Chapter 1 Mapping the Land of Asian Theology: A Critique and a Proposal
2. Asian Theology as Theology of Religions or Interfaith Dialogue
only a small step for context to set the norms for theology as well.78 Hence, it is not surprising to find Asian theologians like Lee echoing famous Brazilian liberation theologian Hugo Assmann’s dictum: the context is the text.79
Christians relate to other faiths in belief and in action remains critical for Asian churches (and beyond) as they seek to avoid religious conflicts and maintain respect for each other’s religious traditions.”82
For some, this fact needs to be translated into a posture of openness to other religions, recognizing divine activity within them, and trying to see how they are related to God’s revelation in Christ.83 Thus, some Asian theologians call for a new method of doing Asian theology with Asian religious resources.84 While traditionally the sources for Christian theology were limited to Scripture, tradition, reason, and (Christian) experience, today the divine
presence in other religions is almost unanimously recognized and accepted by some theologians, so that the other great Asian religions, along with their histories, rituals, and scriptures, are considered as sources for theological reflection as well. One immediate ramification of this perspective concerns the Christian understanding of mission. Song, for instance, regards any attempt to proclaim the gospel of salvation to non-Christians as “Christian ecumenical imperialism.”85 The rhetoric is, as Chan puts it, typical: “since Christianity is only a minority religion in most Asian countries, it must assume a humbler position and proclaim with all the great Asian religions a shared message of God’s universal purpose for humanity and creation centering on such themes as justice and peace.”86
Mission, then, is understood by these thinkers not as evangelization or as Christian witness, but as discerning God’s universal purpose for the common good among other religions.
This is achieved through interfaith or interreligious dialogue. But the content of mission is not
82 Gener and Bautista, “Theological Method (1),” 890.
83 Ibid.
84 Cf. Choo Lak Yeow, ed., Doing Theology with Asian Resources: Theology and Religious Plurality, vol.
3 (Singapore: ATESEA, 1993).
85 Choan-Seng Song, Jesus in the Power of the Spirit (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 176–179.
86 Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology, 37.
the only thing that needs to be reshaped; the direction of mission itself also needs to be
reversed. The Church’s mission is not outward but inward: that is, the Church needs to reinvent herself in light of the multifaceted religious context which she inhabits. This obviously links closely to theologians’ understanding of the theological task. As Sugirtharajah lucidly puts it:
The basic thrust now is not the declaration of the gospel in an Asian style but discerning it afresh in the ongoing broken relationships between different communities and
between human communities and the created order. The task is seen not as adapting the Christian gospel in Asian idioms but as reconceptualizing the basic tenets of the Christian faith in the light of Asian realities.87
Having assumed that all Asian religions are equally valid vehicles of God’s
self-revelation, Asian theologians seek to construct an Asian theology that sets interfaith dialogue as its primary agenda. In the process, not only mission but almost all traditional loci of Christian theology are radically revised—especially Christology, theology proper, soteriology, and biblical authority. Hence, it is not surprising to find Christian Swami Abhishiktananda experimenting with the advaitic tradition of Hinduism;88 Seiichi Yagi seeking to integrate Christianity with Zen Buddhism;89 Aloysius Pieris suggesting and practicing a double baptism in Buddhism and Christianity;90 Stanley Samartha and Raimon Panikkar constructing a cosmic-pluralist Christology that allows for a positive attitude to other religions and their savior
figures.91
87 R. S. Sugirtharajah, “Introduction,” in Frontiers in Asian Christian Theology: Emerging Trends, ed. R.
S. Sugirtharajah (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1994), 5.
88 Swami Abhishiktananda, Saccidānanda: A Christian Approach to Advaitic Experience (Delhi:
I.S.P.C.K., 1984).
89 Seiichi Yagi, “Christ and Buddha,” in Asian Faces of Jesus, ed. R. S. Sugirtharajah (Maryknoll, NY:
Orbis Books, 1993).
90 Pieris, “Two Encounters in My Theological Journey,” 141–146.
91 S. J. Samartha, One Christ, Many Religions: Toward a Revised Christology (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991); Raimon Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Towards and Ecumenical Christophany (London: Darton, 1981).
The critical assessments of Asian theology’s religious pluralism are numerous and accessible, and thus we will not repeat them here.92 Suffice it to say that proposals that attempt to merge the Christian faith with other religions usually end up sacrificing the basic tenets of Christianity. What I would like to focus on below, however, is the common assumption that theological religious pluralism is necessarily an Asian concept, given the presence and confluence of religious plurality in Asia.
Some Asian theologians have suggested that an exclusivist understanding of the Christian faith is really a form of Western religious imperialism towards other cultures.93 It is further suggested that Asian cultures are generally more tolerant and perceive truth in more inclusive and conciliatory terms that favor a pluralistic theology of religions.94 Indian Hindu philosophy and the Chinese Yin-Yang principle are usually given as examples of this tendency.
But is this really the case? I do not think so. As Hwa Yung puts it, the reality is not as clear-cut as usually told.95
It is true that Indian culture is known as a very tolerant culture. This is because different points of view are all perceived to be based on the Brahman (or the ultimate truth) in the Hindu worldview. But despite Hinduism’s tendency to absorb elements from other traditions, it doesn’t absorb everything. For example, while Jainism and Buddhism both grew out of Hinduism and share many doctrines in common with it, they were eventually excluded from orthodox Hinduism.96 As Brian Smith has pointed out, over the past few millennia and even in
92 See, e.g., Vinoth Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission: Beyond the Pluralist Paradigm (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997).
93 See C. S. Song’s comment on mission as imperialism above.
94 S. Radhakrishnan once wrote: “The emphasis on definite creeds and absolute dogmatism, with its consequences of intolerance, exclusiveness and confusion of piety with patriarchism are the striking features of Western Christianity” (S. Radhakrishnan, East and West in Religion [London: Allen & Unwin, 1958], 58). The implication here is that this is not so with non-Western cultures.
95 Yung, Mangoes or Bananas?, 115–118.
96 Ibid., 115–116.
modern Hindu reform movements today, Hindu orthodoxy has defined itself by the acceptance of the foundational authority of the Vedas—the largest corpus of ancient Hindu scriptures.
Consequently, “those Indians who did not and do not accept the sacrality of the Veda have been and are regarded as non-Hindus by those who did and do.”97
Chinese culture also tends to be tolerant of different belief systems. This is partly derived from Buddhist influence and leads to the perception that the three major religious traditions of China—Buddhism, Confucianism, and Taosim—are merely different
manifestations of the eternal Dao.98 The Yin-Yang concept of complementarity is usually utilized here, in that it promises to always manage to harmonize two even mutually exclusive beliefs or concepts. Yung, however, shows that historically there has always been a traditional Chinese category for heterodox teachings. He writes:
The Chinese long possessed a well-established cultural category which they used to label teachings and practices which deviated from a particular ideal or norm. The category has been variously designated as i-tuan, tso-tao, hsieh… which may be roughly… rendered, “contrary to the Way of the Sages.”99
This concept, as Yung explains, goes as far back as the ancient book The Analects of Confucius (Book II, Chap. XVI), which states that “it is harmful to study heretical thought.” The concept of heterodoxy was sometimes used by one school of thought to vilify another, or to vilify divergent norms. In fact, it was also used to denounce Buddhism in the ninth century and Christianity from the seventeenth century onwards. Yung concludes, “Granted that there existed
97 Brian K. Smith, Reflections on Resemblance, Ritual, and Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 18.
98 See Hajime Nakamura, Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples: India, China, Tibet, Japan (Honolulu:
East-West Center Press, 1964), 284–94.
99 Paul Cohen, “The Roots of the Anti-Christian Tradition in China,” in Christian Missions in China:
Evangelists of What?, ed. Jessie Gregory Lutz (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, 1965), 35. Quoted in Yung, Mangoes or Bananas?, 117.
a certain fluidity and historical relativity to the concept, the point remains that Chinese tradition did not see everything as complementary…. The fact is that, whatever may be the meaning of the [Yin-Yang] in the Confucian-Taoist traditions, the latter does not always absorb everything into the both/and mode of thinking.”100
The above evidence shows that while there are inclusive elements in certain streams of Asian thought, it is nevertheless wrong to assert that Asian cultures are naturally all-inclusive.
Both Indian Hinduism and Chinese Confucianism, to mention but two examples, have clear canons by which orthodoxy is defined and heterodoxy is excluded. These canons have operated throughout the history of China and India, and continue to do so today.101 Hence, I suggest that there is nothing particularly Asian about Asian theologians’ preoccupation with the theology of religious pluralism. In my own experience, my home country of Indonesia tends to practice religious tolerance at the level of day-to-day life, whereas in Canada it is mostly discussed as a social and political agenda—that is, as an ideology of religious plural-ism. So, while there is a good deal of local/personal pragmatic tolerance in Indonesia as religion is practiced, this does not arise out of a deep-seated pluralistic ideology that informs the common practice of religious tolerance. In contrast, many Canadians have turned religious plurality into an overarching political and religious vision. This observation also is consistent with Yung’s conclusion that religious pluralism is largely a product of Western liberal religious thought that owes much of its inspiration to the Enlightenment: “Pluralism in its present-day form is primarily—though not exclusively—a liberal Western problem, although its proponents have also drawn on inclusive elements in Asian thought in their attempts to universalize its appeal.”102
100 Yung, Mangoes or Bananas?, 118.
101 Ibid.
102 Ibid., 120. Italics are in the original.