Postcolonial Public Theology

Faith, Scientific Rationality, and Prophetic Dialogue

Chung

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498273701
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Postcolonial Public Theology is a tour de force--theological reflection transformed by encounter with the most compelling intellectual discourses of our time. It offers prophetic challenge to the hegemony of economic globalization. Evolutionary science's encounter with life's limit questions requires an ethically responsible practice of scientific rationality, measured by sufficient, sustainable livelihood for all. Interreligious engagement compels us to take seriously the realities of cultural hybridity and social location in reimagining a polycentric Christianity. Postcolonial Public Theology makes the case for public theology to turn toward postcolonial imagination, demonstrating a fresh rethinking of public and global issues that continue to emerge in the aftermath of colonialism. This book provides students and scholars in these various fields an interesting framework from which to continue to dialogue about the relevance of this literature and, in particular, the continuing importance of Christian theology in the public arena.

Part I

Confession, Contextual Interpretation, and Public Issues

1

Martin Luther

Contextualization and Public Witness

This chapter undertakes a contextual and constructive interpretation of Martin Luther’s theology in reference to an East Asian reading of him in order to radicalize his insights into public issues such as social justice and political responsibility in the aftermath of colonialism. This perspective entails a hermeneutical endeavor, bringing his theological insights more meaningfully into dialogue with Asian contextual theologies, which take issue with the Western hegemonic model of self-interested individualism and dominion embedded within the interplay between knowledge, power, and discourse. Hence, this chapter seeks a hermeneutical and practical retrieval of the prophetic potential of Reformation theology to set forth on radical, new, and alternative possibilities of liberation, life for all creation in fullness, and recognition of people of other cultures and faiths.

I begin with a critical analysis of the Japanese colonial interpretation of Luther’s theology of the cross (Kazoh Kitamori). The generalizing term “Asian” was embedded within the Japanese colonial context. This colonial character of “Asian” continued to shape the Japanese imperial understanding of God’s pain, referencing Reformation theology. Challenging Kitamori’s imperial reading of Luther, I introduce a prophetic interreligious reading of Luther and Buddhism in terms of the reality of the suffering of the subaltern/minjung in their political cultural context.

Furthermore, I interpret Luther’s reflection on the triune God as the source of life and emancipation, facilitating his hermeneutical-prophetic direction in a way that is meaningful and amenable to the issues of public witness, inculturation, and integrity of life. Thus I seek further to revive Luther’s great contribution to the hermeneutics of the gospel in the sense of viva vox evangelii, which accords to the Hebrew manner of dabar in the sense of God’s act of speech. Driven by the prophetic configuration of the living and emancipating word of God, it is substantial for me to reinterpret Luther’s position and his public theology regarding political responsibility, economic justice, the integrity of creation, and the church’s mission. This perspective, framed within a postcolonial orientation, covers new terrain in advancing the future of Luther’s Reformation theology in the East Asian context.

Luther and God’s Pain in Japanese Colonial Context

In a study of Christian theology in Asia,40 we observe that the churches in Asia have attempted to maintain their identity and integrity by articulating their own theologies. The terms “Asian,” “Asian sense,” or “Asian method” highlight the context, relevance, characteristics, and orientation of Asian theological works. A genealogical and archeological study of the unifying term “Asian” reveals its political and colonial usage within the context of Japan’s nationalism and colonialism.

The Japanese colonial discourse of “Asian” might be traced to a Japanese imperial theology and its reference to Japanese life in a post-Hiroshima context. The first attempt to read Luther in this imperial direction was undertaken in a Japanese cultural context. Hence, I critically examine Kitamori’s seminal book, The Theology of the Pain of God.41

In the wake of World War II, Kitamori (1916–98) explored the suffering of God in terms of a traditional Japanese kabuki drama. The traditional and imperial kabuki drama is often shunned by those today who want to break away from Japan’s reprehensible colonial past. However, Kitamori utilizes Japanese cultural terms such as tsurasa (vicarious suffering) in order to propose a theology of the cross. Given Luther’s metaphor of “death against death” on the cross, Kitamori unfolds his theology in terms of “pain against pain.” A notion of “God in pain” comes to the foreground in the sense that God embraces those who do not deserve to be embraced.42

Kitamori’s theology of the cross takes the way of analogy in light of pain, that is, analogia doloris,43 incorporating the Japanese word tsurasa into the wounded heart of God.44 Silence in God’s mystery and tsurasa are the guiding metaphors for underscoring Kitamori’s theological project, featuring God as the One who loves the unlovable through the sacrifice of Christ.

Commenting on Kitamori’s theology, Kosuke Koyama has shown that “embracing and enduring tsurasa becomes an intercultural correspondence to Luther’s concept of ‘God fighting with God.’”45 Kitamori utilizes tsurasa, re-rooting the Christian narrative of a theology of the cross in the Japanese cultural matrix.46

Certainly, Kitamori takes deus absconditus in Luther’s thought as the theological epistemology in understanding God’s pain, because the hidden God is the fundamental principle of Luther’s theology from which the rest of Luther’s thought emerges.47 Emphasizing the hidden God enmeshed with God in pain, Kitamori maintains that God’s eternal decision to deliver the Son to the world becomes a hermeneutical bedrock for proposing the analogy of pain, which is in contrast to the Catholic teaching of the analogy of being and the Barthian teaching of the analogy of faith.

Kitamori transforms Luther’s teaching of justification into a mysticism of God’s pain and silence in the fashion of the hidden God. In so doing, unfortunately, he expunges social-critical and prophetic dimensions of the grace of justification in matters pertaining to Japanese colonialism, its historical responsibility, and guilt. Kitamori sidesteps the human capacity to love and respect the righteousness and justice of deus absconditus only through deus revelatus (revealed God) in Jesus’s resignatio ad infernum (descent into hell), thereby becoming the vicarious representative of those innocent victims. For Luther, Jesus Christ as a mirror of the Father’s heart is also the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. Jesus Christ as the exemp...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Part One: Confession, Contextual Interpretation, and Public Issues
• Part Two: Public Theology and Scientific Rationality
• Part Three: Public Theology, Prophetic Dialogue, and Justice
• Afterword
• Bibliography