Lost in Translation and the Problem of a Pure Christian Message: How "Christianity" Assimilates and Changes Among Christians in Other Parts of the World.

We all know that the formation of Christianity happened in the Greco-Roman world under the influences of Judaism. Indeed, it is often demonstrated that concepts that are not found in Judaism, such as the gospel of John’s use of the Stoic concept of logos, found their way into important doctrines of the Christian Church through the intimate relationship the Church’s writers had with their own Greco-Roman culture.

Western Christianity regularly forgets that Christianity is a world religion that penetrates many cultures. And when enculturation of beliefs occurs, like the foundational integrations between Judaism and Hellenism, Christianity also never survives an unadulterated introduction into the culture it seeks to entice into conversion. Here are just a couple of examples where the “pure” message of Christianity is hybridized into some cultures that approximate Christianity, but lend new meaning and practice.

Yomi no Kuni is the underworld in Shinto Japan. Unlike Christianity’s hell, it is not a place of demons and devils but a final abode for all the dead, and the place where the primordial god Izanami first went to die after her fight with her fire-god son.  The kanji for Yomi no Kuni (meaning “yellow springs” from the Chinese) is 黄泉.

What is interesting is that when Christian missionaries first took their message to Japan in the 1500s and the age of bible translations flourished in the 1800s, the standard way of representing hell was as 黄泉. So in Revelation 6:8 for example, hell, which follows the pale rider of Death is represented as Yomi no Kuni. I don’t read Kanji (though I took a semester of Japanese in college), but here is the verse in Japanese. The kanji characters that are important are highlighted.

そこで見ていると、見よ、青白い馬が出てきた。そして、それに乗っている者の名は「死」と言い、それに黄泉が従っていた。彼らには、地の四分の一を支配する権威、および、つるぎと、ききんと、死と、地の獣らとによって人を殺す権威とが、与えられた。

The "actual" entrance to Yomatso Hirasaka (or Yomi no Kuni)

A striking and perhaps intentional parallel to Revelation 6 is the return of Christ in Revelation 19 who is followed by the armies of heaven riding on a white horse and dressed in white robes (just as a side note, the incarnation of Vishnu named Kalki is also pictured in Indian legend as returning from the clouds on a white horse). But unlike the angels, these are the saints of God….the believers. Yet the Japanese translation has taken the former understanding of Yomi no Kuni, and narrowed the meaning considerably. Yomi no Kuni becomes similar to a place like Abraham’s bosom (whatever this is) or Hades, where everyone goes, or Niraka in some forms of Hinduism. This is not the vision of Western Christianity, but it creates interesting problems for anyone trying to wrap their minds around the eschatology. Yomi no Kuni as a Shinto concept where all the dead go becomes Yomi no Kuni as a Christian concept where only the evil dead go. Why this happens is up for debate. One might argue those who welcomed assimilation loved to glory in parallels where they could be found, even if they were only approximations.  To find parallels was to create reassurances about the importance of one's own culture in the face of foreign ideas. Precision and accuracy were not as important as the comfort of taking foreign concepts that already had some shape or resonance in one’s culture (“you’ve got an underworld…we’ve got an underworld”), ignoring the finer points of detail, and making them your own without understanding how they “fit” into the larger picture.

When one looks at Hinduism, various ex-Hindu Christians have sought to assimilate their new faith in various ways. One such example is referring to heaven as Vaikuntha. The translation from Hindi, meaning “the paradise of Vishnu” becomes the abode of Jesus (Yeju Krista). Vishnu, of course, is one of the most important deities in bhakti (devotional) Hinduism, next to Shiva. Moksha (liberation) is often seen as the path of spiritual enlightenment, though it is very much part of the religious tradition of Hindu yoga (the four paths of marga) and Samkhya by self-attainment, but also Hindu philosophy, such as Vedanta, where it is reimagined among Indian Christians. As well as offering a means of liberation, Moksha is often equated with the Christian heaven as a place where Jesus is seated.

What is important is that for Indian Christians, losing their own religious verbiage within their new set of beliefs is often a non-negotiable condition. Unless there is specific and perhaps aggressive influence by Western Christians, Indians were permitted to attune Christianity into the natural flow of Hinduism, which is a religious of deep and rich polyphony. Even among the staunchest Indian Christians, like those of the Christa Ashram in Ponono, and excluding Charismatics and some Evangelicals, Jesus is still called Sadguru (or good teacher). Many depictions of Jesus in India place him in the position of sadhana (doing spiritual exercises) or resting on a lotus flower (imagery important to the sacred symbology of Eastern religions). While one linguist may say that Sadguru, for example, is simply a translation for “good teacher,” a philosopher or sociologist of religions might argue that words are often not disassociated from their cultural meanings.  By calling Jesus “Sadguru,” Indians look to keep Jesus in the mainstream of Hindu religious and cultural existence.

These are just some of the ways religious homogeneity remains a difficult task. Assimilations like these challenge a pure understanding of the faith we think we have or think we can recover, despite Paul's hope that we all come to one faith and one baptism. We haven't been able to do that in Western Christianity, and the task in Eastern Christianity is perhaps more difficult.

Are All Christians Moral Relativists? The Place of Faith in Moral Responsibility

There was a lot of talk about responsibility as a theological category in the last century. Much of this had to do with the changing socio-politics of the time including two world wars that left the religious moral center of Western society in ruin. Responsibility for the first time, especially in the writings of Rudolf Bultmann and Reinhold Niebuhr became a way to reconcile faith with moral behavior. Until then, there had always been the strain of “double activity” in Christianity. When one read Paul he was confronted with the prevalence of faith. However, when one read James or even the gospels, it was the moral behavior and obedience that keyed into the duty of man. Paul was often read uniquely, as more sophisticated of the lot, and whose theology made for more creative responses then elsewhere. James, an epistle that Martin Luther threatened to throw into the Rhine River for what he read as its insistence of a works-based salvation, never garnered as much popularity.

Where responsibility became important was in the conversation on absolute and relative morals. It was argued on the one side that moral absolutes created no requirement for self-investment, one only needs to follow and obey. Yet on the other hand, there was an appeal to faith as an individual investment, in which obedience was not seen as a construct of faith but rather its fruit. But it was nonetheless thought to be stale fruit so long as my faith was not provided a clear path through my works. Faith was invalidated outside of works, and was therefore remanded to “wishful thinking.” One could trust in God about the sickness of a loved one, but again, faith required no personal investment. We could fold our hands, pray, walk away, and leave the rest to God. Of course, such formulas exist, but they tell us nothing about the inner life of the ordeal we so desperately wish to understand.

Theologians of this time sensed that faith meant something more than a secondary function that could only be fleshed out by one’s works or obligations. Moral absolutes simply created no element of self-risk. Without risk, the imperative for faith was unclear. Bultmann made a point of this when he noted that Jesus’ rising from the dead was an inauthentic existential act, provided he knew he would rise from the dead. Jesus could be “obedient to the death of a cross,” but his obedience did not necessarily translate into the need to feel the terror of the grave, a feeling of not knowing where his obedience might lead. Faith was thought to be the missing component of obedience. Jesus’ moral response could only be validated by an act of faith that considered the possibility that he might not rise again.  Only when the possibility of failure existed does faith make any sense. This is precisely why obedience without faith is morally suspect as a Christian concept.

To “not obey” or “go the way of the flesh,” only suggests a problem of behavior. Yet responsibility grasped at the very heart of such disobedience as an existential problem that lined up more fully and more rationally with the Christian belief that man inherited his sin nature from Adam.  

Without a clear formula for obedience however, the charge became that such Christians were moral relativists, which was seen as the greater of two evils. In the case of such relativism, one risked the collapse of revelation, the inconsistency of the biblical witness, and finally the loss of the democratizing appeal of scripture that all men are created equal. If men are equal, then surely the situations as they attend them are no different in the interpretative lens of one man than they are for another.

Perhaps one of the more powerful examples of moral relativism came in the theology-meets-life case of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  Theologians may have felt that moral responsibility was subject to a context of not very well-defined goals, but Bonhoeffer lived this reality. When Bonhoeffer was faced with the decision of repudiating National Socialism and ultimately conspiring in the assassination attempt of Adolf Hitler, he was faced with a moral dilemma that was based not in interpretation but methodology.  

With the injunction of the commandment not to kill (technically, murder) hanging over his head, Bonhoeffer had to strive for a way past the blockade of moral absolutes and come to an understanding of morality that would ultimately shape his decision in the coming months. His answer was that ethics always occurring when one stands before the “face of God.” This understanding meant that the biblical witness had to be shaped through a different kind of looking glass, one encountered by a cacophony of different instructions and voices to experience how God was speaking to the church today. Much like a Charismatic Evangelical, who believes he is speaking a prophetic word might say that the word that comes to him does not resist the totality of scripture, but is emphasized in a living body of work, Bonhoeffer’s decision to look to Jesus was based upon a similar project. This meant that while one could affirm that absolute harmony of God’s word, since the Word was always ontological, the phenomenology of the words demonstrated that some words regularly manifested over others for the edification of the believer. As a people bound to the book, Christians like Bonhoeffer to Billy Graham, found that in “hearing what the Spirit was saying to the churches,” (Revelation 2:7) did not need to invalidate the body of scripture.

The question of whether one is a relativist depends largely on application ethics and not canonicity. If simply admitted that the canon is, we do not need to be harassed about questions of why it is and what it should have become since these are largely historical concerns. That it did become what it is, and that it has consistently been treated as a multi-colored spectrum of God’s interactions with humanity permits response. And how have the people of Christ responded? With many, many different voices drilling down to differences within the heart of each community, but more importantly down to the divided individual. This is not a lack of consistency. For consistency speaks to systematization and simply a cry to return to absolutism. Consistency, at any rate, lies in the continued engagement with the scriptures.

Reading Jesus’ Transfiguration and the Buddha’s Enlightenment: Supercessionism or Synthesis?

In the story of the historical Buddha, Siddhartha attains a place of enlightenment after intensely meditating under a Bodi tree. Achieving this new level of consciousness about life and the goal of humanity to untangle itself from suffering (dukkha), we find Buddha Siddhartha delivering his teaching to Indra and Brahma.

In the story of the historical Jesus told in the synoptic gospels, he takes his followers with him to the base of a mountain where they observe his miraculous transfiguration. His body illuminates with bright rays of light and the three disciples observe the appearances of Moses and Elijah.

What do both of these stories have in common? Certainly we don’t know the motivations of the writers, but both seem to have apologetic value for their authors. In both accounts, the old gods (Indra and Brahma of the Hindus) and the old harbingers of tradition (Moses and Elijah) are giving their stamps of approval to the newcomer (the Buddha and Jesus).

One way to read the stories is as examples of Supercessionism.

Supercessionism is the theological term used for the belief that the value of the old tradition can only be understood, fulfilled, or accomplished in the new tradition. Both of these stories then show that Jesus and the Buddha are teaching their respective “teachers.” It is the passing of a mantle from old to new, the inauguration of a new type of understanding, a new prophet, a new god, a new king. In any case, Supercessionism is held suspect by those outside the new tradition because it tends to invalidate the ongoing validity of the old tradition. The new tradition is thought to correct something about the old tradition, whether it be its theological content, its trajectory, its audience, etc.

Another way to read the stories is as examples of Synthesis (a term that is replacing the more traditional use of Syncretism)

This is a rather new approach in terms of theological approaches, but suggests itself as one possibility in the reorientation of pluralists and perennialists in our age of common religious interests. On this view, there is no new or old tradition, it is simply the continuation of the old tradition. To demonstrate this, its radical departure in both cases from the old tradition can be explained by the evolutions in the old tradition as part of its very makeup. One might point for example in Judaism to the move from Deuteronomic Law to Wisdom teachings which suggested the introduction of foreign elements. One might suggest that Kabbala as a substantive Jewish movement was influenced by its encounter with Christianity as a result of its strong delineation of heaven and hell and its emanation theology. In this way, the old tradition is “reverse engineered” to accommodate the new and also shows a symbiotic relationship that forms over time. We can see this in less radical attempts to find “the historical Jesus in his Jewish context” by scholars of the last century. Others would claim that in Buddhism we see the veneration of the Hindu deities redefined as bodhisattvas rather than gods. In these redefinitions, the break to redefine oneselves is better understood as a corrective whose sole attempt is not to leave its predecessor behind, but to integrate this knowledge as something recovered that was lost, rather than something completely new, foreign, or uncomfortable. 

In both cases, the Buddha and Jesus inhabited lands, cultural contexts, and a social conscience of a people who could identify them by their behaviors within the tradition. Even if they were saying things that caught them by surprise, the people could claim them as their own. Their languages, concepts, and ideas were not so abusive as to be jettisoned from dialogue with the religious teachers of their time. In many cases, the people recognizing them were not put off by the foreign nature of their agencies. This is an important point and worth considering.