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 20th century. He was a theological teacher in various
seminaries in India
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 4th 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 Louvain
Kappen
had been visiting professor to the Pontifical Seminary (Pune), Vidyajyoti (Delhi ), the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium ) and Maryknoll Seminary (New York
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
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
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
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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 Hiroshima
and Nagasaki
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
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
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
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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
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
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
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
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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 India
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
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
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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
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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
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.
[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.
[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.
[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.
[51]
S. Kappen, Jesus and Cultural Revolution,
17.
[52] Ibid.
[53] Ibid., 73.
[54] S. Kappen , Jesus
and Freedom, 150.
[55] Ibid., 151.
[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.
[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.
[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
[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
[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.
