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Jacques
Dupuis "What is now growing in the Asian context can best be described as a Jesuology of liberation, thought out in the context of religious and cultural pluralism; or, better still, as a liberation Jesuology in inter-religious dialogue.... It fosters in fact an approach to the man Jesus, which Christian believers can develop in conjunction with those of other religious faiths, in a common effort to respond religiously to a concrete reality shared by all".
Much has been heard during the Synod for Asian Bishops recently held in Rome about the pressing need for the Asian Churches to present themselves "with an Asian face". This implied that the principle of inculturation must be applied to all aspects of the Church’s life, from the way of living one’s Christian faith down to the structures and the law of the Church. It applied especially to the need for developing a contextual Asian theology, and in the first instance to the way in which the mystery of Jesus Christ ought to be presented in the Asian context. It is worth quoting what the Second Report by Cardinal Paul Shan Kuo-hsi of Taiwan had to say in this regard:
The recommendation for a contextualised presentation of Jesus Christ made by the Synod Fathers did not get lost in the official list of propositions sent to Pope John Paul II by the Synod. Proposition 6 reads as follows:
It is permitted to presume that the Apostolic Exhortation which will put a seal to the synodal work will echo faithfully the further recommendation made by the Synod Fathers in their proposition 7, which states:
This paper intends to show that a progressive contextual presentation of the mystery of Jesus Christ, starting with the discovery of the man Jesus during his earthly life and passing on gradually to the elaboration of the mystery of his person as it is proposed in the New Testament in the light of the paschal experience of the disciples, corresponds to the pedagogy which Jesus himself used to make himself progressively understood by his followers. The Church tradition has moreover followed the same pedagogy in the way she ascended from the meaning of what "Jesus is for us" to the comprehension of "who the Christ is in himself". In the pedagogy of the Christian faith "Jesuology" must precede "Christology". The paper goes on to show in a brief, schematic fashion that Asian Christologists have in the last decades been responding to the same dynamic of the Christian faith in their efforts to present the mystery of Jesus Christ in the context of Asian reality. Hence the two parts of the paper. Before entering into the heart of the subject, it may be useful to recall rapidly some efforts made in past generations to make the person of Jesus Christ meet with Asian realities, and to ask why such efforts met then with only a partial success. Reviewing rapidly the century which is now fast coming to an end, we may say that the first significant encounter between Jesus Christ and Indian culture and religion is that which took place at the beginning of the century in the context of the meeting of Christianity and Hindu mysticism. I have developed elsewhere, though summarily, various models of Jesus to which this encounter led on the part of Hindu writers (Dupuis 1991:15-45; Thomas 1969, Samartha 1974). I distinguished the following models: the Jesus of the Beatitudes, the Christ of Bhakti, the Christ of neo-Vedatin philosophy, the Christ avatara, the Yogi Christ, the Christ of Advaita mysticism. One will note that among all these models, with the exception of the Jesus model of the Beatitudes of Mahatma Gandhi, the discourse is directly Christological rather than Jesuological. The encounter between Hindu religionists and Christian believers went directly to a doctrinal, Hindu or Christian, interpretation of the person of Jesus Christ. The fact is that in the past generations the Christian presentations of Jesus Christ in India often consisted in building up Indian Christologies with little foundation in the concrete historical reality of Jesus, the man from Nazareth. What retained directly the attention was the doctrine of a divine person made man as the distinctive feature — and the greatest challenge — of the Christian faith to the other religious faiths prevalent in Asia which it encountered. It would be easy to substantiate this observation with concrete examples, either in the Protestant or Catholic tradition. To refer only to the latter, come immediately to mind the celebrated names of B. Upadhyaya, P. Johanns, J. Monchanin, H. le Saux, B. Griffiths and many others whose main concern has been to develop a Christian advaita theology and mysticism in which the basic mysteries of Christianity would find their place, starting with the mystery of a Triune God in relation to the created world and of a divine person made man in history. Such efforts have not been in vain. There is no denying that they still occupy an important place and continue to make a valuable contribution towards an Indian, and an Asian presentation of the mystery of Jesus Christ. One may nevertheless ask whether their limited success and impact in the field of Christology is not to be attributed partly to the fact that they concerned themselves directly with transposing the doctrine of the God-man rather than with fostering a personal encounter with the man, Jesus of Nazareth. Did not such Christology, in some way, put the cart before the horse? A return to Jesuology was then in order, and is, as we shall suggest hereafter, the main concern of the ongoing Christian reflection on Jesus Christ in the Asian context. This too is where the observation and the recommendation made by the recent Asian Synod has something important to tell us. The Synod affirmed in so many words that in the Asian set up to foster the discovery of the person of Jesus is more important than teaching doctrines about him, and must in any case come first in a context where experience is paramount in religious endeavour. It further suggests various directions along which a personal encounter with the man Jesus may be fostered in the context of the Asian reality, where the dehumanizing poverty of large masses of people runs parallel with the rich patrimony of ancient cultures and religious traditions. The call of the day is for an Asian, contextual and inculturated Jesuology. I. The Pedagogy of Jesus The decisive role which the resurrection of Jesus and the Easter experience of the disciples occupied in the genesis of the Christological faith must be fully recognized. These events gave rise to a Christology and marked its point of departure. Before the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples had not perceived the true significance of their master’s person and work. They had, no doubt, some glimpses of his mystery, but without grasping the exact bearing of what Jesus had declared to them. It could be said that from "disciples" Jesus’ followers became true "believers" through the Easter experience. But how did the disciples arrive at the faith in Jesus Christ through the resurrection? The appearances of the Risen One "signified" that Jesus had reached, beyond death, the eschatological state. The fullness awaited in eschatological time had been accomplished in him; or conversely, eschatology had intruded into time. The entirely new condition of Jesus’ humanity, never experienced before, aroused questions as to the identity of the Risen One. The disciples were thus sent back to the testimony of Jesus during his earthly life. Prompted by the Spirit, they recalled the things the pre-Easter Jesus had done and said, which had been mostly misunderstood at the time. This memory of the historical Jesus played a decisive role in the genesis of the Christian faith of the disciples. It supplied the link between Jesus himself and the disciples’ faith interpretation of him after the resurrection. Through it the Church’s Christological faith truly goes back to, and can be based on, the Jesus of history, thus finding in him its historical foundation. This goes to show that, while it is true that no "life of Jesus" can possibly be written, a general portrait of Jesus’ personality, in its singular originality, can nevertheless be drawn. The "Jesus of history" means more than the "historical Jesus", reached through mere historical enquiry. And while it is true that the human psychology of the man Jesus in itself lies beyond the reach of our direct enquiry, it remains, however, certain that through his words and actions, his way of doing things and his choices, his associations and demeanour, his relationships with human persons and his attitude toward the God of his fathers in one word, through his entire human "story" Jesus allows the secret of his person to shine through gradually, though in a manner which still remains hidden and will only be disclosed in the light of Easter. It seems possible then to show that between Jesus’ "implicit Christology" and the "explicit Christology" of the apostolic Church there is at once continuity and discontinuity, or better, continuity-indiscontinuity. This applies also to Jesus himself as he passes from his kenotic state to his glorified condition through the real transformation of his humanhood in the resurrection; it applies to the disciples as they pass from an incipient discipleship to a Christian faith commitment through their Easter experience. Insofar as through the faith interpretation of the story of Jesus conveyed by the New Testament witness, the general picture of the original personality of the man of Nazareth can be retrieved, we are enabled to follow anew the journey made by the disciples themselves, as from their living encounter with the historical Jesus they passed with wonder and gratitude to the discovery of the significance of his person in God’s own eyes on their behalf. The route led them from a personal companionship with the earthly Jesus to the realization of his mystery as the Christ. The same route needs to be followed by would-be disciples and believers in every age and in all circumstances and different contexts; it marks the genesis which is built up in the Christian faith in accordance with the pedagogy of God’s self-disclosure in Jesus Christ. The Christian faith cannot but be based on a personal encounter with the man Jesus, and Christology on Jesuology. Then the question is asked: what was the living centre of Jesus’ message, the fundamental point of reference in his life, the absolute value conveyed by his words and works alike? The answer is undoubtedly: the breaking through in history of the Reign of God. Jesus announced the Reign of God; he did not announce himself. In today’s parlance, he was entirely centred on God and his Reign, theocentric or regnocentric. For Jesus, the Kingdom was symbolic of the new "rule" God would bring about in the world, renewing all things and restoring all relationships between God and human beings as well as among people. For Jesus, too, the Reign of God was impending; indeed, it was not only at hand but had already begun to break through in his own mission. Jesus announced it as the irruption of God’s rule among people, by which God manifests his glory. This is why the arrival of the Kingdom is Good News. A personal encounter with the man Jesus must therefore put in full evidence the centrality and significance of the Reign of God for him. The theme of the Reign of God undoubtedly places God at the source and at the heart of Jesus’ action. The Reign of God really stands for God’s beginning to act in the world in a decisive manner, becoming manifest and putting order in creation. This takes place through Jesus’ human actions. Jesus’ earthly mission is accompanied by miracles. It would be wrong to treat them as merely establishing the credentials of God’s prophet of the Kingdom. The miracles of healing and the exorcisms (akin to healings) that, generally speaking, figure among the unassailable historical data of Jesus’ earthly ministry are signs and symbols signifying that through Jesus God is bringing about his rule on earth, overcoming the destructive power of sin and death. They are the first fruits of the operative presence of the Kingdom of God among people, a constitutive part of the inauguration of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God is his rule among people. It requires a complete reorientation of human relationships and an ordering of human society according to God’s mind. The values, which, in accordance with God’s Reign, must characterise human relationships, can be summed up in a few words: freedom, brotherhood, peace and justice. Accordingly throughout his missionary action Jesus denounces whatever in the society of his time stands against those values. This sets him in opposition to various categories of his own people: he chastises the oppressive legalism of the scribes, the exploitation of people by the priestly caste, the arrogant self-righteousness of the Pharisees. Jesus is not a conformist, but a subversive on behalf of the rule of God. He refuses to abide by the stereotyped unjust structures of the society in which he lives; he associates with sinners and tax-collectors, with Samaritans and prostitutes, with all the despised sections of the society of his time. To all of them he announces that the Reign of God has come about; he invites them all to enter into it through conversion and an ordering of their life. The Kingdom of God that is coming about through Jesus’ life and action is predominantly addressed to the poor, the anawim of God, that is, all the despised categories of people, the oppressed and the downtrodden. For all these Jesus manifests a preferential option that amounts to a declaration of God’s own mind in their favour. The poor to whom the Kingdom of God is preferentially destined are all those who suffer disability under the pressure of unjust structures. This is not to say that economic and dehumanizing poverty constitutes for Jesus an object of choice for its own sake. Jesus is on the side of the poor, not of poverty. What counts for him is readiness to enter into the Kingdom by practising its values. The poor are those predisposed to it, who place their trust in God, not in themselves, their power and their belongings. The values of the Kingdom are present and operative among them. It is clear that Jesus’ attitude to justice and poverty goes beyond the message of the Old Testament prophets on the subject. The prophets had spoken in favour of the poor and the oppressed and in defense of their rights. Their prophetic discourse was clearly indicative of God’s mind on their behalf: God’s predilection for the poor and the divine wrath at the injustice inflicted upon them. Jesus, however, does not only manifest a preferential option for the poor; he is not merely "in their favour". He identifies himself with them personally and associates with them preferentialy. He is not only for the poor; he belongs to and is with them. In this association of Jesus with the poor, God’s preferential love for them comes to a climax. Jesus’ attitude is not only indicative of God’s mind for the poor; it embodies God’s commitment to and involvement with them. Thus, the entire mission of Jesus is centred on the Reign of God, that is, on God as he is establishing his rule on earth in his messenger. Centred on the Reign of God, Jesus is centred on God himself. There is no distance for him between the one and the other: regnocentrism and theocentrism coincide. The God whom Jesus calls Father is at the centre of his message, of his life and of his person. Jesus did not primarily speak about himself; he came to announce God and the coming of his Reign, and to be at God’s service. God is at the centre, not the messenger. Yet, Jesus is not only a prophet, not even merely the "eschatological prophet" who announces that God’s Reign is finally being established on earth. He situates himself in a radically new way in relation to God and God’s Reign: It is in his life and in his person that God is intervening in history in a decisive manner with the inauguration of his Kingdom. In spite of Jesus’ apparent reluctance to declare himself through the use of messianic titles, an astonishing self-awareness emerges from his words and actions. His attitudes and his demeanour altogether exceed, in the most natural fashion, all accepted norms. No known category could ever encompass him. His thorough originality and the difference he makes manifest themselves in many ways. We have already noted the singular way in which Jesus situates himself in relation to the Reign of God. We may point to some other ways in which his thorough originality stands out. Jesus presents himself as a rabbi, but his teaching arouses astonishment, for he teaches with a singular authority. Jesus makes the enormous claim that his authority surpasses that of Moses. He declares God’s ultimate purpose not as a lesson he has learned, not even as a message he has received from God, but out of his own ineffable familiarity with God himself. Jesus simply knows the mind of God, which he proclaims. His way of speaking implies that he perceives it in an immediate intuition, and he declares it in his own name: "I say to you". At the source of Jesus’ personal authority in teaching is a surprising nearness to God, the clearest witness to which is the term Abba with which Jesus invoked God in prayer in an unprecedented manner. Another feature that contributes to make up Jesus’ surprising originality is the way in which he gathers disciples around him and relates himself to them: on the one hand, faced with their slowness to believe he shows an infinite patience which translates in human terms God’s own pedagogy towards people; on the other hand, he makes upon their lives personal claims, which outdo in their rigour all human authority. To leave everything behind to follow him is equal to opting for the Kingdom of God; to look behind in hesitation is to be unworthy and unfit for the Kingdom. In this claim to supreme authority over the would-be disciples, more perhaps than through any other feature, does Jesus manifest the singular character of his personality. He truly stands among people as God’s own presence. II. Asiatic Models of Jesus Not everything has been said here; yet enough will have been mentioned to show, in general terms, a clear similarity between the features of Jesus’ human personality just recalled and the ways of presenting Jesus with "an Asian face" suggested by the members of the Asian Synod of bishops. Proposition 6 of the Synod Fathers’ made explicit mention of such features as "Jesus Christ as the Teacher of Wisdom, the Healer, the Liberator, the Spiritual Guide, the Enlightened One, the Compassionate Friend of the poor, the Good Samaritan, the Good Shepherd, the Obedient One". It added: "It must be kept in mind that such initial proclamation will be completed with a full catechesis on Jesus Christ as truly God and man". If we examine the Christologies which over the last decades have been developing in the Asian context, it is clear that they are intended to respond to the concrete reality of the Asian continent, as it has been described repeatedly by the official documents of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC). As early as 1974, in the Conclusions of the Taipei first general assembly of the FABC, explicit mention was made of three components which together make up the Asian reality and call for a threefold dialogue: with cultures, with religions and with the poor. Progressively the realisation also dawned that these three tasks cannot remain separate as if they were adequately distinct from each other; rather, they must go hand in hand. The result is that what is now growing in the Asian context can best be described as a Jesuology of liberation, thought out in the context of religious and cultural pluralism; or, better still, as a liberation Jesuology in inter-religious dialogue. It is important to point out this integrated character of Asian Jesuology, in which the various dimensions of the context concur to form an organic whole. For this feature is not without far-reaching implications. It fosters in fact an approach to the man Jesus, which Christian believers can develop in conjunction with those of other religious faiths, in a common effort to respond religiously to a concrete reality shared by all. A comparison may be enlightening here with the situation that obtains in the African continent. In spite of vast differences between one situation and the other, it would be true today that on the African continent too the context is often made up of the twofold reality of massive poverty and multiple religiosity. Yet a great difference seems to exist between the Christologies to which this situation gives rise in the African continent and in the Asian counterpart. Two distinct Christologies seem to be developing on the African continent, side by side and without much apparent interaction, one of inculturation and the other of liberation; so far both tend to remain separate. In the Asian context, by contrast, inculturation, dialogue and liberation fuse together into an organic whole, and one Jesuology of liberation is progressively emerging from the praxis of inter-religious dialogue. There is no need — nor is there space here — to enter into a detailed analysis of the contribution made by individual authors to the emergence of such an Asian contextual Jesuology. We must be satisfied to recall, without prejudice to others, some of the important names which immediately come to mind as being especially significant in this respect. In the Indian context, they would include: S. Kappen, M.M. Thomas, S. Rayan, G. Soares-Prabhu, F. Wilfred, M. Amaldoss and outside India: C.S. Song, A. Pieris, among others. We have to go beyond the specific contribution of individual authors; the question is to be asked how in the concrete context in which an Asian Jesuology is successfully being built, the road can best be covered. This road must lead from a vibrant discovery of the man of Nazareth to an adequate Christological account of the mystery of his personal identity as Son uniquely related to the God whom he called his Father. The apostolic Church already found herself faced with this problem, as she endeavoured to ascend from what Jesus represented for her members — the man who makes us free, the teacher of truth, the Messiah of God — to what he was in himself and in God’s own eyes: Son, Word, Wisdom. The dynamics of faith compelled her to make the necessary ascent from the functionality of the man Jesus to the ontology of the Son Incarnate. The historical Jesus had intentionally kept his distance from the messianic titles which were familiar to the Jewish tradition in which he proclaimed his message. When, however, the apostolic Church tried to express her newly discovered faith in Jesus, she did have recourse to such titles and progressively applied them to him. But it is important to note that in the process the messianic titles, taken over from the Old Testament, acquired new, up to then unheard of meaning. The case of the title "Son of God" is emblematic in this regard. In the Old Testament the title had a broad meaning, in virtue of which it could have different applications, being used, for instance, of the chosen people of God, or of a singular just person among God’s people. It applied in a special way to the Davidic king as the representative of God among his people. When, however, the title came to be used of Jesus by the apostolic Church, it progressively took on an added, heretofore unknown, meaning till it came to express the divine Sonship of the Son of God who had become man in Jesus Christ. The title "Son of God" came in fact to occupy a privileged place in the Christology of the apostolic Church, as it seemed better suited to express the mystery of Jesus’ person than some other titles were capable of doing. Not all the titles that are used in different contexts to convey the mystery of Jesus Christ are destined to the same fortune; some will be found in the long run more suitable than others. But the final test of their suitability will be their ability to express in an adequate — though unavoidably imperfect — manner, and in a way at once intelligible and appealing in each particular context, what Jesus is for people, and who he is in the eyes of God. This observation would apply to the titles of healer and liberator, of guru and enlightened one, to give only some examples among those that have been mentioned earlier. Theologians will always have to be concerned at once with the contextual appeal and the hoped for adequacy of meaning of the models they propose in a bid to give — or to restore — to Jesus his "Asian face". It is heartening to know that in this effort, as the Asian bishop members of the Synod meant to declare in no ambiguous terms, theologians have the support of the pastors of the Asian Churches. This did not escape the attention of observers of the Synod proceedings. As is well known, the Lineamenta of the Synod, prepared in the Roman Curia, contained a disparaging statement with regard to the Asian theologians. This, however, disappeared altogether in the "working paper" based on the observations made by the Asian Bishops’ Conferences on the Lineamenta. An insidious question was, however, added — the origin of which remained unclear — to the Second Report of Cardinal Paul Shan Kuo-hsi for discussion in the workshops. It read: "How can the Church deal with some unorthodox trends among some theologians with regard to the divinity of Jesus and his unique mediation of salvation? How can Jesus be portrayed as more than simply one of the many saviours?" The bishops chose to ignore the first part of the question and responded positively to the second part. After proposing in Proposition 6, mentioned above, some models for a "Jesus with an Asian face", they went on in Proposition 7, also cited above, to express their encouragement to theologians to "pursue their work of developing an inculturated theology that responds to Asian realities". "The Synod", the proposition ends, "proposes that the Church authorities, while overseeing the work of theologians, will also give them the encouragement they need". The voice of the pastors of the Asian Churches will be of comfort to theologians in Asia whose demanding task it is to show not only that there is "room for Christ in Asia", but that the Asian Jesus is he in whom the deepest aspirations of the Asian peoples can be fulfilled. References Dupuis,
J. Samartha,
S.J. Thomas,
M.M.
Ref.: Third Millennium, 1 January - March, 1999.
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