Theology Today - Vol 49, No.1 - April 1992 - BOOK REVIEW

Jesus: The Crucified People
By C. S. Song
New York, Crossroad, 1990. 239 pp. $16.95.

The author, a Taiwanese Chinese and one of Asia's well-known theologians, is Professor of Theology and Asian Cultures at the Pacific School of Religion at Berkeley and Regional Professor of Theology at the Southeast Asia Graduate School of Theology. Although he had already written several books from Asian perspectives, this volume is definitely written from and toward an Asian context. For this is one volume of a three-volume work under the general title The Cross in the Lotus World. Though the word "lotus" symbolizes Buddhism, the author means by "lotus world" all of Asia in which mainly Buddhism but also other religions, like Hinduism and Confucianism, have been influential for centuries.

As the title indicates, the author discusses Jesus and his meaning and significance for Asia today, especially for the peoples who are still suffering and dying. Quoting many contemporary poems and songs by peoples who are shouting, crying, and praying out of sufferings caused by political and social injustice and oppression, he attempts to explain how Jesus is responding to them and who Jesus is for them. In a word, this is another theology of the people in Asia, like the "Minjung Theology" in Korea. However, Song's theology of the people is not limited to one country but is related to the whole of Asia and the Third World. As he is fluent not only in his native Taiwanese but also in Chinese, Japanese and English, his knowledge and information about Asia, past and present, are so broad that no other Asian theologian can be compared to him.

Moreover, as his own theological education was initiated in Scotland and his theological research and teaching have been continued not only in Taiwan, but in Europe and America for many years, he is academically very much at home with Western theology and scholarship. His biblical scholarship, especially of the Old Testament, is clearly shown in his discussion of the Book of Job and Psalm 22, and his arguments are quite persuasive. He is not comfortable, however, with the traditional Western theology emotionally, psychologically, mentally, or even theologically. "Traditional Christian theology," he writes, "has created an image of a God who is morbidly afraid of human sin." Then, he says, "The God of the church and its theology is basically the God of retribution. On the cross it is this God who wins victory over the God of love." Therefore, "It is the theological experiences of more and more Christians in the Third World under different historical settings in recent years that have made them realize serious defects in the traditional theology of the cross."

Here I see a problem, if not a serious defect of this book. The author asks whether Christians and theologians in Japan have developed "a

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theological eye" different from the "German eye" or "American eye." It reminds me of his criticism of Kitamori Kazoh's theology in his earlier book, Third-Eye Theology: Theology in Formation in Asian Settings (1974). Kitamori's theology of the pain of God has been regarded not only as a first Japanese "theological eye" but also as a turning point of the concept of God in theology after World War 11. Song thinks, however, that Kitamori is still within the theological traditions of the West, giving away his great sensitivity to Japanese spirituality to the theological thoughts that have dominated the Western churches for centuries. For, according to Song, Kitamori internalizes the cross, God's work of salvation, as a conflict between love and wrath within God's own self. Calling this "divine masochism," he says that there is "too much theology here and too little salvation for poor sinners."

My question to Song is related to Hendrik Kraemer's observation that Asian religions and cultures were the "most formidable opponents" and formed the most "unprecedented challenge" that Christianity ever met because they were "anthropocentric" through and through. I hope Song's emphasis on the crucified people more than on the crucified Son of God is not a case of anthropocentrization of theology. I am looking forward to reading the second and third volumes, which may clarify my question.

Yasuo C. Furuya
International Christian University
Tokyo, Japan