It may sound strange that we are still speaking of “Indian theology” as something that still has to develop. We have had many books that have charted the developments in Indian theology in the recent decades. The Indian Theological Association has been exploring various topics for over 25 years. But the fact that the Editor of this volume to honour the 100 years of life of Fr. Josef Neuner has proposed to me this title shows that, though theologizing in India has been happening for some time now, and people like Fr. Neuner have been working at it for nearly 70 years, it still seems to remain a marginal phenomenon. The teaching and learning of theology in our seminaries and faculties of theology are still following traditional patterns. The ‘official circles’ make sure to keep the Indian theologians on leash. I think that the need for and the possibility of an Indian theology do not have to be defended any more. This can be taken for granted and I can move on to point to the new directions and areas of an emerging Indian theology.
A Protest
But unfortunately I have to start with a preliminary remark of protest because very recently the efforts of Indian (Asian) theologians to focus directly on God’s self-revelation in the Bible and to respond to it in terms of the Indian context and culture, independently of the mediation of Greek culture and philosophy, has been derided as “false, coarse and lacking in precision”. Rational reflection on the data of the revelation is inevitable and necessary. Various cultures will do this in different ways, since the Word of God transcends all cultures, but can become incarnate in any culture. In the course of history, an inter-cultural encounter is also inevitable. We do not wish to ignore 2000 years of doctrinal and theological development. But a pole of dialogue is different from a norm. The pretension that only Greek thought can be rational, become a “part of faith” and so ‘normative’ for everyone, everywhere and at all times betrays an ignorance of the rational/logical depth and complexities of Indian and Chinese, Hindu and Buddhist theologies.
- Boyd, Robin, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology. Madras: CLS, 1975; England, John C. et al.(eds), Asian Christian Theologies, Vols. 1. Manila: Claretian, 2002; Wilfred, Felix, Beyond Settled Foundations. The Journey of Indian Theology. Madras: University of Madras, 1993; Parapally, Jacob, Emerging Trends in Indian Christology. Bangalore: IIS, 1995; Wifred, Felix, On the Banks of the Ganges. Doing Contextual Theology. Delhi: ISPCK, 2002.
- Jacob Parapally, (ed), Theologizing in Context. Statements of the Indian Theological Association. Bangalore: Dharmaram, 2002
- Amaladoss, M, T.K.John and George Gispert-Sauch (eds), Theologizing in India. Bangalore: TPI, 1986
Besides rationality is not merely conceptual/logical, but also symbolic/interpretative. As a matter of fact, Greek rationality is abstract and limiting and its adequacy is being questioned by contemporary Euro-American philosophies. The following pages will show how theology is moving away from Greek rational categories. I do not think that I need to defend here and now the right and the need for Indian and other cultures to encounter the Word of God creatively in their context. Theology will only be one element of this complex encounter. Let me therefore spell out the new directions in which Indian theology seems to be moving.
The Theology of History
Traditionally, world history was seen in the context of ‘salvation history’ as recounted in the Bible. The creation of the world by God is followed by God’s covenant with Abraham and Moses, preparing for the new covenant in Jesus. This gives birth to the Church which is the beginnings of the Kingdom of God and leads to eschatological fulfilment. Everything else is subordinated to this unilinear history and has to merge with it in order to become meaningful. In India, with the experiential realization that God’s salvific encounter with people is facilitated also by other religions in the which the Spirit of God is present and active, this historical paradigm undergoes a transformation. The whole of history then becomes a complex salvation history. God is reaching out to people in various ways known and unknown to us. God’s reign is happening wherever God is present and active. God’s plan is to “unite all things in him (Christ), things in heaven and things on earth”, (Eph 1:10) till God “may be everything to everyone.” (1 Cor 15:28) The creation itself will be integrated into this totality. (cf. Rom 8:21) Peoples everywhere, with their variety of cultures, ideologies and religions are historical agents of this cosmic process animated by the Spirit of God. The Church is the servant of this historical process. Its specificity is that of Jesus, who emptied himself becoming a servant, offering his life, manifesting in word and deed God as Abba, loving and forgiving and sharing life in abundance, with a special concern for the poor and the marginalized. It is called to be the living memory of Jesus, reaching out to all, and facilitating the emergence of God’s reign in history. It does this in dialogue and collaboration with all people of good will of all faiths and ideologies.
We used to speak of the Church as the symbol of the Kingdom of God. Jesus of course proclaimed this Kingdom and made irt present in his words and actions. But the Church is not the Kingdom. I think that it is better to consider it the memory of Jesus – a living and active memorial. As such it has a special, but no exclusive, relationship to the Kingdom of God. Its task therefore is to witness to Jesus and be at his service in realizing his project of bringing all things together. Dialogue and collaboration with all people of good will is one way of assisting this coming together of the cosmos. This is not merely a religious process, but a holistic one, including all dimensions of life – economic and political, personal and social, cultural and religious. Civil society is the context in which this dialogue and gathering together take place.
4. M. Amaladoss, Beyond Inculturation. Delhi: ISPCK, 1998.
God is certainly leading all things to “fullness in Christ” (cf. Eph 1:10; Col 1:19). But this fullness is what we are hoping for in the eschatological future, based on the assurance that we have received in the resurrection of Jesus, the “first fruits”. (cf. 1 Cor 15:20) In the meantime we are engaged in a struggle for justice in love, in solidarity with the poor, in a world that is largely discriminatory and oppressive in various ways, ready to die with Jesus as a manifestation of our love and commitment. Did not Jesus say: “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends?” (Jn 15:13) The history of salvation, therefore, is not a triumphal march, but a story of suffering and struggle, a way of the Cross. The Paschal mystery of the passion-death-resurrection of Jesus is a paradigm that continues to be lived in history till the final day when God will be “all in all”. The lives of the Christians and of other people of good will have borne constant witness to this. While our hope is strong and alive, our vision of history is not a rosy one of unlimited development. Science and technology are constantly offering us new tools. But they can be used as much for destruction as for construction, depending on the will of the humans. In practice, the ‘construction’ of some seems to lead to the ‘destruction’ of the many – and these need not be seen merely in economic terms. Distributive justice and equality, then, become crucial issues in history.
Searching for God
The Bible tells us that God is active in history. But God is not just historical. I think that this is the crisis that has led to the secularism of modern times. We can certainly seek and experience God in our lives and in the lives of others and in the events of history. But it requires the ‘eyes of faith’. Faith means that our affirmations are not too affirmative, because there is always a negative element or a horizon of ‘unknowing’ underlying it. But we have claimed to know all about God. Guided by Greek philosophy we consider God as someone out there, a ‘substance’ that we can describe. We grow eloquent about God’s qualities. Of course, we use analogy. When we say that God is good, what we should really be saying is that God is ‘infinitely’ good. But we forget that we do not really grasp what ‘infinite goodness’ is. ‘Infinite’ is a negative word that means ‘not finite’. And yet, this negative dimension is forgotten. As I am writing this paper, I see in my room a picture of the Trinity. There is God the Father as an old ‘man’, Jesus on the other side – on the Father’s right hand – as a young person (wasn’t he 33 years old?) and between the two is the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. This is our image of the Trinity. Since the Trinity are three persons it is often evoked as the model of community. But then we also affirm that God is one. God is manifested to us in history as Father, Jesus and the Spirit. From that we conclude that God must be Father, Son and Spirit in Godself.
There is no doubt that we have experienced God in Jesus and as the Spirit indwelling in us. But how do we imagine God. Using Greek philosophical terms we speak of one substance or nature and three persons or ‘subsistences’. But what do we understand by these terms today? What did the Christians in the fourth century understand? They experienced Jesus as divine. Yet Jesus called God his Father. They wanted to maintain the oneness of God. So they said that God is one and three and used the terms ‘nature’ and ‘person’ to indicate the difference. But their implications are merely negative. God is not simply one, because S/he is the Father, Son and the Spirit. And yet God is not three, because there is only one God. The ‘nature’ and ‘person’ in God is unlike any other ‘nature’ or ‘person’ we know. So what do we understand by those terms? Nothing precisely. We have turned these negative affirmations into positive and descriptive ones. What Greek philosophy has done is to take concepts from the natural world, tag on the adjective ‘infinite’ to them and pretend that we understand them. Then we go on using them as if we know what God is. The apophatic tradition, which said that we do not know what God is, was not taken too seriously.
I think that Indian theology can go in a different direction. It is true we too have an apophatic tradition in India. Sankara said that what we can say about God is only neti, neti – not this, not that. But the unknown God is experienced in the human heart/mind. So he spoke of Saguna and Nirguna Brahman – Brahman with and without qualities. Ramanuja spoke of Vishnu who was transcendent, but also near to us through his avatars. What we can learn from this is that God is an unknowable mystery, beyond ‘name and form’. But God also manifests Godself to us in our history. So we can speak about and relate to God whom we experience in our lives. But at the same time we will not project such knowledge on the Absolute. The Absolute is unknowable. But as Creator, the creative Word and the animating Spirit God manifests Godself to us. We can know and relate to this God. God takes a particular human and historical form in Jesus Christ. We can know and love Jesus and in him we know and love God. But all the time we are conscious that what we know and love is indeed God but in a historical, relative and limited manifestation. God, the Absolute, is beyond all this. Our love may reach out to God even in the darkness of unknowing, whereas our knowledge may not. Once we realize that our positive affirmations about God are relative and limited we would not build castles in the air based on those limited concepts. We will not absolutize them. We would respect the mystery – a mystery that we could experience in love, but not express in knowledge. God is the great Unknown! Such unknowing has been experienced in the Indian tradition as darkness or emptiness.
Limitations of our affirmations concerning God are of two kinds. Some of these arise from the limited ways in which God manifests Godself. God is free to manifest Godself in any way and to the extent that God wants. On the other hand, the way we understand God may be limited by our own limited capacities of knowledge and expression. Our selfishness, as resistance to respond to God, can further add to these limitations. So what we know about God is limited by the interplay of two freedoms: God’s and ours.
God’s presence and manifestation in our history is also of two kinds. God can intervene in our history in various ways. The Bible is a narrative of God’s interventions in the history of the people of Israel. We believe that that God – the Word of God – became incarnate in Jesus. God became human. But this manifestation does not make the others meaningless, but rather gives them a new meaning by making them dimensions of a multi-faceted whole. Similarly every group of people in the world may have their own narratives of divine interventions.
Besides such interventions, God is also present in the world as the basis of everything. Theology working with Greek thought, applying concepts like cause and effect derived from the material world, thinks of God Creator as an agent outside the world. Science, looking at the material world as a chain of causes and effects, is not interested in such an outside agent. So this leads to secularism. But the problem may be with the way that we conceive of such a creative agent. The Indian tradition, for instance, thinks of God as within, as the Atman – the Self – whose relation with the world is non-dual (advaitic). God is the antaryamin – the indweller. God is not merely “Our Father in heaven”, but also the “Emptiness” in our depths beyond all ‘name and form’ (namarupa). In this case we must be able to search for and encounter God in our lives and in the world as their infinite horizon.
A Theology of Pluralism
Once we realize the limitedness of our affirmations about God, but their relatedness to the Absolute in a way unknown to us, then we will be open to the affirmations of other religious believers about God that arise out of their own experiences in their history. A pluralism of such affirmations can coexist with a common acknowledgement of the Absolute beyond all these ‘names and forms’. We should neither relativize the Absolute God, nor absolutize God’s relative and limited manifestations and our own limited experiences of God. Religious fundamentalism is the result of the absolutization of the relative.
People accustomed to a Greek-Scholastic way of thinking would consider such perspectives as relativist. In a conceptual-logical universe governed by the principle of non-contradiction pluralism is not welcome. Anyone who speaks of pluralism is accused of relativism and syncretism. If I say that I determine what truth is and that the truth varies according to each person’s perception and perspective it is relativism. Such relativists may not only say that truth is absolute and unknowable, but that the absolute truth does not exist. But I am not being relativist if I say that while Truth is absolute and ‘objective’, my own perception and affirmation of it is relative to the many factors that condition my relation to it. What I affirm is not my subjective creation but my limited perception of objective reality. It is an objective, but limited affirmation. One does not escape such relativism by affirming the universality of reason. The universality of a rational concept is abstract and limited. It is not living reality and its limited perception, which is always conditioned. One can of course pretend to escape such limitation by idealizing concepts and projecting them onto a Platonist world of ‘Ideas’.
Pluralism then is an integral dimension of Indian theology. People with different experiences of God can enrich their experience and knowledge of God through dialogue. This dialogue becomes prophetic when it challenges the inevitable limits of the experiences and expressions of the others. No one experience can set itself as the criterion of truth. Rather, truth will be the convergent horizon that emerges from dialogue which presents to us different facets of one and the same Reality that all are seeking in their own way. Contradictions will only be apparent, looking at Reality from opposed points of view.
5. I have tried out a theology of pluralism in my book Making Harmony. Living in a Pluralist World. Chennai: IDCR, 2003.
Jesus, the Saviour
The centre of Christian theology is, of course, Jesus Christ and the centre of Christology is his work as the redeemer. Jesus died on the cross. The early Christians, being in the tradition of the Old Testament, interpreted it as a sacrifice and proclaimed that Jesus died for our salvation without explaining in detail how the suffering and death of Christ were salvific, though overtones of expiation, punishment and ‘buying back’ (redemption) were not absent, depending on the various kinds of sacrifices that were prevalent in the Jewish tradition. The Greek Church thought of salvation as divinization: Christ by becoming human enabled the humans to participate in his divinity. This view put the stress on the incarnation. But the Latin Church preferred to explain it more legally. It said that Jesus paid for the sins of humanity by his passion and death. The idea that suffering is a punishment for sin was taken for granted. The cross, suffering and death then become central. Further, through our own suffering and penances we too have to pay back for our sin and accumulate merit completing it in purgatory, if necessary. The suffering and dying of Jesus for our sins were not seen as exonerating us fully. Such a perspective on suffering fits in well with the theory of karma in Indian tradition. But this is totally against the image of God as an unconditional forgiving Father that Jesus projected in his teaching and miracles. The story of the Prodigal son is just one example. So an Indian theology will have to find another way of linking the passion-death-resurrection of Jesus to the salvation of human kind. This supposes also that suffering is no longer seen as a punishment. The Bhakti traditions of India also suggest that God’s love can overcome karma without punishment.
In India, Gandhi, through his practice of non-violence, highlighted the fact that suffering, not only imposed, but even voluntarily undertaken, can be transformative in restoring relationship and building community. Non-violence is the other dimension of love and it challenges the oppressor to conversion, thus leading to a social transformation of relationships. In the New Testament we see that suffering can be a manifestation of love and obedience. Jesus says that “Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” (Jn 15:13) Paul tells us that Jesus “humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross”. (Phil 2:8) By his suffering and death Jesus counters human selfishness that leads to injustice and hatred. In this way he gives a deep meaning to his new commandment: “You love one another as I have loved you.” (Jn 15:12) Suffering therefore has a social significance leading to the building up of community. Jesus saves us by showing us a new way being and living in community.
Jesus has not abolished all suffering from the world by taking them on himself. Rather by suffering in solidarity with us he is showing us and enabling us to make it meaningful and creative. Jesus is said to cause our redemption. Jesus does not do so either in some materialistic way through suffering or through a legal transaction by appeasing God through obedience. He transforms us and does so in a human way. We transform someone not by physical intervention, but by our relationship of love. It is love that is transformative, not suffering. Suffering is simply a sign, a manifestation of love. By suffering in solidarity we can transform others too. In a situation of oppression, when suffering is imposed on some by others, the sufferer by patient and loving endurance can humanize the oppressor. S/he can even challenge the oppressor by choosing to suffer. This is the way of ahimsa – of non-violence. This leads to the restoration of community. The saving act of Jesus therefore should not be seen in individualistic terms, but as a social project. It is in this way that God is gathering all things together. God will bless us by giving us new life in abundance. The resurrection of Jesus is the ‘first fruits’ of this new life – a share in the divine life. When we love one another, then God is present there leading that love to its fullness. Jesus mediates God’s presence and action in us – in the community. This is how the early Church recognizes that Jesus was not just another human being like ourselves, but divine.
Jesus, the Christ
The early Christians see Jesus as divine because only God can save, that is, give us the fullness of life. Of course, it was difficult for them to understand how Jesus could be both human and divine. While some affirmed his divinity downplaying his humanity, others defended more strongly his humanity. We need not get involved into technical terms here. The Council of Nicea confessed his divinity, making use of the terms ‘nature’ and ‘person’. While he was One with God by his ‘nature’, he was different from the Father as a ‘person’. The Council of Chalcedon affirmed that he was one ‘person’ with two ‘natures’, divine and human. It did not explain how this is possible, but affirmed that the two ‘natures’ in Jesus should neither be ‘confused’, nor ‘separated’. The two natures were two principles of action. They related to each other in total freedom. It was not as if the divine person-nature simply assumed the human nature and acted through it as a sort of instrument. That is why the third council of Constantinople clarified that there were two ‘wills’ in Jesus, human and divine. But the tendency of the Latin Church has been to ‘divinize’ the humanity of Jesus under the excuse that he was only one person. How one person can have two centres of activity, acting in total coordination in freedom, is of course a mystery. But the mystery should not be solved by collapsing one to the other: the human to the divine. This can be seen in the way many Latin theologians speak about the consciousness of Jesus
Reacting to this tendency, there are some theologians today in Euro-America who stress the humanity in Jesus, seeming to deny his divinity, at least in practice. The Indian theologians are NOT doing this. They are defending the specificity of the humanity, though it is always related to the divinity. They try to distinguish without separating and relate without confusing the two natures. One way of doing this is to assert that, though the human nature cannot act independently of the divine nature, the divine nature transcends the human and can act independently of the divine. The Indians, as well as other Asians, are doing this, not for the pleasure of speculating on the mystery of the two-in-one in Jesus, but to explain how Jesus as divine – the Word – relates to all humans, while as human he relates to the Christians who confess their faith in him, human and divine. Jesus as the Word of God is enlightening every human being coming into the world (cf. Jn 1:9), while as the Word Incarnate he is interacting only with those who are relating to him in faith. Whatever Jesus does, the Word of God does in him. But the power and the extent of the Word of God is not limited to the humanity of Jesus. This is not the place to elaborate these perspectives. But I would like to point out that once again we are not making an effort to explain what Jesus is in himself, playing with the Greek concepts of ‘person’ and ‘nature’. We are trying to understand how Jesus is relating to the humans. We are trying to protect his universal outreach to all humans, while seeking to preserve his special relationship to the Christians who know and confess their faith in him. The relationships are not the same though they may be equally effective, because the divine dimension is present in both cases. Once again, we are not promoting abstract theologizing, but reflecting on the significance of Jesus in a multi-religious context.
Besides these technical aspects we also have the task of discovering the significance of Jesus for us in India (Asia) today. We can do this by evoking various images that make him meaningful in our various living contexts. I have done this in my book The Asian Jesus, exploring images like Jesus the sage, the way, the guru, the satyagrahi, the avatar, the servant, the compassionate, the dancer and the pilgrim. Other images are possible in other contexts. The focus is not on what Jesus is, but what he does and how he relates to us. As different from Greek theology that talks about ‘essences’ in terms of ‘concepts’, Indian theology explores ‘relationships’ in terms of ‘symbols’. We do not object to the Euro-Americans following their way. We only claim the freedom to follow our own way in understanding and following Jesus. We do not say that our way is better; it is different, but more relevant and meaningful to us.
The Church as Servant
The ‘object’ oriented, ‘substance’ based traditional theology looks on the Church as primarily a mysterious reality. It is the Body of Christ and the Temple of the Spirit. Its sacraments are signs and instruments of grace. It is not affected by history or the imperfection of its members, who are but its beneficiaries. It is the beginnings of the Kingdom of God on earth, growing towards its fullness. The hierarchical priesthood protects and guarantees this spiritual structure by teaching the revealed truth and making God’s grace available through the sacraments. But our Indian experience tells us that the Church, however special it may, as a human and social reality, is one among the religions that facilitate divine human encounter. It is made up of fallible members. It is a pilgrim always in need of reform. It is the servant of the Kingdom of God. It is a memorial of Jesus whose presence in history it continues. Because of this God is present and active in its symbolic rites or sacraments. The sacraments and the Church do not have a special mysterious status in themselves. They are but mediations and celebrations of an ongoing divine-human encounter. What is important is this encounter and not the ritual in which it is celebrated. This encounter may also take place elsewhere through other symbols and rituals or simply in life. The affirmation that God is present and active in the sacraments and in the Church does not imply that God is not or cannot be present and active elsewhere.
6. See M. Amaladoss, S.J., “Other Religions and the Salvific Mystery of Christ”, Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection 70 (2006) 8 – 23.
7. Chennai: IDCR, 2006.
An example will make this clear. The Eucharist is the central sacrament of the Church. It is called the source and the summit of the sacramental system. The Christian community is called to love each other and to express this love in mutual sharing and service. Jesus gave the example by washing the feet of his disciples and by sharing his own body and blood as food and drink in the symbols of bread and wine. He asked his disciples to continue this symbolic ritual in his memory. What gives meaning to this ritual is not simply the performance of the rites, but the life of love, service and sharing that the community lives. If this is not there as a context, the rites on their own will be meaningless – even a sacrilege, as Paul points out to the Corinthians. The meaningful life, however, can exist without its ritualization. This is made clear by Jesus when he evoked the final judgement. He will appreciate people for feeding, clothing, visiting and comforting him. When they ask him when this happened, he will say that what they did to the poor and the needy in the community was done to him. The poor then becomes the mediation of divine presence and relationship. What this shows is that the sacraments are not ‘objective’, ‘stand alone’ realities. They are symbolic celebrations of a living relationship between the humans in which Jesus becomes present. In the Eucharist this becomes a bodily presence in the form of food. If the living relationship is not there, the symbolic celebration is meaningless. The living relationship can exist without the symbolic celebration. What is important is life, not the sacrament. The living relationship may be celebrated through other symbols in other religious communities.
This reflection can now be applied to the Church community. We tend to objectify and sacralise the community and its institutional and ministerial structures. These are necessary for the ongoing life of any community. But they should not be objectified and sacralised. What is important is the network of relationships between people, in which God becomes present. It is this network that gives meaning to the structures and not vice-versa. Such a network can exist with or without particular religious symbols, structures and institutions. These are necessary to sustain and support human, social and historical beings. But they are relative and should not be absolutized. What are important are life and relationships. I am sure that this can be worked out in terms of a relational ecclesiology that is not based on essential and irreformable structures. Jesus objected to human-made structures when he declared: “The Sabbath is for the humans, not the humans for the Sabbath.” I think that this liberating message has been forgotten and we have built up impressive ecclesial structures. We are more busy in celebrating the sacramental rituals than in promoting the community of freedom, fellowship and justice – the ‘Kingdom community’ – that makes them meaningful and relevant.
This Kingdom is the centre of history, not the Church structures. The Church is intimately related to this Kingdom as its servant. But it is not the Kingdom, which has a wider presence in human history. The Church is then called to collaborate with all the people and the forces that contribute to the building of the Kingdom. Jesus has called and sent the disciples – the Church – on a mission to serve the Kingdom in the world. The Church has a special awareness of the plan of God for the world, a special motivation to work for it and the support of the Spirit. But God – the Father, the Word and the Spirit – does not limit God’s presence and activity to the Church. The Spirit “blows where it wills.” Hence the need for the Church to contemplate God’s ongoing action – mission – in the world and to collaborate with it, not to pretend to be God’s sole agent.
Conclusion
This vision leads us back to the vision of history with which we started. As Christians we are called and sent into the world by Jesus on mission – to continue his own mission. But his mission and our mission are at the service of God’s mission through the Word and the Spirit. God’s choice of us is indeed a privilege, but a privilege to serve not to dominate and be exclusive. Jesus emptied himself and came in the form of a servant. He has called us to be with him. Jesus is being established as Lord. This process has started with his resurrection and will be complete on the last day when God will make all things new. Then Jesus will be Lord, not only for us, his humble servants, but for everyone and everything. This is happening in ways unknown to us. Let us then savour the privilege of being humble servants of God in God’s kingdom in this universe.
What then is Indian theology doing? It is firmly set in a context of cultural and religious pluralism. While searching for the Absolute it does not absolutize its own current experiences and perceptions of the Absolute. We believe in our non-dual oneness with the Absolute. But we seek to make it a reality of experience. It does not see the incarnation of the Word in Jesus as somehow doing away with this mystery of God. On the contrary, the cross only deepens this mystery further, while the resurrection remains an eschatological hope for us, even with the assurance of Jesus’ own resurrection. We affirm the divinity of Jesus, but also take his humanity seriously. We are moving away from a conceptual way of thinking that tends to make reality into an object. We tend to use symbols that keep our approach to reality open and dynamic. Humans relate to each other and to God in freedom. Life is therefore relational. It is not a network of causes and effects as in the material world. The Church and the sacraments are symbols that become real only in the context of living divine-human relationships. History is primarily the field of God’s activity starting with creation and leading to consummation when God will be ‘all in all’. God has honoured us by calling us to collaborate in the process. But we are still only servants of the mystery.
Owing to historical circumstances we are doing Indian theology in dialogue and controversy with the ‘official theology’ that is still prevalent among us. The Euro-Americans themselves are moving away from it in their own way. Moving through the Enlightenment and modernity – positivism, phenomenology, existentialism, idealism, hermeneutics, etc. – they, at least some of them, claim to have reached post-modern relativistic pluralism. We need not follow in their foot-steps. We are happy to dialogue with their theological conclusions and insights without feeling the need to follow their cultural and philosophical developments and methods. We have to remind ourselves constantly that our companions in theological reflection are not our colleagues in Euro-America, but the Indian people.
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.
The Institute of Dialogue with Cultures and Religions,
Chennai.