CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGY OF KOSUKE KOYAMA

THE THEOLOGY OF KOSUKE KOYAMA

AND HIS CONTRIBUTION TO ASIAN CONTEXTUALIZATION

By Rev. Dr. Winfred B. Vergara

(A Master in Theology Thesis presented at Southeast Asia Graduate School of Theology, Singapore, August 1985)

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this paper is to present, analyze and critically evaluate the theology of Kosuke Koyama in so far as it attempts to offer a fresh, relevant and unique way of doing theology in Asia.

A well-known Japanese theologian, missionary and ecumenist, Kosuke Koyama is also one of the few theological educators of Asia who had felt the need to be free from Western thought and to birth out a distinctively Asian theology that is truly responsive to Asian context while remaining faithful and responsible to the biblical texts.  Towards this goal of authentic contextualization, Koyama has written a significant number of books and articles revealing his concepts and understanding of “contextual theology.”  The contextual theology shall be the focus of this study.

Broadly defined, contextual theology would mean the reflection on the Holy Scriptures within the framework of one’s particular historical, cultural, social and religious situation.  Applied in the area of presenting the gospel, it would take into account the indigenous and local or national cultural patterns, liturgical settings, art forms and the like.  Applied to biblical interpretation, it would take into account the basic questions the people are asking.

In a sense, it would not be difficult to show that every theology is contextual.  Theology cannot exist in vacuum, so to speak.  It has to come out from the experience of one who is doing theology.

Scholastic theology, for instance, was formulated within the context of a rigidly hierarchical structure of feudal Europe.  Protestant systematic theology was born out of the Reformation era.  In modern times, the Latin American “liberation theology” has emerged from the segment of the Church which is actively involved in the struggle for social justice.  North America’s “black theology” was coined within the context of the struggle for racial identity and equality.  The more recent “Minjung (people’s) theology of South Korea came out within the context of national awakening.

To be contextual therefore, means to be able to respond meaningfully to the gospel within the framework of one’s total context.  It is more than being indigenous because it takes both tradition and modernity; it is more than situational because it takes not only the present but the past, present and future.  Christianity was brought to Asia by the Western missionaries and Christian theology was garbed in Western culture and values.  How can this theology, being foreign in dress and manner, become more welcome and incarnated in the real-life situation of Asia?  The answer lies in contextual theology.

Koyama’s contextual theology seeks precisely to make the Word of God be incarnated into the culture, tradition and way of life of Asians.  In the process of doing so, he had to be deeply involved in what T.K. Thomas (one time Communications Secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia) would say, a “confused”^`1 context of Asia.  Thomas wrote about Koyama, saying:

(Koyama) believes that it is in this (“confused” Asian) context that we should listen to God’s Word; that it is for this context that we must understand it; and that it is to this context that we must apply it.”²

The “confused” context of Asia means the great diversity and variety of its peoples, races, cultures and religions.  Dr. Won Sol Lee, former Director of Higher Education in Korea, noted the many meanings of Asia, when he wrote:

Asia means different things to different people; for geographers, it is a term delineating the vast land mass stretching from the Middle East to North East Russia.  For historians, it is the cradle of civilizations.  For economists, it is an area comprising of many underdeveloped countries.  For political scientists, it consists of newly emergent nations struggling to modernize their societies.  For most Westerners, Asia means a way of life antithetical to that of the West.³

In the midst of this “confused” context of Asia and its diversity of meanings stands the Christian faith professed by a mere  5.07%  of the total aggregate populations.⁴   This per-

 

¹K. Koyama, Theology in Contact, (Madras: CLS, 1975), Foreword.

²Ibid.

³W.S. Lee, Beyond Ideology, (Illinois: Cornerstone Books, 1979), p. 9.

⁴H.G. Kane, Understanding Christian Missions, (Michigan: Baker Book House, 1978), p. 196.

centage miniscule in proportion to the efforts and the amount of time spent in the Asian missionary enterprise.

Asia has been the scene of the earliest and biggest missionary networks.  Literally tens of thousands of Western missionaries have lived and died in Asia and hundreds of millions of dollars spent for Christian expansion in this part of the world.  To recall the fact that our Lord Jesus was born on Asian soil, it appears as though the Christian minority status in Asia is an anomaly and a serious challenge to theology.

The crucial challenge to theology in Asia is how to be able to incarnate the Gospel or how to “imprint the marks of Christ”⁵ in the life of Asians.  To put it in another way, the crucial challenge to theology is how it can be an effective tool for the Christian Church in her mission to win Asians for Christ and crown Him Savior and Lord of Asia and beyond.

Surely, this is no easy challenge for Asian theologians.  Nourished and bred in Western theological mindset and worldview, they themselves have to wrestle with their personal contradictions.  While at once sensitive to the peculiarities and complexities of Asia, they are at the same time bound by the influences of theologies from the West.  The common temptation is to read  theology coming from Europe,  England,  or America into the Asian

 

⁵D.G. Elwood, What Asian Christians Are Thinking, (Quezon City, Philippines: New Day Publishers, 1976), Foreword.

situations rather than letting the naked gospel to be planted and be allowed to take root in Asian culture and way of life.  The late Sri Lankan Church leader, D.T. Niles, once said:

The gospel is like a seed that must be sowed.  Bout our temptation is to bring along not only the seed of the gospel but our own plant of Christianity, flower pot included.  The need now is to break this flower pot and let the seed grow as it should be in its own soil.⁶

It is against this background that hope to present, analyze and evaluate the contextual theology of Kosuke Koyama.  Is his theology truly distinctive from others or is it merely a reading of Western theology into the Asian context?  Furthermore, in his attempt to contextualize, did he remain faithful to the biblical contents?  The proof of the pudding is in the eating, so to speak.  How can Koyama’s theology be applied in the area of the life and work of the Church?

In attempting this study, I am indebted to the Southeast Asia Graduate School of Theology, especially to its former Dean, Dr. Emerito Nacpil and to the incumbent Dean, Dr. Yeow Chool Lak.

While making this study, I happened to be called to pastor an Anglican Church in Singapore.  Although the hectic pastoral work caused the delay in the writing of this paper,  it  likewise  enabled  me  to view the  theology o f  Koyama  from  a  broader  and

 

                  ⁶J.F. Engel, Contemporary Christian Communications, (New York: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1979), p. 266. 

practical perspective, Singapore appears to me like a laboratory of Asia.  It is a multi-racial, multi-cultural, and multi-religious society.  It is a crossroad between the East and the West geographically by virtue of its dynamism in politics and economy.  Moreover, it is a country where Christianity is professed by only 10% of the nation’s inhabitants.  It is a fertile ground for the sowing of contextual theology.

I shall divide this study into four chapters, namely: (1) The Asian Context and its Theological Direction; (2) Koyama as an Asian Theologian; (3) The Marks of Koyama’s Contextual Theology; and (4) Application of Koyama’s Contextual Theology.

                          

It is my hope that this paper can help draw out interesting and helpful insights into the doing of theology in the context of Asia.  Part of my desire is for lay people to read theological works.  To most of them, like T.S. Elliot, theology is “an intolerable wrestle with words and meanings.”  May this presentation of Koyama’s theology be less intolerable but simple and readable--- like the Bible.

                                                                                                Fred Vergara

Singapore

August 1985

CHAPTER ONE

THE ASIAN CONTEXT AND ITS THEOLOGICAL DIRECTION

Since we will be dealing mainly with Koyama’s contextual theology, it is but fitting that we must first try to understand the context in which he did theology.

Our goal in this chapter is to paint a vivid picture of Asia by briefly summarizing its distinctive features, the state of Christianity, and the current approaches towards the doing of Christian theology in Asia.  Such a picture would hopefully set for us a stage for a better viewing of Kosuke Koyama and his theology.

I.               Distinctive Asian Features

When economist and author Gunnar Murdal was asked why he wrote “Asian Drama” and not “African Drama” or “Latin American Drama,” his reply was:

I got impressed with this idea that the destiny of mandkind will come to be decided here in Asia because it is such a tremendously large part of mandkind that lives here in the Asian region.  And I was also fascinated by the problems.¹

 

            ¹Interview with Gunnar Myrdal by Singapore Broadcasting Corporation, telecast on 5 March 1973 and published in SBC’s The Best of Opinions (Singapore:  SBC, 1981), p.65.

This observation by Myrdal is doubly interesting especially if we understand what drama means to the Asians.  Myrdal said of drama:

Drama means a conflict in the human soul.  It is a conflict between ambitions and ideals on the one hand and what is actually carried out on the other.²

Asians in general look at what is going on and around them as a drama which shall either have a sad or a happy ending.  A drama without a conflict is not a drama, but whatever the conflict is, the conflict will have its end.

But what are the scenes, who are the actors, and what are the main features of this Asian drama?  How are we to view this drama?  What makes the Asian region different from the other regions in the world?  What are the distinctive features that set Asia apart?  What makes Asia Asia?

In 1972, the Association of Theological Schools in Southeast Asia and the Southeast Asia Graduate School of Theology coined the phrase “the critical Asian principle”³ in order to seek what is distinctively Asian.  Included within this principle are seven features which are characteristics of the region.  These features are the following:

 

²Interview with Gunnar Myrdal, op.cit. p. 69

            ³Taken from the Handbook of the Association of Theological Schools of Southeast Asia and the Southeast Asia Graduate School of Theology.  To avoid the cumbersome footnoting, all materials quoted from this Handbook were underlined throughout this section.  Those taken from other sources will be duly footnoted.

1.     “Plurality and diversity of races, peoples, cultures, social institutions, religions, ideologies, etc.” are distinctively Asian.  Asia is the most densely populated portion of the planet earth.  Two of its countries --- China and India --- have enormous populations that could not be surpassed by any two countries in Europe or America combined.  China alone has one billion people while India has 700 million.  Some of the world’s largest cities like Tokyo, Shanghai, and Bombay are all found in Asia.  With its varied and diverse topographies and its peoples’ diverse skin-colors and physical make-up, Asia’s complexity is enormous.

2.     “Most of the countries in Asia have a colonial experience.”  All of Southeast Asian countries, except Thailand, have at one time or another been under the rule and tutelage of Portugal, Spain, the Netherlands, France and America.

3.     “Most of the countries in Asia are now in the process of nation-building, development and modernization.”  Japan, Singapore, Hongkong and South Korea have been advancing rapidly in industry, science and technology.  The other countries are following suit.  “They wanted to modernize through the use of science and technology and to develop and achieve economic growth, social justice and self-reliance.”

4.     “The people of this (Asian) region want to achieve self-identity and cultural integrity in the context of the modern world.”  Oftentimes, the peoples of Asia find the quest pressurizing in the light of changing values and clashes of cultures between the old and new mores.

5.     “Asia is the home of world’s living and renascent religions which have shaped both the culture and consciousness of the vast majority of Asians.”  Hinduism is the dominant religion in India; Buddhism, although originated in India, has spread to Sri Lanka, Burma, Thailand and Kampuchea in its “Theravada”⁴ form and to parts of China, Korea, Tibet and Japan in its “Mahayana”⁵ form.  Taoism and Confucianism, which both began in China, has likewise spread to other parts of Asia.  Shintoism is still the dominant religion of Japan, Islam, while not strictly Asian in origin, cannot be left out because of its pervasiveness and great influence in affecting the various cultures in Asia.

6.     “Asian peoples are in search of a form of social order beyond the current alternatives.”  Efforts are directed towards socio-economic reconstruction and the search for viable political models within the context of post-colonial and post-war eras.  There are attempts to revise and reformulate alternative ideological systems to adapt to current Asian realities.  In general, Asian struggles are geared towards a common vision of economic sufficiency, social

 

            ⁴Theravada Buddhism is said to be a closer adaptation of the original Buddhism as taught by the Buddha, Siddharta Gautama.

            ⁵Mahayana Buddhism, or “Greater Vehicle”, although less orthodox than Theravada (“Smaller Vehicle”) is more accommodating to other cultures thus explaining its great acceptance and wider spread.

equality and of fostering Asian mutuality and interdependence.  The formation of the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) is one of the expressions of this common vision.

7.     “The Christian community is a minority in the vast Asian complex.”  While we will deal with this in the next section, suffice it to say that this statement gives us food for thought as to the reasons why Christianity has yet to make a breakthrough in the Asian scene.

These seven distinctive features of Asia help us see why the Asian drama is such a colorful and complicated one.  The vastness of Asia’s complexities and enormity of problems posed by such complexities would indeed fascinate one who watches and gets involved in this drama.

II.             Overview of Christianity in Asia

As mentioned earlier, the region of Asia has been the scene of the earliest, biggest, and most expensive Christian missions.  As early as A.D. 52, the Apostle Thomas brought the gospel to India and labored there for about 20 years until his martyrdom in Madras.  (The Mar Thoma Church of South India is said to have been named after this great apostle.)

In China, the great Nestorian Church was known to have come and flourished during the era of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 A.D.).  The Roman Catholic missionaries began their work in China in the 14^th century, in Southeast Asian in the 16^th century, and in Japan, in the 17^th century.  They were followed later by Protestant missions in the 18^th century.

The extent of missionary endeavors in Asia can not be overestimated.  During the 1920’s alone, there were some 16,000 missionaries in China.  In India and other parts of Asia, the figures were slightly lower.  It cannot be denied that compared with other regions, Asia had attracted more missionaries than either Africa or Latin America.

The breadth, length, depth and height, so to speak, of the Christian movement in Asia surpassed those of the other regions of the world.  Yet, with all those missionary efforts of the past, Christianity has still remained a minority religion.

For instance, India has only a 4% Christian segment in its population.  China is said to have only 2% (of course, this figure is not very accurate in view of present difficulty in obtaining this date); Japan has only 3%; and in all of Southeast Asia (with exception of the Philippines where Catholics form the majority, the average Christian population is only 6.5%.⁶

 

⁶D. Barrett, (Ed.) World Christian Encyclopedia, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).  For an update of statistics in the various countries, read Section 7, pp. 134-770 of this voluminous work..

There is no doubt that Christianity as a living faith in Asia has still to make a real breakthrough in the context to win the hearts and souls of the Asian peoples.  One interesting note is the present trend in South Korea where the Christian segment of the population has grown to 31% making them a slight majority over the Shamanists (25.9% and the Buddhists (15.5%).

Christian journals all over the world, have noted tremendous conversions in many churches in Korea and their examples are being followed by other countries like Singapore and Indonesia.  Among the contributory factors in the area of church growth is the era of indigenous leadership, the utilization of the lay ministry, and emphasis on spiritual revival.

The total situation in Asia is therefore neither dismal or deplorable but exciting and hopeful.  To this, we can only give God the glory.⁷  As a way of review and lessons from

the past, however, let us look at some of the salient reasons why the Western missionary movement in the past has produced meager results.

J. Herber Kane, a former missionary in China and professor emeritus of the School of World Mission of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Illinois, USA has reckoned five

 

                  ⁷Read C.L. Yeow’s To God be the Glory (Singapore: Trinity Theological College, 1981) for a balanced picture of the Asian theological situation.

major obstacles, which the Western missionaries in Asia had come across.⁸  they are the following:

1.   Christian mission had to contend with some of Asia’s well-developed civilizations.  As mentioned previously, Christianity came to Asia garbed in Western culture, and so it encountered resistance from the native people who thought of their culture equal to if not more advanced that that of the West’s.

This ethnocentrism was largely true with China.  So far as the Chinese were concerned, their civilization (the “Middle Kingdom complex”) was the most advanced in the world.  That observation was literally true especially at a time when Europe underwent its “dark ages”.  In that particular stage of Chinese history, Changan, the capital of the Tang Dynasty became the most sophisticated city in the world.  So when the European missionaries came to China, the people refused to give their preaching of the gospel a hearing because it came from the mouths of the “barbarians” and “foreign devils.”  The physical appearance of the European--- blue eyes, blonde hair, white skin and great height--- coupled with their strange language were enough to scare the peasants away.  As for the intelligentsia, they regarded the Western missionaries with contempt, suspicion and dishonor.  In the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 about 189 missionaries and their children lost their lives in China.

 

⁸J.H. Kane, Understanding Christian Missions, (Michigan: Baker Book House, 1982), pp. 199-204.

2.     Christian mission had to contend with the highly developed religions in Asia.  Two religions--- Hinduism and Buddhism--- antedated Christianity.  As religious systems, these two religions are replete with their own founders, philosophers, seers, teachers, reformers and a host of prophets and holy men.  They had their temples or pagodas, monasteries, sacred rivers, sacred mountains and scriptures.

The Hindus believed that their Rig Veda was revealed by God to the seers and the Buddhists were quite comfortable with their “Lotus gospel.”  Of course, they have their own gods and goddesses--- by thousands.  In India, where Hinduism and Buddhism flourished, it is easier to find a god than a man.  In China, the Confucian emperor’s reaction upon reading the New Testament was classic.  He told his subjects:

There is no need to outlaw this (Christian) religion.  To say that salvation of the world can be affected by the death of a criminal is sheer nonsense.  No Chinese will believe such a doctrine.  We have nothing to fear.⁹

3.     Christian mission was identified with Western colonization which most Asians opposed.  In the whole of Southeast Asia, only one country--- Thailand--- did not become a colony of the west.  England, France, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and the United States of America, had at one time or

 

⁹J.H. Kane, Op. cit., p. 192.

the other, maintained a colony or colonies in Asia.  In most, if not all the colonized countries, the “cross and the sword” (or Bible and gun) had been invariably used to dominate the colonized peoples.  While it can be said that the bigger countries like India, China and Japan were not really totally colonized, they were sliced like watermelons by the intrusions of the West.

                 

Due to the native people’s suspicion that Christianity is only a cover-up of Western colonialism and imperialism, they rejected the Gospel.  And even when some were converted, they did so either under duress or a cloud of ignorance.

4.     The Crusades were a serious blunder in Christian triumphalism and heightened Muslim antagonism to Christianity.  To many Christians, the Crusades of the 11^th century were simply a nightmare in Church history.  To the Muslims, however, they were a grim reminder of the Christian’s lack of credibility and failure to fulfill the Christian commandment of love.  What was the nature of that Crusade?

We do not have time to dwell on the atrocious nature of that crusade.  Suffice it to say that when Jerusalem was liberated in 1099, the Crusaders wiped out the 1,000 man Muslim garrison and proceeded to massacre 70,000 Muslims.  Then they repaired the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and publicly gave thanks to Almighty God for such resounding victory.  To this day, this blunder continues to fester like leprosy in the Middle East.  The Muslim-Christian conflict in Lebanon for instance continues without a visible hope for reconciliation.¹⁰

What happens in the Middle East affects the body of the Muslim world, including the greater Asian scene.  In revenge and alienation from Christians, some Islamic states in Asia made it a crime for a Muslim to be a Christian.  Christian conversion became taboo and punishable under their Islamic laws.

5.     Christian “exclusivism” made Christianity less acceptable to Asians.  Hinduism, being the most tolerant of religions would have easily placed Christ along with Krishna.  The original Buddhism had neither a god nor a savior.  Confucianism is argued not as a religion but a philosophy.  Islam does not consider the prophet Mohammed as “god incarnate.”  In other words, Christ could have been presented either as an addition to the gods of Hinduism, a complement to the vacuum in Buddhism, or a great prophet standing side by side with Mohammed for the Muslims.  But such proclamation cannot be done without diluting the Gospel.  Jesus is “Lord of lords” and “King of kings”:--- to whom every knee shall bow and every tongue confess.

 

                  ¹⁰Michael Youssef, professor at Haggai Institute, Singapore has made some interested observation about the present conflict in Lebanon.  An H.I. News special supplement (1984) carried such observations, one of which is: “…generally speaking, the Lebanese division is along religious lines---not left wing (Muslims) vs. right wing (Christians) as the news media would cause us to believe.”

Christian exclusivism is rooted in what Jesus said in Scripture: “I am the Way, the Truth and the Life.  No one can come to the Father but by me.”  (John 16:4)  Most Christian missionaries stood firmly on that ground even in the midst of pressures for accommodation and acquiescence.  Thus, Mahatma Gandhi would say he could not put Jesus in the “solitary throne” even as he believed and liked the Sermon on the Mount; the Buddhists could not go beyond their human understanding of salvation; the Confucianists become self-satisfied with their moral and civil standards; Shintoists valued their emperor more than anything else; and Islam considered Jesus simply as a minor prophet.

It goes without saying then that Christianity as introduced to Asia by Western missionaries had had a roughshod treatment.  Our own feelings for the missionaries are one of “mixed feelings.”  One the one hand, we point an accusing finger to their insensitive attitude to Asian life and culture and on the other hand, we embrace them for their example of Christian obedience even amidst the difficulties in the mission field.

While more of this “mixed feelings’ for missionaries will be elaborated later, let us examine some of the fruits of their martyrdom and missionary efforts.

1.     Conversion of the lower classes of people.  This was particularly true with India where 60% of the Christian come from the caste of the harijans (or “untouchables”).  The harijans were the outcasts in the Indian caste system.  They were denied access to temples and wells in India.  Like the biblical examples, these outcasts were the ones who readily responded to the Missionaries’ message.  Apparently, they had nothing to lose but everything to gain.  As they accepted the new faith, they were helped by the missionaries and later, they gained education and improved their lot.

The tribal peoples of Burma, Nagaland, Indonesia and other Asian countries had had similar experiences.  Like the parable of Jesus on the great banquet (Luke 14:16-24), the Western missionaries went out to the highways and hedges inviting all kinds of people because the others had failed to come and partook of the feast.  Dr. Yeow Choo Lak has made the observation that many Asian theologians have come from the working class and hence “specially equipped to work with an enlightened conscience with the poor.¹¹

2.     Development of the concepts of nationhood and democracy.  The dynamic age of European enlightenment was brought to Asia by both the colonizers and the whole missionary movement.

The Protestant ethic of stewardship and the biblical injunction to “be fruitful and multiply…and subdue the earth” (Gen. 1:28) revolutionized traditional patterns if  culture and  paved the  way for  progress and  human development. 

 

¹¹C.L. Yeow, To God be the Glory, Op. cit., p. 1

While Western civilization that went with both Christianity and colonization was regarded as harmful to the local traditions and way of doing things, it has also given an attractive alternative.  The science and technology brought about the Western civilization has freed the Asians from fear of nature and given them the concepts of  nationhood,  with democratic ideals and clearly defined boundaries.  From the perspective of human progress, this “colonization: had many positive results.¹²

Kosuke Koyama himself had made a more balanced view of Western civilization when he called it an “ambiguous monster.”  It has both a wounding and healing effect.  In an address at the 5^th Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Nairobi, Kenya in 1975, Koyama said with characteristic humour:

If Western civilization were simply a demonic monster, all we need to do is simply create a Programme to Combat Western Civilization.  But the fact is, Western civilization is not a demonic monster; rather, it is an ambiguous monster.¹³

 

¹²Read P. Gheddo’s Why is the Third World Poor?  (New York: Orbis Books, 1973) for the pros and cons of Western Colonization.

¹³Read D.M. Paton, Breaking Barriers, (London: SPCK, 1976) for a complete account of WCC, 5^th Assembly.

3.   The check on Islamic expansionism.  While much criticism had been labeled to the Hispanic Catholic conversions in the Philippines, it can not be denied that it was through the arrival and colonization of Spain that the Muslims were not able to saturate the Philippines and made it into an Islamic state like Indonesia or Malaysia.  The concerted, though less biblical conversion by the Roman Catholic Church of the Filipino people made the spiritual soil soft for the coming of Protestant missions in the Philippines and other parts of Asia.

4.     Influence on Asian governments and politics.  The influence of the early Christian missionaries was not confined to the spiritual spheres alone, as mentioned earlier.  They were also able to touch on the social and political spectrum of the nations.

Even while Mahatma Gandhi remained a Hindu, it was to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7) and the witness of such missionaries like Early Stanley Jones that he formulated his philosophy of non-violence.  Sun Yat-sen, considered to be the “father of the Republic of China” was a baptized Christian.  Toyohiko Kagama, the founder of the trade movement in Japan was a Christian writer and thinker of his time.  These men, who made great contributions to the advancement of their societies had been associated with Christian missionaries.  Indirectly, these missionaries had given their share in the reconstruction of Asia in its cultural, social, economic and political life.  Directly, they had bequeathed to us a legacy of zeal, courage and faith in doing what God commands, i.e., to go and preach the Gospel to all creation.  To them, we owe a certain gratitude for preparing the way for the Asian Church, for clearing the bushes and plowing the field so that the seeds of the Gospel can be sown.  With Paul’s wisdom, we can say that whoever plants or waters matters less.  What really matters is that it is God who gives the growth (I Cor. 3:6).

III.           Current Approaches Towards the Doing of Asian Theology

In dealing with this topic, we must first come to a proper definition of theology.  We used to define “theology” by looking back at its root word in Greek, which is a compound of “theos” (God or god) and “logos” (science or study).  From the Greek root, we proceeded to define theology as a science or study of God or god.  In the context in which theology has come to be understood, however, such simple definition can no longer hold a more comprehensive and clearer light.  Theology is no longer regarded as only “science” but also as “art” and the study of God or the divine is no longer confined to the Greek dualistic thinking of “God or man” (divine or human) but rather to a more universal concept of “God and man” (divine and human).  Koyama himself had something to say about the meaning of theology but we shall reserve his comment until we come to the discussion on his contextual theology.

A. Glasser and D. McGavran in their book Contemporary Theologies of Mission gave a broader definition of theology when they classified it under four categories, namely: (1) a study of God and His relationship to the human race; (2) a disciplined reflection on the Word of God; (3) a rational interpretation of the Christian faith; and (4) a body of religious opinions distinguished by some characteristic emphasis.¹⁴

From the above definition, Glasser and McGavran said that systematic theology would fall under any of the first three categories whereas specific theologies (such as theology of pain, work, mission, liberation, etc.) would fall under the fourth category because they are distinguished by a particular concern.¹⁵

Applying the above definition, we can say that Asian theology falls under the fourth category because it is not a complete theological system by a group of theological reflections characterized by its emphasis on or concern for Asia.  There is not only one but many expressions or approaches to Asian theology.  They are what Emil Brunner would call “theologies on the march”¹⁶ or what Edicio dela Torre would call “guerilla-type”¹⁷  theology characterized by hit and run.   We would add that Asian theology, in its

 

¹⁴A. Glasser and D. McGavran, Contemporary Theologies of Mission, (Michigan: Grand Rapids House, 1983), p. 62.

¹⁵Ibid.

¹⁶C. Kegley (ed.), The Theology of Emil Brunner, (New York: MacMillan Co., Inc. 1962) p. 325.

¹⁷C.G. Arevalo, et. al., Towards Doing Theology in the Philippine Context, (Quezon City, Philippins: Loyola Papers, 1970) Quoted, p. 124.

attempt to respond to the multiplicity of issues in Asia, has to engage in “Thai boxing,”¹⁸ one that engages all usable resources.

A number of theological reflections were already anthologized in three well-known collections: Asian Voices in Christian Theology, What Asian Christians are Thinking, and the Human and the Holy.  In introducing What Asian Christians are Thinking, editor D.G. Elwood remarked: “It is not always easy to discover what Asian Christians are thinking.”¹⁹  This observation is largely true of the communist and Islamic parts of Asia where access to Christian publications is difficult if not impossible.  Of the “freer” countries, this observation is true in the sense that it is not easy to segregate what truly constitutes authentic Asian theology and what are merely rewrites of the theologies from the West.

Our purpose in this section is not to engage in a discussion on what current approaches to Asian theology are truly Asian and what are not, but simply to state these approaches as attempting to respond to the theological issues in Asia.  The following are the current approaches or categories in which Asian theologians have tried to formulate:

^1.            Theology of nature and history.  This theology tends to rethink a theological approach  to nature,  the  understanding  of  the holy,  and the  development of

 

¹⁸“Thai boxing” uses not only fists but also knees, elbows, head and feet.

¹⁹D.G. Elwood (ed.), Op. cit., Introduction.

history.   Asians  who are  engaged  in this  thinking are  seeking to  relate  the

Bible to the question of man’s respect, fear, use and abuse of nature.  Masatoshi Doi said the task of this theology is two-fold: (a) to emancipate the village people from the spell of nature, and (b) to correct the materialistic view that reduces nature to things for human exploitation.²⁰

2.     Theology of mission.  There is an attempt to redefine mission not only in terms of evangelical proclamation of the Good News but in terms of active presence in the maelstrom of Asian cultural, political, economic and social change.  Some Asian theologians are finding the struggle for human rights, political liberation and social justice to be points of entry for the Christian mission.  They believe that such issues as modernization, technology and human development in Asia are not outside of but an integral aspect of missionary involvement.  Christian must be involved prophetically with such issues.²¹

3.     Theology of Inter-religious dialogue.  Some Asian theologians expressed concern for dialogue with men of other faiths, cultures and ideologies in the context  of  pluralism  in  Asia.    The  Christian  conference  of  Asia  made  a

 

²⁰Ibid. pp. 119-130.

²¹Read E. Nacpil’s Mission and Change, (Manila: EACC, 1970) for a theological treatment of mission in relation to social and cultural change.

statement in 1970 about its “concern for dialogue in Asia”²² and calling for a

deeper life “with our cosmic yet personal Lord”²³ by accepting this religious pluralism and engaging in dialogue with men of other religions.

4.     Theology of development and liberation.  Most Asian countries are part of the Third World and are in the vortex of social change.  Christians who find themselves part of this dislocation are seeking ways to express their theology in the context of oppression, poverty and the human struggle for social justice, human dignity and socio-political liberation.  Inspired by its counterpart in Latin America, the liberation theology and theology of human development in Asia are being formulated with the conviction that God is on the side of the oppressed irrespective of their religious conviction.  M. M. Thomas of India said that “the struggle for human dignity will find Christians and non-Christians into partnership.  We should build koinonia into all structures.”²⁴  

5.     Contextual theology  This theology takes into account not only he socio-economic and political issues but the totality of Asian context, including the religious milieu.  In Asia, there are at least four major cultural-religious groups:  the Malay-Islamic,  the Chinese-Confucian, the Sanskritic-Hindu, and

 

²²D.G. Elwood (ed.), Op. cit., pp. 335-338.

²³Ibid., p. 338.

²⁴D.G. Elwood (ed.) Op. cit., pp. 274-276.

the Sanskritic-Buddhist.  Kosuke Koyama who wrote from the Sanskritic- Buddhist culture of Thailand said that we have to take seriously each context.²⁵  His Waterbuffalo Theology was set amidst the context of agricultural, traditional, Buddhist-way-of-life, economically-developing, socially-changing Thailand.

Summary:  Asia and Kosuke Koyama

In view of the pluralities and complexities of Asia in its social, political, economic and cultural-religious context, it is not surprising to find the theological struggle not only exciting but also difficult.  The fact that Christianity is a minority in the vast Asian complex adds up to the urgency to find a unified, ecumenical theology theology.”²⁶  In the next chapter, we shall be able to know Koyama as a Christian and Asian theologian.

 

²⁵Koyama wrote in his Foreword to D.G. Elwood’s What Asian Christians are Thinking:  “When our contextualization bears the marks of Jesus’ suffering, then our theology is rooted in a given locality.”

²⁶D.G. Elwood, Op. cit. forewords.

CHAPTER TWO

KOYAMA AS AN ASIAN THEOLOGIAN

Theology cannot come from a vacuum.  Before we can proceed to the study of Prof. Koyama’s theology, we must first come to an understanding of him as an Asian theologian.  Contextual theology itself must being with the context of the theologian.  As Fr. Labino, S.J., once said: “The theologian is ontologically prior to theology: systems arise because theologians do theology.”¹

Who is Kosuke Koyama as an Asian theologian?  We shall deal with this question under four main headings, namely:

1.              The formative years in Japan

2.              Marriage and theological studies in the United States

3.              Missionary work in Thailand

4.              Life and work as a theological education in Asia

As the above headings would suggest, Koyama’s life is one that is lived in various and diverse cultural and theological contexts.  As a person, he found himself at the crossroads of the East and the West; as a Christian, he found himself sandwiched between the biblical culture and the Asian culture, which he would sometimes describe in the image

 

¹Lambino, Towards the Doing of Theology in Philippine Context, Op. cit., p. 3.
of two mountains--- Sinai and Fuji.  Indeed, with such richness and variety of life-experiences and learning, Prof. Koyama would be an interesting person to know.

I.               The Formative Years in Japan (1929-1952)

Kosuke Koyama (“small mountain” in Japanese) was born in December 10, 1929 in Tokyo, Japan.  Throughout his childhood, his country was troubled by war and destructive rule of fascist leaders.  As a Japanese, he said of himself:

I belong to both the old Japan and the new Japan.  I lived my first 16 years under the (Meiji) Imperial Constitution promulgated in 1889.  The following 26 years, I have lived under the present post-war New Constitution of Japan.²

The impact of this experience in the formation of Koyama’s thinking can be glimpsed if one understands the backgrounds of the two period he mentioned.  The Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), which followed the much older Tokugawa Shogunate regime (1603-1867) in Japan is often cited as a notable illustration of a tradition where political authority was purposely and ruthlessly used in reconstituting society, morality and culture for political ends.  It was a period when what was considered important was not the needs of an individual but the needs of an empire, a period when life’s purpose was to serve the emperor’s wars for expansionism and the quest for supremacy in Asia and beyond.  Koyama soliloquized on that period when he said:

 

                  ²K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist (Singapore: Christian Conference of Asia, 1974), p.26.

I cannot see Japan today in isolation from my experience in the demonic war years.  The idolatry of the emperor worship brought the nation to utter destruction and inflicted suffering upon her neighbors in Asia and beyond.³

The post-war period (1946-1952) in Koyama’s life was an entirely new experience.  The new Constitution of Japan, promulgated in 1946 shortly after her humiliating defeat by Allied Forces (at the cost of Nagasaki and Hiroshima) was a drastic change from the Meiji authoritarian regime and a radical break from that culture of subservience to the emperor.  For the first time, the Japanese were introduced to the democratic way of life.  They were to “renounce war”, prohibited from maintaining armed forces in land, air and sea, and not to use force as a means of settling international dispute.  These drastic changes in the war-studded history of Japan were introduced to them at their moment of weakness.

To Koyama (speaking also for his fellow Japanese), it was a difficult period of transition and he felt like “lodging a complaint to Almighty God.”⁴  Moreover, he found himself pushed into a “turmoil of self-identity,”⁵ a conflict between the old “authoritarian Koyama” and the new “democratic Koyama.”⁶  Nevertheless, it is possibly not out of that

 

³K. Koyama, Three Mile an Hour God, (London: SCM Press, 1974), Preface.

⁴K. Koyama, Inaugural Address at Union Theological Seminary in New York.

⁵K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist, (Singapore: Stamford Press, 1979), p. 27.

⁶Ibid.
anxiety that Koyama’s hunger for God began to surface and his theological thinking began to take root.  His conversion and nurture in a close-knit Christian fellowship in the D-Shin-Kwai Church in Nakano gave shape to an emerging theological and missionary vision.  And so, after the war, when he was able to return to school, Koyama entered Tokyo Theological Seminar.  After his graduation in 1952, he was made a minister in the United Church of Christ in Japan.

Indeed, God meets man at his point of need.  The young Koyama’s theological questions found their answers at the feet of Dr. Kazoh Kitamori, one of the pioneers of contextual theology.  Kitamori’s work, The Theology of the Pain of God is considered to be the “earliest attempt in Japan to interpret Christian theology in terms of Japanese religious experience.”⁷  Its central truth is founded on the theology of the cross, i.e., Christ achieving victory by accepting defeat on the cross---and Kitamori used the “pain of God” (Itami) theology to speak to the suffering people of Japan after the World War II tragedy.  Koyama says of Kitamor: “He was my revered teacher.”⁸

Another factor which must have molded Koyama as a contextual theologian was his reading of Uchimura Kanzo (1861-1930).  Uchimura was an itinerant evangelist, religious thinker, writer, critic and founder of the Mukyokai (no church) movement in Japan. He was a fearless Christian prophet and prolific writer.  He chided churches which

 

⁷Read pp. 197-220 of What Asian Christians are Thinking for an essay combining three main chapters of Kitamori’s work.

⁸K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology (London: SCM Press, 1974, p. 116.

had become institutions and organizations instead of being households of God.  To him, these churches had become so formalized and too concerned with structures and systems that they lost the dimension of freedom and vitality.

The Mukyokai had no ministers, church buildings nor sacraments.  The movement’s meetings centered upon the study of the Bible and prayer.  The greatest proof of Uchimura’s prophetic courage, however, was when, as a teacher in 1891, he refused to “bow deeply in worship” to the Imperial Rescript on Education, a decision which cost his position from that school.⁹

II.             Mariage and Further Studies in the U.S.A. (1952-1960)

Koyama went to the United States in 1952 to study at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey.  After obtaining his B.D. Cum Laude in 1954, he went to Princeton Theological Seminary and completed his Master in Theology (Th. M.) in 1955.  His Master’s thesis was, incidentally, focused on the Theology of Augustine --- a study which enabled him to know the thinking of the early church fathers.

It was in Princeton that Koyama met Lois Eleanor Rozendaal.  Love blossomed amidst theological concerns and in 1958, Koyama married.  The Koyama’s have three children: two sons and one daughter.

⁹K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 34.

In 1959, Professor Koyama received his Ph. D. at the same Princeton Theological Seminary.  This time, his thesis was on Martin Luther.  His study on Luther’s theology must have been due to the following reasons: firstly, Luther was said to e the German theologian who so greatly influenced Koyama’s teacher (Kitamori); secondly, the close political relations between Japan and Germany had reverberated into the ecclesiastical circles of both countries.  Japan is probably the foremost country in Asia where German (teutonic) theology had its heyday.

What were the implications of Koyama’s marriage and postgraduate studies in the United States to his contextual theology?  For one thing, these personal experiences deepened his awareness and interest in the area of “Christ and Culture.”  Christ transcends and traverses cultures.  At the center of Koyama’s theological reflections is Christ read in the concrete historical and cultural situations of Japan and though out in the context of the American educational system.  His birth and youth in the East and his studies and marriage in the West had combined to form additional ammunition for his contextual theology.

The other implication is that this his studies of Augustine and Luther provided him with solid theological framework insofar as these two great theologians had responded meaningfully and prophetically to the concrete situations of their times.  Tracing their own contexts and theological thoughts, Koyama gained a great wealth of learning for his own contextual theology.  Koyama’s theses on these two thinkers had supplied him with enough backing for his theological approach.  Let us examine their thinking of Augustine and Luther and their influence on Koyama.

Augustine (354-430), Bishop of Hippo in North Africa, was probably the most influential Christian thinker in the history of Christendom.  To Augustine can be attributed the doctrine of sine and grace, accepted in essence by both Catholic and Protestant churches.  In his theology, Augustine affirmed strongly the fact of original sin, i.e., the state in which man finds himself because of the fall of Adam, the progenitor of the whole human race.  Due to his fallen nature, man is unable to save himself and so God, “in the fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4) sent His only begotten Son Jesus Christ to give the fallen creatures a new beginning.  Christ, the embodiment of Divine Love accomplished this mission and established the principle of grace.  To this, man can only respond in faith by the surrender of his will to God and hence receive this restoration in the context of divine-human relationship.

While Augustine’s theology was derived mostly from his reading of Paul’s letter to the Romans, it is interesting to note that his sensitivity to God’s Word had its root in the context of his own situation.  To understand, for example, his position on sin and grace is necessary to know something of his life.  Born to a Christian mother and a pagan father, Augustine sought desperately for a faith that would be meaningful and effectual in delivering him from his own sense of sin and guilt.  He came to a conviction that it was through no effort of his own by through the grade of God that he became converted.  This conviction had so influenced his thinking that when Pelagius, a monk from the British Isles, began a heretical teaching that man’s efforts were instrumental to salvation, Augustine responded readily by his theology of sin and unmerited grace.¹⁰

It is also said that when Augustine was writing his 22 volumes of the City of God, he was actually responding to the context of Rome being besieged and burned to destruction by pagan enemies.  Augustine, while feeling the pain of the burning city and its destruction, wrote the remarkable message: the city of man will always die; the city of God will never die.¹¹  In so far as Augustine responded to the context in which he found himself, he was himself a contextual theologian and Koyama must have learnt a lot from him.

Martin Luther ((1483-1546), foremost leader of the Reformation movement, occupied the pages of Koyama’s doctoral thesis.  Like Augustine, Luther had greatly influenced Koyama’s existential approach to theology.  Masatoshi Doi, another Japanese theologian who was also influenced by Luther’s reformation theology, placed Luther alongside Socrates in terms of his analysis of human existence.  Doi said:

Socrates and Luther were both existential in their approach to God.  But whereas, in the age of Socrates the mark of existential feeling was the uneasiness about death; in Luther’s time it was the uneasiness of conscience.¹²

¹⁰A. Cohen and M. Halverson, A Handbook of Christian Theology, (Tennessee: World Publishing Co., 1958) p. 23.

¹¹S. Augustine, The City of God (Abridged and translated by J.W.C. Wand), (London Oxford University Press, 1963).  Read especially Books XVII and XIX.

¹²M. Doi, Search for Meaning, (Tokyo: Kyo Bun Kwan, Press c. 1976), p. 66.

Doubtless, it was the uneasiness of conscience that moved Luther to theologize amidst the obscurantism of the church in his time.  His celebrated sola fide (by faith alone) and sola scriptura (by scriptures alone) were doctrines culled out of reading the Word of God in the context of Roman Catholicism’s preoccupation over the doctrine of salvation by works and the narrow doctrine of “papal infallibility”.¹³  Luther prophetically sounded the call for Christian liberty and freedom from rigid papacy which had almost become the absolute center of authority concerning Christian doctrine and morals.

It was Luther’s Theological Crucis (theology of the cross) however, which had placed an indelible imprint to the theology of Kosuke Koyama.  What is Luther’s theology to the cross?  In the Hiedelberg Disputation of 1518, Luther described the essence of Christian theology to be theologia cruces.  Luther’s statement that God is known only in suffering points to the deep correlation between the suffering Christ in whom God makes Himself known, and the suffering man who is the only man capable to enter into the communion with God.  Luther explained:

He who has emptied himself through suffering, no longer does works but knows that God works and does all things for him.  For this reason whether God does works for him or not, it is all the same to him.  He neither boasts if he does good works, nor is he disturbed if God does not do good works through him.  He knows that it is sufficient if he suffers and is brought low by the cross in order to be annihilated all the more.¹⁴

 

¹³Simply put: “When the Pope speaks ex-cathedra, he cannot err.”

¹⁴Althaus, The Theology of Martin Luther (Philadelphia: Fortress Pres, 1966) p. 26.

I believe it is Luther’s influence and inspiration that had in fact reinforced Koyama’s own theological prophetism.  In many of Koyama’s writings, he would often quote one of Luther’s famous statements: “Not reading books or speculating, but living, dying and being damned make a theologian.”¹⁵

III.           Missionary Work in Thailand (1960-1968)

In 1960, Prof. Koyama and his family went to Thailand, commissioned as missionaries from the United church of Christ in Japan to the Church of Christ in Thailand.  In Thailand, Koyama served as a church minister and a lecturer in systematic theology in the Theological Seminar at Chiengmai.  While on Thai soil, he was given the challenge to present in the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey, Switzerland, a study on “The Church and Israel.”  The study enable him to keep in touch with the theological trends outside of Thailand.

As a pastor, teacher and preacher in Northern Thailand, Koyama found expression for his contextual theology.  His immediate “neighbours” were students with their bicycles, the Thai farmers with their waterbuffaloes and the Buddhist monks with their lamps.  To these neighbors, Koyama reflected a deep love and respect.  His first contribution in contextual theology was published in 1965 in Japanese and it was entitled “In the Land of Mendicant Monks and Waterbuffaloes.”¹⁶

 

¹⁵K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, Op. cit., p. 23.

¹⁶Published by Christ Weekly (1965).

Koyama’s understanding of Thailand was interestingly similar to his understanding of himself.  Like his own life, Thailand has also its own “turmoil of self-identity.”  Koyama saw Thailand as Thailand One and Thailand Two”.¹⁷  Thailand One is the continuity of Thai history and culture (Mother Nature, Monarchy and Theravada Buddhism) while Thailand Two is an “Americanized” or :busy business” Thailand.  The former is the traditional community with its “delicious banana and mangoes” while the latter is the modernized society wit its “coffee and pizza.”  The center of the former is the fertile paddy fields while the center of the latter is the city of Bangkok.¹⁸

Koyama said that these two Thailands exist side by side and that every Thai person lives within this intersection.  Out of such observations, Koyama raised some theological issues which we would later discuss in the next chapter.  Suffice to say in the meantime, that his missionary works in Thailand had given him concrete experiences in communicating the gospel with the people of other faiths, especially with the Buddhists.

IV.           Life and Works as Theological Educator and Ecumenist in Asia and Beyond.   (1968-1980)

After eight years of immersion in the “theological paddies: of Thailand, Koyama went to Singapore  in 1968 to  become  the  first  Asian executive  Director of  the  Association of

 

¹⁷ Waterbuffalo Theology, p.6

¹⁸Ibid.

Theological Schools in Southeast Asia (now Association for Theological Education in Southeast Asia or ATESEA), Dean of the Southeast Asia Graduate School of Theology (SEAGST), and Editor of the Southeast Asia Journal of Theology (now East Asia Journal of Theology or EAJT)---a three-fold portfolio which he held until 1974.

As an engaging theological educator, Koyama lectured at Trinity Theological College in Singapore, as well as in other seminaries under the ATESEA and SEAGST specializing on the areas of “Christ and Cultures;” “Christian Faith and Social Ethics;” “Christian Theology Under the Impact of Modernization;” etc.  As Dean of SEAGST, he had access to travel and so he circled around not only the whole Southeast Asia but also Australia, New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka and other parts of greater Asia.  Koyama is probably one of the most well-traveled Asia theologians.

It was also during this particular period in Koyama’s life that his major works were published.  Pilgrim or Tourist and Waterbuffalo Theology both came out in 1974; Theology in Contact in 1975; No Handle on the Cross in 1977; and Three Mile an Hour God in 1978.  Amidst these theological achievements, Koyama humbly said:

All theologies are very humble attempts to say something about God because God has first spoken to us…  When God comes to him, the theologian finds himself saying what the young Jeremiah said: “Ah, Lord God!  Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth…” (Jer. 1:6)  In theology, we do not know how to speak.¹⁹

 

            ¹⁹K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist, Op. cit., p. 99

Koyama’s theological “travelogues” in Asia moved his household from Singapore to Dunedin, New Zealand, where he taught at the University of Otago from 1974 to 1979.  In that University, he lectured on “Indian Religions”, “Religions and Cultures of Japan and Southeast Asia”, and “Phenomenology”.  While in New Zealand, he was also invited as a “visiting professor” (January-May 1978) in San Francisco Theological Seminary, U.S.A.  He left New Zealand in 1979.

V.             Koyama at Present

Presently, Koyama is teaching at Union Theological Seminary in New York, U.S.A.  His theological journey seemed to have completed a cycle (A “rotunda”, as he said in his inaugural speech at UTS).  What implication would this have in his contextual theology, we do not know as yet.  Suffice it to say, however, that since January 1980 up to the time of writing, Koyama has been holding the post in UTS as Professor of Ecumenical and World Christianity.  Two of his recent lectures, namely: “Religion in the Global Village”; and “Tribal Gods or Universal Gods”; have appeared in the Drew Gateway and Missionalia both prominent theological journals.

Koyama’s articles on “Asian Spirituality” and “Indigenous Theology” appeared in the new edition of Alan Richardson’s Dictionary of Theology.  At the moment, Koyama is in the process of writing a new book, the title and nature of which are unknown.  We can only surmise it would have something to do with a further sharpening of his theological thinking.

Chapter Three

KOYAMA’S CONTEXTUAL THEOLOGY

In this chapter, we shall attempt to categorize and arrange the various thoughts of Kosuke Koyama insofar as they relate to a clearer understanding of Asian contextual theology.  I must confess that it is not easy task.  Koyama’s writings did not present readily-identifiable formulations but rather laid out a “potpourri” of responses to a variety of theological issues.  A reader hoping to see sequences to Koyama’s reflections might be frustrated because Koyama presented his thoughts in a sort of “chop suey”,¹ way.  This is a peculiar method of communication which we will comment upon the later chapter.

In a way, it is this particular dynamism of Koyama’s approach to communication that tended to confuse those who try to red his thoughts.  This impression, however, can be avoided if we will understand theology the way Koyama understood it.  Koyama viewed theology in two ways, namely: (1) Theology is not a self-evident science by a “hidden reality”:² and (2) Various theological situations demands various theological formulations.

As regards to theology being a hidden reality, Koyama spoke from the point of faith.  He believed that theology goes together with faith and “faith is the assurance of things hoped

 

            ¹C.H. Yeow, To God be the Glory, p. 21.

            ²K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist, p. 24.

for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1).  As regards to various theological formulations, Koyama asserted that in certain life’s situations, it is demanded that the theologian may use the theology of incarnation while in other life situations, he may use the theology of creation, redemption, resurrection and so forth.  The essence of theology, according to him, is its capacity to respond meaningfully to a given context or in a context in which the theologian finds himself.

There are three marks of Koyama’s contextual theology which we shall look at, namely: (1) Contextual theology as “neighbourological”; (2) Contextual theology as “critical accommodational prophetism and prophetic accommodation”; and (3) Contextual theology as “Theo-anthropology”.

I.               Contextual Theology as “Neighbourological”

Koyama opened his first major work in Asia with these words in Waterbuffalo Theology:

The waterbuffalos tell me that I must preach to the (Thai) farmers in the simplest sentence-structure and thought development.  They remind me to discard all abstract ideas and to use exclusively objects that are immediately tangible: sticky-rice, banana, pepper, cat, dog, rainy season, cockfighting.  It is not I but my audience who determines this theology from below.  God commanded me to be a neighbour to these farmers.  I am forced to make this decision because of my involvement with them.  Is not involvement the only soil from which theology germinates?³

            ³K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, Op. cit., preface.

From this preface to Waterbuffalo Theology, one can readily discern Koyama’s starting point for contextual theology.  Basically, it is an approach to mission.  God commanded the missionary-theologian to be neighbor to people.  The greatness or naivety of one’s theology is to be judged firstly on the way in which he as a theologian involved himself with the context of his neighbors.  Theology is a tool or servant of faith.  Its worthiness depends on how it can render service to the neighbor.

In this theology, then, is a passion for relevance, and obsession for communion with people and willingness to suffer with them.  The theologian must have compassion and concern, a willingess to enter into the realms of the people’s cultural and religious experience.  Theology is an act of “Theo-invitation”;⁴ an invitation to suffer with one;s neighbors.  Koyama said that theology in Asia means the “articulation and manifestation of the power of the theo-invitation among Asian peoples”.⁵

To engage in “theo-invitation” with neighbors is not easy because there are two hidden realities at work, i.e., the reality of God and the reality of our neighbor.  Koyama quoted Dr. John Baillie in the understanding of reality, thus:

 

            ⁴D.G. Elwood (ed.) What Asian Christians are Thinking, foreword by Kosuke Koyama.

            ⁵D.G. Elwood (ed), What Asian Christians are Thinking, Op. cit.

           

Reality is what I “come up against”, what takes me by surprise, the other-than-myself which pulls me up and obliges me to reckon with it and adjust myself to it because it will not consent simply to adjust itself to me.”⁶

Koyama said that the missionary is sandwiched between these two realities: Christ’s saving reality and his neighbor’s “other than myself reality”.  The missionary’s sense of the presence of God will be distorted if he fails to see God’s reality in terms of his neighbors.  Furthermore, his sense of neighbor’s reality will be disfigured unless seen in terms of God’s reality.  The missionary should therefore need two kinds of exegeses, namely: (1) the exegesis of the Word of God, and (2) the exegesis of the life and culture of his neighbors.  These two exegeses are closely interrelated and just as the missionary is sandwiched by the two realities, he is likewise sandwiched by these two exegeses.

The following are the assumptions of the theology of “neighbourology”:

1.   God is our “neigbour”.  The theology of neighbourology begins with God as man’s neighbor.  Koyama said that God comes to man’s fallen history with a sense of love and respect for the fallen man.  To Adam after the Fall, God still asked, “Where are you?” (Gen. 3:9) and to Cain, the first murderer, God still called, “Where is your brother?” (Gen. 4:9)

 

⁶Quoted by Koyama from john Baillie, The Sense of the Presence of God (Oxford University Press, 1962) P. 33 IN Koyama’s Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 91.

According to Koyama, the whole Bible is a commentary to the above texts.  The texts on Adam’s “where are you?” and Cain’s “where is your brother?” summarized the action of God in the history of mankind, Israel and the Church.⁷  Both texts summed up the primeval history of man.  God’s “Adam, where are you?”, and “Cain, where is your brother?”, mirror the entire history of nations past and present.  They tell of God’s “holy search” for fallen man, a search filled with compassion, concern and respect---inspite of His pain and righteous indignation.  They tell of relationship that God is neighbor and He cares.  God is neighbor comes to man and asks “Where are you?” and “Where is your neighbour?”

Nowhere has this reality of God as neighbor been fully revealed than in the person and work of Jesus Christ.  Jesus came from an unfamiliar history (sinless) to a familiar history (sinful, fallen) in order to bridge the gap and create a new relationship of “neighbourology”.  He comes to man with love and respect.  He comes and asks, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” (Matt. 16:13)

The biblical God is therefore, the creator of “neigbourology”, because He is the creator of relationship.  He introduces this “neighbourological” relationship at all costs.  “Christ was crucified between the thieves…those

⁷K. Koyama, No Handle on the Cross, (London: SCM Press, 1976). P. 14.

who were crucified with him also reviled him”.  (Mark 15:27, 32).  Koyama said concerning Jesus’ association with the two thieves even on the cross, thus:

           

These verses (Mark 15:27, 32) are important because it indicates that Christ did not die alone.  They were reviling Jesus but in so doing, they kept “company” with Jesus.  They were introduced.  Even while we take the name of God in vain, He takes our names carefully.  What the thieves did was incorporated in the story of salvation.⁸

In dying, Jesus creates human relationship, a “neigbourological” relationship which asks: “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?”  Koyama asked, “Is Jesus telling us that I am what I am but not always what people or you think I am?”⁹

In Jesus Christ, we find the reality of God as a loving neighbour.  God is love and the essence of His neighbourology” is His love for man.  This is why, Koyama said, “neigbourology” is the best vessel to convey Christ in Asia.  Koyama added:

⁸K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 12.

⁹Ibid.

Our neighbours in Asia are not interested in Christology but can be concerned with our neighbourology.  This means that our neigbours in Asia are read to hear our message of Christ if we put it in :neighbourological” language, though they would reject Christ if we were to present Him in Christological language.¹⁰

2.     People are “Neighbours”.  This is the second assumption of the theology of “neighbourology.”  Theology is concerned with a “neighbourological” God.  There is not theology, however, apart from man.  Theology means “God-man-logy”.¹¹  Koyama explained that in theology, it is not man who studies God but it is God who studies man in the context of man’s understanding of God.  Theology is not the same as Ichthyology or “fish understanding” because whereas in Ichthyology, man can catch and study the fish, in theology, man cannot catch and study God.  In other words, theology is man’s understanding of God on the basis of God’s understanding of man.  Koyama said theology is a very special kind of anthropology.

In theology, we are not concerned with God alone but also with people because God is concerned with them.  To say that God is concerned with people means that He approaches peoples as “neighbours” and thus looks at them with love and respect.  Such love and respect for people as neighbours include the love and respect to people’s history, culture, traditions, aspirations

¹⁰K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 43.

¹¹K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist, p. 26.

and moral strivings.  Koyama criticized some missionaries for their insensitivity to the Asian people.

One day some years ago I met a missionary couple from the West in the Bangkok Airport.  They had just arrived in Bangkok.  They expressed the view that Thai Buddhism is a manifestation of demons!  How simple!  Thirty million people in the Buddhistic tradition of 700 years were brushed aside in one second.  The remark betrayed super-arrogance and super-ignorance.  It was further told that the People’s Republic of China, with her 800 million who are all atheists and therefore unsaved, is positively the enemy of the gospel!  This unfortunate display of arrogance and ignorance derives from an inability to appreciate the complexity of living man in living history.¹²

Koyama maintained that Christianity in Asia for the last 400 years has not really listened to the people.  Rather, “it has ignored people”.¹³  It has ignored the people of Asia because it sees Asian history---particularly the history of Asian nascent and insipient religions---in the perspective of self-assertiveness.

It has ignored the innate spirituality of the people, their histories, cultures and way of life.  Because it has ignored the people, Christianity in Asia likewise ignored the God who is concerned with people.  In short, Christianity in Asia has ignored God who approaches people as “neighbours”.

¹³K. Koyama, Three Mile An Hour God, p. 52.

            ¹⁴K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist, p. 40.

Addressing himself with the Asian Christians, Koyama has this to say:

We Asian Christians ignore our cultural heritage: arts, literature, paintings, religions and historical experiences.  Frequently, the moment of baptism becomes the moment of “becoming a stranger” to one’s cultural and religious values.  It is not so much to one’s faith in Jesus Christ, but to one’s acceptance of another’s (American, British, German---the West’s) way of life as the Christian way.¹⁴

People are our “neighbours” and we should approach them with love and respect.  Koyama said that we should not look at them as inanimate objects because if we do that we are making them as maya (Buddhist term of “illusion”) and hence we would be reducing the gospel to maya also.¹⁵  He quoted I John 4:20: “He who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God whom he has not seen.”

What is Koyama’s perspective of people as “neighbours?”  What does he mean by “neighbours” and how does theology relate to them?

There are all kinds of neighbours: rich, poor, strong, weak, educated, uneducated, oppressing and oppressed…whoever they are “neihbourological”

¹⁴K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist, p. 40.

¹⁵K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 90.

theology must take them seriously…(Their) reality---all that they are and all that they do---must become a motivating force for our theological engagement.¹⁶

Theology must take people as neighbours seriously.  A theologian is not a tourist but a pilgrim.  The tourist rushes but the pilgrim walks.  To engage in theology is to engage in walking with people as God walks with them.  “Walking is the proper speed and posture that can prepare a man to meditate,”¹⁷  Koyama commented.  God walks slowly---approximately “three miles an hour”---because He wants to keep pace with people.  This is a slow speed because it is an inner, spiritual speed: the speed of love.¹⁸

This biblical god who walks with people is concerned with them whenever and wherever they are found.  This was seen in His address of Himself as the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” and “This is my Name forever and I am to be remembered throughout all generations” (Exodus 3:15).  While the stories of these patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac and Jacob) were likewise fallen histories, the holy God introduced Himself to these histories in words of neighbourology:  “I am what I am but I will be neighbour to you.”

¹⁶K. Koyama, Pilgrim of Tourist, p. 25.

¹⁷Ibid., p. 2.

¹⁸K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 7.

3.     Application of “Neighbourology”.  Koyama said that because theology is “God-man-logy”, it cannot exist outside the particularity of history.  Theology lives in an orbit, and Koyama called it “POT” or “particular orbit theology”.¹⁹  Koyama used “POT” to call attention to some raw materials and raw situations in Asia.  Let us summarize some of these raw materials and situations which Koyama reflected upon:²⁰

a.     Singapore.  The theological issue here is the relationship between “being efficient” (fast) and “being human” (slow).  God is a slow god (who walks forty years with Israel in the wilderness) but the lifestyle in Singapore is fast.  How does the slow God speak to the fast, modernized setting of Singapore?

b.      Thailand.  There are two related issues here:  (1) Thailand One and Thailand Two, and (2) “Showing mercy” in the theology of the ideal person, the king and Jesus Christ.  How can Christology speak to the spiritual needs of the people who are sandwiched between Thailand One (traditional) and Thailand Two (modernized)?  How can the mercy of Jesus Christ speak into the context of the Thais whose tradition of Theravada Buddhism is rooted in the concept of mercy (medtaa karunaa)?

c.      China.  The theological issue here is the encounter between two credos: Mao’s Credo and that of the Pentateuch.  The former speaks of the struggle of the Chinese people “for a hundred years” for liberation along Marxist-Leninist lines.  The latter speaks of Israel’s bondage in Egypt and its deliverance by God

²⁰Ibid.  To avoid cumbersome footnoting, all the indented portions of country to country are to be understood as taken from Waterbuffalo Theology, pp. 3-19.

(Deutoronomy 26:5-10).  How do we relate these two credos?  How should the former be evangelized by the latter or vice versa?

d.      Hongkong.  The theological question is: How can the “slow God” be meaningful to Hongkong “whose time is running out?”  (Hongkong as a British colony was leased by China to the British Crown in 1842.  This lease will expire in 1997).

e.      The Philippines.  The Filipino has at least “four Philippines” within himself:  (1) The pre-Spanish-rule Philippines, (2) the Spanish-rule Philippines, (3) The American-rule Philippines, and (4) The Philippines-rule Philippines.  Who is Christ against the background of  “many Philippines” Filipinos?  What is the relationship between the diversified shared self-identity and Christology?

f.       Indonesia.  This country seeks to live within the framework of Pantja Sila enunciated in its 1945 Constitution.  It includes five principles, namely: (1) Belief in the One God, (2) Humanity, (3) Nationalism, (4) Sovereignty of the People, (5) Social Justice.  The Pantja Sila is a progressive ideology which takes the relationship of modernity with the traditional gotongroyong (sense of unity: “to carry heavy burden together”).  The Indonesians still live the fear and belief of many spiritis.  In this context of the “many spirits”, how will the doctrine of the Holy Spirit speak to Indonesians?  Is Pantja Sila one of these spirits?

g.      Burma.  Koyama called President Ne Win’s “Burmese Way to Socialism” as “Burmese Way to Loneliness”.  The context of Burma speaks of isolationism.  The Burmese government closed its doors to other countries with the purpose of instilling national self-reliance.  What kind of world vision and Christological message can speak to Burma?”

h.      Japan.  Japan is the most highly industrialized and modernized country in Asia.  In 1973, Japanese spent so much money to enjoy a pollution-free, quiet, pastoral Japan of 1923---and they enjoyed it outside Japan.  What then is this mammoth industrialization for?  What theological support for “foreign aid” will speak to the Japanese people, particularly those in business?

i.       Taiwan.  This country has been living on an illusionary creed of Chiang Kai-shek: that of liberating mainland China.  This situation is idolatry, since this is an illusion.  Liberation of the mainland (which probably Chiang himself would think impossible) becomes to the people their “golden calf”.  How do we theologize on the subject of “idolatry” from the experience of Taiwan?

These were some of the “raw materials” and “raw situations” Koyama found to be fertile subjects for contextual theology as “neighbourological”.  To speak like the above is to speak a “neighbourological language.  Theology has ceased being a private affair but a matter that involves the community of people as “neighbours”.  From “philosophy asks questions and theology answers”, we move on to say that “our neighbour asks the questions and he seeks the answers in Christ.”²¹  Koyama said there is no longer a private theology.  Theology is a community production.  It is “neigbourological”.

²¹K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 91.

II.             Contextual Theology as “Critical Accommodational Prophetism and Prophetic Accommodation”

The second feature of Koyama’s contextual theology is one that relates to his approach to other faiths, cultures and ideologies.  Koyama believed that dialogue with men of other faiths, cultures and ideologies becomes “the area of critical importance to the mission of the church”.²²  This is a serious task but if theology in Asia must be contextual, it must take this task very seriously.  Towards this task, Koyama propounded what he termed as “critical accommodational prohetism and prophetic accommodation”.  (For understandable reason, we shall henceforth abbreviate this term to “CAPPA”)

What is CAPPA?  CAPPA is an “authentic contextualization”²³ of the incarnation of Christ towards the purpose of challenging and changing the situation through rootedness-in and commitment-to a given historical moment.  It is done when theology becomes so incarnated into the history, culture, language and religious context of the people.  CAPPA comes out of self-denial and the theology of the cross.

CAPPA involves two interrelated processes, namely: self-denial or self-emptying, and (2) deep involvement or engagement.  It combines the theology of the cross and the theology of incarnation.  Thus, in approaches to the theology of dialogue with men of other faiths,

²²K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 26

²³Ibid., p. 21

the theologian must first empty himself of previous assumptions of theology.  Then he should listen to the people---whether they be the 240,000 monks in Thailand or the millions of poverty-stricken Hindus in India.  The theologian, before formulating his theology, must first “deny himself” (Matthew 16:24) and then get rooted into the community of people.  That “rootedness” into the context of the people would signal his theology which is not self-evident.

CAPPA keeps a liberal attitude about religious pluralism in Asia.  Speaking at the Discipleship Training Centre in Singapore in 1974, Koyama said:

Every religion has good things as well as bad things; therefore we must keep the good things of Buddhism in Thailand and talk about them.  This will change our life style and I consider it evangelism.²⁴

This process of accommodating “the good things” in other cultures and religions, according to Koyama, was in line with the biblical advice: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious…think of these things” (Philippinas 4:8).  Such process of accommodation demands suffering for the sake of building a community.  Koyama related this process of accommodation to the salvation-process wrought by Jesus through His suffering:

²⁴D.G. Elwood (ed.) What Asian Christian are Thinking, Quoted by Bong Rin Ro, p. 55.

(Jesus) indigenized the message of God through His life of suffering.  Suffering was the point of indigenization.  This indigenization took a mysterious course.  He “pressed beyond” and challenged the present contest of wholeness.  By enduring the chastisement and stripes, He opened up a new possibility for community.  He accommodated salvation through His suffering.²⁵

The interrelated processes of suffering and incarnation found their key in CAPPA.  Koyama advanced two issues in the formulation of contextual theology as CAPPA, namely: (1) The “Crucified Mind” vis-à-vis the “Crusading Mind” in the theology of the cross; and (2) The dialogue between “History” and “Nature” in the context of Buddhist Thailand.  Let us summarize them.

1.     The “Crucified Mind” vs. the “Crusading Mind” in the theology of the cross.  Koyama said that the crusading mind is a mind characterized by an aggressive and confrontational evangelism that points to the Lord of “aggressive historicism”²⁶ instead of the One (who has all authority in heaven and on earth) who died on the cross.  The “crusading mind” is one that suffers from “teacher complex”²⁷ and one that puts a “handle on the cross”.²⁸  Koyama made mention of the following example of a “crusading mind”, thus:

 

²⁵D.G. Elwood (ed.) Op. cit., p. 55.

²⁶K. Koyama, Ritual of Limping Dance (Inaugural Address of the Union Theological Seminary, New York, Jan. 1980), p.27.

²⁷K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 51.

²⁸Read K. Koyama’s No Handle on the Cross to understand fully the meaning of this imagery.

One of the major Protestant denominations has this to say about its 1975 worldwide mission: “To initiate a worldwide mission and evangelism offensive…”  To whom is the offensive directed?  To those “overseas?”  To the “heathens?”  Is this great denomination will thinking of evangelism in terms of “offensive?”  Is Jesus Christ “on a tree?” (Galatians 3:13) or is Her in Pentagon?²⁹

Koyama maintained that the “crusading mind” had presented Christ in Asia as the “crucifying Lord” instead of the “crucified Lord.”  Many Asians, he said, see the symbol of the hated Western civilization not in the factory-chimney pollution but in the cross.  Instead of being the symbol of self-denial and self-sacrifice, the cross has become a self-righteous, Pharisaic, militaristic symbol.  Koyama commented further:

Christianity has not gained much headway in Asia for the last 400 years because Christians “crusaded” against Asians.  When did Christianity become a cheap military campaign?”³⁰

Koyama said that the theology of the cross is not derived from the “crusading mind” but from the “crucified mind”.  The “gospel of the cross” can be interpreted in many ways, but its central thrust is found in the truth that Christ

 

²⁹K. Koyama, No Handle on the Cross, p. 102.

³⁰K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 54.

achieved victory by accepting defeat.³¹  The theology of the cross would present itself thus:

(1)      Crucified, yet Christ is sovereign of all (the King).

(2)      Crucified, yet Christ comforts all (the Priest).

(3)      Crucified, yet Christ frees all (the Prophet).

The imagery of the “cross and lunchbox” was used by Koyama to differentiate the “crucified mind” from the “crusading mind”.  The former is a heavy, badly-shaped and demoralizing object to carry; whereas, the latter is a light, attractively-shaped and comfortable object to carry.  In sharpening contrast, Koyama presented the following:

The “cross” means slow movement; the “lunchbox” fast movement.  The cross means inefficiency; the lunchbox is efficiency.  The cross is insecurity; the lunchbox security.  The cross is pain; the lunchbox is glory.  The cross is self-denial; the lunchbox is self-assertion.³²

Koyama claimed that it is not the crusading mind but the crucified mind that will eventually be risen.  God came to man, he said, not with a crusading mind

 

³¹K. Koyama, No Handle on the Cross, p. 8.

³²K. Koyama, No Handle on the Cross, p. 2.

but with a crucified mind.  Christ emptied Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on the cross.  The crusading mind is not a product of Christ but of Christianity, and Christianity is not identical with Christ.³³

The “crusading mind”, in order to be risen, needs to repent and be illuminated by the “crucified mind”.  It is at the moment of repentance, not in aggression, that it can see Jesus Christ standing at the center and saying: “Lo, I am with you always to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20).  As it repents, it will begin to see its “neighbours” (including their spirituality, frustration, aspirations, etc.) and Christ speaking: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5).

2.     The dialogue between “History” and “Nature” in the context of Buddhist Thailand.  This reflection brought to focus CAPPA at its utmost.  Koyama critically examined the orthodox Christian view of history and prophetically accommodated the Thai understanding of nature into a dialectic which he called “ascending-spiral view of history-nature”.³⁴

Koyama began by taking the biblical assumption that God revealed Himself in history.  History, however, is inseparable from people and God takes people

 

³³K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 51.

³⁴K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 41.

seriously.  The Thai people tend to understand history as “nature”, a repetition, a cycle, a circular movement.  Life in Thailand is strongly influenced by this circular movement of nature.  People eat and sleep 365 times a year; they plant, harvest and plant again in seasons; they experience sunny and rainy seasons in circular order.  Together with other activities that follow the pattern, repetition and circle give the people of Thailand a sense of security.³⁵

From the midnight of 31 December, the Buddhist temple bell will strike 108 times.  As you hear the gong, you are asked to get rid of your greed one by one in preparation for the New Year, the new point of cyclical departure.  By cleaning yourself in this manner, you are going back to the “original purity”…to start again.³⁶

Koyama said that the Christian view of history that came to Thailand is a contract to the Thai-understanding of history.  While Thailand’s view of history appears to be circular, the Christian view of history that confronted them is linear.  This linear view of history is a purposive “once for all” style of life and is antithetical to the “many-timeness” life of Thai Buddhists.  Koyama implied that this is a basic reason why Christianity appeared to have

failed in reaching out to the context of Thailand in particular, and in Asia in

general.

 

³⁵Ibid.

³⁶Ibid., pp. 10-11

Christian evangelism has not gained much headway in Asia because the majority of evangelists have not approached the important of the fact that the womb itself is round.³⁷

The Western evangelists and missionaries who came to Thailand, Koyama implied, tended to rush aside the people’s understanding of historical life as cyclical.  They confronted them with a blunt statement that history is linear, that history is a straight line with beginning and with an end.  To the Thais, however, Nature itself has appointed its own spokesmen, i.e., the monsoon rains, the ung-aang (frogs), the humming mosquitoes, and the waterbuffaloes.  These components of nature appeared and sounded like arguing the point that history is not linear by cyclical.

In Buddhist cultural mind-set, the cyclical cosmic regularity “walks confidently” like the arahant (“worthy one”) over the power of Phaja-Madcura-d (“chief of death”).³⁸  There is security in this regularity of nature and there is so much to learn from this cyclical nature.

Koyama was grossly involved with the Thai people and such involvement bore its fruit of CAPPA in the form of accommodating the Buddhist cyclical

 

³⁷K. Koyama, Ritual of Limping Dance, Op. cit., p. 3

³⁸K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 31

view of nature into a contextualized view, the “ascending-spiral” which is actually the marriage or fusion between the Christian Linear view and the Thai’s cyclical view.  To Koyama, such an image of “ascending spiral view of history-nature” is Christian history contextualized in Thailand.

As a biblical support, Koyama used the Old Testament image of Jehovah as a God who is Lord of both history and nature.  The God of Israel is not part of nature, but the “One who shakes the wilderness of Kadesh…who sits enthroned over the flood” (Psalm 29:3, 11).  In the same manner, God is “the Controller of history,” One who “mobilizes”³⁹ history to accomplish his purpose for Israel.

Koyama brought home the point that in salvation-history, God is the God who “sits enthroned” even amidst the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon’s Nebuchadnezzar in 587 B.C. and the overthrow of the Babylonian Empire in 539 B.C. by the Persian Cyrus.  In other words, against the background of Israel’s history, the Thai people’s view of history is not of the devil “but an expression of the mind of God.”⁴⁰  To Koyama, Christian missionaries should not sweep aside this Thai view of history-nature but accommodate it to the biblical view.  Christian theology should not accept the Thai view in toto but

 

³⁹Quoted by Koyama from . Von Rad, The Old Testament Theology, Vol. II (New York: Loiver and Boyd, 1965), p. 244.

⁴⁰K. Koyama, Waterbullao theology, p. 37

neither should it reject this view.  Instead, theology must prophetically accommodate the Thai view and critically allow the biblical view relate to it.

Expanding on the Old Testament support, Koyama claimed that the “emancipation from dungeon” (history-event) of Israel and “the coming of the monsoon” (nature-occurrence) in Thailand are basically one and the same in expressing God’s desire to help the people as His “neighbours.”  God’s saving help is not confined to the linear view nor to the circular view but to both views.  The contextualized product of “ascending-spiral” is one that says not either-or but “both-and”.  In this ascending-spiral image, we are saying that the biblical linear view of history has bound its proper place in the God who gives Thailand a regular monsoon---and the circular nature has found its proper place and purpose when it is within linear history.⁴¹

Koyama further called his contextualized “ascending-spiral” worldview as “Hebraization of the Buddhist life.”⁴²  In so doing, he baptized key Buddhist doctrines like Dukka, Anicca and Anatta into the interpretation of the Gospel.  The point for dialogue between Christianity (biblical text) and Buddhism (Thai context) is the common concern of the people about their human existence.  By using Buddhist concepts and terminologies, Koyama hoped at

 ⁴¹Ibid., p. 41 

⁴²K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 155

approximating the essence of the gospel message into the Buddhist mind-set and vice versa.

Thus Dukka (Du=bad; Kha=empty), which is the Buddha’s analysis of the futility of human existence (striving) is approximated by Koyama to the Gospel’s understanding that without God, man can do thing.  To Koyama, Dukka is not just man’s experience of himself (Buddha’s enlightenment) but also God’s experience of man (Israel).

Annica, which is Buddha’s analysis of existence as impermanent, was approximated by Koyama to relate to Israel’s experience of idolatrous rebellion and apostasy to the unchanging God, and their continued breaking of God’s covenant relationship with them.

Anatta, (or self-extinction) which is Buddha’s answer to the problems of human suffering and existential groaning, was approximated by Koyama to an ontological-existential understanding of man’s relation with God, i.e., “when man rejects God’s covenantal faithfulness with him, man moves towards destruction and elimination of himself.”⁴³

 

⁴³K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 154

Altogether, when dukka, annica and anatta are placed as marks of human existence in the light of God’s covenant with Israel, then these Buddhist terms are historicized.  The insights of Buddha and of Buddhist Thailand encounters the message of Israel and a new relationship is formed.  The “special bringing” of Hebraization of Buddha’s teaching would illuminate our understanding of God who engages Himself (and not detaches Himself) in history.

Putting this contextualization in another way, God of the Bible is not like the cool arahant who detaches himself from history.  Rather, God is an urgent (hot) God whose direction is not away from but towards the history of Israel (attachment: “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt”).  Yes, He is a God who is hotly attached to history, but amidst his active concern.  He is also the God who gives meaning to people who live in the cyclical history---including the arahant of Thailand.  The One God is Lord over all doctrines---dukka, anicca and anatta included---by virtue of His power, presence and work in history.  The biblical God, Koyama maintained, would not reject these Buddhist doctrines but would historicize them through His historical covenant relationship with Israel.⁴⁴

 

⁴⁴K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, Op. cit., p. 156

In anticipation to possible critics, Koyama said that this placing of dukka, anicca and anatta to the spirituality of Israel is not syncretism but authentic contextualization using the principle of CAPPA.  Koyama explained:

Hebraization in this context consists of injecting the covenant concept into the Thai indigenous spiritual and religious concepts.  In short, Hebraization is “covenantization…”  Our primary target is to bring the historical experience of the covenant-life of this “fewest of all people” to the dukka, anikka and anatta concepts since this is the greatest message of Israel to the Thai people today.⁴⁵

These Buddhis doctrines of dukka, anicca an anatta, Koyama said, already have high spiritual values.  When altered through CAPPA, however, they will yield “tremendous theological value”⁴⁶ for the people of Thailand.  Koyama continued:

When the principle of detachment is embrace by the principle of attachment, the former will inevitably be ‘altered’.  But this special alteration is a theologically valuable alteration.  Dukka, anicca and anatta, but themselves contain high spiritual values.  The ‘altered’ dukka, anicca and anatta yield tremendous theological value for the people of Thailand.  The original value these insights of the Enlightened One and the theological values of the covenant God are mutually related in a paradoxical way.  The former contradicts the latter, but simultaneously, the former participates in the latter by supplying the valuable raw material without

 

⁴⁴K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, Op. cit., p. 156.

which theological values cannot be established for the people of the thought-world of detachment.  In a similar way, theological covenant-awareness rejects the Buddhist doctrines, but at the same time it theologizes them and thus accepts them.⁴⁶

To Koyama, this dialogue between “History” and “Nature” in the context of Buddhist Thailand and the subsequent “ascending spiral view” of contextualized history using the raw materials of dukka, anicca and anatta--- would signal the authentic contextualization that is meaningful to the people of Thailand and of Asia.  Contextual theology is CAPPA---“critical accommodation prophetic and prophetic accommodation”.

III        Contextual Theology as “Theo-Anthropology”

The third feature of Koyama’s contextual theology is its unique understanding of theology as “Theo-Anthropology”.  As stated earlier, Koyama define theology as “God” (Theo) and “Man” (Anthropo) “understanding” (logos).

“Theo-anthropo-logy” is man’s understanding of God on the basis of God’s understanding of man.  Koyama used this concept to apply to his contextual understanding of the “human” and the “holy”, which shall be the main concerned of this section.

 

                  ⁴⁶K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 157.

We shall subdivide this section into three headings, namely: (1) The “human”; (2) The “holy”; and (3) The encounter between the “human” and the “holy”.

1.     The “human”.  In understanding what is man and what makes him human, Koyama gave two characteristics of man which give shape to his identify and distinctness from other created beings.  First of all, Koyama said, man is a spiritual being.  As a human being, man is full of spiritual questions.   There is a deep spiritual question within man whether he is doing good or doing bad.  Koyama claimed that even with a violent act of lust, a person is actually “groping for a spiritual meaning”.⁴⁷  n both directions of creation and destruction, man inevitably acts spiritually.⁴⁸

As a spiritual being, man is endowed with freedom.  It is this quality that makes up the “centre of his personality”⁴⁹ and that which refuses to be “nailed down”.  It is the ability even to stand off and look at himself critically.  This freedom must be balanced by love because it is only when love works that the true character reveals itself.  In the Christian faith, man is given the freedom “to lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:3).  When he choose to be “unfree” for the sake of others, then he is truly free and loving.

 

            ⁴⁷K. Koyama, Theology in Contact, p. 17

            ⁴⁸Ibid.

            ⁴⁹K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist, p. 21

Koyama said that the “spiritual man” is also often a man of insensitivity.  This is demonstrated in the attitude of the Pharisee who went up to the Temple to pray.  The temple stands for a time and place in which man is invited to experience the glory of God, yet, to the “spiritual man” it becomes the place where he engaged in self-glorification.  Koyama mentioned the Billy Graham Crusade in Singapore in 1978 as a case in point.⁵⁰  By using the word “crusade” in the context of Singapore where there is a sizable Muslim population, the Billy Graham Crusade organizers showed an insensitivity to the Asian “neighbours”.

Secondly, man is a cosmological being.  Koyama used the Japaense word “nin-gen” for the word “person”.  Nin-gen also connotes “where man lives” and thus comes close to the Greek word “cosmos”, meaning “world”.  Koyama claimed that the Chinese tradition has taught the Japanese that man stands in intimate association with cosmos.  The Greek saying that “cosmos is an orderly universe and orderly universe means salvation” is not true to the Japanese and Chinese.  To them, “cosmos also means chaos”.⁵¹  That being the case, where man is a cosmological being, he is also in chaos.

 

            ⁵⁰K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 17.

            ⁵¹K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 47.

Man in chaos, was related by Koyama to Adam’s ability to name and misname (Genesis 2:19, 20).  Koyama implied that when man names, he is in the process of “hallowing” things.  But when he misnames, he creates chaos.  His humanity and inhumanity are influenced by his ability to name and misname.  Koyama explained thus:

Man’s ability to name…is tragically his ability to misname.  Because he can name, he can misname.  Outside of ‘Eden’, he gives meaning to cosmos.  The cosmos is enlivened by him and for him.  When man misnames, he creates a “mis-cosmos’, a chaos…human well-being depends on how we name things.⁵²

Koyama mentioned Japan’s “Greater East Asia C-Prosperity Sphere”, England’s “Lucifer” matches, and South Vietnam’s “tiger cage: as examples of man’s misnaming.  In the “Greatest East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”, the Japanese military fanatics also named the emperor as Akitsu Mikami or “God made visible”, and rallied themselves behind his wars for expansion.  The manufacture of Lucifer matches in England from 1833 created such an unhealthy conditions for working men, women and children, with such intensity as the name “Lucifer” suggests.⁵³  The “tiger cage” is a name given to the prison cell in South Vietnam which herds together some ten to seventeen prisoners in an iron box of 2.5 meters square and 1.5 meters high.

 

            ⁵²Ibid., p. 128.

            ⁵³K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 128.

A sense of human dignity rejects the “Lucifer match industry” and the “tiger cage”.  Name, he declares creatively, “I am human”, and misnaming, he declares destructively, “I am human”.  I am human.  Is this insight?...It is the voice of man de profundis.  He cannot quite understand from where this affirmation comes from.  But it comes from within…It is a sacred affirmation.  In this sacred affirmation is found the universal context in which damnation (chaos) and salvation (cosmos) can be meaningfully discussed.⁵⁴

2.     The “Holy”.  The second aspect of Theo-anthropology concerns the understanding of the “holy”.  Koyama dissected the meaning of the holy by using two words, namely: (1) the Hebrew world qodesh, and (2) the Latin word numen or numinous.

Koyama said that in the Hebrew tradition, the word qodesh has a strong connotation of “separation”.  Apparently, it is from this root word that the Indonesians derived the word kudos and the Japanese word sei which connote perfection, separation or unapproachability.⁵⁵  In both Hebrew and Asian traditions, the concept of holiness is related to purification or “cleanliness,” and yet more than being clean or purified.  Koyama said that holiness comes as a “consecrated separation.”  The tradition of Mount Sinai says, “…put off

 

⁵⁴Ibid.

⁵⁵Nacpil, E. and Elwood, D.G. (eds.) The Human and the Holy (Philippines:  New Day Publishes), p.

your shoes from your feet for the place you are standing is holy ground.”  (Exodus 3:5)

Quoting from Rodulf Otto (Idea of the Holy) Koyama agreed that the idea of the holy has now been obscured because it was mixed with moral value.  To restore the original purity, he said that the “holy” (religious category) and the “good” (ethical category) must be separated.  The useful word in this regard is the Latin word numinous is what Otto called “creature feeling.”  Koyama explained that the “creature feeling” is the emotion of a creature submerged and overwhelmed by his own nothingness compared to the awesome majesty and supremacy of the “wholly other.”⁵⁶  Koyama noted that the tradition of Abraham speaks of this “creature-feeling” when he stood before Yahweh to plead for Sodom: “Behold, I have taken upon myself to speak to the Lord, I who am but dust and ashes”.  (Gen. 18:27)

3.     Dialogue between the “human” and the “holy.”  This discussion on the “human” and the “holy” brings us to a logical encounter between God and man at “Theo-anthropology.”  Here, Koyama brought to focus the principle that “human value” is rooted in “God value” and that knowing God-value would lead men to a richer and deeper understanding of human-value.

 

⁵⁶Nacpil and Elwood (eds.), The Human and the Holy, p.

Koyama used the Creation Story to illustrate two kinds of cosmology, namely: (1) the cosmology that says Adam was put into “deep sleep” (Gen. 2:21) by God, and (2) the cosmology that says Adam had no such transcendental sleep.  The first cosmology believes that Adam could not establish his identity apart from the One who caused his deep sleep, while the second cosmology believes that Adam is the center of all things.

From this genetic premise, Koyama proceeded to apply contextualization relating the two cosmologies to the two great living traditions he called the “India-China tradition” and the “Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.”⁵⁷  The India-China tradition emphasizes human wisdom (Indian spiritual enlightenment represented by Gandhi and Chinese pragmatic philosophy represented by Mao) while the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition emphasizes the sense of “encounter with God as Thou.”⁵⁸ 

A dialogue between the two traditions is therefore in order.  The people of “wisdom” tradition will say that Adam (man) named all things but the people of “encounter” tradition will say that Adam name “all” (Gen. 2:20) but this “all” includes the knowledge that the most basic cosmological orders (Day, Night, Heaven, Earth and Sea ---Gen. 1) are named by God.⁵⁹

 

⁵⁷Nacpil and Elwood (eds.), The Human and the Holy, p.

⁵⁸Ibid. p.

This dialogue will lead to a clearer understanding that the “human value” of the people of the wisdom tradition is to be illuminated by the “God value” of the encounter tradition.  The human value of the people of wisdom tradition will be nourished and healthy if they see God behind their value while the knowledge of the people of encounter tradition will lead them towards a greater and richer understanding of human value.

Koyama looked towards this dialogue as a means of reconciliation in Asia.  Contextual theology has to deal with both the Asian understanding of the “human” and the “holy” in relation to the biblical concepts and then should proceed to make applications to the appreciation of “human value” intrinsic to the “India-China” tradition and the enhancement of “God value” inherent in the Judaeo-Christian-Islamic tradition.  This is “Theo-anthropology” in Asia ---man’s understanding of God based on God’s understanding of man.

CHAPTER FOUR

APPLICATION OF KOYAMA’S THEOLOGY

As we have shown in the preceding chapter, the contextual theology of Kosuke Koyama is unique and distinctive.  We state three marks that distinguish this theology.  It is ‘neighbourological.’  It is ‘critical accomodational prophetism and prophetic accommodation.’  And, it is “Theo-anthropology.’

In this chapter, we will deal with the applicability of this theology.  The main areas of our concern will be the following: (1) Contextual theology as applied to Christian communication; (2) Contextual theology as applied to mission; (3) Contextual theology as applied to inter-faith dialogue.

As mentioned earlier, theology is a tool and a tool is judged by the service it renders.  In our discussion of the above areas, we will attempt to make valuative statements or comments on both biblical and contextual grounds.  Is the application biblical?  Is the application truly relevant to the context of Asia?  We believe that Koyama’s theology is a useful tool but how useful it is will depend on how it answers these two questions.

I.               Contextual Theology as Applied to Communication

The first area where we shall put Koyama’s theology to the test is on the area of communication.  In contextual theology, we are engaged in communicating the relevance of the gospel to the context of the people.  Jesus lived, walked and talked among the people and built such a unique trust by using the vernacular, terminologies and symbols which they could understand.  We daresay that communication is the primary foundation of contextual theology.  As John Stott once said: “failure of communication is a failure of contextualization.”¹

What is communication?  Most authorities agree that communication maybe expressed in language, art and symbols but it normally involves four components, namely: (1) what the message is; (2) who is giving the message; (3) to whom is the message given; and (4) how is the message conveyed.  Communication takes place when a message has been transmitted and the intended point is grasped by another.

In looking at Koyama’s contextual communication, there are two aspects which I would like to single out and analyze.  The first concerns his style or approach in communication and the next concerns his biblical hermeneutic or interpretation of the scriptural texts.  Let us discuss them one by one.

1.     Koyama’s style of communication.  I consider Koyama’s style of communication as existential.  This means he starts from human question or human categories  of  experience  which he  would call  raw materials  or  raw

 

¹J. Storr and R. Cotte, Down to Earth: Studies in Christianity and Culture, (Wheaton: Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, 1980), p.

issues.  Then he would proceed drawing on these human questions insights from biblical revelation.

The existential style or approach of Koyama is send in the way in which he used such terms as “waterbuffalo,” “turban,” “lunchbox,” “ung-aang,” “monsoon,” “shopping centers,” etc. which suggest day to day experience for the people of Asia.  Oftentimes, these terms or issues serve as platforms or preludes to a profound theological idea.  His own illustration on the meaning behind ordinary things would give us a clear idea of his existential approach:

When we see chickens and see only chickens, then our life is dry and uninteresting.  But if we see chicken and see the glory of God who made the chicken (though a moment later it becomes “fried chicken), then our life will be different…Theology, it seems to me, requires us to see something more in the ordinary things.²

Asians generally love stories, anecdotes, jokes and works of art.  Koyama’s existential approach to communication is the result of careful listening to that Asian context.  Born a Japanese, coming from a Buddhist religious background, converted through the witness of a Bible-believing church, educated in the American system, it is amazing how Koyama combined scholarship with  simplicity and levity.   The reason is simple.   As he  himself

 

²K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist, p. 6.

admitted: “It is not I but my audience who determines this theology from below.”³

Koyama’s “theology from below” is a radical departure from the Western-imported theology with its characteristic verbosity a little flippant which Asian seminarians could even hardly pronounce, let alone understand.  Indeed, the age of big-systems must come to an end because they serve no practical purposes for the peoples of Asia.  James F. Engel noted a similar situation in Africa, thus:

African scholars come to a seminary with high expectations that they will be equipped to minister to their people.  For many months they study such topics as the proofs of the existence of God.  Now this may well be good but a problem emerges: Africans have no difficulty accepting the fact that there is a God.  The proofs they learn are a part of standard systematic theology, dating, by the way, from the writings of Augustine initially.  Augustine, was of course, writing in quite a different context….The student then plows on through systematic theology, duly considering other important topics such as viewpoints on how the sin nature passed from Adam to the progency.  He or she finishes seminary and returns to the church with a justified sense of frustration.  Never, for example, is anything said on witchcraft or demonism, just to choose one subject that is a critical problem for the African Christian to face.  The net effect is that the leader is unequipped theologically to minister to his or her people.⁴

 

³K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, preface.

⁴J. F. Engel, Contemporary Christian Communications, (New York: Thomas Nelson Publishers, c. 1979), p. 281.

Needless to say, that situation in African seminaries is also true with many Asian seminaries.  Koyama of course, would react sharply to such a situation of detachment and indifference of theology to the basic questions Asians are asking.  In his communication method, he tried to express his own desire to make theology responsive to Asian need.  It is probably because of this desire or passion for relevance that his writings often lack a systematic outline but a mélange of ideas and views, a potpourri of theological reflections.  Dr. Yeo Choo Lak, his colleague and contemporary in Asian theological education, called Koyama’s theology as “chop suey”⁵ in reference to the mix-up of assorted ideas and concepts.  Chop suey is a Chinese dish which is a mix-up of assorted vegetables, meat, chicken, prawns, etc.

The writing style of Koyama indeed lacks logic.  It does not have a clear outline or trend of thoughts.  I believe this is more than intentional on the part of Kosuke Koyama.  In attempting to make the human question relate to biblical revelation and vice-versa, it becomes more urgent and useful to “spotlight” key concepts or ideas than trying to define them.  This process of “spotlighting” certain issue is what we might call the art of illumination.  The   late Paul Tillich had this to say on this art or style of illumination:

 

⁵C.H. Yeow, To God be the Glory

There are notions which resist definition and whose meaning can only be shown by their configuration with other notions.  The task with regards to them is not to define them but to illuminate them by showing how they appear in different constellations.  This way of ‘showing’ may be precise or lacking in precision, consistent or inconsistent.  But the criteria is not the definitional prevision and inconsistency but---the conceptual implication.⁶

This style or art of illumination evident in Koyama’s communication is undoubtedly Japanese or Asian.  The haiku (Japanese poetry) for instance, is to be appreciated not in its consistency or inconsistency, direction or lack of it, but in its picturesque descriptions of people, places and events.  When one reads the haiku, he and the hearers are supposed to imagine or picture in their minds what the words imply.  For example, when you hear the word “ice cream” you are supposed to see in your mind a picture of children running outside of their houses to meet the local ice-cream vendor on a sunny afternoon.⁷

Koyama said, “theology is a hidden reality.”  By that, he meant not only theology but also communication of theology itself.  In illuminating terms like evangelism,  mission  or  theology  of  the cross,  Koyama used  imageries like

 

⁶Kegley and Britall, The Theology of Paul Tillich, (New York: MacMillan Co., 1961), p. 331.

⁷Aikawa and Leavenworth, The Mind of Japan, (Pasadena: Hudson Press, 1967), p. 32.

“cross and lunchbox,” “beauty-salon Jesus,” “crusading mind,” etc.  By using such terms, he invite the readers to see a clear picture of how far removed our missionary and evangelistic patterns are from the lifestyle of Jesus.

Koyama’s existential communication also used personal testimony to amplify his empathy with the audience.  “I am one of you,” Koyama seemed to be saying.  Koyama asserted that “Jesus is Person-Message and Message-Person”⁸ and he wants to live that transparency or wholeness himself.  Thus, in reference to the way in which he communicates, Koyama brooded over his background:

I find myself an ‘authoritarian self’ and a ‘democratic self.’  This arrangement is quite troublesome and it pushes me into a turmoil of self-identity and confuses others who try to judge my actions.⁹

Koyama’s insertion of personal testimony in his theological writings bears similarity with that of Soren Kierkegaard, the existential philosopher of the 19^th century Europe.  Koyama’s existential experience of Japan’s “demonic war years”  was  akin  to  Kierkegaard’s own  “frightful foreboding.”¹⁰   While

 

⁸K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist, p. 13.

⁹Ibid., p. 27.

¹⁰A. Dru (Ed.), The Journals of Soren Kierkegaard (1835-1854), (Great Britain: Fontana Books, 1958), p. 12.

Koyama felt deep personal and national anguish over the destruction of Japan (and its infliction of wounds to neighbouring countries), Kierkegaard likewise felt melancholy over the destruction of the city of Lisbon in 1830 following the great earthquake that claimed thousands of lives.  Kierkegaard wrote of is own predicament in communication, thus:

People understood me so lithe that they do not even understand when I complain of being misunderstood.¹¹

Like Kierkegaard, the sense of personal touch in Koyama’s style of communication accentuated the effect of his being close to the context of the readers or hearers.  Empathy or the putting of oneself into the shoes of another, is basic to effective communication.¹²  In the context of the suffering peoples of Asia, Koyama seemed to be saying, “I am one with you; I belong to you; I feel part of you; I have suffered like you.”  By starting with that personal, existential feeling, he could then lead the hearers or readers to ponder and meditate the most can likewise minister the most, in comforting those who suffer.”

 

¹¹A. Dru (Ed.), The Journals of Soren, Kierkegaard (1835-1854), (Great Britain: Fontana Books, 1958), p. 12.

¹²J. F. Engel, Contemporary Christian Communications, p. 40.

The other things we would like to bring out in Koyama’s existential communication was his constant play of words, which he labeled “rotunda language.”¹³  Koyama used such terminologies or phrases like “sticky-rice,” “Buddhist-lamp,” “Hindu-turban,” “particular-orbit theology,” “critical-accommodational-prophetism and prophetic-accommodation,” etc.  These terms, while sounding awkward and obfuscating are basically Eastern in form.  The Japanese called them “tsugi-tsugi” (“next-next”) form of sentence-construction.  An equivalent of this style is found in Greek form of sentence-structure called “synthesis.”  “Synthesis” in Greek means “putting together” and is an effective style to combine double-thoughts.  Tillich, in his observation of this style, however, cautioned against its overuse in English, saying: “In English, synthesis has also a negative connotation.  Synthetic pearls are not genuine pearls.”¹⁴

Lastly, on the practical level, Koyama gave us some hints on effective communication in Asia, thus:

1.     Avoid exclusivistic aattitude.

2.     Avoid militarism.

3.     Avoid impersonal approach.

4.     Avoid nagging.

 

¹³K. Koyama, Ritual of Limping Dance, (Address at Union Theological Seminar, New York), Op. cit., p. 2.

¹⁴P. Tillich, Perspectives on the 19^th and 20^th Century Protestant Theology, (London: SCM Press, 1967), p. 136.

5.     Avoid ‘teacher complex.’

6.     Avoid ‘crusading mind.’

7.     Avoid triumphalism.

8.     Be inclusive.

9.     Be clear.

10.  Be modest.

11.  Develop theological integrity.

12.  Develop cultural integrity.

The above list are but some of the hints that can be gleaned from Koyama’s understanding of Christian communication is Asia.  Koyama’s loving involvement with the people of Asia was the key towards good and effective communication.  His communication was not only loving but also prophetic because “authentic communication is always prophetic, arising always out of a genuine encounter between God’s Word and His world.”¹⁵

Ultimately, the style of communication is shaped only by the process in which one allows himself to be guided by the “crucified mind” whom Koyama understood to be the same mind who will be risen.

2.     Koyama’s biblical hermeneutics.  The second aspect of our analysis of Koyama’s contextual theology as applied in the area of communication concerns biblical hermeneutics or the interpretation of biblical texts.  In this aspect,  we are not  concerned with  the problem of  style or language but with

 

¹⁵G.H. Anderson (Ed.), Asian Voices in Christian Theology, (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1975), p. 84.

the problem of meaning.  In other words, what exactly is the meaning of the gospel message?  Did Koyama maintain fidelity to the bible?  What was his biblical interpretation?  What was his hermeneutics?

L. Berkhof, in underlining the importance and necessity of hermeneutics to communication, gave two major reasons: (a) Sing darkened the understanding of man and still exercises a pernicious influence on his conscious mental life; (b) Mean differ from one another in many ways that naturally cause them to be apart mentally.¹⁶  Biblical hermeneutics was called by Berkhof as “Hermeneutica Sacra” because it deals not with an ordinary book but with a book “that is unique in the realm of literature, viz, with the Bible as the inspired Word of God.”¹⁷

In reference to contemporary Christian communications, J.F. Engel mentioned three approaches to biblical hermeneutics.  The first is to study the text without awareness of the original cultural context.  The second takes the original historical and cultural context more seriously and seek to discover the meaning of the text in that setting; and the third goes one step further by recognizing a dialogue between the original and the contemporary setting.¹⁸

 

¹⁶L. Berkhof, Principles of Biblical Interpretation, (Michigan: Baker Book House, c. 1950) p. 12.

¹⁷Ibid., p. 11

¹⁸J. F. Engel, Contemporary Christian Communications, Op. cit., p. 275.

Looking at Koyama’s theology, it seems to me that the third approach is the one that applies to Koyama’s biblical hermeneutics.  In essence, this approach asks the following questions, namely: (a) what really was being said back then? (b) how can the basic principles put forth (i.e., the basic true meaning and not just the form) be applied today in diverse cultural settings of Asia?  For want of an appropriate term, I would like to call this hermeneutics as “boundary-line” hermeneutics.

This boundary-line hermeneutics is dialogical.  A fitting example of this will be Koyama’s interpretation of Hosea II:2. 8, 9 which he described to be the “inner helplessness of God.”¹⁹  In this text, the Bible says:

The more I called them, the more they went from me.  They kept sacrificing to the Baals,..How can I give you up, O Ephraim!...My hear recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender.  I will not execute my fierce anger…for I am God and not man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come to destroy.

In interpreting this passage, Koyama challenged our culturally-conditioned viewpoints by taking the context of idolatry in Israel during Hosea’s time and placed it side by side with the context of idolatry in contemporary history.  He interpreted  the  “inner helplessness”  of  God  not only  in  the  context of  the

 

¹⁹K. Koyama, Ritual of Limping Dance, p. 7.

 ff the “chosen people, Israel” but also in the context of the whole mankind.  To Koyama, only God can stop idolatry but if He does, He would likewise stop being God since mercy and grace are part of His divine attributes.  Koyama said, thus:

Hosea has given us a glimpse of the depth of history, God’s painful experience of helplessness caused by the limping dance of the people.  God can stop this dance only by either not being God or by obliterating history.  God rejects both possibilities and the limping dance continues.  History continues.  Idol worship continues.  Prophets are sent.  Yahweh is know.  There is at the depth of history the mind of God that accepts that which is not acceptable.  There is a radical confrontation.  And there is a radical embrace which enfolds this radical confrontation.²⁰

Koyama’s hermeneutical principle seems to follow after Paul Tillich, who likewise belonged to “boundary-line” theologians.  Speaking for instance on the reality of the new birth in Christ, Tillich communicated his interpretation not with absolute certainty but with some form of dialectic between faith and doubt.  Tillich interpreted the reality of the “new birth” by affirming faith through doubt.²¹  The following words from Tillich would give us an idea of how he exhibited this boundary-line hermeneutics, thus:

 

²⁰K. Koyama, Ritual of Limping Dance, p. 8.

²¹P. Tillich, The Future of Religions, (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, c. 1966) p. 22.

But if we accept the message of the new reality in Christ, we must understand that this message does not contain an easy answer, and that it does not guarantee any spiritual security.  We must know that it is real answer only if we understand it permanently in the light of our human situation, in which tragedy and hope fight each other without victory.  The victory is above them.  The victory came when the prayer of the psalmist was answered.  “Relent, O thou eternal”---this prayer is the prayer of mankind through all eons, and is the hidden prayer in the depth of every human soul.²²

In asense, “boundary-line” hermeneutics serves as a mediator or bridge between Christianity and culture or between the biblical text-context and contemporary contexts.  For exampled, Koyama’s “ascending-spiral” view of “history-nature” was an attempt to interpret Hebraic concept of history side by side with Thai understanding of nature in the light of God’s sovereignty over both history and nature.  The result of such hermeneutics is a development of a dialogue between the original context (Israel) and the contemporary context (Buddhist Thailand) within the context of biblical truth---God’s sovereignty.

Another good example of Koyama’s “boundary-line” hermeneutics was his interpretation of Elija’s action of killing the false prophets of Baal recorded in I Kings 18:39, 40.  Koyama looked at Elija’s action as “an overkill” and doubted its motivation.  He questioned the passage, thus:

 

²²P. Tillich, The Shaking of the Foundations, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1948) p. 75.

I am inclined to believe that the considerate judgement of mankind would not approve what the very jealous Elijah did.  It is repugnant to reason or moral sense.  “Let no one of them escape”---reminds me of the blanket fire-bombing in Tokyo in the night of March 10^th 1945.  Avoid extremes, says the Buddha, the sage of the East.  Is it possible that Elija, in his ardour to destroy the Baal, became the servant of the monstrous Molok?  Elijah’s overkill is not a good philosophical and political model for human civilization, though unfortunately it has become such a model.  The “holy war” employs Elijah’s surgical approach.  The nation which thinks of itself as chosen of God may be tempted to such a solution.²³

By using “boundary-line” hermeneutics, Koyama as a communicator did not act as a spokesman of the Bible but as an intercessor between the God whom the Bible proclaims and the fallen Asian humanity.  His role combined Abraham pleading for Sodom and attempting to get a glimpse of God’s sense of justice and mercy and the Apostle Thomas doubting whether the Good News about Jesus’ resurrection was true or not.  Koyama’s hermeneutics gravitated between two poles, the Yes and the No, thus creating a dialectic that remains unresolved.  These unresolved concerns or open-ended viewpoints in Koyama’s hermeneutics is fraught with possibility and danger, i.e., the possibility of new truth being revealed and the danger of syncretism or the tolerance and assimilation of intrinsically false views into Christianity.

 

²³K. Koyama, Ritual of Limping Dance, p. 14.

We will keep the above comment on Koyama’s hermeneutic as we discuss the other issues of application in the proceeding sections.  Suffice it so say, however, that this “boundary-line” hermeneutic had been clarified by Tillich in the past, thus:

A theological system is supposed to satisfy two basic needs: the statement of the truth of the Christian message and the interpretation of this truth for every generation.  Theology moves back and forth between two poles: the eternal truth of its foundations and the temporal situation in which the eternal truth must be received.  Not many theological systems have been able to balance these two demands perfectly.  Most of them either sacrifice elements of the truth or are not able to speak to the situation.  Some of them combine both.²⁴

It is our hope that as we discuss the proceeding sections, we will discover and discern these demands and although we maybe walking on a tightrope, we will affirm what are biblically authentic and what are not.

II.             Contextual Theology as Applied to Mission

The second area where we shall put Koyama’s contextual theology to the task is on the area of Christian mission.  What is meant by mission?

                 

²⁴P. Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. I, (New York: Nisbet Press, 1950), p. 3.

Johannes Hoekendijk defined mission as involving three interrelated aspects, namely: proclamation (kerygma), feloowship (koinonia), and service (diakonia).²⁵  Hoekendijk’s definition looked to the Book of Acts where the apostles of the Risen Christ preached the gospel, founded churches and extended community service.  J. Verkuyl, in his definition echoed Hoekendijk’s definition but added a fourth aspect, which he called “participation in the struggle for genuine human justice.”²⁶

In recent years, the issue of mission has stirred up a new controversy as evangelicals and ecumenicals²⁷ debated on definition of mission.  The former seemed to assert that the mission of the Church is exclusively proclamation, i.e., the preaching of the gospel to the two-thirds of the world’s population who have not yet know and believed in Jesus Christ; while the latter seemed to assert that mission is exclusively service and that involves participation in the struggle against all forms of social injustice towards the establishment of shalom or peace on earth.  To put it another way, the concern of the evangelicals is “for the lost,” while the concern of the ecumenicals is “for the oppressed..”

 

            ²⁵A. Glasser and D. MacGavran, Contemporary Theologies of Mission, (Michigan: Baker Book House, c. 1983), p. 17.

            ²⁶Address delivered by J. Verkuyl at the International Conference of Itinerant Evanleists, Amsterdam, July 1983.

                  ²⁷The word “evangelical” here would refer to theologians which took part in the production of such “evangelical documents” of the Wheaton Declaration (1966) and Frankfurt Declaration (1970).  The word “ecumenical” would refer to the theologians of the World Council of Churches especially those who produced texts for Uppsala Assembly (1968) to the Nairobi Assembly (1975).

John Stott, in attempting to synthesize the opposing views pointed out that mission arises primarily out of the nature not of the church but of God himself.  Stott reaffirmed that God is “sending God.”  God is love and always reaching out for other in self-giving love.  He sent forth Abraham, Joseph, Moses, the prophets and in the fullness of time, His own Son Jesus Christ.  On the Day of Pentecost, both the Father and Son sent forth the Holy Spirit.  Of these missions, the focal point is the mission of the Son for it was the “culmination of the ministry of the prophets, and it embraces within itself as the climax, the sending of the Spirit.”²⁸

Stott further affirmed that the mission of the Son is the model for Christian mission because Christ Himself said, “As the Father has sent me, even so I send you” (John 20:21).  Why and how did the Father send the Son?  Stott said that apart from being a Saviour (which we could not copy), Jesus was sent as a servant (Luke 22:27, Philippinas 2:5-8), and in order to serve, He was sent into the world.

Jesus did not touch down like a visitor from outer space, or arrive like an alien, brining his own alien culture with him.  He took to himself our humanity, our flesh, and our blood, even our culture.  He actually became one of us and experienced our frailty, our suffering and our temptations.  He even bore our sins and died our death.  And now he sends us “into the world,” to identify with others as he identified with us…²⁹

 

²⁸J. Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, (London: Church Pastoral Aid Society, 1975), p. 22.

            ²⁹J. Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, Op. cit., pp. 24-25.

In looking at Koyama’s contextual theology as applied to mission, I would like to align myself with John Stott in the biblical basis of mission and view Koyama’s theology from such an angel.  There are two aspects in Koyama’s understanding of mission that I would like to focus our attention to, namely: (1) Mission in relation to Asian cultures; and (2) Mission in relation to Asian religions.  I believe these are the two crucial issues where Koyama’s contextual theology as applied to mission would be most appreciated or judged.

1.     Mission in relation to Asian cultures.  Culture is defined to be “the artificial, secondary environment,”³⁰ which man superimposed on the natural.  It comprises language, habits, ideas, beliefs, customs, social organizations, inherited artifacts, technical processes and values.³¹  Culture determines what make people laugh, cry, eat and how they laugh, cry, and eat.  It is the way people express their creative and productive capacities, the way they plant and harvest rice or crops, the way they express their songs, dances, art and aesthetics.

In the context of mission, Koyama looked at Asian cultures with passionate love, deep admiration and high respect.  In fact, he viewed cultures parallel with the Word of God in the  study of missionary communication.   Koyama’s

 

³⁰H.R. Niebuhr, Christ and Culture, (New York: Harper and Row Publishers, Inc., c. 1951), p. 32.

³¹Ibid.

“neighbourological” theology advocated a “double-exegesis,” i.e., an exegesis of the Word of God and an exegesis on the culture of he people.³²  Koyama viewed the missionary in the image of one who is “sandwiched” between Christ and culture.  The image of the missionary to Koyama is that of an “intercessor,” one who stands in-between Christ and the culture of the people.

E. Reinhold Niebuhr in his book, Christ and Culture, stated at least five convictions that one can assume in the relationship between Christ and culture.  These convictions are: (1) Christ against culture; (2) Christ of culture; (3) Christ above culture; (4) Christ and culture in paradox; and (5) Christ the transformer of culture.  In essence, the above convictions are distinguished by those who hold them respectively, i.e., the “exclusive,” the “cultural,” the “synthesist,” the “dualist,” and the “convensionist” Christians.  Niebuhr analuzed each one of them in reference to their views on history, thus:

For the exclusive Christian, history is the story of rising church or Christian culture and a dying pagan civilization; for the cultural Christian, it is the story of the spirit’s encounter with nature; for the synthesist, it is a period of preparation under law, reason, gospel, and church for an ultimate communion with God; for the dualist, history is the time of struggle between faith and unbelief, a period between the giving of the promise of life and fulfillment.  For the conversionist, history is the story of God’s mighty deeds and

³²K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 91

of man’s responses to them.  He lieves somewhat less “between the times” and somewhat more in the divine “Now” than do his brother Christians.³³

Looking at Koyama’s contextual theology, it seems to me that Koyama is a “cultural” Christian or one who holds the conviction of “Christ of culture,” although he tried to be a “synthesist” in his discussion of “ascending-spiral” view of history-nature.

Koyama’s “Christ of culture” conviction is seen in his attitude to evangelism or the proclamation of the gospel.  To Koyama, Christian missionaries are not bringers of Christ to the people, because Christ is already present in “whatever is good…” in the culture of the people.  His “neigbourological” theology disdains “crusading spirit” or “teacher-complex.”  There is no more need to fuss about Christian zeal because theology is “a humble finger pointing to the presence of Christ through the thoughts and acts meaningful to the people.”³⁴  On the one hand, Koyama would understand Christ through culture.  In the process of doing so, he tends to accommodate Christ to culture and culture to Christ.

 

³³H. Hiebuhr, Christ and Culture Op. cit., pp. 194-195.

³⁴K. Koyama, Pilgrim or Tourist, p. 14.

This kind of conviction that Koyama held is akin to Schleirmacher at his best.³⁵  Like Schleirmacher, Koyama believed that what (Asian) people find offensive in evangelism is not Christ but the church with its teachings and ceremonies and the behaviour or the way in which they carry out the Christian task.  He believed in the richness, beauty and even holiness of Asian cultures.  He claimed to be both a Christo-centric theologian and an Asian “culture-man,” advocating the continuity of Asian values and traditions and objecting to Asian alienation from their culture at the moment of Christian baptism.  Koyama carried out this task in contextual theology with no real sense of tension, without a sense of guilt that he is serving two masters.

D. McGavran would categorize Koyama’s conviction as a “high view of culture.”³⁶  The high view of culture regards each culture as reasonable given the specific circumstances it has developed.  The high view of culture may use the discipline of psychology, ethnolinguistics and anthropology to ain more accurate understanding of meanings so that Christian communication maybe more accurate and the shaping of Christianity in and with the culture maybe in more accord with the revealed purpose of God.  McGavran cited the vision of St. John  in  Revelation 22  about the “Holy City.”  In that city, the  “leaves of

 

³⁵Schleirmacher, Abelard and the Gnostics are some of those mentioned by Niebuhr as belonging to the “Christ of Culture” conviction.

³⁶D. McGavran, The Clash Between Christianity and Cultures, (Washington, D.C.: Canon Press, c. 1974), p. 67.

the tree were for the healing of the nations (ta ethne).”  McGavran defined ta ethne, as “the peoples, the languages, the cultures.”³⁷  The riches of all cultures will flow in that Holy City, except that in those cultures “there shall no more be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall worship Him” (Rev/ 22:3).

Koyama is also a “culture” Christian in his ideas of interdependence among nation and “global ecumenical partnership in mission.”³⁸  To Koyama, interdependence is a theological covenantal and personal concept.  It is a “form of Christ.”³⁹  Koyama included such practical advises as: “missionary to home,” “moratorium,” “send Asian missionaries to U.S.,” “support our Methodist work in Malaysia,” etc.  In other words, Koyama was not against Western Christianity per se but against the apparent unwillingness of the West to learn from Asian Christianity.  To Koyama, Christianity is already present and incarnated in the authentic cultures of Asia, just as it has incarnated and developed in Europe, England or America.  Christ is the Christ of culture and man’s greatest task is to maintain his best culture.  The age of (Western) Christian “teacher-complex” teaching to Asian has not come to an end.  Koyama does not advocate the age of  (Asian) Christian “teacher-complex” to

 

³⁷D. McGavran, The Clash Between Christianity and Cultures, (Washington, D.C.: Canon Press, c. 1974) p. 67.

³⁸K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 26.

³⁹Ibid.
the Westerners but an “interdependence.”  While he understood the presence of polarities between the cultures of the West and the East, Koyama believed that there is in authentic Christian mission a sense in which Jesus Christ is moving Christianity towards the assertion of the world’s unity and order.

2.     Mission in relation to Asian relgions.  Koyama’s “Christ of culture” view extended itself to Asian religions.  He viewed religious pluralism with tolerance and liberalism.  He hailed the ecumenical movement as a “spiritually awakened” movement whose aim is to “bring all cultural, religious, linguistic, ethnically conditioned doxologies to Jesus Christ.”⁴⁰  He advocated dialogue with men of other faiths as the “area of critical importance”⁴¹ to the mission of the Church.  When condensed, the whole of his theology would amount to the popular theology of “Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of all men.”

These ideas of Koyama opened him up to the charge of being a “universalist.”  Universalim is a belief which asserts that all people will be saved because there are many essential commonalities in different religious beliefs, all pointing to the same God.  Evangelical leaders have condemned universalism as “mischievous,  unbiblical and unchristian.”⁴²  Grady Cohen,  a high-ranking

 

⁴⁰K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 67.

⁴¹K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology, p. 26.

⁴²C.P. Wagner, On the Crest of the Wave, (California: Regal Books, c. 1971) p. 45.

Southern Baptist leader in American, was quoted as saying, thus:

If the church does not believe that men and women are lost, without hope in this world and in the world to come, without Jesus Christ, then there is no place for evangelism and there is no theology of missions.⁴³

Koyama’s liberal view on religious pluralism would certainly not fail to irk the evangelicals especially as he placed Christianity on equal standing with Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam when it comes to the “judgment of the gospel of Christ.”⁴⁴  To Koyama, there is no such thing as a divine, pure and uncontaminated Christianity.  He made no apologies when he lambasted the evangelical zeal with the following words:

Christianity has been busy planning mission strategy---this campaign and that crusade.  People have become the object of evangelism since it is understood by Christians that people are ‘automatically’ living in the darkness, untrustworthy, wicked, adulterous, and unsaved, while the believers are ‘automatically’ living in the light, trustworthy, good, not lustful and saved.  The ‘teacher-complex’ expresses itself in ‘crusade complex.’  What a comfortable arrangement for the believers!  What an irresponsible and easygoing theology!⁴⁵

 

⁴³C.P. Wagner, On the Crest of the Wave, (California: Regal Books, c. 1971), p. 45.

⁴⁴K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 52

⁴⁵Ibid.

It is in this contest of Koyama’s contextual theology, that I beg to disagree with Koyama, not on the ground of avoiding Christian criticism and self-criticism (“for the Christian faith demands such self-criticism”)⁴⁶ but on the ground that such criticism tends to cast aspersions on those who believe in the uniqueness of the gospel.  I disagree with Koyama on both biblical and religious grounds.  Biblically, there is an infinite qualitative difference between the salvation offered by Christianity and that offered by other faiths.  The difference is rooted and grounded in the person of Jesus Christ.  If Koyama’s (and the universalists’) assertion that Christianity is to be placed alongside Hinduism, Buddhism and Islam is true, then what is the meaning of our preaching and teaching about the incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ?  Religiously, only Christianity proclaims the unique revelation of Jesus Christ as “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6) and confesses Trinitarian doctrine of One God in three Persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit---the Son, Jesus Christ being “true God from true God” (Nicene Creed).

The foundation of the great apostolic preaching was anchored on the strong conviction that “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 the

⁴⁶K. Koyama, Three-Mile an Hour God, p. 52.

context of God’s judgment, I echo what Francis A. Schaeffer said that “obeying the Scriptures (the Bible) is the watershed.”⁴⁷  While we can say a lot about some evangelistic strategies of some Christians, it would be unfair to judge them without reference to their desire to proclaim the gospel and follow the mandates of the great commission (Matthew 28:19).  The conviction that the gospel of Jesus Christ is the ONLY Gospel that promises and gives life is the one that gives Christians the sense of urgency and impetus.  While some evangelistic strategies and methods may be questionable, the intention and the urgency are biblical.

Having said the aforementioned “evangelical defense” in relation to Koyama’s criticisms, let me attempt to synthesize Koyama’s Ecumenical liberalism” by using John Stott’s understanding of the “3-P Evangelism”⁴⁸ which consists of three words, namely: presence, proclamation and persuasion.  Stott said that while he was not happy in including all three in a strict definition of evangelism itself, yet he believed that “presence must precede proclamation and persuasion must follow it.”⁴⁹  Looking at Koyama’s attitude to mission, it appeared that he stopped at “presence” theology to which Stott said:

⁴⁷F.A. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, (Westchester, Illinois: Crossway Books, C. 1984) p. 61.

⁴⁸J. Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, p. 55.

⁴⁹Ibid.

The notion of ‘Christian presence’ has not always commended itself because its advocates have sometimes spoken of a ‘silent presence’ or an ‘authentic silence.’  No doubt there are occasions when it is more Christian to be silent than to speak.  Yet the Christian presence in the world is intended by God to lead the Christian proclamation to the world.  At the same time, we have to concede that the ecumenical emphasis on silence is at least partly a justifiable reaction against some of our brash and aggressive forms of evangelism.  If, however, generally speaking, there should be no presence without proclamation, we must equally assert that there should be no proclamation without presence.  The risen Lord’s first word of commission was not ‘preach’ but ‘go.’  And going into the world means presence.⁵⁰

Stott then proceeded to discuss “persuasion” which to him is related to the goal of evangelism.  Persuasion here does not refer to “coercion” but rather to Christian faithfulness to God-given responsibility (2 Corinthians 5:11).  The statement from the Lausanne Covenant on the “nature of evangelism” was quoted by Stott and which we may wish to commend to Professor Koyama for his consideration, thus:

Out Christian presence in the world is indispensable to evangelism, and so is the kind of dialogue whose purpose is to listen sensitively in order to understand.  But evangelism itself is the proclamation of the historical, biblical Christ as Saviour and Lord, with a view to persuading people to come to him personally and so be reconciled to God.  In issuing the gospel invitation we have no liberty to conceal the cost of discipleship.  Jesus still calls all who would follow him to deny themselves, take up their cross,  and identify themselves

 

⁵⁰J. Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, p. 55.

with his new community.  The results of evangelism include obedience to Christ, incorporation into his church and responsible service in the world.⁵¹

III.           Contextual Theology as Applied to Inter-faith Dialogue

Dialogue with men of other faiths or inter-faith dialogue was considered by Koyama as an area of critical importance to the mission of the Church.  In the context of Asia, Koyama believed that dialogue and encounter with people of other faiths are inevitable and necessary both because of the Asian pluralistic setting and because the Gospel demands that Christians become “neighbours” to people.

In this section, we shall discuss the contextual theology of Koyama as applied in this area of inter-faith dialogue.  As a working definition, we shall understand dialogue from this simple but straight-forward definition penned by the National Evangelical Anglican Congress held at Keele in 1967, which says:

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.⁵²

 

⁵¹J. Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, p. 57.

⁵²Ibid., p. 60.

How did Koyama’s contextual theology apply itself to the area of inter-faith dialogue?  How can it contribute to this whole issue of Christianity’s encounter with other religions, especially in Asia?  We shall divided our discussion into two aspects, namely: (1) Dialogue and the danger of syncretism, and (2) Dialogue and the search for world community.  We believe that these two concerns are crucial to our understanding of how contextual theology apply to inter-faith dialogue.

1.     Dialogue and the danger of syncretism.  In its seminal statement of concern for dialogue in Asia, the Christian Conference of Asia (in which Koyama took part), “dialogue” was fist proposed to be “largely a matter of human relations.”⁵³  Such a matter was so broad that it included a whole spectrum of issues like religion, development, justice and peace.  Seven elements of this dialogue were then enumerated by the CCA, which are:

a.     The expression of a serious desire to enter more and more deeply into inter-religious dialogue.

b.     An expression of faith in the fact that God’s grace is working through the sincere endeavors of members of various religions.

c.     An assurance that the dialogue we desire is concerned only with truth, peace and understanding.

d.     A formulation of the principle and acceptance of religious pluralism.

⁵³D.G. Elwood (ed.), What Asian Christians are Thinking, p. 336.

e.     An acceptance of the need to study the biblical evidence as to: (a) the meaning of idolatry in the Old Testament, (b) the work of the Holy Spirit outside the People of Covenant, (c) the doctrine of creation and relation thereto of the Cosmic Christ.

f.      The suggestion of certain practical steps in such dialogue…

g.     A call to Christians underlining the fact that such serious inter-faith dialogue, far from being an invitation to betray Christ and his lordship, demands a radical and existential conversion to Christ and life in Christ, which we Christians have hardly yet begun to experience.⁵⁴

The above statements, which were framed by the CCA as contributions to the World Council of Churches, seemed to have found their way in the WCC’s 5^th Assembly in Nairobi (1975) and was espoused on the floor by Lyn de Silva, himself a leading proponent of dialogue.  De Silva said of the value of dialogue, thus:

1.     Dialogue does not in any way diminish full and loyal commitment to one’s own faith, but rather enriches and strengthens it.

2.     Dialogue, far from being a temptation to syncretism, is a safeguard against it, because in dialogue, we get to know one another’s faith in depth.

3.     Dialogue is creative interaction which liberates a person from a closed or cloistered system to which he happens to belong…

⁵⁴D.G. Elwood (ed.) Op. cit., pp. 337-338

4.     Dialogue is urgent and essential for us in Asia in order to repudiate the arrogance, aggression, and negativism of our evangelistic crusades which have obscured the gospel and caricatured Christianity as an aggressive and militant religion.

5.     Dialogue is essential to dispel the negative attitude we have to people of other faiths, which makes proclamation ineffective and irrelevant.⁵⁵

Dr. de Silva, who spoke in order to “allay the fears” of many about the dangers of dialogue, mentioned specifically the fear of syncretism.  What is “syncretism?”  the WCC defined the terms as “a conscious or unconscious human attempt to create a new religion composed of elements taken from different religions.”⁵⁶  Koyama gave a clearer definition, thus:

The word syncretism derives from the Greek synkretizein meaning “to make two parties join against a third.”  The term originally signified a political alliance.  The Dutch humanist, Erasmus, of the 16^th century Latinized the word giving it the meaning of an eclectic mixture in philosophical and theological doctrines.  A syncretic Christianity would be, for instance, a Christianity mixed with Buddhism.⁵⁷

While the preamble of the WCC’s policy statement on dialogue which was accepted by the assembly “opposed any form of syncretism, incipient, nascent

 

⁵⁵A. Paton (ed.), Breaking Barriers (Nairobi 1975), London: SPCK, c. 1975) pp. 72-73.

⁵⁶Ibid.

⁵⁷K. Koyama, Three Mile and Hour God, p. 64.

Or developed,”⁵⁸ it occurred to Koyama that there was but a thin line between syncretism and “critical accommodational prophetism and prophetic accommodation.”⁵⁹  Koyama gave the following illustration:

Here is a Thai person.  He was born in Thailand…speaks Thai…and a Buddhist…One day this man who lives in a predominantly Buddhist culture, becomes a Christian.  He will naturally bring his Buddhist way of thinking, emotion and outlook into the new faith…Shall we say that our Thai man must not bring his Buddhist background to the new faith in Christ?  Must he be purged, or purified of his essential nature?⁶⁰

Koyama continued by asking whether this (Thai) man’s spiritual training in Buddhism maybe an asset or a hindrance, answering his question, thus:

He (the Thai) is syncretic only if he insists that the salvation in Buddha and Jesus Christ are identical.  If he is able to distinguish the gifts of his heritage and his new faith his attitude will not be syncretic but responsible and discerning.  His life will be greatly enriched…The Thai man will worship Christ with the spirit trained in “taking refuge in Buddha.”  Thus he will bring to Jesus his own adoration as a Thai man.⁶¹

 

⁵⁸D. Paton (ed.) Breaking Barriers, Op. cit., p. 73.

⁵⁹Refer to our discussion of CAPPA in Chapter Three.

⁶⁰K. Koyama, Three Mile and Hour God, pp. 64-65.

⁶¹Ibid., p. 67.

In this regard, Koyama apparently was saying that since there is no pure Christianity that came to Asia in the first place (except Western-“culture” Christianity), why not accommodate the authentic Asian cultural baggage into the shaping of Asian-“culture” Christianity, and since religion and culture are inextricably intertwined, why not accommodate some elements of other religions into the practice of Christianity?  Koyama’s dialogical theology looks back to the doctrine of imago dei as foundation.  The concern for dialogue is not so much for Buddhism as for Buddhists, not for Hinduism as for Hindus, not for Christianity as for Christians.  To Koyama, faith becomes secondary to the person.  Man was created by God “in his image” and so whether a man becomes a Buddhist, a Hindu, or a Christian, “he does not cease to be a man.”⁶²

From the standpoint of the evangelicals, Koyama’s theology would fall under the term “relativistic syncretism.”⁶³  A. Glasser defined this syncretism, thus:

Every religion---Christianity included---is regarded as representing the spiritual; quest of humankind seeking God.  One finds the truth latent in all takes the best from each.  Through religious encounter and dialogue, understanding of one’s  faith  is  enlarged  and  enriched by  the other  religion. 

 

⁶²K. Koyama, Waterbuffalo Theology. P. 130.

⁶³A. Glasser and D. McGavran, Contemporary Theologies of Mission, pp. 122, 207.

Incompleteness diminishes and there is an ongoing movement toward the ultimate truth, which may be brought even nearer by encounter with yet other religions.⁶⁴

As a liberal-turned-evangelical, I have sympathy and agreement with Glasser in looking at Koyama’s dialogical ideas as bordering on relativistic syncretism.  However, I would like to qualify that Koyama was operating on different category, i.e., not from a “church perspective” but from a “no-church perspective.”⁶⁵  From a “church perspective” was can ask Koyama the following questions: (a) What is the place of evangelism and Christian conversion in dialogue? (b) will there be a convert to Christianity?  Apparently, the answer would be in the negative because there is no church to talk abut.  No “baptism: to talk about and no common frame of reference when it comes to the church’s understanding of “repentance,” “conversion,” and “faith.”

From the “no church perspective,” the following can be asked:  (a) What is your view of conversion?  (2) What is the goal and purpose of dialogue?  To the first question, Koyama would answer in the following words from Bishop Kenneth Cragg, thus:

 

⁶⁴A. Glasser and D. McGavran, Op. cit., p. 207.

⁶⁵I refer here to the influence of Uchimura Kanzo on Koyama’s thinking.  Uchimura was the founder of the Mukyokai (no-church movement) in Japan which had no ministers, no church buildings and no sacraments (baptism and Eucharist).

Conversion is not ‘migration.’  It is the personal discovery of the meaning of the universal Christ within the old framework of race, language, and tradition.⁶⁶

To the second question, Koyama would respond just like Tillich who said, thus:

…in our dialogues with other religions we must not try to make converts; rather, we must try to drive the other religions to their own depths, to the point at which they realize that they are witness to the Absolute but are not the Absolute themselves…the relationship of religions to one another cannot consist primarily of desire for conversions but must consist of desire for an exchange, a mutual receiving and giving at the same time.⁶⁷

The kind of dialogue which Koyama and the other liberal theologians espouse is devoid of evangelistic proclamation.  It may result to both parties having a transition from one religion to another or both ending up agnostics.  The goal is open-ended and hence it is not only laborious but also dangerous.  The danger I believe, is not only on the risk of compromise, heresy and syncretism but also on the diversion of Christian priority of proclaiming the gospel to millions and millions of Asians who have not yet heard of Jesus.  The concern for dialogue is humane and worthy of consideration but it should  not be made

 

⁶⁶K. Cragg, The Call of the Minaret (Lutterworth, 1956) Quoted by J. Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, p. 123.

⁶⁷P. Tillich, My Search for Absolutes, (New York: Simon and Schuster, Inc. c. 1967), p. 140-141.

an excuse for the loss of confidence in the truth, relevance and power of the gospel as what the CCA seemed to be saying in its statement on dialogue (i.e., “life in Christ, which we hardly yet begun to experience”).

Looking back to the apostolic tradition, we are reminded that while Paul’s preaching was often dialogical (Jesus too!), Paul’s “dialogue” was always part of, and subordinate to, his proclamation.  I believe that the need in Asia is not dialogue as proposed by Koyama but “dialogical preaching,:” thus avoiding syncretism because the goal is to share God’s gift of salvation in Jesus Christ.  As John Stott remarked:

Our responsibility is neither to create a Christ of our own who is not in Scripture, nor to embroider or manipulate the Christ who is in Scripture, but to bear faithful witness to the one and only Christ there is as God has presented Him to the world in a remarkably unified testimony of both the Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures.⁶⁸

2.     Dialogue and the search for world community.  The second aspect of our discussion on Koyama’s contextual theology as applied in the area of inter-faith dialogue, concerns the relation between dialogue and the search for world community.  Our discussion on this aspect will focus on two interrelated questions:   What is meant by  “world community”  and  how does

 

⁶⁸J. Stott, Christian Mission in the Modern World, p. 48.

Koyama’s contextual theology respond to dialogue towards world community?

First, how should we understand the term “world community?”  The question was raised at a consultation of the World Council of Churches in Colombo, Sri Lanka on April 1974.  The consultation, which gathered together representatives from five major religions---Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity---engaged themselves in dialogue and shared ideas on the “quest for world community.”  S.J. Samartha, who chaired this consultation explained the term, thus:

The term “world community’ maybe understood in two ways.  It maybe a recognition and acceptance of the growing interdependence of people all over the world.  This may express itself in socio-cultural terms and political-economic structures.  This would raise the question whether, within the various religious communities, there is in fact “a quest towards world community”…We may also understand “world community” to mean a certain quality of historical and political relationships between groups of people seeking to build new forms of collective life.⁶⁹

 

⁶⁹S.J. Samartha (Ed.), Towards World Community: The Colombo Papers, (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1975), p. 7.

Koyama’s “neighbourological theology” extends itself to the interdependence of peoples all over the world and the building of a world community.  In another aspect of his “critical-accommodational prophetism and prophetic accommodation,” Koyama spoke about “tribal god and universal God.”⁷⁰  The tribal god is a parochial god who divides humanity while the universal God is an international God who unites humanity.  Koyama said that although the world is full of parochial gods and therefore it is “full of militarism and racism,” we are called upon to choose the universal God.

In distinguishing the “tribal god,” Koyama mentioned three characteristic theologies, thus: (1) the “Western Movie Theology” that divides people into good guys and bad guys: (2) the “God follows Success Theology” which identifies human success in business, religion, political power and popularity as heavenly mandates; (3) the “Fabricated Holiness Theology” instead of “being.”  Koyama said that the biblical God is not a “tribal god: and thus He would not feel at home with “Western Movie,” “God follows Success,” and “Fabricated Holiness” theologies.  Rather, the biblical God is a universal God who is critical of his own people when they dance around the golden calf of the “tribal gods.”

 

⁷⁰K. Koyama, “Tribal Gods or Universal God,” in Missionalia, Vol. 10, No. 3 (Pretoria, South Africa: November 1982), pp. 106-112.

Koyama’s theology of dialogue towards world community can be aptly called “theology of the universal God.”  When applied within the context of world Christianity, this theology will yield the following presuppositions for interfaith and inter-ideological dialogues, thus:

Firstly, the “theology of the universal God” demands that Christians begin dialogue from the point of self-criticism and not-self-righteousness, because self-righteousness destroys the human family.⁷¹

We may differentiate people according to their religious faiths.  Some are called Buddhists.  Some are called Muslims.  Some are called people of primal religions.  We may differentiate people according to their ideologies.  Some are called Marxists.  Some are called capitalists.  Some are called egalitarians.  Some are called socialists.  But making such differentiations does not imply that we are automatically the best and godly people.  We much know what is good and what is bad about us even more than we need to know what is good or bad about other people.⁷²

Secondly, as Christians, we must “walk humbly with God” that we may find spiritual insight and energy to fight evil in this world.  Not from the position of powerfulness but from the position of walking humbly with our God.

 

⁷¹The indented materials following are all quoted from Koyama’s “Tribal God or Universal God, Op. cit., unless otherwise so indicated.

⁷²Ibid.

We know that the name of God is often mentioned in the military confrontation between the two superpowers.  There is a difference between saying: “I do not like you” and “I tell you that God does not like you.”  The former is straight-forward while the latter is twisted, neurotic and sinister.  Professor Bainton writes: “…war is more humane when God is left out of it.”  Western Movie theology must be replaced by the theology of Walking Humbly with Our God.  In this powerful prophetic direction we move toward communion instead of fragmentation in the human family.

Thirdly, we meet people of different faiths and convictions confessing to them that we are “the refuse of the world, the offscouring of all things” (I Cor. 4:13).

If we look at the human family through the perspective of humility for Christ’s sake, we would see a new image of the human family.  We will have a sharper sense of justice in this world, and we will know how to work towards the realization of it through the mind of Christ.

Fourthly, we must “negotiate” with men of other faiths and ideologies from the position of weakness, through the crucified Jesus Christ.

The paradoxical secret of the “success” of Jesus is hidden in the words of mockery thrown at him on the cross:  “He saved other; He cannot save himself” (Mark 15:31).  This is success in the prophetic sense.  We must see our human family through the truth inadvertently expressed in these taunting words.  To look at the human family through these words, whether we like it or not, is the perspective of Jesus Christ.

Fifthly, (and lastly), we must move towards the glory of God in Christ who affirmed His sovereignty over all things by renouncing it.

On the cross his empty hands become mutilated hands.  His is a mutilated sovereignty.  “This is my body broken for you.”  His is the broken sovereignty.  Not as a Western Movie Christ, not as a Successful Christ, not as a Fabricated Holiness Christ, but as a broken Christ because he walks humbly with his God, he embraces the broken world and heals it.

By espousing this “theology of the universal god,” Koyama seemed to be reviving the early Christian universalism which was championed by Erasmus, the Christian humanist and Cardinal Cusanus who advocated “the peace between the different forms of faith.”⁷³  Tillich, who himself belonged to the side of the universalist, all-inclusive Christianity, included such reformers and philosophers like Zwingli, Locke, Hume and Kant in the list of Christian universalists.⁷⁴

During the time of Tillich, the growing influence of Christian universalism and liberal theology was denounced as a negation of the absolute truth of Christianity by  such great  proponent  as  Karl Barth,  oftentimes dubbed  as a

 

⁷³Tillich, Christianity and the Encounter of the World Religions (New York: Columbia University Press, c. 1963), p. 40.

⁷⁴Ibid., p. 41.

“kerygmatic theologian”⁷⁵ for his conviction that the kerygma is the peg on which all theologies should be anchored.  Barth’s “theology of the Word,”⁷⁶ was essentially a corrective theology whose task was to awaken the Chruch from its unwariness to the onslaught of reductionism and abnegation of missionary and evangelistic fervor.  Barth was an anti-universalist, reckoned by Tillich as founder and representative of “neo-orthodoxy.”⁷⁷  In Bath’s view, the embodiment of Christianity is based on the only revelation that has ever occurred, i.e., in Jesus Christ.  All human religions, though fascinating are but futile attempts to reach God.  There was no room nor need to see the light from other religions.⁷⁸

In his own time, Koyama will not be wanting of critics concerning his universalist, all-inclusive view of Christianity.  Francis A. Schaeffer, although not mentioning Koyama’s theology in particular is one of the leading evangelical thinkers and theologians who denounce universalism and liberal theology as “forms of the world spirit.”⁷⁹   Schaeffer  even  warned  his fellow

 

⁷⁵Kegley and Britall (ed.) The Theology of Paul Tillich, (New York: MacMillan, c. 1961), p. 87.

⁷⁶K. Barth, The Faith of the Church, (London: MacMillan Books, c. 1958), 11.

⁷⁷P. Tillich, Christianity and Encounter of World Religions, p. 44.

⁷⁸Karl Barth wrote four volumes of Church Dogmatics dealing with such themes as “Doctrine on the Word of God,” “Doctrine of God,” and “Doctrine of Reconciliation.”

⁷⁹F. Schaeffer, The Great Evangelical Disaster, p. 111.

evangelicals of  associating with the  World Council of Churches  lest they get

contaminated with the WCC’s “hypocrisy and false prophecy.”⁸⁰  Peter Beyerhaus, also an acknowledged evangelical leader, made the following criticisms on the 6^th assembly of the WCC held in 1983, thus:

The decisive shortcoming of the Assembly is lack of truly biblical diagnosis of mankind’s basic predicament: our separation from God through our sin, and of the biblical remedy, our regeneration by the Holy Spirit through repentance and personal faith in Jesus Christ, resulting in the transformation of our present life and in our everlasting fellowship with God.  A rather optimistic view of the human nature and our capacity to help ourselves is once again leading to a universalistic view of redemption.⁸¹

Another critic of liberalism and universalism in the present context is Thomas Oden, a self-confessed “liberal-turned evangelical.”  Although not yet fully accepting the full authority and inerrancy of the Bible as the basis of the Christian faith, which evangelical leaders insist to be the criteria for biblical orthodoxy, Oden berated what he called “the diarrhea of religious accommodation”⁸² that seems to characterize the neo-universalism in the context of  the modern age.   It is also  interesting to note that  even Pope John

 

⁸⁰P. Beyerhaus, A. Johnston, and Myung Yuk Kim, “An Evangelical Evaluation of the WCC’s Sixth Assmbly in Vancouver,” as reprinted in “Theological Student Fellowship Bulletin, Sept.-Oct., 1983), p. 20.

⁸¹Ibid.

⁸²T.C. Oden, Agenda for Theology: Recovering Christian Roots, (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1979), p. 24.

Paul  II,  inspite  of  his  apparent  desire  to  engage  in  some form  of  human religions, has cautioned against any form of humanist-accommodation that threatened the vitality of Christianity as a unique faith.  Pope John Paul II told the Roman Catholics, thus:

The Church must proclaim the whole truth about man, and must not be prevented from doing so “by any external compulsion” or through “contamination by other forms of humanism,” or by lack of confidence in her original message…The best service a Christian pastor can render to any human being is to proclaim Christ’s truth clearly and unambiguously.⁸³

Summing up all the above discussions and putting them back together into our discussion on Koyama’s contextual theology as it applies to the area of inter-faith dialogue, it behooves me to put caution on Koyama’s zeal for accommodation of elements from other faiths, cultures and ideologies into the realms and categories of Christianity.  For although, there is need for dialogue with men of other faiths, cultures and ideologies, there is more need for confrontation, a loving confrontation with the claims of Jesus Christ in the Bible.  There is need for a “loving confrontation” in which we seek to disclose the inadequacies and falsities of non-Christian religions on the basis of the authority and  unity of the Bible  as the Word of God  and in which we seek to

⁸³P. Johnson, John Paul II and the Catholic Restoration, (            , 1981), p. 95.

demonstrate the adequacy and truth, absoluteness and finality of Jesus Christ.  In the words of Stephen Neill, Christ is “the Gift,” the bread of life for the wayfaring pilgrims or travelers from the confusions of the world to the peace of eternity, where signs and symbols are not needed anymore.⁸⁴  And in the challenge of St. Paul: 

But how are men to call upon Him in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in Him whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without a preacher?⁸⁵

Having said the above as arguments against the liberal, all-inclusiveness and culture-accommodation explicit in the contextual theology of “the universal God” of Kosuke Koyama, there is also a message for the evangelicals: listen to what Koyama is saying.  Koyama’s prophetism cannot be dismissed for lack of evidence as to the apparent revival of the spirit of triumphalism and coercive “Christianization” that characterized the evil Crusades and colonizations of the past.  With tears and sweat of Christian persuasion, we must speak against syncretism and universalism that openly declare that no religion is final and that no man is lost.  But at the same time, we must repent of the extreme opposite of the two places.  It is interesting to note that towards

 

⁸⁴S. Neill, The Supremacy of Jesus, (London: Hodder and Stoughton, c. 1984), p.

⁸⁵Romans 10:14.

this end, the evangelical Lausanne Covenant, confessed the guilt of evangelical “worldliness,” thus:

…desirous to ensure a response to the gospel, we have compromised our message, manipulated our hearers through pressure techniques and become unduly preoccupied with statistics or even dishonest in our use of them.⁸⁶

In the present context of Asia and of the world, men are involved in all kinds of polarities, conflict, divisions, fragmentations in every filed and area of human life.  To be truly biblical and contextual in our understanding of the Christian mission, I agree with John Stott that the urgent task is “reconciliation.”⁸⁷  The basis of this reconciliation is our holding together of the two truths; firstly, that God was “in Christ reconciling the world to himself,” and secondly, that we ourselves must be “in Christ” if we are to receive the reconciliation that He was wrought (2 Cor. 5:18-21), Romans 5:11).

 

⁸⁶Quoted by Stott in Christian Mission in the Modern World, p. 110.

⁸⁷Stott, Op. cit., p. 111.

CONCLUSION

KOYAMA’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE DOING OF ASIAN THEOLOGY

As we have endeavoured to present in this study, the contextual theology of Kosuke Koyama, came about not as a spur-of-the-moment theology, but as a result of Koyama’s confounded longings to express the relevance of the Christian faith in the context of complex Asian realities.  His contextual theology began with his context and continued with his context.  Feeling the depth of his biographical experience and knowing the magnitude of his theological involvement, Koyama formulated his theological questions in the midst of confusions, turmoil, uncertainties, suffering and hope in the Asian scene.

Indeed, nowhere in the world has the encounter of Christianity with all forms of humanism on the one hand and with the great religions on the other hand, been more evident than in Asia.  As a Christian, theologian and missionary, Koyama saw himself as an amphibian, or to put it in his imagery, one who is “sandwiched” between two powerful realities: the reality of Christ and the reality of the Asian peoples; the reality of Christianity and the reality of Asian faiths, cultures and ideologies.  Throughout his life in Asia, we found Koyama sometimes pressing on either side, but oftentimes staying in the middle.  To switch to another analogy, we sometime would find Koyama running to and fro the two poles of the tightrope but oftentimes, we see him standing at the center.  That position is never easy.  In fact, it is critical.  It is pregnant with opportunities but also loaded with dangers.

The opportunities that we see in Koyama’s theology are immense but they all boil down to the possibility that we might be able to arrive at a common framework of a truly biblical Asian theology, a theology that is expressive of its “Asianness,” while at the same time faithful to the Bible as the Word of God.  The dangers that we see in Koyama’s theology are likewise multifarious but they all amount to the risk of syncretism and wild abandon of the fundamentals of Christian doctrines in favor of “Christ0-paganism,”¹ or for that matter, “Christo-humanism.”

In our study of Koyama’s theology, we started with his biographical sketch and theological formation.  Knowing Koyama as a person and as a theologian has given us ample evidences that he is keenly aware of the dangers of culture-Christianity just as he had realized the destructiveness of idolatry.  He saw, from his childhood experience of the blanket fire-bombing on Tokyo in 1945, the possibility of Molok (the pagan god who demands human sacrifice) appearing from the “teacher-complex” and “crusading mind” of Western Christianity.  As a Japanese, he shuddered at the thought of utter destruction and enormous suffering which Japan brought to itself and its neighbors in Asia because of the idolatry of the emperor worship.  His life-situation and his keen perception of existential issues added up to form his critical prophetism on both fronts: the distortion of Western Christian devotion on the one hand, and the misdirected passion of idolatry on the other hand.

 

¹See Yamamori and Taber’s Christopaganism or Indigenous Theology? (Pasadena: Milligan College, 1975).

The freshness and relevance of Koyama’s theology were the results of his deep awareness of the context of his neighbors.  Koyama’s “neighbourological theology” approaches Asians in their gut level, the basic questions in which the poor and the simple found themselves asking.  The “raw materials” and appertaining questions he raised in his “theological travelogue”---in Singapore, Thailand, China, Hongkong, Philippines, Indonesia, Burma, Japan and Taiwan---were materials and questions in the gut level.  They leave the readers with something to ponder upon in many years to come.

Koyama’s dialectical analysis of Christian history and Thai culture reached a synthesis in his accommodation of the “ascending-spiral” interpretation of “history-nature.”  His “critical-accommodational prophetism and prophetic accommodation” has plenty to offer in the context of Christ and culture.  Of course, people are the concern of Christ (and so of theologians) but culture plays a dominant part in people’s lives.  Koyama holds that culture has “whatever is true, whatever is pure, whatever is honorable…” (Philippians 4:8) and hence should be approached with reverence and respect.  Koyama saw the task of Christian theology not as an invasion into the life and culture of Asians but as a “neigbourological language.”  Theology must stop being a “tourist” interested only in sights and allergic to eyesores, but must become a “pilgrim,” walking with the people and involved in their predicaments.  Theology must express the message of the “Emmanuel”---God-with-us.

In Koyama’s “theo-anthropology,” we discussed in depth, his understanding of the “human and the holy.”  Apparently, there are some ambiguities which still needs to be ironed out and crystallized.  Nevertheless, it provided us with seminal thoughts to probe deeper into the “nature” of nature and now Asians, in various Asian countries, relate to the human and the holy.

In applying Koyama’s contextual theology to the areas of communication, mission and interfaith dialogue, we cursorily examined his claims and views and criticized them against the background of the evangelical faith.  While we had no questions to his style of communication, we raised some points on his hermeneutical basis.  We expressed anxiety over his “selection” of Scriptural texts when dealing with “neighbourological language.”  We labeled his interpretations “boundary-hermeneutics” because they dealt with two parallel exegesis, i.e., Bible and Asian culture.

In the area of mission, we dealt with Koyama’s denunciation of the militaristic, aggressive and purposeful historicism of Christian evangelism, which to him, tends to misrepresent the Jesus of history who was mocked, spat upon and crucified.  We reckoned with his feeling that the “crusading mind” tends to alienate Asians from Christianity.  From the evangelical viewpoint, we wondered whether Koyama has an awareness of the lostness of the human ace without Christ and whether he has an impetus for proclamation mandated by the Lord Himself prior to His ascension.

In the area of inter-faith dialogue, Koyama is like Tillich before him, who believed that all religions---not least Buddhism, Hinduism, Island and Christianity---will never ever disappear for as long as man is man.  Koyama seemed to believe that it is a fallacy to think that we can do away with other religions by being exclusive Christians.  The prophet in Koyama proclaims a “universal God” as opposed to a “tribal god,” and issues a call for Asian theologians to take the lead in this great encounter and dialogue with men of other faiths, cultures and ideologies.  Koyama seemed to visualize a world Christianity, a global village under the Fatherhood of the universal God who judges Christianity on equal footing with other religions, cultures and ideologies.

I have attempted to present Koyama’s attitude to interfaith dialogue in the most balanced way I know how, and I must say I still have some unresolved questions.  Perhaps, these questions can be put as suggestions for Koyama’s future works.  First, I would like to know what is Koyama’s understanding of eschatology in the light of Christian-non-Christian encounter and dialogue?  Second, what is Koyama’s idea of the Kingdom of God in the context of religious pluralism?  Third, in view of the present evangelical (and charismatic) revival, what will be the future of inter-faith dialogue?

As stated earlier in the beginning of this study, I quoted Gunnar Myrdal’s idea of the “Asian drama.”  It seems to me that the greatest contribution that Koyama has given in the doing of theology in Asia is that he has heightened the tension and aroused our interest to go on and to hear what God is saying in the Asian theological drama.  Sometimes, I an saddened to think that just as there are denominational divisions in the Church, there are also as many theological divisions among those who call Jesus “Lord.”  Yet, I am also comforted by the fact that the Bible acknowledges the necessity of such division “so that the genuine among you maybe recognized” (I Cor. 11:19).  As history moves one, I would not be surprised if these divisions and conflicts sharpen and push the actors into the brink of confrontation.  The experience will be both fascinating and painful, but like a woman in travail when her hour has come, the best is yet to be.  We shall see the final birth of an Asian theology!

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