Kosuke Koyama. Water Buffalo Theology:
A Thailand Theological Notebook. Singapore: n.p., 1970.
Published as Water Buffalo Theology. London: SCM Press,
1974. Also published as Water Buffalo Theology. New
York: Orbis Books, 1976. Chapter 1 reprinted in What Asian
Christians Are Thinking: A Theological Source Book, edited
by Douglas J. Elwood, 16-40. Quezon City: New Day Publishers,
1976.
Waterbuffalo
Theology is one of the classic works of contemporary Asian
theology. It charts the theological journey of a Japanese theologian
trained in the United States who discovers that the struggles
of post-War Japanese Christians and the immaculate theologies
taught at Union Theological Seminary, New York City, did not
prepare him to teach Thai theological students or preach to
northern Thai congregations in a way that was meaningful to
them. Waterbuffalo Theology describes Koyama's external
dialogue with the northern Thai context, and his internal dialogue
between Chiang Mai, Tokyo, and New York. It is a tribute to
his sensitivity and emerging wisdom as a younger theologian
that he allowed that context the power to transform his thinking;
it is a tribute to his insights and instincts as a professional
theologian that he saw aspects of the northern Thai context
long ignored before and after his brief few years in Chiang
Mai (1960-1968).
Yet,
it must also be said from the outset that Waterbuffalo Theology
is not Thai or northern Thai theology. It is a foreign
theology done in the context of and in dialogue with northern
Thais. There are at least two clear measures of its alien-ness.
First, the very title betrays it. In northern Thailand, the
water buffalo is a dirty, ugly tempered beast, and it is improper
to compare anything to do with the sacred with it. The Thai
translation of Water buffalo Theology is literally
titled "Children of the Fields Theology", which might
be rendered as "Farmer's Theology" or even "Hillbilly
Theology." It is decidedly not titled in Thai as sasanasadt
kwai (water buffalo theology). Second, while the book has
been widely read and admired outside of Thailand, it has had
relatively little influence in Thailand—except, perhaps,
among a small group of Koyama??s students. One can speculate
on why that might be, but ultimately it seems to me that it
is not written in an idiom that "makes sense" to northern
Thai Christians. They have not experienced some of the theological
tensions within the northern Thai context that Koyama felt so
keenly, particularly the tension between the Thai Buddhist and
the biblical worldviews. Water buffalo Theology
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struggles with the
newness and alienness of northern Thailand to the author, a
struggle northern Thai Christians do not overtly feel. This
is not to say that Koyama's text is irrelevant to the northern
Thai context, so much as to observe that it speaks more readily
to those of us who have come to it from somewhere else.
From
the first page, Acharn "Ko," as his students in Chiang
Mai knew him, forces us to step outside of the "normal"
framework for theological reflection. He makes it clear throughout
the book that theology in northern Thailand takes place in a
complex dialogue with traditional Thai religion and worldview,
especially Buddhism, and with the forces of modernization still
sweeping Thailand today. He believes that God uses those forces
to introduce Thailand to a very different way of looking at
the world, one that begins with Thai traditional faith to face
a more dynamic religious tradition.
Koyama
is not writing a systematic theology that tries to "cover
all the bases," and his reflections provoke as many questions
as they answer. His contention in the early pages of the book
that God used Western colonialism to import the Christian worldview
into Asia is particularly provocative. Koyama claims, for example,
The breath and contents of the
Lord's controversy came contained in the ugly vessels
of colonial rapacity! Through the period of immense
suffering under the militarily superior colonial West,
the East was brought closer to the revolutional controversy
which the Lord initiated. God's providenceandhuman confusion!
This is, theologically speaking, perhaps the most crucial
event to touch the depth of Asian existence and history
introducing the ferment of disturbing theological discontinuity
into the continuous ontocratic culture of the East.
God's saving presence ('the right hand of God') worked
upon Asia through the violent storm of man's exploitation
of his neighbours ('the left hand of God')! (page 3) |
He also states, "Whenever Christ was preached,
the Lord's controversy challenged spiritual self-satisfaction
and social slothfulness of the South East Asian nations with
unavoidable persistence." (page 4) Is this true? How, where,
to what extent? He offers no evidence, no carefully done historical
studies, no contemporary surveys. We have nothing but the bold,
sweeping claim. His characterization of Southeast Asians as
spiritually self-satisfied and socially slothful smacks, furthermore,
of typical foreign missionary prejudices. Were they self-satisfied
and slothful? How does Koyama know?
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We
should note here that this view of the relationship of God to
modernization was not new to missionary theology in Thailand/Siam.
The "old time" missionaries firmly believed that God
used the forces of social and economic change to open the Thai
door for the reception of the Western Gospel. Koyama's view
is more complex; he sees the paradox and the ambivalence involved
in claiming God's presence in modernization—but he still
makes the claim for that presence. In doing so, he betrays a
view of Southeast Asian history that modern day historians will
reject out of hand, namely that pre-colonial Asia was culturally
stagnant and needed an external challenge. He claims, for example,
"Modernization is, in this sense, an 'ointment' for a stagnant
and traditional Asia." (page 46) Koyama, again, is keenly
aware of the brutality and arrogance of Western colonialism,
yet he still boldly holds to this central premise of colonialism
as ointment and the contention that Siam was stagnant and makes
these assertions a central theme in his theology in the northern
Thai context.
One
of Koyama's strengths as a theologian, on the other hand, is
his sensitivity to the complex set of contexts that shape Christian
reflection in northern Thailand. In addition to the interreligious
and the socioeconomic contexts already mentioned, he is also
aware of the northern Thai ecclesiastical context. The northern
Thai church in the 1960s had what he terms a "crippling
minority complex" that blinded it to its own theological
situation and to its "prophetic privilege of being the
minority in this land." (page 6) Although Koyama otherwise
does not mention this context directly, it is clear that the
church's situation in the North influenced his theology. At
one point, for example, he writes,
"When I become a Christian, should I
discard all Japanese 'Whatever is true, whatever is honourable,
whatever is just'? Should I reject them saying that 'whatever
is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just' of
Japan is 'not true, not honorable, not just' in the light
of Jesus Christ? If Christians of any country reject their
own country's 'whatever is true, whatever is honourable,
whatever is just' it is like a person cutting off his
own nose and ears and gouging out his own eyes! If one
rejects 'whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever
is just' of his own culture, how can he—through
what medium—appreciate the wonderful deeds of God
in Christ for him? (Mark 5:19) A tragedy of immense proportion
takes place whenever a community of Christians underestimates,
ignores, and rejects 'whatever is true, whatever is honourable,
whatever is just' of their own community. What kind of
tragedy? Theirs is a 'ghetto' existence among their own
people!" (page 39) |
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Ach. Ko may well have been too considerate to pin the label
of "ghetto" on the northern Thai church. He was surely
aware that the label applied and applies.
Koyama
is also aware of the Protestant missionary context of theology
in northern Thailand. The section entitled, "Aristotelian
Pepper and Buddhist Salt," contains an open letter to Dr.
Daniel McGilvary, the long deceased pioneer missionary to northern
Thailand. The gist of the whole section is that the missionary
message has been largely unintelligible to northern Thais. It
is clear from the whole of Waterbuffalo Theology that
Koyama feels the distance between the message and the people
very deeply. The whole book captures Koyama's struggle to cross
that gap. In the course of his arguments in this section, furthermore,
he writes what may be the most important single paragraph in
the whole book and maybe even the most important single paragraph
on northern Thai theology ever written in English. It is worth
quoting in full,
"Then, too, I have discovered that the seasoning
takes place in the Thai theological kitchen, not in the
broad living room into which missionaries have access.
Their theological activity goes on while they squat on
the dirt ground and not while sipping tea with missionary
friends in the teak floored shiny living room. When I
peep into the kitchen of their theology, the theological
situation I see there is unique. No books have been written
about this situation and no references are available in
the best stocked theological libraries! I must confess
my incompetence in grasping the details of the daring
activities of this kitchen theology. My experience in
peeping into the kitchen is sometimes like watching a
great Chinese chef throwing six different ingredients
into a heated oiled kwali. I can smell a most delicious
aroma and I can see smoke, but I cannot identify the ingredients!
Free theologizing is going on. No authorized 'theological
commission' is watching over the activity. Terribly fragmentary
use of the Bible, not acceptable in any 'accredited theological
school suddenly explodes with enormous energy and answers
their theological needs. This process, I realize, is going
on unconsciously, unintentionally and almost semi-automatically
so far as those in the kitchen are concerned. It is wrong
to say that we must produce an indigenous theology. It
is not necessary to produce one. It is there! Perhaps
what we must the current ecumenical theological discussion."
(page 78) |
Koyama saw what few others have seen, namely that the northern
Thai Christian community has an indigenous theology of its own.
It is an informal theology, worked out opportunistically, unconsciously
drawing on indigenous cultural themes to
44
understand
Christ. One of the things we still lack today is a clear description
of northern Thai theology. That it combines missionary thought
with northern Thai Buddhism and animism is clear. How it does
so, in what portions, and with what results is not as clear.
Koyama himself confesses his own ignorance of the nature of
northern Thai "kitchen theology."
Koyama's
use of the English language is sometimes interesting, sometimes
exciting, and sometimes exasperating. He, on the one hand, inflicts
almost imponderable theological jargon on his readers, throwing
out fancy terms and theological neologisms at whim. The opening
section, "The Lord's Controversy with Thailand," is
an unhappy example. It has meat in it and some challenging thoughts,
but it does not provide an inviting introduction to the book.
Terms like "Thai Anti-Nomadic 'Decay-Ontology" or
even "automotism" (page 15) obscure his meaning more
than they clarify it, which may be the reason that this section
does not appear in the Thai translation.
Still,
at other times Koyama playfully reshapes the English language
in ways that are profound. His concept of "crucified efficiency"
stands the Western drive for efficiency on its head, for example,
demonstrating how God's "inefficiency" transforms
Western efficiency into something effective and truly efficient.
He writes, "The 'crucified efficiency' teaches us, whether
we are lumbering along in the inhospitable country road on an
oxcart, or penetrating into the depth of awesome space, that
the technological efficiency needs to be enlightened by the
sense of the 'efficiency' of the crucified One. Technological
shalom (peace, salvation) must sit in the shalom
feast of the Messiah." (pages 62-3) What a beautiful use
of the English language!
Another
important contribution of Waterbuffalo Theology is
renaming theology in the northern Thai context as "neighborology.
In a brief few pages (pages 84-88), Koyama reorients our theological
thinking to focus on the people around us as being real people
who have real concerns and their own way of understanding the
world. He enjoins missionaries (and, in fact, all of those living
in northern Thai contexts) to sandwich themselves between the
Bible and their neighbors so that biblical realities and the
realities of one's neighbors of another faith are equally real
for us. Koyama makes the crucial observation that neighborology
means that, "Theology has become no longer a private affair
but a matter that involves the
45
community
of men." (page 86) He takes as the biblical linchpin of
neighborology the injunction in Leviticus 19:18 to love one's
neighbor as yourself, rather than the Deuteronomic call to love
God with one's whole being (Deut. 6:5). Koyama insists that
neighborology represents the best way that Christians can share
Christ with their neighbor, writing, "Earlier I have said
that our neighbors in Asia are not interested in Christology
but can be concerned with our neighborology. This means that
our neighbors in Asia are ready to hear our message of Christ
if we put in 'neighborological' language, though they would
reject Christ if we present him in Christological language." (page 88)
There
is far more in Waterbuffalo Theology than can be dealt
with in a single review article. While there are points at which
readers will disagree with Koyama's perspective and or conclusions,
the work is suffused with his lively, intense ability to bring
Tokyo, New York City, and Chiang Mai into dialogue. It is a
theologically bold work, and anyone wanting to "do"
theology in northern Thai contexts really must enter into her
or his own dialogue with Koyama.
David Laird Dungan. A
History of the Synoptic Problem: the Canon, the Text, the Composition,
and the Interpretation of the Gospels. New York: Doubleday,
1999.
Dungan's
History of the Synoptic Problem is one of
those books that prove that an important history book does not
necessarily have to be a good history book. There are numerous
irritating things about the book that might, ordinarily cause
the reader to be done with it rather than plug along. Irritants
include long digressions from the book's subject, some of which
are never justified by the author, and a bothersome compunction
on his part to tell us repeatedly what he's done and what he's
going to do (the "I'm gonna" syndrome), which compulsion
gives the book a self-important tone at times. That sense of
self-importance is reinforced by the constant use of the first
person singular pronoun, I, I, I. Readers are further distracted
by Dungan's penchant for sarcastic attacks on those who hold
opinions other than his own.
So, why
read the book? Because Dungan also manages to place New Testament
studies into the great sweep of Western thought since biblical
times, showing how it changes with the times and reflects the
shifting currents of Western thought. He has written a history
of the interpretation of the Bible that puts it into
46
larger historical contexts, especially for the
modern era. In spite of its flaws, it is an important book.
Well,
two books, actually. In Part One, "The First to the Fifth
Century: Conflict and Consolidation," the author adheres
closely to the subject of the book, namely a history of the
Synoptic Problem. The problem is, why do the Gospels of Matthew,
Mark, and Luke so closely resemble each other in content and
yet diverge in many ways? If Dungan digresses, it is only
to tackle the larger, related issue of why the Bible has four
Gospels instead of just one. He points out that the existence
of multiple Gospels was a source of endless problems in the
early church, one it had to work at persistently to solve.
He brings Part One to a climax with the arguments of St. Augustine,
whose views became the standard way in which Christians viewed
the Gospels for a thousand years.
With
Part Two, "The Creation of the Modern Historical-Critical
Method," Dungan launches into a critical, at times cynical
history of modern thought, the tone of which indicates from
the first that he doesn't like the way post-Renaissance philosophers
and scholars have treated the Bible. His main bone of contention
is with Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), the Dutch-born philosopher
of Portuguese Jewish extraction. The author's sense of the significance
of Spinoza for the history of biblical interpretation may be
measured by the fact that he requires just 130 pages to describe
the first four centuries of that story. In contrast, Chapter
16, entitled "Baruch Spinoza and the Political Agenda of
Modern Historical-Critical Interpretation," runs to 61
pages, by far the longest chapter in the book. His argument
is that Spinoza consciously wanted to destroy the dictatorial,
life-killing political power of narrow-minded religionists and
bigoted clerics, and one tactic he used was to transform the
study of the Bible into a nit-picking exercise in the historical
study of each book, each author. Spinoza thought supposedly
that if he could undermine the authority of the Bible in this
subtle way, he would topple one of the main ideological props
supporting religious intolerance.
Having
named and described in detail his protagonist, Dungan proceeds
to show how Spinoza and those who followed him, being the vast
majority of biblical critics down to the present, have undermined
the study of the Bible by subjecting it to an endless stream
of historical-critical questions regarding, among other things,
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authorship, text, and historical
background. He frequently so overstates the conspiracy theory
he is arguing that the reader tends to discount the whole thing
as almost silly. Yet, there are points that strike home. His
contention that Enlightenment epistemology causes its adherents
to believe that they have god-like powers to judge and understand
the Bible is correct, although one winces at the spite he heaps
on the achievements of the Enlightenment. His argument that
the historical, scientific approach to biblical studies obscures
the central message of the Scriptures is one worth pondering.
His point that Fundamentalist Christians have been as taken
in by the Enlightenment 's destruction of the Bible as have
the liberals is well stated (and persuasive to a liberal, although
surely not to Fundamentalists).
It
is only in Part Three, "Current Trends in the Post-Modern
Period," that the author's agenda becomes starkly clear.
Dungan is a fierce opponent to the current Two Source Hypothesis
of the relationship of the Synoptic Gospels, which holds that
Mark was written first and that the authors of Matthew and Luke
drew heavily on Mark for writing their own gospels. This hypothesis
further argues that Matthew and Luke also used a second common
and now lost source, called the "Q" source. The author
thinks that the Two Source Hypothesis is intimately related
to the whole "Spinozist" (his term) program for destroying
the meaning and authority of the Bible. Without providing the
details himself, he claims that a number of modern biblical
scholars have demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that the
Two Source Hypothesis is riddled with fallacies.
The
book comes to an ironic end. For 300 pages Dungan pans modern
biblical scholarship's habit of falling into Spinoza's trap
and, thereby, ignoring if not utterly destroying the biblical
message. Then, having shredded some 300 years of biblical interpretation,
he closes his book with an angry rebuttal of the Two Source
Hypothesis, a subject that 99.99% of practicing Christians around
the world surely never even heard of! It is as if he's taken
a howitzer to demolish an anthill. Having previously argued
that contemporary biblical scholars devote their attention to
peripheral issues rather than the heart of the Good News contained
in the Bible, he falls into the same trap in a major way.
Even
here, however, the reader benefits in spite of all of the anti-"Marcan
prioritist" rhetoric. Dungan, especially, notes that when
viewed historically the Two
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Source
Hypothesis proves to have been built mostly out of thin air.
He claims that its proponents started out by simply proposing
the possibility that Mark came first and then, without providing
any solid data, repeated the proposition so frequently that
it became an accepted fact without ever having been proven.
This observation rings true at two points. First, biblical scholars
really and truly are prone to this form of argumentation. They,
frequently, have so little sold evidence to work from that they
are forced to build theories, and sometimes, as page follows
on page, those theories magically turn into facts without ever
having been demonstrated. Second, more largely, this magical
transformation of theory into fact plagues the study of the
past in matters small and large. Historians of 19th century
American Presbyterian thought, for example, repeatedly stress
the influence of Princeton Theological Seminary; but few of
them devote more than a page or two repeating the assumption.
None have demonstrated in any detail the reality of that supposed
influence.
Dungan,
in sum, fails to see the accomplishments of the Enlightenment.
He fails to give due credit to the ways in which modern biblical
scholarship help us to better understand the Scriptures as Scriptures.
One has only to think of Walter Bruggeman or of Raymond Brown
to appreciate how important biblical scholars can be for the
rest of us. He fails to convince the reader that he is a fair,
balanced judge who can be trusted. He fails to realize that
one's position on the Two Source Hypothesis is not the ultimate
litmus test of the faithful interpretation of Scriptures—or
that the vast majority of us have no position on which
Gospel came first. Dungan also fails to cast scholarly biblical
studies in its proper place as an academic field, which produces
food for theological and historical reflection. He seems to
think that none of the rest of us out here can pick and choose
what we take from the biblical scholars, whether it is for personal
Bible study or the preparation of sermons or Bible studies.
New Testament scholars may feel swamped by all of the details
of their craft (which Dungan thinks was Spinoza's intention),
but that does not mean that the rest of us feel so intimidated.
And yet,
for all of these failures there is real value in this book.
It raises basic questions about how we interpret the Bible and
whether we give due place to the authority of the Bible. It
alerts us to the way in which the modern Greek text of the New
Testament has been patched together and still perhaps does not
make adequate
49
use of all of the ancient
sources there are to draw on for it. It reminds the reader in
the most vivid terms that 2000 years of history stand between
the authors of the Gospels and us, and a great deal has happened
to their writings in all of those years. They've been miscopied, "edited," translated over and over, contextualized
repeatedly, and the New Testament text we have today never existed
in ancient times at all. Dungan describes the way in which it
has been pasted together over the centuries and some of the
questions that remain about it today.
Dungan's
A History of the Synoptic Problem, in sum, is a strange
book. It is flawed, yet its very flaws force the reader to reflect.
Would I recommend it to those who are concerned about issues
in biblical hermeneutics? Absolutely. For those who enjoy wrestling
with a book, alternately rejecting and then reassessing its
contents, this is a fun book.
A Postscript
Raymond
E. Brown's brief summary treatment of the Synoptic Problem in
his An Introduction to the New Testament (New York:
Doubleday, 1997, pp. 111-16) stands in marked contrast to Dungan's
diatribe against "Spinozism" and "Marcan prioritism."
Brown concludes, first, that "no solution to the Synoptic
Problem solves all difficulties," and, second, that the
priority of Mark in the framework of the Two-Source Theory is
the simplest and still most satisfactory solution to the relationship
of the Synoptic Gospels. Brown's scholarship is widely respected,
and even Dungan himself commends Brown for being one of the
few New Testament scholars not taken in by Spinoza. Brown's
more balanced summary may help explain Dungan's frequently almost
angry, bitter tone. It surely must be frustrating to be so utterly
convinced that one is right about a burning issue in biblical
scholarship, and yet to have the most respected colleagues in
the field disagree. In the end, personally, I must admit that
Brown's brief, balanced summary is far more persuasive to a
non-specialist than Dungan's hundreds of pages of rhetoric.
Mark (almost surely) came first
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