Jesus in Asia by R.S. Sugirtharajah
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Eastern Gospels and the Fetish of Language

Most literate people know about the so-called ‘lost gospels,’ perhaps as many as twenty accounts of the life and teaching of Jesus written within one or two hundred years of his death but which weren’t officially approved for inclusion in the New Testament - the gospels of Thomas, Mary, Judas and so on. However many of these were never entirely lost. Some found their way in fragments into the canonical gospels. Others were suppressed but never entirely forgotten.

All of these texts have an important cultural commonality among themselves. Even if they provide contradictory interpretations of the meaning of Jesus, they originate from a similar matrix of religious and mythical background. Babylonian legends, Egyptian concepts of the divine order, the pantheons of the Semitic patron gods, and Greek theology, cross paths to produce conflicting and complementary narratives about Jesus that are specific to what we usually call ‘Middle Eastern’ or ‘emerging European’ culture.

But there is also a very different literature of Jesus that developed entirely outside this culture. Strictly speaking the elements of this literature are not gospels but lives of Jesus written centuries after the canonical gospels. Nevertheless they are authentic interpretations of his life made by and for an audience embedded in cultures entirely divorced from that of their predecessors. Among other things, these ‘Eastern gospels’ demonstrate just how culturally specific the older documents are.

Among the oldest texts interpreting Jesus for alien cultures are those of Chinese missionaries and Persian monks of the 7th and 8th centuries. But it is clear that “the type of Christianization that happened in the West could not be replicated in the East... Chinese and Indian cultures at that time were too powerful to be simply dislodged.” The existing cultures had to be incorporated into the message of Jesus (or vice versa). So the manuscripts mix the teachings of Jesus with contemporary religious thought in a highly creative melange (Western critics of course term this unorthodox syncretism). The emperors of both China and India were not only open to a new religious teaching but also, at least for the Chinese, officially endorsed it: “It is right it should spread throughout the empire.”

Much of the material in these texts is drawn from sources which also underlie the official gospels - the Virgin birth, the guiding star, angelic appearances, etc. But the embellishment is noteworthy - the precise time of day of the birth of Jesus (in Jerusalem not the unknown place of Bethlehem), Jesus’s first words (spoken at the age of five!), and other legendary points of intimate detail which have about the same degree of (un)reliability as those in the canonical gospels. The texts want to tell a believable story but without the Jewish or other cultural baggage which would be merely confusing to their audience.

Much more interesting is that Jesus is not seen as superior or a substitute for other religious teachings but as an amplification or complementary manifestation of the divine. According to Sugirtharajah,

“Jesus is described variously as the ‘King of Dharma,’ ‘Radiant Son,’ ‘Compassionate Joyous Lamb,’ and ‘The Great Teacher.’ The honorifics often used for Sakyamuni (a name for the Buddha that referred to his Shakya clan origins), ‘Honored by the Universe,’ ‘World Honored One,’ as well as, in a more direct and radical move, one of the Chinese names for Sakyamuni, shi-zun, are also employed for Jesus.”

Jesus it seems is considered as Buddha’s brother not a religious rival.

The Chinese texts make it clear that Jesus makes the divine perceptible to human beings. But they reject the idea of his divinity: “The Messiah is not the Honored One. Instead, through his body he showed the people the Honored One.” This is consistent with the so-called Nestorian heresy of the 5th century but the humanity of Jesus is emphasised even more forcefully than in Western Christian circles: “Anybody who says ‘I am a God’ should die.” There is an obvious resistance to idolatry which would make Moses as well as the Buddha happy here.

There is also a strong component of what in the West is called negative theology, the discussion of what God is not, inherited from the Hebrew tradition. But here it is obviously of Buddhist origin:

“The Sutra’s conception of God resonates with the Buddhist idea of the emptiness and the incomprehensible nature of God: ‘The holy One of great wisdom (is so invisible as to be) equal to Pure Emptiness itself.’ In the end, God is beyond all human understanding: ‘God cannot be grasped’ and the Sutra reiterates the invisibility of the divine: “Nobody has seen God. Nobody has ability to see God. Truly, God is like the wind. Who can see the wind?’ The God of Jesus is ‘beyond knowing, beyond words’ so that no eye can see your form or your unclouded nature.’”

While Western theology pays lip service to these same ideas, it then goes on to ignore its own advice by creating rather speculative concepts of the precise nature of the divine.

It is clear therefore that the fundamental presumptions about the character and function of the divine do not correspond with what emerged in Western Christianity:

“The Semitic God has been replaced with the Buddhas or the great invisible emptiness that manifests itself in the Word as Spirit or Wind. The name of the Buddha is called on frequently in the Sutras: ‘When people are afraid they call upon Buddha’s name;’ and it is in the ‘Buddha’s nature to bestow grace, and with this grace comes also a deep, clear understanding that lifts us above folly.’”

Jesus is perceived as a source of grace, that is to say, encouragement and support in time of need, not as an evaluator of worthiness, certainly not as a judge.

This is not a religion of faith and its correlate of doctrine. It is one of trust, particularly one of trust in the natural world. Quoting the Chinese text itself, the author makes the point:

“Consider the earth. It produces and nurtures a multitude of creatures, each receiving what it needs. Words cannot express the benefits the earth provides. Like the earth, you are at one with Peace and Joy when you practice the laws and save living creatures. But do it without acclaim. This is the law of no virtue.”

While this is not incompatible with Jesus’s official ‘lilies of the field’ speech, the emphasis is dramatically different. This is not about plants but the entire cosmos. It is not God who reveals but Nature who demonstrates the good life. And the message comes with an ethical not a theological kicker: ‘take care of each other and the world will take care of you.’

There is no eschatological message in the Eastern interpretations, no Kingdom arriving at the end of time with punitive judgement raining down on humanity. Rather the kingdom is already available within oneself:

“Instead of offering a message with an eschatological dimension, the Sutras offer the Buddhist idea of mindfulness. Jesus’s parable about a house built on sand, for instance, is turned into an example of mindfulness: ‘When we lack mindfulness, we are like someone who builds a house out of ignorance . . . The wind comes and blows it away.’ The principal emphasis seems to be on the transformation of the self through conquering desire...”

There is strong evidence that this ‘inculturation’ of the teachings of Jesus worked rather well, not as a separate and competitive system of belief (such a concept would apply only in the West). But as a synthesising expression of spiritual thought:

“The Jesus Sutras reflect the importance of the ‘luminous religion,’ as the Chinese called it—an intricate, sensitive faith that is supple enough to incorporate Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucian thinking and yet retain its religious identity and distinctiveness.”

In light of European dogmatism, however, such an achievement was considered an unorthodox and therefore evil interpretation.

There is enormously more interesting material in Sugirtharajah’s book, including very intriguing comparisons with later Western evangelical texts intended for Eastern audiences. The entire ensemble he presents makes it clear not only that the fundamental presumptions about the nature and role of religion differ dramatically between the two cultures, but also that the origin and trajectory of development of Western Christianity is dominated by very specific, and largely forgotten, cultural issues.

For example, the meaning of ‘salvation’ in the East is purely a personal matter. It certainly has no relevance to cosmic redemption within a culture which did not consider itself to have immersed itself in a sin requiring expiation (an obvious paradox if the original creation was ‘good’). And while there is a recognition of another, spiritual world to which Jesus is pointing, there is no corresponding denigration of this world implied in the Eastern interpretations. Salvation, to the extent it is achieved, is present here, in us, and around us.

Many more explicitly religious presumptions are implied in Sugirtharajah’s analyses, which also include later responses by Western theologians and expansionary interpretations by modern Eastern thinkers. But I find that underlying these is is what we would now call an epistemological postulate that captures much of the difference of the existential attitudes of European and Chinese/Indian thought. Eastern interpretations of Christianity quite explicitly reject the idea of Pauline faith.

The Eastern interpretations, in line with their view of the inscrutability of God, downplay the idea of Jesus as the Word of God in John’s gospel and do not present their own writings as the literal words of God. God is “Pure Emptiness” which cannot be captured linguistically. To presume that words are capable of defining anything of the divine would have been blasphemous. In the tradition of all mysticism, the interpretation given even in these texts is relativised by the limits of language and human cognition. Jesus is seen as instructive, as holy, as an example of being human that somehow involves divinity. But there is no intimation that believing him to BE anything in particular is essential for spiritual health. The emphasis is on individual spiritual growth and ethics not faith.

And because Pauline faith has been dropped (or ignored) in the interpretation, there is no need for subsequent dogmatic development. The issues of orthodoxy simply don’t arise. Language itself is perceived, in good Buddhist tradition, as an impediment to salvation/enlightenment like any other worldly attachment. It is the Western devotion to language which I think creates the most salient difference to Eastern interpretations. Put succinctly: European Christianity from the perspective of the East has made a fetish out of language and built a religion around words. It needn’t have been so. Alas it has been.

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