Peter C. Phan
The Catholic University of America
A quick glance at the history of recent theology will reveal that the symbol of kingdom/reign of God/heaven has returned to center stage after languishing for centuries in the wings. This dramatic come-back is one of the by-products of the nineteenth century quest for the historical Jesus. Thanks to Johannes Weiss and Albert Schweitzer, the apocalypticism of early Judaism became the context in which Jesus' life and preaching were interpreted; and as a result, Jesus' central message was now seen to be the kingdom of God. The centrality of this symbol is not restricted to New Testament studies. It has also functioned as an interpretative category for trinitarian theology, christology, the theology of church and world, ethics and spirituality, and mission.
But more than influencing a particular theological treatise, the symbol of the kingdom of God has shaped a way of doing theology and its fundamental character. This is true especially in the case of liberation theology of various provenances and stripes. Jon Sobrino has argued at length and convincingly that whereas for Latin American theology the liberation of the poor is the "primacy of reality," the kingdom of God rather than the resurrection of Jesus is its eschaton. In Sobrino's view, there are several convergences between liberation theology and the theme of the kingdom of God. Liberation theology presupposes a "pre-theological" option for the poor who are the addressees of the reign of God. Furthermore, it has certain formal characteristics which correspond to the symbol of the kingdom of God: it is concerned with historicizing the transcendental realities of faith (as historical theology), with denouncing and unmasking historical sin (as prophetic theology), with transforming reality (as praxic theology), and with making the people the subjects of theology and the agents of faith (as popular theology). Finally, by choosing the kingdom of God as its eschaton, liberation theology avoids the danger of identifying the kingdom with the church and helps retrieving the importance of the historical Jesus for theology.
On the trail of liberation theology, this essay will explore whether and how the biblical symbol of the kingdom of God can be meaningful to Asians. It will first highlight some of the problems this symbol as interpreted by contemporary exegetes and theologians poses for Asians who do not share the Hebrew and Western cultural assumptions and experiences of kingdom and kingship. Second, it will examine some attempts made by Asian theologians to speak of the kingdom of God. The essay will conclude with suggestions for inculturating this central Christian symbol into the Confucian socio-cultural context of Asia.
KINGDOM OF GOD AS A THEOLOGICAL SYMBOL: CHALLENGES FROM ASIA
It has been pointed out by biblical scholars that even though the specific term "kingdom of heaven" (Hebrew malkût may m) is not found in the Hebrew Bible, the idea of God as king (melek) and reigning (yiml k) over Israel, all peoples, and the cosmos is widespread, especially in post-exilic Judaism. Since Jesus' own understanding of the kingdom of God was deeply rooted in the Hebrew concept of it, it is useful to give a succinct summary of how the Hebrews understood this symbol. For Israel, Yahweh's kingship is based first of all on God's saving deeds performed on its behalf throughout its history -- the deliverance from its slavery in Egypt, guidance during its wandering in the desert, the establishment of the covenant, the gift of the land, protection from surrounding enemies, the institution of the monarchy, and the return from exile. Furthermore, God has demonstrated God's sovereign power by creating and ruling over the cosmos and by extending God's lordship over all nations. Finally, because of the repeated failures of its political and religious leaders, Israel projected its hope in the final and decisive coming of God in the eschatological future when God will establish God's eternal kingdom through a Davidic messiah or a priestly ruler or directly himself.
The idea of God's rule, affirmed in various ways in the Hebrew Bible, reached its apogee in the New Testament. The expression "reign of God" or "reign of heaven" occurs more than 150 times in the New Testament. Whether one thinks of Jesus as an apocalyptic prophet or a teacher of subversive wisdom, and however one interprets the phrase "kingdom of God," there is no doubt that the reign of God was the central focus of Jesus' preaching (in particular, his parables) and ministry (in particular, his miracles).
Despite Jesus' frequent use of the symbol of the reign of God, he had not however given it a clear definition. In summary form, it may be said that for Jesus the kingdom of God means the active presence of God his Father, inaugurated in his own life and death, which brought about a reign characterized by gratuitous forgiveness and reconciliation, by universal justice and peace, in opposition to the anti-reign of division and hatred, injustice and oppression, and which calls for a radical conversion issuing in personal and social transformation.
Leaving aside the question of when Jesus thought the kingdom of God would come, with its three possible answers, there is a host of questions which the symbol of the kingdom of God as used in the New Testament poses for a contemporary Asian theology. Without pretension to exhaustiveness, they can be enumerated as follows:
1. Regarding the very expression itself, in proclaiming God's kingdom, how can one dissociate this symbol from its connotations of absolute power and totalitarianism (perhaps even its patriarchalism), in particular in Communist countries such as Vietnam, China, and North Korea where one political party retains absolute power? Can a royal symbol encourage the people of these countries to achieve forms of government in which basic human rights are respected? Furthermore, in the recent history of most Asian countries, with the exception of Thailand, experiences with emperors and kings have been by and large negative. Terminologically, should the metaphors of king, kingdom, and monarchical reign continue to be used to speak of God and God's rule? Should they not be replaced by other more democratic symbols?
2. Christian theology often emphasizes the spiritual and transcendent nature of the reign of God. It is well known that Asia is the cradle of most world religions; presumably it is not difficult to convince Asians of the transcendent dimension of human existence. Rather, the challenge is to convince them that the reign of God demands not only individual conversion leading to salvation, however conceived, but also that unjust and oppressive structures, both socio-political and economic, be removed and replaced by just and liberating structures. Insisting on the socio-political and economic implications of the reign of God is urgent in Asia, in Communist countries where political and religious freedoms are curtailed as well as in democratic ones (e.g., Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong) where capitalism and market economy reign supreme and produce their own victims of poverty and dehumanization.
3. It has been argued that the addressees of the kingdom of God in the New Testament are the poor, both economically and sociologically, that is, those who lack the basic necessities of life and those are marginalized by the society. In the Asian context, who are the addressees of the reign of God? Are they only the economical and sociological poor or also the religious? It is a commonplace that Asia is characterized not only by the abject poverty of the teeming masses but also by their profound religiousness. How can the proclamation of the reign of God embrace both the poor and the religious?
4. The New Testament presents the reign of God as purely God's initiative and gratuitous gift. Against nineteenth-century liberal theology J. Weiss and A. Schweitzer argued that Jesus understood the kingdom apocalyptically, not as something humans can "build" but as a reality God alone would bring about as an alternative to human striving. Many contemporary liberation theologians however insist that the gratuitousness of God's kingdom is not opposed to but requires human action as a response to God's free gift. How can this tension between gift and task be conveyed in the Asian context in which salvation is seen to be the outcome of both pure grace from a compassionate being (e.g., the Amida Buddha in Pure Land Buddhism) and of personal self-cultivation (e.g., according to Zen Buddhism and Confucianism)?
5. One of the distinctive features of Jesus' understanding and practice of the kingdom of God is his opposition to the anti-kingdom. As Sobrino puts it: "The Kingdom of God is a utopia that answers the age-old hope of a people in the midst of historical calamities; it is, then, what is good and wholly good. But is also something liberating, since it arrives in the midst of and in opposition to the oppression of the anti-Kingdom. It needs and generates a hope that is also liberating, from the understandable despair built up in history from the evidence that what triumphs in history is the anti-Kingdom." It is in the context of Jesus' struggle against the anti-kingdom that his miracles, in particular his casting out of devils, can and should be understood. In proclaiming the kingdom of God to Asians, how can the forces of the anti-kingdom in Asia be identified and named? What liberating actions can and should the Christian Church undertake as "an option for the poor" so that the kingdom of God is truly "Good News" for the people of Asia?
6. Finally, the biblical symbol of the kingdom of God stands for a final and absolute salvation from all evils, both physical and spiritual. Moreover, it connotes an eternal personal union between God and God's people. How can the final and absolute character of the kingdom of God be conveyed to Asians among whom on the one hand there are many who believe only in a limited salvation, that is, from immanent forces (e.g., Taoists, Confucianists, shamanists, and animists), while on the other hand there are many who believe in an absolute salvation, that is, as the passing beyond and liberation (moksa) from all impediments of existence (samsara) and as the passing beyond all attachments into nirvana and the realization of emptiness ( unyat )?
Furthermore, how can the personal nature of the union with God in the kingdom be maintained for Asians some of whom believe that the self is illusion (m ya) and that salvation is consequently the liberation of the self from the conditions of historical existence and personalhood, like the drop of water into the sea, or the light of the candle dissolving into the sun?
THE KINGDOM OF GOD IN ASIAN THEOLOGY
These challenges, and many others, the Christian church faces in speaking of the kingdom of God to Asians are daunting indeed, especially because as a theological symbol, it is not confined to a particular section or treatise of theology but is the foundation upon which to construct the cathedral of Christian theology or, to vary the metaphor, the leitmotif around which to compose the symphony of the Christian message. As Sobrino puts it, the kingdom of God is the eschaton of liberation theology. A majority of younger Asian theologians, who develop their own version of liberation theology, also adopt the kingdom of God as their foundational interpretative category. To speak of the reign of God in Asia is, in a sense, to do theology simpliciter.
Recently, a number of theologians from countries such as Sri Lanka, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Vietnam have focused on the symbol of the kingdom of God as a central theological category. In light of the challenges described above I would like to review these efforts. My purpose is not to present a comprehensive exposition of what may be called the Asian "basileia theology" but to discern its major contours and identify its strengths as well as weaknesses. I will concentrate on the works of Choan-Seng Song who is arguably the ablest and most prolific exponent of this basileia theology.
In recent Asian Christian theology there have been two major tendencies, one focusing on inculturation, the other on liberation. Though ultimately these two streams should flow into one single theological river, there is no doubt that the liberationist tendency privileges the symbol of the reign of God.
1. Tissa Balasuriya, a Sri Lankan Oblate, makes the kingdom of God the central
symbol of his "planetary theology." For him, "the most fundamental fact of
Asia for Christianity and theology is human life itself -- the struggle for
life, which is the basic issue for the vast majority of Asia's massive and
growing population." The answer to this challenge is Jesus' proclamation
of the kingdom of God, since there is, according to Balasuriya, a similarity
between Jesus' society and contemporary Asia:
Within a context of such deep-seated exploitation Jesus presented a radical new teaching, backed up by the witness of his life. He announced it as the "kingdom of God." In today's terminology we may say that he is speaking of a new person and a new society, of new personal and societal values. This was his good news, his gospel. He dethroned the prevailing values of money, power, prestige, and group selfishness. Instead he proposed sharing, service, selfless love of the human person, and a universal solidarity.
From this extract it is clear that Balasuriya intends to translate Jesus' message about the rule of God into economic, political, and social terms ("a new person and a new society") and promote its implications for a social ethics ("sharing, service, selfless love for the human person, and a universal solidarity").
2. Another Sri Lankan, Jesuit Aloysius Pieris, argues most forcefully that the addressees of the kingdom of God in Asia are not only the economically and sociologically poor but also the religious, or more exactly, the poor that are religious and the religious that are poor. In Pieris' reading of the history of the Christian mission in Asia, in the past the kingdom of God was not able to penetrate into Asia because Christians failed to keep the two poles of Asian reality together: poverty and religiousness. To remain in Asia and to become a part of Asia now, the kingdom of God must address together the religiousness of the poor and the poverty of the religious. This task is demanded not only by the peculiar situation of Asia but also by Jesus the proclaimer of the kingdom himself who, in Pieris' words, has undergone the double baptism of the "Jordan of Asian religion" and the "Calvary of Asian poverty."
In identifying the addressees of the reign of God in Asia in this way Pieris has made a momentous contribution to the Asian basileia theology and enriched the Latin American liberation theology to which he is indebted. Thus, the Jesus of the reign of God is "the poor monk" who embodies in himself both poverty and religiousness.
The reign of God, when realized in the world, creates what Pieris calls a "contrast society" by which he means "a society where only Yahweh and no other god would reign, a human community governed by love. This is what the phrase ‘Kingdom of God' meant for Jesus." It is a society characterized by obedience to God who calls us to be poor and by religious poverty.
3. Whereas these two Sri Lankan theologians offer an outline of an Asian basileia theology, a full-fledged version of it has been elaborated in the 1970s by a group of Korean theologians under the rubric of minjung theology. By minjung (literally "the popular mass") are meant "the oppressed, exploited, dominated, discriminated against, alienated and suppressed politically, economically, socially, culturally, and intellectually, like women, ethnic groups, the poor, workers and farmers, including intellectuals themselves." Ahn Byung-mu interprets the ochlos (the crowd) of Mark's Gospel to mean the people who gathered around Jesus, i.e., the condemned and alienated class, such as sinners, tax collectors and the sick. Though not organized into a political group, these people were feared by the powerful. They were, however, unconditionally accepted by Jesus who sided with them and announced to them the advent of the kingdom of God.
Minjung theologians identify the ochlos of the New Testament with the poor and oppressed Koreans throughout the history of Korea, especially during the colonization by the Chinese and the Japanese and under the regime of Park Chung-hee. In the nineteenth century Christianity was introduced into Korea not as the faith of the oppressing and exploiting colonizers, as in many other Asian countries, but as a seed for liberation from the Chinese and Japanese domination. Japanese and Chinese languages being imposed as the official languages, the appearance of the Bible in Korean (and in the Hangul script) was a veiled invitation to the minjung to rise up for their dignity and independence. Jesus' message of the kingdom of God then had a liberative effect on the poor and alienated Korean people.
The minjung are thus the people of God or members of the kingdom of God. Because of their prolonged unjust suffering, the minjung are weighed down by han, another word left untranslated. Han, literally anger or resentment, is a mixture of many things: a sense of resignation to inevitable oppression, indignation at the oppressors' cruelty, anger at oneself for allowing oneself to be oppressed. These emotions, accumulated and intensified by injustice upon injustice, can be a powerful source of psychological energy and an explosive potential for revolution if released in a socially organized way.
The process of resolving the han is called dan, literally cutting off. It takes place on both individual and collective levels. On the individual level, it requires self-denial or renunciation of material wealth and comforts. This self-denial will cut off the han in our hearts. On the collective level, dan can work toward the transformation of the world by raising humans to a higher level of existence. This process is composed of four steps: realizing God's presence in us and worshiping him, allowing this divine consciousness to grow in us, practicing what we believe, and overcoming the injustices by transforming the world. Some minjung theologians, especially Hyun Young-hak and Korean feminist theologians, advocate more traditional methods to release the han, such as rituals, drama, mask dance, and shamanism.
Sofar, minjung theology of basileia moves beyond that of both Balasuriya and Pieris by identifying the kingdom of God with a particular group of people, namely, the Korean minjung themselves. The minjung are not only the addressees of the message of the kingdom of God but constitute the kingdom of God itself. Jesus himself is identified with the minjung. Minjung theologians tend to identify the various struggles for liberation in the Korean history as manifestations of the Jesus event. This is perhaps because in Korea, unlike in other Asian countries, Christianity from its inception was a politically engaged faith and played a significant role in the struggle for national liberation. Hence, whereas Pieris looks toward non-Christian religions and their poor adherents as the source for the theology of the kingdom of God (because outside of Korea it was these religions that stirred anti-colonialist sentiments), minjung theologians welcome the Christian message of the reign of God and draw upon their own national resources rather than Buddhist or Confucianist sources to release the han and develop a basileia theology.
With regard to the term "kingdom," however, some minjung theologians such as Suh Nam-dong find the symbol of the kingdom of God inappropriate. Suh draws a distinction between the kingdom of God and the millennium, between political messianism and messianic politics. According to Suh, the symbol of the kingdom of God has become abstract and other-worldly; it is the ideology promoted by dictatorial rulers practicing their "political messianism". On the contrary, the idea of millennium is concrete and this-worldly; it is the symbol of hope of the minjung in their "messianic politics."
Despite criticisms that have been voiced against it, minjung theology has made a significant contribution to the formation of a distinctively Asian theology and in particular to the theology of the reign of God. In such a theology, the symbol of the kingdom of God no longer remains a Semitic or Western category but takes on a peculiarly Korean face, drawn with the blood and tears of the minjung, and becomes a powerful stimulus for the struggle for liberation.
4. Of all contemporary Asian theologians Choan Seng-Song, a Presbyterian Taiwanese, is no doubt the most prolific writer on the theme of the kingdom of God. For several years now Song has been persistently advocating an Asian theology. The means with which to construct such a theology, Song suggests, are "imagination, passion, communion, and vision": the imagination is that in which we were created in God's image; passion enables us to feel the compassion of God in us and in others; communion makes us responsible for one another and for God; and vision perceives God's presence in the world and enables us to envision a new way of doing theology.
Among the immense and varied resources of Asia Song privileges the personal stories of Asian people and their folktales, old and new. And since the stories of most Asian people are of those of poor, suffering, and powerless people, an authentic Asian theology must of necessity be a liberation theology. Song believes that the most needed skill for Asian theologians is the ability to listen to the whispers, groaning, and shouts from the depths of misery of Asian humanity. This ability is the "third eye," that is, a power of perception and insight (satori) that enables theologians to grasp the meaning beneath the surface of things and phenomena.
Beginning with the concrete socio-political and economic situation of the people in which God's "pain-love" is manifested and actively working for their liberation, Song articulates a basileia theology that is both profoundly biblical and distinctively Asian.
Unsurprisingly, Song grounds his theology of the reign of God in the message of the Hebrew prophets and the preaching of Jesus, especially his parables. From these sources he derives the conviction that salvation includes political and economic salvation. That is, the kingdom of God is both a kingdom of grace and a kingdom of justice, peace, freedom, and love. Song categorically states that the God of the Hebrew-Christian faith is a "political God." "God's politics" means for Song two things: first, it is a "politics against the barbarism of power," that is, a power that deprives people of their political, economic, and spiritual freedom. Secondly, it means that "the God of the prophets, and for that matter the God of Jesus Christ, is a God who takes sides .... God takes the side of the poor against the rich."
Song is quick to point out that God's politics does not mean that Christians should replace secular power and government with another, perhaps sacred, power and government of their own to bring about the kingdom of God. Rather what is called for is what Song calls "the transposition of power": "What it aims at is the transformation of power. God's politics has to do with transformation of human politics. It does not seek to rule and dominate but rather to effect a repentance of power. And in this transformation, or metanoia of power, is found the essence of God's politics."
Commenting on the parable of the workers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-15), which he considers "paradigmatic of the reign of God that has already begun in Jesus Christ," Song writes: "In this parable Jesus makes it clear that that power is the goodness of God. It is the power of mercy, goodness, and love that becomes evident in the demonstration of God's reign. The reign of God is to be characterized as the power that does good, manifests mercy, and embodies love."
In another commentary on the parable of the wicked tenants in the vineyard (Mark 12;1-11; parallels in Matthew 21:33-44; Luke 20:9-18), Song reminds us that "justice is one of the most fundamental principles of God's politics" and that "Christians as such do not hold political power .... But the power of God's love given them through Jesus Christ becomes their power to judge abuses of power by those in positions of political authority. Herein is the essence of the political mission of the church, namely, the transposition of power."
God's politics, which gives the people the power to challenge, criticize, and judge the abuses of those in power, naturally leads to what Song calls the "politics of the cross." The politics of the cross, Song points out, does not dispense the people from getting themselves organized, devising strategies and tactics, becoming informed of the intricate power plays by which dictators seek to oppress and manipulate them, and employing the most effective means to achieve their goal of liberation. In this sense, the "dove ethic" must be reinforced by the "serpent politics."
But Song reminds us that "what transpired in the final struggle of Jesus with power politics was the power and wisdom of the cross .... Whatever the reasons for not pursuing revolution, the fact is that Jesus opted for the politics of the cross." The politics of the cross, however, does not mean weakness and ineffectiveness. Indeed, "the powerless cross proves so powerful that throughout the centuries it has empowered countless persons to struggle for justice and freedom .... The politics of the cross has taken form in resistance, in revolt, in revolution. But above all, it has inspired a great many persons to believe in self-sacrifice as the most powerful weapon against self-serving political power. It has encouraged them to use nonviolence, not just for tactical reasons but out of love, to carry the cause of the people to the court of rulers." Hence, essential to Song's theology of the reign of God are both the "people politics" and the "politics of the cross."
These scattered reflections on the reign of God Song brought together in
his Christological trilogy, especially in the second volume entitled Jesus
& the Reign of God, the most extensive Asian basileia theology to date.
Here Song states explicitly:
The heart of Jesus' message is the reign of God (basileia tou theou). In all he said and did he was at pains to make clear that God's reign is primarily concerned with the people victimized by a class-conscious society and a tradition-bound religious establishment. God's reign, in light of what Jesus said and did, inaugurates an era of people. It sets a new stage for their life and history. It marks a fresh beginning of the divine-human drama of salvation."
Moving from a study of the message of Jesus to that of his life and ministry, Song attempts to elaborate a theology of the reign of God that one the one hand offers us clues as to why Jesus said and did a certain things, and on the other hand enables us to understand and live out the meaning of Jesus and his message of God's reign in our present-day world. With regard to the relationship between the reign of God and Jesus' words and deeds, Song holds that "the vision that inspired him (Jesus) to say what he did and compelled him to do what he did was the reign of God. This vision of God's reign is the hermeneutical principle of the life and ministry of Jesus. It is the ethical standard of his lifeview and worldview. It is the theological foundation of his relationship to God and to his fellow human beings. And it is the eschatological vantage-point from which he relates the present time and the end of time. In short, the vision of God's reign is like the magnifying lens that gives us an enlarged picture of life and the world as Jesus sees them and of life and the world as we must also see them."
Using the two biblical images of a great banquet (Luke 14:16-24) and the new heaven and new earth (Revelation 21:22-24), Song sketches Jesus' vision of the reign of God. Like the banquet to which all are invited, the reign of God is characterized by inclusiveness: "The way of Jesus derived from the way of God's reign tells us many things. First and foremost, it tells us who God is and how God carries out God's saving activity in the world. The God illuminated by Jesus' way with people is the God who does not discriminate against them on account of creed, color, or sex. God is a classless God, too."
And like the new heaven and new earth, the reign of God always and necessarily contains socio-political and economic dimensions. The redemption brought about by the reign of God is "not the redemption of individual souls but the redemption that brings the dead back to life, rights the wrongs committed by those in power, and eradicates injustices inflicted on the powerless by demonic systems and establishments."
This vision of the reign of God as comprehensive inclusiveness and sociopolitical and economic liberation must, Song insists, be rooted in the reality of the present world, and must not be pictured as a purely eschatological event occurring at the end of time and in the beyond. In this way the reign of God promotes what Song terms "a culture of empowerment," that is, it enables oppressed and dispossessed people to realize the injustice of their condition (conscientization) and to take up actions against it.
Though the reign of God is God's deed, an event brought about by God, it needs two things, according to Song: First, it needs eyewitnesses, people who sight it, identify it and distinguish it from its counterfeits. Second, it needs witnesses in another sense, that is, people who embody it by their personal involvement in it in one way or another. Like Jesus, people of today must bear witness in a situation of conflicts and struggle for freedom, justice, love, and life over against slavery, injustice, hate, and death.
Finally, it is important to note that despite his repeated and emphatic insistence on the sociopolitical and economic dimensions of the reign of God, Song does not forget that God's reign also brings forgiveness of sin and deliverance from demonic powers and that, above all, it reaches its fulfillment only in the eschatological resurrection. However, Song hastens to add the resurrection is not an event unrelated to what we are doing now for the reign of God: "The resurrection is not a denial of the past. It is sacrament of tears shed, pain sustained, and death remembered. This sacrament affirms that the tears shed are not in vain, that the pain sustained is the birthpang of hope, and that death is remebered not to be feared but to be transformed into life.... To believe in life resurrected from the ruins of human conflict comes from God who is the power of transformation. And to work toward change in the human condition is a calling in response to the vision of God's reign."
So far I have shown how deeply biblical Song's basileia theology is. But, as I have mentioned above, it has also another aspect which demands attention, namely, its distinctive Asianness. Indeed, it is already Asian in the very way Song privileges and emphasizes certain biblical teachings on the reign of God rather others because of the specific situation of Asian people. Song consistently reads the biblical message through the lens of the poverty and oppression to which a large number of Asians are subjected. Moreover, in developing his basileia theology Song makes extensive use of Asian sociopolitical and economic histories, both ancient and contemporary, from the Chinese folktale of Lady Meng to the current situations of the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Thailand, and Hong Kong, just to mention the countries Song most frequently referred to.
Furthermore, Song derives his theological insights from a great variety of stories, poems, novels, individual biographies, songs, dances, and art works of Asians. He also mines the sayings and teachings of religious sages as well as the sacred texts of Asian religions for parallels with the teachings of the Christian bible on the reign of God. As Song puts it, "the totality of life is the raw material of theology. Theology deals with concrete issues that affect life in its totality and not just with abstract concepts that engage theological brains. No human problem is too humble or too insignificant for theology. Theology has to wrestle with the earth, not with heaven."
True to his methodological precepts, Song offers a basileia theology that is rooted in the earth, and more specifically, in the Asian humus, while not ignoring its transcendental character. Nurtured by the Hebrew prophets' and Jesus' message and actions for justice, human dignity, peace, and love, and bathed in the blood and tears of dispossessed and oppressed Asian people, and inspired by their struggle for liberation, Song's theology of the reign of God is by far the most developed and the richest among contemporary Asian theologians.
BASILEIA TOU THEOU, STILL A MEANINGFUL SYMBOL FOR ASIANS?
In this concluding section I would like to address, albeit briefly, the six issues raised by the symbol of the kingdom of God outlined above in the light of the theologies of the reign of God proposed by the Asian theologians whose works I have discussed. In particular, I will carry out my reflections on the reign of God with reference to the Confucian culture, a feature common to many Asian countries.
1. To preach and witness to the reign of God is the primary mission of the Christian church, even in Asia. The first challenge to this mission is not only to find an appropriate translation for the expression basileia tou theou in various Asian languages. A much more arduous task is to convey accurately the substance of the biblical message about the reign of God as well as to strip away the many distortions that accrued to its meaning throughout the history of its interpretation (its Wirkungsgeschichte). One of the persistent distortions is the patriarchal and authoritarian connotations attached to the symbol of the kingdom of God. As we have seen, Song prefers the expression "reign of God" to that of "kingdom of God" to avoid the latter's patriarchal and authoritarian implications.
For cultures heavily influenced by Confucianism such as those of China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan, the dangers of patriarchalism and hierarchical authoritarianism, and correlatively those of blind obedience and preservation of the status quo, are particularly acute. As is well known, Confucian society is regimented by correct relationships: between sovereign and subject, between husband and wife, and between parents and children. Asked about what a government should be, Confucius replied: "Let a prince be a prince, the minister a minister, the father a father, and the son a son."
In this cultural context it is vitally important to affirm the basic equality of all persons in the reign of God and to stress the prophetic character of the reign of God as well as the duty of speaking truth to power. Song has pointed out that Asian Christians tend to identify obedience to God with obedience to political authorities and to regard involvement in political and social affairs as irrelevant to the Christian faith and even harmful to salvation. In light of the biblical teaching on the reign of God, he asserts categorically: "The more Christian political concern takes on an insurrectional, rebellious, and subversive character under a repressive state authority, the more it resembles the politics of God. To state it more clearly, if the church has no message of justice to proclaim to a ruling authority that practices injustice toward its people, the church has opted out of the politics of God."
Of course, filial piety, the Confucian virtue par excellence, remains a fundamental virtue in the kingdom of God. But because God is the Father, "from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named" (Ephesians 3:15), all piety that is rendered to human kings and fathers must be subordinated to and measured by our filial piety and obedience to God who alone reigns in the basileia tou theou.
2. These reflections already adumbrate the second issue, namely, how to communicate to Asians the truth that the reign of God includes sociopolitical and economic dimensions. It is common knowledge that religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism tend to foster, at least among the masses, disregard for and escape from the present world and everyday life (samsara) which is considered as illusion (m ya) or suffering (dukkha). The goal would be to seek release (moksa) or liberation (nirvana) from life, whether this individual life is seen as an essential self (atman or j va) or as a series of an uncountable number of instants, each caused and conditioned, migrating and inhabiting successive bodies (reincarnation).
Similarly, Taoist ethics of non-contrivance (wu wei) and its insistence on the duty of following non-deliberate and non-purposive intuition or spontaneity (tzu-jan) in nature, society, and individuals may foster passivity in front of evil and injustice. Furthermore, Taoist injunction that individuals and the state should keep in close touch with the primitive and undifferentiated source of creativity, which is like an "uncarved block," may discourage initiatives to reform oppressive structures and institute forward-looking plans of action rather than reversion to the origin (fan).
Confucianism, which was criticized by Taoism for its notion of the human person as a rational and moral being with obligations to the society and the state, affirms the goodness of the human person and the correspondence of the ethical of the human person to that of the universe. Confucius, witnessing the social and political chaos of his times, prescribed as remedy a return to the ways of virtue neglected since the sage emperors of antiquity. The virtues, as embodied by the "gentleman" (chün-tzu), include humaneness (jen), reciprocity (shu), propriety (li) through the rectification of names (cheng-ming) and rites, and filial piety (hsiao).
Confucian ethics, however, focuses primarily on the self-cultivation of the individual, though individual behavior is acknowledged to have an impact on social units such as the family and the state. Indeed, The Great Learning affirms that if one wishes to order the state, one must first practice self-cultivation through the investigation of things, sincerity of thought, and rectification of the heart, and then proceed to regulate one's family. The normative movement is from the individual to the family to the state. In this sense, Confucianism can be said to lack a full-fledged social ethics.
To this apparent lack of social concern and ethical individualism a Christian theology of the reign of God brings the message about the God who takes side, about social justice and liberation, and about the necessity of overcoming oppressive structures, even by means of revolution as the last resort. Furthermore, it can help Asian religions retrieve the potential for social transformation of some of their teachings. Pieris has reminded us of the political and economic implications of the Buddhist practice of voluntary poverty. The Buddhist monk embodies in himself both religiousness and poverty. He is quintessentially one who has renounced Mammon for religious reasons (struggle to be poor through voluntary poverty) so that he may help the socioeconomic poor (struggle for the poor by radically transforming oppressive social structures imposed by Mammon). With the former the monk achieves interior liberation from greed or acquisitiveness (which the Buddha identifies as the cause of all sufferings in his second "Noble Truth"), with the latter he brings about social emancipation from structural poverty imposed upon the masses.
Similarly, in light of the theology of the reign of God, Confucius' teachings regarding the "Mandate of Heaven" (t'ien-ming) of the king (and by extension, political authorities in general) and the duty of the ruler to practice virtue (te) to preserve the mandate of heaven can be retrieved for the common good and social transformation. Already the Book of Odes (shi ching) instructs the king: "Cultivate your virtue. Always strive to be in harmony with Heaven's Mandate." Again, the Book of History (shu ching) says: "Let the king be serious in what he does. He should not neglect to be serious with virtue."
Following this tradition Confucius repeatedly emphasized the duty of the king to lead the people with virtue and propriety: "Lead the people with governmental measures and regulate them by law and punishment, and they will avoid wrongdoing but will have no sense of honor and shame. Lead them with virtue and regulate them by the rules of propriety (li), and they will have a sense of shame and, moreover, set themselves right." Asked about what is most important for the state, armament, food, or the confidence of the people, Confucius replied that he would give up the first two, because "no state can exist without the confidence of the people." Again: "If a ruler sets himself right, he will be followed without his command. If he does not set himself right, even his commands will not be obeyed." Finally, for Confucius, the fact that a state has a small population is no cause for concern; rather it is the "unequal distribution of wealth": "For when wealth is equally distributed, there will not be poverty; when there is harmony, there will be no problem of there being too few people; and when there are security and peace, there will be no danger to the state."
From this small sample of Confucius' sayings it is clear that even in the Confucian tradition, the power of the ruler is not regarded as absolute and permanent, derived as it were from some divine source, as might be implied by the emperor's title of "Son of Heaven." Rather it is based on the Mandate of Heaven, that is, a self-existent moral law the heart of which is virtue. The future of a dynasty is not secured by some divine right but by the ruler's good deeds to promote justice, economic equality, and peace.
Even before Confucius, Li Ko had defended the right of the people to remove the unjust ruler who has lost the Heaven's Mandate on account of his lack of virtue: "The ruler exists to shepherd his people and rectify their errors. If he, himself, pursues secret debauches and disregards the affairs of the people, the people will not be rectified when they are in error, so that the evil will become greater. If with evilness he supervises the people, he will fall and be unable to get up.... When such (a ruler) comes to his doom, there is no one to mourn him, and of what good then is he?"
Together with the Hebrew-Christian symbol of the reign of God, these teachings of Asian religions should be harnessed to formulate a vision of and a plan of action for justice and peace.
3. The symbol of the kingdom of God is addressed as a challenge not only to the powers that be, as a word of truth to power, but also as Good News to the masses. Pieris has argued convincingly that the vast majority of Asian people are both religious and poor, and that the message of the kingdom of God, if it is to become a life-giving truth not only in but also of Asia, must be presented to the religious poor as its primary addressees. This means that Christian mission today must abandon its focus on the Asian elite, e.g. the mandarins in the case of Matteo Ricci or the Brahmins in the case of Roberto de Nobili. Rather, Christians should announce the Good News of the reign of God first to the common people who are most often poor and oppressed, the minjung. To be effective, however, this proclamation must not be simply a matter of words but a praxis, together with the minjung, to achieve freedom, justice, and physical well-being for all those who are deprived of basic human rights.
Furthermore, Christians should jettison the notion that they have a well-formulated and universally valid theology to teach Asian religious poor and nothing to learn from them. At most, it is thought, they have to "inculturate" the symbol of God's reign in Asia by adapting Christian theology to indigenous modes of thought and local customs. On the contrary, an Asian theology must be a common effort by both Christians and non-Christians to understand what God is saying to Asians today and construct a theology on the basis of their common experiences, religious as well as sociopolitical. In addition to Basic Christian Communities, there must be Basic Human Communities in which Christian theology is incubated and grows. In other words, Christian mission must be both inculturation (including interreligious dialogue) and liberation which are simply two sides of the same coin. It is in this double context that a theology of the reign of God will be developed that is recognizably faithful to the Christian tradition and distinctly Asian.
4. It is in the experience of liberation, I submit, that the gratuitousness of the kingdom of God can be best understood and lived. History has shown that religious practitioners often run the risk of taking their own ascetical efforts as the cause of their spiritual enlightenment and transformation, and therefore of thinking that they earn their salvation through their work. On the contrary, the poor, who are often crushed and dehumanized by extreme poverty, deprived as they are of the most basic things that give a minimal sense of human dignity, will most often receive a crumb of bread or a bowl of rice as a gift from on high or from the compassion of a passer-by.
Of course, once conscientized of their plight as the result of oppression, the poor will eventually make claim to what is rightfully theirs and will take part in actions that bring about their liberation. It is here that the theology of the kingdom of God will help confirm the poor's sense of the gratuitousness of their liberation by showing them that they can achieve freedom and justice for themselves because God has taken their side first, because, as Song has argued, God is not neutral but has made an "option for the poor."
Confucianism has widely been characterized as humanism engaged in moral self-cultivation, with its prescriptions for a good society based on virtue, just government, and harmonious human relations. Confucius' saying that "it is man that can make the Way great, and not the Way that can make man great" is often cited as proof of thoroughgoing humanism. On the other hand, the experience of liberation of the poor in the kingdom of God can convincingly show that human effort and divine grace are not mutually contradictory. On the contrary, as Gustavo Gutiérrez has argued, "gratuitousness is the atmosphere in which the entire quest for effectiveness is bathed. It is something both subtler and richer than a balance maintained between two important aspects. This alternative perspective does not represent an abandonment of efficacy but rather seeks to locate efficacy in a comprehensive and fully human context that is in accord with the gospel. That context is the space of freely bestowed encounter with the Lord." In the kingdom of God as experienced by the poor, human effort and divine grace are not in inverse but direct proportion: the more human, the more divine; and the more divine, the more human.
5. The message about the kingdom of God will be ethereal and abstract unless the signs of the anti-kingdom are clearly identified and named. In Asia, in my judgment, the anti-kingdom is not constituted by non-Christian religions with their alleged superstitions and immoralities, as missionaries thought in the past. Nor is it necessarily Communism with its atheist ideology, as opponents of the "Evil Empire" would have us believe. In some cases, Communism can be the cauldron in which the Asian Christian churches are purified of their unholy alliance with foreign political and economic powers.
Rather the demons who must be exorcised from the kingdom of God are, in Asia as well as elsewhere, the men and women who continually seek to oppress God's beloved people for their personal gains, political and economic. This is true not only in the model of capitalism (Japan) and in the so-called "four little dragons of Asia" (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and South Korea) but also in countries which are still officially Communist but which have begun to embrace capitalism as the new messiah offering a panacea for all ills (Vietnam and China).
Another demon is the pervasive patriarchal and androcentric social and moral system regnant both in the Christian churches and in many Asian countries. Other demons include sex tourism (in Thailand and the Philippines), cheap labor, and ecological destruction. The kingdom of God cannot be built in Asia unless these demons are given names and exorcized.
6. Finally, the nature of salvation, which is the goal of the kingdom of God, must be broached. It is well known that Confucianism does not propose belief in a savior or a messiah who would bring supratemporal or transcendent salvation. Rather it acknowledges the importance of a good teacher who exemplifies his teachings in his own life and who, ideally, should also be a ruler, a sort of Platonic philosopher-king, in order to put his teachings into practice for the good of the state. The ideal is to be the "Inner Sage and Outer King." The Inner Sage is one who has achieved virtue in oneself, and the Outer King is one who has done great deeds for the world. Salvation, if such a word could be used in reference to Confucianism, consists solely in realizing the full human potential in oneself through moral self-cultivation and assisting others to become the gentleman or superior man (chün-tzu).
Perhaps the best way to explain what Confucianism means by "salvation" is
by way of the concept of ta-t'ung (great unity) mentioned in the Li-yün
chapter of the Confucian classic Li-chi.
When the Great Way was practiced, the world was shared by all alike. The worthy and the able were promoted to office and people practiced good faith and lived in affection. Therefore they did not regard as parents only their own parents, or as sons only their own sons. The aged found a fitting close to their lives; the robust their proper employment; the young were provided with an upbringing; the widow and the widower, the orphaned and the sick, with proper care. Men had their tasks and women their hearths. They hated to see goods lying about in waste, yet they did not hoard them for themselves; they disliked the thought that their energies were not fully used, yet they used them not for their private ends. Therefore all evil plotting was prevented and thieves and rebels did not arise, so that people could leave their outer gates unbolted. This was the age of Great Unity.
If Confucianism retrojects this golden "age of Great Unity" into the past, Christianity projects it into the eschatological future under the symbol of the kingdom of God. Despite fundamental differences in their visions of what constitutes the ultimate happiness for humanity, there are many commonalities between the Confucian and Christian construals of the "messianic age": common possession of earthly resources, good faith, universal love, care of the weak in society (the aged, the young, the widows, the widowers, the orphans, the sick), justice, peace, work for the common good, and absence of evil.
It must be mentioned that to this list of innerworldly blessings the Christian faith adds the personal union of humans with the Triune God in grace as an essential element of the reign of God. But this union with the divine must not be viewed as something antithetical to or transcending the earthly blessings. Rather the latter must be seen as "sacraments," that is, instruments and signs of the personal union between humans and the Triune God. In this way, the symbol of God's reign, though not identical with the Confucian utopia of the "Great Unity," can find deep resonances or "thick resemblances" with what constitutes for Confucianists the ultimate happiness for humanity.
The symbol of basileia tou theou retains a profound meaning and relevance for Asians. It is no accident that the Institute for Interreligious Affairs on the Theology of Dialogue of the Federation of Asian Bishops' Conference met in Pattaya, Thailand, 17-22 November 1985, to reflect on the meaning of the kingdom of God for Asia. The meeting issued a final statement which concludes with these words: "Thus we persist in the hope that men and women of faith and good will, strengthened by the experience of common humanity, will join in the building of God's Kingdom, whose completion He alone can bring about."