christ, the Urfaktum
Emmanuel (1987:52-3, 67).
Takizawa’s thesis derives fundamentally from his understanding of religion.
But his concept of the deep structures of religion as such, has a very limited
basis. It rests upon only on Christianity (and Christian theology as interpreted by
Karl Barth) and on Mahayana Buddhism in two of its Japanese manifestations (as
interpreted by himself). Religion is understood by Takizawa largely in terms of
the Buddhist idea of dharma. This is a sanskritic, not a universal concept; more-
over it is a concept which many will find much too impersonal and lacking a sense
of history – and it is this, no doubt, which had led him to a minimal interest in the
historical Jesus. Furthermore, while Takizawa rejects the drawing of superficial
parallels of a phenomenological nature between Buddhism and Christianity this,
it seems to me, is exactly what he does in his theory of structural similarities. The
parallels between the two religions are forced rather than obvious. Takizawa has
to reinterpret both Barth and Buddhism to make them fit into an epistemological
and ontological theory. Yagi (1993:33) claims that for Takizawa, ‘Gottama Bud-

80
dha was a man who realised the secondary contact, so that Buddhism as a whole
is another form of true religion, parallel to Christianity.’ I suggest it is more than
this. Takizawa seems rather to be trying to accommodate Christianity into a re-
ligious theory arrived at through his own interpretation of Buddhism (in a sense
he might be accused of making us all anonymous Buddhists, which is no doubt
why he has attracted the attention of academics interested in religious dialogue).
In his interpretation of Barth also he is unconvincing. Barth has been swallowed
up into Zen and it is not surprising that that the result is somewhat indigestible.
Behind this reinterpretation stands a particular type of epistemological theory,
characteristic of, though by no means confined to, Buddhism. This is the rejection
of the supposed ‘western’ view of a dichotomy between the perceiving subject
and the perceived object, and the assertion that there is an intimate unbreakable
relationship between the one and the other. This is not pantheism, the absorption
of the subject into the object, nor is it separation; it lies somewhere between the
two, unity in duality (as expressed in Daito’s poem). More relevant at this point
though is the ‘Christ-mysticism’ of Paul. Yagi (1977:117-34) cogently refers in this
connection to Gal. 2.19-29. In v.19b Paul identifies himself with Christ, but in the
following verse there is a distinction between himself and Christ. Such Christ-
mysticism might have provided Takizawa with a biblical basis to develop a chris-
tology which would have been less abstract. There is however a paradox here,
which Takizawa does not address. If the object-subject relationship is necessarily
beyond ‘objective’ knowledge, how then can we know and recognise it? In Paul it
is by faith, in Zen by satori. This may be self-authenticating for the individual but
it is difficult to see how it can be a valid universal authentication, which Takizawa
claims it is. But of course this is problem that the Christian faith shares with Bud-
dhism, that in the final analysis faith or enlightenment lies beyond normal per-
ception and is therefore unprovable. Christian theology can address this problem
only by assuming the internal witness of the Holy Spirit as the revealer of Christ.
There seems to me to be a fundamental difficulty with Taklizawa’s christol-
ogy. His ‘Emmanuel 1’ really has nothing at all to do with the historical figure of
Jesus. As Sundermeier remarks that Takizawa ‘cannot and will not answer the
question ‘Cur deus homo?’or more specifically ‘Cur Jesus crucifixus?’ and he is
not interested in a coherent theological system’ (1995:196). Jesus/Emmanuel is
rather a principle which lies hidden or latent in everyone. The incarnate Jesus is
the symptom of awakening to ‘Emmanuel 1’ in the form of ‘Emmanuel 2’, just as
Sakyamuni or Amida Buddha is a symptom or reflection of the Buddha principle
which lies in everyone. In this respect Takizawa’s use of the term Emmanuel
(which in Mt. applies to the incarnate Jesus) to refer to the deep structures he
finds in all religions, seems to me an unnecessary confusion (though perhaps
no more so than the patristic usage of Logos). Furthermore, as Yagi (1993:33)

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has argued, ‘Emmanuel 1’ is theologically redundant. His point is that since no
one realises the presence of ‘Emmanuel 1’ until it is awakened by ‘Emmanuel 2’,
then ‘Emmanuel 1’ as only potentiality has no real theological function. Indeed
how can one know it really exists at all? Is Takizawa saying any more than that
there is an innate potential for God in everyone which reaches fulfillment if and
when the Spirit awakens the individual to faith in Christ (or in Takizawa’s Bud-
dhist terminology, to its true Self)? Takizawa’s treatment of the earthly life of
Jesus also seems to me seriously defective. Moltmann in a letter to Takizawa (in
Takizawa 1987:197) suggested that his christology might be docetic, a charge
which the latter rejected (he seems to me closer to Paul of Samosata). However
this may be, there is certainly a strong strand of a-historicism in it. Jesus, like
Sakyamuni and Amida, is less an historical figure than the embodiment of an
eternal truth, a cosmic principle. Takizawa does of course quote from the Gos-
pels. The way he uses them however indicates that he is not really interested in
the Gospels as an historical record or in the tools of historical criticism.94 Tagawa
(1969:42) bluntly, but I think correctly, comments that ‘as far as biblical exegesis
is concerned Takizawa does not understand after all what historical study of the
Bible means.’ Similarly he fails to situate the Gospels within their 1st century
Palestinian context, which seriously skews his understanding of Jesus’ teaching95.
Nor is his Jesus the Christ of Paul. Rather he is a person who shares in sinful hu-
man nature, and is the mirror of what we can all become if we would but awaken
to our true selves, the primary contact with God which lies within us all. In all
this there remains a basic dislocation of Jesus from history – perhaps a result as
much of his study with Bultmann as of his Buddhist background. The real flesh
and blood Jesus has as little immediate and integral relationship to ‘Emmanuel
2’ as to ‘Emmanuel 1.’ As the Buddha nature is manifested in many Buddhas, so
Emmanuel 2 could equally have been manifested in others besides Jesus, there
is nothing specifically unique about him except as a supreme example of what
lies potentially within all of us. It is significant that the nearest Takizawa comes
to discussing the ‘historical’ Jesus is in a comparison with the hero of a work of
fiction (1987:128-80), and even there he is less interested in Jesus as such than in
his legacy to the disciples. Takizawa is of course working with a quite different
conception of ‘history’ from that found in the biblical tradition, a point we shall
refer to again below. But whatever Takizawa, or anyone else, makes of Jesus, he
was originally an historical figure. To distance him from that history is to raise
serious questions about authenticity.

94 This is reflective of Zen in general which, as D.T. Suzuki (1949:19-20) points out, emphasises a
transmission outside the scriptures, ie through experience.
95 As does his misunderstanding of Judaism: like Yagi, Takizawa seems to me to have absorbed
the anti-Judaism characteristic of some earlier western scholars.

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V. Jesus and the Saviour Figures

‘The difference between Jesus Christ and other human beings (including the founders of
world religions) is not one of kind but of degree, and this is to acknowledge that there must
be some affinity. But this is far from saying that one must adopt a thoroughgoing relativism.
(John MacQuarrie Jesus Christ in Modern Thought, 1991)

MacQuarrie’s suggestion that the difference between Jesus Christ and the central
figures of some of the other great world religions (including Krishna and the
Buddha) ‘is not one of kind but of degree’ (1991:414) reflects perhaps a common
modern approach to the difficulty of relating the claims of Christianity to those of
faiths. The term ‘saviour’, MacQuarrie thinks, is problematic (though he uses it
as a chapter title) and he prefers to call them ‘mediators.’ This point is well taken.
Salvation means different things in different religions, and to use the term saviour
may be to impose a Christian category upon other faiths. Though comparisons
between Christ and other mediators is frequently raised in discussions of christol-
ogy in Asia, systematic and extended treatments of this issue are less common. In
this chapter I shall examine two attempts to situate Jesus among other saviour or
mediator figures, one from Hinduism, the other from Buddhism.

Stanley Samartha: situating Christ within religious

pluralism
Samartha (1920-2001) was born in Karnakaka in south India. He studied in In-
dia and in America (where ironically he seems first to have been seriously at-
tracted to Hindu thought) and Europe. He subsequently worked with Devanandan
and M.M. Thomas at Christian Institute for the Study of Religiona and Society
in Bangalore, where he became involved in inter-faith dialogue. He then spent
twelve years in Geneva atthe W.C.C., where he eventually set up a sub-unit on
dialogue. His first book The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ (1974) cov-
ers similar ground to Thomas’ better known Acknowledged Christ of the Indian
Renaissance, and already shows signs of his embracing of advaita (non-dualism).
On returning to India he published a little book titiled The Lordship of Christ
and Religious Pluralism (1981), in which he sought to address the question of

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how to confess the Lordship of Jesus Christ while living and working together
with people of other faiths. Here I shall concentrate on Samartha’s last published
book One Christ – Many Religions, which is the fullest exposition of his views..
This was completed in America in 1990, after his spell in Geneva and return to
theological teaching in his native India. In some ways it is more a collection of
essays than a sustained argument (some of the chapters had previously appeared
in journals). Though some of his writing sounds dated at the beginning of the 21st
century, it usefully represents a position which had been greatly influenced not
only by his experience in the religiously plural country of his birth, but also his
(not always comfortable) time in Geneva. The title is to some degree misleading.
Its focus is on what Samartha believes a ‘revised christology’ should look like in
a religiously plural world, but it does not so much delineate a new approach to
the doctrine of Christ as to map out the implications of doing christology in the
multi-religious context of our world today.
Samartha believes that it is essential that theology should ‘take account of
the meaning and significance of the new situation of religious plurality today’
(1991:10). He suggests that this dates from the second half of the 20th century, with
the new appreciation of non-Christian religions encouraged by Vatican II, and
which received further impetus from the World Council of Churches’ meeting in
1970. He concludes from this that the debate about religious pluralism has been
dominated by a western framework. Probably Samartha’s view has been shaped
by his own involvement with the WCC, and it is surprising that he does mention
in One Christ the very considerable interaction in India during the latter part of
the 19th century between Christianity and neo-Hinduism. However, given that
the modern debate about religious pluralism by and large was initiated by liberal
Christians (too often with limited practical exposure to other religions) it is un-
derstandable that it developed within the parameters of the western intellectual
tradition. Eastern religions by contrast have a tendency to absorb and co-exist,
rather than debate with incoming faiths.
In agreement with many advocates of religious pluralism Samartha tries to
reduce all religions to a common shared core, what he calls the ‘Mystery of Tran-
scendence.’ For Samartha this Mystery is ‘a transcendental centre that serves
both as a source of all values and the norm to judge all human conduct, personal
and public’. Whether this is called God or sat or dharma or Ultimate Reality is
less important to him than that for all religious communities it ‘points to the
sacred symbol that transcends loyalty to one’s own religion, tribe, caste, or lan-
guage’ (1991:56). There are multiple problems with this kind of statement, most
obviously that it assumes the concepts God, sat and so on are less important than
the ‘Ultimate Reality’ which is presumed to lie behind them and in which they are
presumed to share. The capitalising of this phrase itself suggests a certain intan-

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gibility which is alien to the more concrete ways in which each religious tradition
describes its central concern. It also betrays a particular conception of Ultimate
Reality or Mystery, which in Samartha’s case, as we shall see, is derived from an
advaita philosophical system. It looks suspiciously as though from the outset the
central concepts of diverse religious – God, Christ, Allah and so on – are being
submerged into an impersonal multi-religious Brahman, and the distinctiveness
and differences which make them focal for their adherents obliterated. Nor is it
entirely convincing to speak of ‘sacred symbols’ which transcend tribe, caste and
so on in a world in which religious conflicts are often violent, even within the
specific tradition of Hinduism. Samartha (unlike M.M. Thomas) is dismissive
of secularism, and unwilling to include it within the commonality of Transcen-
dent Mystery (1991:56) though, in his desire to allow Theraveda Buddhism into
dialogue, he is insistent that agnosticism is allowable for ‘Mystery is beyond the
theistic/atheistic debate.’ Mystery, he believes, cannot be subjected to rational
thought. ‘Mystery is an ontological status to be accepted, not an epistemological
position to be solved’ (1991:83). This seems as much a ‘lump it or leave’ stance as
Barth’s. Even mysticism has to try to convey its meaning reasonably and sooner
or later has to use propositional terminology if it is to communicate anything to
the outsider.
Since Samartha’s ‘Mystery’ is not confined to Christianity it follows that the
Bible is not the only written source of the knowledge of God. Eastern religions
have other ‘scriptures’ which must also be taken into account, even for christol-
ogy. ‘Christologies developed in a monoscriptural situation in the West in re-
sponse to Western challenges’, he argues, ‘may indeed be helpful to Christians in
Asia and Africa, but they cannot be “normative” to them because they have yet to
develop new hermeneutics in a multiscriptural society’ (1991:57). It is not entirely
clear what this last phrase is meant to imply. Samartha (correctly, I think) rejects
Raimundo Panikkar’s argument (in his The Unknown Christ of Hinduism) that
Christ may be encountered in Hindu religious writings (and there is indeed no
more reason to believe that non-Christian scriptures can illuminate the meaning
of Christ than that the New Testament can inform us about Krishna or the Bud-
dha). Samartha seems to lean towards a kind of spiritual approach – ‘hermeneu-
tics by itself cannot yield the truth in its fullness without purification of the mind,
transformation of the heart, and discipline of the body’ (1991:61). However he
does not spell out exactly what he means by this, nor address the problem of how
one can attain such a state without a prior understanding of scripture. Few would
probably question that the sacred books of Eastern religions may be at times both
aesthetically and spiritually helpful, and Samartha’s plea for western Christian
to have a sympathetic familiarity with these writings is not unwelcome – though
may be somewhat superfluous in an age when the Gita, I Ching, and Quran are

85
commonly regarded as popular classics. But this also raises the issue of whether
we are comparing like with like. Judaism and Christianity have authorised ‘can-
ons,’ and Islam has followed suit. This is not so much the case with Hinduism,
Buddhism and Chinese religions, where scriptures (if one may proerperly use
that term of them) have grown and found acceptance over a long period of time,
and where the concept of a ‘canon’ in the strict sense is alien. Furthermore Sam-
artha seems to be unduly optimistic that all the multiple scriptures ‘point to a
more promising future’ (1991:75).
What underpins Samartha’s position in almost all of its aspects is his whole-
sale acceptance of the Vedantic philosophy of advaita, which (as we have seen
in chapter II) is usually rendered as ‘non-dualism’ but which Samartha translates
as ‘not two-ism.’ In Samartha’s hands advaita becomes an all-embracing unity
which can include everything and which he regards as the key to theology (and
christology) in a religiously plural world. ‘For Christian thinkers in India to ig-
nore advaita and its enduring influence on the life and thought of the people,’ he
writes, ‘is the easiest way to commit theological suicide’ (1991:108). It is a ‘vision
of a grand unity that holds together adversities in harmony and tension … not just
a narrowly sectarian religious doctrine but a view of life.’ He rejects the charge
often made against advaita that it lacks a social ethic, and counters with the large
claim that in India advaita has held together a diversity of ethnic groups, lan-
guages, political ideologies and religions (1991:108). His view is that Hinduism
has been accepting of religious pluralism in contrast to what he sees as Christian
exclusivism and expansionism under the aegis of political, military and economic
power (1991:84). Hinduism, by contrast, preserves two vital principles: the unity
of all religions and the conviction that different religions are not contradictory of
each other. In a rhetorical passage he claims:
‘There are certain elements in the Asian heritage which should make a larger
and more inclusive conceptual framework which can hold together revised chris-
tologies that do more justice to new perceptions of religious pluralism in the world
today. These are a mode of awe and reverence before the Mystery of Truth or God
or Ultimate Reality; a profound hesitation to take any exclusive stance where
faith is concerned; and an unwillingness to claim finality to particular responses
to Truth, even where their necessity is acknowledged; a suspicion of all rational
formulations of Truth; a non-triumphalist attitude toward other religions and a re-
fusal to destroy dissent as heresy; the emphasis towards inwardness, meditation,
contemplation and sadhana (discipline) in religious life ….’ (1991:110).
Of course methodologically there is no reason why Samartha should not adopt
an Indian philosophical system like advaita as a framework for his Christian
theology. It had been used before, as we have seen, by Brahmabandhab Upad-
hyay, though as Kirsteen Kim points out hardly by non-Catholics (Kim 2003:22).

86
In Samartha’s case however the issue is whether advaita has become more than
simply a framework. Samartha was greatly influenced by Radhakrishnan, whose
voluminous writings adopt a thorough going advaita, and had a good deal of
influence in the West as well as in India. Samartha’s almost unquestioning adop-
tion of advaita seems to me uncritical. It ignores the fact that its impact on Indian
political thought since 1947 contributed to the concept of a ‘Hindu mainstream’
which ignored or subjected minority ethnic groups and tribals (of which Samar-
tha, as a South Indian Christian, should have been aware), and has done nothing
to alleviate the lot of the dalits (see following chapter). Philosophically, of course,
advaita is just as exclusive as any other religious philosophy in denying validity
to contrary positions.
Despite his emphasis on advaita Samartha recognises the importance of the
NT, especially the Gospels, as a foundation for christology. ‘All christologies
at any time and place need to be grounded in the New Testament’ and again
‘no Christology worth its name anywhere in the world can afford to do without
the New Testament foundations’ without which it would be ‘mere speculation’
(1991:xi, 119). Only a basis in scripture can ensure that a christology is ecumeni-
cal rather than individualistic – though it is important to recognise that Samartha
uses ‘ecumenical’ not so much in the (WCC) sense of the world-wide church but
much more inclusively to embrace all peoples and religions. He recognises that
the Gospels are ‘testimonies’ of the life of Jesus by the believing community96
and in that sense give an inadequate picture of Jesus. He believes that the being
and truth of Jesus (both terms taken from the language of advaita) behind the tes-
timonies is ‘larger, deeper and more mysterious than any portrait painted by the
brushes of scholarly study, and therefore the being and truth of Jesus must remain
the controlling factor in interpreting the testimonies of the writers’ (1991:115).
Samartha’s stress on the Gospels is part of his conviction that christology must
begin ‘from below.’ Thus we must begin with the historic person and work of Je-
sus of Nazareth, a ‘fact’ which precedes all later doctrinal formulations, of which
he is quite critical (1991:114). Samartha does not address the methodological
problem which tantalises NT scolars of how we can get behind the ‘testimonies’
to the historic person. Indeed he seems less interested in this than in using the
NT as a springboard for his own perspective. He rejects what he sees as a western
intellectualist approach to scripture in favour of a more Indian intuitive herme-
neutic: the search for objectivity is less important than a ‘spiritual’ meaning.
Samartha’s attempt to put Christ into an ‘ecumenical’ (ie. pluralist) context
proceeds on a number of fronts. Primarily he argues for a ‘theocentric christol-

96 Samartha became familiar with the Form Critical approach during his studies in America and
Europe.

87
ogy.’ In the Gospels Jesus points to God, not to himself.97 Thus christological
reflections are concerned not only with the question of Jesus Christ ‘but at the
same time, with the meaning of God or Ultimate Reality for human existence’
(1991:92). Thus in a religiously plural world ‘being Christ-centred is not the only
way of being God-centred’ (1991:93). Samartha does not think that this detracts
from Jesus Christ. On the contrary for him ‘there is not the slightest suggestion
(ie. in his revised christology) that this is to be done by diminishing Christ or
by diluting the substance of the Christian faith.’ It is rather ‘a critical reflection
on the God-human encounter in Jesus Christ in a salvation where new percep-
tions of religious pluralism cannot be ignored any more’ (1991:98). This is a
kind of ‘both/and’ christology in contrast to the ‘either/or’ christology he finds
in western theology. Such a christology will embrace ‘new models of Truth’
(capitalised) in which Truth is a dynamic process and ‘no longer defined in terms
of exclusion’ (1991:104). In his view the affirmation of the divinity of Christ is
a confession of the believing community (1991:116). So ‘truth as received by a
particular community at a given time can prove itself true not by rejecting, but by
relating itself to truth as perceived by neighbours of other faiths.’ He explicates
this further:
‘To Christians this truth is decisively manifested in Jesus Christ. No one asks
them to dilute or betray this faith. But the function of christology, in a pluralistic
world is not to claim uniqueness for Christ by proving others wrong or false, but
to confess, explain and help Christians to live in obedience to the truth, manifest-
ed to them in Jesus Christ. Therefore christology becomes both joyful acceptance
of the truth revealed in Jesus Christ and a pilgrimage toward the fullness of truth
(John 14.16-17)’ (1991:104).
Samartha argues (rightly, I think) that there are several different christolo-
gies to be found in the NT, and that in the light of this we need have no anxiety
about jettisoning what he calls ‘outmoded models’ and developing different ones
for ‘Christ can be unwrapped in different ways’ (1991:112, 105,140). One would
imagine then that Samartha would welcome differing contextual theologies. In
fact he is dismissive not only of Dalit, feminist and liberationist christologies,
but especially of evangelical understandings of Christ, which he calls ‘strident
and aggressive’ and ‘arrogant and exclusive.’ The acceptable multiple models for
him appear only to be ‘ecumenical’ ones, that is, those which are situated within
religious pluralism. Religious pluralism thus turns out to be not an open philo-
sophical position but one which excludes any other view. (The charge of making
pluralism into just another kind of exclusivism is, of course, one which has been
levelled against John Hick, and applies equally here).

97 This claim is not entirely convincing if one accepts the authenticity of the Son of Man sayings,
which Samartha does not comment on.

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 Samartha rejects the charge that he relativises Christ, but he is eager to treat
him alongside other ‘saviour figures’ (his term) of Hinduism and Buddhism. ‘Je-
sus as the Christ of God is the confession of the Christian community,’ he writes,
‘but this does not make him “absolutely singular” ’ or mean that ‘Mystery is
disclosed only in one particular person.’ Other religious traditions have ‘other
points of reference’ (1991:84). Three figures are important for him, Krishna,
Rama and Gautama (all originating in Hinduism) (1991:124-131). Samartha goes
into some detail on the ‘scriptural’ data regarding Krishna, tracing him back to
the Rig Veda and the Upanishads, and then through the Epics, Bhagavadgita and
the (somewhat erotic) Puranas. These scriptures spread over a very long period
indeed (approximately 1,200BC to 1,000AD). (It is perhaps significant that he
does not consider the commonly held view that Krishna – the ‘black’ – originated
as a south Indian pre-Hindu pastoral deity). Though, as we have seen, Samartha is
insistent on the historicity of Jesus he does not apply the same criteria to Krishna
or Rama – indeed he quotes Pulsakar to the effect that ‘an ordinary Hindu is never
concerned with historicity.’ 98 The religious value of these saviour figures is what
their avatars symbolise. ‘The theory of multiple avataras,’ he suggests, ‘seems
to be theologically most accommodating in a pluralistic setting, one that permits
recognising both the Mystery of God and the freedom of people to respond to
divine initiatives in different ways at different times’ (1991:131). The case of the
Buddha is of course different, in that there can be no doubt of his historical ex-
istence, and parallels between the Buddha and Christ have often been explored.
However Buddhist tradition too is less interested in history than in the develop-
ment of tradition. I shall return to the question of differing views of time and
history in what may be broadly called the ‘eastern’ and ‘Abrahamic’ traditions.
Though christology for Samartha can only be credible if it situates itself within
the field of other religions, he shows little awareness of any outside the broad In-
dian Hindu tradition. There is no recognition of the primal or traditional religions
which continue openly or as a substructure to Christianity and Islam not only in
Africa, the Pacific, and Latin America, but also in the great tribal belt stretching
from northern India eastwards, and comparatively little interaction either with the
great religious and philosophical traditions of China. Nor does he pay any atten-
tion to the primal substructure of a great deal of Hinduism. Religious pluralism
for Samartha turns out again largely to be confined to Vendanta advaita, with the
occasional nod in the direction of the heterodox system of Theravada Buddhism.
What then does his christology look like from this quite specific perspective?

98 Gandhi was equally unconcerned about the historicity of Jesus: ‘I may say I have never been
interested in a historical Jesus. I should not care if it should be proved by someone that the man
called Jesus never lived and what was narrated in the Gospels was a figment of the writer’s
imagination. For me the Sermon on the Mount would still be true for me.’

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 Negatively it is not ‘propositional’, which he thinks has a stranglehold on
most Christian theologians (1991:89). Positively, as he never tires of reiterating,
christology must respond to other faiths, which he believes is a major failing of
‘western’ understandings of Christ. He is at pains to discount the idea that ‘Jesus
of Nazareth is ontologically the same as God’ (1991:116), though it is not clear
whether he means by this the Chalcedonian definition or some kind of monistic
modalism, what he elsewhere calls ‘christomonism or Jesuology.’ He argues that
‘coequal divinity’ is not taught in the NT, but nonetheless Jesus is described as
being ‘divine.’ He thinks that ‘the closer people come to affirming the full deity
of Jesus, the further they moved away from the historical Jesus’ (1991:124). His
comment that the incarnation is best understood not solely in terms of ‘deity’ but
in terms of divinity’ is an interesting one, but tantalisingly he fails to spell out
exactly how he understands the distinction between these two terms (1991:119).
‘Divinity’ is a very slippery term, and can be understood as contrasting with
vere Deus (Berkouwer 1954:150). None of the neo-Hindu thinkers discussed in
Thomas’ Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaisance would have balked at
calling Jesus divine. For Samartha, Jesus’kenosis has nothing to do with a self-
emptying of divinity to take human nature. He echoes Chenchiah in arguing that
kenosis should be understood of Jesus’ human life – of his ‘becoming self-less to
the point of being nothing 99 … so that by becoming perfectly selfless he could
become the instrument of God’s compassion and justice in society and the revela-
tion of God’s love to all humanity’ (1991:136). In this he can be compared to the
selflessness (sunya) of the Buddha (and of Gandhi), figures whom Indians vener-
ate because of their self-renunciation (tyaga) and non-attachment (aparigraha).
It is only this kind of Christ, Samartha believes, who will be acceptable to India.
While Samartha recognises that for St Paul the cross means salvation, he thinks
this is no longer sufficient in a plural world. He therefore rejects the idea of the
cross as an atonement for sin and guilt, for damnation is not found in Hinduism:
rather moksa (deliverance) is from ignorance (ajnana) and suffering (dukkha),
and consists in the extinction of desire (nirvana). ‘Salvation,’ he argues, ‘has to
be understood as personal healing, social healing,100 and cosmic healing within
the larger unity of nature, humanity, and God’, adding significantly ‘to which the
vision of advaita, for example, points’ (1991:138). The cross-resurrection event
points to God’s holiness and love. Furthermore Christ does not belong only to
Christians, but to all humanity.

99 Samartha was considerably influenced by the theology of Chenchiah

100 Samartha is surely quite wrong to argue (several times) that social, economic and political
cooperation is only possible on the basis of his view of religious plurality. There is no ground
at all for denying that humanitarian action can be taken in common by committed adherents of
different religions, or of no religion at all.

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 In the final analysis it not easy to identify a coherent christology in Samar-
tha’s writings. It would be instructive to make a detailed comparison with the
Hindu philosopher whom Samartha most revered, Radhakrishnan (see especially
Kirsteen Kim 2003:20ff). Many of Radhakrishnan’s key concepts, and his views
on Christianity, are reflected in Samartha: advaita as a dominating framework,
the idea that there is ‘Religion beyond the religions’ – capitalised as Mystery or
Transcendence or Truth or Reality, anubhava (intuition) as a superior key than
reason and so on.101 Where Samartha differs from Radhakrishnan is in his accep-
tance of the necessity of the real historicity of Jesus, though as we have seen this
sits uncomfortably with his theory of religious pluralism. Kirsteen Kim (2003:56)
argues convincing that Samartha actually advocates a Spirit-christology even
though he does not explicitly say so. Jesus becomes a specific instance of the
activity of the Spirit in the world. Samartha’s problem is to try to fit Jesus into
a system which is fundamentally a-historical, an Ultimate Mystery which lies
at the heart of all religion. In doing so he not only relativises the Christian faith
but every other religious faith a well, denying each its own idiosyncratic genius.
Within such a system the historic nature of Jesus is emptied of any reality.

Seiichi Yagi: Jesus and ‘Front-Structure.’

The relationship between Buddhism and Christianity has attracted consider-
able scholarly attention from Asian theologians, largely because Buddhism, like
Christianity goes back to an historical founder, and in its Mahayana forms can
claim to have ‘saviour figures’ in the Boddhisatvas. I shall take as an example
of Buddha-Christ dialogue the Japanese philosophical theologian Seiichi Yagi,
to whom we have already referred in the context of his twenty year long debate
with Takizawa. Yagi was born in 1932, and we are fortunate enough to have
his own account of the development of his theological thought (Yagi 1997:93-
101). He converted to Christianity partly through reading Kierkegaard and Kanzo
Uchimura.102 After postgraduate studies in the field of New Testament, Yagi went
to Göttingen (where Ernst Käsemann was one of his teachers) and where he came
increasingly under the influence of Bultmann’s demytholigising approach. At this

101 The most convenient introduction to Radhakrishnan’s prolific writings are probably his Hindu
View of Life (first published in 1927 and often reprinted) and Recovery of Faith (Allen and
Unwin, London 1936). Radhakrishnan was one time professor of Philosophy at Oxord and later
first President of India.
102 Uchimura believed Christ was not the possession of the church but of all mankind; he is known
as the advocate of the ‘non-church’ movement. See especially Hiroshi Miura’s The Life and
Thought of Kanzo Uchimura (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1996).

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period in his life he was, by his own confession, quite ignorant of Zen Buddhism.
In 1958 he visited the German orientalist Wilhelm Gundert, who gave him his
draft of a translation of a classical Chinese Ch’an (Zen) text. Yagi records his ex-
perience (in the third person) as he read this text on his return journey as follows:
‘Yagi soon became aware of the parallels between his first religious experi-
ence, when he became a Christian, and the second one in the train, and this paral-
lelism shed new light on this first experience as liberation from the determining
power of language. Before he became a Christian, morals had been the primary
determinant of his behaviour. What he had seen as a personal encounter was
in reality merely an encounter between his ego and moral codes, or to put it in
another way, his superego had been the ultimate subject of his person. However
he had not been aware of that. As he became a Christian, he sympathised with
Paul’s saying that Christ lived in him (Gal. 2.19f.), and he understood this realisa-
tion as salvation, because of Jesus Christ’s atonement. Now his second experi-
ence showed him clearly that what he regarded as an encounter with objective
beings was in reality the encounter between his ego and the bearers of names,
or else he had read the idea into beings which he “encountered” and held it to
be reality. Something like an invisible wall had concealed reality as it was. The
subject-object distinction and the conceptions of the beings – namely, the inevi-
table construction of our language – had pretended to be the primary reality as it
was’ (1997:98).
In this autobiographical account of his two ‘conversions’ – or perhaps we
should say ‘awakenings’ – can be found the seeds of most of his later philosophi-
cal theology. His awakening to Zen provided the lens through which he inter-
preted his earlier Christian conversion, and it dominates his methodology which
seeks to bring together the two different religions and their respective saviour
figures.
Like Takizawa, Yagi espouses an epistemology which seeks to override the
dichotomy between subject and object. While this dichotomy probably domi-
nated western philosophical tradition it was not unchallenged. Yagi’s reading of
Kirkegaard, his encounter with Bultmann’s use of Heidegger, and his interest in
Buber’s ‘I-Thou,’ all clearly resonated. Yagi returns to this in much of his writing,
and it received its fullest expression in his paper, first published in German in
1988, Die Front-Struktur als Brücke vom buddhistischen zum christlichen Den-
ken (ET Yagi 1990). While we are here mainly concerned with Yagi’s christology,
it is impossible fully to grasp this without some understanding of Yagi’s view
of relationship. ‘Front-Structure’ is (broadly) Yagi’s philosophical equivalent of
Donne’s ‘no man is an island entire of itself’ (Devotions XVII). Yagi illustrates
this simply by a rectangle divided down the middle into A and B by a ‘wall.’ The
wall represents a sharing: it is a constituent part of both A and B, but at the same

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time separates one from the other. This is Yagi’s Front-Structure. Front-Structure
is in a sense both foreign to and integral to each part, ie. A and B, by which B
projects itself into A and vice versa. ‘The Front of one object, while it remains its
Front, has become a constituent part of another object’ (1990:77). This ‘Front’
then ‘is the unity of A and non-A: A and non-A are thus one and the same’ – or
in Buddhist terminology ‘A is/is not (soku) non-A’ (1990:78). In relation to the
person this means ‘no component part of myself, no constitutive part of myself,
is something I alone have brought for myself’ (1990:75-6). Yagi describes this
as Front-Appropriation, the activity which transforms the Front of another being
into its own component part (1990:79). Similarly he speaks of Front-Expansion
in which the Front expands ‘like a patch of fog’ to become a ‘field of force.’ The
concept of Front-Structure is crucial for Yagi in the relationships between living
beings (he is wary of the term ‘individual’, for which Buddhism has no equivalent
term) (1990:75,85). He finds the Buddhist terms muge and sunyata more help-
ful. Muge signifies that ‘that which is found outside of me is transformed into
a constitutive part of me in what belongs to me, but still continues to remain
a part of that which is outside me’ – or ‘the in-one-anotherness’ of living be-
ings as the negation of pure self identity (1990:93). Sunyata (often confusingly
rendered as ‘emptiness’ or ‘nothingness’) means ‘that no existing being is com-
posed simply and exclusively of the constituent parts which belong to it alone
…(it is) the emptiness, openness which makes muge possible (1990:75) – or, in
other words, simply the non-substantiality of all existing beings’ (1990:145 n.1).
To be a living human being then means essentially to live in Front-Giving and
Front-Appropriation: ‘it (the living being) ceases to live when it is taken out of
relationship’ (1990:94). Front-Structure is the obliteration of the subject-object
distinction. The individual in and of himself is not yet an existing being, but can
only become so as he ‘binds together’ with others, even though he may not be
fully aware that this binding together is to engage in Front-Structure (1990:107).
In Buddhist terminology this is pratitya samutpada, mutual dependence and re-
latedness or ‘the endlessly multiple in-one-another of existing beings and effects’
(1990:94,97,99).103 The subject-object distinction arises from the construction of
language. But for Yagi awakening or intuition, that is, knowing reality from im-
mediate experience, is actually prior to language construction. It is ‘the event in
which one becomes aware that our uncritical use of language creates something
like invisible walls’ (1990:99-100).104 But in fact, Yagi contends, the ego does not
have a privileged status in knowing (1987:121). Rather knowledge lies in enlight-

103 I am reminded of the proverb widespread in southern Africa ‘a person is only human within
society.’
104 Yagi seems to me quite close to Bergson, for whom language, being static, cannot do full justice
to dynamic reality – only non-logical intuition can do this.

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enment, an awakening in which the absolutising of the ego is overcome. Reality
involves the mutual inter-penetration of subject and object (a kind of I-Thou) in
which the distinction between them is overcome ‘like an invisible wall.’ This
comes from intuition rather than from logical knowledge. It is like the two poles
of a magnet, which are indispensible to each other but at the same time wholly
one (1987:120).
As we have seen Yagi believed he had had two, but fundamentally identical,
awakening experiences, Christian and Zen. He agrees there is a distinction be-
tween Christian and Buddhist thinking: ‘Christian thinking is diachronic … and
understands the world in the context of history, while Buddhism understands
history in the context of the world’ (1990:125). He means by this that Christian
theology, especially in the West, focuses on the relationship between God and
God’s people, whereas Buddhism concentrates on the problem of the being of
the self and its integration into the other(s). However he believes that at the same
time there is a fundamental agreement between the two religions. In his paper
Christ and Buddha he claims that both Gautama and Jesus were great figures
who ‘in each situation and tradition found and realised religious truth common to
all humanity’ (1993:25). In his contribution to John Hick’s symposium The Myth
of Christian Uniqueness he goes further and contends that Buddhism can aid
Christians in formulating what he term a ‘pluralistic christology’ (1991:331). Bud-
dhism explicates universal truth philosophically, Christianity (following Juda-
ism) explicates the saving acts of God in history. Consequently Christians believe
in the person of Jesus, while Buddhists believe in Dharma (1993:28-9). However
the content is the same: it is encounter, an awakening to the deeper self, it is not
objective knowledge. This awakening is called by Takizawa secondary contact’
or ‘Emmanuel 2’ 105 Yagi agrees with Takizawa that Jesus is not the exclusive
realisation of secondary contact for ‘if we can say that Jesus is God we can even
say that there can be “gods” ’ (which on the basis of Jn 10.24 he thinks is biblical).
So as Jesus is the realisation of secondary contact for Christians, so is Gautama
for Buddhists (1993:35-6). In traditional theological language this means Christ
is neither unique nor final.
Yagi is less interested in Jesus as an historical person than in the effect he has
upon us. As he says, his argument is advanced ‘not as the problem of ‘Christol-
ogy’ in the exclusive sense, but as a matter of the analysis of human existence in
general’ (1993:37). For the early Christians Jesus was the only human being at
that time and place, as far as the writers of the NT knew, in whom God was real.
In that sense we can say God was real nowhere outside of Jesus, or better that

105 Though, as we have seen, in his discussion of Takizawa, Yagi dismisses Takizawa’s idea of pri-
mary contact, Emmanuel 1, on the grounds that Emmanuel 1 and Emmanuel 2 are effectively
identical.

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God acted through Jesus, for God and Jesus must be distinguished. As no one
in that situation could find the reality of God outside of Jesus, in this sense Jesus
was God and God was Jesus (1993:35). Thus the early traditions lying behind the
Synoptic Gospels indicated that ‘some who encountered Jesus experienced the
reality of God’ (though Yagi adds the cryptic rider ‘whatever God means here’!)
For Yagi it is experience that determines the Christian doctrine of Jesus Christ,
christology is not based on history but on existential encounter with Christ. This
encounter does not take place ‘objectively’ but is rather within the self:
‘The condition in which we, in the encounter with Jesus, can say that Jesus is
God is our awareness of the primary contact, or, in other words, enlightenment. It
is a condition in which one can say, “I am the Formless”, not in an encounter with
someone else but in relation to myself, “Jesus is God” and “I am the Formless”
condition each other’ (1993:36).
Yagi is following here the distinction made by the Zen philosopher Hisamatsu,
for whom the ‘I’ has a double structure, being composed of the ‘ego’ and the ‘ul-
timate self, the Formless.’ According to Hisamatsu when the self is awakened,
the Formless (the infinite self) contains the finite self (the ego) within its field
(1991:338). Or in Nishida’s terms, ‘the subject is identical with the object in the
field of the Self-Identity of the Absolute Contradiction’ (1997:122, see above on
Takizawa). We shall return to this model of human existence below.
Yagi accepts the dichotomy of his German mentors between the ‘Jesus of His-
tory’ and the Christ of Faith.’ Further, he distinguishes the person of Jesus both
from his message of the Kingdom (Reign) of God and also of ‘the Son of Man.’
According to Yagi, Jesus believed that the Son of Man was acting and speaking
through him. But he himself was not identical with the Son of Man, even though it
might well have appeared so to the observer (1991:340). For Jesus the Son of Man
was both das ganz Andere (the completely other) and at the same time his own
ultimate self. ‘Thus for Jesus’ self-understanding, he did not apotheosize himself,
for as an empirical man he did not hold himself to be divine (Mark 10.18), but he
was aware that his actions were those of the Son of Man in him’ (1991:340-1).
Thus Jesus teaching (eg. in the antitheses of the Sermon on the Mount) was ‘some-
thing divine’ coming from das ganz Andere and his own self in a divine-human
unity. Yagi terms this ‘reality’ the incarnate Logos (1991:343). Put another way,
in Jesus the human-divine Front-Structure had become one (1990:143), the ‘wall’
between God and man had been done away with. The disciples did not grasp this
during Jesus’ lifetime. The ‘Christ of Faith’ arises subsequent to Jesus’death. The
disciples then realised that there had arisen within them what Jesus had called
the Kingdom of God. This they identified with the risen Christ. So Christ and the
Kingdom are actually the same thing: the Kingdom of God is simply the risen,
pneumatic Christ in the early believers (Yagi comes close here to identifying the

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risen Christ with the Spirit). As the divine-human was revealed in and to them
the disciples became ‘awakened to the Self,’ an experience which they interpreted
as ‘Jesus has been raised from the dead, therefore his powers have become effec-
tive in us’ (1990:143). What had been with them (that is, Jesus’proclaiming and
acting out the Kingdom of God) is now within them, and the primitive Christian
community interpreted this as the Risen Jesus, Christ the Lord, and Son of God.
This is most clearly seen in Paul. For Paul, Christ becomes Paul’s ‘true self’, but
Paul’s ego does not disappear but is rather created anew (2 Cor. 5.17). A key text
for Yagi is Gal. 2.20 which he understands to mean that Christ becomes Paul’s
real self (subject) and his ego becomes Christ’s ‘organ.’ ‘Paul was clearly distin-
guished from Christ,’ he argues, ‘(but) the Son of God is revealed both “in” and
“to” Paul, that is to say in and to his ego.’ The revelation of Christ is a ‘widen-
ing of the ego, in which the ego becomes aware of the Self that was hidden to it
… in this event the Self (which was formerly hidden and not actual, potential
and non-existent) becomes “real” not only to itself but also in the ego’ (1993:38;
1991:333-4). ‘An authentic human existence,’ writes Yagi, ‘is so structured that
the incarnate Logos became real in our history, in, through, and as authentic ex-
istence that is aware of its own depths’ (1991:343). Such a statement sounds rather
like Bultmann seen through the philosophical lenses of Zen, and runs the risk of
being an anthropology rather than a theology.
Yagi’s position seems to me basically ahistorical. Jesus’ historical proclamation
of the Kingdom of God and his acting out of the Kingdom in his earthly life have
become an internal self-realisation, a ‘reintegration of the Self.’ And, as Odagaki
points out, this is something we can all realise without presupposing God’s special
revelation in Jesus. In other words, the awakening of the primitive Christians to
the resurrection of Jesus is but one example of the content of religious enlighten-
ment in general (Odagaki 1997:120). Just as in Jesus’ teaching the ‘Son of Man’
is a kind of personification of ‘the Kingdom of God,’ so Amida Buddha in Pure
Land Buddhism is understood as ‘the personification of the saving activity of the
transcendent Amida, who comes from the Formless and reveals it to his believ-
ers’ (1991:338). In an excursus attached to his Front-Structure, which he entitled
‘Concerning the Absolute Claims of Christianity,’ Yagi argued that his reading of
the account of the Easter event is precisely to demonstrate how the absolute claims
of Christianity can be eliminated (1990:143). This is not because the two religions
have a similar concept of God, though he does think that the God of Jesus in the NT
is not a personal God (as Judaeo-Christian asserts). Rather God is closer to sunyata
because he cannot be known by subject-object cognition, but only by an awaken-
ing which obliterates the subject-object dichotomy (Odagaki 1997:121). One might
question whether Yagi has gone beyond simply using Zen categories to explicate
Christian faith, and has begun to force Christian theology into those categories.

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 There is a similar problem with Yagi’s anthropology. Sin is not at issue. Rather
human life is both human and divine (1991:333). Consequently every human being
is in the Field (or Front-Structure) of God’s grace – ‘in Christo.’ This condition,
says Yagi, ‘is found at the depth level of our being, the Self as divine-humanity’
even though we may not be aware of it. ‘When the divine begins to act through, in
and as the empirical human being, so the Self is discovered to be divine-human.’
Consequently enlightenment does not so much come from without, from above,
as from the awakening of the Self to its own potentiality. This reflects the Zen
concept that all living things share in the Buddha-nature (1991:344). The ‘Self’,
‘Christ in me’ and the ‘activated Buddha nature’ are synonymous. Christ. like
Amida Buddha, is in believers as their true Self (1993:41). Experience of Christ,
then, is not unique but only one possible avenue to awakening, and christology
is not an essential concept. It is difficult to see what can be specifically Christian
about this position.
Can Jesus be compared to other ‘saviour figures’? In one sense, of course, the
question, ‘Is Christ unique?’ is wrongly put. All historical figures are unique in
their own way, so ‘uniqueness’ does not distinguish Jesus from Buddha, Krishna,
Mohammad or anyone else. Chakkarai was probably nearer the mark when he
interpreted uniqueness not in terms of difference but of transcendence (1938:55).
But to set Jesus alongside other founders of different religions also begs the ques-
tion of those religions which do not have historical founders, and especially of
those primal religions, found all across the globe, which still have a strong hold
either in their own right or as a substructure to so-called higher religions. Femi-
nist theologians like Chung and Montenegro (see chapter VII) – not to speak of
African theologians – find their most potent christological symbols within the
field of primal religions. So comparisons between Jesus and other religious fig-
ures may not be particularly helpful. Again, to pose the question, ‘Is salvation to
be found only in Christ?’ is also problematic, for it is clear that ‘salvation’ does
not mean the same thing across all religions. I find it hard, therefore, to agree
with MacQuarrie that Jesus differs only in degree, rather than in kind, from other
saviour figures.
Samartha’s claim, that we live in a completely new world of religious plural-
ism which demands a new theological approach, is also unconvincing. Pluralism
equally marked the world in which the Christian faith began and developed, and
the early church had to relate both to the Jewish world which gave birth to it and
to the Graeco-Roman world of ‘gods many, lords many.’ If we are to be guided
by the New Testament we have to assume that Christianity parted both with
Judaism (for some, reluctantly) and wanted no part at all with pagan polytheism.
Pluralism in itself is not new, though the experiences of the last five hundred
years or so have sharpened and considerably modified the earliest Christian at-

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titude to other religions. In some ways Hinduism and Buddhism actually mirror
the Graeco-Roman world, with their ability to absorb everything into their world
views without feeling any apparent conflict. As has often been remarked, the
idea that there must be only one God is a Semitic concept, not an oriental one. Be
that as it may, most theological attempts to put Jesus among the saviours confine
themselves (as do Samartha and Yagi) to the one tradition with which the writer
is familiar, rather than attempting a more grandiose Hickian embracing of all
religions.106
I believe there are two basic problems to this debate, both almost impossible
of solution. The first is the fundamental difference between those religions which
originate in Judaism (ie. Christianity and Islam), and those which derive from
Hinduism in all its varied forms, and which also applies to primal religions. Max
Weber (1966:178-9) once drew attention to the dichotomy between the concept
of an absolute transcendental God who stands over against the world, which was
taken over by the Occident from Asia Minor, and the Asiatic (Weber’s term) view
that the world itself is eternal. In the first case salvation can be obtained only by a
kind of ethical justification before God (whether by works or grace). God remains
the absolute Other. Salvation therefore demands the intervention of a mediator,
whether Law Giver, Messiah, or Prophet. In the second case salvation comes from
within, without the intervention of God, because God is already within the world
rather than standing transcendentally above and against it. It might seem that
while Vedanta Hinduism can well do without saviour figures, Vaishnavism, with
its avatars of Krishna and Rama, and Buddhism with its historical founder who
brings enlightenment, might stand closer to Weber’s first model. However I think
this would be a false conclusion, for what we have in Asiatic religions is a quite
different view of history from the Abrahamic religions – our second problem.
Krishna probably originated as a local nature diety, and Samartha tries to trace
his history back to early times. But it was only during the period of the Mahab-
harata that he emerges as a tribal hero (perhaps 5th century BC to 2nd century AD),
and as a figure of popular devotion in the Puranas (Vishnu Purana 5th century AD,
Bhagavata Purana 9th century AD). A ‘quest of the historical Krishna’ is impos-
sible on the basis of this material, and for Hindus (as Samartha himself points
out) such a quest would in any case be irrelevant. In Christian terms, in any case,
the avatars of Vishnu are docetic. The historical Buddha, Gautama Siddhartha,
probably lived in the 8th century BC (though Buddhist scholars are by no means
agreed on this). But the the earliest traditions of his life were not written down
until the Buddhacarita of Ashvaghosha (1st century AD), and in complex and
rhetorical language. Buddhism as a whole is less concerned with discovering the

106 Though John Hick himself is unwilling to allow all religions the same value, and is somewhat
dismissive of primal religions.

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historical figure than in passing down and expanding the tradition of his teach-
ing. The Boddhisatvas (like Amida) may well have been historical persons, but
their history is unimportant: all that matters is the vow which delivers their dis-
ciples. The contrast to the Judaeo-Christian view of history is stark. The writers
of the Tanakh saw God’s acts of revelation in historical events, which they record
and interpret. And, despite Bultmann, it is clear that the earliest Christians were
deeply concerned not only with the teaching of Jesus but also what they believed
to be the historical facts of his life, and they committed these to writing within a
generation of his death in a common language which was readily understandable.
Significantly Weber’s other two Occidental religions (Judaism and Islam) also
have an interest in the historical figure of Jesus. The extent of the evidence in
the Talmud is disputed107 but there is no doubt of his historicity and claims. The
Quran agrees with Jesus’ the status as a prophet and some of the events of his life,
even if its account of them is reinvented, presumably on the basis of much later
heterodox oral traditions.108 These suras in the Quran are, incidentally, a salient
illustration of how a tradition can be garbled in the absence of the availability of
written records. In contrast to Hinduism and Buddhism, therefore, for Christian-
ity the historical question, and its consequencies for christology, is one which
stubbornly refuses to go away. Without it Christianity is in danger of dissolving
into a kind of universal timeless myth – a danger which, I think, both Samartha
and Yagi slip into.
These differing approaches to what constitutes ‘history’ and ‘salvation’ are
reflected in conflicting understandings of time itself. Hinduism and its derivatives
(in common with primal religions generally) broadly have a cyclic conception of
time. Time repeats itself, it has no beginning and no ending, no creation or escha-
ton. The Hindu avatar is never final. As Chakkarai has it, when the incarnations
Krishna or Rama had completed their task they ‘practically disappeared for they
were temporary, and their significance only remained, while the medium evapo-
rated’ (1968:87). As the Bhagavad Gita puts it, Vishnu is incarnated in every
age as the need arises. The prophetic view of the Hebrew scriptures, followed in
Christianity and Islam, is different. It looks back to a creation when the formless
void became earth and heaven, and it looks forward to an end-time of a ‘new
heaven and new earth.’ Time is linear, and consequently salvation (as the Epistle

107 See R. Travers Herford Christianity in Talmus and Midrash (OUP, London 1965) and more
recently R. van Voorst Jesus outside the New Testament (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids 2000), who
finds far fewer references to Jesus in the Talmud than Travers Herford. The reassessment by
Jewish scholars of the historical figure Jesus within Judaism, which has enormously expanded
our historical understanding, can only have taken place within a religion which takes history
seriously.
108 Suras xix 22-33 (birth), iv 157-8, iii 55-58 (crucifixion).

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to the Hebrews never tires of emphasising) is once and for all. 109 The issue of how
time is perceived is an important one for the global study of religions, but it would
take us too far from the focus of a book on christology.

109 I accept that most of us have few problems in operating with both the linear and cyclic con-
cepts together, in which linear time incorporates the cycle of the seasons. The ‘western’ – one
might almost say universal modern – linear view is able to accommodate with little difficulty
the subsidiary cyclic time pattern, whereas he reverse is not the case. This raises the interest-
ing question of whether a purely cyclic view is compatible with modern ideas of progress and
development.

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VI. Jesus, Dalit and Minjung

In the foregoing chapters I have selected theological thinkers who have made
a substantial and innovative contribution to the development of christology in
Asia. There is however another stream of contextual theology, which originates
not from individual theologians but from movements representative of particu-
lar groups of Christians, and its ideas emerge not so much from individual think-
ers but from the theological consciousness and experience of a whole group.
These are popular, grass roots responses to the Gospel which seek to relate it to
particular circumstances, usually of deprivation and marginalisation, whether
religious, economic, social or (in the case of some feminist theology) gender.
Such theologies are usually limited, in the sense that their dominant concern is
a particular factor in their marginalisation specific to their context. Their roots
often lie in oral theology rather than written theology, that is, in spontaneous
discussion, song, hymn, prayer and narrative.110 It is a theology of an ‘unwrit-
ten’ Jesus, who is real to faith and worship, rather than of the literate theologian.
Oral theology may then become part of the raw material which feeds in to more
academic writing. Perhaps the best example of this process is the Base Ecclesial
Communities which contributed to what Gutierrez saw as the ‘second order’
written theology of the Theology of Liberation in Latin America. This approach
to theology raises problems, the most obvious of which is the difficulty of pin-
ning down and recording such oral theologising, which might also be in a differ-
ent language from what eventually appears in print. There will also inevitably
be currents and cross-currents in it which are not always in harmony. A real
danger is that the original oral voices may be drowned out by the interpretation
of them by literate theologians who may not share the same experiences as the
marginalised community, and that the theological reflection therefore will lack
urgency and real empathy. What begins as a radical oral voice can all too easily
become an academic ‘industry’ carried out at a distance from the real concerns
and insights of those with whom it originated.111 Our task must therefore to be to

110 This is not, of course, exclusively a non-western phenomenon, though grass roots oral theology
is seldom taken very seriously by mainstream western theologians.
111 I sense that this is happening in the ‘post-colonialism’ debate, which has become dominated by
academics (of whatever ethnic origin) domiciled in the rich West, and that Post-Colonialism is
in danger of becoming yet another means for western based academics to colonise non-western
colleagues! Hwa Yung (2004), a conservative theologian from Malaysia, has perhaps not alto-

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try to heed as far as at all possible the original voices which lie behind the written
theology to which we have access.
If the first explorations of Asian theology saw the Christian faith in relation to
Asian cultures which had, in the main, been denigrated by Europeans, its sub-
sequent development saw it more in relation to human suffering, injustice and
oppression. Oral theology, as we have said, is the result of a unique contextual
– usually oppressive – set of circumstances. In that sense it may not unfairly be
characterised as ‘special interest’ theology (I use this phrase purely as a descrip-
tion and without value judgement). The question then arises to what extent they
can become of general application – are contextual theologies which have a very
specific point to make capable of becoming ecumenical theologies of relevance
to the church world-wide? This will no doubt depend on the nature of the spe-
cial interest. Liberation Theology’s concern with poverty and structural injustice
clearly focuses on issues which are, to one degree or another, common to all
human societies, and hence its message (though not perhaps its philosophical
underpinning) has found resonance elsewhere. Theologies which emanate from
particular ethnic groups may find it harder to convey a more universal relevance.
Black Theology in South Africa (though not in America) was in its earlier stages
clearly aware of this problem, and tried in its initial stages to embrace not only
those who were ethnically African but all who shared in their marginalisation.112
This point is important, for special interest theologies can become ideological and
exclusive, and thus not only irrelevant to those outside the group but even hostile
to them. Such a stance would be contrary to the inclusiveness of the Gospel and
the love of God for all. A characteristic of theologies of this kind is that they tend
to identify the person of Jesus with the oppressed group, what we might term
identification christologies.
In this chapter I shall take two examples of group movements which have had a
considerable impact in Asia, Dalit Theology in India and Korean Minjung Theol-
ogy. Within the last decade or so they have also been engaged in mutual dialogue,
suggesting that they see commonalities beneath the very specific issues which
they each seek to address.113

gether fairly condemned Korean Minjung Theology as ‘not of, by or for the minjung people but
the reflection of theologians who have a guilt complex about themselves as not being minjung.’
This cannot be applied to the first generation minjung thelogians discussed below, but does
have relevance to the ‘theology of the poor’ in the hands of their more comfortable successors.
112 I have discussed this in Reinventing Christianity: African Theology Today (Eerdmans, Grand
Rapids & Cambridge, 1995, chapter VII)
113 See the volume resulting from a conference in 2009 Dalit and Minjung Theological Dialogue:
on being a new community of justice and peace in the globalised local context of Dalit and Min-
jung, theological and biblical perspectives on mandate, motives and movements of Christian
mission edited by James Massey and Dong-sun Noh (BTESSC/SATHRI, Bangalore 2100). The

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The Dalit Jesus
‘We proclaim and affirm that Jesus Christ … was himself a Dalit – despite his being a Jew’
(Arvind Nirmal Towards a Dalit Theology).

While we are primarily concerned here with the understanding of Christ which
Dalit Christians have, it is necessary to put this understanding within its spe-
cific context, religious, social and economic. Dalit derives from a Sanskrit term
(which is similar to the Hebrew dal, which has a corresponding meaning). The
word means ‘broken, downtrodden’, and has been adopted as a self-designation
by those in the Indian population (roughly 16%) who are outside the four main
castes.114 This group is called in the Indian constitution ‘Scheduled Castes’, and
by Gandhi (who did not oppose the caste system) as harijans. They were formerly
known as outcastes or avarna (‘without caste’). It has been estimated that nine
out of ten dalits live in villages, and that over half exist below the poverty line. A
high percentage of them are denied the use of village wells and not permitted in
temples. They have in general a very low literacy rate and their political influence
has been limited by the control upper castes have over them. While the reserva-
tion system was designed to improve their status it has largely failed to do so.
Action to attain their legal rights is frequently met by harassment and violence.
Hindu religious tradition excludes them from the main practices of Hindu religion
and from studying Sanskrit sacred texts, and it finds the warrant for this in the
Hindu scriptures.115 Dalits are thus caught in a trap of powerlessness, exploita-
tion and dehumanisation.
By and large the response of the churches has been miserable. While Chris-
tians represent around 2.5% of the population of India, between 60 and 70% of
Christians are of dalit origin (in some areas it is nearer 90%). However until

common theme is that of the damage globalization and neo-liberal capitalism does to the poor.
Though on the whole this is a rather disappointing symposium in terms of sociological analysis
and theological depth, it bodes well for collaboration between two theologies which originated
in very specific contextual concerns.
114 There are two words usually rendered in English by ‘caste.’ Varna (lit. colour) is the nation
wide four-fold division, which originally applied to tasks as well status (see following note).
Jati are sub-castes, endogamous groups within the main varna. These also exist among the
avarna. For a useful explication see Rajkumar (2010:4ff.)
115 ‘When they divided Parusha (the primeval cosmic man) how many portions did they make?
The Brahman was his mouth,
Of both his arms the Kshatriya was made’
His thighs became the Vaisya,
From his feet the Shudra was produced.’ (Rig Veda x 90).
The Brahmins are the priestly caste, kshatriyas the warrior, vaisyas are merchants. The shudras
are servants. Dalits are not mentioned, being regarded as below the four castes.

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quite recently they have been little represented in the hierarchy of the churches116
and have suffered discrimination at the hands of caste Christians. Nor has the
development of Indian Christian theology helped dalits, since it was virtually all
conducted by high caste Christians who were seeking to relate Christianity to the
very Hinduism which so much discriminated against dalits.117 Dalit Christians
therefore agonise over a double oppression, both in society as a whole and within
the church.118 Dalit theology therefore is a counter-theology, an alternative option,
which seeks to conscientise and raise the self-image of those who have histori-
cally been conditioned to think of themselves as inferior and as created to be the
menial servants of the higher castes. As part of this revisionary approach dalit
writers often seek to recover their past history, and argue they were the original
indigenous populations of the Indian subcontinent, but were subsequently sub-
jected by Aryan invaders (eg. Ayrookhuziel 1989).119 Their original democratic
social equality, they claim, has surfaced from time to time in anti-brahmanic and
anti-caste movements, of which those of the Buddha, Kabir, Nanak, and of course
Ambedkar are the most striking examples. Dalit theology then, like much Afri-
can theology, is an attempt to recover the real values of the past before conquest
and colonialism (in this case by the Aryans) took place. It is a theology of protest
which has a deep socio-political underpinning. Its approach to social analysis,
however, is quite different from the Marxist analysis used by Latin American
Theology of Liberation. Here the defining feature is caste, rather than class, which
as Arvind Nirmal has pointed out is a ‘liberation motif which is authentically In-
dian.’ The task of dalit liberation is not confined to Christians. Dalit theologians
are eager to cooperate with all dalits to push forward their agenda of justice and
equality (see eg. Nirmal 1989), for the social context of dalit oppression goes
beyond the frontiers of Christianity. It should also be noted that Dalit Theology
(unlike Latin American Liberation Theology and American Black Theology) has
from its inception given space to the voices of women.120 Dalit theology has been

116 Though V.S. Azariah, a dalit, was appointed as Anglican bishop of Dornakal in 1912 (Jayaku-
mar 1999:289-320).
117 However M.M.Thomas had earlier focused attention on the oppressed groups within Indian
society in his many books and contributions to journals: his key theme of ‘humanisation’ was
taken over the dalit theologians. The CISRS, of which M.M.Thomas was a director, also played
a role in the development of Dalit Theology.
118 The reason that Ambedkar, who became the earliest spokesperson for caste oppression, gave
for not becoming a Christian was that caste persisted within Indian Christianity. Ambedkar
eventually led an exodus of outcastes into Buddhism (see eg. P. Ariokiadoss 1997:290-315) and
more generally V.R. Krishna Iyer Dr Ambedkar and the Dalit Future (DK. Publishers, New
Delhi 1990).
119 On dalit history see especially Webster (1992) and Massey Roots:a concise history of Dalits
(ISPCK/CISRS, Delhi 1991).
120 The contribution of dalit women will be discussed in the next chapter.

104
characterised by Nirmal as one of the most significant theological events in India,
and is now being supported by the National Council of Churches with the backing
of the WCC’s Dalit Solidarity Programme.
While Dalit Theology is a reaction against the domination of Indian Christian
theology by the higher castes (all the Indian theologians discussed in chapters
I-VI were such) there was also from at least the 1930s a strong tradition in Indian
Christian theology which concerned itself with social and political issues. Per-
haps beginning with the ‘Gandhian Christians’ like K.T. Paul, S.K. George and
others, it developed into the founding of the Christian Institute for the Study of
Religion and Society and became especially prominent through the writings of its
second director M.M. Thomas (see especially M.M.Thomas 1971, 1976, 1981: T.J.
Thomas 1993; G. Shiri 1982). While Thomas did not address the dalit issue head
on, he was deeply concerned with the formulation of a just society for those who
were oppressed, and published also on that other grouping marginalised by the
‘main-stream’ India, those called by the Constitution ‘Scheduled Tribes’ (Thom-
as and Taylor 1965).121 While Thomas frequently speaks of a christological basis
for his agenda of humanisation – he calls it ‘New Humanity in Christ’ – it would
probably be true to say that he does not set out this christological underpinning
very explicitly, because he is usually more concerned about practical social and
political ethics than about doctrine. Dalit theology then is not without its prec-
edents in Indian theology. Many dalit theologians are ready to claim as their own
those movements in Indian history as a whole which have set themselves against
caste – the Buddha, Periyar (see Kumar 1990:719), the Dalit Panther movement,
and particularly Ambedkar (see eg. Nirmal 1989).
While Dalit Theology is basically a group movement, several of its writers
stand as especially important and innovative. Foremost among these is Arvind P.
Nirmal. Nirmal, a Church of North India ordained minister, studied in his native
India and at Oxford and held academic posts in several Indian institutions. His
understanding of liberation stresses its cultural, social and economic dimensions,
though he is somewhat suspicious of the Marxist analysis which underpins much
Latin American Liberation Theology. He argues that revelation is not to be lim-
ited to the Christian tradition but (like Thomas) thinks that God reveals himself
in the revolutions of human history.122 The task of theology is to shed light upon
and guide human life here and now. The confessions and creeds, and even the
Bible, cannot be considered determinative for theology today. It is in our present

121 M.M.Thomas was appointed Governor of the largely Christian state of Nagaland towards the
end of his life.
122 In respect of this stance in liberation theology generally Moltmann (2000:299) pertinently rais-
es the question ‘if contextual liberation theologies in their present form go beyond Christianity,
what is left of Christian identity?’ ie. what is there in them which is specifically Christian.

105
situation, supremely in the struggles of the oppressed, that God’s saving power is
to be seen. The theological task is to determine what God is doing now. Indeed in
addressing the question, ‘what is Dalit Theology?’ his response is not based on
the Bible or even the incarnation: it is rather that ‘it is the dalitness that is ‘Chris-
tian’ about Dalit Theology.’ A consequence of this position is a certain theological
exclusivism, liberation is limited to dalits. Thus the ‘Triune God …is on the side
of the dalits, not of the non-dalits who are the oppressors’ (Nirmal n.d. 59). So
Nirmal is is quite ready to call Christianity an ideology which may be set against
other ideologies (1989:123ff.)
Give this methodology, what role can Jesus play? For Nirmal ‘the Jesus of
Palestine, or more immediately, the Jesus of India is in the midst of the libera-
tion struggle of the Dalits of India’ (n.d. 63). He supports this thesis by two main
arguments. Primarily he believes that ‘the God whom Jesus Christ revealed and
about whom the prophets of the Old Testament spoke is a Dalit God. He is a ser-
vant God.’ Dalits have a history of servitude to the upper castes. So ‘to speak of
a Servant-God is to recognise him as a truly Dalit Deity’ for ‘servitude is innate
in the God of the Dalits.’ Nirmal of course recognises the ambiguity of dalit ser-
vitude, that for the dalits it means forced service in performing demeaning and
humiliating tasks. Nevertheless he insists that ‘it is precisely in this sense that
our God is a servant God’ (n.d. 64). This divine servitude extends also to Jesus.
Referring especially to Servant Song of Is. 53 he argues that Jesus as servant ‘was
himself a dalit, despite being a Jew … both his humanity and his divinity should
be understood in terms of dalitness’ (n.d. 65). He lays emphasis on Jesus’ use of
the term ‘Son of Man’ as indicative of rejection, contempt, suffering and death,
the same humiliations which dalits today suffer at the hands of ‘the dominant
religious tradition and established religion’ (n.d. 66). Another key passage for
him is the Nazareth sermon in Lk. 4, a textus classicus of liberation theology,
and which he regards as a ‘manifesto for dalits.’ He also stresses Jesus’ associa-
tion with the marginalised of society, tax collectors, ‘sinners’, and Samaritans. 123
His interpretation of the account of the cleansing of the temple in Mk. 11.15-19 is
controversial in that he sees in it a narrative aimed at restoring religious rights to
Gentiles. This he connects with the exclusion of Hindu dalits from many temples
by caste Hindus and their struggle for the right to worship in them.
Nirmal’s second argument, again making use of Is. 53 as well as the general
thrust of the Gospel narratives, focuses on the concept of ‘pathos.’124 He sees this
as fundamental to the NT, and also lying at the root of the dalit experience of
life. For dalits pathos is the key factor in knowing God. Dalits, he argues, reject
any intellectual approach to the knowledge of God and focus rather on experi-

123 Though the evidence for the last is scant indeed.

124 ‘pathos’ is similar to han in Korean Minjung Theology; cp. also on Kitamori in chapter IV.

106
ence as key to theological epistemology. We have of course met this before, and
it might be regarded as a characteristically eastern approach to epistemology.
The difference between dalit theology and the ‘Indian theology’ of upper caste
Christians like Chenchiah, Chakkarai and Sundar Singh, is that for the latter
knowledge by experience comes through sanskritic religious categories, whereas
for dalits it comes through the experience of exclusion and pain. Thus Nirmal
claims that ‘Dalit Theology wants to assert that at the heart of the dalit people’s
experience is pathos or suffering … pain or pathos is the beginning of knowledge
(and) authentic Dalit Theology must arise out of pain-pathos’ (n.d. 141). Pathos
precedes both thought and action, it is the given of the dalit condition, because
through pathos the sufferer ‘knows that God participates in human pain.’ Such
‘pathetic knowing’ (n.d. 142) is the condition of dalit existence.125 What he terms
‘pathos-epistemology’ is based in the incarnation, in the God who must become
human in order to participate in human pain. Nirmal in many ways set the agenda
for Dalit Theology, and his influence can be seen in the work of M.E. Prabhakar
and several other dalit writers. Prabhakar’s polemic is aimed as much at those he
terms ‘middle class Christians’, whose faith he characterises as individualist and
pietistic. His main emphasis however is, like Nirmal, on socio-political liberation.
Jesus himself was a dalit, and his dalitness is best seen in the forsakenness of the
cross which ‘symbolises the dalitness of the divinity-humanity.’ At the same time
‘the cross is the appropriate symbol for dalitness in its experience of being forsak-
en’ (1997:414). Dalit social conditions therefore determine how they understand
Christ. ‘What the Dalits think of Jesus Christ and God’s saving act in and through
him is integrally linked with their dehumanised social existence and their hope
for future in Christ, freed from all inhumanity and injustice’ (1997:405). Even
more explicitly, ‘their point of departure has been their belief in God’s revela-
tion and presence in Jesus Christ, who engages himself in the saving activity of
God in the world, liberating them from oppression’ (1997:408). Prabhakar does
not dismiss personal faith in Christ, but understands it as belief in the liberator
who will save dalits from ‘inhumanity, social oppression, from exploitation and
cultural subjugation’ (1997:409). There is little indication here that the death of
Christ relates to any sinfulness that might be within dalits themselves, it is purely
socio-political. Prabhakar in fact suggests that dalit suffering in itself may also
be in some degree redemptive. A similar understanding of the crucifixion is re-
flected by Wilson (1989:53-4), for whom sin is not an issue, but rather the death
of Christ is an appeal to human effort: ‘Jesus, who is God-forsaken on the cross,
appeals that every man (sic.) should work as though he is a saviour to himself.’
Dalit theology involves hermeneutical presuppositions in at least two key ar-
eas. The first is in how it understands and uses the Bible (which it generally takes
125 Rajkumar (2010:65) not unjustly suggests this could lead to ‘masochistic resignation.’

107
as a key source), and how it interprets the Bible to support its dominant asser-
tions. The second is its understanding of how God is at work in the the political
and social upheavals of the present – what we might call its doctrine of provi-
dence. I shall defer discussion of these hermeneutical questions until the end of
this chapter, since these problems seem to me to apply also in some degree to
Minjung Theology. For the moment I shall concentrate on a more fundamental
issue, that of whether christology in Dalit Theology is in danger of being reduced
to ideology.
Dalir theology addresses a specific context. It is both understandable and legit-
imate then that its christology should be seen through the eyes of dalit experience
and protest against the oppression under which most dalits are compelled to live
in India. It is also legitimate that it should expose the inability of the sanskritic
theological tradition to address dalit questions. The danger in this is that it risks
becoming an exclusive theology and dismissive of all non-dalit approaches. Some
(Sundar Clarke 1989:32, Dyanchand Carr n.d. 72) wish to assert the inclusive-
ness of Christ and the need for dalit theology to relate to others as well as dalits.
But by and large its emphasis is on the exclusivity of its message of liberation to
dalits. Arvind Nirmal, for example, can write that because ‘the protest note of
Dalit theology will be so harsh (that) the Indian church … will fail to see it as
a viable Christian option’ (Nirmal 1989:76). He continues, more radically: ‘The
primacy of the term ‘dalit’ will have to be conceded as against the primacy of the
term ‘Christian’ in the dominant theological tradition. This means that the non-
dalit world will ask us, “What is Christian about dalit theology?” and our reply
will have to be “It is the dalitness which is Christian about dalit theology.” …The
“Christian” for this theology is exclusively “dalit.” What this exclusively implies
is that the Triune God – the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit – is the God of the
dalits and not of the non-dalits.’ Similarly Prabhakar can cliam in relation to Lk.
4.18ff that the Gospel that Jesus brought was a ‘Gospel for Dalits … not for non-
dalits and not for Israel’ (1997:415).
Quite apart from the dubious exegesis involved here, it is quite at variance with
Jesus’ own statement about his ministry to his own people (that he was sent to
‘the house of Israel’) and to the world wide application of the Gospel of Mt. 28.19
and most of the NT epistles. ‘Dalitness’ is not a universal category (like the poor’
might be construed to be) but for these writers it is apparently determinative for
Christian salvation. In the same way ‘dalit’ becomes for Prabhakar the essence
of christhood. Just as American Black theology proclaimed that ‘Jesus is black’
(even though he historically clearly was not) so the first National Consultation on
Dalit Theology in 1986 affirmed ‘Jesus as Dalit’ (Prabhakar 1997:418). Accord-
ing to Prabhakar ‘first of all we proclaim that Jesus, whose followers we are, was
himself a Dalit, despite his being a Jew’ (1997:414). It is not at all clear how we

108
are to understand this assertion. Literally, of course, it is meaningless – Jesus was
not an avarna in any sense. Even granted the usual assumption that Galileans
were regarded as less than orthodox by first century Jews of Judaea, the picture
we have of Jesus in the Gospels is of one fully integrated into – though at points
highly critical of – Jewish society. Presumably then the statement is meant rhe-
torically, that Jesus sets himself alongside the oppressed of society. While this is
true it scarcely warrants the kind of exclusive claims which we find in Normal
and Prabhakar. Prabhakar makes similar statements about the death of Christ and
his Person: ‘it is the dalitness of the divinity-humanity that the cross symbolises’
and again ‘his dalitness is the key to that mystery of his divine-human unity’
(1997:414). Presumably statements of this kind are to be understood in the light
of Nirmal’s insistence (n.d. 64-5) that ‘God is a Dalit God’, by which he under-
stands that God is a ‘servant God,’ and he does has no hesitatation in comparing
the servant God to the menial servitude which dalits suffer as a result of the caste
system. While there is a valid underlying point in this, the diakonia of Jesus in
the NT (no doubt derived in part from the Servant Songs of Isaiah) is always
portrayed as willing service in sacrifical self-giving for others, which is far from
the compulsion to almost unavoidable servitude dalit status implies. Nirmal and
Prabhakar, in their valid attempt to seek an answer to the oppression of dalits,
have reduced Christ (and God) to their own category of dalitness. It is a kind of
christological identification model – Jesus is reduced to what we are, rather than
our seeking to approximate to what he is. In effect (somewhat like the 19th century
Liberal theology which Schweitzer exposed) Jesus is reinvented in the dalit im-
age (cp.Rajkumar 2010:54-5). Dalit theology starts from its own situation, and
has projected this situation on to the Christ of the Gospels. The issue surely is
whether the dalit perception of Christ can in fact be justified or whether it is an
imposition on the biblical material. It seems to me that it is an ideological reading
of the NT rather than a critical theological one, a point perhaps acknowledged
in the title Nirmal’s edited volume of seminar papers Towards a Common Dalit
Ideology. Black Theology in South Africa was able to develop a coherent theo-
logical position from the basis of the political ideology of Black Consciousness.
It is not at all certain that Dalit Theology at present has been able to do this.126 If,
as Rajkumar argues (2010) argues, it is the case that Dalit Theology has not had
very much practical impact in changing the Indian church and society it may well
be because its specifically theological base is not rigorous enough.

126 Though a recent volume edited by Sathyanathan Clarke contains essays which challenge the
ethnocentric and closed nature of Dalit Theology (S. Clake et. al. Dalit Theology in the 21st
Century: Discordant Voices, Discerning Pathways, OUP New Delhi 2010).

109
The Minjung Jesus
‘Jesus is not the Christ who is facing man from God’s side, but the Christ who is facing God
from man’s side’ (Byung-Mu Ahn Jesus and the People, 1993).

Like Dalit Theology, the Minjung Theology which has emerged from South
Korea is a very specific movement which claims to represent those on the mar-
gins of society. While it is a minority Christian movement in a country in which
Christians make up some 30% of the population, and are mostly of conserva-
tive convictions, Minjung theology has attracted a good deal of attention partly
because of its avowedly socio-political stance. Its origins may be traced back to
the political ferment in South Korea during the 1970s, though its deeper roots
go further back into Korea’s history of colonialism and oppression at the hands
of the Chinese and Japanese. It was the brutal regime of Chung-Hee Park from
1962-1979 which crystalised the stance of the churches, and which resulted in the
Declaration of Korean Christians in 1973, which bears quotation:
‘Jesus the Messiah , our Lord, lived and dwelt among the oppressed, poverty-
stricken and sick in Judaea (sic.). He boldly confronted Pontius Pilate, a represen-
tative of the Roman Empire, and he was crucified while witnessing to the truth.
He had risen from the dead, releasing power to transform and set the people free.
We resolve that we will following the footsteps of our Lord, living among our
oppressed and poor people, standing against political oppression, and participat-
ing in the transformation of history, for this is the only way to the Messianic
kingdom.’
Certain aspects of this statement are key to Minjung Theology: the messiah-
ship of Jesus, his identity with the alienated classes, his confrontation with politi-
cal power, his suffering, the liberating power of the resurrection, Jesus’ solidarity
with the oppressed, and the need for political action for the transformation of
society. One of the signatories of the statement was Byung-Mu Ahn, who along
with Nam-Dong Suh may be regarded as the originator of Minjung Theology.127
Ahn spent several years in Germany where he studied under the eminent NT
scholar Gunther Bornkamm.128 Here he came under the influence of the dominant
critical-historical approach to the Bible, and of Form Criticism which, despite
his later disenchantment, left its mark on his later writing. He also encountered
the Barthian ‘theology of the Word’ against which he subsequently reacted. Ac-
cording to Sundermeier (1995a:209) he came to conclusion that these academic

127 For Ahn’s earlier career and a summary of his views see especially Sundermeier (1995a), Bala-
sundaram (1998:60ff.) and Ahn’s own Draussen vor dem Tor (1986). On Suh see Kirsteen Kim
(2007:21-2).
128 His doctoral thesis was on ‘The Understanding of Love in Confucius and Jesus’ (1965).

110
approaches were of little relevance to the churches in Germany and even less
to German society. ‘The Babylonian captivity of pure theology of the Word,’
comments Sundermeier, ‘… had lost its deep connection with history, because it
moved (only) in the atmosphere of a pure kerygmatic oriented theology.’ Ahn’s
subsequent experiences of political repression back in his own country in the
1970s, against which he along with other pastors reacted sharply, only served
to confirm his conviction that theology needed to address coherently social and
political issues, especially the suffering of those who were excluded by the power
structures. The roots of this experience of suffering, he believed, went deep into
Korean history and culture in the way in which the suffering of the common peo-
ple had been expressed in folk tales, story and legend, and in the masked dances
of traditional shamanistic religion. A relevant theology had to reflect the psyche
of the minjung, as a counter-culture to that of the Chinese based culture of the
elites. Minjung Theology as a movement probably emerged from the publication
of the journal Theological Thinking which came out of Ahn’s Theological Study
Institute (it was later banned). The movement attained greater coherence by the
publication of papers given at a conference in 1979 organised by the Committee
on Theological Concerns of the Christian Conference of Asia in conjunction with
the Korean National Council of Churches. This volume (C.C.A. 1983, revision of
first edition of 1981) has had a substantial impact.
‘Minjung’ is a difficult concept to render into European languages. Suh
(1983:42) points out that to translate it as ‘proletariat’ is misleading, for Minjung
Theology is not based on Marxist social analysis. For him a ‘scientific definition’
of minjung would be ‘to objectify the minjung on an epistemological level, thus
making the people an object for study and reflection.’ He seems to mean by this
that the significance of minjung can only fully be understood by participation,
by the dissolution of the distance between subject and object which character-
ises most western philosophical thinking (we have already met this stance in
Takizawa). For Suh the meaning of minjung can only properly be appreciated by
understanding its social story in the liberation motif found both in Korean history
and in the present condition of the minjung. Etymologically minjung is combina-
tion of two Chinese characters, min meaning ‘people’ and jung, ‘the mass, the
crowd’.129 Both words have a long history, and Korean theologians would argue
that minjung (like Dalit) should remain untranslated. Just as Dalit theology has
embraced non-Christian liberation movements, so Minjung Theology claims as
its own similar movements in Korean history. Foremost among these is Tonghak,
a quasi-religious revolutionary struggle. Dating from the end of the 19th century,
Tonghak was a popular grass roots movement aimed at bringing to an end the
exploitation of the common people (the min) at the hands of the aristocratic class-
129 It has been suggested that min predominates in the Confucian tradition, jung in Buddhism.

111
es.130 Minjung thus signifies those alienated and excluded from power, those on
the margins of normally accepted society. A fundamental source for the specifi-
cally Christian usage of minjung is of course the Bible, by a process which Suh
characterises as ‘interweaving the Korean minjung and the biblical story.’ Ahn
(who, as we have seen, initially trained as a New Testament scholar) has provided
the most developed example of this methodology, and it forms the fundamental
basis for his christology. In Ahn’s opinion ‘kerygma theology’ and the Theology
of the Word are too impersonal, too distant from the real ‘Jesus event.’ Referring
to Bornkamm’s well known dictum, he regards them as all about Jesus as ‘pro-
claimed’ and not about Jesus the proclaimer. He sees them as having no interest in
the actual life of Jesus and therefore as de-historicising him. The ‘Jesus-event’ for
kerygma-theology is once for all, whereas for Ahn it is something which contin-
ues to occur in the present.131 He pursues this argument by a dialectical interpreta-
tion of the early church. He agrees with Gerd Thiessen132 that the Jesus traditions
were preserved largely by wandering Christian charismatics, but he sets them
over against the institutional apostolic church which, he believes, had a concilia-
tory attitude towards the ruling powers. The charismatics were more radical and
it was they who really preserved in a kind of underground way the true Jesus
traditions. The apostolic kerygma (preserved for us in the speeches of Acts and
the snatches of early Christian creedal and hymnic statements in the epistles)
prevailed, and had no interest in the original historical Jesus event other than
spiritualising it. Ahn believes that the wandering charismatic Christians were
the first Christian minjung. Hints of their traditions are preserved especially in
Mark (which he accepts as the earliest Gospel). The other synoptic gospels, and
of course John, under the influence of the settled apostolic church, have largely
eliminated this pre-literary hidden tradition. What we have therefore is the of-
ficial confessional theology of the established church, rather than the the vibrant
message of earliest Christian minjung. Ahn uncovers this hidden tradition in the
parables and healing stories, the beneficiaries of which are, he thinks, the minjung
of 1st century Palestine – the poor, the sick, the ritually unclean, the politically
oppressed. These appear especially in Galilee, which becomes a kind of symbol
for the minjung, the am-ha-aretz, the people without belonging (Ahn 1986:40ff).
Ahn’s preference for Mk. as the source for reconstructing the Christian min-
jung leads him to explore the social nature of Jesus’ Galilean audience. He focus-
130 Tonghak later developed into Chondogya (‘the religion of the heavenly way’) which fused ele-
ments from Confucianism,Taoism and Buddhism.
131 Cp. Bornkamm’s conviction that the NT tradition ‘is not the repetition and transmission of the
word he spoke once upon a time, but rather is his word today’ (1960:17).
132 Propounded in his ‘The wandering radicals: light shed by the sociology of literature on the
early transmission of Jesus’ sayings’ (1973) reprinted in Social Reality and the early Christians
(Augsburg 1992).

112
es especially on the designation ochlos (usually translated as ‘people’, ‘crowd’)
to describe them, and believes that Mark ‘indicates a definite intention in the
use of the word’ (1983:139). Mark, he argues, is the first NT writer to use the
term ochlos, and he does so because he did not accept the ‘highly concentrated
kerygmatic theology.’133 His definition of ochlos is significant for Ahn’s chris-
tology (though he would deny that the followers of Jesus who constituted the
ochlos had any interest in formal christological doctrine). From his analysis of
the uses of ochlos in Mark’s Gospel (1983:140-4) Ahn concludes them to be the
common crowds around Jesus, but not including the disciples. Jesus, he claims,
never makes any criticism of the ochlos, though he on occasion rebukes the dis-
ciples. Further, the ochlos is sharply contrasted to the Jerusalem ruling classes
and ‘took an anti-Jerusalem position.’ It was ‘the minjung of Galilee’ who were
clearly on the side of Jesus. It consisted of the ‘so-called sinners who were con-
demned by their society …the outcastes of society.’ They were those ‘alienated
from the system and despised’ and included especially the poor, the ill, and those
considered ritually unclean. Jesus’ attitude to the ochlos was one of compassion:
he frequently taught them, he saw in them the nucleus of a new community and
he extended to them the promise of the Kingdom of God. While Ahn agrees that
the use of ochlos in the LXX is unspecific and that the other Synoptic Gospels use
ochlos and laos134 without discrimination, he believes that Mark’s use of ochlos is
quite distinctive and reaches back to the wandering charismatics he assumes were
the faithful preservers of the Jesus tradition. It is thus almost a technical term for
the pre-kerygmatic Christian minjung. So in Mark the ochlos ‘belong to a class of
society which has been marginalised and abandoned.’ It is somewhat fluid in that
it is a ‘relational term’, that is it defines marginalised status over against the elites
and socially and politically powerful.
Ahn’s emphasis on the ochlos provides a key for his christology, and there is
an explicit relationship of identity between the ochlos and Jesus. The basis for this
relationship is suffering. Taking his cue from the narrative of Gethsemane and
the cry of dereliction on the cross, he sees Jesus as one who ‘identifies himself
with the cries of the minjung’ (1993:169-70). Similarly he understands the heal-
ing miracles not as Jesus actively seeking the sick but rather as responding to a
‘request (which) always comes from the Minjung’s side first’:
‘In order correctly to interpret Jesus as the Christ, we must endow ochlos in
the Gospels with proper esteem with regard to their relationship with Jesus. This
Jesus is not the Christ who is facing man from God’s side, but the Christ who is
facing God from man’s side. So in this case it means man is not an abstract being

133 Presumably as reflected in Paul’s letters: Paul does not use the word ochlos, though given the
nature of his writing there is perhaps no reason why we should expect him to.
134 Laos is often used in the Greek Bible with the implication of ‘priestly people.’

113
but the concrete Minjung who are suffering. Therefore Jesus who is one with the
Minjung, facing God in their direction – HE IS CHRIST. He identifies himself
with the Minjung. He exists for no other than the Minjung …..salvation is not a
manufactured product given to man from heaven to possess. On the contrary, it
means, the salvation Jesus realised in the action of transforming himself, by lis-
tening and responding to the cry of Minjung’ (1993:169, Ahn’s emphases).
For Ahn this represents not so much the sympathy of Jesus with the Minjung,
but his identity with them. We can meet Jesus only in the poor, the minjung. ‘We
should not understand Jesus as an “individual” as western scholars do. Such a
Western point of view cannot but turn into a metaphysical Christology. No, we
should rather understand the Jesus of the Gospels as a “collective” being. That is,
we must grasp Jesus as the Minjung itself’ (1993:170). It is not so much that Jesus
is a reflection of the minjung, or even a symbol of it;135 rather he is the actual em-
bodiment of the minjung. The key to this identity of Jesus and minjung is suffer-
ing, for ‘in the pain of the minjung we experience the pains of Jesus. Conversely,
the present pains of the minjung is seen in the pain of Jesus. In this sense the
Jesus-event is much more important than the kerygma’ (cited in Balasundaram
1995:65 note 14, my translation).
The identification of Jesus with the minjung as a kind of collective being inevi-
tably raises problems. I shall defer a consideration of Ahn’s use of the term ochlos
for the moment. Here I want to raise two inter-connected issues. The first was
well expressed by a leading South American liberation theologian. ‘To say that
Jesus identified with himself the people or the poor is one thing. To say that the
latter are ‘identical’ with Jesus Christ is a different proposition. When it is done
– and I think we (ie. in Minjung Theology) frequently come quite close to it – I
wonder whether we are not implicitly assuming some sort of ‘messianic” confu-
sion, whether it is political, cultural, or otherwise’ (Jose Bonino in Lee 1988:167).
A similar point was made by a group of German theologians, who found diffi-
culties with Minjung theologians interpreting the ‘Christ-event historically and
collectively’ and assigning ‘messianic eschatological attributes’ to the minjung,
for this, they believed, would be to deny the once-for-all and unique nature of the
cross (in Lee 1988:192). Ahn’s response was that Christ reveals himself through-
out history continuously, and that the Christ-event is not a unique happening but
rather ‘the standard and criterion for revelation in history’ (in Lee 1988:203).
It is the present activity of Christ which is important for Ahn, and this may be
discerned in action in and for the minjung. Quite apart from the thorny question
of how we can confidently discern exactly what is the action of Christ in our pres-
ent predicament, this stance runs the risk of emptying the events of the Gospel

135 As Jin-Kwan Kwon claims (‘The Minjung (Multitude), Historical Symbol of Jesus Christ’ in
Asian Journal of Theology Vol 24/1 2010, pp.153-171).

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story of their fundamental historical meaning. Surely the crucifixion and resur-
rection were unique. This does not in any way lead us to deny that their effects
and efficacy have a continual abiding impact on the present. This issue seems of
a piece with Ahn’s dichotomy between the Christ of the kerygma and the real
Christ-event. Even if we grant that the kerygmatic passages in the New Testament
are in a sense the abstractions of faith, those in the Acts especially (eg. 2.22ff.)
focus not only on the cross and resurrection but also on Jesus’ ministry of healing
and compassion. The kerygma therefore only has meaning if is dependent on the
‘Christ-event.’ Conversely, in linking the Christ-event in the context of suffering
so closely with the contemporary suffering of the minjung, Ahn has really failed
to give this Christ-event its true historical value. In positing a kind of social-
existential identity between the minjung and Jesus – not significantly different
from his mentor Bultmann’s individual-existential identity – Ahn seems to be in
danger of de-historicising the very Christ-event which for him is the foundation
of Minjung Theology. Furthermore, it may be questioned whether his epistemo-
logical assumptions are appropriate for an understanding of the Bible. Though
we may accept that there is concept of what earlier scholars called ‘corporate
personality’ in the Bible (not least perhaps in the Servant Songs of Isaiah), neither
ancient Judaism nor early Christianity bought into Ahn’s rejection of the subject-
object dichotomy. To approach the Bible from this epistemological stance is not to
exegete its message (which is what Ahn is claiming in his examination of the text
of Mark) but to view it through the eyes of a quite different cultural perspective.
Behind this position, as Bonino suggested, lies a second problem, that of the
messianic nature of the minjung itself. It is the minjung in identity with Christ
which has the task of bringing in the messianic age. This theme has been ex-
pounded several times by Yong-Bok Kim. For Kim the Korean Christian com-
munity has sought ‘a category which would express its history and destiny.’ This
it has found in ‘the language of eschatology and the Messianic Kingdom (which)
was a vehicle for social-historical imagination’ (1983:116). He also emphasises
the passion stories, but for him their political implications are paramount – the
torture by the Roman military, the trials before Pilate and Herod. These are for
him symbols of the oppression of Koreans, with which they can identify. The
language of the Messianic Kingdom is thus transformative in times of oppres-
sion. The Gospel consists of Jesus’ exposing the injustice of worldly political
pretensions, and the resurrection is a ‘foretaste and affirmation of the raising of
all dead minjung to inaugurate the messianic rule of justice, koinonia (partici-
pation), and shalom’ (1983:193). Kim’s interest is in the conjunction of what he
terms ‘social biography’ (the story of the minjung) and theology (1987, 2004). His
focus is less on the Jesus of history than on his death and resurrection as symbols
of the messianic minjung’s political suffering and striving for justice. Again the

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figure of Jesus has been absorbed into the minjung and has in effect been both
de-personalised and de-historicised. The Messiah is not Jesus as an individual but
the minjung as a messianic community.

The Use of the Bible in Minjung and Dalit Theologies

The issues raised by these ‘identification christologies’, it seems to me, stem
from their use of the Bible. Unlike some recent Asian theology Minjung The-
ology, and Ahn in particular, does not reject out of hand the historical-critical
approach to the Bible as western ideological tools of the powerful. Indeed
Ahn’s attempt at a linguistic analysis of the term ochlos in Mark might almost
be said to stand in the tradition of Kittel’s Wörterbuch! Ahn’s contention, as
we have seen, is that Mark’s use of the term ochlos is more or less synonymous
with minjung – ‘the ochlos is the minjung of Galilee’ as he puts it. Ochlos, he
argues, stands in contrast to laos, the priestly covenant people, and indicates
low social status and objects of contempt. So persuasive has this theory be-
come that it has even been adopted by Moltmann.136 This theory is important
for Ahn’s christology in that Jesus becomes identified with the ochlos as a kind
of collective being rather than an individual – ‘Jesus as the minjung himself’,
as he put it. This is an attractive suggestion but quite unjustified by the textual
evidence. It is true that in Classical Greek ochlos has the sense often of an
undisciplined mob (in contrast to demos).137 But an examination of Mark’s
use of the term shows that it means crowds, nothing more. It does not neces-
sarily, or even possibly, have the meaning of the especially marginalised or
contemptible. Nor was the ochlos exclusively Galilean, as Ahn suggests (see
Mk. 11.8; 12.12 and 41). Nor, significantly, does Mark distinguish it sharply
from the laos, which is used in 14.2 with the implication of ‘common people’
or perhaps even ‘mob.’138 Mark, in fact, seems to have made no deep sociologi-
cal distinction between the two words, which suggests that Ahn’s exegesis has
been driven by his own preconceived ideological position, rather than a close
examination of the text.

136 Moltmann (1990:148 and note 115) follows Ahn’s interpretation of ochlos though on p. 99 he
seems to see it as a key term for Mt. rather than Mk; see also Moltmann (2000:247-67) where,
however, he makes some cogent critcisms of Ahn’s identification of Jesus with the minjung.
Moltmann edited the German edition of Minjung Theology.
137 The only occasion Mk uses it in this way is 15.11
138 Mk uses laos only three times. Besides 7.6 (a quotation from Is. 29.13) the only other possible
occurrence is 11.32 (‘they feared the people’). This text is interesting since although the main
mss. read ochlos others have laos.

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 Part of the reason for Ahn’s interpretation of Mark is no doubt the acceptance
of the almost uncontested assumption, which forms a platform for liberation the-
ologies generally, that Jesus humself must have been poor. The text Ahn uses
to support this view is interestingly not found in Mark, but in the saying in Mt.
8.20//Lk 9.58 that ‘foxes have their holes, birds their roosts, but the Son of Man
has nowhere to lay his head’ (Ahn 1993:170). Assuming this saying is authentic, it
is nevertheless ambiguous. It may possibly indicate that Jesus was homeless. On
the other hand, given the context, it seems more likely that Jesus may be quoting a
folk saying here to illustrate the itinerant nature of his ministry. The Gospel nar-
ratives do not give the impression that Jesus was without a home. Nor, if Josephus
is to be believed (Wars iii(42-3, 516-519)) was Galilee at all deprived or poverty
stricken. Jesus was clearly quite as much at home in the houses of the relatively
wealthy as he was among the common people. Someone who could be accused of
being a glutton and wine-bibber (Mt. 11.19//Lk. 7.34) could hardly have lived in
desperate poverty. His own poverty, such as we can reconstruct it from the Syn-
optic Gospels, was voluntary rather than imposed.139 That Jesus had a deep em-
pathy with the poorer people of his time is undeniable, and was perhaps the most
important feature of his ministry. But this is quite different from the assumption
that by the standards of his time he himself was poor. And of course ptokos as
used in the Gospels draws on a rich background of Hebrew and Aramaic terms
(‘ani, ‘ebyon, dal) which have much deeper layers of meaning than simply mate-
rial or socio-political poverty. 140
There is in Minjung theology a tendency to exalt material and social poverty
to an almost messianic level. Ahn believes (in Lee 1988:208) that ‘among the
minjung something akin to transcendence can occur’ in their self-sacrificial ef-
fort and collective suffering. In response to a criticism of Moltmann’s that salva-
tion for the minjung can only come from outside the minjung Ahn’s response is
‘I believe that the minjung save themselves’ (quoted in Kwon 2010:161). A dalit
theologian puts this position even more strongly, speaking of a ‘transforming
praxis of social reality through which they (dalits) realise themselves and God’
(Ayrookhuziel 1989:102). No doubt this logically follows from the identifica-
tion of the individual person of Jesus with the minjung or dalits, but it sits very
uneasily with the picture we have in the New Testament. It also begs the ques-
tion whether salvation –however understood – is the prerogative of the poor only.
The thrust of the Gospels is surely that God is equally concerned with all men

139 Dodd’s comment is apt, namely that Jesus belonged to to the class of small farmers and crafts-
men that stood between the well-to-do and the proletariat: he also stresses that Jesus was edu-
cated enough to meet the learned scholars on their own ground.
140 Ptokos is used sparingly in the Synoptics (only 18 times, including all parallels): penikos is used
only once in Luke, for the penniless widow.

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and women. The Jesus who mixed with the ‘tax-collectors and sinners’ is also
described as interacting with and accepting the hospitality of the more privileged
(eg. Lk. 11.37; 19.1). While the common people may have been privileged in terms
of need, there is no indication that they were exclusively privileged, certainly not
in the way that some representatives of Dalit and Minjung theologies speak of
salvation being primarily or even exclusively for these groups. Limiting the good
news only to those who are on the fringes of society is understandable, but it is
none the less a one-sided reading of the Gospels.
A leading West African biblical scholar has pertinently questioned if Minjung
theology (and by implication Dalit theology) has adequately taken into account
the cultural background and context of the Bible, and asks ‘whether or not the
minjung analysis done on certain biblical passages has shown full cognisance of
the cultural particularity of the scriptures’ (Kwesi Dickson in Lee 1988:179).141
Ahn’s almost complete lack of concern for the Palestinian Jewish context of the
Synoptic Gospels may perhaps have been partly due to his mentor Bornkamm,
whose Jesus of Nazareth (1956) showed minimal interest in 1st century Judaism.
Ahn’s own emphasis on socio-political factors has crowded out any real apprecia-
tion of the religio-cultural context of Jesus’ ministry. Nor are Minjung and Dalit
theologians always careful to avoid lapses into anti-Judaism.142 Jesus is not seen
as a Jewish figure sharing in 1st century Jewish culture, and he has effectively
been abstracted from his own culture and historical context.
At the same time the Jewish background of the Gospels may be misinter-
preted by the drawing of too simplistic parallels with contemporary Asia. Raj-
kumar’s otherwise penetrating critique of Dalit theology has as one of its main
arguments the thesis that a more convincing contextuality might be through a
re-examination of the concept of pollution in the Gospels. Useful as this is, his
attempt to relate ritual pollution in 1st century Judaism (often temporary and
reversible) to the permanent pollution of the lower castes seems to me flawed.
Also problematic is his interpretation of the healing narratives as deliberate
acts by Jesus to subvert the boundaries between ritual cleanness and unclean-
ness (2010:80, 126). While one might possibly see in some of these narratives a
justification for setting aside the principle of caste pollution, that is quite dif-
ferent from arguing that this was the intention of Jesus healings. Here, it seems

141 He goes on to question whether traditional Korean culture is quite so liberative as some Min-
jung theologians assume.
142 Though they seldom fall into the anti-Semitism of C.S.Song’s Compassionate God (Orbis,
Maryknoll 1982). Yong-Bok Kim’s Messiah and Minjung makes the extraordinary statement
that the Korean (not Japanese) victims of Horoshima and Nagasaki were ‘the first victims of
this world’s giant death machine’ – as though the Holocaust had never taken place (2004:chap-
ter 3). There seems to be here such an introverted view of the suffering of his own people that
he can be blind to that of others.

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to me, the dalit agenda has again determined exegesis, rather than resulting
from it.
Korean theologians on the whole, however much they view it from their con-
temporary predicament, have tried to take the text of the Bible seriously as an
historical source, and do not wholly reject so-called ‘western’ critical methods.
Dalit theologians agree in ‘looking at the Bible as a ‘liberative source’ (John
2010:xvii) in the context of their own oppression. However the dalit approach is
more explicitly reader-centred and generally seems quite willing to ignore the
original context of the Gospels. ‘Reader-response’ in this context does not mean
individual response and interpretation but the interpretation of the social group.
According to A.M. Arul Raja (1997:336), who has written fairly extensively on
Dalit biblical hermenutics, ‘the biases and prejudices of Dalit interpreters’ is to be
preferred over ‘the fiction of objective scholarship’ (1997:336). He speaks (some-
what confusingly) of the ‘meaningfulness evoked by the Bible’ being ‘uncoded
from the written text and re-encoded in the form of oral Dalit discourse.’ He
leaves unanswered the question of whether it is possible to uncode the biblical
text without some help at least from the ‘fiction of objective scholarship.’ As Ra-
jkumar pointedly remarks (2010:72), Dalit theology is appropriating rather then
interpreting the Bible. There seem to me serious problems with this kind of ap-
proach, which probably have more to do with an easy acceptance of the more
debatable aspects of western postmodernism than with Dalit contextuality. One
may grant that ‘scholarly objectivity’ is never wholly objective nor wholly infal-
lible. However this does not absolve us from at least trying (especially with the
vast amount of scholarly information available to us about 1st century Palestinian
Judaism) to put Jesus in his own context before seeking to discover what (if any-
thing) we might find there that fits our own context. As Calvin once remarked,
the first task of the interpreter is to try to discover what the writer did say, not
what we think he ought to have said! Liberation theologies, quite as much as as
any other, are in danger of tearing the Gospel material out of its original setting
as though that did not really matter, and depositing it in a quite different setting.
Old patches on new garments comes to mind.
Of course the question of the legitimacy of the way Minjung and Dalit theo-
logians use the Bible , or even their ideological approach to doing theology, does
not in way invalidate the essential thrust of these movements. Solidarity with the
marginalised and excluded, or with those under oppressive social and political
systems, is part – and a very important part – of the whole Gospel narrative. But
this has a much stronger biblical foundation than either Dalit or Minjung theolo-
gies with their restricted agendas have yet developed.

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VII. The Jesus of Asian Women

‘Though the christology be educed from the depths of our cultures and expressed in Asia’s
soteriological idiom, the result will not be relevant unless it takes into account the women’s
experience, perspective and contribution’
(Virginia Fabella We Dare to Dream, 1990)

My original intention in writing this book had been to try to avoid gender bias
by incorporating the christological explorations of Asian women theologians into
the general scheme of the book, on the principle that gender differentiation should
not determine the theological task. It soon became clear to me however that (at
least as far as Asia, and probably also Africa) is concerned this would be almost
impossible, and this for two reasons. Firstly, it is difficult, if not impossible to find
any Asian woman who has at yet made the kind of substantial contribution to the
debate about christology as have most of the male thinkers dealt with in chapters
II to V. The reason for this, as has often been pointed out, is that women have
been excluded both by Asian cultural traditions and subsequently by patriarchal
church structures from playing their rightful role until relatively recently. The
second, and more important reason, is that (as Asian women are united in claim-
ing) they have introduced a new dimension and a very specific concern into the
theological conversation. As Virginia Fabella and Sun Ai Lee Park put it in their
introduction to a valuable collection of earlier essays, if women’s voices are not
clearly heard ‘then God’s voice is only half heard’ (1990:ix). There is a history
behind this claim. It reflects little credit either on the earlier generation of male
theologians in Asian countries or on the more recent liberation theologies that,
while making erudite theological analyses of cultures, religions, and society in
general they almost entirely ignored both the situation and potential contribution
of women. Even within the Ecumentical Association of Third World Theologians
(EATWOT), with all its concerns for the marginalised and oppressed, it took
many years before the theological contribution of women was given its rightful
place and taken seriously.143 The earliest sustained work by a woman Asian theo-
logian was probably Marianne Katoppo’s Compassionate and Free. Katoppo is
from the mainly Christian island of Sulawesi in Indonesia (the world’s most popu-
lous Muslim country). She eschews the term ‘feminist’ as too loaded, preferring

143 Chung 1990:114-9 has a useful summary of the obstacles to women in the earlier years of EAT-
WOT.

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to subtitle her book ‘an Asian Woman’s Theology.’ The question her book seeks
to answer is, ‘How do Asian women encounter God?’ This is thus an explicitly
experiential approach, less concerned with dogma and tradition than with the na-
ture of women’s Christian experience. This is an approach which became almost
definitive of women’s theology in the Third World.144 For Katoppo women are
invariably seen as ‘the other’ in Asian male dominated societies, and her aim is
‘to claim the right of women to be liberated from being the threatening other …
to the right of women to be the other in all her fullness and variety of gifts.’ This
other is ‘not an adversary, the deviation, the subordination of the Self, but the
one who finds meaning to the Self’ (1979:6). She argues the believers encounter
‘the powerless Christ’ within the context of the structures of oppression in Asia.
Thus ‘the face of the exploited non-person’ (which for her includes the major-
ity of Asian women) ‘is the face of Christ’ (1979:29). Katoppo was not particu-
larly indebted to western feminism (though she worked for a time for the WCC).
The Indian theologian Aruna Gnanadason, on the other hand, embraces the term
‘feminist’ and her thinking owes a great deal to earlier feminist theologians like
Rosemary Ruether, Elizabeth Schlussler Fiorenza and Letty Russell. She sees the
Bible as an androcentric text which comes from a patriarchal context, and which
itself has contributed to the low status of women. The task of women then is to
identify the liberative strands in the Bible. In common with liberation theology
generally she focuses on socio-economic and cultural factors. In the Indian con-
text the most pervasive oppression (as we have seen in the previous chapter) is the
caste system, and Gnanadason has also written on Dalit women,’the dalit of the
dalit’ (in Nirmal n.d:129-36) to which we shall return below.
The first EATWOT women’s conference in Manilla in 1985 included as one
of its seminar topics the theme ‘Women and the Christ event.’ This again em-
phasised a practical and experiential approach. Understandably it involved an
exploration of the oppressive circumstances which defined the experience of the
majority of Asian women – poverty, abuse in the home as well in society, ex-
ploitation, and for too many prostitution, often enforced or as the only way out
of grinding poverty. Virginia Fabella emphasised the two issues which, she felt,
defined the approach to christology by Asian women. On the one hand there is
their experience of real poverty and of dehumanisation stemming from patriar-
chal male dominated societies. On the other, however, she argues that women
have shown more openness to the religious and cultural plurality of the societies
in which they live (1988:108-117). She developed these themes further in a later

144 Compare Mercy Amba Oduyoye’s definition of christology: ‘Christology is not meant to anal-
yse the nature of Christ, but to identify saving acts and to cling in hope of liberation … Chris-
tology takes the form of apprehending the Christ event’ (2001:63-4)

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seminal paper ‘Christology from an Asian Woman’s Perspective’ (1990:3-14).145
This well illustrates the distinctive approach which characterises a good deal of
Asian women’s theology in contrast to that of their male counterparts. One point
they have in common is a suspicion of tradition and dogmatic christological
statements. Fabella is not very interested in the classical creeds which, she be-
lieves, are ‘no longer of the greatest importance for many Asian theologians.’
One reason for this is that these statements do not, and indeed can not, speak of
the Asian experience of living in multi-religious societies. They therefore inhibit
any fruitful dialogue with other religions (1990:8). Nor does the language of the
creeds resonate well with women. Terms like ‘Lord’ (though biblical) are pro-
foundly unhelpful since they have overtones of feudal injustice and patriarchal
control. What Fabella is arguing for here is a reorientation of theological lan-
guage, not only to remove gender references but to replace biblical and traditional
theological terminology with language which will relate to the circumstances of
those to whom it is addressed. The real value of the ecumenical creeds for her
is not that they have final and definitive content so much as that they challenge
us ‘to have our own contemporary culturally based christological formulations’,
which will be based on what Jesus actually means to believers in their contextual
concerns (1990:8-9). In other words christology is not so much assent to dogma
as experiencing the meaning of Christ within given contexts. This will indeed be
a context of the degradation wrought by colonialism of different kinds, as well
as situating itself within the multiplicity of Asia’s religions and cultures. But its
main emphasis will be that it relates specifically to women within that Asian
context. So she argues that ‘though this Christology be educed from the depths
of our cultures and religions and expressed in Asia’s soteriological idiom, the
result will not be relevant unless it takes into account the women’s experience,
perspective and contribution’ (1990:4). It has therefore to be ‘based on their (ie.
women’s) context and concerns, who Jesus Christ is for them’ (1990:9). So to the
question, ‘Whom do you say that I am?’ Fabella responds that Christ is ‘not only
what we encounter in the scriptures, but also our reality and experience as Asian
women.’ So christologies are ‘not only interpretations of Jesus but confession of
our faith in this Jesus who has made a difference in our lives’ (1990:4). This stress
on experience is not new – indeed as we have seen in chapters II and III it might
be considered a typically eastern contribution. What is new is that the specific
experience of women (which played no perceivable role in the writings of Chak-
karai, Chenchiah or even Sundar Singh) comes clearly to the forefront. Looking
back on Asian theology as a whole one might well agree that it was long overdue.

145 We Dare to Dream is a collection of papers from conferences of Asian women in Manilla
(1985), Oxatepec (1986) and Singapore (1987), which gives some idea of the development of
women’s theology in Asia in that decade. Her paper ‘Christology from an Asian Woman’s Per-
spective’ was reprinted in R. S. Sugirtharajah’s Asian Faces of Jesus.

123
 The ground of experience is found in the historical person of Jesus. In common
with most Asian women theologians (but perhaps in contrast to some western
feminists) Fabella has no problem with the fact that Jesus was male.146 Asian
women, she argues, see his maleness as ‘accidental’ for the purposes of salvation.
‘His maleness is not essential but functional’ (1990:4). It was the later patriar-
chialisation of the church on the basis of Jesus’ gender which was responsible
for excluding women. This was a retrograde step, which led to an oppression of
women which is not found in the Gospels. Fabella is convinced that for christol-
ogy ‘the historical Jesus plays a central role … (for) to by pass history is to make
an abstraction of Jesus and distort his person.’ This is not necessarily to deny
the doctrine of the two natures in Christ, but rather to affirm that it is in the
incarnate Jesus that the true meaning of humanity and divinity are most clearly
manifested. The historical Jesus thus reveals ‘the deepest truths about a loving
God, who cares for the weakest and the lowliest and wills the full salvation of all,
men and women alike’ (1990:4-5). The central message of Jesus is the coming of
the Kingdom of God which, though fully inclusive, shows a preference for the
marginalised. In this context Fabella focuses on the attitude of Jesus to women
in the Gospels, whom he welcomes as ‘witnesses and disciples, missionaries and
apostles’, and which extended (in the case of the Syro-Phoenician woman) even
beyond Jewish boundaries.
While Fabella recognises that Christ’s solidarity with suffering is most clearly
shown in the crucifixion, she is critical of approaches to the cross which make it
a symbol of passive endurance and resignation to suffering, which is character-
istic of Catholicism in the Philippines, which she as a Filipino Maryknoll sister
understands full well. The image of the tragic crucified victim is a prominent
feature of Filipino popular religion.147 Fabella argues that the crucifixion is not,
as in popular religiosity, a end in itself (1990:7). On the contrary, it is a sign of
hope, for the resurrection gives the ground for liberation from all forms of op-
pression and discrimination ‘whether political or economic, religious or cultural,
or based on gender, race or ethnicity’ (1990:10). The historical Jesus, therefore,
through his life, death and resurrection, provides the norm for ethical action and
the transformation of society.
Though Fabella writes from the predominantly Catholic Philippines she re-
gards the religious plurality of most Asian countries as an essential ingredient for

146 As has often been pointed out, many non-western languages have common personal pronouns
which make no distinction between male and female. In such contexts the ‘maleness’ of Jesus
is not so intrusive.
147 It has its origins, like similar perceptions of Christ, in Spain: see the classic by John Mackay
The Other Spanish Christ ( 1932). For another view see Lydia Lascano’s paper in Fabella and
Oduyoye (1988:109ff.)

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rethinking christology. As well as what she calls ‘the dialogue of life’ – engaging
with the real experiences of marginalised women – there is a second dialogue,
with non-Christian Asian religions. This task will not only be to examine Asian
religions to determine what in them is oppressive and enslaving to women and
other marginalised groups, but also to discover their emancipating and liberative
factors, what can contribute towards humanisation (1990:4). The acknowledg-
ment of these values in Asian religions, she believes, must lead us to the question
‘the centrality and universality of Christ as Saviour for all religions.’ Her tenta-
tive approach to this problem leans in the direction of inclusivism, that there are
different paths to salvation, and that Jesus proclaimed the Kingdom of God rather
than a christology. Fabella’s aim is not to develop a narrowly feminist theology
but one which concerns ‘the full humanity and salvation of all, men and women
alike’ (1990:4). At the same time, since a corrective is needed to the patriarchal
and European domination, she seeks a theology which ‘aims to make Jesus cred-
ible to Asian women (and to) directly touch their everyday lives.’
Some of Fabella’s arguments have been echoed by the South Indian theolo-
gian Monica Melanchton in her ‘Christology and Women’ (in Fabella and Park
1990:15-23). For her too traditional Christology has been ‘wounding and deform-
ing’ because it has ignored the significance of Jesus for women. The accounts in
the Gospels are for her of first importance. ‘The human life and teaching of the
historical Jesus,’ she writes, ‘have to be given full place in his saving work as es-
sential, not incidental … (thus) there can be no christology except that which is
based on the life of Christ’ (1990:16). Jesus maleness is not an issue, but rather the
perfection of his humanity. ‘Man’ has therefore to be understood to include male
and female. Furthermore, in his resurrection Jesus transcends both his maleness
and his (Jewish) particularity and becomes the ‘representative of a new human-
ity’ (1990:16, 18). The Gospels demonstrate clearly Jesus’ concern for women
(in her view in contrast to the Judaism of his time). Consequently christological
dogma is ‘no longer adequate’ and women can only ‘interpret the doctrine of
Christ within a specific frame of reference which is meaningful to us as women.’
It is significant that Indian Dalit Theology (in contrast to Latin American Libera-
tion Theology and American Black Theology) had from its inception a deep and
compassionate concern to listen to the voices of dalit women. Already in Towards
a Dalit Theology (1989) Ruth Manorama and Swarnalatha Devi had drawn atten-
tion to the appalling lot of dalit women. In addition to caste discrimination dalit
women suffer additional exploitation which is rooted in the patriarchal nature of
Indian society, and indeed in the Indian church in general. Women’s sexuality is
regarded as polluting and threatening (which does not however prevent over 80%
of rapes of dalit women being committed by upper caste men). They are subjected
to domestic violence and unremitting drudgery in the home and to abuse within

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society at large.148 This has given rise to a remarkable oral theology which reflects
these women’s faith experience. Some of the most moving of these oral testimo-
nies graphically reveal the misery, but also the faith, of dalit women, a vernacular
grass roots theologising which stems from deep spiritual experience similar to
the biblical Psalms:

We shall break the class oppression

That thrives on women’s labour.
If we don’t, we will have spend
All our lives in useless tears …

Hunger pangs drive us to toil every day

We slave all day for a handful of gruel.
The merciless masters chase us on the one side,
And our starving children wail on the other side…

We have become victims of earth’s displeasure …

So we’ll cast our burdens upon the Lord
And dare to stand up and fight for release.

This kind of theologising, in so far as it comes from dalit women themselves,

is conveyed through oral, rather than written, categories of personal narrative,
prayers, song and poem. It tends to reflect on the meaning of Christ for the in-
dividual and community and mainly focuses on the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus’ at-
titude to women, and their role in the Gospel story. Christ is seen as the liberator
from all evils, and one who restores women to their rightful dignity. It is, in a
sense, a contemporary reading of the ‘signs of the kingdom’ (Mt. 11.4-6). Such
oral theologising poses the question as to whether the largely cerebral and philo-
sophical written theology which has characterised the western tradition can claim
to be the only valid theological method.
The beginnings of feminist theology in Asia (as in Africa), while it force-
fully argued for the need to hear women’s voices in the theological debate, was
equally concerned with human wholeness – theology was a task for women and
men together. From the 1990s more radical voices began to emerge. One rea-
son for this was probably the number of Asian women theologians who pursued
doctoral studies in the United States, where they absorbed not only a good deal
of western feminist writing but also, and perhaps less helpfully, a taste for post-
modernism and the eclectic mix of ideas which subsequently became labelled
post-colonialism. Some gifted Asian women theologians left their home coun-
tries and opted for academic posts in America, which effectively detached them

148 These experiences frequently feature in symposia on Dalit Theology: see eg the papers by
Faustina, Prasana and Raja Selvi in Devasahayam (1996) and especially the volume Dalits and
Women, a collection of papers delivered at the Gurukhul Seminary in 1992.

126
from the grass-roots experience which had previously informed their thinking.149
Perhaps the best example is Kwok Pui-Lan who had earlier carried out valuable
research into Chinese women’s Christianity (eg. 1990), but is now better known
for her writing on feminism and post-colonialism published after she moved the
United States. While she voices some criticism of middle class western femi-
nism, some of her own writing may well be thought to fall into this very cat-
egory. Her Introducing Asian Feminist Theology (2000) shows a surprising lack
of interest in the earlier history of theology in Asia (especially in the use of the
concept of shakti by male theologians) and has a tendency to generalised state-
ments without adequate analysis (even the phrase ‘Asian women’ is a gross over-
simplification). Perhaps more serious though is her enthusiastic embracing of
post-colonial theory (2005). This is not the place to engage in a detailed critique
of post-colonialism, but some comments are necessary because (it seems at least
to me) to be having a substantially negative effect on Third World theologies in
general and on feminist theologies in particular. Post-colonialism as an ideology
has little to do with the former colonial world, for its roots lie in a particular
kind of western intellectualism. Of course Asian, African and Caribbean writ-
ers in all kinds of fields – history, politics, anthropology, and indeed religion as
well as literature – had been re-defining themselves over against colonialism in
the 20th century and well before post-colonialism was invented, though much of
this writing is either ignored or gratuitously co-opted by post-colonial theorists.
Post-colonialism as a theory emerged largely among expatriate Asians domiciled
not amidst the Asian post-colonial trauma but in academic positions in the West,
and in the dubious field of ‘cultural studies.’150 Many commentators have drawn
attention to its esoteric nature, obscurity of language, and others to its basic irrel-
evance to the former colonial world.151 What I am suggesting here is the inherent
self-contradictory nature of much post-colonial theory. While claiming to speak
for the ‘subaltern’ its western domiciled and elitist spokespersons do their work
from explicitly western intellectualist foundations, and are as well distanced by
149 Of course this is a tendency begun by some leading male Asian theologians who migrated to
America earlier than this.
150 �����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
As���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������
has been unkindly (but truly) remarked, Post-Colonialism began when Third World intel-
lectuals left their own countries for academic positions in the First World!
151 The (high caste) high priestess of ‘subalternism’, Gayatri Chakravorti Spivak, according to an
Indian commentator, ‘would not recognize a subaltern if she bumped into one’! I would include
Edward Said here. His reinvention of ‘orientalism’ to mean the historical prejudice of a motley
collection of European writers against Arabs and Muslims (undifferentiated) proceeds on just
the kind of methodology he pillories. While he notes in passing that ‘representation’ (in his
sense of the word) is not limited to Europeans alone, he proceeds as though it is. Any sugges-
tion that racial or religious prejudice is the common fallacy of most societies is ruled out. For
an interesting reversal of Said’s thesis see I. Baruma and A. Margalit Occidentalism: a short
history of anti-westernism (Atlantic Books, 2005).

127
location from the subaltern marginalised for whom they claim to speak. Despite
its western origins, post-colonialism has also shown a distinct tendency to ap-
pear anti-western. However for many Asians the most traumatic and violent form
of 20th century colonialism came not from Europe but from Japan (as Koreans
are quick to point out), and militant colonialism still characterises both Asian
super-powers, China and India, in their subjection of ethnic minorities along
their borders. I do not wish to labour this point. However it appears to me that
the enthusiastic embracing of post-colonial theory by a minority of theologians,
including a number of feminists, is unlikely in the long term to prove very fruit-
ful in helping to produce authenitic contextual theologies. Strangely, Kwok Pui-
Lan seems to be in substantial agreement. She recognises that some non-western
women may see post-colonial theory as a product of ‘Third World and diasporic
intellectuals in the Western academy, with little relevance to the burning issues
they face’ (2005:126). Elsewhere she is more explicit: ‘Post-colonial theory is
not written primarily for the poor, the peasants, the subalterns, and other mar-
ginalised people … The readers are likely to be a “marginalised community”(!)
made up of intellectuals interested in the relation between theology and empire
building…’ (2005:148). One of the areas in which post-colonialism, with its roots
in the study of literary texts, has had a substantial influence has been in the ap-
proach to the Bible, to which we shall return below.
Perhaps the Asian female theologian who attracted most attention during the
1990s was the Korean Hyun Kyung Chung, largely as a result of her presentation
to the 1991 World Council of Churches Assembly in Canberra.152 Chung lectured
at the Ewha Women’s University in Seoul before moving to the United Theologi-
cal Seminary, New York, where she had done doctoral studies. (I shall discuss
here only her work prior to leaving Korea, though including her thesis, later pub-
lished under the title Struggle to be the Sun Again, introducing Asian Women’s
Theology). The theme of the Canberra assembly was ‘Come, Holy Spirit, renew
the whole creation’, which resonated well with both the emphasis on the Holy
Spirit in Korean Christianity (K. Kim 2008:91-2) and Chung’s own attachment to
eco-feminism. However what caused a stir in Canberra was her enthusiastic adop-
tion of Korean Shamanism. To the beating of drums Chung ‘appeared on stage
as a Korean shaman in the midst of Korean – and some aboriginal – dancers. She
led an exorcist’s dance invoking the Holy Spirit and the spirits of suffering, op-
pressed individuals, peoples, and parts of creation’ (K. Kim 2008:88). At the root
of Chung’s performance was the Korean concept of han, which plays a significant
role in Minjung Theology. Han is the crushing resentment and suffering of in-
nocent victims, which in traditional Korean religion can only be expunged by the
shaman, who is usually female. Not surprisingly Chung’s performance evoked
152 For a sympathetic critical review see Kirsteen Kim (2008).

128
a sharp reaction on the part of the more conservative and orthodox delegates at
Canberra and later in her own country. This antagonism was not helped by her ap-
parent identification of Kwan In, the Buddhist goddess of compassion, as a femi-
nine image of Christ. Her detractors should, perhaps, not have been too surprised,
for a year earlier both Struggle to be the Sun Again and a paper ‘Han-pu-ri: Doing
theology from a Korean woman’s perspective’ (in Fabella and Park 1990) had ap-
peared in print. In the article she set out her methodology quite clearly:
‘I do not try to articulate Korean women’s God-experience from biblical or
orthodox theological perspectives in the traditional sense. Instead I like to name
Korean women’s experience within our cultural context of suffering and life-
giving using our traditional symbols and metaphors in an organic way. Then I
try to make connections between women’s experience and Christian tradition’
(1990a:136).
The paper follows a common Asian and feminist pattern of theological autobi-
ography, emphasising Chung’s upbringing within a world of unseen, but deeply
felt, ghost spirits. These spirits are ‘han-ridden’, full of bitterness and resentment
and representing Korea’s ‘collective consciousness.’ Han, according to Chung, is
a result of the ‘sinful interconnections of classism, racism, sexism, colonialism,
neo-colonialism, and cultural imperialism which the Korean experience every
day’ (1990a:138). These are factors, she argues, which especially impact upon
women. Release from women’s han comes through han-pu-ri, the traditional sha-
man ritual which involved (as is common in many religious traditions) identifying
and listening to the wounded spirit and effecting peaceful satisfaction. In Chung’s
opinion, the primary source for women’s theology in Korea should be based on
the experience of women as victims and their liberation from this – that is, on
han and han-pu-ri. For this purpose Korean women engage in several religions,
Shamanism, Buddhism, and Confucianism together with Christianity. The Bible
is used alongside other scriptures, and its use is selective. The acid test for Chung
of any valid theology therefore is not its dogma, but whether it ‘untangles the
Korean women’s han and liberates from bondage’ (1990a:144). The specifically
christological reference here is that ‘for us the gospel of Jesus means liberation
(han-pu-ri) and life giving power … Where there is a genuine experience of lib-
eration and life giving power, we meet our God, Christ, and the power of the
Spirit’ (1990a:145).
Some of these ideas were incorporated into Struggle to be the Sun Again. A
substantial part of this book (as the sub-title implies) is a survey of the begin-
nings of Asian feminist theology, and Chung is very dependent here on the earlier
work of Asian women theologians. In that sense her thesis is only marginally
innovative. There is also a good deal of over generalisation about ‘Asian women’
which does not adequately distinguish between the many different contexts in

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different parts of Asia, and an assumption that what she perceives as the Korean
experience is valid throughout Asia. The dichotomy between male and female is
much sharper than in the earlier writers we have considered and the tone is often
rhetorical rather than carefully argued. Her emphasis on experience is certainly
salutary, but there is little attempt to relate the Korean experience to past tradi-
tions of theology or to other theologies within the Asian context. Her answer
to her question, ‘Who is Jesus for Asian Women?’ is largely based on material
drawn from the conferences mentioned earlier in this chapter, and not on her own
original field data.153 She notes that the traditional titles for Jesus (‘received from
missionaries,’ but in the main biblical titles) are common, but that their meanings
are subtly reinterpreted to meet the experiences of Asian women. The image of
Christ as the Suffering Servant resonates because in many Asian cultures suf-
fering and obedience is imposed upon women. Chung argues though that many
regard their suffering as salvific and redemptive, and in some sense as a form
of empowerment. Jesus is seen as one whose attitude to women contrasts to the
dominating male oppression of the post-colonial situations in which they live.
Since ‘Jesus takes sides with Asian women in his solidarity with all oppressed
people’ the image of Christ as Suffering Servant becomes stronger than his image
as a male representative of colonial powers. Christology is experiential, not doc-
trinal. ‘Their understanding of Jesus’ humanity and divinity… is very different
from that of Nicene-Chalcedonian theological definitions stressing the Son’s rela-
tionship to the Father and the two natures of his person. Asian women’s concern
for the humanity-divinity of Jesus derives from their resistance to colonial male
domination in their churches and cultures’ (1990:59). This may well be true, but
experience of this kind inevitably raises specifically theological questions as to
the Person of Christ, and surely some deeper probing is needed as to how exactly
individual, or group, experience reflects the sense in which humanity-divinity is
understood. What do these words mean in this particular experiential context?
This more philosophical question is not one to which Chung offers an answer. She
draws attention to what she calls ‘new emerging images of Christ’ (1990:62ff.)
Foremost among these is the image of Jesus as liberator from social, political and
economic oppression. This is familiar to us from Liberation Theology, but it is not
very clear exactly how she perceives Christ as liberating from these evils, except
through social and political action by women themselves. Chung’s specifically

153 This is in marked contrast to detailed field studies on christology by African women theolo-
gians: see eg. Anne Nasimuyu-Wasike (‘Christology and an African Woman’s experience’ in
R.J. Schreiter ed. Faces of Jesus in Africa, Orbis, Maryknoll, 1995); Teresia Hinga (‘An African
Confession of Christ’ in J. Pobee ed. Exploring Afro-Christology Lang, Frankfurt am Main
1992); and the papers by Elizabeth Amoah and Mercy Oduyoye in With Passion and Compas-
sion.

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Korean and innovative symbol for Jesus is, as we have seen, the shaman mediator
who removes han, and in this context she can boldly speak of the ‘female Christ’
(1990:66). Jesus as priestess of han is a symbol, not a definition. Symbols (like ex-
perience) must be related in some way to the biblical material and to mainstream
theological traditions (eastern as well as western) if they are to have more than
purely local and limited relevance. Hopefully women theologians in Asia will see
this as part of their ongoing task.
Muriel Orevillo-Montenegro’s The Jesus of Asian Women (also a doctoral
student at New York’s United Theological Seminary) is, like Chung’s, largely a
survey of Asian women’s theology, though it has more depth and shows a greater
knowledge of Asian male theologians. Orevillo-Montenegro is from the Philip-
pines and views theology against ‘the suffocating veil that makes people suffer
through violent colonial occupation, racism, ethno-centricity, classism and pa-
triarchy’ (2006:7). Filipino feminist theologians, she believes, are moving be-
yond the ‘Suffering Servant’ christology charcteristic of the Spanish Catholicism.
They ‘speak of Christology only in relation to social, political and economic re-
alities and injustices in the country and in the Third World overall.’ She argues
that if we are to take ‘the historical Jesus’ seriously we cannot ignore the glaring
realities in the Philippines and that ‘any Christology will be inadequate if it ig-
nores women’s experiences of oppression, specifically because of being women.’
While acknowledging that most Filipino women are cautious in their christol-
ogy she also draws attention to what she calls ‘radical feminists’ in her country
‘who go beyond the traditional view that only Jesus reveals the Christ … (and)
explore feminine embodiments of the christic and the divine’ (2006:144). The
reason for this, she believes, is that popular indigenous Filipino religiosity has
regarded the sacred as female, embodied in the mother-goddess, and that this kind
of spirituality is beginning to inform the understanding of Christ. This is not only
characteristic of the eco-feminist movement154 but also of seeing ‘the new Christ
embodied in struggling women.’ She argues that Filipino women ‘associate Jesus
the Christ with the feminine principle’ (2006:149) and that Christ is manifested
in the experiences of mothers (‘Christ-mothers’) who are persecuted for standing
up for life over against death.
Orevillo-Montenegro’s underlying contention is that images of God can and
should be female as well as male. Both the Bible and some patristic and medi-
eval theologians (as well as earlier Asian male theologians) have not hesitated to
speak of God in maternal images and of his motherly care. However to claim, as
Orevillo-Montenegro does, that Jesus is ‘the feminine face of God’ is more prob-
lematic. If we grant, along with the majority of Asian women theologians, that

154 See eg. the contribution from the Philippines by Victoria Tauli-Corpuz ‘Reclaiming earth
based spirituality’ in Ruether ed. (1996:99-106).

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the maleness of Jesus is not a substantial problem, and that (as Mananzan puts it)
that his maleness is functional rather than essential, it does not seem particularly
helpful to go on to speak of his femininity. Of course the Gospels portray him
as a friend and helper of women in a society in which their status seems to have
been less important than that of men. But this surely does not indicate that Jesus
‘embodied’ women, any more than his standing alongside the poor implies that
he himself lived in poverty. For all her legitimate stress on ‘taking seriously the
historical Jesus’ Orevillo-Montenegro sources her basic material for her chris-
tology less from the only historical records we have of Jesus’ life than from the
experience of women in the Philippines. The biblical material is viewed through
the lenses of those women who are defined by the social, political and economic
pressures they suffer, and whose spirituality gives a large space to the indigenous
mother-goddess. This is not necessarily a faulty methodology: however it does
need to be rigorous in discerning how far the picture we have of Jesus in the
NT conforms to the image of him which this approach paints. Again we run up
against the problem of biblical hermeneutics.
There is a further problem with Orevillo-Montenegro’s christology, one which
is by no means confined to Asia or to feminism. It is the sharp dichotomy she
makes between ‘Jesus’ and ‘Christ.’ For her the ‘christhood’ of Jesus is ‘defined
by his liberating, loving and life-giving acts.’155 So she can conclude that since
‘Christ finds embodiment in different times and spaces, as the Christ responds
to people’s yearning for salvation and fullness of life, Jesus is indeed one mani-
festation and revelation of the Divine, a prototype of a sign that points to the
reality that God is with us and that, in Asia, Christ is one and many’ (2006:195).
So ‘Jesus is the paradigm of the embodied Christ … (and) this Christ is not im-
prisoned in one single person in history: we meet this Christ in many faces and
forms’ (2006:196). Again ‘one must not forget that the Christ is larger than the
historical Jesus’ (2006:198). This seems to me very confused. The use of ‘Christ’
in the Gospels invariably means ‘Messiah.’ It is generally agreed that in the NT
epistles (apart from a rare use in Rom. 9.5) the term has simply become a name,
the designation for a particular person in history, which is confirmed by the fre-
quent designation ‘Christ Jesus.’ Nowhere is it used to indicate a plurality of faces
and forms. It may, of course be possible to argue that ‘Christ’ is a principle which
manifests itself continuously in liberating historical events, but this is not the
way the word is used in the NT, nor does it seem to be compatible with taking
the historical Jesus seriously. It would be better to speak of the liberating acts of
God in such contexts. Jesus is not ‘the paradigm of the embodied Christ’, he is
the embodied Christ.

155 Her contention that echrisen Lk. 4.18 (=Is. 61.1) can be translated ‘made to be Christ’ is ex-
egetically impossible.

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 A good deal of feminist theology in Asia (as elsewhere) has adopted a post-crit-
ical approach to the Bible, deeply influenced by post-modernism and post-colo-
nialism.156 Kwok Pui-Lan has argued that ‘women all over the world are claiming
the power and authority to retell, rewrite, and reinterpret this important docu-
ment’ (2005:99). In her view the emphasis is no longer on historical criticism (‘the
world behind the text’) but on literary criticism (‘the world in the text’) and the
reader’s response (‘the world in front of the text’) (2005:103). This is a ‘synchron-
ic’ reading of the Bible within what she calls ‘cultural metatexts’ (2005:120). This
is not the place to engage at length with these post-modernist and post-colonial
hermeneutical innovations, but as they immediately affect christology, especially
as done by Asian feminists, some general comment is perhaps appropriate. Pri-
marily it is clear this is a deeply ideological approach to biblical hermeneutics.
Of course it can be argued (as post-modernists usually do) that all approaches to
the Bible are ideologically based and that it is not possible to be bias free however
much we may try to be. This is true, though it is not a particularly new insight.
We may grant that much traditional historical and linguistic criticism emanated
from a particular world view, largely derived from the Enlightenment and its
aftermath. But it should hardly be necessary to point out that this does not neces-
sarily mean that its ‘findings’ are so flawed that it must be discarded – and in fact
quite a portion of professed post-modern interpretation makes use of traditional
critical methods. Thus when Chung Hyun-Kyung claims that in selecting texts
from the Bible ‘we learn from the texts but we go behind the texts to meet the
community behind the texts’ (1990:144) she is more or less following an earlier
generation of exegetes who tried to put the text in its social as well as its historical
and religious context. The difference lies in Chung’s deliberately chosen bias of
understanding the text from the perspective of Korean women in the contempo-
rary world. In so doing she runs the risk of compromising (or perhaps deliberating
dismissing) the search for any possible original meaning of the text. One of the
few attempts to grapple with the text of the Gospels is Hisako Kinukawa’s Women
and Jesus in Mark which she describes as an ‘attempt to re-read Mark’s Gospel
from a Japanese feminist perspective’ (1994:138). Kinukawa’s main interpretive
key is the honour/shame dichotomy which she regards as characteristic of her
own Japanese society.157 On this basis she embraces the very debatable contention
that honour/shame was also a factor in 1st century Judaism.158 Kinukawa goes fur-

156 For a clear overview of post-modern approaches to the Bible see Kevin Vanhoozer ‘Scripture
and Tradition’ in his edited volume The Cambridge Companion to Post-Modern Theoogy (CUP
Cambridge 2003) pp. 141-169. On post-colonial approaches see R.S. Sugirtharajah The Post-
Colonial Bible (Sheffield Acad. Press, Sheffield 1998).
157 For a sympathetic treatment of women in Japan see Alan Suggate Japanese Christians and
Society (Lang, Bern 1996).
158 A theory advocated by B. Malina and J. Neyrey, though their evidence relies more on Medi-
terranean religion than on Judaism. This thesis seems to me unlikely. Honour is never used in

133
ther arguing that ‘having spent his whole life in the culture of honour/shame that
was fully male oriented and expected women to bear all the shame, Jesus did not
take the initiative until women prepared by stages to break down the boundaries’
(1994:139). There is little evidence for this assertion, except for the pericope of
the Syro-Phonecian woman, in which, however, the real point at issue is neither
honour/shame nor the fact that she was a woman, but rather that she was not a Jew.
Despite her considerable acquaintance with (mainly western) studies on Mark,
Kinukawa’s rhetorical reading of Mark is a sophisticated reader response inter-
pretation from a very specific cultural feminist standpoint. Behind this approach
lies the theory (presumably derived from Gadamer and Derrida) that a text has no
fixed meaning. Kwok (2005:29) significantly quotes R.S. Surgirtharajah, a lead-
ing exponent of post-colonial biblical theory, that ‘what post-colonialism signifies
for us is that the future is open and the past unstable and constantly changing.’
With the first part of this statement few would disagree, and the ‘open future’ has
become a trigger for much liberation theology. But the second statement is surely
mistaken. It is not the past which is unstable and changing, it is merely our under-
standing and interpretation of it which may change. If we can claim that the text
is essentially fluid then we can impose upon it whatever new idea we wish. This
is crucial for christology. Whether we like it or agree with it or not, the biblical
material is fixed (give or take a few fairly inconsequential textual variants). It is
not open to us (in Kwok’s terms) to ‘retell or rewrite’ it. This might be legitimate
for a writer of fiction (as for example in Endo’s A Life of Jesus) but it is scarcely a
secure basis for a serious search for the truth about the nature of Jesus. As a lead-
ing feminist theologian has commented: ‘The more Christian discourses picture
Jesus as the liberator of women, the more they make him un-Jewish or anti-Jew-
ish’ (Schussler-Fiorenza 1995:85)159 – that is they detach him from his historical
context. My point is simply that post-colonial, post-modern textual theories are
inherently incapable of bringing us nearer to the historical person of Jesus, which
must surely be one important basis of a coherent christology.
Asian women’s theology shares a number of methodological characteristics
with other recent developments in the Third World, including an emphasis on
oral forms such as narrative, poem, and prayer. It also stresses personal auto-
biography, focussing on the actual experience of women, specifically on their
marginalisation. However, it seems to me that in its more radical later stage it
has (like a good deal of western feminism) perhaps too enthusiastically embraced

contrast to shame in the NT: time is usually used of esteem for others, and aischune, aischuno
is used mainly of individual acts, not social status. The concept of shame is hardly found in the
Talmud.
159 Though both Kwok or Sugirtharajah warn strongly against the unconscious fostering of Asian
Christian anti-Semitism.

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a particular kind of 20th century western intellectualism, and in so doing is in
danger of loosing its authentic voice. At the same time its tendency to talk in
terms of contrasting binary absolutes (probably also going back to Derrida) –
male/female, oppressor/oppressed and so on, while it may reflect the position of
‘ordinary’ Asian women, – is insufficiently discerning of the fact that women
do not necessarily have the monopoly on suffering in Asia. Linda Woodhead,
in a perceptive paper, argued that some feminist theology had ‘failed to be suf-
ficiently theological … (which is) the result of a failure to engage in any serious
and sustained way with the realities of the Christian faith and tradition.’ In her
view feminist theology is generally content to see Christianity as merely a set of
doctrinal formulations and dogmas which ‘trace back the authority of Christian
belief to the self-interest strategies of patriarchal clerics’ (1997:191-2). These criti-
cisms in part apply also to later Asian women’s theology. We await a substantial
treatment of the meaning of Christ which will not only resonate with women in
Asian countries, but which will also engage critically and more widely with past
and present explorations of the One who stands at the centre of the Christian faith.

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Epilogue: The other Jesus?

‘To acknowledge Christ is to acknowledge his benefits, not, as is sometimes taught, to

behold his natures or modes of incarnation’
(Melanchthon Loci Communes, 1521)

‘After all, to be a Christian means not to have adopted certain dogmas, but to have placed
one’s life under the domination of another life, the life of Christ, and thereafter to live one’s
own life only as an expression of the power derived from it’
(Franz Rosenzweig Der Stern der Erlösung, 1919)

The quotation from P.C. Mozoomdar with which I prefaced this book contrasted
the eastern Christ of love and grace with the western Christ of formal dogma
and power. While this may not be entirely fair to western thinking about Jesus
Christ, it is, I think, true that the Asian christology is generally characterised by a
disinterest in cerebral doctrine, and more inclined towards the apprehension that
the real meaning of Jesus is to be found in personal experience which does lend
itself to philosophical formulations. In their different ways the theologians and
theological movements discussed in this book all have this common denomina-
tor. Earlier generations of Indian Christians expressed it broadly in the categories
of classical Hinduism. For Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya it was in the poetry and
worship of satcitananda, while for Sundar Singh it was in the bhakti of Christ-
devotion. Chakkarai found the continuing presence of Jesus through the Spirit,
which unites the soul with the antaryamin who dwells within, whereas Chen-
chiah’s ‘raw fact of Christ’ comes through intimate spiritual perception of pra-
tyaksa. Japanese theologians, situated with the Buddhist tradition, use somewhat
different concepts, but the emphasis on experience still dominates. Kitamori ex-
plores the relationship between Father and Son in terms of tsurasa. Takizawa and
Yagi, in spite of their differences, are united in understanding faith in Christ as
an enlightenment or awakening (satori) to Emmanuel or to the real self. Interest
in doctrinally orthodox statements which define Christ’s nature or person become
almost irrelevant, experience is what is determinative.
This emphasis is not of course entirely absent in western theology. From Mon-
tanus to Schleiermacher and beyond the mystical and experiential trend has never
been entirely absent, though it would probably be true to say that it has usually
been treated with suspicion by the mainstream of theology. For the Asian think-
ers discussed above christological doctrine, if given any place at all, is always

137
subservient to the real experience of Christ by the believer. As an acute Jewish
observer of Christianity put it, Christianity is not a matter of dogma but of self-
surender to another life (Rosenzweig 1970:277).
That this ‘other life’ is an historical figure, a real Jesus who had an historical
existence is not in doubt. Asian theologians, on the whole, would probably be un-
comfortable with the radical historical scepticism about the possibility of recov-
ering the real life of Jesus that charcterised 20th century European christologies.
Schweitzer’s necessary but devastating hatchet wielding on earlier lives of Jesus,
and Bultmann’s assertion that we can know almost nothing about the historical
Jesus, led to systematic theologians either starting their christologies from the
dogma of the Trinity (Barth) or imaging Christ primarily as a symbol (Tillich).
In both cases there was a palpable ahistoricism which created another ugly ditch
separating us from the Jesus of history,160 so that he became, in Chenchiah’s strik-
ing image, like water from a distant fountain.
The Asian theologians discussed in this book give more credibility to the histori-
cal data, especially to the Synoptic Gospels, though they often use them in a way
which pays little regard to traditional historical-critical exegesis. But history is not
the primary determining factor. Sundar Singh is perhaps the most striking in his
assumption that Jesus is not just an historical figure, but that what is important is
his continuing presence. This theme is explored at length by Chakkarai, for whom
the nativity is only the starting point of kind of continuous incarnation. For femi-
nists the historical material is important in order to recover the place of women in
Jesus’ ministry, but this is still only a basis on which to explore the real experience
of Christ. In Takizawa and Yagi, as one might expect from their Buddhist back-
ground, the historical figure is of much less significance than existential experi-
ence, so much so that one might perhaps question whether the Jesus of history is (in
Kitamori’s phrase) a necessary constituent to their theology. But, the emphasis on
Christ-mysticism, or whatever we may call it, should not be seen as in contradiction
to the Jesus of history. Dunn (2005:164) has reminded us (why did we ever forget
it?) that the essence of the New Testament is that it reflects an active and very real
kind of faith-experience which reaches back even to before the resurrection. More
strikingly Hurtado has brilliantly demonstrated that New Testament teaching – doc-
trine if we may call it so – about the person of Jesus Christ sprang out of the Christ-
devotion of the earliest disciples. Faith experience, Christ devotion, gave rise to faith
formulations, not vice versa. The conception of what came to be called the divinity
of Christ initially grew out of confrontation with the human figure of Jesus. Perhaps
too much christology begins at the wrong end – in heaven instead of on earth.

160 I am using this phrase in Baillie’s sense: ‘the “Jesus of history” means precisely “Jesus as he
really was on earth” which includes of course what he did and said, what he intended and what
he taught’ (Baillie 1956:28)

138
 But one might question whether the deference to the Jesus we find in the Syn-
optic Gospels by the majority of the Asian theologians discussed here is actually
to the Jesus of history. Very few have much interest in the Palestine-Jewish 1st
century context in which Jesus lived – indeed some betray a degree of latent, if
unconscious anti-Semitism, and Chenchiah is ready to dispense with the Jew-
ish background altogether. Jesus’s story is not seen so much within the world in
which he actually lived, as in the context of the situation of the theologian himself
or herself. This is perhaps more evident in political christologies. Sobrino (1987)
strongly emphasised the importance of the historical Jesus to Latin American
Liberation Theology, but his perception of the historical Jesus owes much more
to the context and background of 20th century Latin America than to that of 1st
century Palestine. The same might be said of Moltmann (1990). Unusually for a
book on christology Moltmann devotes considerable space to the earthly life of
Jesus, that neglected christological gap between the birth and the crucifixion.
Positive as this is, Moltmann is perhaps still reacting too sharply to the ‘lives’
of German liberalism, which he characterises as ‘Jesuology.’ Like Sobrino and
Kappen (1977) Moltmann still tends to see the historical Jesus too much through
the lenses of his own political theology. A similar perception applies with most
of Asian the writers discussed here. Perhaps the only exception is ironically the
rationalist neo-Hindu Ram Mohan Roy – no doubt because he came to Jesus with-
out dogmatic Christian presuppositions and from a study of the Greek text! Of
course, it is impossible to be entirely objective in matters of faith and history. But
given the large amount of data that has been exposed during the last few decades
about the context in which Jesus lived it seems perverse (not to say somewhat
lazy) to ignore it in constructing a christology. If earlier scholars, writing under
the shadow of historical scepticism, did not have the benefits of these findings,
the same cannot be said of the theologians and movements dealt with in the later
chapters of this book, and this perhaps is their most significant failing. After all,
we need to try to understand what Jesus was in his incarnate life before we can
confidently discover what he is for us today in our very different contexts.
Moltmann’s dismissal of ‘Jesuology’ is perhaps an example of the use of selec-
tive and loaded terminology which has helped to shift attention from the human
figure of Jesus in his historical life on to ‘Christ’ the divine resurrected one.161
But this is to condemn by definition rather than by argument. One may question
whether perhaps the the traditional terminology for that part of theology which
concerns the Person of Christ – i.e. christology – is not itself problematic in that
it privileges the exalted divine Christ and marginalises his human life. Whether

161 He regards ‘Jesuology’ as implying that ‘the centre of christology is the human being of Jesus
of Nazareth, not the exalted Christ’ (1990:55). Personally I cannot find anything necessarily
reprehensible in such an approach.

139
or not Jesus claimed to be the Messiah/Christ, the title plays a relatively small
role in the apostoloic understanding of Jesus. It would have been relevant only
to Jewish converts, and largely irrelevant when the church became mainly Gen-
tile.162 As we noted in the previous chapter, for Paul (apart from one or two rare
references) ‘Christ’ has become simply a distinguishing name, a way of signify-
ing which Jesus (a common enough name) he was speaking of. It is perhaps ironic
that a Jewish title, the significance of which was soon forgotten, should have been
selected to define that branch of theology which deals with the person of Jesus
of Nazareth. The serious point here is that the terminology of ‘christology’ itself
may deflect theological attention away from the flesh and blood human person.
An Alexandrian perspective has the danger of marginalising the Antiochene. It
might have been more helpful, since kurios is the title which is more usually
applied to Jesus in the NT, if this particular branch of theology had been called
kyriology rather than christology! Asian perspectives, being largely disinterested
in christological dogmas, are a useful reminder that behind the dogmas stands a
real human person.
The choice we make of the language we use is never neutral. It is both a po-
litical act (in the widest sense) as well as a subjective one. The names and titles
applied to Jesus in the NT point not so much to the metaphysics of his being as
to what the early Christians believed he accomplished for them, and are ex-
pressed in its cultural and contextual language and metaphors. The language of
christology, if it is to be meaningful, has to be both experiencial and culturally
conditioned. Hence the use of Hindu and Buddhist categories by many theolo-
gians in Asia, but also the vigorous rejection of same categories by those who
find them oppressive (dalits, minjung, feminists). This may indeed seem to result
in a bewildering post-modern plurality of christologies (or Jesuologies), and raise
the question of whether all are valid expressions of Christian faith. The only real
test would seem to be how far these ‘other Jesus’ figures of contextual cultural
and political theologies find their origins and justification in what we know about
him from the Synoptic Gospels. Even granted that the Gospels themselves are
interpretations not the ‘raw fact,’ this is all we have. As Dunn remarks, if we are
dissatisfied with the Jesus of the Synoptic tradition ‘we will simply have to lump
it: there is no other truly historical or historic Jesus’ (2005:34). To sideline this
tradition is not to do christology but to write fiction (as Shusako Endo does in his
A Life of Jesus).
One might perhaps argue that human language is a poor and inadequate me-
dium in which to attempt an adequate apprehension of the person of Jesus Christ.
If God is ultimately unknowable (as surely all theology acknowledges), and if

162 As Rowan Williams remarks ‘the title “Christ” is the almost indecipherable archeological trace
of his involvement with the story of Israel’ (2001:95).

140
Jesus in some way shares in the Godhead, then christology becomes a problem-
atic task, and there will always be something about it which cannot be adequate-
ly expressed in human speech. The only adequate response would have to be a
doxological one (in this I am in broad agreement with Sobrino 1988:42-3). To
this degree Christ devotion becomes not just one response, but the only initial
response. Here perhaps Yagi’s contention, that awakening or intuition, knowing
reality from immediate awareness, is prior to its expression in human speech, is
helpful, even though he, like Takizawa, focuses perhaps too heavily on the expe-
rience itself to the neglect of the its object. These writers come at the issue from
the standpoint of an epistemology which diminishes the distinction between the
knowing subject and the known object, a position which is not unlike some forms
of existentialism.163 For Asian thinkers in general epistemology is deeper and
more comprehensive than simply identifying cerebral categories. The problem
with this is that it can only be self-authenticating for the individual (as illustrated
supremely in Sunder Singh) and cannot as easily be communicated to others in
mutually meaningful terms.
Doing christology will always in a sense be, as M.M. Thomas’ telling phrase
has it, ‘risking Christ for Christ’s sake.’ In their explorations of christology Asian
theologians tend to privilege their own experience of the historical figure of Jesus
in terms of their own cultural and linguistic contexts. Like all christologies, these
can never attain finality, for the Jesus of history challenges us to continually re-
think and reassess our own experiences and conceptions of him. 164

163 And also similar to Michael Polyani’s contention that ‘the act of knowing includes an appraisal,
and this personal coefficient, which shapes all textual knowledge, bridges in so doing the dis-
tinction between subjectivity and objectivity’ (1958:17).
164 As Rowan Williams (2001:102-3) suggests, in his discussion of the Jewish-Christian debate, the
‘Finality of Christ’ is an ongoing eschatological challenge to all our assumptions.

141
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Suh, Nam-Dong (1983) ‘Towards a theology of Han’ in C.C.A. Minjung Theology
pp. 55-72
Sundermeier, T. (ed.) (1988) Brennpunkte in Kirche und Theologie Japans (Neu-
kirchen Verlag, Neukirchen)
Sundermeier, T. (1995) ‘Das Kreuz in japanischer Interpretation’ in Konvivenz
und Differenz pp. 185-208 (Erlanger Verlag, Erlangen)
Sundermeier, T. (1995) ‘Minjung Kunst und die Minjung Theologie Koreas’ in
Konvivenz und Differenz pp. 209-222 (Erlanger Verlag, Erlangen)
Tagawa, Kenzo (1969) ‘The Yagi-Takizawa Debate’ in North East Asia Journal

148
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Takizawa, Katsumi (1980) Reflexionen uber die universale Grundlage von Bud-
dhismus und Christentum ed. H.Hamer (Lang, Frankfurt am Main)
Takizawa, Katsumi (1987) Das Heil im Heute, Texte einer japanischen Theologie
ed. T. Sundermeier (Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, Goettingen)
Tang, E. (1995) ‘The Cosmic Christ – the search for a Chinese Theology’ in Stud-
ies in World Christianity 1/2 pp. 131-142
Tang, E. (2004) ‘EastAsia’ in Parratt (ed.) An Introduction to Third World Theolo-
gies pp. 74-104
Terazono, Yoshiki (1988) ‘Das christliche Leben in Japan’ in K. Terazono and
H. Hamer (eds.) Brennpunkte in Kirche und Theologie Japans (Neukirchner
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Thomas, M.M. and R. Taylor (1965) Tribal Awakening (CISRS Madras)
Thomas, M.M. (1969) The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Rennaisance
(SCM, London)
Thomas, M.M. (1971) Salvation and Humanisation (CLS Madras)
Thomas, M.M. (1976) The Secular Ideologies of India and the Secular Meaning
of Christ (CLS Madras)
Thomas, M.M. (1978) Towards a Theology for Contemporary Ecumenism (CLS,
Madras)
Thomas, M.M. (1981) Religion and the Revolt of the Oppressed (ISPCK Delhi)
Thomas, M.M. (1987) Risking Christ for Christ’s Sake: to wards an ecumentical
theology of pluralism (WCC, Geneva)
Thomas, M.M. and F. Wilfred (1992) Theologiegeschichte der dritten Welt, Indi-
en (Kaiser Verlag, Munich)
Thomas. T. J. (1993) Ethics of a World Cumminity: the contribution of
M.M.Thomas (Punthi Pustak, Calcutta)
Tillich, P. (1967) Systematic Theology vol. 2 (SCM, London)
Weber, M. (ET 1966) The Sociology of Religion (Methuen, London)
Webster, J.C. (1992) The Dalit Christians, a History (ISPCK, Delhi)
Williams, Rowan (2001) On Christian Theology (Blackwell, Oxford)
Wilson, R. (1989) ‘An Approach to Christian Dalit Theology’ in Prabhakar (ed.)
Towards a Dalit Theology pp. 48-56
Woodhead, Linda (1997) ‘Spiritualising the Sacred: a Critique of Feminist Theol-
ogy’ in Modern Theology vol. 13 pp. 191-201.
Yagi, Seiichi (1977) ‘I in the words of Jesus’ in J.Hick ed. The Myth of Christian
Uniqueness (SCM, London)
Yagi, Seiichi (ET 1990) ‘A Bridge from Buddhism to Christian Thinking: the
Front-Structure’ in S. Yagi and L. Swidler A Bridge to Buddhist-Christian
Dialogue (Paulist Press, New Jersey) pp. 73-152

149
Yagi, Seiichi (1993) ‘Christ and Buddha’ in R.S. Sugitharajah ed. Asian Faces of
Jesus (SCM, London)
Yagi, Seiichi (1997) ‘The Third Generation’ in Furuya A history of Japanese The-
ology pp.83-113

Note: E
 ast Asian names place the surname before the given name. In this bibli-
ography I have followed western usage but included the given name in full.

150
Author Index

Ahn, Byung-Mu 110-118

Appasamy, A.J. 36n, 37-9, 41n
Ariokadass, P. 104n
Baillie, D.M. 138n
Balasundaram, F.J. 110n, 114
Banerji, Charan Bhavnani see Brahmabandab Upadhyaya
Barth, K. 13n, 45, 49, 56, 64, 66, 69-71, 75-78, 80, 81, 85, 110, 138
Bergson, H. 67
Bonino, J. Miguez 114, 115
Bornkamm, G, 110, 112, 118
Boyd, R. 17n, 21n, 23, 29, 30n, 32, 33, 34, 36, 37, 39n, 42, 46, 47n, 48n, 51, 54,
60, 61.
Brahmabandhab Upadhyaya 26, 29-36, 137
Brock, S. 14n
Brockington, J. 21n, 22n, 31n, 38, 47n
Brunner, E. 13n
Buber, M. 92, 93n
Bultmann, R. 70, 82, 91, 92, 96, 99, 115, 138
Carr, D. 108
Chakkarai, V. 26, 29, 45-55, 97, 99, 107, 123, 137, 138
Chatterjee, M. 16n
Chenchiah, P. 26, 55-61, 90, 107, 123, 137, 138, 139
Chung, Hyun-Kyung 97, 110, 121n, 128-30, 133
Clarke, S. 107, 109n
Conze, E. 72n
Devasahayam, V. 126n
Dohi, A. 62
Dodd, C.H. 117n
Dunn, J. 138, 140
Eliot, C. 38n, 47n
Embree, A. 38n
Endo, Shusako 64n, 68, 134, 140
England, J. 14
Fabella, V. 121-5

151
Farquhar, J.N. 17n, 21n
Fiddes, P. 64n
Gandhi, M. 17, 26, 37, 46, 60, 89n, 90, 103, 105
Gnanadason, A. 121-2
Gonda, J. 38n, 47n
Goreh, N. 29
Harnack, A. 22n, 66
Hay, J. 17n, 18, 21, 24, 26
Hinga, T. 130n
Hick, J. 88, 94, 98
Heiler, F. 36-40
Hurtado, L. 39, 42, 43, 138
Jayakumar, S. 104n
Kappen, S. 139
Kasemann, H. 92
Katoppo, M. 120, 122
Karkkainen, V-M. 15n
Killingley, D. 17n, 18, 19, 27, 29
Kim, K. 86, 91, 110n, 128
Kim, Yong-Bok 115, 118n
Kinukawa, H. 133-4
Kirkegaard, S. 92
Kitamori, K. 52n, 63-70, 106n, 137, 138
Kraemer, H. 45, 56
Kumar, P. 105
Kuster, W. 14
Kwok, Pui-Lan 127, 128, 133, 134
Kwon, Jin-Kwan 114n, 117
Lipner, J. 21n, 22n, 30-35
Luther, M. 63, 64, 68
Mackay, J. 124n
MacIntosh, H.R. 22n, 55
McIntyre, J. 11
MacQuarrie, J. 60, 83, 97
Manorama, R. 125
Massey, J. 102n, 104n
Melanchthon, P. 137
Melanchton, M. 125
Miura, H. 91n
Moltmann, J. 15, 64n, 68, 82, 105n, 116, 117, 139

152
Mozoomdar, P.C. 9, 21n, 137
Nag, K. 17n
Nasimuyu-Wasike, A. 130n
Nirmal, A.P. 102, 104-9
Noh, Dong-Sun 102n
Odakgaki, M. 71, 96
Odudoye, M. A. 124n, 130
Orevillo-Montenegro, M. 97, 130-2
Panikaar, R. 85
Parekh, 21n
Park, Sun Ai-Lee 120, 129
Paul, C.T. 52
Pelikan, J. 20n
Pieris, A. 15
Polyani, M. 141n
Prabhakar, M.E. 107-9
Radhakrishnan, S. 31n, 47n, 53n, 87, 91
Raja, A.M.A. 119
Rajkumar, P. 103n, 107n, 109
Ritschl, A. 66
Rosenzweig, F. 69n, 137, 138
Roy, R.M. 17-20
Ruether, R. 121, 122, 131n
Samartha, S. 83-91
Schleiermacher, F. 45, 61, 66, 137
Schlussler-Fiorenza, E. 122, 134
Sen, K.C. 17, 21-8, 30, 34, 53
Shiri, G. 105n
Simon, M. 14n
Sobrino, J. 139, 141
Streeter, B.S. 36, 39, 40, 41
Suggate, A. 133n
Sugirtharajah, R.S. 53n, 123n, 133, 134
Suh, Nam-Dong 110-2
Sundar Singh, 25, 30, 36-43, 58, 107, 123, 137
Sundermeier, T. 64n, 68, 71, 78n, 81, 110, 111
Suzuki, D.T. 82n
Tagawa, K. 73n, 80
Takizawa, K. 70-82, 118, 119
Tang, E. 14, 15

153
Tauli-Corpuz, V. 131n
Theissen, G. 112
Tillich, P. 13n, 61, 138
Thomas, P.T. 46n
Thomas, M.M. 15n, 17, 18, 19, 21n, 22, 26, 30n, 31, 33, 36, 46, 48, 55, 58, 61, 83,
85, 90, 104n, 105, 141
Thomas, T.J. 105
Weber, M. 98-9
Webster, J. 104n
Williams, R. 141n
Wilson, R. 107
Woodhead, L. 135
Yagi, S. 65, 80, 81, 82n, 91-9, 137, 138, 141
Yung, H. 101n

154
 STUDIEN ZUR INTERKULTURELLEN GESCHICHTE DES CHRISTENTUMS
ETUDES D'HISTOIRE INTERCULTURELLE DU CHRISTIANISME
STUDIES IN THE INTERCULTURAL HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

Begründet von/fondé par/founded by

Richard Friedli, Walter J. Hollenweger und / et / and Hans Jochen Margull †
Herausgegeben von/edité par/edited by

Mariano Delgado Jan A.B. Jongeneel Klaus Koschorke

Université de Fribourg Universiteit Utrecht Universität München

Frieder Ludwig Werner Ustorf

Hermannsburg University of Birmingham

Die Reihe “Studien zur interkulturellen Geschichte des Christentums” arbeitet im Überschneidungsge-
biet von Missions- und Religionswissenschaft, Ökumenik und Interkultureller Theologie. In histori-
scher, sozialwissenschaftlicher und theoretischer Erforschung verfolgt sie die Frage der Identität des
lokalen und globalen Christentums. Sie tut dies in Anerkennung grundlegender Transformationen (z.B.
Technisierung, Globalisierung, Migration, Ökologie), der Bezugnahme auf die Andersdenkenden und
Andersglaubenden und im Blick auf die Zukunft der Menschheit.
The series “Studies in the Intercultural History of Christianity” operates in an area that includes the
disciplines of missiology, history of religions, ecumenics and intercultural theology. Using historical,
socio-cultural and theoretical approaches it addresses the question of the identity of local and global
Christianity. This is done in the light of the continuing transformations (e.g. technology, globalization,
migration, ecology) and the living together of people of different faiths and persuasions in the human
community.
La série « Etudes de l’Histoire Interculturelle du Christianisme » étudie les points de rencontre entre
missiologie, science des religions, œcuménisme et théologie interculturelle. En utilisant les approches
théoriques de l’histoire et des sciences sociales, elle fournit des éléments de réponse à la question de
l’identité du christianisme local et global. Pour ce faire, elle prend en considération aussi bien les
transformations profondes (p. ex. technologie, globalisation, migration, écologie), que la reconnais-
sance de ceux qui pensent et croient d’une manière différente, le tout en relation avec l’avenir de
l’humanité.

Band 1 Wolfram Weiße: Südafrika und das Antirassismusprogramm. Kirchen im Spannungsfeld

einer Rassengesellschaft. 1975.
Band 2 Ingo Lembke: Christentum unter den Bedingungen Lateinamerikas. Die katholische Kir-
che vor den Problemen der Abhängigkeit und Unterentwicklung. 1975.
Band 3 Gerd U. Kliewer: Das neue Volk der Pfingstler. Religion, Unterentwicklung und sozialer
Wandel in Lateinamerika. 1975.
Band 4 Joachim Wietzke: Theologie im modernen Indien - Paul David Devanandan. 1975.
Band 5 Werner Ustorf: Afrikanische Initiative. Das aktive Leiden des Propheten Simon Kimbangu.
1975.
Band 6 Erhard Kamphausen: Anfänge der kirchlichen Unabhängigkeitsbewegung in Südafrika.
Geschichte und Theologie der äthiopischen Bewegung. 1872-1912. 1976.
Band 7 Lothar Engel: Kolonialismus und Nationalismus im deutschen Protestantismus in Namibia
1907-1945. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen evangelischen Mission und Kirche im
ehemaligen Kolonial- und Mandatsgebiet Südwestafrika. 1976.
Band 8 Pamela M. Binyon: The Concepts of "Spirit" and "Demon". A Study in the use of different
languages describing the same phenomena. 1977.
Band 9 Neville Richardson: The World Council of Churches and Race Relations. 1960 to 1969.
1977.
Band 10 Jörg Müller: Uppsala II. Erneuerung in der Mission. Eine redaktionsgeschichtliche Studie
und Dokumentation zu Sektion II der 4. Vollversammlung des Ökumenischen Rates der
Kirchen, Uppsala 1968. 1977.
Band 11 Hans Schöpfer: Theologie und Gesellschaft. Interdisziplinäre Grundlagenbibliographie
zur Einführung in die befreiungs- und polittheologische Problematik: 1960-1975. 1977.
Band 12 Werner Hoerschelmann: Christliche Gurus. Darstellung von Selbstverständnis und Funk-
tion indigenen Christseins durch unabhängige charismatisch geführte Gruppen in Südin-
dien. 1977.
Band 13 Claude Schaller: L'Eglise en quête de dialogue. Situation actuelle et perspective du laïcat
missionnaire Catholique et Protestant de Suisse Romande. 1978.
Band 14 Theo Tschuy: Hundert Jahre kubanischer Protestantismus (1868-1961). Versuch einer
kirchengeschichtlichen Deutung. 1978.
Band 15 Werner Korte: Wir sind die Kirchen der unteren Klassen. Entstehung, Organisation und
gesellschaftliche Funktionen unabhängiger Kirchen in Afrika. 1978.
Band 16 Arnold Bittlinger: Papst und Pfingstler. Der römisch katholisch-pfingstliche Dialog und
seine ökumenische Relevanz. 1978.
Band 17 Ingemar Lindén: The Last Trump. An historico-genetical study of some important chap-
ters in the making and development of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. 1978.
Band 18 Zwinglio Dias: Krisen und Aufgaben im brasilianischen Protestantismus. Eine Studie zu
den sozialgeschichtlichen Bedingungen und volkspädagogischen Möglichkeiten der
Evangelisation. 1978.
Band 19 Mary Hall: A quest for the liberated Christian. Examined on the basis of a mission, a man
and a movement as agents of liberation. 1978.
Band 20 Arturo Blatezky: Sprache des Glaubens in Lateinamerika. Eine Studie zu Selbstverständ-
nis und Methode der "Theologie der Befreiung". 1978.
Band 21 Anthony Mookenthottam: Indian Theological Tendencies. Approaches and problems for
further research as seen in the works of some leading Indian theologicans. 1978.
Band 22 George Thomas: Christian Indians and Indian Nationalism 1885-1950. An Interpretation
in Historical and Theological Perspectives. 1979.
Band 23 Essiben Madiba: Colonisation et Evangélisation et en Afrique: L'Héritage scolaire du Ca-
meroun (1885-1965). 1980.
Band 24 Katsumi Takizawa: Reflexionen über die universale Grundlage von Buddhismus und
Christentum. 1980.
Band 25 Stephen W. Sykes (ed.): England and Germany. Studies in theological diplomacy. 1982.
Band 26 James Haire: The Character and Theological Struggle of the Church in Halmahera, Indo-
nesia, 1941-1979. 1981.
Band 27 David Ford: Barth and God's Story. Biblical Narrative and the Theological Method of Karl
Barth in the “Church Dogmatics”. 1981.
Band 28 Kortright Davis: Mission for Carribbean Change. Carribbean Development as Theological
Enterprice. 1982.
Band 29 Origen V. Jathanna: The Decisiveness of the Christ-Event and the Universality of
Christianity in a world of Religious Plurality. With Special Reference to Hendrik Kraemer
and Alfred George Hogg as well as to William Ernest Hocking and Pandipeddi Chen-
chiah. 1982.
Band 30 Joyce V. Thurman: New Wineskins. A Study of the House Church Movement. 1982.
Band 31 John D´Arcy May: Meaning, Consensus, and Dialogue in Buddhist-Christian-
Communication. A study in the Construction of Meaning. 1984.
Band 32 Friedhelm Voges: Das Denken von Thomas Chalmers im kirchen- und sozialgeschicht-
lichen Kontext. 1984.
Band 33 George MacDonald Mulrain: Theology in Folk Culture. The Theological Significance of
Haitian Folk Religion. 1984.
Band 34 Alan Ford: The Protestant Reformation in Ireland, 1590-1641. 1987. Second ed.: 1997.
Band 35 Harold Tonks: Faith, Hope and Decision-Making. The Kingdom of God and Social Policy-
Making. The Work of Arthur Rich of Zürich. 1984.
Band 36 Bingham Tembe: Integrationismus und Afrikanismus. Zur Rolle der kirchlichen Unabhän-
gigkeitsbewegung in der Auseinandersetzung um die Landfrage und die Bildung der Afri-
kaner in Südafrika, 1880-1960. 1985.
Band 37 Kingsley Lewis: The Moravian Mission in Barbados 1816-1886. A Study of the Historical
Context and Theological Significance of a Minority Church Among an Oppressed People.
1985.
Band 38 Ulrich M. Dehn: Indische Christen in der gesellschaftlichen Verantwortung. Eine theologi-
sche und religionssoziologische Untersuchung zu politischer Theologie im gegenwärtigen
Indien. 1985.
Band 39 Walter J. Hollenweger (ed.): Pentecostal Research in Europe: Problems, Promises and
People. Proceedings from the Pentecostal Research Conference at the University of Bir-
mingham (England) April 26th to 29th 1984. 1986.
Band 40 P. Solomon Raj: A Christian Folk-Religion in India. A Study of the Small Church Move-
ment in Andhra Pradesh, with a Special Reference to the Bible Mission of Devadas.
1986. Second rev. ed.: 2004.
Band 41 Karl-Wilhelm Westmeier: Reconciling Heaven and earth: The Transcendental Enthusiasm
and Growth of an Urban Protestant Community, Bogota, Colombia. 1986.
Band 42 George A. Hood: Mission Accomplished? The English Presbyterian Mission in Lingtung,
South China. A Study of the Interplay between Mission Methods and their Historical Con-
text. 1986.
Band 43 Emmanuel Yartekwei Lartey: Pastoral Counselling in Inter-Cultural Perspective: A Study
of some African (Ghanaian) and Anglo-American viewes on human existence and coun-
selling. 1987.
Band 44 Jerry L. Sandidge: Roman Catholic/Pentecostal Dialogue (1977-1982): A Study in Devel-
oping Ecumenism. Volume I. 1987.
Band 45 Friedeborg L. Müller: The History of German Lutheran Congregations in England, 1900-
1950. 1987.
Band 46 Roger B. Edrington: Everyday Men: Living in a Climate of Unbelief. 1987.
Band 47 Bongani Mazibuko: Education in Mission/Mission in Education. A Critical Comparative
Study of Selected Approaches. 1987.
Band 48 Jochanan Hesse (ed.): “Mitten im Tod - vom Leben umfangen”. Gedenkschrift für Werner
Kohler. 1988.
Band 49 Elisabeth A. Kasper: Afrobrasilianische Religion. Der Mensch in der Beziehung zu Natur,
Kosmos und Gemeinschaft im Candomblé - eine tiefenpsychologische Studie. 1988.
Band 50 Charles Chikezie Agu: Secularization in Igboland. Socio-religious Change and its Chal-
lenges to the Church Among the Igbo. 1989.
Band 51 Abraham Adu Berinyuu: Pastoral Care to the Sick in Africa. An Approach to Transcultural
Pastoral Theology. 1988.
Band 52 Boo-Woong Yoo: Korean Pentecostalism. Its History and Theology. 1987.
Band 53 Roger H. Hooker: Themes in Hinduism and Christianity. A Comparative Study. 1989.
Band 54 Jean-Daniel Plüss: Therapeutic and Prophetic Narratives in Worship. A Hermeneutic
Study of Testimonies and Visions. Their Potential Significance for Christian Worship and
Secular Society. 1988.
Band 55 John Mansford Prior: Church and Marriage in an Indonesian Village. A Study of Customa-
ry and Church Marriage among the Ata Lio of Central Flores, Indonesia, as a Paradigm of
the Ecclesial Interrelationship between village and Institutional Catholicism. 1988.
Band 56 Werner Kohler: Umkehr und Umdenken. Grundzüge einer Theologie der Mission (her-
ausgegeben von Jörg Salaquarda). 1988.
Band 57 Martin Maw: Visions of India. Fulfilment Theology, the Aryan Race Theory, and the Work
of British Protestant Missionaries in Victorian India. 1990.
Band 58 Aasulv Lande: Meiji Protestantism in History and Historiography. A Comparative Study of
Japanese and Western Interpretation of Early Protestantism in Japan. 1989.
Band 59 Enyi B. Udoh: Guest Christology. An interpretative view of the christological problem in
Africa.1988.
Band 60 Peter Schüttke-Scherle: From Contextual to Ecumenical Theology? A Dialogue between
Minjung Theology and “Theology after Auschwitz”. 1989.
Band 61 Michael S. Northcott: The Church and Secularisation. Urban Industrial Mission in North
East England. 1989.
Band 62 Daniel O'Connor: Gospel, Raj and Swaraj. The Missionary Years of C. F. Andrews 1904-
14. 1990.
Band 63 Paul D. Matheny: Dogmatics and Ethics. The Theological Realism and Ethics of Karl
Barth's Church Dogmatics. 1990.
Band 64 Warren Kinne: A People's Church? The Mindanao-Sulu Church Debacle. 1990.
Band 65 Jane Collier: The culture of economism. An exploration of barriers to faith-as-praxis. 1990.
Band 66 Michael Biehl: Der Fall Sadhu Sundar Singh. Theologie zwischen den Kulturen. 1990.
Band 67 Brian C. Castle: Hymns: The Making and Shaping of a Theology for the Whole People of
God. A Comparison of the Four Last Things in Some English and Zambian Hymns in In-
tercultural Perspective. 1990.
Band 68 Jan A. B. Jongeneel (ed.): Experiences of the Spirit. Conference on Pentecostal and Cha-
rismatic Research in Europe at Utrecht University 1989. 1991.
Band 69 William S. Campbell: Paul's Gospel in an Intercultural Context. Jew and Gentile in the
Letter to the Romans. 1991.
Band 70 Lynne Price: Interfaith Encounter and Dialogue. A Methodist Pilgrimage. 1991.
Band 71 Merrill Morse: Kosuke Koyama. A model for intercultural theology. 1991.
Band 73 Robert M. Solomon: Living in two worlds. Pastoral responses to possession in Singapore.
1994.
Band 74 James R. Krabill: The Hymnody of the Harrist Church Among the Dida of South Central
Ivory Coast (1913-1949). A Historico-Religious Study. 1995.

Band 75 Jan A. B. Jongeneel a.o. (eds.): Pentecost, Mission and Ecumenism. Essays on Intercul-
tural Theology. Festschrift in Honour of Professor Walter J. Hollenweger. 1992.
Band 76 Siga Arles: Theological Education for the Mission of the Church in India: 1947-1987.
Theological Education in relation to the identification of the Task of Mission and the De-
velopment of Ministries in India: 1947-1987; with special reference to the Church of South
India. 1991.
Band 77 Roswith I.H. Gerloff: A Plea for British Black Theologies. The Black Church Movement in
Britain in its transatlanctic cultural and theological interaction with special reference to the
Pentecostal Oneness (Apostolic) and Sabbatarian movements. 2 parts. 1992.
Band 78 Friday M. Mbon: Brotherhood of the Cross and Star. A New Religious Movement in Nige-
ria. 1992.
Band 79 John Samuel Pobee (ed.): Exploring Afro-christology. 1992.
Band 80 Frieder Ludwig: Kirche im kolonialen Kontext. Anglikanische Missionare und afrikanische
Propheten im südöstlichen Nigeria, 1879-1918. 1992.
Band 81 Werner A. Wienecke: Die Bedeutung der Zeit in Afrika. In den traditionellen Religionen
und in der missionarischen Verkündigung. 1992.
Band 82 Ukachukwu Chris Manus: Christ, the African King. New Testament Christology. 1993.
Band 83 At Ipenburg: “All Good Men”. The Development of Lubwa Mission, Chinsali, Zambia,
1905-1967. 1992.
Band 84 Heinrich Schäfer: Protestantismus in Zentralamerika. Christliches Zeugnis im Spannungs-
feld von US-amerikanischem Fundamentalismus, Unterdrückung und Wiederbelebung
"indianischer" Kultur. 1992.
Band 85 Joseph Kufulu Mandunu: Das "Kindoki" im Licht der Sündenbocktheologie. Versuch einer
christlichen Bewältigung des Hexenglaubens in Schwarz-Afrika. 1992.
Band 86 Peter Fulljames: God and Creation in intercultural perspective. Dialogue between the
Theologies of Barth, Dickson, Pobee, Nyamiti and Pannenberg. 1993.
Band 87 Stephanie Lehr: "Wir leiden für den Taufschein!" Mission und Kolonialisierung am Beispiel
des Landkatechumenates in Nordostzaire. 1993.
Band 88 Dhirendra Kumar Sahu: The Church of North India. A Historical and Systematic Theologi-
cal Inquiry into an Ecumenical Ecclesiology. 1994.
Band 89 William W. Emilsen: Violence and Atonement. The Missionary Experiences of Mohandas
Gandhi, Samuel Stokes and Verrier Elwin in India before 1935. 1994.
Band 90 Kenneth D. Gill: Toward a Contextualized Theology for the Third World. The Emergence
and Development of Jesus' Name Pentecostalism in Mexico. 1994.
Band 91 Karl O. Sandnes: A New Family. Conversion and Ecclesiology in the Early Church with
Cross-Cultural Comparisons. 1994.
Band 92 Jan A. B. Jongeneel: Philosophy, Science, and Theology of Mission in the 19th and 20th
Centuries. A Missiological Encyclopedia. Part I: The Philosophy and Science of Mission.
1995. Second rev. ed.: 2002.
Band 93 Raymond Pfister: Soixante ans de pentecôtisme en Alsace (1930-1990). Une approche
socio-historique. 1995.
Band 94 Charles R. A. Hoole: Modern Sannyasins. Protestant Missionary Contribution to Ceylon
Tamil Culture. 1995.
Band 95 Amuluche Gregory Nnamani: The Paradox of a Suffering God. On the Classical, Modern-
Western and Third World Struggles to harmonise the incompatible Attributes of the Trini-
tarian God. 1995.
Band 96 Geraldine S. Smyth: A Way of Transformation. A Theological Evaluation of the Conciliar
Process of Mutual Commitment to Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation, World
Council of Churches, 1983-1991. 1995.
Band 97 Aasulv Lande / Werner Ustorf (eds.): Mission in a Pluralist World. 1996.
Band 98 Alan Suggate: Japanese Christians and Society. With the assistance of Yamano Shigeko.
1996.
Band 99 Isolde Andrews: Deconstructing Barth. A Study of the Complementary Methods in Karl
Barth and Jacques Derrida. 1996.
Band 100 Lynne Price: Faithful Uncertainty. Leslie D. Weatherhead's Methodology of Creative
Evangelism. 1996.
Band 101 Jean de Dieu Mvuanda: Inculturer pour évangéliser en profondeur. Des initiations tradi-
tionnelles africaines à une initiation chrétienne engageante. 1998.
Band 102 Allison M. Howell: The Religious Itinerary of a Ghanaian People. The Kasena and the
Christian Gospel. 1997.
Band 103 Lynne Price, Juan Sepúlveda & Graeme Smith (eds.): Mission Matters. 1997.
Band 104 Tharwat Kades: Die arabischen Bibelübersetzungen im 19. Jahrhundert. 1997.
Band 105 Thomas G. Dalzell: The Dramatic Encounter of Divine and Human Freedom in the Theol-
ogy of Hans Urs von Balthasar. 1997.
Band 106 Jan A. B. Jongeneel: Philosophy, Science, and Theology of Mission in the 19th and 20th
Centuries. A Missiological Encyclopedia. Part II: Missionary Theology. 1997.
Band 107 Werner Kohler: Unterwegs zum Verstehen der Religionen. Gesammelte Aufsätze. Her-
ausgegeben im Auftrag der Deutschen Ostasien-Mission und der Schweizerischen Ost-
asien-Mission von Andreas Feldtkeller. 1998.
Band 108 Mariasusai Dhavamony: Christian Theology of Religions. A Systematic Reflection on the
Christian Understanding of World Religions. 1998.
Band 109 Chinonyelu Moses Ugwu: Healing in the Nigerian Church. A Pastoral-Psychological Ex-
ploration. 1998.
Band 110 Getatchew Haile, Aasulv Lande & Samuel Rubenson (eds.): The Missionary Factor in
Ethiopia: Papers from a Symposium on the Impact of European Missions on Ethiopian
Society, Lund University, August 1996. 1998.
Band 111 Anthony Savari Raj: A New Hermeneutic of Reality. Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric
Vision. 1998.
Band 112 Jean Pierre Bwalwel: Famille et habitat. Implications éthiques de l'éclatement urbain. Cas
de la ville de Kinshasa. 1998.
Band 113 Michael Bergunder: Die südindische Pfingstbewegung im 20. Jahrhundert. Eine histori-
sche und systematische Untersuchung. 1999.
Band 114 Alar Laats: Doctrines of the Trinity in Eastern and Western Theologies. A Study with Spe-
cial Reference to K. Barth and V. Lossky. 1999.
Band 115 Afeosemime U. Adogame: Celestial Church of Christ. The Politics of Cultural Identity in a
West African Prophetic – Charismatic Movement. 1999.
Band 116 Laurent W. Ramambason: Missiology: Its Subject-Matter and Method. A Study of Mis-
sion-Doers in Madagascar. 1999.
Band 117 Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen: Ad Ultimum Terrae. Evangelization, Proselytism and Common Wit-
ness in the Roman Catholic Pentecostal Dialogue (1990-1997). 1999.
Band 118 Julie C. Ma: When the Spirit meets the Spirits. Pentecostal Ministry among the Kanka-
naey Tribe in the Philippines.2000. Second rev. ed.: 2001.
Band 119 Patrick Chukwudezie Chibuko: Igbo Christian Rite of Marriage. A Proposed Rite for Study
and Celebration. 1999.
Band 120 Patrick Chukwudezie Chibuko: Paschal Mystery of Christ. Foundation for Liturgical Incul-
turation in Africa. 1999.
Band 121 Werner Ustorf / Toshiko Murayama (eds.): Identity and Marginality. Rethinking Christianity
in North East Asia. 2000.
Band 122 Ogbu U. Kalu: Power, Poverty and Prayer. The Challenges of Poverty and Pluralism in
African Christianity, 1960-1996. 2000.
Band 123 Peter Cruchley-Jones: Singing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land? A Missiological Inter-
pretation of the Ely Pastorate Churches, Cardiff. 2001.
Band 124 Paul Hedges: Preparation and Fulfilment. A History and Study of Fulfilment Theology in
Modern British Thought in the Indian Context. 2001.
Band 125 Werner Ustorf: Sailing on the Next Tide. Missions, Missiology, and the Third Reich. 2000.
Band 126 Seong-Won Park: Worship in the Presbyterian Church in Korea. Its History and Implica-
tions. 2001.
Band 127 Sturla J. Stålsett: The crucified and the Crucified. A Study in the Liberation Christology of
Jon Sobrino. 2003.
Band 128 Dong-Kun Kim: Jesus: From Bultman to the Third World. 2002.
Band 129 Lalsangkima Pachuau: Ethnic Identity and Christianity. A Socio-Historical and Missiologi-
cal Study of Christianity in Northeast India with Special Reference to Mizoram. 2002.
Band 130 Uchenna A. Ezeh: Jesus Christ the Ancestor. An African Contextual Christology in the
Light of the Major Dogmatic Christological Definitions of the Church from the Council of
Nicea (325) to Chalcedon (451). 2003.
Band 131 Chun Hoi Heo: Multicultural Christology. A Korean Immigrant Perspective. 2003.
Band 132 Arun W. Jones: Christian Missions in the American Empire. Episcopalians in Northern
Luzon, the Philippines, 1902-1946. 2003.
Band 133 Mary Schaller Blaufuss: Changing Goals of the American Madura Mission in India, 1830-
1916. 2003.
Band 134 Young-Gwan Kim: Karl Barth's Reception in Korea. Focusing on Ecclesiology in Relation
to Korean Christian Thought. 2003.
Band 135 Graeme Smith: Oxford 1937. The Universal Christian Council for Life and Work Confer-
ence. 2004.
Band 136 Uta Theilen: Gender, Race, Power and Religion. Women in the Methodist Church of
Southern Africa in Post-Apartheid Society. 2005.
Band 137 Uta Blohm: Religious Traditions and Personal Stories. Women Working as Priests, Mi-
nisters and Rabbis. 2005.
Band 138 Ann Aldén: Religion in Dialogue with Late Modern Society. A Constructive Contribution to
a Christian Spirituality Informed by Buddhist-Christian Encounters. 2006.
Band 139 Stephen R. Goodwin: Fractured Land, Healing Nations. A Contextual Analysis of the Role
of Religious Faith Sodalities Towards Peace-Building in Bosnia-Herzegovina. 2006.
Band 140 Ábrahám Kovács: The History of the Free Church of Scotland's Mission to the Jews in
Budapest and its Impact on the Reformed Church of Hungary. 1841–1914. 2006.

Band 141 Jørgen Skov Sørensen: Missiological Mutilations – Prospective Paralogies. Language and
Power in Contemporary Mission Theory. 2007.
Band 142 José Lingna Nafafé: Colonial Encounters: Issues of Culture, Hybridity and Creolisation.
Portuguese Mercantile Settlers in West Africa. 2007.
Band 143 Peter Cruchley-Jones (ed.): God at Ground Level. Reappraising Church Decline in the UK
Through the Experience of Grass Roots Communities and Situations. 2008.
Band 144 Marko Kuhn: Prophetic Christianity in Western Kenya. Political, Cultural and Theological
Aspects of African Independent Churches. 2008.
Band 145 Yang-Cun Jeong: Koreanische Immigrationsgemeinden in der Bundesrepublik Deutsch-
land. Die Entstehung, Entwicklung und Zukunft der koreanischen protestantischen Immig-
rationsgemeinden in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland seit 1963. 2008.
Band 146 Jonas Adelin Jørgensen: Jesus Imandars and Christ Bhaktas. Two Case Studies of Inter-
religious Hermeneutics and Identity in Global Christianity. 2008.
Band 147 Brian K. Jennings: Leading Virtue. A Model for the Contextualisation of Christian Ethics. A
Study of the Interaction and Synthesis of Methodist and Fante Moral Traditions. 2009.
Band 148 Jan A. B. Jongeneel / Peter Tze Ming Ng / Paek Chong Ku / Scott W. Sunquist / Yuko
Watanabe (eds.): Christian Mission and Education in Modern China, Japan, and Korea.
Historical Studies. 2009. Second ed.: 2010.
Band 149 Jan A. B. Jongeneel: Jesus Christ in World History. His Presence and Representation in
Cyclical and Linear Settings. With the Assistance of Robert T. Coote. 2009.
Band 150 Richard Friedli, Jan A. B. Jongeneel, Klaus Koschorke, Theo Sundermeier, and Werner
Ustorf. Intercultural Perceptions and Prospects of World Christianity. 2010.
Band 151 Benjamin Simon: From Migrants to Missionaries. Christians of African Origin in Germany.
2010.
Band 152 Pan-chiu Lai / Jason Lam (eds.): Sino-Christian Theology. A Theological Qua Cultural
Movement in Contemporary China. 2010.
Band 153 Jan A. B. Jongeneel / Jiafeng Liu/ Peter Tze Ming Ng / Paek Chong Ku / Scott W. Sun-
quist / Yuko Watanabe (eds.): Christian Presence and Progress in North-East Asia. His-
torical and Comparative Studies. 2011.
Band 154 Jan A. B. Jongeneel: Utrecht University. 375 Years Mission Studies, Mission Activities,
and Overseas Ministries. 2012.
Band 155 Wim H. de Boer / Peter-Ben Smit: In necessariis unitas.Hintergründe zu den ökumeni-
schen Beziehungen zwischen der Iglesia Filipina Independiente, den Kirchen der Angli-
kanischen Gemeinschaft und den altkatholischen Kirchen der Utrechter Union. 2012.
Band 156 John Parratt: The Other Jesus. Christology in Asian Perspective. 2012.

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