The Gospel of John and the Religious Quest. Johannes Nissen

and Tao. First, Reichelt’s Christology has a platonic tendency; and his Logos is interpreted more in a Hellenistic way as a transcendent-cosmic principle than straight from its biblical and Old Testament background. This implies a weakening of the incarnation and the historical dimension; the cosmic dimension in Christology becomes more important than the historical dimension. Second, Reichelt’s approach to the issue of Logos-Tao comes through a mystical experience that includes a search for the foundation of existence; and as a mystical experience it also has a sense of the encompassing, divine power behind everything. According to Riisager, Reichelt did what is justifiable and natural when his premises are taken into consideration, that is, he did what we always have to do when the Christian gospel is translated or interpreted into a new cultural situation: we employ words and concepts from that culture and give them a new content. In the time before Reichelt Protestant Christians in China did the same as him, using the term Tao to render the Johannine “Logos.”65

Yet, in other contexts Reichelt underlines the importance of the incarnation. In an article from 1939 (originally presented as a lecture at the mission conference in Tambaram in 1938) Reichelt observes that from the hour of incarnation “we have not only the Logos as a grain of seed or as small beams of light flashing out from the religious systems, but now we have God revealed in His fullness.”66 The uniqueness of the incarnation is given in the closing sentence in 1:18. Here it is said that God the One and Only “has made him known (i.e., the Father).” As Reichelt puts it, he “declared him, not only by giving one side of the godhead, like an Indian Avatara, not only by giving the essence of an inner pattern, as the Buddhists have it in their idea of the Bhuta-ta-tha-ta and the Tatha-ga-ta, but giving in a historical and personal life in all-embracing love and power, the full expression of the heart of God.”67

Many Indian theologians have likewise argued that Logos may be compared with atman and Brahman or similar notions. Matthew Vellanickal considers John’s presentation of Jesus as Logos very interesting in the Indian context. The corresponding Vedic term for Logos is Vac or Vak which means word or wisdom, and is the first-born of Rta (direction/destiny). “The similarity between the ‘Word’ in John’s Gospel and the Vak of Hindu scriptures seems to show that the Incarnation was the answer to the age-long prayer of the pre-Christian religions.”68 The Logos in the thought of John seems to be in the last resort the very principle of all that is and all that lives. It is connected to the concept of atman and Brahman, self and absolute. This principle is in the depths of God and is itself God. These attempts to combine Logos with central concepts like Tao or atman and Brahman are sometimes seen as an expression of syncretism. It is therefore relevant to ask: What is the difference between syncretism and a necessary accommodation?

This question is addressed by the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama in the book Theology in Contact (1975). According to Koyama we must differentiate between syncretism and accommodation. In the new translation of the Thai New Testament, John 1:1 is translated as “In the beginning was tamma” (dharma). Koyama sees this as the insight of an accommodating and not a syncretistic mind. “The word tamma in Buddhist Thailand is as rich as logos in the Hellenistic world of the New Testament times.”69 In the light of this we may ask: Can the purity of Christian doctrine be maintained with the introduction of such a central Buddhist word? Would it not be possible to find a more neutral word? Koyama has three observations in relation to these questions.

First, if tamma is too strong a word and a danger to the purity of the Gospel (and thus expressive of an encroaching syncretism), we must remember that so it was with the word that John himself chose. In both cases it was a dangerous situation. When the Bible was translated in 1967 tamma was used out of the conviction that the power of the living Christ can capture it and baptize it with new meaning (2 Cor 10:5). It is the context of Christ which can baptize such strong words as tamma and Logos. The context is that of grace. It speaks of God’s initiative in coming to the world in the ultimate event of the incarnation of the Son. “How profoundly in the incarnation God accommodated himself to realize his love in the world (cf. Joh 3,16).”70 It is this love which is the substance of God’s method of accommodation.

Second, Koyama asks: How do we maintain the purity of the Gospel in the process of accommodation? He is not alarmed at “In the beginning was the tamma.” But if Jesus the Buddha rather than Jesus the Christ is proposed in the present-day religious context of Thailand, he would be alarmed. Yet he does not immediately condemn Jesus the Buddha as dangerous syncretism. First he must find out whether this suggestion is contextualization or syncretism. Is the concept of “the Buddha” here baptized into the new Christian context? Will Jesus the Buddha mean Jesus the Light in the Johannine sense: “the true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:9)? If so, it is an accommodation, and is too great a risk to take. This line of thought may make sense to a small group of theologically sophisticated people, but it will cause only immense and unnecessary confusion in the minds of both Christians and Buddhists.71

When “Jesus the Buddha” is said with the understanding that “here is no unique revelation in history, that there are many different ways to reach the divine reality,” then it is a straightforward syncretistic affirmation. What is meant is that Jesus of Nazareth plus Gautama will constitute greater universal religious truth than just Jesus or Gautama in separation. The “plus” here is fundamentally different from contextualization, which is a creative way of maintaining purity in the process of accommodation. But Jesus plus Gautama will distort the truth they proclaim respectively.72

Third, in our present discussion indigenization means a theologically informed endeavor to root the contents and expression of Christian theology in a community of different cultural localities.73 Speaking concretely, it means the total process for the emergence of a Thai Christian community, who speak the Thai-language, serve their neighbors in Thai fashion, and who own a Thai Christian theology. Indigenization means “rooting.” The event and message of Jesus Christ, which was brought by the missionaries, must be rooted in India, Thailand, Indonesia, Hong Kong.74

      Logos—Christ Impulse or Incarnated Man

Other attempts to demonstrate the relevance of the Prologue are to be found in various new gnostic interpretations of the Gospel of John. One outstanding example is by Rudolf Steiner who gave twelve lectures on the Fourth Gospel in 1908, originally published in German, and later translated into English. Steiner argues that the very first words in the Gospel “permit of no other interpretation than that in Jesus of Nazareth, who lived at the beginning of our Christian era, a being of very high spiritual order was incarnated.”75 However, Logos as being is seen first and foremost as a principle (“Christ Principle”), or a Force-Impulse. “When Logos became flesh and appeared among men, then it became a Force-Impulse which is not only a teaching and a concept, but exists in the world as a Force-Impulse in which humanity can participate.”76

Christ as a Force-Impulse is closely connected to the understanding of human beings as possessing a free “I-am” consciousness. An “I-am” statement is not limited to Jesus Christ; it is characteristic of all mankind. The words of Jesus in John 8:58 play a special role: “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”77 Steiner comments: “My primal ego mounts not only to the Father-Principle that reaches back to Abraham, but my ego is one with all that