Manejo de residuos sólidos proveniente de las actividades del proyecto

The shortcomings in Newbigin‟s interpretation of the relationship between the reign of God and the present can be seen in its possible lack of appeal to the Indian sensibility. There are no critiques of Newbigin‟s interpretation of the kingdom by Indian theologians, so it is necessary to consider this point in relation to P.

Chenchiah‟s critique of Kraemer‟s, The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World. While Kraemer and Newbigin cannot be identified there are sufficient parallels

between them to justify this comparison, and Chenchiah‟s criticisms of Kraemer focus primarily on the absence of a note of realisation in his writing.

Chenchiah reviewed Kraemer‟s book in an extensive essay that occupies more than sixty pages of Rethinking Christianity in India.247 This is a valuable reflection from on an Indian perception of Kraemer‟s book and ideas, and in him, of one

245 _{G. Hunsberger, Bearing the Witness of the Spirit, 133.} 246 _{L. Newbigin, „Which Way for “Faith and Order”?‟ 130.}

247 _{Pandipeddi Chenchiah, „The Christian Message in a Non Christian World,‟ in Rethinking}

Christianity in India, eds. D. M. Devasahayam & A. N. Sudarisanam (Madras: A. N. Sudarisanam,

1939), 143-196. This is not a term that Kraemer uses of God. Chenciah is using it to express what he perceives as the abstraction that Kraemer has turned God into.

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important strain of Western theological thought. Chenchiah‟s central, and most pointed criticism is of Kraemer‟s emphasis on God‟s transcendence and otherness to the world, which Chenchiah identifies as a vision of God as “absolute.”248

While Chenchiah does at times seem to be reading too much of his perception of Barth into Kraemer, his criticism has some justification. Kraemer‟s key concept of “biblical realism” is intended to point to the otherness of God to man, “that God is God, that He is the Absolute Sovereign and the only rightful Lord. . . In this point consist the originality and uniqueness of the Bible.”249

This concept of “biblical realism” reflected a concern within the European branch, in particular, of the Western missionary movement to avoid any confusion between Christ and other religions. Chenchiah‟s criticism of Kraemer, which discloses what can be seen as Kraemer‟s polemical purpose, is that the true starting point for our conception of God is

Christological. Starting from this position God cannot be conceived as other, but is to be known as immediate, present, as he states: “Our Lord is the measure of the true criticism of the absolute. In his presence we feel the „relation‟ of God to us – his nearness and intimacy . . . . Jesus is not God, the absolute, but God as standing in relation to man – not God who operates vertically and in crisis.”250 Even the key text, of God at Mount Sinai, sometimes used to point to the otherness of God actually shows God as “human, sometimes emotional and has very little of the absolute.” For Chenchiah the whole logic of the incarnation is of God becoming immanent, present to the world, “The Incarnation has its spear head towards creation.”251

There is in this sense an element of harmony and continuity between God and the life of humanity. Conscious of Kraemer‟s intention to distinguish Christ and the religions, Chenciah briefly indicates how beginning from the incarnation can serve this purpose: God in Christ, and through the Spirit, permanently dwells on earth as distinct from Hinduism where this is periodic, to fulfill a purpose; that in Him is the realization “for the first time in history” of human identity with the divine.252

One of the great strengths of Chenchiah‟s critique is that it shows the contextual nature of theology: while for Newbigin Kramer‟s book was “liberating,” resolving particular problems and pressures, from the quite different perspective of an Indian theologian it is

248 _{P. Chenchiah, „The Christian Message in a Non Christian World,‟ 158ff.}

249 _{Hendrik Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non Christian World, 3}rd _{ed. (London: James Clark}

& Co., Ltd., 1956), 63.

250

P. Chenchiah, „The Christian Message in a Non Christian World,‟ 159.

251 _{P. Chenchiah, „The Christian Message in a Non Christian World,‟ 168.} 252 _{P. Chenchiah, „The Christian Message in a Non Christian World,‟ 159, 168.}

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unconvincing. Chenchiah briefly indicates the legitimacy of an Indian interpretation that points to the experience of Christ in terms of harmony, immediateness, presence, and realisation.

Chenchiah, with direct relevance for our consideration of Newbigin, critiques Kraemer‟s vision of the kingdom of God for the lack of any note of the realisation of the kingdom within history. He points, as evidence of this, to Kraemer‟s description of the kingdom as a “transcendental, supra-historical order of life” that “can never be realized in any social, economic, political or cultural order.”253

Chenchiah again points to the absence of any note of realisation as a great weakness in the presentation of the gospel in that it provides no adequate reason for a Hindu to become a disciple of Christ:

What is it you are going to preach to the Hindu and for what purpose are we going to ask him to renounce his faith? . . . For chasing after a Kingdom of God which can never be realised? For aspiring after a Jesus who though born as we are of human mother can never be attained by us? . . . Realisation has been the heart and soul of the Indian view of spiritual life.254

Chenchiah‟s criticism again points to the contextual nature of theology. The background to Kraemer‟s position lay partially in his response to the American Social Gospel movement255 which under the banner of terms such as “realization of the Kingdom of God,” had advocated social reform as the heart of the mission

enterprise.256 Kraemer justifiably accused this movement of a false optimism and made the same point that Newbigin would repeatedly return to that the responsibility of the church is to be a witness to the kingdom, and not to bring the kingdom to realization in the world.257 As valid as these points may be, Kraemer‟s stress, like

253

H. Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non Christian World, 93 in Chenchiah, „The Christain Message in a Non-Christian World,‟ 172. Kraemer makes the point even more forcefully on the following page when he describes the preoccupation of the New Testament writers as being the building up of the church and their lack of any real interest “with the world and its great spheres of life,” and of their “real concern” being “other-wordly, the transcendental Kingdom of God.”

254 _{P Chenchiah, „The Christian Message in a Non-Christian World,‟ 172.}

255 _{The American Social Gospel movement was a blend of theological/biblical ideas and insights from}

the social sciences mixed with American optimism: the kingdom was interpreted as a “present ethical reality” that would be progressively realized within history and society; this realization depended primarily on the transformation of the social and economic environment and only secondarily on deliverance from indwelling sin (Bosch, Transforming Mission, 328ff). The Social Gospel movement developed during the final decades of the nineteenth centry and the early twentieth century.

256

H. Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non Christian World, 47.

257 _{H. Kraemer, The Christian Message in a Non Christian World, 49. Kraemer writes of the church as}

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Newbigin‟s, on the absence of a real, visible manifestation of the kingdom in history may have strength and weight in a Western context, but can be interpreted in an Indian context as a gospel without real content.