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In his book, The Church and Cultures, Louis Luzbetak tells of an Indian religious who was complaining to a group of missionaries about the mission methods which were being employed in his native India: "You say that you bring Jesus and new humanity to us. But what is this 'new humanity' you are proclaiming? We would like to see it, touch it, taste it, feel it. Jesus must not be just a name, but a reality. Jesus must be illustrated humanly". To this story Luzbetak adds the remark: "And how right on the target he was! All human beings are cultural beings. Jesus must be culturally relevant if he is really to be understood and appreciated. This is a most obvious fact unfortunately only too often overlooked".1

If evil and the sinful were presented as "a world without the sun" among the Khasis of India, or as "dirty water" to the fishpond entrepreneurs of Pangasinan, Philippines; and, conversely, if the good, the delightful and grace-filled as a "rooster who brings back the sun to this dark world" and "clean, fresh water" that enables people to live and be supported by their livelihood, then Jesus, perhaps, would be indeed real to people of these cultural contexts. And would the significance of Jesus not be more intelligible and meaningful to women who are battered or physically abused and who perceive their condition as "being asphyxiated" or strangled (and, therefore, they feel that they are gasping for breath or that they are short of breath), if Jesus and the "salvation" he brings are presented in terms of being able to breathe well?

Christology needs to be intimately linked with the culture, the particular way of feeling, thinking and behaving of a given people. This is important because a recognizable reference to lived experience is the first criterion for the meaningfulness of a given theological reflection. A Christology which is rooted in a culture ensures the intelligibility and relevance of Jesus in that culture. In the past culture has been largely neglected in theology in Asia.

1. Trends in Asia Related to Christology

It was largely colonization and evangelization in tandem that brought and propagated the western understanding of Jesus in Asia. Not only was it foreign to Asia, it was also an understanding which was polemical against non-Christian religions, disrespectful of indigenous cultures and insensitive to the injustices which colonialism brought about.

As a rule, this Christ brought by the missionaries was one which was against culture and religion (Richard Niebuhr). It was at odds with other religions- often viewed as false-which were found in Asia. Although there were exceptions, the general altitude of Christian missionaries from the West was one of opposition. As one missionary to India put it, "The missionaries were sent out to eradicate heathendom in India, not to spread heathen nonsense over all of Europe."2 This foreign perspective on Jesus also significantly diminished its influence and, at times, militated against the possibility of being given a good hearing because it suggested the turning of one's back on one's own indigenous culture. In a way, although deplorable, this was understandable because Christianity has been largely a "potted plant in Asia. ..transported without being transplanted" and, therefore, "viewed by Asians as a foreign importation and imposition".3 And instead of challenging the oppressive and exploitative ideology and practices of colonialism, this Christ legitimated these instead by encouraging people to put up with their suffering for the sake of identifying with the suffering Christ and for the sake of a heavenly reward.

Against this background of the widespread dissemination of classical Christology in Asia and the felt lack of its impact, the Asian churches since the late 1960s have increasingly become aware of the need to root the importance and relevance of Jesus in their respective situations and cultures, which were also religious. As I read it, it was the rediscovery of experience as an essential and constitutive element in theological understanding that provided the breakthrough. Rather than regarding the human situation as just a locus for applying theology what is happening in people and societies is a necessary ingredient in comprehending the faith. Coupled with this consciousness of the importance of the historical in theologizing was the new awareness that culture is not monolithic. Around this time, a shift occurred from a classical way of viewing culture to one which was empirical. There is a plurality as well as diversity of cultures, the Euro-American being only one of them and its assumed superiority is unfounded. Acknowledgment of cultural diversity easily led to the recognition of religions alive in and interwoven with cultures.

A Triple Dialogue in Asia Theologizing

When we survey the Christological reflections produced during the 1970s and the 1980s by local and expatriate theologians in local churches, we notice the many different attempts to interpret who Jesus is and what he means to diverse Asians. One way of categorizing these endeavours is to see them as results of the triple dialogue currently being carried out by Christianity with the poor, the religions and the cultures of Asia. While it may be possible to somehow delineate each of these areas of dialogue, it is important to remember that in reality the three are really intertwined, even if only in an implicit way.

Prominent among the themes which have emerged and gained consensus among Asian theologians is liberation from social injustice, one which colonial Western Christology had generally bypassed and neglected. Expectedly, social analysis is given priority in the theological methodology espoused by most theologians advocating this standpoint. This development surfaced during the 2nd Inter-Continental Dialogue of EATWOT in Seoul in 1999 where an overview of the Christological debates in Asian theology was made.4

The dalit theology of recent years in India exemplifies this trend of liberation. The dalits (from the root word dal in Marathi language which means to crack, open and split), especially the women, are poor and discriminated in society and in the church. They are forced to live separately from the common people, they are barred from using common wells, roads and other common facilities and dalits converted to Christianity have separate seats in the church and separate cemeteries for the dead. Liberation from the dehumanizing caste system in all aspects has been and is the deepest longing of the dalits. Dalit theology provides us with a vivid description of the marginalization and depredation of the dalits who are despised and exploited outcasts within the Hindu caste system. It unveils the ideology both in the hierarchical and the ecclesiastical caste system through social analysis, and articulates the hope and the struggle of the dalits for liberation.

Moreover, Asian theologians have been cognizant of another dimension in their articulation of Christologies, the presence of and dialogue with other religions. For Aloysius Pieris of Sri Lanka "our desperate search for the Asian face of Christ can find fulfilment only if we participate in Asia's own search for it in the unfathomable abyss where Religion and Poverty seem to have the same common source: God, who has declared Mammon his enemy" (Matt. 6:24).5 Thus, the "church must be given time to step into the baptismal waters of Asian religion and to pass through passion and death on the cross of Asian poverty. Until this ecclesiological revolution is complete, there will be no Asian Christology".

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