Asian Christian Spirituality: Context and Contour

Asian Christian Spirituality:

Context and Contour

In its broadest sense, spirituality refers first of all to the human capacity for self-transcendence actualized in acts of knowledge and love of realities other than oneself. Secondly, and more narrowly, it refers to the religious dimension of life by which one is in touch with the more-than-human, transcendent reality, however interpreted and named (for example, Emptiness, the Holy, the Ultimate, the Absolute, Heaven, or God). Thirdly, and more strictly still, it indicates a particular way of living one's relationship with this transcendent reality, through specific beliefs, rituals, prayers, moral behaviors, and community participation (for example, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, etc.). ¹ There is of course no generic spirituality, untethered from a historical and particular tradition and community. Even when one attempts to construct one's own spirituality, one can only do so by drawing upon various elements of pre-existing spiritual traditions. In other words, the institutional dimension of spirituality is essential to any spiritual quest. ²

Needless to say, Asian spirituality embodies all these three connotations. It is human self-transcendence toward the Ultimate Other within a particular religious tradition. This is also true of Christian spirituality, which is a particular way of relating to God as Abba/Father, mediated by Jesus of Nazareth in his ministry, death, and resurrection, and made possible by the power of the Holy Spirit, who has been poured out upon the community called church. In short, Christian spirituality as relationship with God is pneumatological (empowered by the Spirit), Christological (mediated through and modeled after Christ), and ecclesial (realized in the church). This reflection on Asian Christian spirituality will consider how these three dimensions are realized in the context of Asian societies, cultures, and religions. On the basis of this context I will also delineate the contour of such a spirituality. ³

Spirituality as Life Empowered by the Spirit: Being Religious Interreligiously

Spirituality is essentially life in the Spirit. It is not however antithetical to the body and matter. According to Paul, "spirit" (pneuma) and spiritual (pneumatikos)—from which "spirituality" is derived—are the opposites of "flesh" (sarx), "fleshly" (sarkikos), and "soul-ly" (psychikos), but not of "body" (soma), "bodily" (somatikos), and "matter" (hyle). The Pauline opposition is not between two ontological orders: the incorporeal and the immaterial on the one hand and the corporeal and the material on the other. Such metaphysical dualism did not attach to the use of spiritualitas until the twelfth century. Rather, the opposition is between two ways of life, one that is led by and in accord with the Spirit ("spiritual") and therefore leading to life, and the other opposed to the Spirit ("fleshly") and bringing about death. Christian spirituality then is essentially life empowered by the Spirit of Christ, by which men and women are made sons and daughters of God by adoption and brothers and sisters of Christ into whose image they must be fashioned. Such a life is adorned with the Spirit's gift of virtues (1 Cor 13:13; Col 1:9; Rom 8:21; Gal 5:13; 2 Cor 3:17), fruits (Gal 5:23–24), and charisms of different kinds to build up the Christian community (1 Cor 12:4–11; 28–30; Rom 12:6–8; Eph 4:11–13). ⁴

Because Asia is the birthplace of most if not all religions, and because Christians form but a tiny minority of the Asian population, Asian Christians, more than their fellow-believers in any other part of the globe, cannot live their Spirit-empowered lives apart from non-Christian religions. At first, most missionaries, both Catholic and Protestant, were pessimistic about the spiritual values of these religious ways of life. But the goodness of non-Christians (many of them are holier than Christians!), with whom many Christians share their daily life intimately as family members, give the lie to the church's age-old teaching that...