Full text of "Missions -- Christology"

See other formats

A MONTHLY LETTER ON EVANGELISM
MONATLICHER INFORM ATIONSBRIEF UBER EVANGELISATION
LETTRE MENSUELLE SUR L ’ E V A N G E L I S A T I 0 N

No. 12, December, 1982

Dear Friends,

Once again, it is the season of Advent, and the end of my first year in the
WCC. I would like to share with you a few thoughts on evangelism and the
ecumenical movement.

Let me start with Korea. The country has been featured high on the ecumenical
agenda largely because of the human rights situation there, and the churches’
responses to it. The Korean experience calls for international Christian
solidarity and opens up new ways of understanding mission. It is right that
the human rights struggle of Korean Christians become a matter of deep ecu-
menical concern. But too often this focus is seen and understood by some of
us as a Korean commitment over against that of another set of Korean Christian
realities. In this case, the phenomenal growth in the number of Christians
and of congregations there. Many of us in the ecumenical movement tend to see
the commitment to human rights as somehow inconsistent with the commitment to
engage in evangelism. I call this "pseudo dialetical" thinking: contraditions
are looked for and suggested and unresolved. A latest example, from a report
of a church-to-church visit to Korea:

"We attended the second of two services Wednesday night at the Young-
Nak Presbyterian Church. When we got to the church, the parking lot
was already filled with cars. The English material indicated that
they have a membership of 50,000 with 19 ministers, seven Sunday
worship services, and several educational programmes. The congrega-
tion seemed to enjoy the hymn singing and the sermon. The main role
of the church seemed to be to provide a refuge for troubled people.

What impressed me was that there were many well dressed young people
who were proud to be members of the church. Contrasted to this* was
the attendance at the Thursday Prayer Service for the political
detainee’s families and their supporters in the chapel at the
Christian Centre. The WCC team were introduced to the 130 people in
that ecumenical fellowship. The Rev KIM Dong Won, of Inchon, UIM
General Secretary, preached. Through hymn singing and prayer all

WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES ■ COMMISSION ON WORLD MISSION AND EVANGELISM
OEKUMENISCHER RAT DER KIRCHEN ■ KOMMISSION FUR WELTMISSION UND EVANGELISATION
CONSEIL CECUMENIQUE DES EGLISES ■ COMMISSION DE MISSION ET D ’ EV AN GELIS ATI ON

Case postale N° 66 ■ 150, route de Femey ■ CH-1211 Geneve 20 /Switzerland

participants shared experiences and received mutual encouragement for
life together as they carried this common burden of concern for
oppressed people." (*my italics)

A fair-minded description, gently proding the mind. But is there any reason to
put the two pictures of Christians worshipping and praying in a relationship of
"contrast"? Is there any reason to suggest that they are incompatible with each
other? From the description as it stands, none that I can see. If there are
reasons, they would have to come from assumptions that well-dressed young people
attending church are somehow a contradiction to political detainee's families
and supporters praying and singing together.

With this type of thinking, I doubt if we could ever understand the Korean pas-
tor who said, in utter frustration with some of us in the ecumenical movement,
"But the big churches pray for the detainees and their families too!"

Of course, there are differing degrees of commitment to human rights among the
Christians in Korea, as in elsewhere. And how the commitment should be
expressed must have been a subject of fierce debate within the churches. But
to cast the question as an issue between commitment to human rights and social
justice over against commitment to evangelism and church growth would be a
serious distortion of reality as Korean Christians see it. With this perspec-
tive, no one is served. Neither the cause of human rights there, nor the
sharing of the evangelism concerns and insights of Korean churches with the
rest of the world. We need to affirm the oneness of the churches and the need
for mutual challenge and support as Christians try to be faithful to their
calling .

I can't help feeling how many more allies the ecumenical movement could have
had, and how much richer and stronger we could have become, if only we would
have more clarity in our theological convictions and allow them to guide us as
we seek the unity that is promised us. I look for insights as to how the minis-
try of evangelism can contribute to the ecumenical movement. Do you have
something for me here?

The other thought I like to share, it may only be some sort of a thinking
outloud instead of a well thought-out thought j) has to do with evangelism and
dialogue with people of other living faiths. Two events in this regard happened
in the year which render me both grateful and alert. You remember the July
issue of the Monthly Letter about bearing witness to Hindu neighbours? A col-
league from the Dialogue office (DFI) wrote it. For me, it is probably the most
lucid dialogue statement on witness. The clarity is such that, in my opinion,
the issue is cut, the problem defined. Which is: In front of a Hindu, or others
of another living faith, do we or do we not, as Christians, proclaim "Christ is
the Only Way: there is no salvation except through him"?

To quote from the same letter, the answer is clearly "No" - "If you ask me to
single out one single factor that has been the greatest hindrance to genuine
witness, I would say that it is these absolute claims that some Christians make
for Christ. The decisiveness of Christ must be a matter of experience and
should never be a matter of preaching." Thus the field is open for debate.

For this I am grateful. The other event which makes me become alert is the
passage of the WCC statement on Mission and Evangelism - An Ecumenical
Affirmation. As I expressed my unhappiness in my last letter over a section on
Witness Among People of Living Faiths, the wording "in him is our salvation",

- 3 -

instead of Min him is salvation", let alone "in him only is salvation"
denotes no more than the lowest common denominator of the thinkings of the
ecumenical movement. There is need, to use Archbishop Edward Scott's
expression, for "a common quest into a deeper and fuller understanding". My
hope is that the ecumenical movement will engage itself on this vital issue,
and the Vancouver Assembly with its explosive theme may well be a proper arena.

As an Asian, I believe I have long been awared of the minority status of the
Christian churches among neighbours who possess different faiths. We need the
ministry of dialogue for mutual understanding, for cooperation, yes, for our
own survival, and yes, for the enrichment of our own faith. I have also put
much hope in dialogue because it challenges much of the missionary practices of
the churches. As far as I am concerned, in terms of world evangelization, the
modern missionary movement and the evangelistic endeavour of the subsequent
national churches have not made a dent on countries and peoples which have
long-established cultures and religions. India, Burma, Thailand, China, Japan
spring to mind. Our way of doing the job obviously has not worked. So I
eagerly look for another way. Although fully aware of the fact that Dialogue
does not speak the language of evangelism, I was, and still am, prepared to see
in it an ally or even a teacher, indirectly, in the church's evangelism task.
Now, I've been put on alert. Do we or do we not proclaim that Christ is the
Only Way?

Arrogance, let me assure you, has nothing to do with it. There's absolutely
nothing in Christianity today that we can be arrogant about. Similarly, for
that matter, for Islam and Hinduism. Massacre, totalitarianism, Casteism.

They provide the most compelling reasons in the world for people not to believe.
That's why, for us Christians, there's all the more reason not to point to our-
selves but to Christ. And the only asset Christians have in pointing others
towards Christ lies with the recognition and confession 1) of our failure to
follow him and 2) of his love which compels us to continue on this journey.

This, in all fairness, is somewhat of a negative asset, but herein lies our
credibility with all those who are on a journey too.

Back to the question of the finality of Christ. Probably, there is no one
ecumenical answer to it, perhaps because of the nature of the ecumenical move-
ment, or perhaps because of the nature of the question. But I am glad the
problem has been defined. How shall we approach the issue? I believe we
would debate it head-on on a practitioner's level, i.e., let practitioners of
evangelism share their experiences and conceptualization of evangelism among
people of other faiths, to see if proclaiming Christ as the Only Way works or
not. That would give us a good start.

We could, of course, take a more theological approach. But I don't know if we
can break new ground. Or we would have to go a long way back, and say, "The
question is all wrong. Let's bring in a new formulation." I am aware for
instance that a few theologians in Asia have been attempting to understand
Christianity afresh with a creation focus rather than the salvation focus.
Potentially, this has the promise of easier sailing for Christology in the
Asian context. We may be able to steer away from having to deal with the
question of the finality of Christ with regard to other offers of salvation.

But, I am not sure. It is a monumental task. I am suspicious of academics
making structures of words and call it theology. And I suspect "What do you
think of Christ?" will always remain a question and a challenge with us,
seeing as it did in the Gospels.

My preferred approach to the whole concern of world mission and evangelism
among people of other living faiths is, and I must be careful now and I ask of
you not to misunderstand me, the approach of solidarity, of participation in
people’s struggle for justice and dignity, in short, of the Good News to the
Poor variety. During my 14 years of industrial mission in Asia, my every
encounter with the poor was an encounter with people of another living faith,
except when they happen to be Marxist-inclined. In most cases, we got through
to each other. This is not to suggest that all non-Christian religious
believers are poor. On a world scale, the overwhelming majority of them are.
Neither do I suggest that the faith elements of the poor are not important to
them. They are, and extremely so. As a matter of fact, I wish those of us
who work with the poor for justice would have a much better appreciation of
the religious in people. My experience has been simply that credibility,
trust, openness and respect can be more naturally achieved if we, Christians
and others, work together on our felt needs, struggle together against forces
which sin against us.

I have a lot more to share with you on the common concern of Good News to the
Poor and where a handle can be found, having been exposed to the abundance
which is the World Council of Churches family in the course of the year. So
I look forward to a new year of sharing. With this may I wish you and your
family a happy Christmas,

Yours in Christ,

Once again, an appeal to you to share your evangelism hopes for
the Assembly in Vancouver next July and August. This gathering
will be decisive in influencing the WCC agenda for the next ten
years. I hope to devote one or two issues of the Monthly
Letter to reader’s views. Please play your part.

Rajruiuuu jl' uug

***********

Jesus Christ and Mission: The Cruciality of Christology
Robert J. Schreiter, C.PP.S.

Catholic Theological Union
American Society of Missiology - June 1 6 , 1990

Introduction

The theme of this annual meeting of the American Society of
Missiology is "Mission and Joint Witness: Basis and Models of

Cooperation." We are seeking together those points where we, as
Christians in different denominations and communions, can find
the common ground upon which we might stand to witness to Christ.
We do this not just out of some sense of a greater efficiency or
effectiveness in our evangelizing efforts, so as to streamline
our processes or utilize better our resources, but for profoundly
theological reasons. There is but one Head of the Body, and that
is Christ. We acknowledge but a single Lord, and that acknow-
ledgement, if it is to be true to its Lord, should be of a single
voice. That deeper desire to praise God in unity wells up from
that great prayer of Jesus himself: "That all may be one, as you,
Father, are in me, and I in you, and that they may be one in us,
that the world may believe that you sent me." (John 17:21 NAB)

We realize, too, that the divisions brought into the body of
Christ are a stumbling block for many who would hear the Gospel.
We preach union with Christ, but manifest among ourselves divi-
sion. How does our human failing strain the credibility of our

evangelization to our hearers? We obscure the power of the cross
by our own, all-too-human power struggles and rivalries. And we
do not live together in peace and harmony that is portrayed for
us as a sign of the resurrection in the Book of Acts (Acts 4:
32-35).

But recent decades have witnessed to significant progress.
It has long been noted that the ecumenical movement itself grew
out of the missionary movement -- as though the experience of
evangelists prompted a reflection on the scandal of divided wit-
ness to the One Lord. And documents of these last few decades
from all across the spectrum of the Christian church have acknow-
ledged the need for a greater sense of collaboration and coopera-
tion, as in the Lausanne Covenant (1974) and its followup in the
Manila Conference (1939); to the World Council of Churches'
ecumenical affirmation on mission and evangelism (1982), reaf-
firmed by participants in the 1989 meaning in San Antonio; and in
parallel Roman Catholic documents.

A call for greater unity is one thing; finding suitable ways
to work toward and achieve it is another. Evangelism, as Philip
Potter remarked a number of years ago, provides a challenging
ground for that struggle (World Council of Churches 1982: 428).
For it touches on our most personal encounters with the Risen
Lord in the experience of grace and forgiveness, prompting us to
ponder again the meaning of what God has done for us in Jesus
Christ. It urges a definition of the role of the church in this

process. It requires that we think about those who struggle to
live upright and just lives beyond the pale of the Gospel, trying
to discern their motives and inner directions. And it demands
thinking about integrity on all fronts -- our preaching of
Christ, our witness, the world to which we witness. This is cap-
tured beautifully in one of the themes of the 1989 Manila Con-
gress of the Lausanne Covenant, "Calling the Whole Church to Take
the Whole gospel to the Wnole World."

If we ever hope to develop the grounds for common witness,
it will require this kind of holism. Even to treat any one of
these themes of Christ, church, world with the comprehensiveness
it deserves goes beyond what could be done here adequately. Yet
despite this awareness of the inadequacy of our efforts, we know
that we must continue to move forward, in the hope that the Holy
Spirit is guiding us.

In view of that, I want to focus on the topic of Jesus
Christ and mission, and within that topic on three points for
reflection and discussion. These three points are ones that
divide Christians from each other in different patterns and con-
figurations of disunity. They are all, I believe, central to our
affirmations about who Jesus Christ is and what he has done for
us in saving us. My hope in each of these is to sketch direc-
tions that might aid us, first of all, in examining the quality
of our preaching and witness in mission, and secondly, in laying
out what might be the bases for developing the frameworks and

models we will need to achieve a greater sense of both fidelity
to the Gospel and commitment to the unity of witness that befits
our one Lord, Jesus Christ.

Thus what follows here is by no means complete. It is of-
fered rather as a series of suggestions to stimulate discussion
and common exploration. Some of these questions loom, I believe,
as the most important ones theologians will have to face in the
coming decades as Christianity becomes a genuinely world church.

There are three areas to explore together here: (1) What
measure of salvation beyond Christ; (2) the role of the Trinity
in Cnristian mission; and (3) preaching the whole Christ.

What Measure of Salvation outside Christ?

For a long time, most of the Christian church answered the
question about salvation outside Christ and his church in a
simple, straightforward manner: there was, quite simply, no hope
of such salvation outside of accepting Christ as savior and being
incorporated into his Body, the church. But all throughout that
same history, there have been dissenting voices, usually coming
from those intimately acquainted with non-Christian realities.
The names of Justin Martyr and those connected with the
catechetical school at Alexandria are some of those who come to
mind.

It is only in the most recent period, however, that the
question has taken on a new urgency. When Christians faced only
one opponent, it seemed simple enough to reaffirm the sovereignty
of Christ. But within the missionary experience of this century,
especially in Asia, attitudes began to shift. There Christianity
is a tiny minority and seems destined to remain so, despite our
most fervent evangelistic efforts. Encounter and dialogue with
Asians reveal persons of deep faith in their own traditions, com-
mitted to living upright and just lives. One becomes aware of
how much Christian preaching was cloaked, even muffled, by West-
ern cultural attitudes. But even when one moves beyond eth-
nocentrism and colonialism, even as one continues to believe that
Christ is the Way, the Truth and the Life, one cannot help but
wonder about how God might be working in and through those other
great religious traditions.

Different parts of the Christian church have responded to it
differently. To take but a few examples: already in 1964 the
Second Vatican Council of the Roman Catholic church affirmed that
”[t]hose who, through no fault of their own, do not know the
Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God
with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions
to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their con-
science -- those too may achieve eternal salvation." (Lumen gen-

t ium , 16 ) . Thus, there was an affirmation that God’s grace could
be active in people's lives outside Christ and the church. While

4 ^ 6w \/up ^ a !&ctc U* ^

C U'Ww,

hesitant about expressing what the exact nature of the salvation
might be, that same Council, in other documents (notably the Con-
st itut ion on Div ine Reve lat ion , the Dec ree on the Miss ionary Ac -
t i v i ty o f the Church and the Dec ree on the Re la t ion to Non-
Christian Religions) , does affirm that God and God’s salvation
does move — however mysteriously -- outside the realm of the
Church and the preaching of Christ.

Protestant churches have largely been more hesitant in their
approach to all of this. To allow for such divine activity
without the explicit mediation of Christ goes beyond the strong
Cnr istocentr ism that marked the Reformation and formed their un-
derstanding of the meaning of the Scriptures. Different measures
of goodness are to be found in non-Christian cultures and
peoples, but this does not prescind from their need for Christ.
To take but one recent example from the Manila Manifesto: at one
point the document affirms that ”[b]ecause men and women are made
in God’s image and see in the creation traces of its creator, the
religions which have arisen do sometimes contain elements of
truth and beauty." (Manila Manifesto 1989:29) But its seventh
affirmation reads also: "We affirm that other religions and
ideologies are not alternative paths to God, and that human
spirituality, if unredeemed by Christ, leads not to God but to
judgment, for Christ is the only way (ibid.:26).

The possible calibrations between different positions of a
christocentric approach regarding what we mean about the "truth”
and the "salvation" found outside Christianity present a complex
bundle of proposals, none of which has met universal acceptance.
From Rahner’s "anonymous Christian" through Schlette’s "ordinary
and extraordinary" means of salvation, these different approaches
are wrapped up with how we understand creation, the extent of
God’s revelation, the relative strength of uncreated reason, the
precise meaning of human sinfulness, and the role of other
religions in God’s overall plan for human salvation.

But even before this complex of issues could be unravelled,
there has come in the last two decades an even more dramatic
challenge by the rise of theocentric approaches that shift the
parameters of the discussion entirely. To most Christians such
an approach cannot escape relativizing the person and work of
Christ in the world, and in so doing, questioning the uniqueness
of Christ and the fullness of God’s revelation through him. This
was evident in, for example, Carl Braaten’s presentation on the
Trinity last evening, and many would find themselves in sympathy
with him on this matter.

My own feeling is that we should not be too hasty to set
aside a christocentric approach for a theocentric one, no matter
how well it seems to meet some of our problems in facing other
religious traditions in their integrity. I believe that two im-
portant tasks still remain before the grounding of a chris-

tocentric approach -- tasks that have already been undertaken,
but not completed. These have to do with our understanding of
the re lat ionships surrounding uniqueness, and a closer study of
the New Testament itself as it witnesses to the uniqueness of
Jesus. Let us look at these two tasks and see if they might
reveal something to us about the meaning of Jesus.

The Language of Uniqueness

Part of the problem clouding this discussion is finding the
adequate language to capture Jesus' role in God's salvific plan.
Basically, it involves finding a faithful and contemporarily
relevant equivalent to some of the language of the New Testament
such as is found in Acts 4:12 ("There is no salvation in anyone
else, for there is no other name in the whole world given to men
by which we are to be saved"), and elsewhere in the New Testa-
ment. What is needed is to find ways to sort out the meanings of
concepts that are used as equivalents, but do not actually have
quite the same definition. To that extent, gradated schemata or
spectra can be of help. Let me suggest two such instruments
here .

The first was offered some years ago by J. Peter Schineller
in his classification of the different approaches to the question
of Christ and salvation (Schineller 1976). He distinguishes four
points on a spectrum: an ecc les iocent r ic approach, a constitutive
approach, a normative approach, and a theocentric approach. Of

importance here are the second and third points. "Constitutive"
he defines as "not only normative but ind ispe ns ib le " (Ibid.:553).
"Normative," on the other hand, "corrects and fulfills all other
mediations." (Ibid.:556) Thus some see Christ as constitutive,
while others may posit Christ as being normative but not con-
stitutive .

A second classification, now widely used (although not al-
ways in the same way), would make a distinction between ex-
clusivistic and inc lus iv is t ic approaches, i.e., those saying that
Christ is the only way, and those holding that Christ is the su-
perior (but not only) way. (cf. most recently, Hillman 1939)

In all these instances, there is a matter of precision of
language. What do we mean by "absolute," "unique," "normative,"
"constitutive," and so on? Some of this language finds its
semantic field by setting itself off from the more clearly
definable. Other kinds see themselves as foundational. In every
instance, however, the language presumes a relationship, a
relationship to something it is not. Without being aware of
that, we can be engaging in superlatives that are really simply
oppositional. Freytag showed that already thirty-five years ago
in terms of some of the biblical language of "ta ethne": that it
was less descriptive than a foil for talking about the Chosen
People. (Freytag 1956)

Thus one thing that we might try to do together is to check
out the precision of the language we are using when we try to
speak of the uniqueness of Jesus.

The New Testament Witness to Jesus * Uniqueness

In one manner of speaking, we can say that there would have
been no Hew Testament if the followers of Jesus had not thought
him to be unique. One can read the New Testament as a coming to
terras with what God had revealed in Jesus. We know also that
this coming to terms with the event of Jesus did not happen all
at once. Recently, Adelbert Denaux has retraced that develop-
ment. He sees it as growing out of the historical Jesus’ claim
to a unique filial relationship to God and his claim of an es-
chatological mission and authority from the Father. The ex-
perience of the resurrection and the Spirit led Jesus’ disciples
into the confession of a high christology, developed in a dialec-
tical relationship with their equally held tenet of monotheism
( Denaux 1988 ) .

We know, too, that the development of the understanding of
Jesus' did not end with the New Testament period; indeed it would
take the ensuing three hundred fifty years to come to its comple-
tion in the affirmation of the Council of Chalcedon.

This long development poses for us a question today, a ques-
tion again that we might explore together. Just as the develop-
ment of the understanding of Jesus’ divinity stretched beyond the

New Testament period -- but did not negate what the biblical wit-
ness proposed -- might we be in a situation, because of the
changed circumstances prompted by living in a genuinely world
church, that requires a continued reflection? Again, such a
reflection would not negate the past so much as extend it. That
past must be viewed cumulatively rather than in terms of isolated
words and events. If we do not do that, we would have difficulty
explaining, for example, the apparent reluctance of Jesus to ap-
pear as though he were usurping God’s place (Logister 1988:254-
257 ). But back to the point: dramatic new developments such as
those we experience in the encounter with the great religious
traditions of the East may prompt such reflections. Are we in a
position, then, to reflect together again on the growing sense of
Jesus’ uniqueness and his divinity in the early church in such a
way as to carry that reflection into the cirucras tances of our own
t irae?

The Trinity and Mission

Carl Braaten has already addressed this topic in some
detail; what I would like to do is to highlight two things that
he said and make two proposals for reflection on the Trinity that
have implications for Jesus Christ and mission.

Braaten makes the point that a neglect of the Trinity opened
the way for theocentric understandings that minimize the impor-
tance of Jesus in the Christian confession.

1 1

He traces this

development from the nineteenth century down into our own time.
That is a fruitful point for our reflection. He notes also the
western tendency to begin with the unity of God and from there to
move to the Trinity, whereas Orthodoxy has preferred to move in
the opposite direction, from the three Persons to the one God.
This is suggestive of a second point for our reflection and for
our common witness. The two points I would like to present,

then, have to do with the divided witness between East and West
about the relationships in the Trinity (the f ilioque problem),
and what our point of departure (unity or Trinity) might tell us
about God and mission.

The Filioque and Miss ion

The witness of the New Testament regarding the relationship
of the Son and the Spirit is complex, and cannot be completely
harmonized. Paul at one point exclaims that the Lord and the
Spirit are one (2 Cor 3:17). Paul seems to want to link the
Spirit closely with the Risen Lord so as to hold some of the more
charismatic developments in Corinth from getting out of hand (1
Cor 12-14). On the other hand, the synoptics make the Spirt of
God to seem more separate from Jesus.

A painful point that divides East and West is the under-
standing of this relation — whether the Spirit proceeds from the
Father only (East) or from the Father and the Son (West). The
western affirmation is admittedly late, although it clearly has

its roots in Augustine’s reflections on the Trinity and can claim
precedent in Paul's theology. One of the consequences of the
western affirmation, however, is a strong chris tocentrisra that at
times can threaten to become a chr istornonisra . The East has long
noted this, that tying the Spirit so closely to the Son reduces,
as it were, all of the Father's activity to that which is
manifested through the Son.

The experience of the corruption of the medieval church and
the need to reassert that it is Christ who saves us, not the
church, only reinforced chr is toce nt r ism in the West. Is it
perhaps time now to reconsider that approach to God's revelation
in Jesus? Would not the Eastern approach be more useful in ex-
plaining how God is manifest through the Spirit throughout the
world, and how that Spirit goes before us to prepare the hearts
and minds of those to whom we preach the Gospel? This is not to
create a tritheisra or to suggest that God works at cross-purposes
in the world, but to overcome our tendency to undervalue the work
of the Spirit as proceeding from the Father. Certainly one con-
sequence of the addition of the f ilioque in the Nicene Creed has
been to keep the theology of the Holy Spirit underdeveloped. The
Spirit is not separate from the Son, but cannot it be distinct
from the Son?

This, I believe, is something that a more soundly
trinitarian approach to mission urges upon us for reflection. It
can serve as a safeguard to refraining from making our solus

Chr is tus simply a replacement for a sola ecc les ia . And it might

provide us with a way of dealing with the reality of many
religious traditions and the place of Christ and Christianity
within them.

Where to Begin : Unity or Trinity?

As was noted above, East and West have had different points
of departure for reflecting on the relations within the Trinity.
The West's concern with the unity of the Godhead has led to a
wonderful cohesion in our faith, but has made it difficult at
times for us to come to terms with new realities.

A number of years ago, the French Roman Catholic theologian
Christian Duquoc wrote a book entitled Dieu Different (Duquoc
1979). He looked at the doctrine of the Trinity from the Cap-
padocian point of view, and suggested that such an approach to
God could serve as the grounding of difference as an essential
component of unity rather than its antithesis. He does not ex-
tend the argument to the question of christology and other
religious traditions we are addressing here, but I think such an
extrapolation might be made. Would the presence of different
religious traditions in the world be a manifestation of a dif-
ference that is part of the unity of God? This is not to claim
that all religions are of equal value, but it would help overcome
that gap that arises out of affirming the possibility of truth in

other religions, but not wanting to grant them any salvific
value. Does difference offer a categorical possibility that will
help us mediate our problem here?

Duquoc ’ s interpretation of trinitarian theology is not
without precedent. We find similar ideas being discussed and
critiqued elsewhere in the West (cf. Baillie 19*18; Plantinga
1 986; Sch i 1 lebeec kx 1 989 ). But again, as we think together,
might we not find a path here worth exploring?

Preaching the TChole Christ

As was noted above, the theme of the 1989 LCWE Conference of
"Calling the Whole Church to Take the Whole Gospel to the Whole
World" is helpful for reflecting on the theme of Jesus Christ and
mission. It prompts us to ask: do we preach the whole Christ?
Or do we preach only the Christ who suits us? Every missionary
needs to ask this question from time to time.

I do not intend to point fingers here, but only wish to note
a phenomenon that could well have an effect on how our chris-
tologies get shaped, and in turn how they interact with our sense
of mission. I refer to the shift taking place, in many dif-
ferent sectors around the world, away from a heavy reliance on
the christologies of the Pauline and Johannine literature of the
New Testament toward the christologies of the synoptic writers.
To be sure, the christologies of the synoptics have never been
absent from Christian faith, but under the influence from two un-

likely quarters -- liberation theologies on the one hand, and
secularized cultures on the other -- synoptic ch r isto log ies seem
to be more and more in evidence. These chr istologies are
generally not as "high” as are those of Paul and John, although
they are not incompatible with our confession of the divinity of
Jesus. They emphasize much more the earthly life and ministry of
Jesus than do those of Paul and John. They make for a challeng-
ing approach to discipleship and imitation of Christ, and point
us much more toward this world than so exclusively to the world
to come.

This is not the place to argue the relative merit or lack
thereof of this shift; I am only try to identify what seems to be
a growing phenomenon. But if it is indeed the work of God's
Spirit for our time, what will it mean for our chr istologies for
mission? Are we being asked to expand our chr i s t o log ic a 1
horizons, to include more than the traditional high chr istologies
of John and Paul? Certainly parts of the synoptic Chris tologies
have always informed missiology, notably Matthew’s great commis-
sion. But will they have an effect on more profound aspects of
christology — e.g., if we adopt the suffering messiah christol-
ogy of Mark to guide us rather than the more exalted christology
of John? Again, in a time when we are faced with new and daunt-
ing challenges, might this not be something that we can explore
together?

Conclusion: The Cruciality of Christology

This presentation has tried to raise questions in three
areas of our christology -- regarding salvation outside of
Christ, our understanding of the trinity, and preaching the whole
Christ -- that confront all of us in mission today, whatever our
particular backgrounds, and are areas that we can work on
together as we search for the proper and faithful forms of mis-
sion for the twenty-first century. They are meant at this point
as questions to explore and suggestions to pursue. It will take
our working together to discern whether or not these are poten-
tial resolutions to the challenges we face.

A final word about the subtitle of this presentation. This
was the title assigned for this presentation, and the play on
words is not lost on any of us. I accepted the title gladly, be-
cause it highlights two important things we need to keep in mind
in any discussion of Jesus Christ and mission.

First of all, we cannot talk Christian mission if we do not
speak of Jesus Christ. He is simply crucial to the message, the
crossroads where we meet God in our world. To diminish that fact
is to engage in something other than Christian mission.

And secondly, to speak of Jesus Christ is to speak of his
cross. The cross (and here I remain Pauline) is central to the
story of Jesus and our proclamation of the Good News today. The
cross reminds us how little we know of the ways of God in the
world, how easily we mistake our own power and ways of doing

things for the ways of God. I think that such a modesty should
underscore not only our evangelizing, but also our reflection in
missiology -- that whether the absolutes we proclaim reflect the

mind of God or our own; and that whether we like -- Jesus on the
way to the cross -- may be asked to remain faithful even if we do
not understand entirely where God is leading us.

In this time where the question of universal salvation seems
more complex than it may have been for us in the past, that
modesty -- and that fidelity — should be two characteristics of
every disciple of Jesus Christ.

References Cited

Baillie, D.M.

1948 God was in Christ ; An Essay on Incarnation and Atone-

ment . London: Faber and Faber.

Braaten, Carl

1990 "The Trinity: A New Source for Mission and Unity,"

Missiology 18:000-000
Denaux, Adalbert

1988 "'Bij niemand anders is er redding’ (Hand. 4,12),"

Ti jdschr ift voor Theologie 28:228-246.

Duquoc, Christian

1979 Dieu different. Paris: Desclee De Brouwer.

Freytag, Walter

1956 Das Ratse 1 der Re 1 ig ionen und d ie biblische Antwor t .

Wuppertal- Barmen: Jugenddie ns t-Ver lag .

Hillman, Eugene

1989 Many Paths : A Catho lie Approach to Religious P luralism

Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books.

Logister, Wiel

1988 "Het unieke van Jezus -- een sy stemat ische vingeroefen-
ing, " T i jdschr ift voor Theologie 28:247-271.

Manila Manifesto

1989 Proc laim Christ until He Comes . Lausanne: Lausanne
Committee for World Evangelization.

Plantinga, Cornelius

1986 "Gregory of Nyssa and the Social Analogy of the Trini-

ty," The Thomist 50:325-352.

Schillebeeckx , Edward

1989 Mensen het verhaal van God. Baarn: H. Nelissen.

Schineller, J. Peter

1976 "Christ and Church: A Spectrum of Views," Theological

Studies 47: 545-566.

Vatican Council II

1975 Vat ican Counc i 1 II : The Cone iliar and Post-Cone i liar
Documents. Northport, NY: Costello Publishing Co.

World Council of Churches

1932

Mission and Evange 1 ism -- An Ecumen ical A f f irmat ion .
Appearing in Internationa 1 Review o f Miss ion 7 1:427-451

Abstract

Questions today about the relationship between the salvation
given in Jesus Christ and the salvific value of non-Christian
religions looms larger than ever before. Robert Schreiter sug-
gests in this article that, even though the Christian churches
are divided in their responses to this challenge, there may be
some areas where they can work together to meet this issue in the
twenty-first century. He proposes three areas for such common
exploration: what measure of salvation might be found in non-
Christian religions; the meaning of the Trinity for understanding
non- Chr is t ian religions; and the importance of preaching the
whole Christ.

Vita

Robert J. Schreiter
and coordinator of
Union in Chicago.
Missiology for the

, C.PP.S., is professor o
World Mission Studies at
He is president of the
1990-91 year.

f doctrinal theology
Catholic Theological
American Society of

Abstract

Vita

Robert J. Schreiter
and coordinator of
Union in Chicago.
Missiology for the

, C.PP.S., is professor o
World Mission Studies at
He is president of the
1990-91 year.

f doctrinal theology
Catholic Theological
American Society of

0V, S Sw V(a vw

A VHiS/U/|

^ATVv\ iMAA^j", Vu^ "V CUv<1 l^CA^d* ' . "jfc ^ fvuv, c^'

(Vua? tv, Uvi4^ . 'fit ‘I i*v .

J^A^O L^v, WvuXv^ ^ HAzM/J Itvn .

£<l>

[ (bvdCy ^aaa?U| jjvyw\ ^ fc*L ^.L\^)t? I ^hTV^j (^

?f, ‘~ijJ\~ C Iaa*~-g£\ -dsi* ^frsyJI^S^C/f

j s ' -fcs ' <^ciU>j' ■> ^ *tv^ Om l ~ ) )

^fhcAs Qh*\s\^c (^ bri&j C-v-v /L^Hvia^l ^1 t/v, C/Urv? ^

' ^ .| j A/Li CUfri^ u ^ sm^Lm^ a, (Jkrt 4j7 (« k, dU^f -itzt'

l*rtu K*1

£*. 0 lv . 0^;

-2-

C’Lics D, 11

Wftkui & ^L_/U^ }

«y*. 1, H*b

and what is an adequate overall theology of religions. Most of
this overview will be taken from Contemporary Miss iology , by
J. Verkuyl. In light of the first two sections, the final section
will be an attempt to draw some conclusions about my understanding,
about my theology of Christian witness among those of other faith
traditions .

Section I_.

Learning of Gandhi's faith experience and reading his books
caused me to question my own faith experience and beliefs. His views
about how people of different religions are to relate to one another
were particularly thought provoking. A closer look at some of these
major ideas will provide an assortment of issues we will later
compare to a Christian perspective. The Message of Jesus Christ is
a concise account of Gandhi's personal opinions about Jesus Christ
and Christianity, and it will be the major source of the follow ing
material .

One of the things that must have influenced Gandhi's feelings
about Christianity and its missionary practices was early contact
with Christians, themselves. Gandhi could appreciate most religions
by the time he was a young adult, but he had a problem with Christ-
ianity. An early negative impression was gained by observing
Christian missionaries standing on street corners and abusing Hindus
and their beliefs. Almost simultaneously, he became angry at the
news that a Hindu convert to Christianity had been compelled to
disregard his previous customs and religious standards. Supposedly,
grace allowed one to eat beef, drink liquor and wear European clothes.
These and other experiences lessened Gandhi's opinion of Christians.
Christian missionaries were seen as hypocr ite^and unworthy messengers.

When Gandhi moved to England for further education , his contacts
with Christianity became somewhat more positive. He was introduced
to and studied the Bible. He was affected by it, especially the Sermon
on the Mount. This particular passage truly emblazed itself upon

Gandhi. It gave definite form to his conviction that Truth and moral-

ity were the basis and substance of all things.

-2-

and what is an adequate overall theology of religions. Most of
this overview will be taken from Contemporary Miss iology t by
J. Verkuyl. In light of the first two sections, the final section
will be an attempt to draw some conclusions about my understanding,
about my theology of Christian witness among those of other faith
traditions .

Section I.

One of the things that must have influenced Gandhi's feelings
about Christianity and its missionary practices was early contact
with Christians, themselves. Gandhi could appreciate most religions
by the time he was a young adult, but he had a problem with Christ-
ianity. An early negative impression was gained by observing
Christian missionaries standing on street corners and abusing Hindus
and their beliefs. Almost simultaneously, be became angry at the
news that a Hindu convert to Christianity had been compelled to
disregard his previous customs and religious standards. Supposedly,
grace allowed one to eat beef, drink liquor and wear European clothes.
These and other experiences lessened Gandhi's opinion of Christians.
Christian missionaries were seen as hypocr iteSjand unworthy messengers.

When Gandhi moved to England for further education , his contacts

with Christianity became somewhat more positive. He was introduced

to and studied the Bible. He was affected by it, especially the Sermon

on the Mount. This particular passage truly emblazed itself upon

Gandhi. It gave definite form to his conviction that Truth and moral-

ity were the basis and substance of all things.

-3-

Gandbi was not convinced that Christianity offered him something
unique and superior to that which he believed as a Hindu. God's
existence and creative acts of mercy offered nothing new, and Gandhi
could not accept the idea that Jesus was the only incarnation of God

or the idea that Jesus was the true Mediator between God and humanity.

If God had one son, th§n all human beings were children of God; as

Jesus was like God, so could all people be like God. In terms of

salvation, Gandhi could not accept that it was attainable only by be-

coming a Christian. Jesus was a divine teacher, who's message was

best conveyed in his^Ser^ion on the Mount; Jesus was a martyr for the

world to emulate, who's actions were totally servantlike loving. Cn

the other hand, Christian principles and lives did not convince Gandhi

that Christianity was the truest of all religions. Hinduism satisfied

the heart, and soul and mind of Gandhi.

The supposition held by Gandhi was that all religions are linked
to Truth, God, and that they were all imperfect. The true factor they
had in common was their stress on the Law of Love, while their im-
perfection was the result of inadequate human interpretation and
disc ipleship . Gandhi wrote, "Religions are different roads converging
to the same point," and he asks, "What does it matter that we take
different roads, so long as we reach the same goal?"^ Love is the
law that is seen to govern all major religions. All would be well if
members of the various faiths would just follow this rule. Mutual
tolerance is the only possible alternative for people who have similar
but slightly differing interpretations of the one true and perfect
Religion. Thus, all religions were equal according to Gandhi. In
conjunction with his framework surrounding the equality of religions,
Gandhi's primary objection with missionaries was that they thought
no religion other than their own offered truth and salvation.

What did Gandhi intend in his request for mutual toleration?

It was his invitation for the religions of the world to learn and
grow from one another. Gandhi had a broad faith that was not restrict-
ed to one orthodox interpretation of Hinduism. Toleration meant
working along side of other traditions. It meant loving all people,
everywhere, and becoming better people through religious interaction.
Each religion should, like a rose, transmit its own special scent not
by action of speech but by the natural effect of being a Hindu, or a

-4-

Christian or a Jew in the midst of others. Toleration was to be
synonymous with humility that does not hold up one's faith as
superior. All faiths were seen to be equally valid, salvific and
errant

Conversion was possible within Gandhi's understanding „ of things,

but it was to have nothing to do with acquiring Western beliefs or

practices as a matter of fact. It entailed giving up the evil of the I

old and acquiring the good of the new. Practically, it meant greater

self-purification. One was not to convert from one faith to another.

Gandhi was even troubled by the thought of secretly praying for one t

to be converted to one's own religion. Instead, efforts and prayers

should be made that aid people of faith in becoming more obedient to

their own faith tradition. In the end, conversion is an individual

matter caused and known only by God. Conversely, Gandhi, accepted

those who did change from one religion to another as long as the

conversion was not induced by fear, hunger cr material gain. Obviously,

these were some of the factors Gandhi saw as forces affecting Christian

conversion .

In the final analysis, Gandhi strongly maintained that the
validity of one's faith depends upon the degree to which one lives
out the main tenets of that tradition of faith. Gandhi wrote he could
not be content until he was purified from even the thought of sin. Of
course, for Gandhi, being obedient involved non-violence, or, in other
words, turning one's cheek and loving one's enemies. Living the faith
related directly to moral progress and not at all to material gain.
Obedience to truth and the quest for it has everything to do with
purification of the soul and nothing to do with bodily pleasures.
Regarding this point, Gandhi believed tbit Christianity lost contact
with Christ's message. The teachings of Jesus are antithetical to
Western society's materialism, technology and, so-called, modern
civilization. The point is that adherents of Christianity should live
their faith and let their lives witness of all people and religions.

In other words, let the works of believers be their appeal and service

to the world.

Section II.

Gandhi's thoughts on the subject of religions relating to one

-5-

another was unsystematic; Verkuyl 's material will be more systematic.

Let us now consider a Christian perspective of how people from diff-
erent religions are to relate to one another. Three questions will
order the format. The questions are: 1) Why do Christians view mission
as indispensable? 2) How should missionaries witness to the Gospel?

3) What is an adequate theology of religions? These same questions
will shape the course my conclusions will take in Section Three.

To be sure, there are both sound and unsound motives for Christian
mission. Likewise, there have been valid and invalid appraisals of
missionary motives. Verkuyl makes a concerted effort to be fair. He
lists pure and impure motives that have been used over the years.

First, there is the Motive of Obedience. God's written word
mandates the proclamation of reconciliation in Jesus Christ. Second,
the motive of compassion (love, mercy, pity). Recipients of God's great
love should, in turn, be instruments of God's love to others. Compassion
is a motive derived from God's creative and recreative compassion.
Doxology is a third motive. God's divine glory is that which leads
men and women to praise God "through their witness in word and deed.

An Eschatological motive believes that the body of Christ is incomplete
until all people become a part of it. There is a Motive of Haste,
which considers the Good News of Jesus Christ as an urgent message.
Finally, the Fersonal Motive involves the dynamic nature of one's own
journey of faith. It leads a person to share it with others and to

grow in the process of sharing.

Verkuyl also giv® four impure motives. The Imperialistic Motive
involves both political and economic forces that attempt to extend

their respective domains of influ enc e . over other nations of the world.

Next is the Cultural Motive. Simply put, this motive results in the
transfer of the missionary's culture rather than the proclamation of
God's incarnation, which is not the possession of any one culture.

Third, there is a Commercial Motive. The Church's progress in a country
was sometimes valued as an opportunity to further commercial interests.
Finally, we consider the Motive of Ecclesiastical Colonialism, which

1 o

entails the goal of modeling the native church after the mother church.

Summarizing pure and impure motives gives a parital answer to

why missionaries seek to share their faith. Verkuyl offers a second

-15-

ENDNCTES

M.K. Gandhi, Th e Message of Jesus Chr is t (Bombay: Anand T.
Hingorani, 1964) p. 1 .

2 Ibid . , pp.2-3.

3Ibid . , pp. 4-9.

4Ibid . , p. 13.

3Ibid . , pp. 9, 50-52.

8lbid. , pp. 27, 31 .

^Ibid . , pp. 15, 28, 33, 56.

8Ibid . , pp. 5, 17, 23.

Q .

J. Verkuyl, Contemporary Miss iologv : An Introduction (Grand
Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1978) pp. 164-168.

1 °Ibid . ,

pp.

168-174

11 3 bid. ,

pp.

176-180

1 2Ibid . ,

pp.

181-185

13Ibid. ,

pp.

194-196

1 ^Tbid . ,

pp.

196-198

1 3Ibid . ,

199.

l6Ibid. ,

pp.

199-200

17Ibid. ,

pp.

201-202

18Ibid. ,

P«

224.

1 8Ibid . ,

pp.

206-21 1

20Ibid . ,

pp.

211-221

21 Ibid . ,

pp.

221-222

22Ibid. ,

PP.

355-357

23Ibid. ,

pp.

357-359

24Ibid.,

pp.

359-561

23Ibid. ,

pp.

361 -366

CHRISTIANITY AND PLURALISM:

Perspectives on the Problem in the Indian Context

Paper presented to

Dr. Samuel H. Moffett
EC41

Contemporary Asian
Christiani ty

by Richard Kusterbeck

Introduction

It is impossible to underestimate the importance of Asia. It
is home to over sixty percent of the world's population and contains
one third of the land mass. It contains an amazing variety of
peoples, languages and cultures, and a great variety of religions, of
which Christianity is only a small percentage . The fact that the
overwhelming majority of Asians have remained faithful to their

traditional faiths is one of the key factors in evaluating Asian

Christianity, as Christians in Asia must cope with religious puralism

as the dominate feature of their enviroment.

For centuries Christianity developed in a narrowly western

context. It became the dominant#, religion of Europe, but was hemmed in
by muslim "infidels" to the east and south. The discovery of a new
world, and the development of an economic and industrial revolution
led to a great expansion of European influence throughout the world.
This led to the nineteenth century, which witnessed the greatest
period of missionary expansion in Christian history. Christian
missionaries carried the gospel to every nation on earth, winning
converts, forming churches and passing on what was considered the best
of Christian civilization. The underlying assumption of these

missionaries was that "vast hordes of unsaved heathen" of these lands
* were lost, and faced a Christian eternity without the gospel.

The twentieth century has brought new information and
questions before the church. The former caricatures of Asia's great
religions are being replaced by a genuine appreciation of their
ethical nature and answers to the ultimate questions of existence.
Furthermore , a new estimation of their strength has been called for,
as most asians have shown stiff resistance to conversion to
Christianity . These questions are now being dealt with by theologians
from Asia, who view the plurality of religions in Asia from an inside
perspective, and often arrive at different estimations than western
theologians .

Why are there so many religions? How do these relate to each
other? Is there only one true religion? If so, what is the fate of
everyone else? Are there many paths to one god? These questions are
critical concerns to the Christians of Asia, and the solutions they
offer will shape the missiology of Asian Christianity for a long time.

In this paper I want to examine the problem of religious
pluralism in Asia. First, I shall examine some of the traditional
Christian solutions offered to explain how Christianity relates to
other religions, and how those answers are viewed today. I shall then
turn to briefly examine some of the great religions of Asia, paying
oarticular attention to the Indian subcontinent . Finally, I would
like to analyze how several Indian theologians are addressing the
questions and examine the startingly different answers they advocate.

Traditional Perspectives on Other Religions

Before we examine the traditional Christian positions in depth
it will be helpful to sketch out a simple range of opinions that are
held by Christians concerning other religions. Lesslie Newbigin
lists a sample of these as:

1. Christianity is the only truth revealed by God and the
Christian has nothing to learn from these other religions
which are whole]/ false.

2. Non-Christian religions are the work of devils and their
similarities are the results of demonic cunning.

3. Other religions are a preparation for Christ and the
reception of the gospel fulfills them.

4. Other religions have true value. Their religious claims

contain elements of genuine truth; but only in Christianity

are all true values found in their proper balance,

relationship and perspective.

A. -ffcftgA/f

5. A difficult perspective was offered by Pope Paul VI in his
encyclical Ecclesiam Suam (1964). In it the world religions
are viewed as concentric circles having the Roman Catholic
Church at the center, then other Christian, Jews, Muslims,
other (Theists) etc., radiating from the center.

6. Recent Roman Catholic thought which affirms that non-
christian religions are the means which god uses to save those
who have not yet been reached by the gospel.

The Problem of Exclusiveness

This scope of Christian opinion covers the very traditional to
the modern, yet does not yield on any critical point of the Christian
faith. For example, the uniqueness or universality of Christ.
However, quite a different theory of religious pluralism is
increasingly heard and accepted in many quarters. In this view, there
is no one and only way to religious truth. It understands that there
are many roads to one center, each co-existing and satisfactory for
different individuals. This view, and variations of it are perceived
as serious threats to the Christian faith, as Karl Rahner states:

"Because of Jesus Christ, Christianity understands itself as
the absolute religion, intended for all men, which cannot
recognize any other religion beside itself as of equal
right .. .this pluralism is a greater threat and a reason for
greater unrest for Christianity than for any other religion.
For no other religion - not even Islam - maintains so
absolutely that it is the religion, the one and only valid
revelation of the one living god... The fact of the pluralism
of religions, which endures .. .even after a history of two
thousand years, must therefore be the greatest scandal and the
greatest vexation for Christianity" . 2

? JWA * b

* - V * tl

Rahner has correctly diagnosed the problem; Christianity which
claims to be the ultimate and clearest revelation of Cod in Christ
must admit that after twenty centuries, the most generous estimate
attributes only thirty two percent of the world as being Christian. 3

Essentially only tbdf a small minority of the world claims it is right
while the rest of the world is wrong. If Christians were to make any
concession, their faith would be seriously undermined; the universal
claims that have energized it until now would be threatened. Is
Christ the "one among many" the " first among many" or the "only" way
to god and salvation?

Thus a pressing need in Christian theology is to develop an
apolegetic for world religions. Simple missionary claims such as
"Christ is the answer" must respond to the challenge "what do these
others mean?" Yet before we list some of the possible solutions it
will be helpful to examine more closely some of the modern notions of
religious pluralism.

Roman Catholic Views

h*s(V

Modern Catholic thought since Vatican II has made a radical
h

break with both the traditional Christian view and the Protestant
positions. They readily acknowledge God's saving activity in the
world, even to the extent of accepting the salvific value of other
faiths while retaining a measure of uniqueness for Christ by
conceiving of Christianity as the norm.

Roman Catholic thought has several theological differences
from the Protestants . It has always stood for the universal aspects of
Christ's salvation. It has not been troubled with the decrees of
elections since the middle ages, and has never advocated as severe a
doctrine of total depravity as the reformers. Yet Vatican II marks a
significant change, as its "Declaration on the Relationship of the

f uU A iv-tW 6<W\ 4 *v-AV J.'j

Church to Non-Christian Religions" praises the beliefs and practices

of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. It states that these religions
contain truths that have enlightened every human being and encourages
dialogue and common life with other faiths. Much of the impetus for
the Vatican II change has come from the two leading theologians that
shaped its view of relating to non-Christian faiths, Karl Rahner and
Hans Kung. Although Rahner wrote earlier, Kung has had greater impact
on the average person as his works are available in popular form
suitable for ingestion by the average mind. Kung notes that the great
religions have to be acknowledged, at least provisionally, as a

OU w, 'Vkfc

\ u> ^

(

i tu;

tl* W ~ ^

*rA —

W v\| C f*. CtA VCn\W C

permanent fact. The sad record of Christian neglect of the great Asian
lands where they have flourished is no reason to presuppose they have
been neglected by God. The "cosmic covenant" with Adam and Noah are
ample evidence to support God's interest. Thus, God plainly wills the
salvation of those who are outside the church, and the means he uses
to accomplish this are the " legitimate " religions which have a
"relative validity", and a "relative providential right to exist".
Kung adroitly points out that all religions are a mixture of faith,
doubt, and superstition. He suggests that the Old Testament pattern of
faith which had no explicit revelation of Christ was often corrupted
with Baal-worship and cultic practices and was probably misunderstood
by its followers. Yet it cannot be denied, by evangelicals or
catholics, that it was effective for salvation. So from this Old
Testatment example he states that people can be saved without an
explicit revelation of Christ by "extraordinary" means. Yet these
people are not united to the visible church, and, presumably are
unaware that they are Christians. Rahner termed them, "anonymous
Christians" , as recognizing their acceptance by God, but still through
Christ. Rahner held that the time limit for this possibility exists
only until the religion and culture is confronted with the
Gospel , i .e .-the gospel is indigenized and embodied in the culture. 17
When that happens, Christianity then becomes the normative revelation.
Kung notes the problem with the term, how would we appreciate being
called, "anonymous Buddhists" for example? Nevertheless, the concept
requires a vast reorganization of presuppositions about the nature of
the church. The Church is no longer an ark floating on a sea of
Perdition, but the sign and sacrament of salvation; the explicit

representation of what is hidden reality outside the Church.

He does not suggest that all religions are equally true. If
people are saved outside the church it is inspite of the errors of
their faith, not because of them. Christ is the unique element of
Christianity, only, as Kung argues, we have been bound by western
interpretations of his message, his meaning and his person. Kung would
have us open ourselves to tru^ly Indian, African, and Asian Christian
understandings of Christ and how He is active both in the universe and
in the life of our Asian religions.

Thus recent Catholic theologians have acknowledged the
possibility of permanent value and place for non-Christian religions.
/Is one writer states; "There is a good deal of evidence that the
actual religious pluralism is the will of God for humanity." 18 This
is held in tension with the understanding that Christ is the critical
catalyst for all world religions, as He is the final touchstone of
divine revelation. Thus the Catholic view is jsiut an extension of the
Liberal Protestant view, for it still understands Christianity as a
superior faith and the highest revelation, although it does not make
salvation dependent upon a personal relationship with Christ.

What is then the result of this new development in mission
theology? First, it must be acknowledged that there is an underlying
desire on the part of many Christians to be more pluralistic . The
"Scandal of Exclusivity" is a not a point of pride but a object of
dismay. No one enjoys looking at a world which is 70 % non-Christian
and consigning the greater portion of these people to hell. Yet few
Christians want to reduce Christ to a transcendental influence which
is divorced from the actual preaching and teaching of the Word of God.

thought forms and philosophical tenets of that culture in order to be
understood . /Is Hinduism seems strange, even bizzare, to the Western
mind, so Christianity often appears strange to the Asian mind. A two
way pJ^reHrirsm is the result, one which re-evaluates the nature of
Asian religions, and at the same time seeks to translate Christianity
into Asian thought forms and which respond to Asian questions. To
illustrate how this might be done, let us examine the dominant faith
of the sub-continent .

Hinduism

The great, diverse religion of Hinduism began over five thousand years
ago and has shown itself to be remarkably pluralistic and adaptable.
It can be divided into hundreds of sects which claim a total of over 3
million distinct dieties. The unifying forces within the faith are
esteem for the Vedas, the belief in Karma, reincarnation, and non-
violence, respect for holy man, and acceptance of caste as the
framework of society. 20

Hinduism can be divided into three main branches:

1. A small percentage who are mono-theistic, reject
idol worship and the incarnation of the Gods. Those include:
Arya Samaij-assembly of noblemen, formed in 1875; Shankar
Archarya-Vendantic Hinduism; the RamaKrishna Mission (1886);
and Sikhism which all can be considered reform movements,
although Sikhism is usually classified as a separate faith.

2. The vast majority, 98%, are called Sanatanists, or
idol worshipper . These believe in incarnations of the Gods, the
chief among them being Siva, Kali, Vishnu, Ram, Krishna, and

Sakti .

3. New Sects- These are missionary oriented,
proselytizing sects. They tend to draw on Christianity and
Islam, and unite them to traditional Hindu philosophy , among
them being: The Divine Light Mission (Guru Maharaj Ji), Sri
Chinmoy, Ragneesh Bagwan.

Hinduism has passed through many phases or periods which
demonstrated distinctive emphasis as; Vedic, Brahmanic, Philo-
sophical, Reformed, and Devotional . The name for Hinduism derives
from the word "Sindhu" which means "river", from this is derived the
Persian "hindu" and the Greek " indos ". Hindusim has no creed or
doctrine. There is no such thing as heresy. There is no great founder
as Moses, Jesus, Mohammed or the Gutama. Everything runs according to
cosmic law or "dharma", which rules all of life. Hinduism believes in
the self, which continues to pass from generation to generation, on an
endless cycle of evolution and dissolution. Life is ruled by Karma,
the principle of cause and effect. Every action has its consequence,
and effects us in this life and perhaps the next. Karma determines who
and what a person is. People are born unequal; caste dictates
position, but Karma indicates an opportunity and not only fate. The
actions we perform can raise or lower us thorugh the chain of being.

Life is accepted with resignation but also involves action.
One accepts, for injustice is the reward of your Karma. Yet the desire
to transcend- moksha - to "eat up" Karma and get off the wheel of
birt\t, and rebirth is present. Moksha is release, emancipation, escape,
deliverance, and liberation.

There are three chief paths to moksha called margas. They are
the three disciples of liberation or yogas: Karma Marga- the way of

Indian Christian Theology

The first question which faces us is not only one of
indigenization. In some respects the Hindu tradition intersects with
Christian philosophy as in the Bhakti tradition, but in many ways
Hinduism is in opposition to Christianity . Can a Hindu-Christian who
accepts Christ also accept a cyclical view of history? Syncretism is
always a danger in indigenization, and even more so in the Indian
context because the fundamental notions of sin, time, and after-life
are radically different than the Western ideas. To the Western mind
what appears to be heretical dilution of the faith may be to the
Indian mind, an expression of Christ.

For the most part adaptation has taken place primarily in
forms or rituals, not in theology. So the wedding necklace or
mangalsutra can be used instead of a Western ring, and a Christian
adaptation of the seven steps ( saptapadi ) will be used in a Hindu
Christian weddings. However, these are adaptations of form not
substance, similar to many worship traditions found in Western
churches.

Walbert Buhlmam, who has been an eloquent advocate for

readjustment of our philosophy in encountering the religions of Asia,
reports how firmly the Catholic Church rejected any theological
adaptation with Hinduism. The Bangalore Center is a large Christian
center which has held large study sessions on important topics of
interest to the Christian church. In December, 1974, a group met to
consider the place of non-Christian Scriptures in Indian Catholic
worship sevices. Included was Mgr. Pietro Rossano, Vatican Secretary
for Non-Christians . They concluded that the decisive point was not the
text itself, but what was received and experienced as the " Word of
God". They explained that what can be rightly understood as " seeds of
the Word" can be found in Hindu scriptures, and so might be heard as
the "Word of God". This continues the development from rejection of
Hinduism as paganism, to a position of a positive recognition of its
value in God's plan of salvation . It follows that the Hindu scriptures
might also provide help in understanding the mystery of the Divine, as
well as the Christian Scriptures do. The study group pointed out the
limitations of other scriptures but advanced the position that through
the annointing of the Holy Spirit we can discern the special way in
which the Spirit speaks in those scriptures.

The Vatican responded quickly and decisively . In June, 1975,
it issued a protocol which abruptly called a halt to the whole
experimental pattern that was being tried. 22 Thus, they continued
the historical pattern of adaptation in form but not in the substance
of theology.

Another example of this type of adaptation is the Christian
ashrams or religious communities. These have been popular since the
middle of the last century, and, however ludicrous it may appear, many

of these have been formed where Indian Christians gather to study the
thought of Calvin or Wesley. The adaptation of form is also seen in
Christian hymns set to Indian tunes or in the ascetic sadhus,
religious holy men. Yet the question remains: Is there a truly Indian
theology? The tentative answer is ,”yes", it is in the process of
being born. It will be a Christian theology which will be as related
to the philosophical systems of Hinduism as Paul, Augustine, and
Origen were to theirs. The problem is how does Christianity relate to
this adaptable system, without being swallowed up by the amorphous,
changable boundries of Hinduism? Christianity has always resisted
syncretism because it is a dogmatic religion. Is this a product of the
Greco-Roman culture- an acretion to the gospel? Can Indian Christians
adapt Hinduism without slipping into syncretism? I don't know. I do
know that ultimately they must do their own theology and be judged by
their peers. Indian thought is rich, and its contributors are
plentiful. Let us now examine some of their contributions.

The "Father of Modern India" as he is often called is Rammohan
Roy, who was a contemporary of the Serampore trio of Carey, Marshman,
and Ward. Raja Rammohon Roy ( 1772-1933 ) became fascinated with the
person of Christ. Inspired also by Islam, he converted to monotheism
and devoted his life to the overthrow of idol worship. He published
many works and engaged in a published dialogue with Joshua Marshman
over the nature of true religion. Roy held that moral principle was

the essence of Christianity while Marshman tended to be more

evangelic A Yet Rammahan Roy revered Christ and in a certain sense
adopted Him into the Hindu world. This was not acceptable to
Protestants who understood that the very nature of the gospel was at

stake. Although Raja Rammohan Roy is not counted in the Christian
camp, and is not representative of orthodox theology, he began the
dialogue and debate.

The next significant step was developed by Keshab Chandra Sen
in 1872. He also became attached to the person of Christ, but instead

\fj

of pursuing Christ along rationalistic lines as the Raja had done, Sen
adapted the concept of bhakti -personal devotion- to his quest for
Christ. Although unorthodox by creed, Sen moves towards trinitarianism
but explains it in relation to Hindu definitions as Sat, Cit, and
Anada. Yet perhaps his greatest contribution was his insight of a
"hidden Christ" who is already present in the Hindu faith. This is the
Christ who is present in all the good of philosophy and religion. 25
This concept wirUrloe picked up in our own day by Raymond Panikkar and
contribute * greatly to the discussion within Catholic circles. Keshub
Chunder Sen, then, for his thoughts on the trinity, his description of
Christ as divine humanity, and even expressing thought on the
atonement, represents an authentic attempt to interpret Christ from an
Indian perspective while not straying too far afield from the locus of
orthodox Christianity .

Although Sen emphasized the continuity of Christianity with
Hinduism he had no system of doctrine, which has led some to doubt his
orthodoxy. A more rational approach but much less sympathetic to
Hinduism was that persued by Father Nehemiah Goreh (1828-95). He was a
noted Sanskrit scholar and exponent of traditional Hinduism prior to
his conversion, and later, ordination in the Anglican church. His
greatest work was A Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical
Systems which was published in 1862. In it, with detailed logic he

examines the main Hindu systems and exposes the deficiencies in each.
This becomes a vehicle to preach the gospel, which he does clearly and

with much power. Although his apologetics were developed in a largely
negative fashion, fihe recognized the value of Hinduism as a preparatio
Evangelico . He writes:

But a genuine Hindu is rather prepared to receive the teaching
of Christianity. Providence has certainly prepared us, the
Hindus, tt£e receive Christianity , in a way which, it seems to
me, no other nation - excepting the Jews, of course - have
been prepared. Most erroneous as is the teaching of such books
as the Bhagvadgita, the Bhagvata, etc., yet thay have taught
us something of ananyabhakti (undivided devotedness to God),
of vairagya (giving up the world), of namrata (humility ) , of
ksama (forbearance) , etc., which enables us to appreciate the
precepts of Christianity. 24

Thus Goreh recognized the value in the Hindu culture as
preparation for the gospel, he was surpassed by a younger contemporary
Brahmobandhav (Sanskrit for Theophilus ) Upadhyaya in his appreciation
for the nature and value of Hinduism. Upadhyaya' s thought followed the
path blazed by Keshuh Chundu Sen in trying to discover an indigenous
expression for the Christian faith. He was baptized and became a
member of the Roman Catholic Church. The main points of his works as
summed up by M.M. Thomas are:

1. Integration of the social structure of India into the
Christian way of life.

2. Establishment of an Indian Christian monastic order.

3. Employment of Vendanta for the expression of Christian
theology.

4. The recognition of the Vedas as the Indian Old Testament.
Upadhyaya felt that Vendantic thought could be integrated into

the Christian faith much the way Greco-Roman philosophy had been in
the West. He felt that Hinduism as a culture could be separated from
the religion, much the same way the Greek and Roman religions were
separated. First, culture was closely tied to religion; then, slowly,

the ties were weakened. Philosophy became a separate discipline,
mythology became a part of literature rather than religion, and Greek
and Latin religions died, while cultural, philosophical, scientific,
literary, and artistic traditions merged with Christianity and are
very much alive today. 26

His activities intergrated some aspects of Hindu culture to
such an extent that he was suspected of syncretism. In the school he
ran for Hindu children, he encouraged the veneration of Sarasvati, the
Hindu goddess of learning. He defended the worshipping of Krishna as a
avatara and also took part in a ceremony of prayascitta or ritual
atonement, in repentance for unclean acts. Yet Upadhayaya defended his
acts as merely cultural expressions of his life and as being
compatible with his Christian faith. In Europe he had seen pictures of
the Moses and depictions of the graces in art and literature. The
Roman and Greek Gods are melpioned in Shakespeare and other great
literary works; Thus he reasoned that Sarasvati was merely a cultural
expression of learning, as Venus for Love, Mercury for Speed.
Upadhyaya understood Krishna as an historical figure who has revealed
the sublime teachings of the Gita, which, he felt hjtad a true message
for the people of India. Finally, Hindu ceremonies carried no
implication of his being Hindu, rather, it emphasized his continuity
and connectedness to the society from which he came and in which he
stilljlived. Upadhyaya felt that Hinduism had drifted from its pure
base in the original Vedas even as ancient Isreal drifted from the
Pentaftjch. Though Hinduism had drifted from an original monotheism
present in the Vedas, there was no reason to dispense with the entire
system. Instead he would baptize much of cultural Hinduism into the

Church.

Thus Brahmobandhau Upadhyaya s thought is truly significant in
the development of an indigenous theology for he wanted to re-open the
canon to include Indian Scripture. He didn't claim that the Gitas were
without error; yet who would claim that the Old Testament contains the
highest developed theology? Indeed, the Old Testament often depicts a
God who is vengeful, warlike, jealous and unforgiving-are we justified
to say that other writings, revered as highly as our Scripture, are
not preparations for the Gospel? In many ways his thought reflects the
early Church fathers who saw similar patterns in the Greek and Roman
worlds, and attempted to utilize the philosophic systems of Athens and
ROme as platforms to explain the meaning of the Christian faith.

In his zeal to intejgrate Christianity with the Hindu
tradition Upadhyaya fulfills many of the hopes and ideas of Roberto de
fiobili ( 1577-1656 ) , the first missionary to India to advance the
policy of separation of Hindu religion and culture. This Italian
Jesuit firmly believed that religion and culture were distinct and
separate spheres and he desired to have a broad and tolerant view of
social customs, including those which had religious overtones.

Upadhyaya represents a further development over detiobili, as
he wanted to substitute the Gitas for the Old Testament. This is a
movement toward pluralism from simple contextualization, although
Upadhyaya never accepted Hinduism as having equal validity with
Christianity . The distinction between contextualization and pluralism
must be noted. Contextualization attempts to translate Christianity
into the thought forms and symbols of a culture. This can be done
without acceptance of the validity of those concepts. The validity is

J.,4- Sv>*<

rr l> O'

the essence of pluralism which may be understood as a continuum that
stretches from acceptance of religious concepts as containing elements
of truth, to granting equality of status to another religion. Indian
theology has spanned the entire spectrum, from tentative use of Hindu
terminolgy to understanding Hindusim as God's avenue of salvation. Our
purpose here is not to recount the entire history of Indian theology,
Yet I would like to present several more important examples before we
move into our concluding discussion of the future of Indian theology
as related to pluralism.

Sadhu Sundar Singh ( 1889-1929 ) is perhaps the most well-known
and influential of the Indian theologians . Although he had little
formal training in theology he was raised in the bhakti tradition of
Hinduism and also in the Sikh faith. He converted to Christianity
while a teenager and donned the ochre robe of a sadhu. His ministry
consisted chiefly of itinerant preaching in India and especially
Tibet. His theology was derived chiefly from the New TestamAent and
Singh's personal experience of Christ. Singh's theology was personal
and entirely Chirist centered. He derives his influence from the depth
of his spiritual experience and evident saintliness. His atttitude
toward Hinduism is positive. He accepted the validity of Hindu
religious experience, and believed that where true experience of God
had occured it was the result of the Holy Spirit. "Just as every soul
that lives breathes in the air, so every soul, whether Christian or
non-Christian breathes in the Holy Spirit, even when he knows it
not". 27 Singh understood Christ as the fulfillment of Hinduism, and
consequently made it a point not to criticize that faith. His message
was simple yet profound. He embodied deep religious experience with

technical simplicity and in doing so, penetrated the heart of Indian
mysticism.

Sundar Singh had a deep effect on his biographer, Bishop

A.J .Appasamy, (b.1891) who followed the ideas of Keshab Chancha Sen in

developing the tradition of Christian bhakti. Appasamy was raised in a

Christian home and was greatly influence by the bhakti poetry of

Tamilnad. He completed a doctorate at Oxford and returned to publsh

several works, Christiani ty as Bhakti Marga ( 1928) and What is Moksa?

( 1931 ) . These are expositions of John's gospel as understood by a

Christian from the bhakti tradition. He utilizes a wealth of

illustrations from Tamil poets who interpret the Christian life as one

of loving devotion to God in Christ. Appasamy' s emphasis was on

religious experience. He understood bhakti as the way prepared by God
lli

as a path to frmself. He also maintained that the Scriptures of INdia
should be read as devotional material. He felt that the Bible was not
the only authoritarive guide for our religious life. 28 He continues
the distinguished line of Indians who have interpreted Christinaity
from a point of view deeply influenced by Hindu thought.

The two other famous South Indian theologians who greatly
contributed to the development of Indian Theology were P.Chenchiah
( 1886-1959 ) and V. Chakkarai ( 1880-1958 ) . P.Chenchiah regarded
Hinduism as the spiritual mother of all Indians which need not be
surrendered in order to be a faithful Christian. He also emphaijszed
the centrality of Christ to all Christian experience and directly
attacked the dogmatic theology of Chalcedon as being forifegn to the
true nature of the gospel. He felt that the deep religious experiences
of the Hindu faith were not being reproduced in Indian Christianity

because the Church had become the central focus of the believer,
replacing the Spirit of Christ. His view of the faith is one where the
new life from above is constantly drawing the believer into union with
Christ and service. He also has a negative opinion of the Old
Testament and would substitute the Hindu Scriptures for it. Like other
Indians he sees little value in the organized church. Hinduism has
little organization and our Western development of large complicated
denominational structures hold little appeal to the Indian mind, which
is more metaphysical than practical. Chenchiah felt that Christianity
could spread from within Hinduism, rather than outside of it, yet this
thinking runs the risk of simply assimilating Christianity with
Hinduism. However, his view also indicates his respect for the
strength of the Christian faith.

Chahkarai attempted to further develop a Christology by
utilizating the 'concept of avatctre^ and continued the struggle to form
a new vocabulary of Hindu-Christian terminolgy that would be relevant
to both Hindu and Christian. He felt the religious experiences of
Hinduism had prepared the Indian heart for the gospel and that God
inspired Hindu Scriptures.

This South Indian trio of Christian writers contributed
greatly to the development of a distinctive Indian theology, which
tried to contextualize the Christian message for the Indian world, but
also acknowledged the spiritual validity of the religious experiences
of the Hindu tradition. Other theologians have also contributed; Paul
Devanandan articulated the terms of dialogue with Hinduism and set an
agenda for action. M.M. Thomas, who succeeded him as Director of the
Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, has

followed in his footsteps by continuing dialogue with both classicl
Hindusim and secuafr society. Thomas ' book, The Acknowledged Christ of
the Indian Renaissance is a sustained effort to place Christ in the
center of neo-Hindu thought that has developed since 1800, and
parrallels Raymond Ppnikkar' s effort in The Unknown Christ of
Hinduism to uncover Christ in traditional Hinduism. Panikkar believes
that Christ is present in Hinduism, albeit hidden, but because of that
hidden presence, Hinduism has been for many people an effective means
of salvation. Father Panikkar then understands Christian mission as
unveiling the Hidden Christ of Hinduism and so transforming it rather
than destroying it.

This has been a brief sampling of Indian thought: it is rich,
mysterious, baffling, surprising, and intriguing. I have extended this
survey to demonstrate its complexity, and to show how the overwhelming
Hinduism of India has forced Christians to wrestle with religious
pluralism, the relationship of Christianity to non-Christian faiths is
the central theological issue on the subcontinent . Let us now make
some concluding remarks on the subject of pluralism in India.

\J f '

Conclusion

The decisive turn taken by recent Roman Catholic theologians
has deeply effected the relationship between the Church and the world.
In Roman Catholic circles this has meant that the world is no longer
viewed as a hostile environment but the proper place of life, witness,
and service for a consecrated community. The church is no longer a
place to escape from the contaminations of the world, but a community
that is determined to transform the world. This change is remarkable,
and has led to renewed theological energy in Latin America, Africa,
and Asia.

This view poses new questions for evangelicals. The
traditional Protestant understanding of missions has been that the
world was lost and that God wants to send us to help save it. It is
quite startling to propose that perhaps the "heathen" were never lost
in the first place, or, "lost to us but known to God". Protestants
must do some deep rethinking of the traditional answers proposed by
them about the relationship of God to the world and the extent of
God's revelation. Is natural revelation sufficient to condemn? If so,
has there been special revelation given to others in the form of
Scripture, insights or oral tradition? Up until the twentieth century
Westerners were smug in their belief in the superiority of their
culture and faith. They never stopped to ask these questions. This

does not undermine the belief that the revelation in Christ is the
highest and clearest revel'tjaion of God; Yet it acknowledges the
activity of God in the world through other mediums.

This proposition understands the will of God as positively
directed towards the salvation of all humans. It also asserts that
where there is a will, there is a way. God is able to reach out to the
searching heart by grace through faith to minister salvation through
Christ through the concepts and forms of other religions. This
requires a loosening of the dogmatic Western approach to salvation,
which postulates salvation as dependent on orthodoxy in faith as well
as praxis yet It meets the Old Testament requirements of "faith".
Although the notion of a "hidden Christ" of Hinduism is novel to this
writer, it is dangerous to underestimate God or to limit his grace
according to our own theological formulations . Our rational, orthodox
understanding of Christianity as a doctrinal or dogmatic system must
shift to an existential experience of Christ; even if this experience
does not fit our accepted patterns of orthodoxy.

The question this study of pluralism raises is "what is
tneology?" Traditionally, it has been the study of God and doctrine as
understood by examining the authoritative sources for this knowledge,
i.e., the Scriptures . However, it raises the question of whether the
world itself can be understood as a revelation of God's activity. This
takes seriously the dynamic quality of all religions and tries to
interpret them in light of their authentic religious experience. The
fact that several Indian theologians have questioned the value of the
Old Testament for India must lead each of us to re-evaluate their
Scriptures as authentic vehicles of Divine revelation. If so, they may

be of value for us. Since we have Christ as our revelation of God, He
is the center of our theology. There is no way any Christian can yield
on the uniqueness or the universality of Christ and still be faithful
to the New Testament. Nor can we endorse synthesis of Hinduism and
Christianity into a new religion. Yet the New Testament claim that
salvation is "only in Jesus Christ" need not be understood to mean
that God is only revealed in Christ and nowhere else. Rather, the God
who is revealed everywhere is the one and only God who is revealed in
and through Jesus.

We must be cautious in lowering the levees on the stream of
salvation. I do not deny what I perceive to be the reality of dam-
nation. Yet I find it difficult to render so many people to damnation
because of what seems to be a failure on the part of Christians to
spread the news. Although I recognize a remnant theme in Scripture, I
fail to see how Christ's coming into the world could be such a failure
that barely a third responded. Surely the great victory of God's
incarnation and redemption was more successful .

The analogy which is advanced in support of this is the Old
Testament example. Certainly the Old Testament views of God as
vengeful, jealous, and at times blood thirsty, are not sustained in
the New Testament. It is questionable whether the average Isrealite
under Moses, Joshua or David had a very clear understanding of the way
of salvation, the who of salvation or what salvation meant. Yet a

ftJV\

community of faith continued. Although mixed with falsehood ©£
superstition, people came to know an "unknown" Christ of the Old
fst ament.

The model for religious pluralism in Hinduism can also follow

. - mU

' r - >«- J ^

j.„ A

rJ~( v.

a. ;v

ilf '

' j ; xi

■jt

on$ which has received greater acceptance in Protestant circles-
Messianic Judeaism. These are Jews who have converted to Christianity
and acknowledge Christ as the fulfillment of their religion. Because
they have evolved out of the Old Testament, they have been accepted as
an authentic expression of contextualized Christianity . Perhaps in the
future we will be able to accept on a similar level with the Hindu
Christians and Muslim Christians.

What this challenge has to offer to Christianity is a
stretching of its theological vistas. Each culture has a
distinguishing characteristic and approach to life. If the Western
approach is rationalistic, scientific, and dogmatic, then the Indian
approach is metaphysical and poetic. The Chinese approach is
humanistic and relational while the African is communal. The Latin
American experience grows out of poverty and domination. Each can add
to our total understanding of God's revelation in the world instead of
the one (the Western) serving as the criterion to evaluate all the
others. Consider Michaelangelo' s famous statue of David in the Vatican
as an example. Viewed from the front, the young King appears boyish,
almost feminine with smooth features and delicate frame; yet if one
views this same statue from the rear, the rippling muscles of a
powerful man emerge. One man, two views. Or consider the famous Hindu
parable about the blind men who are asked to describe an elephant: the
one who grasps the tail declares the elephant to be like a snake. The
one who touches the leg perceives the elephant to be as a tree. The
one who feels the belly declares the elephant to be as a great
boulder. Each is right, yet each is tragically wrong for they all
failed to perceive the whole picture. The comparison to the Western,

This tentative solution does not answer the problem of
exclusiveness. The question of whether a Hindu is saved "in spite of",
"in", or "through" his or her religion can still be posed. These
suggestions in no way yield to the exclusiveness of Christianity .
Other faiths are seen containing the seeds of the faith, but the
uniqueness, universality, and fulfilling revelation of God remains in
Christ.

To the three types of pluralism: substantial, distributive,
and unitive (pg.J) I would add one more - hierarchal pluralism. This
pictures Christianity at the apex and other faiths in descending

planes ordered in relationsijhp to it. This type acknowledges certain
truth claims in other faiths and even the possibility of salvation
being present in them but reserves the primary place for Christ. I
find this the most attractive alternative, for I am not able to
essentially yield on the uniqueness or universality of Christ but I am
willing to be open to what God may be doing in other cultures. Thus I
reject the Evangelical Fundamentalist position which understands
Christianity as the only truth revealed by God. I affirm the liberal
protestant position that Christ is the true light which enlightens
every person who comes into the world. I rejoice in the notion that
all humans are saved by grace, and that faith is itself a gift of God.
I find the propositions advanced by Rahner both thoughtful and
attractive. It combines sensitivity to other faiths with
acknowledgement of God's universal activity, and unites this to a high
view of Christ. I believe that this offers a real basis for dialogue,
acceptance, and mutual learning which can explore these possibilities.

I admit that my conclusions in this paper startle me. I am not

1 kv ) "

UvV> W

11/ $

Uv-/

A 7

d.c . ,

m) '

Mw'

ike

„,JLW p- 1 11

\ U .
y

! i v--v

1'
(0 S i'v-'rt

,JW ^

i/vi 4

sure whether I have been swept away by a new idea or have made a
permanent shift. The danger in this is an all too apparent syncretism.
Yet, it is a syncretism which is measured by an attempt to find the
most liberal view of God's grace to all humans. How can we limit God's
grace to the individual? Few Christians claim to be infallible in all
points of doctrine or practice - Yet we believe God's grace is active
in our lives. The question remains, where do we draw the line? The
general concensus of recent thought is toward a widening of the
circle. We can draw the line of orthodox Christianity at Nicene
orthodoxy , but we cannot maintain this as the limits of God's saving
grace.

\f.r\( V't'i '"v' *

to '

m &

t wO , r*rs'

The development of Indian theology provides a concrete example
of a non-western church struggling to relate to its faith to other
religions. We clearly see two facts; first, the attempt to translate
the kerygma of Christ into the philosophets of a different culture;
and secondly, the gradual realization by some that Hinduism hall
definite value, truth, and perspective which illuminated their search
for God. The proposal that Indian Scriptures are the Old Testament for
India cannot he lightly dismissed, even if they were rejected for
liturgical use by the Vatican. The current argument by major
theologians that they contain seeds of truth must be evaluated and
answered. This is perhaps the finest example of contextualization of
substance. Sadhu Singh's belief that Christ was the fufillment of
Hinduism leads us to recall our Lord's own statement, "I came not to
destroy, but to fulfill". To what was Christ referring? Sundar Singh
believed it was Hinduism.

Is there an unknown Christ of Hinduism? This question can

END NOTES

1. Lesslie Newbigan, "The Gospel Among the Religions" in Mission
Trends #5, Faith Meets Faith, New York, Grand Rapids: Paulist
Press, Eerdman's; 1981, pg. 3- 19. Originally published in
The Open Secret; Sketches for a Missionary Theology, Grand
Rapids; Eerdmans, 1978, Pg. 190-206.

2. Karl Rahner, "Christianity and the Non-Christian Religions",

i n Theological Investigations , Vol. 5, Baltimore: Helicon

1969, pg. 116-118.

3. David Barrett, World Christian Encyclopedia , Nairobi:

Oxford University Press, 1982, Pg. 796.

4. For this section I relied on Paul Knitter, No Other Name?

A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Towards the World
Religions . MaryKnoll, New York: Orbis, 1985, pg. 21-70.

5. Arnold Toynbee, An Historian’s Approach to Religion,

New York: Oxford Univesity Press, 1956, pg. 262. See also

Paul Knitter, above citation, pg. 38-39 for his analysis
of the central themes in Toynbee's philosophy.

6. Knitter, op. cit., pg.44.

7. Ibid. pg. 59.

8. St. Cyprian, Epistle 51:24. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 5,

Grand Rapids: EErdmans, 1951, pg. 333.

9. St. Cryprian, "treatise on the Unity of the Church", 1:6 in
above citation, pg. 421.

10. Barrett, WCE, op. cit., pg. 71.

11. Lausanne Covenant, Chapter 3, "The Uniqueness and Universality
of Christ", in Let the Earth Hear His Voice, Minneapolis:
Worldwide Publications, 1975, pg. 3

12. Student Volunteer Movement Slogan.

13. Theological Students for Frontier Missions.

14. See John Stott, "Dialogue, Encounter, Even Confrontation",
in Mission Trends #5, op. cit., pg. 156-172.

15. Newbigin, op. cit. pg. 10.

16. Hans Kung, On Being A Christian, Garden City: Image, 1984,

pg. 89-ff.

17. Rahner, op. cit., pg. 119-121.

18. Gregory Baum, "Christianity and Other Religions: A Catholic

Problem", Cross Currents # 16, 1966, pg. 461.

19. Barrett, NCE, op. cit., pg. 370.

20 . Ibid . pg . 372

21. Herbert Wolf, "The Hindu Tradition", in Great Asian Religions,

C. Fry, J. King, E. Swanger, H. Wof. Grand Rapids: Baker,

1984, pg. 33-64.

22. Walther Buhlman, The Search for God, Maryknoll, New York:

OrbiSf-^ii , 1980, pg. 98-113.

23. R.H.S. Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology,

Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1969, pg. 38.

24. Ibid., pg. 55.

25. M.M. Thomas, The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance,
Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1970. Pg. 104.

26. Boyd, op. cit., pg. 69.

27. Ibid, pg. 107.

28. G.C. Oosthuizen, Theological Battlegrounds in Asia and Africa,

London: Hurst, 1972, pg. 18-21.

Oosthuizen is overly critical of Appasamy's work, chiefly
because it does not conform to the rigid Calvinism which he
prefers. Oosthuizen is a dogmatic theologian who cannot
tolerte vagueness in theological works. He seems to find
fault with every theologian who steps outside of traditional
Western formulations.

H.I.. HIM-

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barrett, David. World Christian Encyclopedia, Nairobi:

Oxford Univesity Press, 1982.

Boyd, R.H.S., An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology,

Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1969.

Braybrooke, Marcus, The Undiscovered Christ, Madras: Christian

Literature Society, 1969.

.Together to the Truth, Madras: Christian Literature

Society, 1971.

Buhlmann , Walbert. The Search for God, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1980.

. The Coming Third Church, Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1976.

Camps, Arnulf. Partners in Dialogue: Christianity and Other

World Religions , Maryknoll, New YOrk: Orbis, 1983.

Chethimattam , J.B.. Unique and Universal: Fundamental Problems

of an Indian Theology, Bangalore: Dharmaram Pu b 1 i c a t ion s , 1 9 1 9 7 2 .

Dhavamony, M . . Evangelization, Dialogue, and Development , Rome:
Universita Gregoriana Editrice, 1972.

Fry, Geogre. King, J., Swanger, E., Wof, H., Great Asian Religions
Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984.

Griffiths, Bede. Christian India, New York: Scribners, 1966.

Howard, Paul. No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian

Attitudes Towards the World Religions. Maryknoll, New York:

Orbis, 1985.

Kraemer, H. The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World,

London : 1938.

Kung, Hans. On Being a Christian, Garden City, New York:

Image , 1978 .

, The Church , New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967.

Oosthuizen, G.C.. Theological Battlegrounds in Asia and Africa.

London: Hurst, 1972.

Parrinder, Geoffrey. Upanishads, Gita and Bible, London: Faber and

Faber, 1962.

Rahner, Karl. Theological Investigations, Vol. 5, Baltimore:

Helicon, 1969.

Tamilnad Christian Council. A Christian Theological Approach to
Hinduism , Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1956.

Thomas , M . M . .
Madras :

Anderson , G . ,
New York

The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance
Christian Literature Society, 1970.

and Stransky, T.. Mission Trends, 5 Volumnes,

Grand Rapids: Paulist, Eerdmans, 1974-81

E. Earl Carver
School of World Mission
Fuller Theological Seminary
Pasadena, California 9II82

March 28, 1987

Dear Respondent:

First of all I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to you for participating in
my survey of opinions among "mi ssiol ogically minded persons" regarding the
spiritual state of the unevangelized. Many respondents showed incisive in-
sight, made quite pertinent comments, and suggested relevant references. To
these I owe special thanks.

The questionnaire was sent to the persons in the United States and Canada whose
names and addresses were published in the April, 1986 issue of Missiology. It
was feared that if it were sent to foreign countries that problems of com-
muni cation would be greater than desired. This decision produced a prepon-
derance of respondents from these countries.

454 questionnaires were sent out. Four were returned marked "undeliverable."
244, or 54.2%, responses were received. 155 persons (63.5% of the respondents)
modified their answers or gave an alternative answer to at least one question
in written comments. These written comments are quite possibly more signifi-
cant than the answers without comment. 216 persons requested information on
the results.

The accompanying pages indicate the total of answers for each question. A
detailed analysis will appear in my dissertation, which should be finished
later on this year.

Thank you for the privilege of corresponding with you and sharing with you the
results of the questionnaire.

Most sincerely

E. Earl Carver

QUESTIONNAIRE

TO DETERMINE OPINIONS OF MISSIOLOGICALLY-MINDED PERSONS
CONCERNING THE SPIRITUAL STATE OF THE UNEYANGELIZED

ANSWERS GIVEN BY THE 244 RESPONDENTS:

I. I consider myself to be

100 a. very highly motivated to win converts to Jesus Christ.

1 between 'a' and 1 b ' .

116 b. motivated to win converts to Jesus Christ.

11 c. not very motivated to win converts to Jesus Christ.

3 d. not at all motivated to win converts to Jesus Christ.

10 e. Other. (Please explain on answer card.)

3 No answer.

II. I consider the Christian denomination (or movement or organiza-
tion) to which I belong to be

99 a. highly interested in winning converts to Jesus Christ.

108 b. interested in winning converts to Jesus Christ.

2 between ' b ' and * c ' .

25 c. not very interested in winning converts to Jesus Christ.

1 d. not at all interested in winning converts to Jesus Christ.

6 e. Other. (Please explain on answer card.)

3 No answer.

III. In regard to communicating the Christian message, I believe that
199 a. as far as it is possible, Christians should reach every human being

in world with the message of Christ's salvation.

15 b. Christians should make reasonable, but not necessarily heroic, ef-
forts to reach the unevangelized with the Christian message.

3 combination of 'a' and 'c'.

12 c. it is not imperative to reach every human being with the message of

Christ's salvation. In his own good way God will take care of those
who do not hear.

1 combination of ' c ' and ' d ' .

4 d. one should not try at all to induce people of other religions to

accept Jesus Christ.

8 e. Other. (Please explain on answer card.)

2 No answer.

IY. In regard to non-Christian religions I believe that
21 a. Christianity is the only true religion and that all other religions
should be considered as false.

2 combination of 'a' and ‘ b ' .

114 b. there may be some truth in other religions, but there is no other way
of salvation other than accepting the Christian gospel message.

8 combination of ' b ' and ' c ' .

73 c. there is some truth in most religions and, in the absence of the
Christian revelation, God may use such religions and/or “natural
revelation" to bring persons to a knowledge of himself.

1 combination of ' c ' and ' d ' .

1 combination of 'a', ' b ' , and ' c ' .

7 d. all religions lead to the salvation of the people who practice them

sincerely.

15 e. Other. (Please explain on answer card.)

2 No answer.

-170

43 b.
14 c.

0 d.

10 e.
3

V. I believe that Christians should

persuade as many people as possible, worldwide, to accept Christ as
their personal Savior,
combination of 'a' and ' b ' .

preach the gospel message as widely as possible, but leave it entire-
ly to the individuals whether to accept or not, i.e., not make any
special effort to persuade them to accept the message,
preach the gospel message to practicing and non-practicing Chris-
tians, and to those of other religions who show some initiative and
desire to know about and possibly accept Christianity
not attempt at all to disseminate the Christian message among those
of other religions.

Other. (Please explain on answer card.)

No answer.

100

a .

VI. Regarding the eternal destiny of a person who has never heard the
gospel, I believe that

the person who has never accepted Jesus Christ has no opportunity of
being saved, even though the choice has never been presented to him.
combination of 'a' and ' b ' .

since such a person is responsible neither to the Law nor to the
Christian gospel, he will be judged by his conscience, and may be
eternally saved or lost, accordingly,
combination of ' b 1 and ' c ' -

since such a person never had the opportunity to accept Christ while
on earth, an opportunity will be provided in the life hereafter to
accept or reject Christ.

those who do not hear and believe on Jesus Christ will simply cease
to exist.

combination of ' b ' and * e ' .
combination of ‘ c ' and Je'.

since God wills the salvation of all persons, none will be lost, in-
cluding those who have never heard the Christian message,
combination of 'a' and ’ f ' .
combination of 1 b ' and ' f * .

it is not possible to know the eternal destiny of those who have not
heard the Gospel. God has not revealed this to us. I have no
opinion.

None of the above descriptions fits my belief exactly. (Please
explain on the answer card.)

"Those who have not heard are not responsible."

"They must cast themselves upon God's mercy."

No answer.

VII. I believe that in order to be accepted of God and enter heaven
the only way is for one to accept the historical Christ as one's
personal and exclusive Savior,
combination of 'a' and ' b ' .

those who have heard the gospel explained must accept it to be saved;
for those who have been deprived of the gospel other provisions have
been made.

it is only necessary for people to practice their religion faith-
fully.

no one will be damned, whether or not the person has followed his
religion faithfully.

Other. (Please explain on answer card.)

No answer.

VIII. Of the following statements by well-known theologians and

missiologists, the one that best expresses my belief is:

a. Because of their "spiritual sinfulness and estrangement from God
... the heathen are lost and are doomed, unless saved [by hearing
about Jesus Christ and accepting him as Savior], unto eternal death."
combination of 'a' and 4b‘.

b. "In the light of Romans 2:6-7 we must not completely rule out the
possibility, however remote, that here and there throughout history
there may have been the singular person who got to heaven without the
full light of the gospel. "

combination of 'a' and ' c 1 .
combination of 'b4 and ’ c ' .

c. "If a pagan surrenders himself in faith, in some obscure but real
way, to the one true God in Jesus Christ, of whom he is perhaps only
dimly aware under a hundred concealing veils, and if he then shows
forth this faith in works of love, then he can be saved."
combination of ' c 1 and ' d ' .

d. "We ought at least to admit the equal rights of the milder view,
namely, that through the power of redemption there will one day be a
universal restoration of all souls."

e. None of the above fits my belief.

No answer.

Socio-demographic information:

Nationalities:

USA-225; Canadian-8; British-2; Italian-1; Swiss-1; No answer-7.

Ethnic group:

White (Ethnic groups which are easily assimilable were assumed to be
assimilated and included in this group. Not all were WASPS, however, for
there were a significant number who were not Protestant, and many who were
not Anglo-Saxon. ) -222 .

Hispanics-2; Black-1; Chinese-1; Korean-1; No answer-17.

Capacities in which respondents have served (3 allowed per person):

Missionary-173; Instructor-153; Administrator (usually of a missions
organization or of a missions school )-120; Pastor-35; Para-Missionary
Activity-10; Researcher-5; Evangelist-5; Consultant-4; Translator-3;
Author-2; 1 each: Minister, Lay Person, Nun, Strategist, Missiologist,
Musician.

Denominations:

Roman Catholic-27; Southern Baptist-22; Presbyterian USA-20; Baptist (non-
specific)-^; Mennonite-12; United Methodist-11; Epi scopal -10; Non-denomi-
national or independent-9; Christian and Missionary Alliance-8; Evan-
gelical Free Church of America-7; United Church of Christ-7; Lutheran
(non-specific)-7; Conservative Baptist-6; Presbyterian (Non-specific)-6;
Reformed Church-6; Brethren in Christ-4; Christian Reformed Church in
North America-4; Church of the Nazarene-4;

3 each: Seventh Day Adventist, Church of God (Anderson), Lutheran

(Missouri Synod), Missionary Church.

2 each: North American Baptist Conference; Presbyterian Church in

America, Evangelical Covenant Church, Assemblies of God, Conservative
Congregational Christian Conference.

1 each: Pentecostal (non-specific), Friends, Pilgrim Holiness, Grace

Gospel Fellowship, Baptist Central Conference, Evangelical Congregational,
Moravian, American Baptist Church in the U.S.A., Fellowship of Christian
Assemblies, Free Will Baptist, Church of God (non-specific). Free
Methodist, Methodist (non-specific). Orthodox Presbyterian, Evangelical
Presbyterian, Associated Reformed Presbyterian, Wesleyan Methodist,

General Association of Separate Baptists, Salvation Army, Bible Church.

Some reported the missions organization rather than a denomination:

Wycliff Translators-2; and 1 each: Africa Inland Mission, Siloam
International, TEAM, Oriental Missionary Society.

No answer-7.

Fields of labor (Two allowed for each person. Too many countries to be
meaningful ) :

Western nations-100; Africa (except Egypt)-56; Eastern Asia-52; Latin
America-46, Oceania-26, Near East-12, Non-Latin Caribbean-9; More than two
areas-20.

World Council of Churches
Central Committee
August, 1962

THE FINALITY OF JESUS CHRIST IN THE AGE OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

by Principal John Marsh

Fathers and Brethren:

You have prescribed for me a large theme, and I must quickly proceed to it.

But you will, I hope, pardon this brief preparatory glance at something at the
opposite pole to universal history, namely, my own personal and private history. It
was on 21st June, 1962 that Dr. Bilheimer brought to me in Oxford the request of the
General Secretary that I should read a paper to this august and learned Central
Committee. I knew, even without an impending visit from Queen Elizabeth the Queen
Mother to Mansfield that this request from Dr. Visser 't Hooft was really a command;
so as an obedient Chairman of a Division, I agreed to obey. But what hindrances
Providence has put in the way of my obedience! An international Congregational
Council at Rotterdam where my appearance without any major commitments was the signal
for my incarceration into one sub- committee after another, and my hope of having the
paper finished by the end of the Council vanished. There were domestic difficulties
with an injured son, and I ask your indulgence therefore if I no longer set out with
any pretence to read you a paper, but at this late date simply raise a few problems
that seem to confront us as we set ourselves the task of planning some successful
study on this large theme.

"The Finality of Jesus Christ in the age of Universal History." It would take
a longish essay even to expound this title; I can only raise a few questions that it
poses to my mind. And first: " the age of Universal History." The definite article
is noteworthy and, I suppose, deliberate. It is intended to remind us that in a way
quite unknown before, human history has become recognized as one, in a sense that
was unknown and indeed impossible, in previous ages. Hitherto, it is implied,
peoples, nations, continents could live within their particular histories, unaware
of, and not needing to be aware of, the particular histories of other people, nations,
continents. But today, not even Tibet, not even the lordy islands of the ocean are
able to survive as isolated entities, but are obliged to realize, in varying ways,
that each unit is bound up with a whole of which it is but a part.

And yet the title says not only "the age of Universal History," but "the age of
Universal History." If History be truly universal, it surely cannot be so for one

age, or start to be so for one age. Either history is universal in all its ages, or

it is not truly universal at all. Our title, that is to say, wants to remind us not
only that in this particular era of a history that is universal we have become, many
of us for the first time, aware of the fact that it is universal, but that, whether

we have known it or not, history has all the time been universal. And this as I

understand it, is the implication of the whole biblical tradition. When, in the
years, as I suppose, of the Babylonian Exile, the Priestly writers of Israel seized
upon the myths of Babylonia about the creation of the world, and made them serve the
high monotheism of their belief in Yahweh, they were in effect saying, as they pre-
faced the great sagas of Israel’s history with this demythologized Babylonian mater-
ial, "our Israelite history, particular and local as it is, is in the end but part of
a general, indeed universal history, so that it can be taken as part of what Yahweh
began when he first, in the beginning, created heaven and earth."

-2-

Simfl.arly in the New Testament, the "story of Jesus" is never seen as something
that is contained within itself. (Nor, for that matter is any historical story ever

so seen). Mark sees it beginning with the story of John the Baptist, and even his

mission, clouded with mystery as it is, he recognizes to have been that precipita-
tion into the present of some recognizable elements from Israel's past in the
prophecies of Isaiah and Malachi, much as today many Britishers would see any

yielding to Moscow as an intrusion into the present day of Chamberlain and his

journey to Munich with its tragic appeasement. Matthew traces the story back, with
the aid of a genealogy, to the very beginning of an historical "Israel," to Abraham,
Luke traces it even farther back, to the very beginning of humanity, to Adam, while
John, with an insight matching the deepest in the scriptures, begins it, as the
priests of old, "in the beginning," with God.

It would be idle to pretend that throughout its history the Christian Church
has always been conscious of these things. But it would not be too much to claim,

I think, that in her attempt to evangelize the world, the Church has been staking a
claim that all history really belongs to her. She has wanted to see "one Lord"
throned in proper dominion over his "one world" - and if that consummation is ever
to be seen by men in this terrestrial history, then it will be plain that all the
many streams of human life that eventually join in Christ's one kingdom will in fact
have become part of one history, and that His story.

Meanwhile, we live in an age where the effects of the Church's evangelism, with
its implicit claim to be the only true bearer or subject of history, has had wide-
spread effects throughout the world. In particular, the other great religions of
the world are living in a time after Christ. Their present resurgence, their
strenuous attempts to modernize themselves and their doctrines, may be seen in depth
as an attempt to claim a part in the universal history which, we are all coming to
feel, we all share. In some sense I would think this the depth of their claim; and
there is a real sense in which I think their claim should not be resisted. For from
the standpoint of Christian faith it has to be asserted both that they have been part
of the Christian story, and that Christ has been part of theirs. Again, this kind
of thinking, difficult though it is, is not strange to the biblical tradition. In
various ways and with different emphasis it appears in the assertion that God hard-
ened Pharaoh's heart; that he raised up the Assyrian as the rod of his anger; that
he had a "strange" work to do in the history of men; that the Word was in the world,
and the world received him not, that he came to his own, and his own would not accept
him; that Jesus was, by God's deliberate will given up to wicked men to be cruci-
fied - and so I could go on. Positively and negatively both the non-Christian and
the Christian religions are related to the one central story of all history, the
story of God's creation of the world, and of its redemption, by the same Word,
creative, incarnate, crucified, risen, ascended, triumphant.

But it is not only the great religions of the world that are coming to be aware
of the inescapable unity of the history that men share in every part of their life.
The great nations and power blocks have come to see the same thing. But though it
is seen that history is one, or, in other words, that what any one nation does is
bound to affect what all the other nations do, or suffer, this fact is seen from a
world more divided, and more tragically divided, than ever before. Never before has
it been so plain to so many people that the histories of the peoples are really one
and indivisible; and never before have men lived in such isolation, for our present
estrangements are not, as they once were, geographical, easily to be conquered by a
ship or an aeroplane; but our isolations now are ideological and political, strength-
ened by fears, suspicions, ignorance and an insatiable lust for power.

-3-

It is in such an age of universal history that we are asked to speak of the
finality of Jesus Christ. Our title rightly asks us to speak of his finality _in
history, not simply his finality for history. The meaning of this distinction is
plain, and very important. It might well be held that what was final for history
was not something that was, or is, or ever could be, _in history. Indeed some inter-
pretations of the Christian, mistaken as I should hold, have come perilously near
maintaining that even the Christian faith does not conceive of what is final for
history as having been, in any strict sense of the term, _in history. There are some
forms of the eschatological hope, those that are entirely futuristic, that would
come under this condemnation; whatever may be the defects of Professor Dodd's con-
ception of "realized eschatology" he has at least seen the importance of being able
to say that what is final for history is also something that has been jjn history.
Further, I should hold any sort of Christian Platonism of the kind that saw certain
values, such as beauty, truth and goodness as final for history as equally in error.
The really distinctive thing, as it seems to me, about our Christian faith, is that
it/is bound to assert that what, or rather He, who is final for history is also He
who is final Jji history. I must therefore take some slight exception to the way that
the generally excellent paper that has been circulated to us has been expressing the
way in which the New Testament understands the finality of Jesus Christ. This cannot
really be stated in terms of a contrast between present reality and future expecta-
tion. Indeed, as the paper rightly says, "the present study raises the issue from
inquiring in the first instance concerning the finality of Jesus Christ within
history." What kind of conclusions does such a procedure entail?

I want to say that the answer to this question cannot be given in a general
universal proposition; it cannot be formulated in any general philosophical or meta-
physical statement; it can only be stated in sentences couched in finite verbs of the
historic tenses, in such forms as are found in the historic creeds of Christendom:
"who was born of the Virgin Mary, suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead
and buried. He descended into hell. On the third day he rose again from the dead;
he ascended into heaven." But in what way may we understand such apparently normal
historical statements as "final" for history? The answer must be given in two parts:

First, it must be said that this set of statements in historic tenses is final
in the sense that they in some way describe all the events of history, even of uni-
versal history. They are, as Dorothy Sayers said in the preface to her remarkable
play, "The Man Born to be King," "the only thing that has ever really happened."

That is to say, they sum up, in their reality, all that preceded them, and expose
the depth of the reality of all that has succeeded them. It is as if a Britisher
were to take the unusual experience of this country at Dunkerque during the last war,
and were to see in it the disclosure of many a hair's breadth escape that his country
had had in the past, and were to keep it, as it were ready-made against any such
escape in the future, per chance at some time when again a British army were to be
swept ruthlessly towards the Channel ports, and again to be saved as by a miracle in
what doubtless others as well as Britishers were to call "another Dunkirk." So, for
the Christian, the Cross and Resurrection sum up in themselves all the great story
of God's dealing with his people Israel (Exodus, Exile and Return, etc.) and provides
a disclosure of the depth of the meaning of all subsequent events, from disasters
like the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD to the historic tragedies of modern times, and
the more personal histories of individual men, in their virtues and vices, their
failures and successes, their life and their death.

But the second thing that has to be said about such historic statements as we
find in the creeds is that they represent not only a set of assertions of different

-4-

events in history, but even more they tell of one unique act of God in history, by
which, at a given place and at a given time, he redeemed his world. In other words,
whatever men may learn about the eternal nature of God from the Gospel , and I assume
that they may learn much, the Gospel as such is literally ’’good news," a story of
something God has done. It is not just the successive statements of what Jesus did
and suffered during his "lifetime"; it is one statement, composed of several parts,
of one act that God has done, and by which he has reconciled the world to himself.

The finality of Jesus Christ then, is the finality of an act by which God has,
once and for all, irrevocably and ineluctably saved the world. The finality of
Jesus Christ consists in the fact that this action has been taken, in him and through
him, by God; and that nothing can undo it, or add to it, or detract from it. Like
the act of the first creation, this act of the new creation has been done, and it is
final. I have no easy answers to all the questions that these considerations arouse,
but we shall have to wrestle with the problems posed by thee facts that while his-
tory, as we may put it, began with the first creation, the new creation began, in a
very real sense within history. Quite clearly, it seems to me, the time relation-
ships of the old and the new creations differ from one another considerably. And
these differences are, I suspect, well worth exploring.

But above and beyond all the fascinating metaphysical questions that such an
enquiry would impose, there seems to me a great need for a renewed emphasis upon the

redemptive nature of the finality of Jesus Christ. If our document is weak, it seems

to me weak here. He is final because he is Saviour; he is Saviour because he has
been and is yet "in history",’ and he is relevant to all human thought in the age of

universal history because he is such an historic Saviour. But to place this emphasis

upon or within our studies will not be to seek a simple reiteration of older views
about the Work of Christ, or of doctrines of the Atonement. It will be to see the
whole historic character of our salvation in a new perspective, in which the whole
of human history, sacred and secular, Christian and non-Christian, comes to be seen

as essentially part of his one story. And seen in this way, not because we have

projected our stories into his, but because he has written his story into ours. As
an English poet wrote of him: "I’ll put into your story what I did."

But if the story of Jesus, so understood, is to be presented as the real sub-

stance of all history, what are we to understand by the word "Universal" in our
title? We must acknowledge that, at any rate in English, the word is highly ambigu-
ous. I do not think that in this area of the usage of our term we shall want to
limit it to mean "all the inhabited earth," meaning by earth just this planet on
which we chance to live. I take it that we are more concerned to pick up those
authentic trends of biblical tradition and affirm that Jesus Christ is final not only
for the history of our planet, but for even the vast universe of the modern physi-
cist. There will be many outside the Christian Church, and I suspect a few not un-
friendly ones inside it, who will say that the claim passes the limits of human
imagination. But that will be nothing new in the biblical tradition. What does the
language of Genesis 1, of Second Isaiah and Job and the Psalmist about creation mean
save that they have linked the world of nature and the history of man on this planet
with a life of God that is unimaginably greater than the, to them, vast earth of
their mortal pilgrimage? What does it mean that within forty years or so of the
death of Jesus Paul, or some other Christian apostle, is claiming for him that he
was "far above all rule and authority, and power, and dominion, and every name that
is named not only in this world, but in that which is to come." Paul stretches his
imagination, and ours, beyond its limit, in order that language might begin to con-
vey to men that transcendant act of salvation that God had wrought for his whole

-5-

universe in Jesus Christ. Today we are doubtless boggled in our attempts to imagine
what it is like to live in a universe where stars may be millions of light years
away from us; but, if we are to retain the insights of the biblical writers, we shall
still want to make the effort of imagination, or of some faculty perhaps transcending
it, and claim that even the story of so vast a universe is still, by the exercize of
God's power, the theatre of a salvation of the universe in Jesus Christ.

But from the vastness of an Einsteinian universe we must come to look at the
other meaning of universal - that of the inhabited world we know as our planetary
home, however much we may be at the starting point of making holidays, planetarily
speaking, abroad. On this earth, at any rate, we have had to learn in this century
of the solidarity of man. There can no longer be a British history, a French his-
tory, a Russian history, an African an American, an Australian history; while we
shall go on writing such histories for, I suppose, a long time, we know them to be
false, and false because they are partial, in both senses of that word. Humanity is
one, and its destiny is one, and in many ways is now acknowledged to be one. But
the world, as we noticed before, is nevertheless divided, more deeply divided than
ever before. What does it mean to speak of the finality of Jesus Christ in such a
world as this? What has the Christian Church to say to the world? What, in the
properly realistic question of our paper, does the Church expect to accomplish, or
to be able to accomplish, in this divided world?

To answer this question we must look at the problem, raised in the paper, of
what the Church may expect to secure in this world if she is ever able to establish
a "Christian Society." I would myself accept the valuable distinction drawn some
years ago by T.S. Eliot between "a Christian Society" and "a Society of Christians."
That is to say, it is quite possible to have a society whose life is based upon in-
sights into life deriving from Christian faith, without by any means every member of
the society being a committed Christian. On the other hand I should hold it impor-
tant to observe that even if there were to be established in this world a society
that was composed entirely of Christians, and even if they were all of one kind,
there would be no guarantee that the social and political order they established
would be wholly Christian, and certainly no guarantee that all their political,
social, legal, and moral judgements were either Christian or free from error or
folly. What the Church must expect to accomplish then is an ordering of society in
which is incorporated those insights into the nature of man and of human society
that derive from or are consonant with the Gospel. In the end this means, I venture
to think, that the Church is made for man, not man for the Church. We become
Christians in order to become men; we are not made men in order that we may become
Christians. Christianity is but the rehabilitation of manhood on this earth, even
at the same time that it is man's deification in the life of the world to come.

I want to say a brief word about the form of the Church in a world that is
dividely aware of its unity. It is idle to point out how very much involved in
contemporary society the Church is elsewhere, or has been in past ages, unless we are
prepared to learn that we are ourselves immersed in our own cultural forms and
social traditions. There is, as I believe, a constant tension between the given
form of the Church (whatever that may rightly turn out to be) and the actual form it
assumes in any given cultural or historical environment. It may, for example, be
permitted for a Congregationalist to hold that episcopacy is a given form of the
Church's life; but will it be equally happily permitted for him to observe that the
form that episcopacy has taken has varied a great deal from time to time, and from
place to place? And that whereas some forms of episcopacy were consonant with a
feudal social order, those same forms of episcopacy, if persisting into twentieth

-6-

century societies, are irrelevant and contrary to the forms of political and social
life today? But there is a further test of the form of the Church's life that I

want to mention. Paul writes of him who "did not count equality with God a thing to

be grasped at" as having "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant." If the
profoundest and yet the simplest truth about the Church's true life is that it is
not her own life, but a life that Christ is pleased to live in her, then it seems to
me that the Church must needs be found with her life in a servant's form. What does
this mean? That the Church is with man in his likeness and in his unlikeness to
God, as the coming in the flash of the Son of God was God's decision to be with man
his child in both his likeness and unlikeness to Himself. The form of the Church's
life, that is to say, must enable the Church to associate with man at his best and
at his worst, in his creativity and in his rebellion, in his vice and in his virtue,
and in both as the compassionate society that knows that man's true destiny does not

lie in seeking a terrestrial solution to the moral tensions and dilemmas of human

life, but only in accepting a heavenly gift of forgiveness and renewal, where man's*,
virtues and vices, where his creativity and destructiveness are both alike redeemed
from their power to estrange man from God, and God is once more found and known to
be man's chief end. If you ask me what sort of practical questions these considera-
tions raise, I would answer that they seem to me to ask questions about, for example,
the universally popular "parochial" form of the Church's life, to which even the
"gathered" churches to which I belong have for centuries subscribed. I believe that
whether or not the parochial system is to be replaced by some other, or supported&y
some extra-parochial forms of ecclesiastical life, there needs to be some quite new
forms of experience of the Church open to modern, industrialised, technological man;
and that we shall not find a way of evangelism until we have been much more radical
in thought and experiment than we have so far managed to be.

But if these are to be some of the thoughts that are to guide us for the Church
today, in what way are we to think of Jesus Christ as being "final" in the sense we
have described, i.e. in being the real subject of the history of this and all ages,
of out own and other people's religion, culture, politics and society? I can only
begin to sketch in an answer to these questions, which will surely have to receive
consideration if our work is to have integrity in our own eyes, let alone in the eyes
of others. I would suggest that perhaps the best way of expressing the reality that
is disclosed to us in our religion of an incarnation of the Son of God, is to say
that God is "complicit" in all our human activity, not indeed as one who is just
"alongside us" as an equal, but over us as Lord; yet not over us as one who has
destroyed our significance and integrity by taking away our freedom, but as one who
through the bestowal of freedom has sought a world where his creatures shall in the
end be freely bound to him in love and thanksgiving.

If we think of this complicity of God in a world that is divided, yet knows its
unity of destiny, we are surely able to see the relevance of the whole drama of the
incarnation, cross, resurrection, ascension and heavenly reign, as well as the signi-
ficance of the hope of a final consummation. For the cross was the bridging of the
unbridgeable gulf between man and God, between man and man, between man and woman,
between slave and free, between Jew and Gentile, between cultured and barbarian.

The good news of the gospel is that the really unbridgeable gulfs have been bridged
already, and that the secret of human, as well as distinctively Christian living, is
to live in the knowledge that the divisive powers in human life have been proved
finally impotent. What Christ has dready done, the story that he has already written
into our human story, has already given the final ending to the tragic divisions of
our own time. Whatever tragedies our present divisions may bring to us, or whatever
darkness we may avoid, we shall know that what takes place will be what has already

-7-

taken place at the cross, where the whole universal history was affirmed and reaf-
firmed as the story of God's reconciliation of an alienated universe to himself.

Yet the final unity that God has been pleased already to make known proleptical-
ly in our human history is not a mere undifferentiated monism, but a rich and har-
monious plurality in unity. There are, in our Christian thinking, two modes of ex-
pression which help us to see the rightful balance between plurality and unity. The
first concerns the Christian attempt, on the basis of the revelation of God in Jesus
Christ, to say something about the nature of God himself. This finds expression in
a doctrine of the Trinity, of three 'persons' in one 'God.' It is as if, for the
life of the blessed God it is necessary to have a unity that is not a mathematical
unit, but in itself a rich union of function and of being. The Godhead remains the
Godhead both because it is triune, and because the triunity never dissolves into a
triadic relation between three deities. This is the ideal, the proper unity in
diversity, from which all true unities flow. The second mode of expression of the
rightful balance of unity and diversity is found in the Christian conception of the
"creature." The creature is not, like a person of the Trinity, part of the Godhead;
he is, by divine intention in creation, separate from the deity: and yet, though so
separate, he is also by divine intention, purposed and destined to live only in
obedient and loving relationship to his creator. Man is, as it were, a satellite in
orbit, separate from the planet from which he has been launched, yet fulfilling his
function only as he remains in proper orbital relation to his launching base. It is
such reflections as these that must underlie what our paper has appropriately called
"the integrity of the secular." The world of creatures has been "set in orbit" by
the creator, given a life of its own, which it must live as its own, and yet must
live always as an "orbital" life, related at depth to God. The duties of the
Christian community then, are to respect the integrity of the secular, and so to
accept responsibility for it and within it, knowing that whatever the course of
history proves to be, God is complicit in it, and that its outcome is already
assured. In this sense at least the Christian must be a "man of the world."

I wish I had more time and space to take up further points. For example, what
does "conversion" to Christianity mean in the context of these thoughts'? It cannot
mean forsaking one history that has no meaning, or only negative meaning, leaving
one religion that has no truth for one that has nothing but truth. It is rather to
be made aware of the one history that lies in and beyond all histories, the one
universal history that underlies all particular and partial histories, even the
history of the Christian Church, the one history that is the history of one person,

God and man, one person, yet all persons as they come to live in him, Jesus Christ.

So finally it is worth saying a word about "fact" and the "consciousness of
fact." History has always been "universal," for us who are Christian because God
has always purposed his one purpose for the world. In varying ways men have dis-
cerned that universal purpose, sometimes, as in Israel and the Church of Jesus Christ
through what we have come to call revelation; sometimes, as in this present age, as
secular men and as secular societies, by the pressure of events forcing man to
realize his interdependence upon other men. To live in a given factual situation is
one thing; it may not make any difference to live in the same situation and know
what it is and how it works. But this cannot be true of the fact of history if what
Christians say is true, that the real substance of history is the story of Jesus
Christ. For that makes of history a realm of personal relationships, not only in its
inter-mundane events, but also in that area where the events of this world are related
to the life of God who is Lord. To know him as the centre and the substance of all

-8-

our human story is to have a new dynamic and a new hope, indeed a hope that is, as
the New Testament assures us, "certain and sure." To speak of the finality of Jesus
Christ in this age of Universal History, then, is to use the language of faith about
matters of fact, which is but to confess that "facts" are not always what they seem,
and that we who have put our trust in Christ look not only at the things which are

seen, which are temporal, but also at the things which are unseen, which are

eternal. And it is because in Him, Jesus Christ, that time and eternity, history
and what lies beyond history, God and man have been made inextricably one, and that

our eyes have seen him, and still hope to see him, that we can speak of him as the

finality of our history.

copied

JCS/nbs

8/22/62

World Council of Churches
Central Committee
August, 1962

THE FINALITY OF CHRIST IN THE AGE OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY
by Father Paul Verghese

What a vague, clumsy, and uninspiring title. But then, friends, that is the
way some of us theologians speak, and you have in sheer charity to put up with us.
Perhaps, some of you who are closer to reality would suggest for us an adequate
phrase which more inspiringly expresses the main point of our common quest.

It seems we have tried to load off too many of our urgent concerns into that
title. First, we are all honestly worried about the loss of assurance about any-
thing absolute in our secular culture. We want once again to affirm Him, our Lord
and Master, as the Alpha and Omega of all things. The phrases in which we expressed
the uniqueness or absoluteness of Jesus Christ are all worn thin; we need a set of
fresh concepts, which have some relevance to the life of the world, in which to
express our Christian Faith.

Secondly, our major intellectual rivals in Asia are also challenging the
Christian message precisely at this point of the Finality of Christ. Both Hinduism
and the varieties of Buddhism have now come of age and refuse to be bullied by the
Christian missionary condemnation of their religions. In fact they have taken the
battle into our camp, and the number of Buddhists and Hindus is steadily on the
increase in the West. New forms of syncretism are rising up all over Europe and
America, and we have to speak clearly the message of Jesus Christ in this context.

Some of my colleagues are also worried about "Religion in general," which seems
to become increasingly a concern of many good men everywhere. These good men see
the need for religion and are prepared to support any kind of religion. Religion is
good for morality. Religion makes good loyal citizens. Religion may be able to deal
with the juvenile delinquency problem, the divorce problem, and the many other
social problems. Religion gives a good emotional glow to our culture and makes us
feel a bit more secure. Prosperous nations and governments also seem to be deeply
interested in religion, because it helps to preserve order and loyalty, both abso-
lutely necessary for the efficient running of the economy.

Religion is thus in danger of being prostituted to serve our human ends, and my
friends are anxious to liberate the Christian message from the category of religion
altogether. There may be detected in this effort, especially by a cynic like me,
the attempt to rescue the old concern for "the uniqueness of Christ" from the in-
roads of the phenomenological and descriptive schools of comparative religion. How-
ever that may be, I feel quite sure that we cannot keep the Gospel in a vacuum. It
has to be embodied in the life of a divine-human organism, the Body of Christ, and
it is by no means fair or honest to make the contrast between the Gospel and
Religions. We must speak about the Church and other religious societies, and it
will be useful to create a special category called the "Christian religion" as dis-
tinct and separable from the Gospel. Our comparisons must not be between the
reality of other religious societies and an abstract concept called the Gospel,
which we are always tempted to equivocate with the whole of Christian teaching when
it so suits us.

-2-

The need to find genuine meaning and significance in the other religions, and
to extend the horizons of our ecumenism beyond the confines of the Church and the
"secular world" which is after all only a part of the world, has suddenly become
imperative and in our understanding of the Finality of Christ in the age of univer-
sal history, we must learn to assume a more positive attitude towards these rena-
scent religions, in order to achieve a truly oikumenical ecumenism.

Another of our concerns is the new shaking of the foundations in New Testament
scholarship. Of course this affects only those churches for whom the University
Professor is the main locus of authority in Hermeneutics, and a large part of the
Christian Church may not even detect the post-Bultmannist tremors even in a sensi-
tive theological seismograph. But some who are closer to the quake feel that some-
thing is happening to their foundations and are asking us for help. We have there-
fore along with our Finality study also to launch a Hermeneutics study.

But the fourth is our major concern. History is no longer a national affair.
Humanity is caught up in a common destiny, so obviously. We have to find the mean-
ing of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ in a manner that relates to the whole of
humanum and not merely to those who acknowledge the Lord and are incorporated into
the Body of Christ. We may even have to include the non-human elements of the world
in our doctrine of the Incarnation, since science and technology have revolutionized
our relationship to the physical world.

As our General Secretary says: "Post-Reformation Christian ity has lacked the
universal dimension. It has not developed a theology de humanitate and left it to
the philosophers to think in terms of mankind. We need to work out a Christo-
centric universal ism."

To put it rather bluntly, the question we need to ask is: "Is the rest of man-
kind merely the object of evangelism and service, or does God have a greater purpose
for the whole of mankind, including the Church?" If we answer yes, we have to go
further, and indicate some ways in which to state this purpose of God for the whole
of humanity.

These four major concerns of ours have all been loaded into our theme, and it
is obvious that we would not expect to explore all these areas here in Paris. What
I would seek to attempt with your permission and cooperation is simply this: to
sharpen the theme to one of its many foci and suggest a partial answer to the
question I have raised above.

A word then about the definition of our theme itself. Some of us think'
"finality" is a rich enough word. Others among us are not so sure, particularly
those who have no parallel word in their own languages which has the same richness.

I myself have only a vague awareness of what is meant by the word. And so there is
little I can do to clarify the theological meaning of the expression except to say
that when I use the word, I am thinking of the Sanskrit "Paramata" or Paramya of
Christ. In case you do not have the time to look up an English dictionary, here
are a few dictionary meanings for the word finality and final .

Finality = the state of being final. In philosophy, the doctrine that

nothing exists or was made except for a determinate end.

Final = Pertaining to the end or conclusion: last; ultimate: conclusive;

decisive; respecting a purpose or ultimate end in view.

-3-

You see the word is rich and every meaning of the adjective is applicable to
Christ. So we will have to keep all that in mind when we use the phrase.

Perhaps the word has a haughty ring to it, and non-Christians especially in our
little parochial Asian world will call us arrogant and conceited for using such a
phrase. Then perhaps that is what we are - arrogant and conceited - and we shouldn't
resent being called by our name.

Let us not bother too much about defining "universal history" except to pass on
a rather illuminating remark of our General Secretary:

In a sense history has always been universal. Is our age then the first
in which there is a consciousness of the universality of history? No,
for that consciousness began to develop in the 18th century. Our age is
an age of universal history in that the consciousness of participating in
universal history has itself become universal.

That may be a slight exaggeration when it comes to the masses of Asia, Africa,
and Latin America, and even some supposedly educated people in Europe and America.

But the point is clear enough.

Now the question that I propose to ask and suggest a partial answer is this:

God is at work in history. We all accept that. But what is God doing?

The partial answer:

He is doing many things which we do not as yet understand. But one
thing is clear . God the Holy Trinity in our time is working in all
things together (Romans 8:28), gradually but at a definitely stepped-
up tempo, to bring about an enhancement of the scope of human freedom,
human community and human tragedy, in order that man may grow into the
fullness of the mature manhood (Ephesians 4:13) of Christ the God-Man.

There is a further question: In what way does the Incarnate life of Jesus Christ
affect the life and destiny of the whole of mankind, even those who are outside the
community of faith?

To me the latter is the more interesting question. But I do not have the
courage to attempt even a partial answer to it in 20 minutes. I shall seek to do so
in a paper on some other occasion. In this present paper, I would like, with your
permission, to limit myself to the first question.

God the Holy Trinity. We ought to be careful not to separate too sharply the
Three Persons of the Triune God. We must resist the temptation to Christo-monism
and to the assertion that the Holy Spirit alone is working outside the Church. The
Father, Son and Holy Spirit are working together.

working in all things together. History is in a large measure the work of man.
But man often works for his own personal, group or national interests, and not
always for good. God who controls history takes the raw material of our decisions
and actions and puts them together to work towards His over-all purposes for makind .

-4-

gradually, but at a definitely stepped-up tempo: History is outrunning our

time-tables. The independence of the African nations, the sudden advances in space
research, and the breaking down of confessional and national barriers in the Church
and in Western Europe have all caught us by surprise. We should be on the alert
with eager expectation and yet with great patience, to watch for His clandestine
coming into the life of mankind.

Human Freedom

The question of freedom has often been posed in Western theology in the cate-
gories of Free-will and Predestination. Augustine started the debate in his De
Civitate Dei, but nearer to the end of his life retracted his main position against
free-will, a fact almost ignored by medieval and post-Reformation Theology. (See
Retractations I: xxiii) .

But the issue is hardly one of predestination and free-will. The nature of
freedom itself has to be explored. Freedom has been sub-divided in many ways by
many thinkers. But most of them make two assumptions which seem to me to be unten-
able when we speak of Christian freedom. First, most of the writers on freedom are
speaking primarily of a freedom of choice; and secondly, they usually speak of free-
dom as individual freedom.

We need to see freedom as essential to the nature of God Himself, and reflected
in humanity as Image of God in the form of a seminal potentiality. When we speak of
God's omnipotence, we are actually speaking of God's absolute freedom. Freedom is
more than merely the possibility of choice, but truly the possibility of realization,
of achievement.

Let me try to speak simple everyday language here. Am I free to be in India
physically in the next five minutes? That of course is not a question of choice,
but of power, of forces that prevent me from fulfilling what I desire, of agencies
that I lack. God is free in that by the sheer act of willing He realizes His pur-
poses. His freedom is commensurate with His power. And when we speak of human
freedom from a Christian standpoint we are not speaking of free-will as over against
predestination, nor are we thinking of the freedom of choice of the individual.

The Reformation set men free from the shackles of traditional authority in the
medieval European world. But this was basically an individual freedom, a freedom
which later paved the way for free enterprise capitalism and the missionary and
sectarian revolts against the organized Protestant Churches. The Reformation and
its individualist Gospel of freedom released forces whose mushrooming and fall-out
have begun to envelop the whole world.

As Jacob Burkhard puts it admirably:

In the Middle Ages both sides of human consciousness - that which was

turngJ^ifihMt Saiffiig nf^l f awake beneath a common veil .

The veil was woven of faith, illusion, and childish prepossession,

through which the world and history were seen clad in strange hues.

Man was conscious of himself only as a member of a race, people, party,

family or corporation - only through some general category.*

-5-

But in this very process of discovering himself as an individual as over against
other individuals, there is alienation both from the neighbour, and from nature.

And the uncomfortableness of this alienation has filled western man with doubt and
anxiety, and has ever since his liberation been driving him once again to new sub-
missions to authority, new identifications with mass movements, new urges to compul-
sive and often irrational activism.

While the Reformation brought freedom, it has not been able to train man for
the burden of freedom - that which we too lightly call responsibility. This train-
ing of man is the crying need of the day which God is imposing on us. We cannot
afford merely to develop a few super-men who are able to handle their freedom with
responsibility, while the others meekly accept their authority and surrender both
their freedom and their responsibility. We need to develop the freedom of the
totality of the human race.

So while we need to continue our fight for "the rights of man," for the free-
doms of speech, of worship, of minorities, of association, of conscience, and of
government, we have to expand the scope of our quest to reach for two different
realms of freedom as well.

The first realm still deals with the freedom of the individual - namely freedom
from internal constraints. But at the very point where the internal bondage breaks,
the kingdom breaks in and community begins to emerge. This is not simply a question
of believing in Jesus Christ for it was precisely to the believing Jews that Jesus
spoke His momentous words on Truth and Freedom:

Jesus then said to the Jews who had believed in him, "If you continue to

abide in my logos . you shall be truly my disciples, thus know the truth

and the truth shall liberate you." St. John 8:31-32.

The inner constraints are manifold and we only catalogue a select list: anxiety
guilt, fear of death, fear of being different, fear of losing approval and love,
fear to upset established patterns in which we find our security, the compulsive
drives of passion and hatred, envy and slander, bitterness and gossip, fear of
exposure, fear of loss of power and so on. Here is the tremendous need of the world
- western or eastern, Christian or non-Christian, educated or uneducated. And the
break-through in this area of freedom must come from the community of love, the
Church, where "for freedom Christ has set us free." This is a question of a genuine
Christian community of faith and forgiveness, of mutual acceptance and common wor-
ship and service. From the Church this freedom must spread to the world, just as
the concept of service has broken loose from the Church and is spreading into the
unbelieving world. There is so much to say here, but one can only find time to
indicate the area.

The second realm is one which is already receiving world-wide attention. This
is not freedom from, but freedom for. This is a question of considerable urgency
especially in those nations which have recently become free from the colonial bond-
age. There remains the whole question of economic colonialism and I think, also
intellectual and spiritual colonialism, which are highly loaded phrases likely to
alienate the sympathy of many among you. But the positive aspect of the freedom of
the new nations to be themselves can hardly be separated from these aspects of
western domination. To find their own identity - it is for this that the nations
are striving. Emancipation is the first stage - from external domination of any
kind; also from the uncritical enslavement to the past. But the second stage is the

-6-

slower and more laborious process of growing into full nationhood in a community of
nations, where no one dominates and all are free to be members in a relationship of
mutuality to other nations, in an atmosphere, of acceptance, forgiveness and coopera-
tion jb St ‘eo fcfie dmbses%snMssm Si t £ on belong s^fo the realm of

freedom. It raises a whole series of questions: economic and technological devel-
opment, the development of a pluralistic but harmonious culture within each national
unit which determines the fundamental aspect of the nation's personality, the
changes and adaptations that this calls for in the areas of education, pattern of
government, and social systems.

To summarize the answer in the area of freedom, God has enhanced the scope of
freedom for individual and social entities within the world-wide human society. He
is working to face us with new freedoms to be won, and the Church should be there to
work with men outside in the common quest of freedom - which is the power to be
one's own self in relation to other selves, and to grow by the mastery of power and
by its utilization for good ends.

Human Community

God has broken down many fences in our time, to throw us together. The commu-
nications media, economic interdependence of nations, the spread of education to the
masses and the levelling influence of a contagious urban- technological culture have
brought us together across many national, racial and class harriers.

The United Nations Organization and its allied agencies, in spite of their many
set-backs and failures, have created the nucleus of a total human organization on a
world-wide basis, something completely new in the known history of the world.

Just as God has been and is increasing the scope of human freedom in its
internal and external aspects, so also He is now working to increase the scope of
human community. The spontaneous communities of the middle ages in Europe as well
as in other parts of the world were after all parochial communities. They have
broken down. The urban- technological culture has demolished the old securities and
has thrown us together into the Lonely Crowd. It is there that we have to redis-
cover community, and that not by going back to an agrarian-rural economy. God has
placed us in front of a problem which frustrates us by its very magnitude. Here
again God works in history to place a challenge before man which he cannot solve
even in part without truly developing and growing together in the very process of
finding and executing that solution.

It may be possible for us et this point to seek many easy solutions - (1) to
retreat into oneself and find a purely personal adjustment to the loneliness and
meaninglessness of life - what some delight to call "acceptance of absurdity and
living with it" or (2) to escape into pietism and find a solution in pure "inner
spiritual development" or (3) to escape into the mass and drown the groan of inner
loneliness by joining the whirl of social or political activity, or again (4) to
seek a meaningful active vocation of service in which one almost uses other people
as a means of giving significance to one's own life.

But none of these can create community - not even the fourth alternative which
is most attractive to us as Christians. Some way has to be found at the foundation-
al levels of human association - in the family, in the school, in the local commun-
ity, in the local church, in the factory and so on - to break down the walls that
divide man from fellow-man. The forgiving, accepting, sustaining, secure love of

-7-

God must become so richly and deeply a matter of personal and direct experience to
each individual that he is enabled to face himself as he is and open himself to
others. This is the grass-roots level of community - also the grass-roots level of
genuine ecumenism. Ecumenism does not simply require that the local Methodist and
Lutheran congregations merge into one congregation, or are in a relationship of
mutuality to each other. The unity of the Church does not become a full reality
until at the inter-personal level there is forgiveness and openness and mutual
acceptance. This is something which has more meaning for the ordinary Christian
than the merger of the denominations.

I am not sugggsting that we should not do anything to bring the Churches to-
gether until we have dealt with the inter-personal problems at the level of "where
two or three are gathered together." My suggestion rather is that the small group
community of openness in love and concern, in common worship and common service is a
neglected area of our ecumenical work. The neglect of this level is sure to leave
an enormous gap in the full manifestation of the reality of Christ's unity, even
when the problem has been solved at other levels. This is the sort of thing which
cannot be tackled by the Welfare State, and at present the Church is in a better
position to start a contagion of openness than any other agency that God has in the
world .

But we must at the same time keep in mind the genuinely ecumenical dimensions
of the problem. If the whole oikoumene has to be involved in the new human commu-
nity towards which God is beckoning us, we cannot be satisfied with merely working
at the small inter-personal level. The power structures have to be reconciled to
each other too. And here God does place before us several concerns.

(a) The West and the East. I need not elaborate this area of concern, except to say
that our faith must be equal to the risks involved in taking bold action at this
point. Disarmament takes courage and faith and openness. Fear of the other still
hiding his true intentions and his murderous weapons is inducing both sides to hide
their hearts from each other. A break-through is necessary here. The charge of
"Fellow-travelling" or in more modern lingo, of being a "Com-symp" (Communist sym-
pathizer) is a frightening and tyrannical force in many parts of the world today,
disrupting community both at a world-wide and at national and domestic levels. The
Christian faith should be able to deliver us from our bondage to this tyranny.

Christ was and is the Master Fellow-traveller and we cannot afford to be less. He
was and is the "all-symp" and we have to share in his universal sympathy. The World
Council of Churches itself is hamstrung in its approach to Christians in the socialist
countries by the fear of being tarred and lampooned as "com-symps," even though the
smear campaign has already started anyway. Neither can we afford to neglect one
fourth of humanity in our human community by keeping People's China out of the
United Nations.

(b) The West and the Rest. I am not always sure that we can blame God for taking
the West into the rest of the world. Imagine the year 1450. Europe is a pretty
isolated place, ignorant of the rest of the world. And then suddenly it explodes.
Discovery of America, discovery of route around the Cape of Good Hope, the division
of the world between Portugal and Spain as areas of colonization, the wars in Europe
which expand into European world colonialism lasting until about 15 years ago. I
know some of my friends see God's hand in all this; but I see only the wrath of men
praising God.

-8-

But can we think that we have come to the end of Western dominance in the world
today now that political colonialism is practically liquidated? The true answer is
no. And we cannot have a world-wide human community so long as that dominance
lasts. Western man has slowly acquired the spirit of domination through the last
400 years. It will take him many generations to get rid of it. So he has a special
responsibility to be careful; for even when he thinks he is serving, he may actually
be dominating. I will say no more, for it is a very sore subject.

We have a need to think of how the European Economic Community, the African
regional federations, the Commonwealth and other regional or selective human com-
munities can contribute to the final emergence of a genuinely world-wide community.

Human Tragedy

Suffering is the constant companion of human existence. Obviously it is hard
to measure. My own general impression, however, is that its scope has increased in
our time. The up-rootedness of human life is becoming more universal today than it
ever was. Wars are more global in scope today. The catastrophic possibility of the
dissolution of the whole planet with all life in it also has become frighteningly
real in our time. In spite of our greatly increased humanitarian activities, the
impressive progress in medicine and our more comprehensive care for the disabled and
aged, we still have such vast proportions of human suffering to conquer yet.

It takes more optimism than facts allow to hope that the world without war and
without want which we hope to achieve in a foreseeable future, would also deal with
all the other aspects of suffering and that we would thus come into a golden age of
no suffering at all.

What then is God doing in our world by increasing the scope of suffering and
tragedy in our world? The agony of the burden of freedom itself is a major cause of
suffering. Our very efforts to relieve suffering does entail voluntarily accepted
suffering. Our alienation from neighbour and nature also causes intense suffering.
What is God calling us to do in the midst of this suffering? Of course there is the
imperative that springs directly out of the love of God, not only to relieve suffer-
ing, but also to share the suffering of men. But I wish here to speak of another
aspect of suffering to which God is calling us. I will call this the "tragic mode
of learning."

Learning is of the essence of human growth. And God's purpose is that the
whole of mankind may grow into the mature manhood of Christ. That is why education
is such an important concern to us. But how do we learn? I suppose all experience
is learning in a sense. But it may be fruitful to distinguish between the comic
mode of learning and the tragic mode of learning.

Eric Bently in his discussion of George Bernard Shaw's Comedies makes the
interesting point that the method of comedy is clarification of truth through the
ironic exposure of pretentious, false or hollow ideas. Comedy as distinct from
farce uses words to analyse truth. The inspired verbal commentary and dialectic
which dissects and exposes falsehood, however, asks for no identification of the on-
looker of the drama with the agents in it. We can watch it in detachment and learn
without pain.

-9-

Tragedy on the other hand has its power in the learning that comes to the
actors through suffering, and to the onlooker through participation in the suffering
of the actors. The essence of tragedy, I am told, is to affirm the dignity and
significance of man in a world of suffering.^ This dignity is reflected in man s
choice and his responsibility for the consequences of the choice. But it is not the
individual man who chooses, in isolation from others. His choice and action are
affected by other men and other forces , which have power over him. There are
limitations on the agent ' s naHRi A1.55 ^lincAicftf ^ i1^ no t

to offer a solution to the problem of human limitation and suffering but to provide
a clarification of the situation.

The tragedy, when it is authentic drama, does not pose the issues of good and
evil in black and white terms. The hero and the villain have both good and evil
mixed in them in varying proportions. Of course there are the demonic forces, like
Mephistopheles , the witches, Iago, etc. Their demand is for the soul of man, for
the surrender of basic humanity. But the triumph of the tragedy is not in the
destruction of evil, but in the dignified refusal to surrender one's basic identity.

As Hegel so brilliantly pointed out, the tragic struggle is not between good
and evil but between differing principles of right. It is unfair to oversimplify
this as choosing the lesser evil. The tragic probe is always to clarify the con-
flict in real human life between rival principles of right, and to unveil the hard
and by no means clear nature of the decisions we have to make in life.

Our scientific and academic approach to knowledge, discursive and analytical,
detached in general, belongs to the comic pattern of learning and is an essential
component of learning for maturity.

But the tragic mode of learning is the key to Christian Education. One is
frightfully worried about the great desire to educate the Church through an unending
stream of books, periodicals and mimeographed sheets, by the virtuoso or amateurish
performances of preachers for 20 minutes a week, taking advantage of the time when
the congregation puts on its most civil manner, and by those who think that including
or excluding a "subject" called religious instruction in the school curriculum and
the shape of that curriculum are the important keys to Christian education.

If we are to serve the Church and the world which in some ways is more mature,
we have to cut through the moralistic over-simplification of issues and teach our
people to learn by the tragic method, by the method of identification and involve-
ment, of suffering with and for the world, in order that we may learn wisdom. The
moral uprootedness of our time is again God working to destroy our over-simplified
concepts of good and evil. As Michael Polanyi so convincingly asserts, our age is
not an amoral age. It is rather an over-moralistic age. We are very much concerned
about moral issues, the burning questions of value, but we have found no acceptable
system. Youth is deeply interested in morality even when it rejects the convention-
al form of it.

To evolve an ethic of suffering love, to embody it and thereby manifest God to
the world - this is the great goal of Christian education. For this it must use the
tragic mode of learning, not merely the comic. By enhancing the scope of tragedy in
our time, God is forcing us to restructure our ethical vision. Our work of service
must grow into a labour of suffering love. In our time we have returned to a stoic
conception of suffering: suffering is to be relieved, but without ourselves sharing
in it, our own suffering is to be heroically borne alone, without showing any of it

to others. But suffering is the raw material out of which true faith and love can
be built, and there needs to be discovered a more Christian attitude towards suffer-
ing. In this we shall ourselves grow closer to the mature manhood of Christ, but
we will have to grow with the whole of mankind.

* * *

I have intentionally refrained from discussing the theological aspect of the
question: "How does the Incarnate life of Jesus Christ affect the life of unbaptized
man in the world?" Limitations of time prevent me from doing it here. But we must
get an image of humanity past, present and future as a single unit, the Great Adam,
flowing through time, and of the presence of the Incarnate Christ in this Adam as a
continuing phenomenon affecting the life of humanum in perceptible and imperceptible
ways .

The Lordship of Christ should not be misunderstood in this connection as an
arbitrary authority over the world. Our Lord's words to Pilate, the representative
of the Roman Empire, are significant: "My Kingship is not of this world, if ray
Kingship were of this world, my servants would fight, that I might not be handed
over to the Jews." (John 18:36). It is neither the law-and-order Kingship nor the
welfare state kingship. It is the kingship of suffering love. It is the kingship
that lays down its life for the world. And we are kings too, but my participation
in his kingship of suffering love.

The Finality of Christ in the age of Universal History is a strange finality -
the finality of the Cross and Resurrection - of life through death.

•* * -k

Will the unbaptized man be saved? God wills that all men be saved. Christ
wills that all men be saved. And He wills as He ought to will. And His will is:
"When the hour of destiny strikes, to gather together into one the whole Universe
in Him." (Eph. 1:10) Can that will be thwarted? No, for His will is commensurate
with His power. But how is His will to be fulfilled? That is a comic question.

Our task is to learn the answer slowly by the tragic method, by laying down our
lives for the life of the world.

^The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, 1921, p. 129,
quoted by Erich Fromm, The Fear of Freedom, Routledge, 1960, p. 36.

^The Playwright as Thinker, New York, 1946

^The Complete Greek Drama, Oates & Neill (ed.), New York,

1938, Vol . I Intro, passim.

copied

JCS/nbs

8/23/62

Timothy M. Solomon
EC-41 Dr. Moffett
7 March 1983

Lesslie Newbigin's The Finality of Christ

The Finality of Christ (John Knox Press, 1969) has met a need for me. As
EC-41 progresses, I am growingly aware that I have been lacking something basic in
my knowledge of modern missions and ecumenics. That lack is an introductory sense
of the development of modern missions. While aware of the church's repudiation of
much of the 19th century's mission efforts, I fail to see what the issues are
which define the current concerns in the world of missions. Newbigin's book not
only fills that gap but gives the reader cause for excitement and not embarassment
about Christian missions.

As Newbigin casts it, this century's missionaries wrestled with the relation
of Christianity to the world's other religions. Many Christians, he says, have
operated on a principle of continuity here: Christianity's distinction is in being

the fulness of what the other religions are in part. The difference is a quanti-
tative one, with Christianity being more and better than the rest -- the ultimate
end to which the others point. Newbigin, however, argues for a principle of dis-
continuity which recasts the question as the relation of Christ to secular history.
In this light the focus is on Christ (thus, Christianity itself receives the
critique of the Cross), and other religions do not begin to compare. "They face
in different directions, ask fundamentally different questions and look for other
kinds of fulfilment than that which is given in the Gospel." (p. 44) Yet Newbigin
goes beyond this to affirm that this radical discontinuity is not a total one, for
those who are converted later see that the God they now know in Christ had been
working in their lives before they ever heard the name of Jesus. Thus, by affirm-
ing both continuity and discontinuity, Newbigin is able to present conversion as
the essential response to the Gospel, though not necessarily into a fellowship
modelled after that of Western Christians.

Newbigin's book is a valuable one. It explains and structures the issues of

-2-

20th-century Missiology with the kind of thorough clarity achieved by John Bailli0f
whose The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought (Columbia University Press, 1956)
fulfills a similar function in Theology. Drawing on the work of Hendrik Kraemer
and others, Newbigin presents a masterful twist when he refutes the continuity-
minded, with their high value of the devout and religious in other faiths, by pre-
senting the example of the Pharisees who, according to their logic, should have
readily embraced Christianity. Thus, the Jews become the stumbling-block to this
argument! But in emphasizing the point that the religious are the last to accept
the Gospel, Newbigin plays up the compatibility between Christianity and the secular
realm. He even states “modern secularism has its roots in the Bible"! (p. 46)

From my perspective this is an extreme statement, unnecessarily made to show that
the Gospel is at home with the everyday world whereas other religions withdraw
from it (p. 63). I believe that Asian secularization stems less from the spread
of the Christian Gospel than from the effect of modem materialism. It is encour-
aging, however, to know through Newbigin that even in a secular Asia the finality
of Christ challenges men and changes lives.

The Mission Society for United Methodists

February, 1988

Dear Praying Friend,

This may well be the single most important letter I've ever
written to you! I ask you to read it very carefully. I am going
to share with you some things that are of utmost importance!

This month marks the fourth anniversary of The Mission
Society for United Methodists. Thinking back to those early days
in 1984, I remember several questions we were frequently asked:

"What is the reason for the tremendous
problems within the United Methodist Church?"

"Why was the Mission Society formed?"

"What's the real problem with United
Methodist missions?"

"What are the real issues which the Mission
Society is raising as it challenges the Board
of Global Ministries?"

Those questions are still being asked today, because the
crisis in our Church's missions program has not been solved. I
want to snare my answers with you, because l Know mat you, too,
are being asked these same things!

My response to these inquiries is very simple:

The root of the problems within Methodism is theological.

The Mission Society for United Methodists came into being
because a dramatic theological shift had taken place
within our United Methodist missions movement over the
past several decades.

The primary issues which we have raised with the General
Board of Global Ministries in 1 0 formal dialogue sessions
since 1984 have centered around the Board's theology.

The signs of our missions crisis are increasingly evident.
You can ' t look at the astonishing reduction of missionaries from
1,500 to 500 in the last twenty years, or the monumental shift
toward social and political programs instead of proclaiming Jesus
Christ, without knowing that something is wrong. What is it?

At the root of these "symptoms" lies a theological cancer!

P.O.Box 1103 • Decatur, Georgia 30031-1103 • 404/378-8746

MoiQJHl

I am absolutely convinced that it matters what you believe!
In spite of the indifference to doctrine and theology which Ts so
prevalent within our denomination, I am persuaded that there are
matters of Biblical teaching which are so important that we
simply cannot remain silent when they are either ignored or
attacked .

The Mission Society's concerns about what United Methodist
mission leaders believe were stated very clearly in a letter
which was written to two directors of the General Board of Global
Ministries several years ago. After stating a conviction that
the struggle over missions really centered in theological issues,
the letter went on to clarify those issues by raising several
crucial questions:

Who is Jesus, the One whom we call the Christ?

Is He the only Son of the living God?

Was His death on the cross an atonement for
sin, or merely an example of loving sacrifice?

Is He or is He not the only One through whom
persons might be saved, as the Scriptures
assert?

Do persons need to repent of their sins and
turn in faith to Christ to be forgiven by God,
to be adopted into His family, and to become
heirs of eternal life?

Is salvation possible outside of faith in
Jesus Christ?

I think you will agree that those were honest and
straightforward questions that focused on vital issues. But
though the letter requested unequivocal answers to these very
plain inquiries, the replies that finally came were full of
disclaimers as well as excuses for their inability to give a
clear response. The "inclusiveness" and "diversity" of our
Church were used as reasons for avoiding the questions entirely!

In an age when theological pluralism has reigned supreme
over our denomination, the Mission Society has not always been
popular for declaring that there are certain unchanging truths
which are not subject to revision by either a Board of our Church
or the latest theological fad.

Nevertheless, God has called us to declare with boldness and
clarity those Biblical teachings which lie at the heart of the
Church ' s faith and mission.

What, then, are the Biblical foundations upon which we
stand? What does the Mission Society believe?

*We believe that Jesus Christ is the
only Son of God- THE BIBLE SAYS that _v7esus
is God's only Son, and that He alone is "Kina
of Kings and Lord of Lords." He has no peers
or equals. Jesus was not just a great
teacher. Nor was He simply one among many
religious leaders. Jesus, the "Word made
f lesh , " is God .

*We believe that the central problem of humanity is sin, and
that the primary need of the human family is to be forgiven and
restored to fellowship with God. THE BIBLE SAYS that "all have
sinned and come short of the glory of God." While the tragic
catalogue of social, political and economic ills in the world is
almost endless, people's deepest need is not a better environment
but a new heart !

*We believe that Jesus' death on the cross was an atonement
for sin, and that on the cross He voluntarily took upon Himself
the sins of the whole world. THE BIBLE SAYS that "while we were
yet sinners Christ died for us." While His death certainly
modeled self-sacrificing love, it was much more than an example
for us to emulate. It was God's atoning act, providing the basis
upon which He offers forgiveness to all who trust in His Son.

*We believe that salvation is only to be found in the Lord
Jesus Christ. JESUS HIMSELF DECLARED : "I am the way, the truth,

and the life. No one comes to the Father but bv me." Jesus is
not a savior of the world. He is the Savior of the world.

*We believe that in order to be saved, people must repent of
their sins and turn to Christ in faith, trusting in Him alone for
salvation. THE BIBLE SAYS: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,

and thou shalt be saved." Neither religion nor human effort can
save, no matter how sincere. It is only by trusting in Christ
that salvation is experienced.

*We believe that the primary task of the church is the
evangelization of the world. JESUS SAID: "Go ye therefore into

all the world and make disciples of every nation." The central
task of Christian missions, then, is to offer the world Christ.

I invite you to be the judge of whether our positions are
faithful to the Bible. And only you can determine whether the
Mission Society's positions represent your own understanding of
the Christian faith and your own convictions about missions.

Perhaps you are wondering how the Mission Society's theology
differs from that of the General Board of Global Ministries.

While I will not attempt to speak for the GBGM, I hope you will
read their new Theology of Mission Statement (1987). Then you
can make your own judgment concerning the differences between us,
and evaluate whether Biblical truths are being faithfully upheld
by the GBGM.

I am convinced that the mission program of the United
Methodist Church is no longer founded upon these teachings that
have for years been the hallmarks of the evangelical faith.

Historic Wesleyan theology is out and radical new ideas are in.

As a consequence, Methodism's missions thrust, which once
was the flagship of North America's missionary movement, has
foundered on the shoals of a bankrupt theology.

I hope you agree with me that this
must be changed, and that United
Methodists must once again rise up in
obedience to Jesus Christ and make the
evangelization of the world our highest
priority. Your partnership in the effort
to restore to United Methodism its true
mission heritage is vital!

The problems in our Church are so great, my friend, and the
needs of a lost world are so urgent, that words alone are not
enough. Dialogue regarding missions has been going on for nearly
two decades in our denomination. But all the while, millions are
plunging into eternity without hope of salvation.

It is time for action! Evangelical convictions alone will
not win the lost to Jesus. Orthodox theology in itself will not
save anyone. Only our obedient response to the Great Commission
will reach the nations for Christ. We must pray, we must give,
we must go. That is His command. And that is our commitment.

Thank you for joining the Mission Society in the marvelous
task of taking the Gospel to the ends of the earth.

P.S. Your support matters! The needs on our fields around the
world, coupled with the special demands upon our resources during
this General Conference year, make your gift this month very
important. I know I can count on you! Thank you, in advance,
for your gift.

XUIU UUU«£>

THE MISSION SOCIETY FOR UNITED METHODISTS fECFHi

P.O. BOX 1103/DECATUR, GEORGIA 30031-1103/PH. (404) 378-8746

The symbol of mist

A MONTHLY LETTER ON EVANGELISM
MONATLICHER INFORM ATIONSBRIEF UBER EVANGELISATION
LETTRE MENSUELLE SUR L ’ £ V A N G E L I S A T I 0 N

No. 8, August 1982

Dear Friends,

The July Letter featured my colleague Wesley Ariarajah writing a pastoral
note to a Sri Lankan Christian on witness to Hindu neighbours. It was very
quickly responded to. The Ecumenical Press Service picked it up immediately.
Twelve written statements arrived from Asia, Europe and Africa. So, for this
month I propose to take life easy and simply publish selections from these
responses. The issue, as I see it, is deadly serious - Do we or do we not
proclaim "Christ is the Only Way; there is no salvation except through him."?
Wesley clearly advised "no" in front of a Hindu. What do you think? I’m
half-tempted to wade into the discussion. But let's hear our readers first.

Whatever the theology and whatever the missiology (what a big word) , I am
happy to find that the format of a pastoral letter on evangelism communicates.
Pastor H. Barth in France had his attention caught "by Wesley’s letter to
Ranjith". He suggested if we could "from time to time, do this kind of letter
addressed to other ’sorts’ of evangelists: vis-avis secularized persons in
Europe, for instance, or vis-a-vis persons who are victims of sects, or vis-a-
vis socio-professional categories (workers’ milieu, small bourgeoisie...)".
Good idea. I’ll work on it. And if you feel like trying your hand, or know
somebody who would, please let me know.

Before you turn the page for readers' responses to Wesley, I would like to
report to you some recent "evangelism" highlights in the life of the WCC.

In July, we had our Central Committee meeting. It is the highest policy-
making body in the WCC, and apart from the assemblies probably the world's
most formally representative church body. Let me share several things which
happened there.

The concern for the theology of cultures received a lot of attention. It is
not simply a "dialogue" issue. It is something like my walking through the
Geneva Museum of Art and History for the first time. Beautiful religious
paintings. Jesus speaking to his disciples by a Swiss lake. Christianity has

Case postale N° 66 ■ 150, route de Femey ■ CH-1211 Geneve 20 /Switzerland

been totally contextualized into European culture. And then I found myself
saying to myself, "How much richer the Gospel will be to all of us if it
can ever be seen through the cultures of Asia and Africa, etc?" I think
this is what the Central Committee was concerned about.

On a number of occasions, a woman delegate from the Netherlands said something
to this effect, "I am a mother. Many of our children have dropped out of
church." In fact, probably she used these same simple words. It was power-
ful. I think it will be heard in Vancouver.

During a plenary session. Max Rafransoa, General Secretary of the All African
Council of Churches, told the Central Committee, "In Africa, evangelism is our
first priority, but we can't separate this from the whole problem of libera-
tion, not only the question of political liberation as in Southern Africa but
all types of alienation which exist on our continent. It is because of the
Gospel that we speak for liberation." It was well said. I hope he would say
some more.

The Central Committee approved an important document called "Mission and
Evangelism - an Ecumenical Affirmation" which had been drafted and submitted
by CWME. The statement is now a WCC statement on the subject. It contains
many ecumenical insights on evangelism, one of the most important, it seems to
me, is this in paragraph number 34:

"There is no evangelism without solidarity; there is no
Christian solidarity that does not involve sharing the
knowledge of the Kingdom which is God's promise to the
poor of the earth. There is here a double credibility:
A proclamation that does not hold forth the promises of
the justice of the Kingdom to the poor of the earth is
a caricature of the Gospel; but Christian participation
in the struggles for justice which does not point
towards the promises of the Kingdom also makes a cari-
cature of a Christian understanding of justice."

I shall be sending you a copy of the full text later in the year, and would
ask for your help in circulating it to local churches and getting their
response .

Now, back to readers' responses to Wesley's letter on witness to Hindus.
Welcome to the debate.

With warm greetings.

Yours in Christ,

Raymond Fung

SELECTED READERS' RESPONSES TO

- 3 -

WESLEY ARIARAJAH ' S LETTER ON WITNESS TO HINDU NEIGHBOURS

From Parmananda R. Divarkar, S.J., India

I found myself very much in sympathy with Wesley's line of thought. Of course,
he does not say all that there is to be said on the subject; nor does he claim
to. But he does open up a lot of questions that need to be examined; and which
moreover are relevant not just when addressing Hindus.

One of my own reflections on this matter, as you know from our previous dis-
cussion, is that we need not only new "models" of evangelization but a new type
of model. The traditional models envisaged communication in one direction’: the
point of departure remained firm and stable; and a change, indeed a conversion,
was expected at the receiving end. Could we not think of "dialogal models" for
accomplishing the evangelical task?

Do keep up the initiative of encouraging an exchange of ideas on this topic,
which is both interesting and very important.

From L. Suohie Mhasi, Nagaland, India

The statement of Wesley in the form of a letter is very educative. Once a
Gandhian leader came to Kohima and we had fellowship with him. As I was sit-
ting by him, he started conversing with me about religious matter. He said,

"My mother is a wonderful religious woman in the world. But she did not like
to practise kneeling in prayer because it is what the Christians practise.

Some Christians also do not like 'tika'. There are some extreme Christians
who say that man can be saved through Christ only and there is no other way.
What is your view?" I replied, "It is what I believe." "Then there are
millions and millions of people in other major religions in the world. What
will be their fate then?" he harshly asked. "According to the Bible, the
unbelievers of Christ will perish." I replied. He angrily departed. My
conviction is that whether one likes it or not, we cannot compromise the truth.

Once I share the words of God with a Hindu young man in a hotel. For several
times when I said some thing, he replied, "Yes, it is in our religious book
too." At last I posed a question to him, "Do you have the joy of salvation
in your heart?" He replied, "No." "We Christians have the real joy of
salvation in our hearts." I told him. However deep their search for the truth,
their devotion, their philosophy; however old their religion is, they do not
have the peace and joy of forgiveness of their sins and of having communion
with the living God; and therefore, seeking for peace they practise self-
immolation. We must love them and must present Christ the only living bread
from God to them.

From Israel M. Kabalimu, Bukoba, Tanzania

"Christ Only is the Way" is a common conviction among many Christians in
Africa. Since, the witness of the preacher is based on his/her own reflection
and experience, no one outside the preacher could deny it. Some of the revi-
valists I had talked to in our diocese, stress that when a person testifies
to the power of Christ, he does so in ecstasy. At such a moment a person
becomes so full of the Holy Spirit that he may feel to have been "born again"

- 4 -

with Christ. However, this is not done to force the hearers to do the same but
rather it is an open encouragement to share Christ’s Love, and Salvation among
themselves .

If the Hindus do not find any reality in such a Christian witness, e.g., "Christ
is the Only Way", we cannot force them to accept it. The Holy Spirit, after a
Christian witness, functions among the hearers and a few would become genuinely
converted. It is my opinion that after a person has recognized the truth of the
Gospel, he or she gradually would accept it at his/her own volition.

From W. Morgenstern, Dresden, German Democratic Republic

1 . The basis of all Christian witness and all missionary and evangelistic
activity is the fact that God acted decisively and comprehensively for all human
beings in Jesus Christ: God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself"

(2 Cor 5:19) and "God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that all who
believe in Him should not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16).

2. The real motive of Christian speech and action is rooted in personal
experience of the Love of God. Paul writes: "Having received mercy, we weary
not..." (2 Cor 4:1) And Peter tells those who would forbid him from witnessing
to Christ: "We cannot keep silent about what we have seen and heard." (Acts
4:20)

3. Because it is God's will that all human beings should be saved and come to
the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim 2:4), the mission of the Church can have no
limits. The dialogue with people of other faiths and ideologies is a specific
form of mission calling for a special measure of sensitivity, humility and
receptivity .

4. Christian witness can only be accepted when it is accompanied by the witness
of life. In the encounter with people of other faiths, therefore, it is
essential to respect both their integrity and their freedom.

5. Dialogue is possible only if the partners to it are ready to listen to each
other and to take the other partner's conviction seriously. The absence of this
readiness to listen on the part of the witness to Christ, however imbued with a
sense of mission, will always prove a fatal handicap preventing him or her from
successfully commending the Good News to others.

6. In the dialogue with people of other faiths, the witness of Christ always
also finds him or herself in a tense situation, particularly so even. However
friendly, humble, receptive and patient his or her approach to the dialogue
partner may be, the point will inevitably be reached when he or she must testify
to the Lord Jesus Christ, and indeed to "the crucified Christ, a stumbling block
to the Jews, and foolishness to the Gentiles" (1 Cor 1:23).

7. The Gospel is a message which necessarily requires a decision. This being
so, the dialogue, too, will reach the decisive - i.e. the "critical" point,
earlier or later. The Christian who seeks to witness to his or her Lord will
have to allow seriously for the possibility that his or her witness may also
meet with resistance, rejection or even violence (Acts 9:20-23; 13:44-46; 17:
22-23, etc) .

8. In dialogue, too, love and truth are inseparable. The ruthless fanatic for
truth is just as incapable of dialogue with people of other faiths as the

- 5 -

Christian who, out of a spurious love, keeps silent about the consequence of
rejecting the truth. Christian mission is constantly exposed to both these
dangers. But the special temptation to which dialogical mission seems to be
most exposed is that of telling only half the truth, out of a mistaken
tolerance or fear of the reactions of the partner in dialogue. But the whole
truth is: "Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever refuses
to believe in the Son will never see life; the anger of God rests on him or
her . " (John 3 : 36)

From Moti Lai Pandit, New Delhi, India

Dear Wesley,

Your letter to Ranjith is thought-provoking. While going through the letter,
certain important questions arose in my mind. Let me share them with you.

1 . There are lot of ambiguous expressions and terms in your letter. It is
very difficult to understand what you really mean by spiritual experience.
Spiritual experience of what? There must be some truth, a belief, a way of
life to be experienced. An experience, whatever its nature and content, is
always cognitive, and therefore operates within a particular frame of beliefs
or ideas, predispositions, and so on. It is, therefore, fallacious to speak
of experience without any reference to the truth which I am to share or
experience .

2. It has become a fashion to say that Hinduism values experience rather than
doctrine. This is not, historically speaking, true. The study of classical
Hinduism, even of contemporary neo-Hinduism, makes it quite clear that teach-
ings and doctrines and beliefs of every Hindu denomination or sect are based
on the ideas of a particular prophet or saint. Each denomination has its own
belief-system. Hinduism may not have homogeneous doctrines, yet certain
beliefs are universal among all Hindu denominations: the concept of samsara,
karma, dualism between mind and body, eternity of soul, etc. It is, therefore,
wrong to say that Hinduism is basically oriented towards experience and not
towards a belief-system.

3. No religion exists without the dimension of experience. The same is the
case Hinduism. The experience of one person, whether he be called a saint or
prophet, are concretised into what one may call doctrines and beliefs. Take
the case of Advaita Vedanta of Sankara. Whatever Sankara wrote or said have
been transformed into a particular school of beliefs and doctrines by his
followers. These beliefs and doctrines are not accepted by those who follow
Ramanuja or the Trika system of Kashmir. Take the contemporary examples of
Ramakrishana or Ramana. Ramakrishana has been raised to the pedestal of a
deity by his followers, and his teachings have become the doctrinal basis for
his followers. The same is the case with Ramana. To say that Hindu denomina-
tions have no founders or prophets is, from a historical viewpoint, not
correct .

4. You maintain that God can be experienced through different ways, such as
bhakti yoga, karma yoga, jnana yoga, etc. This unfortunate classification is
not found at all in traditional Hinduism. It is the creation of Vivekananda.

If we, for example, study the classical texts on Yoga dispassionately, it
becomes clear that the aim of Yoga as such is not to experience God; rather
it is to reach the state of isolation (kaivalyam) . I shall not here go into
a textual exegesis. However, we must remind ourselves that when making use

of such terms, we must be aware of their meaning, and how they have been applied
in the contexts in which they sprang. Carelessness can lead to confusion and
chaos of thought.

5. In this context to say that Hinduism is tolerant is to misread history. This
fallacious argument started with Vivekananda, and has now become a slogan with
contemporary neo-Hindu writers and leaders. What is maintained to be tolerance
turns out, when perceived carefully, to be intolerance. We just have to study
the contemporary Hindu missionary literature, particularly of Hindu Vishwa
Parishad, Arya Smaj , etc.

6. The question is not whether we should preach Christ to Hindus or not. The
question is: how to preach him. I agree with you that we cannot separate the
message from the one who carries the message. But this does not mean that the
truth-claim of Christ depends on the person who carries it. Truth must subsist
in itself. If truth is dependent on something else other than itself for its
validity, it is no more truth. If Christ is God, he must validate himself as
God. This assertion - that Christ is God, and therefore redeemer of mankind -
must vindicate itself. If human techniques can lead to the experience of God,
then God is nothing but fiction, an illusion created by imagination. What is
needed is not the negation of this truth (that Christ is God) by entering into
a false pluralism (all roads lead to Rome) , but a re-interpretation in the con-
text of historically-conditioned human experiences. The need of preaching
Christ as redeemer exists as much now as it did when the event of Incarnation
took place. If this point is missed in our Christian life, we have missed the
central meaning of Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

7. We cannot separate the witnessing of Christ to Hindus from the message of
Christ. We cannot witness Christ outside of his message. To bring a dichotomy
between Christ and his message is to deprive Incarnation of its significance
and meaning in the plan of God. I agree with you on the problem of methodology.
There is no doubt that the Church in the Third World countries suffers from the
sins of all historical aberrations which took place in the West. We have
various denominations, we have different modes of worship and confessions, we
have different structures in the church - all of them imported from the West.

In this sense we can say that we do not have the authentic Gospel, and therefore
not authentic Christ. Our Christ is a Christ of the Western denomination, of
Western confessions, of Western cultures, etc. We have to rectify this situa-
tion. The Western garb of Christianity has put us in a defensive position. It
has isolated us from the mainstream of our culture and history. But we have
to be careful on this point, that is, this aberration of the past does not
absolve us from our task, which is to preach Christ authentically in the
contexts in which we live.

8. Let us keep this in mind always: If we really believe in the uniqueness of
Christ, we will have to make this belief a reality through our witness. Christ's
uniqueness is not hindrance only to Hindus, but to everyone. It is proving a
hindrance even to the church.

From Johannes Aagaard, Denmark
Dear Wesley,

I appreciate your letter to Ranjith and I shall express my gratitude for the
letter by offering some critical questions and statements:

1 . During my many excursions to India I have been impressed by the plurifor-
mity of Hinduism. But at the same time this fact has put a full-stop to most
of my generalizations about "Hinduism" and thus made life more difficult! I
should like to make your life more difficult too, for I am not sure that your
generalization "Hinduism" holds water. In fact it is my impression that you
by "Hinduism" simply means that limited part of neo-Hinduism, which took off
from Ramakrishna/Vivekananda and similar synthezisers .

2. I am somewhat worried because of the tendency in your letter to emphasize
knowledge and not faith. Does this represent a terminological trend only? Or
does it reveal a certain one-sidedness? You speak about knowledge as a
counterpart to experience, while the counterpart to faith is obedience? I
would not exclude your dimension, but I do think that it is only a biblical
trend if and in so far as knowledge is part of faith and experience is part of
obedience. I know well that this terminology is not at all as easy as yours
in relation to my Hindu-f riends , but it may still be necessary.

3. You underline that "God" cannot be taken anywhere. But this fact does
not exclude - I hope - that the good news and its affirmation of life and

of God's love to mankind can and must be taken everywhere. It has to be taken
to all mankind, not as a package deal, that is right, but still as something
which has to be sent off and received.

Neither Nordic people nor Indian people have been able to find the truth by
themselves. Nor has the Jewish people been able to. No one can experience
or see Truth. It has to be revealed "from outside". We cannot escape that
hard fact. Faith can only be shared when it has been accepted as a gift which
is and remains in a way foreign to all of us.

4. The reason for this foreigness is not imperialism or colonialism or other
isms. The reason is our sin and our alienation from God. Not the concepts
matter, but the fact matters. The human condition is fundamentally determined
from the fact that we do not know who we are ourselves and definitely not who
God is .

We not only do not understand our human condition, but we are most probably
even in principle not able to understand it. Our knowledge more than anything
is ruined. We do not even put the right questions, not to speak about the
answers to our dilemma. I see no fundamental difference between people and
people in this respect. Danes hate to acknowledge this hard fact and so do
all other people. We prefer our own religious projections - and although they
differ from people to people, they are fundamentally the same: we see in a
mirror and thereby we see ourselves. We are our own horizon and constitute
our own limitations.

Jesus and his communication to mankind is different from all that. He is the
road in a very specific way, specific because of his specific mission. This
specificity is not part of the church's reality. The road of the church is
inclusive: Those who are not against the church are for it, but those who are
not with Christ are against Him (Luke 9:50 and 11:23). This exclusive claim
is part of his love and in fact is the most inclusive mission one can imagine.

God's name is Christ, for Christ reveals the face of God, creates the love of
God, gives the faith in God. God always spoke to mankind in Christ, and there
is no other road from God to us than this revelation. But from that revela-
tion there are many roads to mankind in all its religious diversity. All these
roads can be used by the Holy Spirit who, however, always speaks out of the
wisdom of the Truth which Christ manifested.

I know well that this double dimension is not easy to express in a factual
dialogue, but it is necessary, I hope, that we never forget this dialectic
and attempt to communicate it. The church is itself more of mankind than of
God, as are all religions in the world. The church is not the presence of
God or Christ. It is when it is at its best a pointer to God beyond all gods
and divinities. It is fundamentally very necessary never to forget this
distance between us and God. This unites us with all of mankind. We are all
in the same dilemma.

I fear that some of my friends may sneer: European theology. If so, what then?
I am a European theologian, and I speak or write as such. If not I would
cheat. We have a lot of escapism in modern theology, which makes people behave
as if they were someone else. Let us not join this farce, which threatens to
empty the theological task of its seriousness.

From Vinay Samuel, Bangalore, India

I appreciate the concern of this letter to be sensitive and to be aware of a
number of pitfalls in Christian witness among Hindus. Most Christians whom I
know would affirm the necessity of an integral relationship and proper con-
gruity between the messenger and the message. But there is an important
distinction between the Hindu and Christian world views in the emphasis given
to this relationship. The Hindu perspective is that the messenger must reach
the status of a guru before he can instruct others about matters of faith.

There is no dominant concept of bearing witness in Hinduism because the funda-
mental relationship within which religious communication takes place is that
between a guru and a disciple. On the contrary, the Christian perspective is
that an ordinary disciple can share matters of faith with others. A person
does not have to reach a state of enlightenment that identifies him as a guru
or master before he can share with others, nor in so doing does he make any
claim to be a master.

Consequently, when Christians share with Hindus, they appear _o ^ making . —
implicit claim to a status as a guru, which they do not demonstrate. So it
is important that Christians do not bear their witness in a didactical manner,
using categorical or absolutist terms. Rather they must humbly share their
convictions in a fashion that shows that they are disciples of the guru who
enables his disciples to share. The issue is whether we can speak with
conviction without being categorical. For our categorical statements give
the impression of a claim to have reached perfection.

I fully agree that in dialogueing with Hindus, we are dialogueing with members
of a religious tradition which includes great spiritual giants. Only ignorance
mixed with arrogance would dismiss all such as not of God, merely human or even
evil. But the very openendedness and plurality of Hinduism which makes it easy
for the Christian to begin a discussion with a Hindu at any point, makes it
impossible for him to reach a conclusion anywhere. In the popular understanding
of religious pluralism, all expressions of religion have equal validity. Thus
an atheist and a devout Bhakti follower have equally valid stances. The ethical
and social implications of such a view are obvious to any observer of Hinduism.
The oppressive dimensions of casteism are not merely rooted in economic or
social realities, but are reinforced by the religious world view. Any witness
to the religious world view of Hinduism must not neglect the religious sanc-
tioning of casteism.

Therefore while Hinduism has a concept that truth has many dimensions and takes
a variety of religious forms, the only basis of truth is religious experience.

- 9 -

The content of that experience can only be known and authenticated by the
individual who experiences it. It cannot be evaluated by anyone else. This
renders it almost impossible to formulate criteria for evaluating truth
within any religious experience.

But people do form judgements within Hinduism. The religious experiences of
the vast majority of Hindus who may be committed to the worldview of karma and
reincarnation are set in the context of being victims of oppression. Within
that situation they are forced to ask questions and make judgements for which
their own religious system provides no objective validity. Christian witness
and dialogue must therefore not be restricted to only one type of religious
experience among literate and sophisticated Hindus. It must begin with the
questions and judgements of these marginalised groups, especially the women
and the poor. For it was with the questions of these groups that Jesus began
to explain the good news, even to the rich. Not all human questions point to
the realities and answers of the Gospel. The questions of the untroubled
rich did not lead them to appreciate the answers of Jesus. It was those rich
who experienced for themselves the questions of the marginalised, Zaccheus
the outcast and the prodigal son who experienced degradation, who found in
Jesus the answer to their quest. When they found themselves victims of
oppression, they asked the right questions and came to Jesus for the answers.
That is part of what is meant by repentance.

A crucial area therefore for Christian witness to Hindus is to begin with the
questions of the marginalised within Hinduism, the women and the poor, and to
share the answers of Jesus which affirm the validity of their questions and
of their judgements. The aim of Christian witness is not to enable the
literate sophisticated Hindu to have a religious encounter with a mystical
figure from another religious tradition. The Gospel comes with questions.

It enables the questions of the marginalised Hindus to be affirmed, and
addressed by the Gospel, and addresses those questions to the socially elite
Hindu.

Again, because the Chris tan Gospel is about breaking down barriers between
God and man and between man and man and so addresses issues such as the
barriers between rich and poor, caste and outcaste. So the Christian witness
cannot be the witness of an individual alone testifying to his own personal
religious experience. It must be the witness of the life of a Christian
community in which the new life of reconciliation is being expressed. A
person's Christian witness must not be confined to claiming a privileged
status for his own Christian religious experience as superior to other
religious experiences. It must be to witness to his participation in the
reality of the reconciliation which his Christian community is experiencing
which he is convinced is mediated to them and offered to all through Jesus
Christ .

10 -

From Raymond Fung, again, but on a different subject.

Since there is a blank page left, let me advertise a
book I have put together and recently published by
the WCC. It tells true stories of the "house churches"
in the People’s Republic of China. This is how the
promotion material describes it:

HOUSEHOLDS OF GOD ON CHINA'S SOIL

A book of stories, but the stories
are from real life. They are
stories about the church in China,
told by Chinese Christians. They
are about the "house churches" of
which we have heard so much and
know so little. They describe
"how small Christian communities,
through one of the most radical
uphevals in human history, kept
their faith in Jesus Christ - and
how their faith kept them". And
they do so with a simplicity which
is both refreshing and challenging.

Emilio Castro wrote in the Foreword, "Personally, I found
these stories deeply moving. They meant a lot to me in
my own commitment to Jesus Christ and his church."

He also suggests a distinctive type of
contextual theology. Rather than adapting
theology to context in a way that places
the gospel in cultural captivity, he be-
lieves that the gospel has a normative
priority and context an experiential prior-
ity. Brands of North American adjectival
theology, which view one's context as
normative for doing theology, could ben-
efit from his way of doing theology in
context, rather than subjecting theology
to context.

This book will also help those who
want to think theologically about social
issues. The tendency to moralize may re-
lieve a guilty conscience or two but fails
to respond evangelically to one's context.
Confessing Christ in a particular situa-
tion binds us as well as the situation to
Christ. To confess Christ as Lord in a con-
text that denies people the humanity that
Christ assumed and reconciled is a re-
sponse that arises from the gospel.

A critical question is whether inser-

Help us
Send Her
Daddy’s
Love

It’s not her fault that
Daddy’s in prison. Yet she
is serving time, too . . .
days of loneliness no child
should have to endure.

Through Project
Angel Tree, church mem-
bers are giving children a
Christmas to remember—
by buying gifts to show
love. And bringing fami-
|T lies of prisoners into the
' larger Christian family-
all year ’round!

Project®

AngelTree

? Straight from the Heart

1 .

Prison Fellowship Ministries
P.0. Box 17500
Washington, DC 20041-0500

tion in a crisis situation is a legitimate
starting point for a theology of ministry.
We must guard against the tendency to
respond merely to one's context istead of
the gospel. This, however, is what
de Gruchy successfully avoids. By using
Tracy's concept of the three publics, he
minimizes the danger of playing one
public off against the other (such as the
church or society against the academy).
By beginning with Bonhoeffer and Barth's
chris tological emphasis, he lessens the
propensity merely to moralize about so-
cial issues. By incorporating insights from
liberation theology, he reminds us of the
critical role of society in one's theological
and pastoral activity. Although these var-
ious influences may not fit neatly to-
gether, they do complement one another

in developing a theology of ministry that
serves Christ in response to social crises
This book, in short, is theological
without being abstract, pastoral without
being privatistic, contextual without being
acculturated, and timely without being
trendy. Theology and Ministry in Context
and Crisis would make a distinctive con-
tribution to courses in theology, ethics,
missions, and ministry. It would also help
people in a church context become theo-
logically formed and prepared for minis-
try. This book, originally given as lectures
to a British audience, reflects on the South
African context and would be profitably
read as a case study of doing theology. It
would then prompt us to consider crises
in our context in light of the gospel of
judgment and transformation. □

Soteriological Christology

by Richard A. Muller

Lee E. Snook, The Anonymous Christ: Jesus as Savior in Modern Theology. Augsburg,
1986, 191 pp.

If nothing else, 20th-century Christology
is diverse and varied. We have seen
Christology "from above" and Christol-
ogy "from below," Christology that is on-
tologically oriented to the tradition of
German idealism and Christology that is
experientially constructed, reminiscent of
Schleiermacher. There have been existen-
tial Christologies and Christologies
grounded on a consideration of the place
of Jesus of Nazareth in salvation history
or, indeed, in universal history. This di-
versity is both amazing and daunting.
There are few trustworthy guides to its
highways and byways. Although far from
complete in its survey of authors and
models, Lee Snook's The Anonymous Christ
provides a significant typology of and in-
troduction to a fairly broad selection of
contemporary Christologies.

Snook's point of departure is the ne-
cessity of grounding any successful

Richard A. Muller is Associate Professor of
Historical Theology at Fuller Theological
Seminary.

Christology in the saving "event which
centers on Jesus of Nazareth and which
is inseparable from the community of
believers who wrote the New Testament"
(p. 7). This basic assumption leads him
to analyze the various Christologies and
to present his own prospectus for a "con-
structive" and "post-modern" Christol-
ogy from a soteriological perspective,
specifically, in terms of the way in which
the human predicament of "lostness" or
"disrelation" is addressed by modem
theological meditation on the saving event
of Jesus Christ. Snook further defines the
problem of lostness or disrelation in terms
of the categories of God, world, and self,
and uses this definition as the basis of his
typology. Thus, some Christologies ad-
dress primarily the disrelation of God and
the human self, others primarily the dis-
relation of God and world, still others the
disrelation of self and world.

This typology manifests several sig-
nificant relationships and parallels that
might otherwise go unnoticed. Barth's
virtually a-historical Christology "from

The Reformed Journal

above" and Pannenberg's historicized
Christology "from below" for all of their
methodological and attitudinal differ-
ences both lay stress on the lostness of
the individual and the reestablishment of
the relationship between God and the
human self in and through Christ. Snook
can also point to the fact that both Barth
and Pannenberg place christological
understanding prior to soteriological
understanding and, in a sense, oppose
the kind of soteriological paradigm pro-
posed by Snook's essay. Thus also,
despite their profound ontological
disagreement, Tillich and Cobb agree in
their construction of Christology along
soteriological and apologetic lines, with
an emphasis on the estrangement or dis-
relation of God and world. The liberation
theologians and Schillebeeckx, with their
emphasis on human experience and the
liberating presence of Jesus, stress the
soteriological problem of the disrelation
of self and world. As a final group, Snook
discusses a rather diverse set of thinkers
including John Hick, Paul Knitter, Wilfred
Cantwell Smith, and Karl Rahner, all of
whom point toward the need for a view
of Christ that recognizes or at least allows
for salvation outside of Christianity in the
other great religions of the world. These
views of Christ all stand outside of Snook's
paradigm.

In lieu of a detailed discussion of
Snook's various presentations, suffice it
to say that The Anonymous Christ is both
a substantial and a substantially accurate
work. Its paradigms of lostness or disre-
lation, though obviously not the only
paradigms for analyzing 20th-century
Christology and probably not sufficient
by themselves to explain the christologi-
cal discussions of recent times, are quite
instructive and provide a significant van-
tage point from which to address Chris-
tology. It is worth questioning why the
author omitted certain theologians — no-
tably Jurgen Moltmann, Walter Kasper,
Hans Kiing, and Emil Brunner. While
Snook is perfectly justified in illustrating
his paradigm rather than attempting to
discuss every important theologian of the
century, the omission of Brunner seems
curious inasmuch as Brunner struggled
I so mightily with the problem of order in

Christology, even to the point of setting
aside the early pattern of The Mediator in
favor of a soteriologically-govemed
movement from Work to Person in the
Dogmatics. This is very much the ap-
proach that Snook advocates.

A word needs to be said, finally,
about Snook's own christological pro-
posal: it is a Christology that grows out
of the analyses of the problem of salvation
present throughout the book and that
gravitates toward the issue of the disre-
lation of God and world. Snook sees the
need for Christology to address such is-
sues as "global interdependence," ecol-
ogy, and oppression together with the
problem of the encounter of Christianity
and of Western culture with other reli-
gions and with the cultures of the Third
World, but he also recognizes the neces-
sity of maintaining the "finality of Christ"
in God's redemptive plan. In order to ar-
gue the breadth of God's saving work and

to acknowledge the incompleteness of all
particular Christologies, Snook proposes
a language of the "Anonymous Christ" —
recognizing both the finality and the ul-
timacy of God's work in Christ and the
presence of Christ, beyond the localiza-
tion of historical Christianity, in all of
God's redemptive working with the hu-
man race. This formulation does draw to-
gether many of the themes of the book,
but it is not developed to the point that
a reader is able to understand concretely
what the author means by the anony-
mous presence of Christ, say, in Hindu-
ism or Buddhism. One is left, at the end
of the book, with some sense of incom-
pleteness and perhaps with a desire to
hear more of what the author has to say.
In any case, the book does provide a sig-
nificant paradigm for examining contem-
porary Christology and, by extension, a
useful overview of problems confronting
Christianity and Christian teaching in the
20th century. □

"In a time when the struggle for justice is so pressing and so
difficult. The Other Side lifts up thejustice side with evangelical
vigor and fine first-hand reporting. The Other Side is a
magazine that really lives up to its name!"

Letty Russell

Professor of Theology. Yale Divinity School

THE OTHER SIDE

An evangelical and ecumenical magazine for Christians in
search of shalom. Get a full year for $21.75 from TOS, 300 W
Apsley, Philadelphia, Pa. 19144. Don't delay. Write today!

November 1988

THE CONTEXTUAL I ZAT I ON -SYNCRETISM DEBATE

AND CONTEMPORARY ASIAN THEOLOGIES

Christianity in
a Pluralistic World

Dr, M.M. Thomas

Garry 0. Parker

December 8,1982

-1-

INTRODUCTION

The debate on contextual i zation and syncretism is an important one.

It focuses on some of the most important issues of missiology today.

It relates to the need to make the message of Christ come alive in
the culture of the peoples of the world. It addresses the question
of God's revelation to the world, the problem of communication,
and the need for thoughtful reflection on the theological task.

This paper will deal with the issue by examining the discussion
regarding contextual i zation; then Syncretism and the problems connected
with it; and finally examples of contextualization and conclusions
to be drawn from them.

-2-

CONTEXTUAL I ZAT I ON

During the last decade one of the major foci of missiological dis-
cussion has been the issue of contextualization-contextual ity and
its implications for theological reflection. The roots of the dialog

can be traced to the classical discussions of protestant missiology

regarding indigenization by Venn, Nevius, and Hodges but the

current discussion goes far beyond the problems of structure and

administrative control and evangelization. The issue is well defined

in Ministry in. Context;., when-*, in discussing the third mandate

of the Theological Education Fund the. staff writers state,

(It) appears to focus on a central concept, context-
ual ity, the capacity to respond meaningful ly to the
Gospel within the framework of one's own situation,
contextual ization is not simply a fad or catch word
but a theological necessity demandj)y the incarnational
nature of the Word. What does the term imply ?

It means all that is implied in the familiar term 'ind-
igenization' and yet seeks to press beyond. Contextual- ■

ization has to do with how we assess the peculiarity
of third world contexts. Indigenization tends to be
used in the sense of responding to the Gospel in terms
of traditional culture. Contextualization, while not
ignoring this, , takes into account the process of
seculari ty, tachjenology , and the struggle for human
justice, which characterize the historical moment
of nations in the Third World.

Xheyj^j go— on to urge that a careful distinction be made between
authentic and false forms of contextualization. False contextualization
is that which produces uncritical accomodation. Authentic contextual-
ization is prophetic, arising out of real encounter between God's
Word and the world and seeks to challenge and change situations through

-3-

grounding in and commitment to the historical moment. Contextual izati on
is a * dynamic, future oriented view. The context of third world
situations will produce its own priorities but there is an inter-
dependence of contexts. Renewal thus grows out of the local sit-
uation and relates itself to the past, present, and future with
ties to all contexts. Ultimately, contextual i zation draws its
basic power from the Gospel, which is for all people and thereby
contributes to"the solidarity of all people in obedience to
a common Lord." The section concludes by suggesting that context-

ualization relates to mission, theological approach, educational

method, and structure.

How did the use of this new word, "contextualization" begin ? It

appears to have begun in a letter from Dr. Nikos A. Nissiotis,

who was then Director of the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey. He

wrote inviting participation in a meeting on "Dogmatic or Contextual

Theology" to be held in 1971 . He urged the consideration of the issue

because of, "...the crisis which has arisen through the continued use

of abstract principles and metaphysical presuppositions by some

theoretical disciplines." He goes on to cite techonologi cal

changes in the world which have given rise to experiential or

"contextual" theology which .." gives preference, as the point of

departure for systematic theological thinking to the contemporary

historical scene over against the biblical tradition and confessional
5.

statements." The discussion obviously arose not out of a sterile

-4-

academic environment, but in "context", because there was a movement
toward doing theology contextually and that movement needed eval-
uation and encouragement in the minds of Nissiotis and others.

Dr. Nissiotis concludes his call for discussion by asking,

"..whether Systematic Theology can continue to take biblical texts

as its point of departure, and on the basis of Biblical Theology

systematize the Christian Faith."

After the conference had reached its conclusions, Dr. Nissiotis

introduced the report by restating the issues and pointing out

that one main issue was whether theology is self sufficent , built

on its own premises alone or whether experimental thought and

environmental action might not be sources of theology. The
thrust of the report was to recognize the contextual ity which
is present in all theology and to focus on the need to contextualize
theological premises. Dogmatic theology was seen as rooted in the
past and while methods such as the hi stori co-critical were seen
as helpful, their methodology was regarded as partial. Stress
was placed on event centered theology and the common motifs of
struggle and redemption seen in the histories of all people. There
was an emphasis on the universal action of God among the nations
and the need to recognize God's hand in the histories of the nations.
A conscious effort was made to join the older dogmatic approach to
the newer contextualized one and to balance all the parts. The
shift in emphasis was away from a priori use of Bible and tradition

-5-

and toward a method of doing theology which gave equal weight to

the context of the historic moment. Contextualized theology can

be contrasted with the older styles of doing theology in its

approach (inductive); its philosophy (functional); and in

its expression (praxic).

By 1972 Dr. Shoki Coe had begun to use the word contextual i zati on

in his writing and speaking and the discussion about its significance

had widened beyond the TEF documents. In the Salvation Today
Conference of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, in
the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, and in numerous
regional meetings in the USA and other countries the issues have been
discussed. Dr. F. Ross Kinsler, one of the developers of Theological
Education by Extension, a contextual approach to pastoral training
suggests that there are four crucial issues to be dealt with in
relation to contextual ization. First, that the current debate is
concerned with the nature of the Gospel itself. All missiological
scholars agree that it is necessary to understand the literary and
historical context of the Scriptures. Similarly the modern context
must play a role in interpretation. At issue is how that modern
context should be related to the text. Secondly, there is a need
to understand and define syncretism and perhaps a danger in it of
distorting the Gospel. Yet this trend has always been present in
the life of the church and should not keep us from exploring the
issue and rethinking our views on it. The line between authentic
contextual ization and syncretism (if the latter word is to be used

-6-

in a negative sense, as is most often the case) is very thin, and
may involve gray areas ( or at least areas where different cultural
filters may result in differing opinions). ( For an expanded
discussion of syncretism, see the following section of this paper.)
Thirdly, contextual i zation is concerned about both tradition and
renewal in the church. It seeks to evaluate and renew structures
as well as ideas. This renewal can be positive, but it is sometimes
radical and revolutionary . Finally, there are apparent conflicts be-
tween contextualizing theology and relying on Biblical theology as
a starting point in reflective thinking. Does one use Biblical
theology as a filter for contextualizing, or does one use it as

only one part of the admixture of reflective thinking that produces

10.

a "theology"?

Dr. Shoki Coe holds that we must see that there are many contexts
and not all are equally important for the Missio Dei He sees
danger in academic theology becoming fossilized and equally of
contextual theology becoming "chameleon" in nature. He sees the
salvation of contextual i zation in the principle of critical discern-
ment of the signs of the times. He speaks of the conscientization of
the contexts through involvement and participation in the historic
moment. This inte rJ?t ion with history is the contextual ity of
contextualization. He seems to stress a process of theologizing
which is ever changing in relation to the context. He suggests
that theologica in loco, must become theologica viatorum as the

-I'-

ll.

"pilgrim people" make their way toward God.

Most of the attempts at contextualizing theology to date have proceeded

from an existential framework. This involves the essentially relative

nature of text and context. It depends on a dialectical methodology

in its doing of theology. It assumes that all theology is conditioned

12.

by culture and not absolute. This methodology has produced

13.

the various "peoples' theologies" of Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Its presuppositions raise the question of syncretism and how we
may best avoid it in the pejorative sense.

SYNCRETISM

What is syncretism ? W.A. Visser 'tHooft defines it as the
view which,

" holds that there is no unique revelation in
history, that there are many ways to reach the
divine reality, that all formulations of religious
truth or experience are by their very nature in-
adequate expressions of that truth and that it is
necessary to harmonize as much as possible all re-
ligious ideas and experiences so as to create one
universal religion for mankind.

Is the tendency to reldttvise the Gospel into a way among ways a

real problem or a straw man based on inadequate understandings of

the Gospel? Looking at the general world situation Visser 'tHooft

sees it as a major problem. He distinguishes between translation

of ceremonies and forms from one religion to another, a.dsorbption

of practices from one religion to another, and true syncretism which

15.

relevatizes all in universality. He demonstrates that the

-8-

Bible is not a syncretistic book, and that its message is a particular

one calling tor salvation through a narrow point, Jesus Christ, but

thereby opening up to a universal salvation through the death and

16.

resurrection of Jesus Christ. In taking this position he argues

against Bultmann ,von Harnack, Hocking, and most of the scholars of

comparative religions. He is supported by Cullman, Kraemer, Newbigin,

17-.

Beyerhaus and many others. He points out that if the message of

a historic God acting in historic ways through saving events and

especially through Jesus Christ is not a true one, no real humanization

can take place. He traces the waves of syncretism which have swept

the world and points to the need for the Gospel message to remain

above the '.efforts to distort its uniqueness. He calls for dialogue

but not for a blending of religions. For Visser 'tHooft, Jesus

18.

Christ is always lord above all.

In what ways might contextual i zation lead to syncretism ? In
precisely the point of relevatizing the |(ri^orvc?^Jesus Christ into
a cosmic Christ figure who would assume mythic proportions as he
was interpreted and reinterpreted in the local context. Has this

happened in western society across the centuries of the Christian '

^ * i

era ? Yes, it has, and the many cults (Theosophy, Spiritism, etc)
which have grown out of the attempt need to be judged in the light ^
of solid exegesis. The hermeneutical problem is central in evaluating ^
contextualization and in avoiding syncretism. One obvious conclusion Le^

*v *

is that what is "syncretistic " by one yardstick may not be considered'

-9-

syncretistic by a different yardstick. Some scholars continue to use

the word syncretistic in a positive sense. M.M. Thomas called for

19.

a "Christ- centered syncretism" at Njarobi. But by Vi sser ' tHooft ' s

j T-4*^/*** j£> ?

it^^^rnat is ju^bably not syncreti sm, Dut'rather

definition or Newbi
adsorpti(o»f£.

discussing Syncretism and contextual ity, Saphir Athyal suggests

J+t

that when the<^speL-?TTFutTvi1^£ciT all certainty of understanding^

of God is lost, the Incarnation loses its significance, and God's

person is obscured. He suggests an apt analogy of true contextual i ty u<yi£r%’

is the picture of a grain of riGe buried in the ground, dying, and «U ' jr .

Pf9

bringing forth transformed life, the rice plant- true in genus and

species, unique in form, rooted in the soil, interacting with its

20.

envi ronmient, and reproducing.

Hendrick Kraemer has written at length on the problem of syncretism
and has had great influence on missiology of past years through his
books. He sees a primitive kind of spontaneous syncretism and a
more conscience philosophical effort to construct syncretistic systems.
Kraemer recognizes that there is a constant effort on the part of
popular religion in Israel to syncretize their faith, but recognizes
also the rejection of this tendency by the prophets . Kraemer
believes that most religions are naturally syncretistic because they
see themselves as partial apprehensions of the great universal
truth. Christianity, functioning in the light of "Biblical Realism

-10-

21.

reacts against syncretism. There are many evidences of the tend-

ancy of the first century world to seek accomodation with the
Gospel and bend the Gospel to its own ways, but these were rejected
by the church as witnessed it in the New Testament, especially in Y
the Acts and the Epistles .

In struggling with contextual i zatiofi and avoiding syncretism there

is a need to avoid a "ChristOTffaganism" on one hand and <g foreign^

nated (Tlien -culture model on the other. Bruce Nichols of the y

-uO+jJLi.) ,i Vu>}*A. H >2- f***-

EvangelTcal Fellowship warns of cultural syncretishf*which . .

I* 5 1* uses inappropriate animistic symbols or nationalistic symbols and '

thereby creates a distorted witness to Christ or which rejects ail

cultural forms except its own. The former is dangerous because it

lacks critical judgement; the la $er because it is a form of Judaizing.

Nichols suggests a second form of syncretism which distorts the Gospel

is theological in nature. He suggests that such syncretism, because

it assumes that all truth is culturally conditioned relativizes the

nature of truth and reduces the Gospel to a competing philosophical

22.

claim, idealizing Jesus as a cosmic Christ figure. He suggests
that syncretism results in a slow death for the church.

We can summarize by noting that generally contextual ization is seen
as a positive method of doing theology, but it must be done carefully
so that the uniqueness of Jesus Christ is maintained. The tension bet-
ween uniqueness and uni versal i ty^must be maintained and the yr<1

-11-

importance of the text must not be obscured by the context, nor
should the uniqueness of the context be ignored in understanding
text.

Having examined in an introductory way the issues of contextual ity
and syncretism, I shall evaluate how these issues are dealt with
iin the writings of several Asian theologians before considering
analytically the factors involved in contextual ization and syncretism.

CONTEXTUALIZED THEOLOGIES

In the last decade a number of Asian scholars have been developing

theologies which could be called contextualized. Earlier attempts

though few in number, were an excellent foundation for their efforts.

D.T. Niles and M.M. Thomas were two who pioneered in this effort a-

mong the protestent community. Most of these protestant theologies

23.

have grown out of the Asian Christian Conference.

The most well developed of these theologies is that of Dr. Choan-
Seng Song, formerly Principal of Tianan Theological College in
Tiawari, and now associate director of the commission on Faith and
Order of the W.C.C. in Geneva. His major work to date is found in
the books Third-Eye Theoloqy, The Compassionate God, and The

2T.

Tears of Lady Meng. He is attempting a synthesis of insights from

the Asian experience with Scripture events and stories which he

sees as paradigmatic for all peoples and therefore justify taking a

25.

theological leap from Israel to Asia.

-12-

One of Dr. Songs' starting points is the view that it is not Salvation-

history which is important, but salvation in history. A view centered

on Israel and the church is not an Asian view because most of the

church's history is western history. We must therefore take a leap

from the Bible to modern history in Asia. We must learn to see God's

26.

hand at work in the nations. He sees God's redemptive acts as

revolutionary acts and always in a context of violence, because history

resists change. He stresses the discontinuity of these acts which

make history readable and enable us to leap into the future. He sees

the church as attempting to institutionalize the revolution and

strongly critizes the western church for coming to Asia with the

view that salvation and truth are in the church's hands alone. He

sees the missionary effort of the church as an attempt to incorporate

Asia within the static structure of Salvation-History instead of

27.

seeking to understand history in context.

Western theologies are critized for reflecting on other cultures

from the vantage point of messianic hope lodged outside Asia (in

the western church history) so that redemption loses its meaning

28.

for these "outside" cultures. Song maintains that every nation
has analogical experiences to calling, slavery, exodus, and
other redemptive acts and therefore all nations experience God's
saving grace directly in their history, not only Israel and the
nations touched by Christian history. He cites the passages in
the Old Testament dealing with God's covenant with all people, and

-13-

^ ' '

with aliens who were used by God in Israel's history. This makes the

leap from Israel to Asia justified and even an existential necessity.

All histories are like paintings which need to be scrutinized in the „ ^

29.

light of the dialectic of salvation seen in the Bible. ^ ^ .

He recommends that Asian theology should not seek relevance beyond As i

but that reflection should be concrete in the Asian setting. A

liberation from the claim to universal validity is necessary so that a jv*')

an ecumenical theological community may be built on the basis of

30.

situational authenticity.

Therefore a conceptual and propositional

theology must give way to the situational and contextual. For
Song this implies that while the Cross plays an important role in

showing God at work in history, the Resurrection hasfftnTy a symbol ogi cap

31.

value. The material of Scripture is only important in as far as

it deals with events of history which show God at work and analogical

stories which teach something of the peoples' struggle. Reflective

insights of Scripture may equally be drawn from other wisdom literature

of the Asian setting. Song finally calls his theology a Transpositional

32.

Theology, because it stresses the transaction of God in history.

Charles West sees in Song's theology four main points. First, a

Christology which is almost universal and which sees a sacramental

presence of Christ in all cultures. Second, a transformational theo-
logy which breaks history and changes it and secularizes it. Third,

a theology judging the bad missiology of the past. Fourth, a theology

33.

of hope for change based on God's redemptive acts.

-14-

D. Preman Niles challenges Song's analogical method and asks whether

it is a form of spiritual imperialism to insist that all nations’

histories can be seen in Israel. He agrees with the concept that

a break needs to be made with the older missiologi cal views of

Salvation History and he agrees that attempts need to be made to

34.

seek values in other religions and cultures.

Song's theology stresses the love of God working in human history

and working for the people. His transpositional hermeneutic is

a liberating one which sees God freeing people through redemptive
35.

acts. Though his earlier work (Thi rd Eye Theology) does nbt stress

the Resurrection, his newer book (The Compassionate God ) does

36.

although it is not clear in what sense he takes its significance.

His theological hope is based on an eschatalogical view that affirms ^

God's control over human history and sees the whole of history as

' Jjfi .j*?

the arena of God's saving work. God s salvation is a universal one ky*'' -i •

yUi/

37.

which is mediated through Christ in all religions.

A second theologian writing contextualized theology in Asia is
Dr. Kosuke Koyama, formerly a missionary to Thailand, Dean and a
professor at Southeast Asia Graduate School of Theology, and now
teaching in the U.S.A.. He is a Japanese. Dr. Kosuke uses a keen
wit and popular style to raise specific questions about specific
points of encounter between theology and culture. His three major
books are Waterbuffalo Theology , No Handle on the Cross, and

”-15-

Three Mile an Hour God. He has also written a number of articles
for various journals.

Dr. Koyama speaks of contextual ization as "critical accomodational -

38.

prophetisni and prophetic accomodation". He points out that this
is likely to be done in an often hidden manner. It is a life
centered action focused on Jesus Christ. He challenges the traditional

view that Christianity takes history seriously while Buddhism or

Hinduism do not. He defines taking history seriously as experiencing

39.

history and influencing history through suffering. This kind of

reinterpretation of old assumptions is characteristic of Koyama. He
continually refers to various Bible passages and in both exegesis and
exposition forms a background of them in doing theology. He does not
limit himself to a few themes, but trys to let the Bible speak to
each problem he encounters. In this sense he is existential in his

methodoloqy. He seeks to accomodate the line/al view of history and

( 40.

the cyclical view of Buddhism through a spiral pattern. He stresses

the importance of the Asian context and its sacredness in history. He

deals with questions of technology, relational theology, western

dominance, relations between Buddhists and Christians, the

problem of suffering, the pilgrimage of faith, the outcast ministry

of Jesus, and the identification with the crucified one through

41.

participation in the world's sufferings. One of the interesting
themes which Dr. Koyama treats is that of the "Three Mile an Hour God".
He points out that God meets us in the wilderness and deals with us
at a walking pace. The implication is that the wilderness is a place

-16-

of both danger and promise. The Biblical patterns are of God working
with us over a long period and slowly.

Koyama is not tied to any one major theme, nor is he a slave to

a particular hermeneutic. He uses afegory, linguistics, tradition,

and the hi stori co-cfci ti cal method as needed. He comments that those

who are tied to one method are like those who spend " too much time

42.

with chopsticks and not enough with eating". Dr. Koyama's position
can be said to be Christ centered. He states, " The historical
context is ruled by God. To it the 5on came ( incarnation, crucifixion,
and resurrection) to challenge it profoundly. Contextualization

43.

is, then, an outcome of reflecting on the career of Jesus Christ."

Two different approaches come out of Korea. Dr. Juhg Young Lee is

a North Korean, educated in the USA, who teaches in the USA. He has

taken a philosophical approach to contextualization in going back

to the Chinese tradition of I Ching , a philosophy of change which

is monistic in nature, and using it in the light of process theology

to set up a rather systematized theology which leans heavily on

Bultmann,Whi tehead, and other western theologians. Lee applies the

yin-yang- both/and principle to resolve paradox and to establish a

framework for a universalized religion able to cope with the realities

44.

of quantum physics and the traditions of Asian religions. His

approach, while innovative is rather philosophical and not directly

/* — _ —

tied to the struggle of the mass of people as most contextualized
theologies are. His Americanized framework of supporting evidence

seems to make his theology more suitable to Asians in the USA rather

-17-

than in Asia itself.

A second type of Korean theology comes from the minjung movement.

Mi nj Ling is a word for the "people" (in the class sense) and is used

by the Christian theologians who are constructing a people's

theology in South Korea. Dr. Steven Tonghwan Moon was at Princeton

Theological Seminary recently and delivered a lecture from which the

material for this discussion is drawn. There are some writings in

English available on minjung theology but it is primarily being done

45.

in the Korean context as a liberation theology.

Minjung theology came into being as the work of professors and

students expelled from their schools for their political views. They

46.

were not of the minjung background in their upbringing. They
sought to work for the exploited and downtrodden people of the min-
jung They took as their background materials the stories and
traditions of the minjung, and the Biblical stories of Exodus and
other liberation passages. The minjung are seen as possessing
a spirituality which has grown out of the long struggle against the

overlords. They are still struggling but they are the sinned against,

^ —

more than sinners. Their spirituality is seen as a gift of the God of
love and justice. They are seen as a chosen people; chosen to lead
the way to justice and freedom. Their social history is the history
of the struggle of all the people. Their history is filled with the
struggle with greed, fellowship of the people, and the messianic hope

-18-

of the people. In the idealism, the sufferings, and the hope of the
m.injung, a redemptive process goes on. God is there. The same God who
appears in the Bible. The analogical method is used to find identy
between the people of Israel and the minjung.

The Minjung theologians have used a common contextualization method

in rooting their process of theology in the oppressed people of their

9 * —

land. They use case study, social history, Biblical critism, and

analogy to make their points. Their theology is a form of liberation

theology since it has as its eschatology the victory of the people

in God's liberating movement through history. It is Christian since

they see Jesus Christ as the witness to God's redemption. It is

universalist since it sees God in the folk religion of Korea and

would use their social history as an Old Testament analogue for

47.

their preparation for the coming of Christ.

A large number of other- "Asians are presently writing and
most are approaching their doing of theology from the contextual-
ization framework. In Indonesia, Albert Widjaya is suggesting a
theme of "beggarly theology" based on identifying with the poor
and seeking meaning in the context of daily life. He suggests that

begging is taking from the west, but beggarliness is taking from the

48.

garbage can of daily life. Ms. H. Marianne Katoppo presents a
woman's view of doing theology and suggests that in Asia women are
not given their rightful status before God. She suggests doing theo-

-19-

logy through reinterpretation of Biblical models and correct lingu-
istic studies of Bible words to remove the male bias. She suggests

that the model of Mary the work weary peasant woman is the best one

49.

for Asian women to identify with.

Emerito P. Nacpil, now Methodist Bishop, from the Philippenes

has written of the "critical Asian Principle" which should underlay

all of Asian contextual theology. That principle is that it should

be throughly Asian . (By which is meant that it must take into

account the tradition, social history, religions, historic struggle,

and contemport scene all in the light of Scriptureal witness). That

critical principle is to be used in a situational, hermeneutical,

50.

missiological , and educational dynamic.

M.M. Thomas surveys the development of indigenous theology (by
which contextualized seems to be meant) and points out three sources
of Indian theological development. First, theological education has
sought to maintain high standards of training for the ministry and the
whole church. Second, the ecumenical struggle of the various confess-
ions has sought an indigenous expression in its creeds, though with
limited success. Third, theological creativity has been increased
through the interaction of Christian thinkers with the religions of
India. Dr. Thomas cites a long list of men who have sought to gain
insight from the Indian religious context. These insights seek to
relate basic Hindu concepts to the Christian understanding and find
ways to communicate the Gospel more clearly in Hindu thought forms.

Dr. Thomas goes on to present an analysis of the fourth stream

of influence through the interrelationships with other religions

and those who claim Christ without baptism or Christianization of

culture. Finally he cites the early political theologies, and the

rise of nationalism. He sees the major Indian contribution to

contextualized theology as probably coming from Chenchiah's concept

of the new creation. Jesus Christ is the mani sfestation of a new

creative effort of God. The Christology of this view is based on

the Pauline idea of Jesus as the New Man. The Incarnation then is

51.

a permanent state and the basis for the humanization of history.

It can be seen from the preceeding survey of contextualized theo-
logies that most of them tenterTn the peopled) Most of them are ^

attempts to find meaning in the context of history and interpret
history in the light of eschatology which ^ocuse5~W'tTie person of
Jesus Chris^and God's redemptive acts in history. They all ‘have: a

deep respect for the traditions of the religions which surround them
and they find values in those religions which are analogous to the
Old Testament protohistory of Christianity. James A.Veitch has
suggested that an Asian Theology should be oriented to the " living
factors of self disclosure and liberation and the witness of Christ
to the Resurrection. He speaks of its response as a Christian inter-?
pretation of the world, a Christian understanding of man, a Christ-
ian concept of freedom, and a Christian concept of God's self disclosure
in human history. He quotes Barth that Asians should feel free to

-21-

/ 52. /

be Asians and work at constructing their own theology. Dr. Saphir

Athyal suggests that there are four factors to remember when shaping

an Asian theology. First it must have a Biblical base and character.

He maintains that the Written Word and the Living Word have no

contradiction or contradistinction and that there is a core of

Biblical theology which is supracul tural . Second, he calls for a

systematization of theology around the Asian context. He points

out the need for carefully relating to the context, both social and

religious, as his third point. Interreligious dialogue is called

for on the basis of a need to understand one another. He urges careful

maintaining of the " revelation-fact" in any dialogue. Fourth, he

shows that Asian theology should be directed toward life and mission

53.

and not be abstract. Although stressing the "revelation-fact"

less than Dr. Athyal, Bishop Lakshman Wickremesinghe suggests a

similar idea in stressing a need for adaptation, in forms, naturali-

54.

zation in communication, and dialogue in interaction.

In a thoughtful paper delivered to the American Society of Missiology,

Dr. Charles Taber suggested several criteria for contextualizing
(or indigenizing) theology. He cites several Asian and American
theologians in making the first criterion Biblical. There must be
a grappling with the text itself. The Transcendence of God is a
second criteriorn. In whatever way this is expressed it is necessary.

Christology is the third criterion. It must be explicitly stated in
ways which communicate. Contextualized theology must be prophetic

-22-

in nature, the fourth criterion. It must not only affirm the
values of its context; it must challenge them where necessary. A fifth
criterion of theology is that it must be dialogical. It must learn from
the struggles of others within and without the Christian faith ,
both in the east and in the west. The sixth criterion is that its
methodology must be open ended. It must wrestle with modernization,
power and all the complexities of the age with all tools available.
Finally, it must be subject to the Holy Spirit. He must be its

55.

dynamic principle as He has been for the church through the ages.

D. Preman Niles points out that Asians see a great need to join

theology and mission in contextual izati on. There is a need to make

•r *-4r*\ArC.-M-t‘

the periphery ( the poor of Asia) the center of theologizing. A

r —

conversional theology needs to arise stressing not personal conversion

56.

in isolation, but in relation to belonging to the people. For

Asians , Niles holds creation history is the proper starting place

for doing theology, not salvation history (he defines salvation

history as book bound and related to the western church and western
57.

history). Niles is not rejecting the history of salvation in

God's redemptive acts, but in identifying that history with the west

and neglecting the work of God among the peoples of Asia. He suggests

three approaches to contextual i zation. First, forming a theology or

philosophy of pluralism. Second, shape a method and analysis of dialogue

which is dynamic. Third, seek to discover the significance of other

58.

religions in God's plan.

Niles affirms a ^hri st centered approach rather than a^static doctrinal
approach. There are two salvation stories in Niles' view. One which
is based on the Bible, mediated through western missionaries and the
church, and the other which is mediated through Asian religions,
cultures, and social histories. The Asian task is to relate these

59.

two into one coherent whole.

There are two motifs which seem to form the center of the contextual

theological framework in Niles' opinion. First, a liberation motif

which is drawn from the Bible and from other stories of Asian religions

and social histories. Second, a view of the mystic, Cosmic Christ

who figures in all of history. Niles' view in this regard is

60.

widely held in Asia. The prevalance of this view can be

seen in the following quotes from the East Asia Christian Conference

Sri Lanka Conference of 1965,

For Asian Churches to be confessing Churches in
the contempory World of Asia means they must
... extend their worship to the secular world...
their theology... to the world of Asian Thought,
philosophy, and religion... (Such confession
is essential and)....* This enrichment happens as
Christians share in what it means for a Buddhist,
a Hindu, a Muslim, to know Christ. ... (We have
inherited a great tradition from the missionaries )
but we have been too inhibited by our fear of syn-
cretism... forgetting thateven as peoples of other
times and cultures made their confessions, we must
do the same in our own time and culture."

61.

V ^ ■

Again the tension between contextual i zati on and syncretism arises. It

is inescapable in the effort to relate Gospel and culture.

-24-

DETERMINING FACTORS

In the discussion of valid criteria for contextual ization and the
problem of syncrestic tensions there is a need to clarify issues
and define terms. Communication is a difficult process at best and
misunderstandings lead to misapprehensions. LyH (T*

The First factor to consider is proto-world views. Proto-world views ^ ^
are those views which act as a grid through which we view our envir-

62.

onment. In communicating the Gospel, there are at least three yy+A*
proto-world views operational. The first is that of the Biblical
writers themselves. To communicate, we must first effectively
analysize the linguistic, hi storical ,and social and religious elements
of the textual materials. Exegesis is basic to the task. Secondly,
the protoworld view of the communicator is important. He must express
his ideas through a filter of his own pre-understandings. The Third 4
factor is the receptor's proto-world view. The receptor must understand
a radically new way through the old context of his usual environment.

The Second Factor is the role of the Bible in revelation. In
contextualizing, one must ask what part Biblical material will play
in the ultimate theology produced. If Scripture is interpreted as
event and interpretation, completely culturally conditioned, one
will use Biblical materials more casually than if one sees an
element of the transcul tural or "cosmic" in the form of^rfopositional
principles in ScrWture. There is little question that Scripture is

t * ^ . / 1 1

-25-

enculturated in its own time and culture, but the question remains . ^

whether God intends Scripture to speak supracul tural ly in such a

_ — * * ‘

way that the Biblical Theology of al Systematic theologies remains j \2'-r^0

^ — rurfi'

the same, though emphases will differ. All systematized theologies a

are culturally conditioned and contextualized. Are the Scriptures , n '

a special case in speaking normatively to all cultures or are they

63. yuj*

the same as all other theologies ?

The Third Factor is the need for a valid Hermeneutical principle
in evaluating the contextual i zation process. Situational principles,
historical principles, cosmic principles and others have been suggested
to resolve the dilemma. Four concepts lend themselves to the shaping
of a hermeneutic. First, the Living Faith Principle. The Scriptures
witness that understanding is not possible with out faithful living
in obedience to God. One must be in spiritual relation to God in
Christ in order to understand the Scripture. Second, Interactive
encounter with the text. One must objectively wrestle with the material

of the text, before subjectively submitting to the text. Third,
one must be in community with the body of Christians, the Church,

in order to gain all the insight God offers His people through

collective wisdom. Fourth, One must relate all to the Eschatological

Hope of God's action in history and His control over history which

64.

moves toward climax in Christ.

The Fourth Factor is the issue of pluralism and dialogue with other

-26-

religions. At the heart of this discussion is the question of

the ways the peoples of the O.T. and the N.T. interacted with the

surrounding cultures and whether they were syncretistic in their

accomodation to those cultures. They provide us with a model for our

interaction today. Secondly, thejre is the question of the kind of

revelation we have in the Scriptures and the kind of revelation other

religions have from God. Thirdly, there is the question of the

grace of God as it relates to other religions. Is it saving grace, or

65.

only informing and calling grace ?

The Fifth factor is the role of the Holy Spirit in informing

Scripture, informing other religions, informing the church, and

informing individual Christians. Certainly His work is mysterious

and unseem, but He is God's dynamic at work in the world. We must

develop an adequate understanding of His work if we are to adequately

66.

contextualize theology.

CONCLUSIONS

I perceive contextualization to be a valid process which holds real
possibilities for enriching the church of Christ in every setting. I
see also, grave problems with the process because it is often done with
out adequate critical reflection taking into account the Biblical
materials. There is a considerable latitude of viewpoints regarding
the proper hermenoutic for contextualization. Those differences often
arise out of the preunderstandings of the interpreters. There needs

-27-

to be more dialogue at the level of hermeneutical understandings, and
Biblical approaches. Contextual ization has sharpened the awareness
of theologians toward other religions and cultures. This is for the
good. We need to struggle more with the question of God's providencial
care and His witness to the world. The Scriptural material is ample
and has been cited frequently. Finally, as I analyse the various
views as an evangelical, I see one major problem which deserve more
discussion between those of my viewpoint and other positions. That is
the nature of revelation and the role of Scripture in shaping our
views. There is too much of chri taturing ’of positions by all con-

ENDNOTES

1. See Rolland Allen's Missionary

< Methods , St. Paul ' s or

Ours

Eerdmans' F

5ublishers, Grand Rapids,

and Melvin Hodges, The Indigenous Church,

Gospel Publishing House, Springfield, MO, 1953.

Also John Nevius, Methods of'Mission Work, Foreign
Mission Library, New York, 1895. In the view
of its proponents, contextual i zati on goes beyond
the limits of indigenization; however see also
James Buswell III in Theology and Mission ,
"Contextualization, Theory, Tradition, and
Method ", Baker Book House, Grand Rapids, 1978
for a contrasting view.

2. Ministry in Context , The Theological Education Fund, London, 1972,

p. 19-20. The first mandate was to raise the level
of scholarship in ministerial training in the
3rd world. The second mandate was for re&afl/ancy to
context. This mandate is for reform and renewal.

3. Ibid. ,p. 18 ff.

4. A quote taken from an unpublished letter by Nissiotis found in

Contextualization of Theology, Wm. Carey Library
Pasadena, Ca ., Bruce Fleming, Author, p. 5.

5. Ibid. , p. 6.

6. Ibid, p. 6.

7. Ibid., p. 7.

8. See Allman, Daniel von, "The Birth of Theology, " International

Review of Mission, Vol. 64, No. 253, June 1975.
Also see Bautista, Lorenzo, et. al.,"The Asian Way of Thinking in

Theology", The Evangelical Review of Theology,

9. Beginning in 1972 with the third mandate and the Bangkok
conference on Salvation Today, and in the various mission journals

of every theological persuasion there has been extensive debate on the
issues .

10. Kj^nsler, F. Ross, "Mission and Context", The Evangelical Missions

Quarterly, April 1978, Vol 14, No. 2.
pp. 23-36. Dr. Kinsler is a United Presbyterian
missionary representing a mediating view in the
discussion.

11. Coe, Shoki , " Contextualizing Theology", Mission Trends No. 3.,

Gerald Anderson, Ed. ,~Eerdaans , Grand Rapids
1976.

12. A keen analysis of this aspect of contextualization in discussed
by Bruce Nichols in his Contextualization: a Theology of Gospel

and Culture, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, 1l7,i979~

13. See Guttieriz, Mbiti, Song, et al . These Theologies begin with
engagement between the historic moment, Biblical themes of liber-
ation, and pre understandings of history and the class struggle.

14. Visser t'Hooft, W.M., No Other Name, Westminster Press, Philadelphia,

1963, p.ll.

15. Ibid., p. 11-12.

16. Ibid. , p. 90-97.

17. This is oot to suggest that the Biblical writers do not struggle
with the issue of syncretism. Both the O.T. and the N.T.

deal with the issue squarely, but they remain in tension with
it rather than absorbing syncretic elements. As Visser t'Hooft
says, "There is a great gulf between the N.T. (and the O.T. as well)
and syncretism." p. 77.

18. Ibid.p. 124-5.

19. Nichols, Contextualization , p. 34 as cited.

20. Ibid. , p. 36.

21. Kraemer, Hendrick, The Christian Message in a Non Christian World ,

’Harper and Bros., New York, 1947, especially
chapters 6 and 8. Kraemer sees a radical
discontinuity between the Christian faith and
others, but he calls for adaptation in relation
to the other faiths.

22. Nichols; See especially chapters one and two. He states a position

whioh approves of contextualization but sees limits in
the nature of Biblical core material which must be res*
pected. He adopts the view that there is but one Biblical
theology and that authentic contextualization will seek
to relate its task to that core.

23. The various periodicals, papers, and books of the Asian Christian
Conference and the, as yet scarce publications of the Asian
Theological Association (of the World Evangelical Fellowship)
have published most of the Asian material available.

24. His books have been published by Orbis and the W.C.C. and
represent a truly Asian theological discussion.

25. Song, Choan-Seng, " From Israel to Asia, a Theological Leap",

Mission Trends, No. 3, p. 217. See also
his Third Eye Theology .

26. Ibid., p. 217; see also his Tears of Lady Meng in which he

discusses political theology through a folk
story.

27. Ibid., p. 213.

28. Ibid . p.216

29. Ibid, , p. 212.

30. Song, Third Eye Theology , Chapters one and two.

31. Ibi d. , p. 189.

32. Ibid. , p. 16.

33. West, Charles, " Responding to the Thought of Choan- Seng Song, "

Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research,

Vol . I, No. 3 .July 1977, pp. 11-12.

34. Niles, D. Preman, Ibid, ,pp. 9-10.

35. Song, The Compassionate God , section one.

36. Ibid, , p.98.

37. Ibid. , see also his reaction to West and Niles in the Occasional

Bulletin article cited.

38. Koyama, Kosoke, Water Buffalo Theology S.C.M. Press, London, p. 21.

39. Ibid., P. 23.

40. Ibid ., p.28ff .

41* Ibid. , see parts II and III of Waterbuffalo Theology and the

Three Mile an Hour God

42. Koyama, " Reflections on Association of Theological Schools
in South East Asia", S.E.A. Journal of Theology,

Vol 15, Spring 1974, p. 13.

43 • Ibid. , p. 19.

44. Lee, Jung Young, The Theology of Change , Orbis, Maryknoll, 1979, p 53ff.

45. See Living Theology in Asia , also Minjung Theology .

46. Based on a statement of former missionary to Korea, Dr. Samuel
Mofett.

47. Stated in a lecture given by Dr, Steven Torighwan Moon at Princeton
in the fall of 1982.

48. W.id j ay a , Albert, "Beggerly Theology", in Living Theology in Asia

Orbis, Maryknoll, 1981, p. 139.

49. Katoppo, K. Marianne, "A Liberated Asian t:oman", Ibid. , p . 163 .

50. Nacpil, Emerito P., Emerging Themes in Asian Christian Theology

" The Critical /'si an Principle" , p.56ff.

51. Thomas , M.M., "Towards an Indigenous Indiam Theology", in

Asian Voices in Christian Theology , Anderson,
“Hd7,p 11 W.

53. Athyal, Saphir, "Toward an Asian Christian Theology", in

Elwood, p.66.

52. Veith, James A., "Is an Asian Theology Possible", S.E. A. Journal

of Theology, 17, Spring 1976, p. 13-14.

54. Wickremesinghe, L.A., "Chri stiani ty in the Contexts of Other

Faiths", p. 30 in Asia's Struggle .

55. Taber, Charles, "The Limits of Indigenization in Theology",

Missiology, Vol . 6, No.l,Jan.l968.p.69ff.

56. Niles, D. Preman, "Christian Mission and the Peoples of Asia",

Missiology, Vol 10, No. 3, July, 1982. p. 281.

57. Ibid. , p. 286

58. Ibid. ^ 287.

59. Ibid., 291.

60. Ibid ., p. 292-5.

61. Elwood, p.44-5.

''Jr**

62. This represents a change from the time when it was accepted that

one could view issues purely objectively as in the case
of the scientists of religion of the last century.

63. This is a basic dividing point in the views of missiologists of
the World Council of Churches and the World Evangelical Fellowship

in their thinking on contextual ization. At the Willowbank
conference the W.E.F. defined their position as affirming one
Biblical theology and one core of Biblical truth for all cultures.

64. Often preunderstandings shape hermeneutics. Bultmann seems to be

bound in a world which allows no supranatural intervention and
which is based on the postulates of a materialistic- scientism
in denying the possibility of miraculous events. Barth's
Christiolgical filter of hermeneutic caused him to strain in
some exegesis. Others could also be cited on any side of an
issue. We need to be careful of our preunderstandings in
our hermeneutic.

65. The spread of opinion on this issue is wide. Evangelical scholars
such as Hesselgrave amfl Nichols join Visser t'Hooft, Kraemer,

and others against Van Lewen , von Harnack, et. al. Part of the
. problem is the definition of words as Visser t'Hooft wisely
points out.

66. Perhaps the Pentacostal Christians have something to teach us

in their insistence on the immediacy of the Spirit's work in
the church today.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS

Anderson, Gerald, Ed. , Asi an Voi ces i n Christian Theology, Orbis,

Maryknol 1 , T97(T

Mission Trends No. 1 (1974);No. 3(1976) ;

No. 5 ( 1961 ) ; Eerdmans Publishing, GrandRapids.

The Theology of the Christian Mission ,

McGraw Hill, New York, 1961.

Blauw, Johannes, The Missionary Nature of the Church , Lutterworth

Press, London, 1962.

Elwood, D.J., Ed., Asian Chirstian Theology, Westminister, Philadelphia 1980.

England, J.C.,Ed. Living Theology in Asia, Orbis, Maryknol 1, 1981.

Fabella, Virginia, Ed., Asia's Struggle for Full Humanity , Orbis,

Maryknol!, 1980.

Fleming, Bruce C.E., Contextualization of Theology, William Cary

~ Library, Pasaciena, 19 8b.

Hesselgrave, David, J. > Ed., New Horzions in World Missions

Baker Book house, Grand Rapi'di", 1079

Theology and Mission , 1978. ( Ibid)

Koyama , Kosuke, Waterbuffalo Theology S.C.M. Press, London 1074

Kraemer, Hendrick, The Christian Message in a Non Christian World,

~ Harper Bros7, New York, 1947.

Why Christianity of all Religions ?

Lee, Jung Young, The Theology of Change, Orbis, Maryknol 1, 1079.

Nacpil, Emerito P., Ed., The Human and the Holy, New Day Publishers,

Quezon City, Phi 1 i ppenes , 1978.

Nevius, John L. Methods of Missionary Work , Foreign Missionary Library,

Nhw York r 1095'.

Newbiqin, J.E. Lesslie, A Faith for this One World , SCM Press, London

Nichols, Bruce, Contextualization: A Theology of Faith and Culture ,

In ter Varsity Press, Downers Grove , IL. 19797

Niles, D.T., Upon the Earth , McGraw Hill, New York, 1962.

Padilla, Rene, The New Face of Evangelicalism, InterVarsity Press,
bcvVners^ Grove, IL, "1976.

Song, Choan-Seng, The Compassionate God , Orbis, Maryknoll , 1982.

Third Eye Theology , Orbis, Maryknoll, 1979

The Tears of Lady Meng , World Council of Churches,

Geneva, 1§81.

The Theological Education Fund, Ministry in Context, New Lift Press,

B romi 1 ey , G.B., 1972.

Tillich, Paul, Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions ,
"Columbia U. Press, New York, 1963.

Visser t'Hooft, W.A., No Other Name, Westminister Press, Philadelphia, 1963.

Yamamori, Tetsumau, Christopaganism or Indigeneous Christianity,

William Carey Library, Pasadena,” 1975^

PERIODICALS

Allmen, Daniel von, "The Birth of Theology", International Review of

Mission, Vol. 64, N. 253, June 1975. pp 37-52.

Bautista, Lorenzo, et. al, "The Asian Way of Thinking", Evangelical

Review of Theology, Fall, 1982, p. 37-49.

Buswell, James 0. III." Contextual izatiofl',' Evangelical Missions

Quarterly, April 1978, Vol 14#2 , pp 13-19.

Conn, Harvie M. ,"Contextualization: A New Dimension for Cross Cultural
Communication," , E.M.Q., April 1978, Vol 14, no. 2,
pp. 39-46.

Kinsler, F.Ross, "Mission and Context", E.M.Q., April 1978, Vol. 14,

< no. 2, pp. 23-36.

Koyawa, Kosake, " Reflections on Association of Theological Schools

in South East Asia", South East Asia Journal of
Theology, Vol 15, Spring 1974, pp. 10-35

Lam, Wing Hung, "Patterns of Chinese Theology,", Occasional Bulletin of
Missionary Research, Vol 4, No 1, 1980, pp. 20-24.

Latuihamal lo, Peter D., "God in a Developing Plural Society"; SEA

Journal of Theology, Spring, 1982. pp. 93-102.

Niles, D. Preman, " Christian Mission and the Peoples of Asia",

Missiology, Vol 10, No. 3, July, 1982, pp. 280-90.

"Reviewing and Responding to the Thought of Choan Seng-Song, "

0BMR, Vol. 1, No. 3, July 1977, pp 9-15.

(responses by D.P. Niles, C. A. West and reply by Dr. Song)

Ro, Bong, Rin," Contextual i zation : Asian Theology ", EMQ, Spring,

1979, r pp. 15-23 .

"Statement of the Asian Theological Conference of Third World Theologians

0BMR, Vol 3, no. 3, July 1979, pp.' 20-24.

Veitch, James A.',' Is an Asian Theology Possible" , SEA Journal of Theol

Vol. 17, Spring, 1976, pp. 1-14.

Evangelism

There is nothing quite so
crippling to both
evangelism and social
action as to confuse them
in definition or to
separate them in practice.

I hr Now Testament uses the word
evangelize in what seems to he a
shockingly narrow sense. A whole
i luster of verbs, actually, is used to
describe evangelism: "preaching the
word" (Acts 8:4), "heralding the
kingdom" (Luke 9:2), "proclaiming
the good news" (Luke 4:18, 8:1). but
in essence, w hat all these words de-
scribe is simply the telling of the
good news (the Gospel) that Jesus
the Messiah is the saving King. Evan-
gelism was the announcement of
C heist's kingdom. It was more than
an announcement. It was also an in-
vitation to enter that kingdom, by
faith and with repentance.

Evangelism, therefore, is not the
whole of the Christian mission. It is
only a part of the mission. Jesus and
the disciples did many other things
besides announce the kingdom and
invite response. Evangelism is not
worship or sacraments. "Christ did
not send me to baptize but to evange-
lize," said Paul (I Cor. 1:17).

And it is not church growth or
c hurch planting. 1 he planting and
growth of the church are surely goals
of evangelism and its hoped-for re-
sults. but evangelism does not al-
ways produce a church or more
members for it.

Neither is evangelism confined to
apologetics. Paul says, "We try to
persuade" (2 Cor. 5:11), but insists
that he was sent to tell the good news
"without using the language of hu-
man wisdom" (I Cor. 1:17, 20).

f inally, evangelism in the New
Testament was not confused with
Christian service, or Christian action
and protest against the world's injus-
tices. A revealing and disturbing inci-
dent in the book of Acts tells how
Greek-speaking Jews among the ear-
ly Christians rose as a minority group
to complain of discrimination in the
distribution of funds. The reply of
the apostles seems almost callously
narrow: "We cannot neglect the

: The leading

preaching of God's word to handle
finances" (Acts 6:1, 2 I EV). Of
course, they did immediately pro-
ceed to do something about the injus-
tice. but they did not call it evange-
lism.

In the context of the kingdom,
however, the evangelistic proclama-
tion was never so narrow that it be-
came isolated from the immediate
pressing needs of the poor, the im-
prisoned, the blind and the op-
pressed.

Here I am reminded of Korean
evangelism. I asked a pastor in the
Philadelphia area why his church
was growing so fast. "When Koreans
come in," he replied, "first I get them
jobs; 1 teach them some English; I
help them when they get in trouble
with their supervisors. I invite them
to church. And then I preach to them
the Gospel." That is putting evange-
lism into context.

But if there is anything worse than
taking the text out of context, it is
taking the context without the text.

Just as Christ's salvation is never to
be isolated from the immediate, real
needs of the people, neither is it to be
identified with those present needs.
When Jesus quoted the Old Testa-
ment about "good news to the poor"
and "freedom for the oppressed," he
did so on his own terms. J lis salva-
tion is not Old Testament shalom, and
his kingdom is not Israel.

There is nothing quite so crippling
to both evangelism and social action
as to confuse them in definition or to
separate them in practice. Our evan
gelists sometimes seem to be calling
us to accept the King without his
kingdom; while our prophets, just as
narrow in their own way, seem to be
trying to build the kingdom without
the saving King.

Restoring the balance

There was a time when most Chris-
tians believed that evangelism was

IMPACT

by Samuel Moffett

partner in missions

the only priority. They were wrong
I hen the C hurch swung too far the
other way. The only Christian prioi
ity for some has been social justice
through reconstruction. I hat, too, is
an important priority. But it is not the
only one. And when they made it the
only clear mission of the Church, the
result was a disaster. In trying to
speak to the world, they almost lost
the Church.

Others tried to restore the balance
by pointing out that "Christ mediates
Cod's new covenant through both
salvation and service. . .Christians
are called to engage in both evange-
lism and social action." But even that
is not enough. What the Church
needs for the future in mission is
more than balance. It needs momen
turn. Not an uneasy time between
faith and works, but a partnership
Now in most practical, working
partnerships, there must be a leading
partner, a "first among equals," or
nothing gets done. Which should be
the leading partner in mission? F.van
gelism or social action?

1 submit that what makes the
Christian mission different Irom
other commendable and sincere
attempts to improve the human con
dition is this. In the Christian mission
our vertical relationship to Cod
comes tirst. Our horizontal rela-
tionship to our neighbor is "like unto
it, and is just as indispensable, but it
is still second. I he leading partner is
evangelism.

I his is not to exalt the prot Luna-
tion at the expense of Christian ac-
tion. 1 hey belong together. But it
does insist that, while without the
accompanying deeds the good news
is scarcely credible, without the word
the news is not even comprehensible!
Besides, the real good news is not
what we in our benevolence do for
others, but what God has done for us
all in Christ. Evangelism, as has been
said, is one beggar telling another

where to find bread

I lie supreme task of the Church,
then, now and for the future, is evan-
gelism It was the supioine task for
the ( hurch of the New iestament. It
is also the supreme challenge facing
the ( lum h today.

Half Ihe world unreached

I he determining factor in develop-
ing evangelistic strategies, I believe,
is that evangelism moves always in
the diieclion of Ihe unreached. "It
must focus on those without the Gos-
pel More than one-half of the
woi Id's people are still without the
simplest knowledge of the good
news ol ( .oil's saving love in Jesus
t hrist I here is no greater challenge
to evangelism in mission than that.

In this connection it may be useful
to note that for general strategic
evangelistic planning, some mis
siologists suggest as a rule of thumb
th.it 'a group of people are classified
as unreached it less than 20 percent
claim or are considered to be Chris-
tian ( hi isti. ms are rightly con-
cerned about the grievous tinbal
a ni es ot wealth and food and free-
dom in the world What about the
most devastating unbalance of all:
the unequal distribution of the light
ol the knowledge ot ( iud in Jesus
Christ?

I am not overly addicted to statis-
ts s But what does it say about a
"six continent approach to evange-
lism," for example, to find that most
of our church mission funds still go
to ourselves on the sixth continent,
which is between 70 percent and 80
percent at least nominally Christian?
Africa, however, is perhaps 40 per-
cent Christian by the same rough and
imprecise standards. And Asia,
which holds more than one-half of all
the people in the world, is only three
percent to four percent even nomi-
nally Christian.

In the next ten years, the number

of non Christians which will be
added to the population of Asia will
be greater than the entire present
population of the United States mul-
tiplied almost three times (650 mil-
lion, compared to 220 million). Treat-
ing all six continents as equals for
strategical purposes is a selfish dis-
tortion of the evangelistic realities of
the world.

One last thought. There is an unex-
pected bonus to keeping the defini- (SW\
tion of evangelism simple. It means
that anyone can get into the act. One
of the happiest lessons I ever learned
about evangelism came not from a
professional evangelist, but from a
watermelon vendor.

It was in a Korean village, and my
wife came up to ask him how much a
watermelon cost. He was so sur-
prised at finding a long-nosed for-
eigner who spoke Korean that at first
he was struck dumb. He even forgot
to tell her the price. There was some-
thing more important he wanted to
say. I ie asked, "Are you a Chris-
tian?" And when she replied, "Yes,"
he smiled all over. "Oh, I'm so glad,"
he said, "because if you weren't I
vyas going to tell you how much you
are missing."

If more of us were so happy about
what we have found in the Lord
Jesus Christ that we couldn't wait to
tell those who have not found him
how much they are missing, we
would need to worry no longer about
the future of evangelism. .

Dr. Samuel Moffett was born and raised by
missionary parents in Korea. After oblaining
degrees at Wheaton College, Misdy B*M«
#*•*■*, Princeton Theological Seminary and
Yale University, he returned as a missionary
to serve first In China and then in Korea, where
he just retired as the dean of Ihe graduate
school of the Presbyterian Seminary in Seoul.
This article is reprinted with permission from
the author and Latin America Evangelist,
magazine of the Latin America Mission.

SEPTEMBER 1981

ON THE DEITY OF JESUS CHRIST

In our American Presbyterian tradition, one of our illustrious 20th Century
church fathers is Robert E. Speer. Those who have "ears to hear" him realize
that the historic, orthodox view of the divinity of Christ Jesus proved a problem
at the beginning of the 20th Century, as it is in the United Presbyterian Church
today.

Closing his address* at Northfield Massachusetts, Dra Speer presents four
reasons why "so many men and women do not believe that Christ is the Son of God."

Briefly, these reasons are:

First, they have never given real, conscientious, consecutive thought to the
problem of Christ at all. Second, they have never studied the four gospels. Fourth,
they have never tried Him. ("The deity of Christ is not a mere doctrine or propo-
sition. It is a living theory of being . . .")

Speer’s third reason — "A great many do not believe in His deity simply
because they do not know how absolutely the world needs God incarnate in the flesh" —
appeals to me as a missionary. Robert E. Speer’s illustration supporting this third
reason seems a bit removed from Presbyterianism today — but need not be0 I quote:

"I have a dear friend who says that he never realized how it must be that Christ
was the Son of God until, during his university course, he went down to work
in the county jail. Sunday after Sunday as he sat down among the prisoners in
that jail, among men of darkened souls, men of rotted-out characters, men who
were hopeless about this world and the world to come, men who were as dead
as any man could ever be when his body was laid down in his grave, he realized
as he had never realized before that, if there never had been an incarnation,
by the very character of God there must be one; because it was necessary that
there should come into the world somewhere and some time that great release of
divine and transforming power without which the world in its death could never
live. We believe it came nineteen hundred years ago once for all in Jesus of
Nazareth. "

Before graduating from Princeton Theological Seminary, my son told
some classmates that the Speer Memorial Library was named after himself «, Not exactly,
but he is not ashamed of his name — Robert Speer Rice. Would that all Presbyterian
clergy would read Speer the layman’s "The Deity of Christ"!

*The Deity of Christ, Robert E. Speer, Revell, 1909

Rev. Robert F. Rice, Pastor at large,
Presbytery of Eastern Oklahoma

This article appeared in the January /February ’81 issue of PRESBYTERIAN COMMUNIQUE.

IS SALVATION THROUGH JESUS CHRIST
RELATIVE, NORMATIVE, OR EXCLUSIVE ?
A CRITIQUE OF THE CONTEMPORY DEBATE
AND ITS MISSIOLOGI CAL IMPLICATIONS

Prepared for
Dr. Moffett
EC 33

* *»Garry 0. Parker
PhD. Program

i*e
vv livdc.

i\ uk*

Wc«

^V)K< 5 Uwtua&j Cv*A^***4A
" u*»)n**\ fy-Y'K '

Wt -1^ Iblt i‘4v4 iwnywwv .

■|y wT

«0

S'rL'M’i

!Vc^ a4/^vuL

|4«1 ^ IrtWs.

' Kv *W- ixv-*c &*£lv»7«w .

* KavCIJ*v4uw av .

n * ^ ^ j1 ^ "

IAAaa

6 l^uu^ Avu.«^a.L , c/h“***’

t c.\{ !CA~fius4) Si H lU~*A*f*W

' (tu. j] dt-vui WM-t V XPl

I, w<ft. Wjt oieLihlaiiji^

MM4 u4»3 rjfe^ y*

tv»A \

Gu{ b\jJQ^ . LwW'viwLj ;) ^ «A

•. ***\y ^

y ww<, (i4<( w«t

(Ra* w>

P Cr*iOw»-> luL’j.* ^ -

t Vv>V^. C,*h jun *j J^-Wv;

<v> t«ii| c<\a c»^<Lit*'*< |«\

#^. dvwf

/**- r ^v< .

■4 r*w - . v * "

tj.r.w^I iT S^W *w^^N

aOa,j ^ (VimLlij
< ./ f,i. .

, , , | ***0
c-5 Uw's K w

^Vya* VX<\* ^ ^

V<v«w u': <wr

►*( Am.' I- k**« .

-1-

INTRODUCTION

What is the soteri ologi cal role of Jesus Christ in the salvation of the

world ? That key question is the dialogical point of the contemporary

debate on the relationship of Christianity to the other religions of the

world. Historically, from the writing of the New Testament, Christians

have affirmed with Peter, and the other Apostles, " Salvation is found

in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men

by which we must be saved." ( Acts 4:12). In today's climate of inter-
religious dialogue, however, such claims of exclusivity are being chal-
lenged both by the proponents of other religions, and by Christians
such as John Hick, who call for a "Copernican revolution", which will
move us away from exclusivist positions toward a theocentric universe

in which all the religions have ultimate salvic significance, and are le-

gitimate ways of pleas inf -God , The issues are very significant.
There seems little question that. the Christian heritage is one of exclu-
sivity, but it is unclear to many whether the Christian claims to
Jesus Christ s singular role in salvation should be regarded as accidental
(that is, growing out of the particular, prescientific, limited world view
of the past); or whether they should be considered an essential part of
the gospel message. Though few would go as far as John Hick's call
for a "Copernican revolution", there is a wide spread call for a re-
assessment of traditional views by protestants such as Carl Braaten and

Roman Catholics such as Karl Rahner. These men and others argue for
a proleptic universality of Jesus Christ's role in salvation not only
tntough explicit faith via Christianity, but also through other religions*

-2-

because God is at work in all religions through Jesus Christ and is
leading all to a final unity of salvation. There is also a resurgence
of more traditional views among evangelicals through the focal point of

the Lausanne Covenant, and the writings of such men as John R.W. Stott,

Michael Green, et. al . These renewed affirmations of traditional views
of Jesus Christ's soteri ol ogi cal significance recognize the necessity,
along with the more heterodox views, of the need to develop an adequate
apologetic which can cope with the broad horizon of inter- religious
dialogue and the eclscticizing tendencies of modernity which charact-
erize the contemporary era.

— n » _ ->

The focus of this paper is an examination of the question of the
soteriological role of Jesus Christ in world salvation as that role
is understood in the context of the contemporary debate. I shall argue
that the major positions in the debate can be delineated along an axis
which can be viewed as beginning from the position which states,

"Christ has a relative soteriological role", through the position which
states, " Christ has a normative soteriological role", to the position
which states, "Christ has an excl usi ve soteriological role". It is
my thesis that this wide spectrum of positions is shaped by three
root causes: wide hermeneutical diversity, the impact of contemporary
inter-rel i gi ous dialogue, and the pressure of the modern model of
cooperative unity.

-3-

This paper has the character of an exploratory study on the debate
regarding the role of Jesus Christ in world salvation. It is not a
study of how His redemptive acts are carried out, nor of the problem
of His divinity vs. His humanity (except tangentially), but rather
of the debate on Whether He is to be considered a way of salvation
or the Way of salvation for all peoples.

A RELATIVE SOTERIOLOGICAL ROLE

The most radical position in the spectrum of views on Christ's soterio-

logical role in world salvation is expressed by John Hick. In numerous

articles, he has argued far a^universe of faiths, theocentricly related,

complementary, and all partial understandings of the Eternal Spirit. He

characterizes the Christian way as, " authentic, adequate, and sufficent"

( but not exclusive, for) . . "God saves men and women within the Christian

way, within the Muslim way, within the Jewish way, within the Buddhist

way." Calling the Christian claims to exclusivity a rejection of, " God

leading us through new experiences into a wider conception of human

brotherhood and a larger understanding of divine Fatherhood", he urges

us to leave exclusive superiority in the past and move beyond them.

Hick characterizes the "God- Incarnate" language of the New Testament
as mythic and suggests that the scholarship of New Testament theology

-4-

has left us unable to secure access to the Jesus of history and there-
fore the Christ of faith should not be viewed in exclusivist terms,
for our view of Him is based on the developing theology of the church
and subject to our more insightful correction. He summarized his position
by affirming,

" We no longer have to draw the negative conclusion that
He is man's one and only effective point of contact
with God... We can say that there is salvation in Christ
without having to say that there is no salvation other
than in Christ."

The implications of Hick's views for all of theology are far reaching.

He places us with a universe where all truth claims are valid, inade-
quate expressions of the greater whole. Contradiction is swallowed as
easily as congr-uence. He seems to place us in a universe of total
cognitive subjectivity with regard to religious truth, except as it

relates to his axiom, " -till religions are different responses to variously

overlapping aspects of the same ultimate reality." From what fulcrum

point Hick achieves his assessment he does not tell us. His axiom seems

to presuppose a complete knowledge of all systems, and of ultimate reality

which one suspects is really somewhat beyond him. Yet Hick goes on his

way, seemingly unaware that in calling for a universal access to God

through any religion, he has adopted a specific religious position which

is not new, but as old es Hinduism. Ironically, he closes one of his

articles by quoting from, ."cneof the great revelatory scriptures of

the world" (the Bhagavad Gita) to support his hermeneutical position,

" Howsoever man may approach me, even so do I
accppt them; for on all sides whatever path
they may chbse is mine.'"

-5-

In a similar vein, from within the radical wing of the Roman Catholic

tradition, Paul Knitter speaks of a need to question the uniqueness of

Jesus Christ. He asks, " Is it not consistent, as John Macquarrie claims,

to be fully committed to Christ and at the same time fully open to the

salvific significance of other religions ? " He answers his question

with a clear affirmative. Drawing on the work of Tracy and Ricoeur, he

argues that claims to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ are part of the

Apostles' historically conditioned world view, and therefore simply,

1 mode of being in the world', that is , accidental accretions rather

10.

than essential core. His thesis rests on his reliance on the conclu-
sions of contemporary hermeneutical thought, following Tracy, Ricoeur,

Wiles, Baum, and Loneagan, among others. Using the arguments of John

11.

Hick's (Ed.), The Myth of God Incarnate , he demythologi zes and re-
mythologizes the language of Incarnation in order to affirm his central
thesis. One suspects a predisposition to find all traditional views of
Jesus Christ's soteri ol ogi ca\^ role inadequate and outmoded, precisely
because they do not support the findings which he is looking for. It
appears that Knitter's reluctance to accept a unique role for Jesus
Christ in world salvation grows out of the 'common experience' side

of the theological model he espouses (along with David Tracy) which

12.

includes also 'Christian fact' ( that is Scripture and tradition).

The model takes on a rather lop sided shape when Knitter makes 'common
experience' the filter for 'Christian fact', and fails completely to
allow for the problem of sin and its distortion of 'common experience'.

In arguing for the importance of 'common experience'. Knitter is arguing
for a kind of secular theology which relies epistemologically on the

-6-

sense experiences for verification and seems to enthrone sociology and
history of religions in the place previously occupied by dogmatics. It
is a position which he comes to out of a desire to bring all the resources
of modern research to bear on the fundamental question of Jesus Christ's
role in the salvation of the world. He poses questions which deserve
better answers than have been given, but his tentative conclusions are
in need of critical revision. His position can be summarized as follows,

" In the present state of knowledge of and dialogue with
world religions, the revisionist theologian", ( he refers
to Hans KUng) ."simply does not have enough data from
' human experience', to verify the claim that Christianity
is based on a revelation which surpasses and can ' catalyze'
all others. Better to follow the more scientifically
reputable path of David Tracy who claims that for Christians
Jesus is clearly the revealer of a decisive truth about
God and human existence and that this truth has universal
significance but he (sic) cautions against concluding to
the finality of this truth for other religions."

13.

Knitter seems less sure of himself than does Hick in questioning the
uniqueness of Jesus Christ. He maintains a qualified agnosticism as
to whether Jesus Christ has soteriol ogical significance uniquely or
in common with other salvific figures. He points out with Tracy that
no one has yet taken on the immense task of writing a systematic theo-
logy for, nor explored a theology of religions on this important issue,
with sufficent breadth and depth to make a 'final' statement. " Whether
it (the task) would yejild a verification of Christ's finality is un-
certain. In the light of the processive, ever incomplete character of

reality and of the continued vitality of other religions, it would
14.

seem unlikely. "

-7-

A NORMATIVE SOTERIOLOGICAL ROLE

This position is more difficult to define than either the preceding
relative one, or the following exclusive one. It is amorphorous and
its edges tend to shade into the positions on either side. The core of
the affirmations of this position are variations of the view that while
Jesus Christ is the decisive and normative final way in which we find
salvation, our understanding of the words "Jesus Christ" must be very
broad and while historically conditioned, must go beyond history into
a cosmic dimension. Further, advocates of this position would assert

the seeking after truth of those in other religions or philosophies, or
ultimate salvation because of God's eschatological purpose to save all
peoples .

At one extreme of this viewpoint are those who would affirm with Paul

Tillich that while there i$ .sal vation apart from Christ, "He is

15.

the ultimate criterion of every healing and saving process." Schubert
Ogden and other process theologians take up Tillich's arguments stating,
" One may affirm the necessity of Jesus' sacrifical life and death with-
out in the least supposing that his sacrifice accomplishes some other

end than perfectly manifesting God's everlasting purpose to embrace even

16.

our sin within his love." John Macquarrie opts for a similar under-
standing of Christ's work, calling for finding "truth and love" in other
religions as representative of Christ's work through them, and rejecting

exclusivity for a tonus of openness and commitment in the Christian
17. '

faith.

-8-

A kindred view of the role of Jesus Christ in world salvation is found

in Karl Rahner and Raimondo Panikkar's writings. Speaking from a posture

of " open Catholicism", Rahner calls for a shift from traditional Roman i,

tM >

Catholic views, beyond Vatican II, to a new understanding of the uniqueness V'^

’ \k;

of Jesus Christ which can see God at work normatively in other religions f
18.

in salvific ways. For Rahner Christianity is in one sense the absolute

religion, but at the same time, "..every human being is truly and really

exposed to the influence of divine, supernatural grace which offers an

19.

interior union with God." Rahner regards nonchristi ans as" anonymous

20.

Christians" and seems to affirm an almost irresistable grace at work
in their lives. Raimondo Panikkar takes a similar tack when he suggests,

" The good and bonafide Hindu is saved by Christ and
not by Hinduism, but it is through the sacraments of
Hinduism. ... through the Mysterion that comes down to
him through Hinduism, that Christ saves the Hindu
normally. This amounts to saying that Hinduism has 21.
also a placed the universal saving providence of God."

For these preceding advocates of a normative soteriological role for
Jesus Christ, he is savior because God is in all things, reconciling
them to himself. Though Rahner qualifies his understanding by speaking
of sinful distortion of God's grace, he still leans toward a theology
which, with others of this persuasion, views sin as something which
has no more ultimate significance because of their univer$*alist escha-
tology. The cosmic function of Jesus Christ as the light of all the
world is upheld. Emphasis is placed on the "Christ of faith" and the
"Cosmic Christ" or the "spirit of Christ" as the means by which God
brings salvation to those who have no explicit knowledge of him or who
follow other religions. All soteriological actions are viewed as having

-9-

an underlying unity of cause. Any "yes" to God's grace is seen as leading

to salvation if pursued, and is affirmed as origmatingAand enabling
because of Christ.

Protestants have also affirmed a similar viewpoint. Particulari ly the

theologians related to the Asian Christian Conference have often spoken

from this perspective. M.M. Thomas, S.J. Samartha, and S. Wesley Aria-

rajah are three whose writings have reflected this viewpoint. In

recent articles Ariarajah has called for a dialogical Christianity which

22.

abandons all absolutist claims for Christ. He is arguing for more

than simply humility in listening however, for earlier he has written

that we must see Christ in each religion, since all have their experiences

of salvation and their stories which grow out of valid human experiences.

Ariarajah roots Kis theology in the 'common experience' of humanity and

sees all scriptures as revelatory and equal. Christ is a cosmic organiz-

23.

ing principle which symbol tzes God's work in the world. All these men
have a deep devotional faith in Christ, but have chosen to read his
salvific action in broad terms.

It is interesting to note that all of the preceding views are products
of the struggle to wrench Christianity from its moorings as a 'historical
religion' and give it more 'cosmic significance' by emphasizing the
timeless present of God's working and a smooth continuity between nature
and grace rather than a sharp discontinuity because of sin.

-10-

Moving closer to the exclusivist position, one finds a large grouping

major figures such as Hans Kling, Wolfhard Pannenberg, Carl Braaten,

/of

and others. Concerned to preserve the historicity and careful "linguistic
access" to the Chri stol ogi cal traditions ; they affirm the finality dhd
ultimate value of Jesus Christ. At the same time they rely on a critical
tradition of scholarship which produces a universalist eschatological
outlook, and a view of Christ's work in the other religions which is
quite close to the preceeding thinkers' views . The difference between
the two groups seems to lie in the insistence of this latter group on

(\ lifer ic'd y *

maintaining hi stori cal i ty in its views of the way Christ works in other
rel igi ons .

Carl Braaten is an excellent example of this latter group. In a recent

article he surveys the spgQtrum of positions regarding Christ's soterio-

logical role. He challenges the more radical views to prove what iden-

Kj>

t i ty Christ has apart from^his historical nature, other than identity

we give him subjectively. He challenges the more conservative position

to present a convincing exegesis of all the universalist passages in

24.

the New Testament (such as Colossians l:19c20). At the same time,

Braaten affirms the uniqueness of Christ, " nothing is more clear in

the New Testament and the Christian tradition than the uniqueness of

25.

Jesus Christ in whose name alone there is salvation." Braaten
characterizes his own position as one which guards both the uniqueness
and universality of Jesus Christ through emphasis on historical study,
Christological tradition, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and
re-interpretation of the 'texts' in a modern context.

-11-

Braaten seems to find great hope in the contemporary inter-rel igious

dialogue. He asserts that, " The true identity of Jesus Christ is

still being disclosed in the encounter of the gospel with the world
26.

religions." He envisions the dialogue as a two way street with the
religions of the world occupying an analogous position to the Old Testa-
ment and complementing the New Testament with their insights. His emph-
asis on a living Christology is a counter to the deadness of orthodoxy.
While Braaten's critique is very insightful, he seems somewhat inconsist
ent in his own position. While affirming the historical character of the
uniqueness of Christ, he nonetheless seek to lift chri stologi cal theo-
logy from its historical relationships and subject it to a revisionist
critique based on the insights of other religions. This creates a kind
of relativity which seems to belie his affirmation of Christ's unique-
ness. He couples, his -weakness in this area with an eschatological
universal ism which sees Hod's 'work in other religions converging ulti-
mately in universal salvation. Why we should involve ourselves in a
mission to the world in Jesus' Name is questionable in the light of
his conclusions. Braaten wishes us to move forward in hope, which he
sees as an antidote to gnosi s , that is being too sure of what God is
going to do (apparently being too sure means being more confident than
Carl Braaten in what is going to happen). Our hope is, " ..that the

Lord of the Church will also finally rule as the Lord of the world,

27.

inclusive of all its religions." Certainly Braaten has charted a
course which many will follow. His combination of the uniqueness and uni
versality of Jesus Christ, coupled with openness to God's work among
the non-Christian religions, and hope for universal salvation is an
attractive, if problematic package.

-12-

EXCLUSIVE SOTERIOLOGICAL ROLE

This position has often been described using words like absolute,

unique, ultimate, and final. I have chosen to use the word exclusive

because it seems to delineate the position best. Unique could also

be used satisfactorily. Absolute has many Hegelian overtones. Ultimate

and Final seem to imply a process of saviors leading up to a last savior

28.

(and that is certainly not accepted by proponents of this position).
Exclusive is a word which may have negative connotations as in placing
some outside and accepting others, but it has another common meaning,
and it is this second meaning which I use to define this soteri ologi cal

29.

position, " given or belonging to no other; not shared or divided; sole".
Exclusive is a word which clearly carries the core meaning of this pos-
ition's affirmation that Jesus Christ is the unique Savior of humanity
and no one else has a role like his in offering salvation to the world.

This affirmation is clearly spelled out in the Lausanne Covenant, a

document which represents t|je thinking of the evangelicals who make up

30.

a large segment of those who hold this position. Those who hold
this viewpoint usually couple it with an eschatology which acknowledges
the possiblity of some being lost because they have rejected Christ.

Adherents of this position range from "fundamentalists" to "evangel-
icals " of varying degrees. If Carl Braaten could be said to lean slight-
ly to this position, then Leslie Newbigin could be said to lean slight-
ly from this position toward Braaten. Affirming the universality of
God's love, the need for repentance and faith, and the freedom of God
in an exposition of Romans 10:9-12, Newbigin says, " It is those who

-13-

1 call upon the Name of the Lord1 who will be saved. Conscious belief

and explicit verbal confession of Jesus as Lord (Romans 10:9) are

31.

the conditions for salvation." Newbigin prefers the term finality

in describing Jesus Christ's soteriological role (but it is clear that

he means ' unique ') He rejects an unqualified uni versal ism, but does not

clearly affirm an eschatology which strictly limits salvation to explicit

belief, choosing rather to use Jesus exhortation to seek to enter into

the narrow gate, " To claim finality for Jesus Christ is not to assent

either that the majority of men will someday be Christians or to assent

32.

that all others will be damned." Newbigin has a clear view of an

historical Christ who offers salvation to all people. He recognizes the

powerful evil of sin and understands a need for explicit belief in

Christ. His arguments are strong where they represent an analysis of

the human situation, but weak where he hopes for salvation beyond the

realm of those who have explicit faith in Christ. What the basis of

that hope is he does not olearly say, other than to affirm an openness

of action on God's part, " ..the Bible offers us always an open world

... We cannot and must not try to know in advance what the final judgement
33.

is going to be." His contention is that the Bible does not tell us
in Christ's words about the final judgement. It seems that Newbigin is
•A overly cautious here and fails to read Matthew, chapters 24 and 25.

\ v

r, -

An exemplar of the broad middle of this position is found in John R.W.

Stott. In his exposition of the Lausanne Covenant he states,

"It is because Jesus Christ is the only savior, that he
must be universally proclaimed..'.' (By calling Him the only
savior).." we mean neither that all men are automatically

-14-

saved .. nor that all men are ultimately saved.. for alas
some will reject Christ and perish. Still less do we mean
that all religions offer salvation in Christ, because
plainly they do not.

34.

Stott also affirms the possibility of the lostness of some, 'saying

35.

that it is " almos’t too dreadful to contemplate". The strength of
Stott's argument is his reliance on the Biblical record. Yet that same
strength is a weakness also, for he makes no reference to any critical
analysis of situation or context in his exegesis. Stott rests his case
on Scripture without demonstrating the kind of critical awareness that
would give us confidence that he understands the difficulties with some
of the passages he cites.

Another evangelical, N.T. Wright of Cambridge, writing in Tjiemel i os

makes up for Stott's weakness in an article which analysizes the texts

relating to universalism in the New Testament. He demonstrates that these

texts primarily relate to Vuni versal ism of inclusiveness of both Jews

and Gentiles in God's salvific plan, and do not affirm unconditional

universalism, because they are linked to passages calling for explicit

36.

belief in Jesus Christ.

In regard to the question of what happens to those who have never heard
the good news of the gospel, an interesting view is developing among
some evangel icals. (it is not a new view, having been held by John Wesley
inter al i a j It suggests, according to Clark Pinnock, " ..God will not
abandon in hell those who have not known and therefore have not declined
His offer of grace. Though He has not told us the nature of His arrangements

-15-

37.

we cannot doubt the existence and goodness of them." Pinnock points
out that such a view is based on the exegetical possibilities of God's
Word. C.S. Lewis, Wesley, and others are cited as holding a similar
viewpoint. This concept grows out of an understanding of God's activity
among people who do not have explicit knowledge of Christ in such a
way that their implicit faith is counted as explicit. It is really
quite close to the view of those who see with Rahner, "anonymous Christians"
among the world^ religions . What makes the concept interesting is that
those who are suggesting it come from a background most antagonistic to
the implications of universalism it carries with it.

The exclusivist position can be summarized as one which rests more on
Scripture and tradition than 'human experience'. It affirms the tradi -
tions of the historic Christian community. Its strengths lie in its
fidelity to a Biblical tradition which has proven convincing to many,
and its systematic theology which can deal with the texts adequately.

Its weakness is its inadequate grappling with the problem of religious
pluralism and the modern spirit of eclecticism.

-16-

INFLUENCES WHICH SHAPE THE DEBATE

It is affirmed by as diverse a group as John Hick, Carl Braaten, and

John R.W. Stott that the traditional views of Christ's soteriologi cal

role have largely been exclusive ones. Why then, the clear shift by a

majority of theologians to a normative or relative view of that role ?

One reason the shift has come about is the impact of the historical -

critical method on modern Biblical scholarship. It has assumed the role

of a given in the methodology of most scholars. "Modern historical

method questions all traditional views about the sources of the New

Testament... and it excludes in principle dogmatic presuppositions

38.

such as the notion of revelation.." This kind of methodological as-
sertion clearly predisposes its users to a limited set of conclusions.

It is often said that the historical critical method not only critiques
structure, but content as well. Rigorous application of the method has
tended to make an a-priori assumption of eliminating divine agency
in Scripture transmission as one of its bases. This in turn has produced
Biblical theologies which both relativize any insights from Scripture,
and remove any possibility of a unifying principle from their message.
Thus Hick can quote Pannenberg approvingly since," certainly one can no

longer regard it as a fact proved out of the New Testament that Jesus

39.

thought of himself as God incarnate." This frees Hick to construct

his 'Copernian revolution' of religions since Christ cani.no longer
be shown to be unique from the Scriptures. :

In the same manner all Christological titles can be reduced to the
expressions of the faith of the maturing church and not directly be

-17-

attributable to Jesus Christ's self awareness. Therefore witness to the
uniqueness of Jesus Christ in the early church can be held to be out-
side the essential core of the gospel, that is outside Jesus personal
teachings. Thus the argument is built and it stands and falls on the
question of the strength of the methodology. Carl Braaten seeks a mediat-
ing view, while agreeing with the use of the critical-historical method he
points out that all we know of Jesus' identity is through the witness of
the apostolic community and therefore we must accept their assessment
as a valid reflection of faith on who Jesus was. For him, this means that

all Christological titles are subject to revision and should be context-

40.

ualized in contemporary language. A further implication of the rejection

of any special quality adhering to Scripture, is the willingness to

use the scriptures of other religions in an analogous role with the Old

Testament. Braaten', Rahner, Panikkar, and others affirm the need for

us to incorporate insights from these other religions into our under-

~ - ---- 41.

standing of who Jesus Christ; was and is.

The net result of this methodological change is the production of
Chri stologies of an extremely relative nature. Jesus Christ's soterio-
logical role becomes whatever the considered weight of interpretative
evidence leads one to. An axiomatic corollary to this position is that
the Biblical truth statements are only blik ( personal and unverifiable
insights). Therefore, our contemporary insight takes methodological
and existential precedence over the Biblical blik, as long as our

statements are based on a scientific methodology.

-18-

While hermeneutical diversity is primarily a by product of the rejection
of traditional views for modern ones, it has not entirely left even
the exclusivist viewpoint undisturbed. It is undeniable that the quest
for more reliable insights into Scripture has benefited all theologians,
whether they fully accept its critical historical methodology or not.

It is equally clear that it follows that if we cannot agree on what
constitutes the basis for determining Christ's soteriol ogical role in
world salvation, we can never expect to agree on the correct under-
standing of what that role is.

A second factor shaping the current debate is the impact of inter-
religious dialogue. There is a great deal of agreement on all sides
that dialogue is important. There is less agreement by some on what
truely constitutes dialogue. A W.C.C. Theological Consultation held
at Chiang Mai, Thailand in 1977 ended up confessing an inability to
define the word in its religious context. Instead they spoke of openness
and communities and love, etc. (Dialogue has the characteristics 6f)
‘.'..an opening up in more than intellectual terms each to the concerns
of the other... a fundamental part of our service within the community,
... an expression of love... affirmation. . .participation with all who

are allies of life in seeking the provisional goals of a better
42.

humanity." Urging the use of the Bible as a basis for our Christian

reflection in dialogue, the report speaks of a need for repentence,

43.

humility, joy, and integrity in approaching people of other faiths.

In guidelines issued by the W.C.C. central committee, meeting in

-19-

Jamaica in 1979 dialogue is called, " witnessing to our deepest con-

44.

victionjand listening to those of our neighbors." There is a cautious

tone to these official W.C.C. statements. While some individuals have

pushed for less restrictive views of dialogue, the W.C.C. , increasingly

occupied with the idea of dialogue has also maintained some affirmation

of the uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Whether that affirmation will grow

weaker or stronger is open to question. Certainly there are those who

wish to carry the commonly held W.C.C. view of Christ's working in

other religions to the extreme of affirming his salvific action in other ^

^ V

religions, at least in terms similar to Vatican 1 1 1 s statements, if not
further. vi* ji Y

VI*

Those of the exclusivist position affirm dialogue also. John R.W. Stott

cites an Anglican definition as parti culari ly helpful,

Dialogue is a conversation in which each party
is serious in his approach both to the subject
and to the other person and desires to listen and
learn as well as to speak and instruct.

45.

Stott also traces the use of the word dialogue to the Greek word,
di alegomai as it is used by Luke in Acts 20:7-9 to describe Paul's
teaching method. Both in the passage cited and in other places the
word appears and Stott affirms its modern use on that basis.

On all sides of the debate, inter- religious dialogue has had a significant
impact. Dialogue enables encounter, understanding, clarification, hum-
ility, sensitivity, and integrity to be part of the communication process

whatever the content.

-20-

We live in a world where interdependence is an important fact of life.

In other eras, empires have forced cooperation on smaller nations and
provided little or no opportunity for them to seek redress for grievance.
Today that model has changed somewhat. Certainly large nations still
exercise their influence and at times use force to impose their will,
but a new emphasis on cooperative unity has produced at least the begin-
nings of a different style of international cooperation. The United
Nations provides a structured forum for the world community to discuss
political problems and to work together to solve common agricultural,
health, scientific, educational, and disaster related problems. It has
proven ineffective many times, but it is a start. Its existence has
engendered a drive for increasing cooperative efforts. These efforts
have been most evident in the way the economies of the world have
meshed into an interdependent network. Multinational corporations, for
all the problems they have created, have also been instruments in
promoting international interdependence. Tourism has been another factor
in creating international cooperation, as people from differing cult-
ures have become acquainted with each other.

This spirit of cooperative unity has affected inter- religious relations
and the Christian view of Christ's soteriological role in world salvation
as well. With the growing awareness of how interdependent the world
has become, and how much we all need to cooperate in insuring its
survival in the face of world tensions, has come a call to reexamine
our claims to exclusivity for Christ's salvific work. Sometimes the

-21-

calls for cooperation have been based on convictions that there is an
underlying religious unity among religions in that all are manifestations
of God's grace such as in the case of John Hick, or Raimondo Panikkar.

At other times, the calls for cooperation have been based on the common
humanity which we share with others and the need to work together to
preserve it, as with Wilfred Cantwell Smith, who states,

" My own view is that the task of constructing even
that minimum degree of world fellowship that
will be necessary for man to survive at all
is far too great to be accomplished on any other
than a religious basis... cooperation among
men of diverse religion is a moral imperative,
even at the lowest level of social and political
life.

46.

This call for cooperation based on common humanity is a common one

in the World Council of Churches documents. S.J. Samatha is a

47. A

representative spokesperson. It is interesting to note that these
calls for cooperation among religions seem to originate from the
area of the world where ..the plurality of religions is most evident,

Asia. The consciousness of the need for cooperation is sharpest there
both because the natural tendency of other religions in the region is
toward cooperation, and because population pressures make the need for
cooperation imperative.

The question remains however, whether cooperation is a good or bad thing ?
Our basis for answering that question will need to be related to the
root purpose of cooperation. If cooperation is for the purpose of
seeking mutual solution to common human problems, it would seem to

-22-

be a good thing. If, on the other hand, cooperation among religions
is sought for the purpose of creating a common world religion or in
affirmation of God's salvific action through all religions in a similar
way, then cooperation will create as many barriers as it tears down.

It appears that in the modern debate on the soteriologi cal role of

Jesus Christ in world salvation there are two podnts of tension. One

point centers on the use of Seri pture, (particul arly, the Bible) and

Christian tradition as a hermeneutical filter in determining Christ's

role, with human experience helping the process. The other point

centers on using human experience and the modern scientific method as

a hermeneutical filter, with Scripture from many religions informing

the process. These two points of tension seem to me to be ultimately

polarized points of view. One point begins with an affirmation of

revelation which is specific and exclusive, i.e. Jesus Christ is the
only Savior of mankind. The»,other begins with human insight, i.e.,
the universe is too vast to conceive of only one Savior or at least to
conceive of only one way to God. One can only hope that those parti-
cipating in the contemporary debate will at least listen to eath
other and seek to understand what is being said. It seems to this
writer that if in past decades our problem was arrogance in claiming
too much in our soteri ol ogi cal affirmations (that is being too cult-
urally conditioned and misinformed about the world religions to really
understand what they affirm and to see how God has led them

' to whatever insight they have ); then today the common problem is that

we are too humble, not recognizing that there is a uniqueness in

Jesus Christ.

-23-

The missiological implications of this debate are significant. It seems

ultimately, that the way one perceives the role of Jesus Christ in

world salvation conditions the type of mission one carries out. The

Christian community has historically perceived its mission as being one

of service and witness. The focus of the mission has been loving

witness by word and deed to Jesus Christ's saving power. That witness

has resulted in Christian churches planted in every continent. The

Biblical tradition is clear and forthright- there is no other Name given

for salvation than Jesus Christ. If we are now to move away from that

position because of the impact of other religions sal vationcl aims and

our own growing humility, we must answer some thoughtful questions. In

what way do the religions of the world today differ from the religions

of the New Testament world ? Certainly they have been impacted by modern

life, but their variety of mystical and ceremonial insights are essentially

the same. Why was it valid for the Apostles to witness to "No other
Name" then, if it is not„yaild for us to do so today ? They confronted
the same variety of religious truth claims as we do. Secondly, if it
can be argued that the Apostles, because of their limited world view
did not know any better than to preach as they did, how do we know that
we have arrived at a wise enough position to say we know so much that
there is no possibility that we may be wrong in our assessment of the
"many ways to God"?. Thirdly, If we would argue that Christ is in all
religions, saving mien in them, how do we explain the New Testament's
painstaking effort to encourage a clean break between believers'
new faith in Christ, and their old religions, with the old religions
being characterized as, "walking in darkness." ? Finally, what is

-24-

the nature and extent of salvation which some claim to find in Christ's
presense in other religions ? The New Testament claims that salvation
in Christ is deliverence from death and hope of eternal life through

the grace of God. It equally claims repentance as a necessary gateway
to entering that new life. When the religions of the world, such as
Hinduism insist that death is a part of the cycle which frees us for
rebirth in yet another life and that it is our good works which enable
us to go on from better life to better life, how can their affirmation
be seen as congroent with Christian ones ? When Islam insists that
only the al Koran contains God's true revelation and therefore Jesus
cannot be God's Son, nor savior, how do we resolve the paradox ? It
can only be resolved by reducing the New Testament to helpful, but often
erroneous insight and by finding some organizing principle for harmon-
izing the conflicting truth claims. While such a principle has been

suggested by many as residing in simply a theism without specific
content, such an approach wcirid reduce religion to philosophy and
woula pass too lightly over the problem of evil in the world. The
Apostolic witness to Jesus Christ is that God broke in on history and
put an end to speculation with his affirmation of hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. We should not part with that affirmation
for it is the essence of the uniqueness of the Gospel.

ENDNOTES

1. All Scripture quotations are from the New International Bible.

2. Hick ,John, God and the Universe of Faiths, p.121.

3. c.f., Braaten, Carl, " Who do We say that He Is ?, Occasional Bull-

etin of Missionary Research, Jan. 1980, p.2-8.
and, Rahner, Karl, Foundations of the Christian Faith.

4. c.f., Green, Michael , The Truth of God Incarnate and Stott, John R.W.

Christian Mission in the^Mooern World.

5. Hick, John, " Is There only One Way to God ?", Theology, Jan. 1982, pp. 4-6.

6. Ibid^, p.7.

7. Hick, John, Death and Eternal Life, p. 31

0. Hick, John, Eel. , Christianity and Other Religions, "Whatsoever Path

men choose is’ mine.1', p. 190.

9. knitter, Paul, " World Religions and the Finality of Christ",

Horizons, Vol 5/ 2, 1978, p.153.

10. Ibid. , p. 154.

11. c.f., Hick, John, Ed., The Myth of God Incarnate.

12. Knitter, "World Rel jgions" ,p. 159.

1.3. Ibid., p. 160.

14. Ibid., p. 160.

15. Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology II, p. 168.

16. Ogden, Schubert, " The Reformation that we want", Anglican Theological

Review, Vol. 52, 1972, p. 268.

17. Macquarrie, John, "Christianity and Other Faiths", Union Seminary

Quarterly Review , Vol. 20, 1964, pp. 39-48.

18. Rahner, Karl, "Christianity and the NonChristian Religions",

Christianity and the Other Religions, p.33.

19. Ibid. , p. 63.

20. Ibid. , p. 75.

21. Panikkar, Raimondo, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, p. 54.

ENDNCTES

22. Ariarajah, S. Wesley, " Witness to Hindu Neighbors", Internati onal

Review of Missions, Jan. 1983, p.87.

23. Ariarajah, S. Wesley, "Toward a Theology of Dialogue", Ecumenical

Review, Vcl .29, 1977, pp. 3-11.

24. Braaten, Carl, "Who do we Say that He is", p.4.

25. Ibid. , p.3.

26. Ibid. , p. 7.

27. Ibid. , p. 7.

28. c.f., Halhar.na, Origen Vasantha, The Decisiveness of the Christ

Event and the Uni versa! ity of Christianity in a World of
Religious Plurality, pp. 22-31T

29. Webtter's New World Dictionary of the American Language, p. 489.

30. Stott, John R.W., The Lausanne Covenant ,

31. Newbigin, Lesslie, The Finality of Christ , p. 101.

32. Ibid. , p. 114.

33. Newbigen, Lesslie, Christian WitBess in a Plural Society, p.25.

34. StGtt, Covenant ,p. 17- -

35. Ibid., p. 16.

36. Knight, W.T., "Toward a Biblical View of Uni versal i$m" , Themelios,

Jan. 1979, pp. 54-58.

37. Pinnock, Clark, "Why is Jesus the Only Way", Eterni ty , Dec. 1976, p. 34.

38. Morgan, Robert, The Nature of New Testament Theology, p.7.

39. Hick, Other Religions, p. 184.

40. Braaten, Who Do We Say He Is ?", p. 7.

41. Ibid. , p. 7.

42. Dialogue in Community , World Council of Churches, p . 1 7 .

43. Ibid. , p. 18-19.

44. "Guidelines for Dialogue", World Council of Churches, Occasional

Bulletin of Missionary Research, Oct. 1979, p,160.

ENDNOTES

45. Stott, John R.W., Christian Mission , pp. 60-61.

46. Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, " The Christian in a Religiously Plural

World", Christianity and the Other Religions , p.

47. Samartha, Stanley J., Courage for Dialogue ,

BIBLIOGRAPHY

PERIODICALS

Ariarajah, S. Wesley, " Toward a Theology of Dialogue", Ecumeni cal

Review, Vol. 29., 1977, pp. 3-11.

" Witness to Hindu Neighbors", International
Review of Mission , Jan. 1983, pp. 83-90.

Braaten, Carl, " Who Do We Say That He Is ? On the Uniqueness and Univer-
sality of Jesus Christ." Occasional Bulletin of Mission-
ary Research, Jan. 1980, pp. 2-8.

Cupitt, Don, "The Finality of Christ", Theology , Vol. 78, Dec. 1975, p6 1 8-33 .

Glasser, Arthur T., "A Paradigm Shift ? Evangelicals and Interreligious
Dialogue", Missiology, Vol. IX, No. 4, Oct. 1981.

"Guidelines on Dialogue with Peoples of Living Faiths and Ideologies",

World Council of Churches, Occasional Bulletin of Mission-
ary Research, Oct. 1979, pp. 160-2.

Hick, John, "Is There Only One Way to God ?", Theol oqy , Vol. 89, Jan. 1982, p.4-7.

Knitter, P&ul F. , " World Religions and the finality of Christ: A Critique
of Hans Kflng's, On Being a Christian ", Horizons, Vol. 5/2,

1978, pp. 151-64.

hOMJt- : A j iIJLium, , (IW lt*>/

Macquarrie, John, " Christianity and Other Faiths", Union Seminary Quarterly

Review, Vol. 20, 1964, pp. 39-48.

Ogden, Schubert M. , "Christianity Reconsidered: John Cobb's Christology

in a Pluralistic Aqe, Process Studies, Vol. 6,

1976, pp. 116-129.

"The Reformation that we Want", Anqlican Theological
Review , Vol. 52, 1972, pp. 260^70;

Peters, George, "Missions in a Religiously Pluralistic Age", Bibliotheca

Sacra , Vol. 136, Oct. 1979. pp. 291-301.

Pinnock, Clark, "Why is Jesus the Only Way", Eternity, Dec. 1976, pp. 13-34.

Runia, Klaas, "The World Council of Churches and InterRel igious

Dialogue", Calvin Theological Journal, Vol. 15, Apri 1 ,80, p .27-46 .

Schineller, J. Peter, "Christ and the Church: A Spectrum of Views",

Theological Studies, Vol 37, 1976 , pp. 545-566.

Wright, N.T., "Toward a Biblical View of Uni versal ism" , Theme 1 ios ,

Jan. 1979, pp. 54-58.

BOOKS

Altwinckle, Russel F., Jesus, A Savior or The Savior ?, Mercer University

Press, Macon, Ga, 1982.

Anderson, Gerald, Ed., Christ's Lordship and Religious Pluralism , Orbis,

Maryknoll ", 1981.

Blihl rr.ann , Walbert, All Have the Same God , St. Paul Publications,

~ Great Bri tan ,— 1979

Dawe, Donald G. , Ed., Christian Faith in a Religiously Plural World,

Orbi s , Maryknol 1 , 1976.

Dialogue in Community , World Council of Churches, Geneva, 1977.

Green, Michael, The Truth of God Incarnate , Hodder and Stoughton,

London, 1977.

Hick, John, Ed., Christianity and Other Religions, Fortress, Philadelphia, 1980.

Death and Eternal Life, Collins, London, 1979

God and the Universe of Faiths, Macmillan, London, 1973.

The Myth of God Incarnate, SCM Press, London, 1977.

Truth and Dialogue in World Religions: Conflicting Truth
Claims , Westminister, 1974.

Jathanna, Origen Vasantha,’ The Decisiveness of the Christ Event and the

' Universality of ClrisTtianity in a World of

of Religious Plurality , Peter Lange, Berne, 1981.

Kane,, J. Herbert, The Christian World Mission, Today and Tomorrow ,

Baker, Grand Rap’idsT 1981.

McCown, Wayne, Ed., Hermeneutics , Warner Press, Anderson, Ind. 1982.

Morgan, Robert, The Nature of New Testament Theology SCM Press, London, 1973.

New World Dictionary of the American Language, Collins and World, 1978.

Newbigin, Lesslie, Christian Witness in a Pluralistic Society, British

Council of Churches, London, 1977.

The Finality of Christ, , SCM Press, London, 1969.

Padilla, C. Rene, Ed., The New Face of Evangelicalism , InterVarsity

Press, Donners Grove, 111. 1975

BOOKS

Panikkar, Raimondo, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, Dartmann, London, 1965.

Peters, George W., A Biblical Theology of Missions , Moody Press, Chicago, 1972.

Rahner, Karl, Foundations of Christian Faith, Seabury, New York, 1978.

Stott, John R.W., Christian Mission in the Modern World, Falcon, London, 1975.

The Lausanne Covenant , World Wide Publications,

Minneapolis, Minn., 1975.

Samartha, Stanley J., Courage for Dialogue, Orbis, Maryknoll, 1982.

Smith, Wilfred Cantwell, Toward a World Theology , Westminister Press,

Phi Tdel pTvT a, 1981

Tillich, Paul, Systematic Theology II, University of Chiago Press,

Chicago, 1951.

International
Bulletin

The Truth of Christian Uniqueness

A few years ago our colleague Donald R. Jacobs, visiting
the World Council of Churches headquarters in Geneva,
looked across the dining room and recognized Dr. W. A. Visser
't Hooft, the former general secretary of the WCC. Jacobs recounts
how he approached Visser 't Hooft and, after introducing himself,
ventured to ask, "What is the major issue in missiology to-
day?"

Visser 't Hooft replied without hesitation, "The unique-
ness of Christ." And with eyes alight he explained to Jacobs his
concern that "if Jesus is not unique, there is no gospel."

The publication of The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, edited by
John Hick and Paul F. Knitter (Orbis Books, 1987) demonstrates
the validity of Visser 't Hooft's concern. The magnitude of shift
in Christian belief that is proposed by the authors of The Myth
volume constitutes what has been described as crossing "a
theological Rubicon." Langdon Gilkey, one of the co-authors of
the book, allows that this effort "toward a pluralistic theology
of religions" represents "a monstrous shift indeed," from an
affirmation of the uniqueness of Christ and Christianity to some
sort of parity of religions. Gilkey acknowledges that "this is
real relativism" and it "involves all theological doctrines, not
just some of them."

Voices of theological relativism have always been around the
churches, usually at the fringes. What is new today is that some
of these voices and views are found in the World Council of
Churches' Program on Dialogue with People of Living Faiths.
Concern about these developments and their meaning for the
future of the World Council is widespread as the council prepares
to hold a World Mission Conference in San Antonio, Texas, in
May, and anticipates its next general assembly in Canberra, Aus-
tralia, in February 1991.

In this issue of the Bulletin two veteran missiologists and
longtime supporters of the ecumenical movement express their
deep disquiet. Bishop Lesslie Newbigin, a former director of the
Commission on World Mission and Evangelism of the World
Council of Churches, says that if the council goes along with
these trends, it will "become an irrelevance in the spiritual
struggles that lie ahead of us." Dutch missiologist Johannes
Verkuyl predicts that the drift toward religious universalism
and theological relativism in the dialogue program "will pose
more and more serious questions not only about the credibility
of the WCC, but even about its survival."

The Christian world mission cannot afford to cross the the-
ological Rubicon proposed by the authors of The Myth. Rather,
we need to affirm again that unique "Rubicon-crossing" event
of twenty centuries ago: the redemptive entering of the Creator
into human history in the person of Jesus Christ (Heb: 1:1-3).
Without the uniqueness of that person and that event, there is
no gospel and no mission.

On Page

50 Religious Pluralism and the Uniqueness of
Jesus Christ

Lesslie Newbigin

55 Mission in the 1990s

Johannes Verkuyl

58 The Roots of African Theology

Kwame Bediako

65 The Legacy of Roland Allen

Charles Henry Long and Anne Rowthorn

71 My Pilgrimage in Mission

Harold W. Turner

72 Noteworthy

76 Reflections on Missionary Historiography

Eric J. Sharpe

80 Reader's Response

Raimundo Panikkar

82 Book Reviews
94 Dissertation Notices
96 Book Notes

of Missionary Research

Religious Pluralism and the Uniqueness of Jesus Christ

Lesslie Nezvbigin

In his 1987 Lambeth Lecture on “Religious Pluralism
and Its Challenge to Christian Theology," the director
of the World Council of Churches unit on interfaith dialogue,
Wesley Ariarajah, speaks of “a current . . . about to become
a flood," exercising an overwhelming pressure on people of all
religions to "become aware of and to cope with a religiously
plural world."1 That pressure has already led a group of well-
known Christians to announce — under the title The Myth of Chris-
tian Uniqueness — their conclusion that the claim for uniqueness
must be abandoned.2 The July 1988 issue of the International Review
of Mission (IRM), containing addresses and discussions centering
on the celebration of the jubilee of the 1938 Tambaram Confer-
ence, gives further evidence of the power of this current.3 It is
fed, of course, not only by arguments that are, properly speaking,
theological and philosophical, but also by the pervading feeling
of guilt in the world of Western Christendom, and by the over-
whelming sense of need to find a basis for human unity in an
age of nuclear weapons. As always, there is a strong temptation
to go with the current, but even a small acquaintance with history
is enough to remind us that what seem to be overwhelmingly
powerful movements of thought can lead to disaster. Critical re-
flection is in order.

No persons in their senses deny the need for human unity.
Our world is in fact tom apart by rival programs for human unity.
Washington and Moscow are both convinced that we need one
world. Many years ago Andre Dumas drew attention to the ob-
vious fact that any proposal for human unity that does not specify
the center around which unity is to be constructed has as its
hidden center the interests of the proposer. The Myth of Christian
Uniqueness provides rich illustration of this. Gordon Kaufman in
his essay starts from the need for human unity and takes it for
granted, without argument, that the Christian gospel cannot pro-
vide the center. He goes on to say that "modern historical
consciousness" requires us to abandon the claim to Christ's
uniqueness and to recognize that the biblical view of things, like
all other views, is the product of a particular culture (pp. 5-6). It
is of course true that the biblical view of things is culturally con-
ditioned: that does not require us to say that it is not true.
"Modern historical consciousness" is also a culturally condi-
tioned phenomenon and does not provide us with a standpoint
from which we can dispose of the truth-claims of the Bible. Rec-
ognition of the culturally conditioned character of all truth-claims
could lead to the abandonment of all belief in the possibility of
knowing the truth; that is what is happening in contemporary
Western culture. But this recognition provides no grounds upon
which it is possible to deny that God might have acted decisively
to reveal and effect the divine purpose for human history; and
such a revelation would, of course, have to be culturally condi-
tioned, since otherwise it would not be part of human history
and could have no impact on human history. There are certainly
no grounds whatever for supposing that "modern historical
consciousness" provides us with an epistemological privilege de-
nied to other culturally conditioned ways of seeing.

Lesslie Newbigin, a contributing editor, was for many years a missionary and
bishop of the Church of South India in Madras. He is now retired in Birmingham,
England, where he taught for several years on the faculty of Selly Oak Colleges.

As Alasdair MacIntyre so brilliantly documents in his book
Whose Justice, What Rationality ?4 the idea that there can be a kind
of reason that is supra-cultural and that would enable us to view
all the culturally conditioned traditions of rationality from a stand-
point above them all is one of the illusions of our contemporary
culture. All rationality is socially embodied, developed in human
tradition and using some human language. The fact that biblical
thought shares this with all other forms of human thought in no
way disqualifies it from providing the needed center.

The authors of The Myth would go some way to accept this.
For Paul Knitter, "Pluralism seems to be of the very stuff of
reality, the way things are, the way they function. . . . There can
never be just one of anything."5 So there are no absolute values
given to us; we must create them, but this must be a collective
enterprise in which we all share. In similar vein Stanley Samartha
calls upon Christians to contribute "to the pool of human
values such as justice and compassion, truth and righteousness
in the quest of different people for spiritual and moral values . . .
to hold together different religions, cultures, languages and ethnic
groups" (IRM, p. 323) and that "to claim that one religious
tradition has the only answer to such a global problem [as the
nuclear threat] sounds preposterous" (IRM, p. 315).

These and similar statements bring us, I think, to the heart
of our matter, revealing as they do that loss of faith in the pos-
sibility of knowing objective truth, which is at the heart of the
sickness of our culture. In the first place it is, of course, not true
that the modern worldview of physics removes all absolutes.
There are such absolutes as the speed of light and the value of
Planck's constant. One might well say that it seems preposterous
that these figures should be just so, no more and no less; but it
is so. These are what we call in our culture "facts," about
which we are not pluralists. It is in the realm of "values" that
we are pluralists. Values are matters of personal choice; they are
what people want. And human wants conflict. The idea of con-
tributing to a shared pool of "values" conveys no coherent
meaning. The question that has always to be addressed, surely,
is the question about the facts, the question "What is the
case?" — and on that question some answers will be true and others
false. Rational people will see to it that their "values" are based
upon what is the case, upon reality. "Values" that are not so
based are merely personal wishes, and human wishes collide. It
is precisely for "justice" that nations go to war.

The course of the present debate has illustrated the retreat
from objectivity into subjectivity of which I speak. In his well-
known use of the Copemican paradigm, John Hick advised us
that we should learn to see God as the center of all reality, and
abandon our culture-bound vision of Jesus as the center. Paul
Knitter and others now suggest a further move, beyond a Chris-
tocentric and even a theocentric view to one that might be called
soteriocentric — for why indeed should belief in God be the clue to
reality? Thus Christopher Duraisingh writes: "It is not through
our a priori doctrinal formulations on God or Christ, but rather
through our collective human search for meaning and sacredness
that the 'universe of faiths' could be adequately understood,"
and he goes on therefore to say, in agreement with Paul Knitter,
that our approach to other faiths must be neither theocentric nor
Christocentric, but must start from soteriology (IRM, p. 399). In
Paul Knitter's words, interfaith dialogue "should not revolve

International Bulletin of Missionary Research

International Bulletin

of Missionary Research

Established 1950 by R. Pierce Beaver as Occasional Bulletin from the Missionary
Research Library. Named Occasional Bulletin of Missionary Research 1977. Renamed
International Bulletin of Missionary Research 1981.

Published quarterly in January, April, July, and October by the

Overseas Ministries Study Center

490 Prospect Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, U.S.A.

Telephone: (203) 624-6672

Editor: Associate Editor: Assistant Editor:

Gerald H. Anderson James M. Phillips Robert T. Coote

Catalino G. Arevalo, S.J.
David B. Barrett
Samuel Escobar
Barbara Hendricks, M.M.
Norman A. Homer
Mary Motte, F.M.M.
Lesslie Newbigin

Contributing Editors

C. Ren6 Padilla
Dana L. Robert
Thomas F. Stransky, C.S.P.
Charles R. Taber
Ruth A. Tucker
Desmond Tutu
Anastasios Yannoulatos

Books for review and correspondence regarding editorial matters should be ad-
dressed to the editors. Manuscripts unaccompanied by a self-addressed, stamped
envelope (or international postal coupons) will not be returned.

Subscriptions: $18 for one year, $33 for two years, and $49 for three years, postpaid
worldwide. Airmail delivery is $16 per year extra. Foreign subscribers should send
payment by bank draft in U.S. funds on a U.S. bank or by international money order
in U.S. funds. Individual copies are $6.00; bulk rates upon request. Correspondence
regarding subscriptions and address changes should be sent to: International
Bulletin of Missionary Research, Circulation Department, P.O. Box 3041, Ridge-
field, New Jersey 07657-3041, U.S.A.

New subscriptions and renewals for persons in the United Kingdom should be sent
with payment to: Paternoster Press Ltd., Paternoster House, 3 Mount Radford Cres-
cent, Exeter, U.K. EX2 4JW. Subscription rates in U.K. are: £12 for one year, £21 for
two years, and £29 for three years.

Subscribers in India may send payment to: Christian Literature Society, Post Box
501, Madras 600 003. Subscription rates in India are: Rs. 275 for one year, Rs. 495 for
two years, and Rs. 750 for three years.

Advertising:

Ruth E. Taylor

11 Graffam Road, South Portland, Maine 04106, U.S.A.

Telephone: (207) 799-1387

Articles appearing in this journal are abstracted and indexed in:

Bibliografia Missionaria

Christian Periodical Index

Guide to People in Periodical Literature

Guide to Social Science and Religion in Periodical Literature

Missionalia

Religion and Theological Abstracts
Religion Index One: Periodicals

Opinions expressed in the International Bulletin are those of the authors and not
necessarily of the Overseas Ministries Study Center.

Second-class postage paid at New Haven, Connecticut.

POSTMASTER: Send address changes to International Bulletin of Missionary
Research, P.O. Box 3041, Ridgefield, New Jersey 07657-3041, U.S.A.

ISSN 0272-6122

around 'Christ' (or Buddha or Krishna), or around 'God' (or
Brahman or Nirvana) but around 'salvation' — that is, a shared
concern about and effort to remove the sufferings that rack the
human family today” ( IRM , p. 399).

The movement that Knitter and Duraisingh propose is indeed
a natural extension of the movement initiated by Hick. He asked
us to move from Jesus — the name of a man about whom there are
historical records that can be read and probed and analyzed — to
God, a name that has almost as many meanings as there are
human beings. "God” as the center means not God as revealed
in Jesus or in the Qur'an or in any other specific religious tradition
but "God" as I understand God. It is a move from the objective
to the subjective. The further move is natural — the move to my
own search for wholeness, a search that is surely in some sense
different for every human being. Hick in several places speaks
of true religion as being turned from self-centeredness to reality-
centeredness; but this is a move in the opposite direction, from
objective reality to the self and its needs.

One might bring out the point by placing Copernicus in his
historical context. Ptolemy's way of understanding the solar sys-
tem had endured for 1,500 years. During that period it enabled
astronomers to predict eclipses, cartographers to make accurate
maps, and explorers to sail to far destinations. It satisfied human
need for a very long time. When Copernicus proposed his alter-
native view, there was a debate (not then called "dialogue"),
which lasted for many decades. It was not, of course, a debate
between "science" and "religion" — an absurdly anachron-
istic portrayal of the matter. It was a debate within a society that
had not yet relegated "facts" to a domain outside theology. It
was a hotly argued discussion. In the end it was decided: Cop-
ernicus was right; Ptolemy — useful as he had been for so many
centuries — was wrong. The suggestion that the argument might
be ended by agreeing that there is a common search for truth or
that the different views should be "pooled" would not have
been accepted. And rightly so, because there was a concern for
truth and a belief that it could be known.

I make this point (which I owe to Harold Turner) to illuminate
what seems to me to be the central issue in this whole debate; it
is the abandonment of the belief that it is possible to know the
truth. There is indeed an ancient and venerable tradition that tells
us that ultimate reality is unknowable. It is true that the human
mind cannot comprehend God. But this true statement can be
used, and is used, to disqualify any firm affirmation of truth. The
true statement that we cannot know everything can be used to
disqualify a valid claim to know something. The human mind
cannot comprehend God, but we have no grounds for denying
the possibility that God might make the divine known to human
beings and that they might legitimately bear witness to what has
been revealed to them.

And, of course, the writers whom I am criticizing would
reply: "Yes indeed, but God has revealed God's self in many
ways. Therefore, there are many gospels and many missions." I
do indeed believe and am firmly convinced that there is no human
being in whose mind and conscience there is not some whisper
of God's word, and I have known many non-Christians who have
a deep and often radiant sense of the presence of God. But I also
know that many evil and horrible things are done in the name
of religion and in the name of God. Does a claim to have a mission
from God exempt the one who makes it from critical questioning?
And if there are to be questions, where do we find the criteria?
Diana Eck, moderator of the WCC's Dialogue Unit, is severely
critical of Hendrik Kraemer because he presumed to discuss the
question of whether and how God reveals the divine to a Muslim;
for the answer to that question, she says, we must go to the

April 1989

Muslim ( IRM , p. 382). But does that apply to all those who claim
to have a mission from God? Hitler, for one, was certain that he
had a mission from God; do we take his word for it? If not, on
what grounds do we deny his testimony? When Christians do
evil things in the name of God, as they do, we can confront them
with the figure of Christ in the Gospels and require them to
measure their actions and motives against that given reality. But
if it is denied that there is any such divinely given standard
available to us as a part of our human history, what grounds are
there for passing a judgment that is more than ad hominem?

This is not a merely rhetorical question. In The Myth of Chris-
tian Uniqueness one writer faces up to it. Langdon Gilkey asks the
question: How, in a pluralist world, do we respond to a phenom-
enon like Hitler? His answer is interesting. He says that for such

"We are in the midst of
a dying culture."

situations we need an absolute; only something like the Barmen
Declaration is an adequate response. But the necessity for this
absolute is a relative one. Gilkey's key sentence is: "paradox-
ically, plurality, precisely by its own ambiguity, implies both rel-
ativity and absoluteness, a juxtaposition or synthesis of the
relative and the absolute that is frustrating intellectually and yet
necessary practically" (pp. 45-46). Gilkey endeavors to cope with
the intellectual "frustration" by appealing to "the vener-
able, practical American tradition" of pragmatism, and I confess
I am simply unable to follow him. He is, of course, profoundly
right in drawing attention to what he calls the demonic possibil-
ities of pluralism. But I remain totally unconvinced by the idea
of an absolute that is available on call when it is relatively nec-
essary.

The point is that we do not need to go back to Hitler to find
evidence for the demonic possibilities of pluralism. We surely
know that our contemporary Western culture is in the power of
false gods, of idols; that people are seeking salvation through the
invocation of all the old gods of power and sex and money —
"star wars," the "nuclear shield," the free market, the con-
sumer society. There will come a point, perhaps not far in the
future, when Christians will realize that something like the Bar-
men Declaration is needed. What deeply troubles me about the
contemporary output of the "interfaith industry" is that it is
destroying the only basis on which such a declaration could be
made. There is certainly a common search for salvation; it is that
search that tears the world to pieces when it is directed to that
which is not God.

But Wilfred Cantwell Smith says that there is no such thing
as idolatry. In The Myth volume he restates his familiar view that
all the religions have as their common core some experience of
the transcedent; that whether we speak of images made of wood
or stone, or images in the human mind, or even of Jesus himself,
all are the means used by the transcendent to make himself or
herself or itself present to us humans. To claim uniqueness for
one particular form or vehicle of this contact with the transcendent
is preposterous and blasphemous. Much rather accept the truth
so beautifully stated in the Bhagavadgita and in the theology of
Ramanuja, that God is so gracious that he (or she or it) accepts
all worship whatever be the form through which the worship is
offered. Here clearly "the transcendent" is a purely formal
category into which one can put any content that the mind can
devise. Once again it is clear that we are in the world of pure

subjectivity. There can be no such thing as false worship because
no objective reality is involved. The question "True or false?"
simply does not arise. We are witnessing the collapse of the whole
glorious human enterprise of seeking to know the truth, to make
contact with reality, to know God as God truly is. It is the mark
of a culture that — in the words that Gilbert Murray used to describe
the end of the glorious civilization of Greece — has lost its nerve.
We are in the midst of a dying culture.

When the Greeks, worshiping "an unknown God," were
confronted by a not very impressive man (see 2 Cor. 10:10) who
| told them, "What you worship as unknown, that I proclaim
to you," they were naturally inclined to laugh. And of course
God was not wholly unknown, otherwise there would have been
no altar. And if God had been truly known, there would have
been no need for many altars to many gods. God has indeed
made the divine known in some way and in some measure to all
human beings. Why, then, speak of one unique revelation? Eck
tells us that her Hindu teacher was astonished to learn that Chris-
tians acknowledge only one avatar, and she goes on to say that
while some Christians believe this, to many other Christians it is
folly (IRM, p. 384). With Cantwell Smith, she deplores the idea
that God's revelation is locked away in the past, and she quotes
Smith as writing, "God is not revealed fully in Jesus Christ to
me, nor indeed to anyone that I have met; or that my historical
studies have uncovered" (ibid). Now surely every Christian must
confess that he or she has not fully grasped the length and breadth
and height and depth of God's revelation in Jesus, and is seeking
to comprehend more. Truly God makes the divine known in the
soul and conscience and reason of the human person, but not in
a purely inward spirituality, which is separate from the public
history that we share. The Hindu can speak of many avatars,
because none of them is part of public history; they are all ideas
in the mind. There is no event in public history that can or could
replace those events that we confess to have taken place under
Pontius Pilate. It is because of those events that we can recognize
and rejoice in the intimations of God's presence in the experience
of men and women of many religious traditions and (especially!)
men and women who make no religious profession. What is here
in question is not merely an inward experience of "the tran-
scendent" but a series of events in public history by which the
human situation is decisively changed. We enter into and grow
into the inward experience of God's love and truth through par-
ticipating in the rational discourse of the community that takes
its rise from these events. This tradition of rational discourse
enables us to find in these events not only the source of a growing
inward experience of God, but also the clue by following which
we are enabled to make sense of the world, to grasp its real nature
with growing (though always very partial) sureness.

Of course, it is always possible to deny that these events
have this significance. One might almost say that it is normal to
deny it. There are no external proofs by which it could be shown
to be indubitable. But every form of rationality or of spirituality
is socially embodied in a particular tradition and language, and
rests ultimately upon presuppositions that cannot be verified by
reference to some reality external to it. The idea that the universe
is so constructed that we can enjoy indubitable knowledge with-
out the risks of personal commitment is an illusion, but this il-
lusion is used to discredit the claims of a specific tradition of
rationality such as is embodied in the Christian community.
"True knowledge," says Paul Knitter (quoting Cantwell
Smith), "is that knowledge that all intelligent men and women
. . . can share, and can jointly verify, by observation and by par-
ticipation" (No Other Name? p. 11). But truth is not the possession
of majorities — even if the vote is unanimous. All knowing of real-

International Bulletin of Missionary Research

ity, and supremely when the reality in question is God, is the
work of people nurtured in a tradition of rational discourse. The
fact that the Christian affirmation is made from one such socially
embodied tradition in no way discredits its claim to speak truth.
To pretend to possess the truth in its fullness is arrogance. The
claim to have been given the decisive clue for the human search
after truth is not arrogant; it is the exercise of our responsibility
as part of the human family.

There is, of course, one final objection. It was classically
expressed in the saying attributed to Rousseau: "If God
wanted to say something to Jean Jacques Rousseau, why did He
have to go round by Moses to say it?" Why Moses and not Soc-
rates or Confucius or Gautama? Why one people and not another?
Should not "the transcendent" be equally and simultaneously
available to every human being? Very clearly there lies behind
the complaint that very ancient belief to which I have referred:
the belief that in the last analysis I am a solitary soul with my
own relationship with the Transcendent — whatever he, she, or it
may be. And that belief is false. It rests upon an atomistic spir-
ituality that contradicts what is most fundamental in human na-
ture, namely, that our life is only fully human as we are bound
up with one another in mutual caring and responsibility. When
Stanley Samartha, in the Tambaram discussion, attacks the tra-
ditional work of missions because "conversion, instead of
being a vertical movement towards God, a genuine renewal of
life, has become a horizontal movement of groups of people from
one community to another" ( IRM , p. 321), he demonstrates his
captivity to this illusion. We do not know God, in the sense of
true personal knowledge, except as part of a community. The fact
that the confession of Jesus as unique Lord and Savior is made
by a particular human community among other communities pro-
vides no ground for denying its claim to speak truth. God's action
for the salvation of the whole human family cannot be a series
of private transactions within a multitude of individual souls; it
is something wrought out in public history, and history is always
concrete and specific. It is possible, as it has always been possible,
to deny the truth of the Christian claim, as these writers do. But
it is not possible to claim that the denial rests upon a kind of
rationality superior to that which is embodied in the Christian
tradition.

I think it is fair to say that the writers whom I am criticizing
are not wholly to blame for this individualist perspective. I think
that the whole debate about the uniqueness of Christ has for
many decades been skewed by the notion that the only question
at stake is the question of the fate of the individual soul in the
next world. It is assumed that those who speak of the uniqueness
of Jesus are saying that only Christians will be saved in the next
world — which of course opens the way to destructive debates
about who is a real Christian. It is enough to say that this way
of thinking has lost contact with the Bible. This individualism,
with its center in the selfish concern of the individual about per-
sonal salvation, is utterly remote from the biblical view, which
has as its center God and divine rule. The central question is not
"How shall I be saved?" but "How shall I glorify God by
understanding, loving, and doing God's will — here and now in
this earthly life?" To answer that question I must insistently ask:
"How and where is God's purpose for the whole of creation
and the human family made visible and credible?" That is the
question about the truth — objective truth — which is true whether
or not it coincides with my "values." And I know of no place
in the public history of the world where the dark mystery of
human life is illuminated, and the dark power of all that denies
human well-being is met and measured and mastered, except in
those events that have their focus in what happened "under
Pontius Pilate."

There is indeed a powerful current in our time that would
sweep away such a claim and insist that the story of those events
is simply one among the vast variety of "religious experience"
and that it can be safely incorporated into a syllabus for the com-
parative study of religions. The current is strong because it is part
of the drift of contemporary Western culture (of what in every
part of the world is called "modernity") away from belief in
the possibility of knowing truth and toward subjectivity. The
World Council of Churches has been asked, at two general as-
semblies, to accept statements that seemed to call in question the
uniqueness, decisiveness, and centrality of Jesus Christ. It has
resisted. If, in the pull of the strong current, it should agree to
go with the present tide, it would become an irrelevance in the
spiritual struggles that lie ahead of us. I pray and believe that it
will not.

Notes

1. S. Wesley Ariarajah, "Religious Plurality and Its Challenge to Chris-
tian Theology," World Faiths Insight (London), June 1988, pp. 2-3.
Ariarajah is quoting from Wilfred Cantwell Smith.

2. John Hick and Paul F. Knitter, eds., The Myth of Christian Uniqueness:
Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books,
1987).

3. All quotations from the International Review of Mission (IRM) dted in
the text of this article are from the July 1988 issue.

4. Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1988.

5. No Other Name? (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis Books, 1985), p. 6.

International Bulletin of Missionary Research

THESES ON CHRISTO LOGY : JESUS CHRIST IN MISSION

Group I-A

While we recognize that the theses stated below are "source-oriented"
rather than "receptor-oriented", we offer them as a beginning point of our
common witness.

1 . The centrality of Christ is essential to the mission and unity of the
church .

2. Christ must be understood from a trinitarian perspective. While we must
not surrender the classical formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity, we
need to be prepared to go beyond this to new expressions which, while
remaining faithful to the scriptures, would relate to our life and witness
in terms understandable in other cultures.

3. Our witness to Christ must be informed by the full range of views of
Christ in the scriptures.

4. The primary manifestation of Christ is in and through the community of
faith expressed both in the local congregation and in the universal church.

5. Though we differ in our view as to the extent and nature of salvation
beyond explicit commitment to Christ, we affirm the urgency of witness to
Christ to people everywhere.

Group I-B

Thesis I: God's activity in Jesus the Christ is necessary for salvation.

Reflection: though there was agreement on this generic statement there
was a diversity of interpretations, e.g.

a) there is no salvation outside the specific relationship with Christ
and the Christian church;

b) salvation is possible for those who do not explicitly know Christ.

Thesis II: How we interpret the role and relation of Christ to salvation
leads to diverse approaches to mission which may prove divisive/complementary
for unity in mission.

a) one interpretation would/could lead to intrusive colonial/imperial
insertion of the Christian community in contrast to the host culture;

b) the other would necessitate a respectful discovery of Christ's
revelation already present in the culture.

Thesis III: God is manifest through the Spirit throughout the world. That
Spirit goes before us to prepare the hearts and minds of those to whom we
preach the gospel.

Thesis IV: The Body of Christ (church) must continue to preach and embody
Jesus Christ and his message as evidenced by his life, ministry, death and
resurrection. We must embody Jesus' call to right relationship (love and
justice) between all creation, all members of the human community and God.

We must address theologically and concretely issues which distort our
mission. .. and unearth the treasures of cultural and racial identity.

ASM THESES ON MISSION AND UNITY

THESES ON MISSION AND UNITY

Presented to Closing Plenary Session of 1990 ASM Annual Meeting
by Reporters from Six Working Groups

Techny Towers, Techny , IL, June 17, 1990

The theme of the 199C Annual Meeting of the American Society of
Missiology was "Mission and Joint Witness: Basis and Models of Cooperation."
The keynote address was given by Carl E. Braaten on "The Trinity: New Source
for Mission and Unity", and a response to the keynote was made by Steve Bevans,
SVD. Other major addresses given on sub-themes of the conference were as
follows :

(I) "Jesus Christ and Mission: the Cruciality of Christology" , by Robert
Schreiter, CPPS, with a response by Chuck Van Engen; (II) "What Mission Is:

Our Understanding of Mission as a Factor for Unity or Division", by U Kyaw
Than, with a response by Lois McKinney; and (III) "Church, Mission and Unity:
Obstacles to and Practical Possibilities for Joint Witness", by Samuel Wilson,
with a response by Mary Motte, FMM. The texts of the keynote address and of
the major presentations on conference sub-themes will appear in the October
1990 issue of Missiology .

The Presidential Address, "Why Mission Theology Cannot Do Without
Eschatological Urgency: The Significance of the End", given by ASM President
James A. Scherer, will also appear in the October 1990 issue of Missiology .

Biblical presentations on themes relating to mission and unity, based on
texts from St. Paul's letters to the Corinthians, were offered by Margaret
Mitchell, Ken Gill and Lamin Sanneh.

At the closing plenary session, reports from six working groups were
presented by reporters for the groups and received by the plenary. In view
of the "working draft" character of the reports, it was agreed that they
should be released to participants in the 1990 ASM Annual Meeting and to
other interested persons as an unofficial record of what was discussed in
the working groups, with no na’mes of participants, group facilitators or
recorders attached. The working group reports do not represent agreed
statements of the ASM or of its members present at the 1990 Annual Meeting.
They are made available solely for the private use of ASM members.

The texts of the working groups reports which follow have been slightly
edited, and abbreviated. No attempt has been made to harmonize differences.

The ASM Program Committee expresses its thanks to the working group members,
approximately 75 in number, and to facilitators and scribes of the six working
groups, for their helpfulness and cooperation in preparing these theses.

Persons desiring to reproduce these theses are requested to secure
permission from the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Society of Missiology,
George R. Hunsberger, Western Theological Seminary, Holland, MI 49423.

JAMES A. SCHERER
ASM President, 1989-90

June 25, 1990

ASM THESES ON MISSION AND UNITY

Internet Archive Audio

Featured

Top

Images

Featured

Top

Software

Featured

Top

Books

Featured

Top

Video

Featured

Top

Mobile Apps

Browser Extensions

Archive-It Subscription

Save Page Now

Full text of "Missions -- Christology"

See other formats