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Theology
in Thai Operating System |
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One
of the points made in this year's HeRBs is that Protestant theology
in Thailand resides in the church more than in books. As a young
missionary in Chiang Mai forty year's ago, Dr. Kosuke Koyama
discovered northern Thai theology in a variety of informal settings
and labeled it "kitchen theology." If one accepts
his premise that Thai theology takes place in the life of the
church, it becomes clear that the theological medium of the
Thai churches includes sermons, prayers, lectures, conversations,
discussion groups, and a wide variety of other of informal theological
vehicles. Recently, I have had several happy encounters with
Thai "theologians," which I would like to share with
you here. I am not sure that this brief essay conveys any particular
message, other than to highlight the creativity inherent in
today's Thai theological operating system.
The
first of these encounter with Thai theology jumped out at me
in a conversation that I had with a pastor of a church in the
CCT 's First District, Chiang Mai-Lamphun during the CCT General
Assembly this past October. We had gotten into a discussion
on the difference between chitchai (soul) and chitwinnyan
(spirit) in the Western tripartite division of the human person
into body, soul, and spirit. The pastor observed that the word
chitchai, which is sometimes somewhat awkwardly used
to translate the concept of soul in the Western schema, actually
refers to a part of the human body (rangkai) and not
to a separate entity apart from the body. The term is not equivalent
to the Western idea of the soul at all. The chitchai
is, rather, that part of the human psyche that concerns itself
with the search for happiness (kwamsuk). This pastor
sees the chitchai in negative terms as being the part
of us that leads people into immoral behavior. He describes
the chitwinnyan, on the other hand, as being a separate
entity within the human person. He called it a "form"
(rang), which would distinguish it from the body, which
is also a rang. The term chitwinnyan, thus, en compasses
both spirit and soul. He stated that the chitwinnyan
is that part of us which searches for peace (santi).
Jesus in his ministry addressed the chitwinnyan and
not the chitchai. Jesus brings us peace in a spiritual
sense, not happiness in a worldly sense.
Thai
religious thinking generally divides reality into two realms,
the profane and the sacred. The local temple and its monks embody
this division in clear geo-
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graphical
and personal forms. The temple is sacred space. The monks are
sacred per sons. So different are they from the mundane world
outside the temple that monks are sometimes referred to as the "third sex." I was once told that monks are not "people" (
maichaikhon), which means that they are not mundane
persons who live in the profane world. This pastor, thus, reformatted
the tripartite Greek psychology that some Western missionaries
still assume in their work in Thailand today into a Thai mode.
He turned body, soul, and spirit into body and soul-spirit (or,
more simply, body and spirit), where the body is worldly outer
space and the soul-spirit is sacred inner space.
This
pastor is not a person of any note. He graduated from a Bible
school years' ago and does not even have a bachelor's degree
in theology. Yet, he ably restates the inherited Western theology
of the Thai church in terms that make sense in his own intellectual
and religious context. His neighbors of another faith can understand
his theological approach because they share its basic assumptions
concerning the makeup of the human person and its relationship
to religious thinking. The pastor's treatment of Jesus is particularly
striking. He has reformatted Christ, transforming him into a
person who speaks to Thai religious sensibilities. Jesus calls
(Thai) people away from the profane world. He calls them to
a search for peace, which peace can be found only in the realm
of the sacred.
A few
days after my discussion with the pastor, I shared his views
with a younger pastor, a recent seminary graduate of some academic
acumen. He greeted my recitation of that earlier conversation
with a slight frown. Although he agreed that the chitchai
is tied to the body, he felt that the first pastor is too negative
about it and makes too sharp a distinction between chitchai
and chitwinnyan. He feels that they have more in common
than the more senior pastor seemed to think. A third individual,
in another follow-up conversation, also disagreed with the pastor's
model for the human person. This third person went so far as
to state that he simply did not understand the Western three-way
split into body, soul, and spirit. He avowed that there are
just two states, the physical (rangkai) and spiritual
(winnyan), which form one whole person. The difference
is that the body is mortal and the spirit immortal.
Although
these follow-up conversations led to no definitive conclusions,
we should note that the pastor's views on body, soul, and spirit
successfully shifted the
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dialogue from
a Western to a Thai context by reformatting Western theological
precepts into a Thai operating system. Where the third person,
mentioned above, does not understand the Western distinction
between spirit and soul, he did understand the original pastors
distinctions clearly enough to disagree with them.
Some
weeks later, I heard a sermon on Genesis 4 (where Cain murders
Abel), which put that biblical story firmly into a Thai mode-and,
interestingly enough, drew on the concept of chitchai
in the process. According to the preacher, Cain killed Abel
out of jealousy because God rejected Cain's offerings while
accepting those of Abel (4:4-5). The perennial question, of
course, is, "Why did God reject Cain's offering?"
One answer is found in I John 3:12 (TEV), namely, "Because
the things he [Cain] did were wrong, but the things his brother
did were right." Hebrews 11:4 (TEV) provides a second explanation.
The author of Hebrews states, "It was faith that made Abel
offer to God a better sacrifice than Cain's." Our northern
Thai preacher, a theologically trained pastor, offered a third
explanation. God shunned Cain's cereal offerings because Cain's
heart (chitchai) was unclean (maisaad), which
meant that he could not offer proper worship to God. His heart
did not praise and worship God, as it should. This preacher,
also, has reformatted Christian theology into a Thai operating
system. He reads his Bible with "Thai eyes." His sermon
made immediate sense to his congregation, because they too believe
that a clean heart is necessary to faithful worship.
One
need not necessarily agree with their conclusions to appreciate
the theological creativity of these two pastors. Other Thai
Christians find the first one's schema problematic. If we seriously
acted on the stated conclusion of the second that only people
with pure hearts can worship God, there would be no left in
the pews on Sunday morning. What is important is that both of
these Thai local theologians have changed theology's format
from the received tradition of the West into a recognizably
Thai form. The debate as to how useable their particular thoughts
are can now take place in Thai language and thought world.
Herb Swanson
Ban Dok Daeng
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