NEW INSIGHTS OF ECCLESIOLOGY IN SEBASTIAN KAPPEN’S UNDERSTANDING

NEW INSIGHTS OF ECCLESIOLOGY IN SEBASTIAN KAPPEN’S UNDERSTANDING

Sam Varghese

(To Quote: Sam Varghese, “New Insights of Ecclesiology in Sebastian Kappen’s Understanding,” Master’s College Theological Journal 1, no.1 (March 2011): 60-83.)

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Introduction

Sebastian Kappen is one of the prominent Indian Liberation theologians who talk much about liberation, culture, ecology, etc. His writings and theological thought became one of the prophetic voices of Asia in the last decades of the 20^th century. He was a theological teacher in various seminaries in India and abroad. He was a prolific writer, an author of several books in his mother tongue Malayalam and also in English. His writings are considered as the theological reflections on the Asian reality.

Kappen shows his keen interest in his writings on the Church or ecclesiology. Even though he hailed from the Roman Catholic tradition, his understanding of ecclesia is not confined to the firm frontiers of Roman Catholic interpretation but for the whole ecclesiastical realm. He identifies the church with Jesus-fellowship or Jesus-community, which through it Jesus envisages the unity and liberation of the humankind. But he finds today’s ecclesiology is far from these missions. Instead of that the church maintains its status quo with the capitalism and it is substantiate with its own theology. Kappen calls this theology as the Churchist Theology. This article talks about the criticism of Kappen against the ecclesiology and what he envisions the church as such.

Biographical Sketch

Sebastian Kappen[1] was born on 4^th January 1924 at Kodikulam, Kerala, India. He was born and brought up in a traditional Catholic Syrian family of the Syro-Malabar rite that belongs to the heritage of the St. Thomas Christians of Kerala.[2]  In 1952, he earned his Licentiate in philosophy in Kodaikanal and taught for two years at St. Joseph Seminary in Mangalore.[3] In 1954 Kappen began his theological studies at Pune. Within the constraints of the academic structures and ecclesiastical demands he conformed to the traditional reinterpretations in theology. He was ordained in 1957. After completing the Tertianship, the final stage of Jesuit formation,

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in 1959 he was sent to Rome to do doctorate in theology.[4] His doctoral research was “Praxis and Religious Alienation in the Economic Philosophic Manuscript of Karl Marx”

.

After his doctoral studies, he returned to the Lumen Institute in Ernakulum in 1961, and worked there as the Regional Chaplain of the Newman Association. In 1970, accepting an invitation from Francois Houtart, he went to Louvain as guest professor of ecclesiology.[5] He founded a Centre for Social Reconstruction.[6] While there, Kappen maintained contact with political action groups and started publishing bulletins Anawim and Socialist perspective.[7] In 1982, he started to publish another journal Negation under the title “A Journal of Culture and Creative Praxis”.[8]

Kappen had been visiting professor to the Pontifical Seminary (Pune), Vidyajyoti (Delhi), the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and Maryknoll Seminary (New York). He was engaged in a study of communalism and postmodernism debate till his death on 30 November 1993.[9]

 

1.1 Kappen’s Perception on Ecclesiology

Ecclesiology is the study of the nature and the mission of the church. Kappen perceives church as Jesus-fellowship. As such the church is a people’s movement.  Kappen ousted the traditional conception of church as emanating from the risen Jesus who dwells the fullness of the divinity. This assumption led to identify the church with the Kingdom of God and outside the church only imperfect spiritual beings. Kappen condemns this absolute claim as hypocritical and commented that there may be as much evil in the church as outside of it. This fact led him towards a new understanding of the church. His ecclesiology is basically historical, that is Jesus of history.[10]

Kappen pointed out there are three reasons for this shift in perspective. First, in Judeo- Christian world view, it is history that the revelation of the truth regarding God and man has taken place. Second, the community of believers at different stages of history is in need of a criterion of Jesus of history to judge its validity. Third, the historical approach restores the man

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Jesus to his rightful place in theological thinking and will lay the basis for a new humanism in tune with the self understanding of human today.[11]

Kappen noticed two trends in the church to explain its nature of movement-dominant and emerging.[12] The dominant stream tied down to money, power, and the God of the dead and also through her institutions she is integrated into the capitalist economy. If the church is truly a people’s church, she must have a sense of community. It is born out of memory and hope.[13] Kappen observes that, in India, it has been the Christian activist groups who are committed to the struggles of the poor for bread and freedom on the basis of Jesus’ message, forms the emerging church of Jesus-fellowship.[14]

In other words, Kappen identifies church as a fellowship of disciples. He says it because for him, the new liberating practice Jesus initiated had to be continued in history and extended to the four corners of the world. Hence Jesus gathered around him a group of disciples. Thus was born what we now call the Church. As a fellowship of disciples, the church had its center in Jesus.[15]  It clearly gives the idea that church should participate in Jesus’ mission of social action for the upliftment of the poor and downtrodden in the society. 

1.2 Kappen’s Critique of the So-called Church

1.2.1 Jesus within the Church Dogma

Kappen made a serious criticism against the belief of Jesus within the church dogmas. According to M. M. Thomas, Kappen sees that the picture of Jesus of the Church dogma is one which is distorted and “recast in the cosmic mould of magic myth and cyclic time” with his spirit of ethical prophecy lost.[16] By the end of the third century, Jesus’ message of the Kingdom was spiritualized and Christianity was reduced to “subserve and legitimize Roman power” and Christian Mission since then aimed merely at extending the boundary and communal power of the Church. The social message and historical and eschatological hope of the Kingdom were preserved by dissenting and/or heretical Christian communities. In fact, Kappen interprets Hindutva and its theocratic and hegemonic communalism as Semiticization, even a sort of Christianization, of Brahminic Hinduism under the impact of medieval theocratic Christianity.[17]

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In other words Kappen elucidates “for Jesus could not come to his own within the official Christianity. Dogma reified him; theology reduced him to a sum of concepts: cult degraded him to a god among the many gods.”[18] His visage was further marred and mutilated by Christianity’s alliance with the rulers and the principalities of this world. This state of affairs continuing even today in spite of much radical rhetoric on the part of church leaders. Until the Christian churches undergo a radical conversion to God the task of presenting Jesus in person before the Indian people will devolve primarily upon small communities of committed disciples. These alone can initiate a new exegesis of the Gospels that is unclouded by class interests and dogmatic bias. From them we may expect a genre of writing through which Jesus will speak to the people of India in their own idiom and as one among them.[19] The church dogmas confined Jesus in the four walls of the church and become the stumbling block to the liberative mission or the real vision of the Reign of God.  Thus Kappen criticized the theology which is formulated by the church.

1.2.2 Critic of Churchist Theology

Kappen finds that church had deviated far from the original teaching of the Jesus. The primal focus of the life and teaching of Jesus was the reign of God, understood as the dawn of a new age of freedom, love and the peace born of the communion of minds and wills. Kappen criticized that now the church’s ideology imported from the West and transplanted on our Indian soil.

 For Kappen, true to her internal logic, she became in course of time deeply entrenched in the value system of the dominant classes in India. Kappen asked, is it possible for her now to recapture the values of the Gospels and once again become a prophetic movement? He gives the answer for that to happen, she must be prepared to dismantle her cultic-legal-hierarchal apparatus, give up her secular institutions, end her dependence on foreign money, and throw overboard her theology of legitimating and spirituality of resignation. It is unrealistic to hope that she will do so in any reasonably near future, for the obvious reason that most clergy and laity have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. However, the conditions favourable to such a radical conversion may emerge if a cataclysmic social revolution

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were to overtake the whole of Indian society, which would more or less violently, dispossess the church of her property, money and institutions.[20]

Kappen also argues that the church should learn to read the signs of the times, to understand history in the light of the Gospel and understand that Gospel in the light of history. For him, her (church) theology should not only derive from above but also from below, i.e., from the concentrate life of the people.[21] In other words Kappen explains she should listen not only to the words as contained in the Bible but also to the Word operative in historical situations, events and movements. Such an attempt at revision should extend also to her traditional ethics, especially to the prevailing conceptions regarding private property, nationalization, individual rights and social peace.[22]  

In the opinion of Kappen, the Christian churches/Christianity identified itself with the culture of the ruling classes in India. For Kappen, the ethos prevailing in its religious institutions tend to reflect the values of bourgeois society.[23] He finds that church/Christianity joins hand with feudalism to buttress the forces of capitalism. In the Churchist understanding the right to private property, understand as the right to use and misuse it is considered as sacred and inviolable.[24] The church preaches a bourgeois morality whose basic norm is conformity to the established order.[25]  Kappen criticizes the church leaders’ wont to laud the present form of government as democracy. Kappen understood democracy in reality a government of the privileged classes and is maintained by the use of permanent violence on the part of privileged minority against the mute majority. In Kappen’s view the Churchist theology promote the idea of legitimization for their existence.

Kappen calls the Churchist God (the understanding of God by the church) as Christian Ungod. This is because the Churchist God has given negative conations. Kappen explains it in this way: “The Christian Ungod is a god of ambivalence. He will exhort humans to love one another, while turning a blind eye to ethnic cleansings, genocide and cluster bombing. A jealous guardian of the genital morality of the faithful, he is unconcerned about the immorality of exploitation and injustice. He is all zeal for the fate of

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the unborn, but the born that is doomed to death by the systematic violence fails to move his bowels of mercy. He has invested heavily in promoting the fear of sin in the faithful and works up the same fear to such a pitch of intensity that it kills the humans more than sin itself.”[26] 

 

Some of the characteristics of Churchist theology that Kappen explains as follows:

1.2.2.1 Taming the Divine

Kappen sees that today theology is original of promptings of the Divine are interpreted as to legitimize and promote the interests of the privileged classes or castes. He calls it as ideologization. He says that it is another way faith degenerates into unfaith. He explains this with the example that there is a belief among the Jews of the Jesus’ time that wealth was a sign of divine favour, which had for its corollary that poverty and misery were the just punishment for sin. The belief came in handy for the rich, who could use it as a cover-up for exploitation and means to transform their vices to virtues. Similarly, many Christians today use Pauline concept of equality of all humans in Christ Jesus to pre-empt any struggle against inequality in real life. Thus the Divine that necessarily beckons us to shake off all shackles and march forward to ever more humane existence is tamed and broken in by religion, so that it would from now on serve as the watch-god and watch- dog of the status quo.[27]  In other words Kappen says that the church is using the theology to tame the Divine for its own survival.

1.2.2.2 God: as a Means of Political Power  

For Kappen, the followers of all religions have used God as a means of political power. Christian churches also followed the same path. They must tame the Divine, so that it would legitimize and further their all two mundane interests, whether cultural, economic or political. Kappen gives the example that the original biblical command to subdue the earth was extended to subdue the Divine as well. He further gives some of the instance from the church history. For him, the medieval Christian recast the Cross as the supreme symbol of humans’ No to all forms of dominations. During the Crusades there were massacre of two millions

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Turks, later in the name of God Church burned heretics and persecuted witches and in the name of same God, then Pope authorized the Christian rulers to enslave all pagan people.[28]

Kappen again gives the account that there arose a brood of scribes and doctors of Law, all too willing to legitimize slave trade, and genocide against the indigenous people of America. Nor did belief God prevent the Christian nation of West from waging two world wars or from dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.[29] Kappen believes that using God to mundane interests is the root of sectarianism.

1.2.2.3 The commoditized God

The theologians theologize within the frame work of churches which own immense property and whose economic interests coincide with those of the privileged classes. The system of values operative church institutions and organizations is that of capitalism consisting of private interest, competition, individualism and consumerism.[30]

For Kappen, the Churchist theology believes the God who exists to serve the interest of the rich is a product of mind. As a product of labour- of mental labour in the present case-God easily became a commodity. He calls this commoditized God as the deity. Kappen stated that the deity can, like any other commodity, be bought and sold against payment in money. Thus money, the universal equivalent of all commodities, becomes the equivalent of the deity as well. The moneyed can from now on buy the grace (favour) of the deity.[31] Kappen claims that through the commoditized God the church expands her financial territory and engaged in business.

Kappen criticizes that the church seemed to have attained mastery over the Divine, the Christian theologians reduced it to the manageable concepts i.e. their theo was enwrapped in their logos, to marketable commodities, to the God of rich and powerful. Money became convertible into divine grace and vice versa. For him, it led to ‘the marriage of convenience between the priest and the rich, between the business of religion and the religion of business.’[32]  

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1.2.2.4 Christian Hegemony

Kappen argues against the Christian hegemony of the divinity of Jesus. According to him, once Jesus is equated with God and the church seen as Jesus’ extension in time and space, the way is clear for the hegemony of Christianity over other religion.[33] For him, it raises the hermeneutical suspicion that the equating Jesus with God is a post- paschal interpretation. He says that all that the earliest kerygma claimed was that the power of God was with Jesus, that he was one taken hold off by the divine. The divinity of Jesus Kappen meant that Jesus having been invaded by the Divine to the point of his radiating through word and deed. This formulation leaves upon the continued revelation of the Divine in history.[34] Here Kappen emphasizes that this divine revelation is not the monopoly of the Christian community but for all human community.

1.2.3 Post-mortem Theology

As an authentic theologian, Kappen coins this terminology, thus he calls the churchist theology as post-mortem theology.  This is because, for him, that today’s church carrying out the cult of the dead God. Kappen commented that the church generated the Jesus as God as mute through the Canon. In his words, “the fixing of the Canon as the final and the definitive revelation meant in effect that in and through Jesus had said his last word, and having nothing more to say, retired from the scene. This amounted to silencing the Divine once and for all. A muted God is a dead God.”[35]  Festivals and ceremonies based on this God is ‘necrolatry’. Kappen views today’s so called theology as post-mortem theology, which is dissecting the dead body of this dead God.

Again he criticized that where the cult of the dead God hold sway, the challenges of the living God go unheeded. This explains the silence of the official Churches and their leaders in the face of the colossal problems our country is facing today such as the appealing poverty of the masses, the atrocities on the Harijans[36] the destruction of the tribal communities, communal riots, and bonded labour, the terrorism of the deprived, the culmination of the politics, economic neo-colonialism, cultural invasion from the West, the on-going rape of the collective consciousness by media, the death dance of monotheism of the market and so on.[37]

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1.3 Kappen’s understandings of New Churchist Theology

1.3.1 Paradigm Shift to Living Theology[38]

For Kappen, the Churchist theology tended to invest the church with monopolistic right over divine revelation and equate with her the kingdom of God. Therefore, Kappen states that the time has come to leave behind the Churchist theology in favor of a theology of living God. According to the theology of living God, God is nobody’s private property. God is available to men and women of all times and places.[39] Kappen clearly emphasizes that the need of a paradigm shift from Churchist theology to the theology of living God.

Kappen explains the difference between these two theologies is that the former made conversion a prerequisite for salvation; the latter knows no conversion other than the conversion to which all are called, Christians as well as non- Christians. The former pictured God who appeared on earth two thousand years ago, said all that he had to say once and for all, and left the scene, leaving it to his vicegerents to interpret his word and will for all generation to come; the other sees God continuously at work in history, reveling his will in ever new ways and challenging human beings to decision [sic].[40] Here Kappen challenges the Churchist theology and calls the church for doing the theology of living God which sees the equality of all the humans. Living theology is the reflections emerging from a genuine relationship of human with God.

1.3.2 Ecumenism of Freedom

Kappen envisions that the Churchist theology should bestow the ecumenism of freedom. The ecumenism of freedom seeks to create a universal community in which the different races, castes, cultures and religions will be able to develop each according to its own specific genius and tradition while, at the same time, enriching and being enriched by one another. What it envisions is a union that diversifies and a diversity that unites. It stands for the oneness of all, achieved through the otherness of each. The freedom it promises to individuals and groups will consist in their being recognized by the community as absolute values, in other words, it will be a freedom born of justice and love.[41]

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Kappen wants to a living theology. This vision is the need of today’s ecclesiastical theology. Church in its action, its being and is daily life should always strive to bear witness to be the sign and very self-communication of God to the world to be a sacrament of grace, of salvation, “for God so loved the world.”[42] The function of theology is not simply to define “church” based on scripture and tradition so as to give it a comprehensive image and role in the world as well as a distinctive identity. Rather theology’s role to help the church reform itself in such a way that community, justice, sharing and peace will be expressed at local, national and global levels through a service orientation.[43] The function of theology is to reflect on how the church can mediate the good news of Christ to the world with a proper awareness of the world’s needs and expressions of the good. Gustavo Gutierrez expresses this succinctly: “A theology of the Church in the world should be complemented by a theology of the world in the Church.”[44]

1.4 Kappen’s New Insights of the Church

From the analysis of above criticism we understand that Kappen had different visions about the church. They are explained below:

1.4.1 Church’s Mission

Kappen noted the primary task of the church as disciple of Jesus is to preach the reign of God and to interpret and proclaim God’s will manifested in the situations, events, forces and trends of the world we live. It is to work for the birth of a new humanity in which humans will live for one another, in which the freedom of each individual will be the condition for the freedom of all, and conversely, the freedom of all will be the condition of the freedom of each.[45]  Another task is to drive out the demons. He expressed it is in a mythical term. By ‘driving out demon’ Kappen means that church has to engage the economic, social and political, ideological and other forces which enslave the human. For Kappen, the demons of today are not only power for evil inherent in human freedom but also the sins embodied in social structure, customs, and false casteism, communalism, corruption, prostitution, materialism, etc.  For Kappen, a church that does not fight against these ‘demons’, is nothing less than an institutionalized betrayal of Jesus.[46]

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Another task Kappen promotes is to create harmony or socialism which the message of Jesus found in the Gospel. For that he advocates that the church should take a radical choice against the capitalist system. He says that, “for those who believe in Jesus of Nazareth and in the reign of justice and love, he preached and died for, the time for a radical choice against the capitalist system of values and the economic praxis in which it is embodied, and in favour of a truly socialist future in harmony with the message of the Gospel.”[47] But he criticize that the organized church is not yet ready to make that choice and still governed the values capitalism.

1.4.2 Church is for Liberation

Kappen advocates that the primary task of the church is to work for the liberation of humans. He analyses that Christian commitment to the task of liberation will have to take a revolutionary form in countries like India. Because such countries manifest and long standing injustice and exploitation existing together with an increasingly articulate consciousness on the part of the oppressed masses, of their right to a life worthy of human. For Kappen, it must become both revolutionary criticism and revolutionary action, aimed at the radical and rapid transformation of the existing social order. In such conditions Kappen opines that the Christian shares the prophetic mission: “to pull down and to uproot, to destroy and to demolish, to build and plant” (Jeremiah 10).[48]  In this stand point Kappen sees liberation is an ethical task of the church.

Bonheoffer also affirms that “the Church can only defend its own space by fighting, not for space, but for the salvation of the world. Otherwise the Church becomes a ‘religious society’ that fights in its own interest and thus has ceased to be the Church of God in the world.”[49] So the primary task of the Church is not to stand for its own cause but to witness Jesus Christ in the world by identifying with the people of different cultural settings. For Bonheoffer witness of the Church means “The Church is the Church only when it exists for others.”[50] It can be implied that in pluralistic context the task of the Church is to become a reality that fully involves in the world by raising voices for the entire humanity and by embodying Jesus in the hopes and aspirations of the people.

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1.4.3 Church as the Community

Kappen traced his understanding of church (ecclesia) in relation to the notion of the community. Kappen understands in such a way that church is the community of disciples. For Kappen, Jesus, who encountered God, was gripped by the vision of the human divine community of the end-time.[51] The core of Jesus’ message and life is to the realization of the reign of God, which was already germinated in the present (Mt. 13: 33; Mk. 2: 22; 4: 31-32).  The point of departure of Jesus’ vision from the former prophets was that while they envisaged a universal humanity, whose centre would be Israel and the temple, but for Jesus, the new humanity would have no centre other than God.   The sole condition of entry into it will be preparedness to love one’s fellow human (Mk. 3: 35). In short, the message Jesus made the emergence of a radical new vision of the ultimate possibility open to humankind.[52]

Kappen had the view that the church has an inclusive characteristic. It is because Jesus’ table-fellowship with the social outcaste was in inclusive manner. They will be open to all who look forward to the reign of God and seeks to do his will: “whoever does the will of God is my brother, my sister, my mother.”[53] Kappen christened this fellowship as Jesus- community.

Kappen analyses that “Jesus-community is in solidarity with this community that we are raising the problem regarding the relevance of Jesus for human liberation. The answer too depends, to a great extent, on the self understanding of the same community. For, it is primarily through this fellowship of his disciples that the Jesus of yesterday can become present to the oppressed of today.”[54] 

1.4.4 The Nature of Jesus-Community

Kappen viewed that Jesus-community is distinguished from all other religious community. He opines that Jesus-community is its being centered upon Jesus through sharing his faith and hope. To be centered upon him means to be drawn into a current that carries beyond him to God. They are essentially a community of pilgrims of the new humanity God is fashioned by giving himself to all without any distinction; the Jesus-

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community is only a fragment.[55] A disciple of Jesus has therefore, to accept as brothers and sisters all those to whom God reveals himself in whatever way he chooses.[56]

 For Kappen, the mission of Jesus-community is the same as that of Jesus, namely, to set the oppressed free. To fulfill this mission, it must quicken and sustain human’s hope in the New Humanity as the ultimate point of arrival of all struggles for liberation.[57] Kappen affirms that church as the Jesus-community needs to construct penultimate models to project the ultimate hope[58]; and in the same way affirms the hope, in whatever is true and good in the existing conditions, based on a scientific analysis of the prevailing social system and its ideology.[59]  

Kappen opines that church as Jesus-community carries the significance for the ultimate future of human- whatever that embodies or fosters freedom, love, equality, cooperation and solidarity. It has to structurally aim at unveiling the dehumanizing character of the social system as a whole. In short, Kappen understood Church as Jesus-community means that it is a community in solidarity with and in relation with others and it is not a community opposed or oppressed others.

1.4.5 Church: Jesus-Community of Disciples

Kappen noted that the members of the church are the part of Jesus-community. Therefore, he avows that church is understood in terms of Jesus-community of disciples. Kappen views protest as an important features of the discipleship. He states that   “the discipleship of Jesus cannot but make their-own every form of legitimate protest in the country. To refuse to join in the protest against injustice is to disown God of the poor of whom Jesus proclaimed and join the ranks of his enemies, who make a living by killing the souls and the bodies of humans; it is a practical atheism.”[60] 

Kappen assess that the ecclesiality of community is very important, because it delineates community of the disciples from being a mere sociological entity to form the body of Christ and for encounter the self revelation of the Divine. For Kappen, the new ecclesiality will be a community of those who have encountered the self revelation of the Divine in Jesus. He further

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says that “to encounter the divine Jesus is at the same time to encounter the divine whom Jesus encountered. The adequate expression of the ecclesiality of the community is not that of settled around Jesus and find fulfillment in worshiping him, but that of their marching him to Jerusalem and the cross, in response to the divine call. It finds symbolic consideration not so much in the temple as in the Arc of Covenant marching with the Israelites in their desert days. Being with Jesus means walking with him.”[61] 

In other word, Kappen describes that only Christian who hearkens to the divine call to march forward from slavery to freedom can grasp the original character of the church as the community of disciples, conscious like Jesus, of the mission to preach good news to the poor. That community was truly ex-centric, having its center outside itself in the absolute future of humanhood. Only those had a place in that sought first the kingdom of God and its justice were prepared to contest the forces injustice and oppression.[62]  By church as a Jesus-community of disciple Kappen means that church and its each member has responsible for take care of the poor and oppressed within the community and outside the community. It is the real envision of the Reign of God principle.

1.4.6 Church: Community of Counter-culture

Kappen calls the church for becoming the counter-cultural community. M. M.Thomas noted that Kappen calls the Jesus- tradition to the emergence of counter-culture and alternative society in India.[63] It is because by rejecting the dominant values of his day, which were largely the values of dominant class, Jesus initiated a counter- culture, a prophetic protest, embodying a new vision of the world and a new set of values and norms. That this was his intention is clear from the fact that he sent out his disciples to carry on the same mission which he himself came to fulfill, namely, to proclaim the reign of God and to realize it through individual and collective action (Mk. 3:14).[64]

For Kappen, the church herself must become enfleshed in the culture of India. He feels: “in order to be a subversive creative force in Indian society, Christian must, on the one hand, radically revise its traditional self-understanding and repudiated all complicity with the cultures of the ruling

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castes and classes. It calls for nothing less than the revolution of consciousness within churches.”[65] The notable feature of Kappen’s understanding of counter-culture is its communitarian dimension. His attempt seems to be that of using counter- culture for the integral liberation of the people, which finds its realization in the renewed search for authentic community. Kappen feels that collective and communitarian effort are very vital for the intended social reconstructing of the society to take place.

1.4.7 Church: the Basileic Community

Kappen identifies church as Basileic community because church is called to be the follower of Kingdom values. Kappen gives answer to what type of basic communities does we envisage for India. In his opinion India needs communities patterned not after the churches, which tend to be exclusive and sectarian, but after Jesus’ table fellowship with social outcaste, which was inclusive. Kappen says that these inclusive or open communities must work for the emergence of a new and universal community of love, and favour a theology of living God. They must break loose from all alliance, overt or covert, with caste and bourgeois culture.[66] 

Kappen designates these pluralist communities[67] as Basileic communities. Since its focus is as the reign (basilea) of God to come, one might call it Basileic community. In religious pluralistic societies like India, such communities are necessary mediations between the Jesus-community and the reign of God to come.[68] For Kappen, the ground situation in India warrants such collaborative efforts from different communities. The problem before it created a climate of solidarity in which people of different communities recognize their oneness as members of the human family while respecting each others’ differences, address themselves to the common task of creating a new social order based on justice and mutual concern.[69]

In other words, the Basileic community is the ecumenism on the basis of Kingdom values in which it is sought to create a universal community in which different castes, cultures and religions will be able to develop according to its own specific genius and tradition, while at the same time

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enriching and being enriched by one another. What it envisions is a union that diversifies and diversity that unities.[70]  It means this is not an ecumenism of domination but an ecumenism of freedom.

The subject of the Reign of God is the whole human race.  Alwyn D’Souza points that church is conscious of its own solidarity with humankind and its history by the deepest bonds. For him, humankind has the same calling as church, and that calling is divine. Hence the church’s task of being involved in the joys and hopes, in grieves and anxieties of humans, especially those who are poor or in any way afflicted.[71] In this sense, instead of Basic Ecclesial Community D’Souza prefers Basic Human community. For him the Basic Human Community should be the church’s response as a strategy for evangelization today. 

1.4.8 Church: The Cosmic Community

Kappen has the opinion that church cannot be far away from its cosmological vision. Kappen criticized the less involvement of church in the ecological issues. In his opinion the Christian world view is the main reason for the today’s ecological crisis. For him, in the beginning of the modern age around the fourteenth century when human took the place of God as absolute subject and reduced the world to the object of his/her action. The unity of human and nature was replaced by the duality of the subject and object. The working out of the dualism found its zenith in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with the growth of natural science and technology, which produced mechanistic world view and individualistic self view.

Market forces, consumerism and globalization are the new entrants in India. Growth driven economic model accompanied by greed, selfishness and unsustainable life-style through exploitation of natural resources and the people is the root cause of evils that affects humanity, society and our fragile eco-system.[72] In this context, Kappen calls the church for the Vedic world view of nature. The Vedic conception of nature is the relation between mother and children is one of flesh and blood, affective rather than the rational. It shows our oneness with the nature. The erotic-agapic principle is to be understood as community’s longing for fulfillment.[73] It is

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not a striving for the selfish desire of one’s own individual happiness. It aims at the collective good.

With his understanding of community, Kappen envisages a new spirituality for the future. For Kappen, this spirituality will have to be communitarian, one that will leave behind both individualism (the fragmentation of the social) and scientific rationality (the fragmentation of consciousness).[74]

1.4.9 Church: An Eschatological Community

Kappen calls the church for an eschatological community. Kappen commends that unenlightened enthusiasm for economic development and capitulation to materialism are bringing about the death prophecy in the Indian Churches. For Kappen the development as the humanization of human through the humanization of his/her socio- economic condition is only possible within the frame work of a prophetic hope for the future of humans. Therefore Kappen argues that the primary task of Christianity is to proclaim its hope that human is called to the eschatological community of love, to the classless society of the new heavens and the new earth.[75] It must awaken and sustain hope in the ultimate success of the human venture on this planet. It should, likewise, awaken and sustain the faith that the eschatological community of love is germinal present and mysteriously taking shape already in the realities of secular history.[76] For him, only such a faith, instinct with hope, can release the creative energies of the masses for the building up of the future, and inspire the generosity and courage required for demolishing the structures of unfreedom. It can save humans from the tyranny of the past and the present, and thus ensure their transcendence.[77] 

Kappen’s community aspects of church are the vital point in the theology. The community aspect of the church is discussed by different theologians. Karl Barth opines that the Christian community should exist in the world in the sphere of visibility. He says that “like its Lord, Jesus Christ, the Word who became flesh, the church must be directed ad extra (towards the outside world), visible, like the world and in solidarity with it.[78] Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book, The Communion of Saints describes the church as an interpersonal community: “The community is constituted by the self-

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forgetfulness of love. The relationship between I and thou is no longer essentially a demanding but a giving one.”[79]

 Gustavo Gutierrez depicts the community aspects of church as “to preach the Good news[80] for the church to be a sacrament of history, to fulfill its role as a community- a sign of the convocation of all humans by God. It is to announce the coming of the Kingdom. The Gospel message reveals, without any evasions, what is at the root of social injustice: the rapture of the brotherhood which is our son ship before the Father (sic.); the Gospel reveals the fundamental alienation which lies below every other human alienation.” [81]

From the above analyses, the we try to find some basic understanding of the church to the present world.

Church as the Alternative Community

In contrast to the unjust and oppressive society, the church is challenged to become an alternative community in which God’s plan for a new society will be realized, a community which is free, fraternal and non-exploitative. In the today’s situation, liberative mission becomes the centre of her focus. In the mission, the following challenges should be perceived and thus renew her commitment to work unceasingly as the light of the world.  In short, in Indian context, the church is called to be on the side of the powerless poor, support movements of people for freedom, dignity and justice and to promote and strengthen all the initiatives of people for solidarity and cooperation.

Identification with Oppressed as Integral Part of the Church 

The perspective of Jesus and his action flow from his identity with the oppressed. The church should follow Jesus’ model because of Jesus Christ is the head of the church. In her identification with the oppressed a progressive transformation has taken place. In India, only by being deeply involved in the lives, aspiration, problem and issues of the Dalits and poor can the church fulfill her liberative mission and thus realize her authentic identity.[82] Such identity is the mark of recognition and hope to the oppressed people.

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Solidarity with the Oppressed for Their True Identity

Solidarity calls for identification. By identification with the oppressed and enter in their suffering, the church would radically change her perspective on many issues can make her message more credible. Solidarity helps to see through the suffering, humiliated, sunken and weeping eyes of the oppressed. In the words of Samuel Rayan, “Solidarity with the downtrodden is an essential constituent of the Christian church. It is in choosing to be identified with them that the coming kingdom is discerned, met and served.”[83]

According to Dhyanchand Carr, “The role of church is to prefigure what God has planned for all; to shout aloud what God Is, what God did in Jesus the Christ and how God will bring about the New Human Community and the New Creation. This task of being prototype and task of proclamation involve a lot of struggle (moral, spiritual and intellectual) against the Principalities interested in maintaining the status quo and it demands great sacrifices to be living expressions of the Compassionate Solidarity of God with the Suffering people, the primary pattern of God.”[84] Through this solidarity the church becomes participate in God’s own mission of liberation of the oppressed and the downtrodden.

Church as the Healing Community

The disabled persons and the HIV/AIDS affected persons are the most ignorant people in our society. Under the phrase ‘disabled’ or otherwise ‘abled’ are included people with physical and mental disabilities, such as blind, the deaf and dumb, the paralyzed, and the physically defective and mentally retarded.[85]  Most of them are denied education and employment opportunities. They have no hope in their future. In such a context, the church has the responsibility for reaching out to this people with the message of hope which is based on Jesus’ attitude towards the weaker sections of the then society particularly the physically and mentally disabled persons. Church has to make adequate projects to help them who are voiceless and powerlessness.

Usually the people and the church have a negative attitude to the HIV patients. Most of them are outcast from the society. Denial of their fundamental rights such as housing, health care, education and employment,

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insurance, and right to live is a subtle form of social discrimination. They are the ‘new Dalits’ or the new ‘untouchables’ in India.[86] The theological imperative reiterates that in relation to HIV and AIDS, the church is called to heal and to be healed. To abide by Jesus’ commission to preach, to teach and to heal, the churches are called by God to be healing communities and to take part in the healing ministry in a world that is characterized by brokenness through war, injustice, poverty, marginalization and disease.[87]  Jesus’ earthly ministry was characterized by healing all diseases unconditionally, forgiving sins and breaking the stigma associated with leprosy by touching people with leprosy and restoring them to physical and social health. Jesus called the church for such healing ministry in the society.

Church: the Champion of Justice

Church is a worldly reality for all people irrespective of religious identities, the Christ existing community that exists for entire humanity and the form of Jesus on the earth that engage with the issues of people. Moreover, the church is called to struggle for the people who are deprived of justice in all aspects of life and to be concerned with the issues of wider human community. Therefore the church can be called as the Community of Jesus for Justice.

Conclusion

Kappen makes a tremendous criticism against the present ecclesiology and its theology. He understands that the Churchist theology is nothing to do with the original mission of the church. It is only for maintaining the church’s status quo with the capitalistic structure of the society through which it tamed, commoditized the divine for its selfish motives. It is against Jesus’ Reign of God concept and also Jesus’ idea of church as the community characterized by the equality of all. But it creates the sectarianism and its benefits go to only the certain privileged groups. The church cannot close her eyes towards the Indian reality. The church should follow ortho-praxis rather than its orthodoxy. Kappen calls the church for leaving its Churchist theology and moves to the living theology which works for the service of the whole humanity without caste, class, and colour and gender consciousness.

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Endnotes

[1] Sebastian Kappen: hereafter will be referred to as Kappen.

[2] Sebastian Painadath, “Preface”, Jesus and Culture: Selected Writings of Sebastian Kappen, vol. I (Delhi: ISPCK, 2002), vii.

[3] Franklyn J. Balasundaram, “Sebastian Kappen”, The Prophetic Voices of Asia, Part II (Colombo: Centre for Society and Religion, 1994), 27.

[4] Sebastian Painadath, “Preface,” vii- viii.

[5] Franklyn J. Balasundaram, “Sebastian Kappen”, 27.

[6] Centre for Social Reconstruction was founded in 1977 at Adayar, Madras. It was closed down in 1983.

[7] Anawim contains theological article about Jesus’ mission and its relevance to contemporary situation. Socialist Perspective contains writings from other sources, mostly from non- party socialist authors like Ajit Roy, and C. T. Kurien and so on. Later these two journals closed down.

[8] Franklyn J. Balasundaram, “Sebastian Kappen,” 27.

[9] S. Kappen, Divine Challenges and Human Response, compiled and introduced by Sebastian Vattamattam (Thiruvalla: Christava Sahitya Samithy, 2001), 2.

[10] S. Kappen, “The Jesus Fellowship.” Jeevadhara 23(September-October, 1974): 190.

[11] Ibid., 190-191.

[12] S. Kappen, “Church, a People’s Movements”, unpublished Papers. Manusham: Changanacherry, 1.

[13] Mathew Zachariah, ed., “The Church as the Bearer of New Values,” NCCR XIV/12 (December, 1975): 55.

[14] S. Kappen, “Church, a People’s Movements,” 1.

[15] S. Kappen, Jesus and Society, 93.

[16] S. Kappen,  Religion Ideology and Counter-Culture, 26 cited by M. M. Thomas, The Church’s  Mission and Post-Modern Humanism (Delhi/ Thiruvalla: ISPCK/CSS, 1996), 90.

[17] Ibid., 90-91.

 [18] S. Kappen, Jesus and Culture, 71.

 [19] Ibid.

 [20] S. Kappen, Jesus and Society, 130-131.

 [21] S. Kappen, “Church and the Challenges of Social Revolution of Kerala,” in Vaidikamithram, 3/1 (1969): 42.

 [22] Ibid.

 [23] S. Kappen, Jesus and Cultural Revolution, 53.

 [24] S. Kappen, “Christianity and Indian Development,” Jeevadhara (1972): 57.

 [25] S. Kappen, “Church and the Challenges of Social Revolution of Kerala,” 69.

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 [26] S. Kappen, “Spirituality in the New Age of Decolonization,” 28f.

 [27] S. Kappen, “The Dialectic of Faith and Unfaith,” Jeevadhara, 20/ 116 (May, 1990): 171-172.

 [28] S. Kappen, Hindutva ad Indian Religious Tradition, 65-66.

 [29] Ibid., 66.

 [30] S. Kappen, Jesus and Culture, 90.

 [31] S. Kappen, Jesus Today, 72.

  [32] S. Kappen, Jesus Today, 72.

  [33] S. Kappen, “The Asian Search for a Liberative Theology,” 110.

  [34] Ibid.

  [35] S. Kappen, “Beyond the Cult of the Dead God”, Jeevadhara XIII/135 (May, 1993): 180.

  [36] The term “Harijan” (child of God), originally coined by a Gujarati novelist, Narsi Mehta, and popularized by Gandhiji, refers to untouchables, though used still popular parlance, was resented by Ambedkar and the later militant Dalit activists. Now they have rejected the term altogether because of its implication of social patronage and condescension and also because of the oblique but pejorative reference to “children of god” born to devadasis.          

[37] S. Kappen, “Beyond the cult,” 180-181.

 [38] Living theology derives its name from Living God, Living People, Living Memories and Living     Actions.

 [39] S. Kappen, Jesus and Cultural Revolution, 73.

 [40] Ibid.

 [41] S. Kappen, Liberation Theology and Marxism, 6.

[42] Gerard Mannion, Ecclesiology and Post modernity: Question for the Church in our Time (Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2007), 184.

[43] Israel Selvanayagam, Samuel Amirtham’s Living Theology (Bangalore: BTESSC/ SATHRI, 2007), 345.

[44] Quoted by Israel Selvanayagam, Samuel Amirtham’s Living Theology, 345.

 [45] S. Kappen, “The Jesus- Fellowship,” Jeevadhara, 1974: 198.

 [46] Ibid.

 [47] S. Kappen, “Values in Crisis: A Socio-philosophical Analysis of Indian Situation,” Jeevadhara, 27 (Jan-Feb, 1975): 22.          

[48] S. Kappen, “Christianity as Liberation,” Rally, 47 (Dec., 1970), 13.

[49] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ethics, edited by Wayne Whitson Floyd Jr. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), 63-64.

 [50] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (New York: Macmillan Publishing, 1972), 382.

[51] S. Kappen, Jesus and Cultural Revolution, 17.

[52] Ibid.

[53] Ibid., 73.

[54] S. Kappen, Jesus and Freedom, 150.

[55] Ibid., 151.

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[56] Frankyln J.Balasundaram, “Sebastian Kappen,” 45.

[57] Ibid., 46.

[58] According to Kappen, Hope grows only where chains are broken, barriers overcome and walls pulled down. In his opinion Jesus- community can effectively communicate hope by participating in the day-to-day struggle of the people. Kappen criticized the church’s traditional understanding of the hope.

[59] Ibid., 48.

[60] S. Kappen, Jesus and Freedom, 166.

[61] S. Kappen, Church, A People Movement, 6.

[62] S. Kappen, “Towards an Indian Theology of Liberation,” in Towards an Indian Theology of Liberation, edited by Paul Puthenangady (Bangalore: ITA/NBCLC, 1986), 310. See also S. Kappen, Divine Challenges and Human Response, 83- 84.

[63] M. M. Thomas, The Church’s  Mission and Post-Modern Humanism (Delhi/Thiruvalla: ISPCK/CSS, 1996), 89.

[64] S. Kappen, Jesus and Society, 128.

[65] S. Kappen, Jesus and Cultural Revolution, 19- 27 cited by L. Jayaseelan, Towards a Counter- culture,      44.                

[66] Joseph Prasad Pinto, Inculturation through Basic Communities: An Indian Perspective (Bangalore: ATC,  1985), 238- 239.        

[67] While assessing the prospects of Indian liberation theology, Kappen is of the view that simply transplanting the Liberation theology of Latin America would not be reasonable in Indian situation due to the difference in the contexts. Kappen explained his position, “for unlike his/her counterpart in Latin American, the theologian here has to carry on his search for more relevant theology in the context of  a religiosity pluralistic society where Christian form but a minority. These can effectively act as society in so far as they join hands with like- minded Hindus, Muslims and Marxists forming wider communities. The matrix and testing ground of an Indian theology of liberation cannot be the praxis of closed Christian communities but that of open, pluralistic communities. Cf. S. Kappen, Liberation Theology and Marxism, 17. 

[68] S. Kappen, Liberation Theology and Marxism, 47.

[69] Ibid., 67.

[70] Ibid.

[71] Alwyn D’Souza, “An Ecclesiology in the Socio-economic Context of India”, Searching for an Indian Ecclesiology,” edited by Gerwin van Leeuwen (Bangalore: ATC, 1984), 185.

[72]William Stanley, “ Our Earth, Our Future- ‘Towards a Sustainable Ecological Development’: A Challenge to the Churches, NCCR, CXIX/6 (June-July, 1999): 469-470.

[73] S. Kappen, Tradition, Modernity and Counter-culture, 75.

[74] S. Kappen, Spirituality in the New Ages of Recolonization, 49.

[75] Cf. Revelation 21:1.

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[76] S. Kappen, “Christianity and Indian Development,” in Jeevadhara, 1972: 60.

[77] Ibid.

[78] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, iv., 726 cited by Eric G. Jay, The Church: Its Changing Image Through Twenty Centuries (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1980), 365.

  [79] Quoted in Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (New York: Orbis, 1974), 44.

[80] According to Gutierrez, the gospel is the good news of the presence of God’s love in the historical becoming of humankind.

[81] Gustavo Gutierrez, Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll/New York: Orbis, 1983), 269.

[82] L. Stanislaus, The Liberative Mission of the Church among Dalit Christians, 353.

[83] S. Rayan, “Outside the Gate, Sharing the Insult,” Jeevadhara 63 (1988): 230.

[84] Dhyanchand Carr, The Cross of Christ and Christian Spirituality (Madurai: TTS Publications, 2008), 134.

[85] M. Azariah, Witnessing in  India Today (Madras: United Lutheran Churches in India, 1983), 152.

[86] George Mathew Nallunnakkal, “HIV/AIDS an Ethic of Just Care,” HIV/AIDS: A Challenge to Theological Education, edited by Samson Prabhakar and George Mathew Nallunnakkal (Bangalore: BTESSC/SATHRI, 2004), 22.

[87] Manoj Kurien, “The Quest for Relevance: The Ethical and Theological imperative of the Churches in Response to the HIV/AIDS Crisis, Ibid., 91.