International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018) 416–439 brill.com/ijpt
Reading Karl Barth in Myanmar: The Significance of His Political Theology for a Public Theology in Myanmar
David Thang Moe Ph.D Candidate, Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, KY, USA [email protected]
Abstract
This article pays particular attention to the three themes in Barth’s macro-political theology and their contextual significance for a micro-political theology for Myanmar. First, I explore Barth’s renewed doctrine of political Lordship in response to the tradi- tional doctrine of two kingdoms. Second, I examine his hermeneutics of the dialectical relation between church and state and the ethical role of the church in the sociopo- litical situation in the light of his theological document of the Barmen Declaration against the evil of Nazism and the errors of the church. Finally, I seek to show how Barth’s political theology and liberation theology are convergent and divergent in their synthetic goals of transforming unjust rulers and liberating the oppressed, reforming and renewing the ethnic church, and establishing an embracive and reconciled com- munity in Myanmar.
Keywords
Barth – Myanmar militarism – Lordship – Political Theology – The oppressed
1 Introduction
It is perhaps rather unusual to invoke the Swiss theologian Karl Barth (1886– 1968) on behalf of a political and public theology that is relevant to contem- porary Myanmar. The most recent practice has been to concentrate on the differences between those who argue on the basis of a liberation theology and those who seek a way to nurture civil society in general. At face value Barth
© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/15697320-12341554Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access Reading Karl Barth in Myanmar 417 seems to be an unlikely presence despite his being widely regarded as one of the fathers of contemporary political theology. The situation in life that confronted Barth was a world away from that of ethnic minorities wrestling with matters of identity and rights under a mili- tary regime where the overwhelming majority of citizens are Buddhists. The origins of his political thought are to be found his ten years of pastorate in the Safenwil village of less than 2,000 people (1911–1921).1 The formative years of his political theology was cast against a background of great upheavals tak- ing place on the other side of the world: World War I (1914–1918), the October Russian Revolution (1917), the General Strike in Switzerland (1918), and the rise of Nazism during the 1930s.2 In due course Barth would become the principal author of the Barmen Declaration and the Confessing Church in response to Nazism (1934). Of critical importance in the evolution of his thinking was his Commentary on Romans. First published in 1918 the second edition appeared in transla- tion in English in 1933. Nazism was coming to power. Barth now left behind an earlier reticence and argued that the problems facing Paul in the Roman Empire were similar to those confronting his contemporary Christians. Barth had begun to address explicitly the following kinds of questions: “what is the relation of theology to politics? What is the role of the church in politics? What is the relation of the Bible to culture or the newspaper? What is the preacher to preach?” Those same questions lie behind the task of a Christian witness and theol- ogy in Myanmar today. The military regimes continue to discriminate against the ethnic Christians, especially the Chins, Kachins and Karens because of their ethnic minority status and their religious identity as Christians in a Buddhist majority country.3 The argument is extended to include the common people—Pyithu-dukkha—who share an analogous experience. Pyithu-dukkha is a combination of two Burmese words. Pyithu refers to the 135 racial groups, whereas dukkha means suffering. When the words are com- bined pyithu pyitha then means all citizens of the country. When dukkha is placed alongside Pyithu, the meaning is implied exclusively to the non-ruling
1 Clifford Green, ed, Karl Barth: Theologian of Freedom (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1989), pp. 13–14. 2 George Hunsinger, ‘Toward a Radical Barth’, in George Hunsinger, ed, Karl Barth and Political Politics (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster Press, 1972): pp. 181–234 at p. 224. Bruce L. McCormack, Karl Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology: Its Genesis and Development 1909–1936 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), pp. 61, 184. 3 Kanbawza Win, ‘Are Christians Persecuted in Burma?’ in Asia Journal of Theology, 14:1 (April 2000): pp. 170–117.
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access 418 Moe classes. Pyithu-dukkha refers to the suffering masses of people.4 Dukkha itself needs to be defined in two ways. First, the idea of dukkha as a cosmic reality is comparable to the Buddha’s first sermon on the Four Noble Truths. According to the first truth, dukkha is a cosmic reality of pain. It is similar in this respect to Paul’s use of sin as the cause of death (Rom. 5:12; 8:21–22). Dukkha is also a cause of evil. It possesses a moral sense. It is in this latter sense that the term dukkha will be employed. Just as Hitler causes suffering to the Jews, so the evil- regimes cause suffering to Pyithu-dukkha. According to the second Noble Truth, the cause of suffering is one’s desire.5 It is mistake to see the people’s suffering in Myanmar as a result of their vol- untary desires, however; their suffering is a consequence of the evil desires of the rulers. In Myanmar, a rich country blessed with natural resources, such as jades and minerals, the people’s poverty is the result of the rulers’ sin of omis- sion (the failure to do what they should do) and commission (they do what they should not do). They fail to promote the welfare of people; instead they exploit the Pyithu-dukkha.6 The socio-political oppression is so rampant in so- ciety that dukkha becomes a common spoken term for people to express their daily suffering. Melford Spiro rightly wrote that
Dukkha is the most frequently used term in Burma; it is on everyone’s lips at work and on a trip. For Burmese, as for the rest of humankind, the notion that life involves suffering is not an article of faith; it is a datum of everyday experience.7
Pyithu-dukkha is the point of departure for an appropriate public theology. Its boundaries are set by three theological questions. What is the role of Christian community and other religious communities in the context of Pyithu-dukkha? How should a political-cum-public theology in Myanmar discern the relation- ship between divine authority and political authority? What is the public goal of political theology? Barth’s writings from another fraught context can here serve as a foil. It can do so in three ways. The first is by giving due attention to his renewed doctrine
4 For full account of definition of Pyithu-dukkha, see David Thang Moe, Pyithu-Dukkha Theology: A Paradigm for Doing Dialectical Theology of Divine Suffering and Human Suffering in the Asian-Burmese Context (Lexington, KY: Emeth, 2017), pp. 4–9. 5 Lynn A. De Silva, The Problem of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity (Colombo: The Center for Religion and Society, 1975), pp. 34–36. 6 Aung San Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear (New York: Penguin, 1991), p. 168. 7 Melford E. Spiro, Buddhism and Society: A Great Tradition and Its Burmese Vicissitudes (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982), p. 74.
International Journal of Public TheologyDownloaded 12from (2018) Brill.com09/26/2021 416–439 01:27:14PM via free access Reading Karl Barth in Myanmar 419 of the political Lordship as the ground for his hermeneutics of political theol- ogy. The second emerges out of his hermeneutics to do with the dialectical relationship between church and state and the role of the church in a politi- cal situation8 as shown in the Barmen Declaration. The third is by way of a comparison made with the liberation theologies of Gustavo Gutiérrez and its Asian expression through the work of Aloysius Pieris. How are Barth’s political theology and these liberation theologies interrelated in their common goals of liberating the oppressed and transforming the unjust rulers, reforming and renewing the ethnic church, and establishing an embracive community?
2 With Reference to Political Lordship
Barth took the idea of Christ’s Lordship as an organizing principle for his politi- cal theology. It has been argued by Jürgen Moltmann (among others) that here he is indebted, by way of critique and appropriation, to Martin Luther. For the sake a theology relevant to the situation in Myanmar the difference between their renderings of the doctrine two kingdoms within which Lordship is em- bedded is critical. According to Luther “[t]here are two kingdoms—one is the kingdom of God, the other is the kingdom of the world.”9 His doctrine has its theological origin in a Jewish apocalyptic conflict between God and the devil, between Cain and Abel and between the righteous and unrighteous. Luther declared that “[w]e must divide Adam’s children and all people into two parts. The first those righteous belong to Christ and the rest unrighteous those who belong to the kingdom of the world.”10 His theory of the two kingdoms tended towards eschatology and lent itself to a separation between church and state. For Luther this doctrine of the two kingdoms provided for the spiritual rule of God and the secular rule of the world / devil. In a spiritual kingdom, God provides eternal salvation and grace rules; in a secular kingdom, the state rules for the temporary welfare through the sword.11 Barth assumed that the Reformation ideas of the two kingdoms were liable to create too much of a separation between the two spheres of God’s rule and
8 Hunsinger, “Toward a Radical Barth,” p. 181. 9 Jaroslav Pelikan and Helmut Lehman eds, Luther’s Works, vol. 46. (St. Louis, MO: Concordia, 1955–1968), pp. 69–70. 10 Walter I. Brandt ed, Luther’s Works, vol. 45 (Philadelphia, PA: Muhlenberg Press, 1962), p. 91. See also Heiko A. Oberman, Luther, Man Between God and the Devil, trans. Eileen Walliser-Schwarzbart (New Haven: CT: Yale University Press, 1989). 11 Brandt, Luther’s Works, pp. 91–92. See also, Moltmann, On Human Dignity, p. 68.
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access 420 Moe distance Christ from the state. Barth instead formulated a confession of uni- versal Lordship from the perspective of Christ the victor. For Barth the two kingdoms theory was possible only in the context of the Fall before God’s re- demption. The world raised itself in rebellion against God, and the devil has become lord of this world. But the world is still God’s creation that He did not let it go to the eternal rule of the devil. By His faithfulness, God gracefully re- deemed it through the humiliation and exaltation of Christ (Phil. 2:6–11).12 The cross is the political conflict in which Christ vanquished demonic powers in the resurrection, and so there is no longer the border between two kingdoms. The world is no longer subject to the demonic rulers. It is reconciled to God, and is under the Lord.13 That confession is testified to by Matthew 28:18—“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18). As a consequence Barth pro- fessed three core Christological themes: “Christ is the victor (Christological eschatology); Christ is Pantocrator or reconciler (universal Christology) (Col. 1:16); and Christological ethics (the politics of discipleship in socio-political sphere).”14 Barth thereupon described Christ’s universal Lordship with the po- litical concepts of justice and freedom. The question, who is our Lord, becomes a politico-ethical question. Barth duly concluded that “[p]olitical ethics is not centered in knowing what is good but in knowing who is our Lord.”15 Through Christ’s victory a new age has been inaugurated but the old age re- mains until Christ’s Parousia. We are now living in the new age in the midst of the old. Living in this apocalyptic world of new age and old age, Barth claimed that “humans always have a lord—either evil powers or the Lordship of Christ. Human action is determined by answering the question, who is the real Lord of our existence or whose slave are we?”16 The imperial lordship of humans over humans is an evil. Barth resisted any concept of Christ’s Lordship that permits a parallel structure of human domi- nation, whereby some persons excise lordship over others—e.g. the powerful over the weak, Hitler over the ethnic Jews, the Burman regimes over the civil- ians and the ethnic minorities. Barth reminded us that God does not call us to
12 Robert E. Hood, Contemporary Political Orders and Christ: Karl Barth’s Christology and Political Praxis, (Allison Park, PA: Pickwick Publications, 1984), 102. See also Moltmann, On Human Dignity, p. 66. 13 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.2, eds, G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1958), p. 20. 14 Ibid., p. 86. 15 Ibid. 16 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Vol. II.2, eds, G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957), p. 5.
International Journal of Public TheologyDownloaded 12from (2018) Brill.com09/26/2021 416–439 01:27:14PM via free access Reading Karl Barth in Myanmar 421 be lords over our neighbors only Christ is Lord of all humans. Christ’s Lordship prohibits any confusion between divine Lordship and humans’ socio-political lordship. The Lordship of Christ is not a kind of Caesarian domination, but subverts all Caesarians.17 Humanity’s illegitimate lordship over the other indicates Barth’s definition of sin. Barth spoke of “pride as sin—pride is exalting oneself to be like God or master.”18 When German Christians exalted Hitler as bringing salvation to Germany and demanded that the Protestant churches should cooperate in na- tional renewal under his powerful leadership, Barth strongly resisted through the theses I and II of the 1934 Barmen Declaration.19 The first rejected the German-heresy that said: “Christ for the Soul, the people for Hitler.” Thesis II concluded that Christ is Lord over the universe. Anyone who wants to rule the world dictatorially is a friend of the devil and a foe of Christ, for only Christ politically rules the whole world in justice and peace.20 With regards to the matter of political lordship in the context of Myanmar there are several steps to negotiate. From this reading of Barth the first step depends upon an analogy of correspondence. It is assumed that Barth’s re- sponse to the social catastrophes of Hitler can be viewed as being equivalent to the dictatorial lordship of the military in Myanmar. That then needs to be set alongside cultural understandings of sin. The distinction can be made be- tween a missionary and a liberationist perspective. Let me explain by way of a common response. When Christian missionaries ask Buddhists to confess their sin and accept Jesus as a Saviour, their response is that “we didn’t kill anyone, why dare you call us sinners?”21 The strength of this approach is that it bears witness to the salvation of Christ in terms of an emphasis on forgiveness (Rom. 5:10); its weakness is its capacity to mediate the gospel of forgiveness as ‘bad news for the oppressed’ and ‘good news’ for the oppressors. It becomes possible for the oppressors to take God’s forgiveness for granted and continue to inflict injustice. From the perspective of the Pyithu- dukkha, a political theology in Myanmar must focus on seeing sin an immoral act of militarism, oppression and discrimination.
17 Green, ed, Barth, p. 149. 18 Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.2, p. 403. 19 Green, ed, Barth, p. 149. 20 Quoted in Moltmann, On Human Dignity, pp. 82–84. 21 Simon Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology: Thinking the Faith from the Ground Up (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 2014), pp. 80–81. See also David Thang Moe, ‘Sin and Evil in Christian and Buddhist Perspectives: A Quest for Theodicy’, in Asia Journal of Theology, 29:1. (April 2015), pp. 22–46.
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access 422 Moe
The liberationist understanding of sin is similar to a Buddhist concept of immorality. Both Christians and Buddhists believe the failure to uphold pro- priety is immoral. In the context of the Pyithu-dukkha sin needs to be defined as domination.22 Buddhism possesses an understanding of human rights and dignity. It is established in the Buddhist principle of self-salvation and nonvio- lence. Every individual has freedom of self-autonomy and self-duties for one’s salvation.23 It is not right to violate the other’s rights. Buddhism views nonvio- lence through a lens of respecting the dignity of each person. The basic inter- related ideas of rights and dignity are expressed in the preciousness of human birth and the potential for enlightenment. Human birth is deemed to be more precious than any other birth because it is only humans that can attain en- lightenment.24 The duty of the rulers, then, is not to violate one’s rights.25 The central message of Buddhism is nonviolence, but the military regimes have violated the rights of civilians and killed peaceful protesters.26 This violent lordship over other humans in Myanmar does not only contradict Christ’s Lordship of justice and freedom; it is also contrary to Buddhism’s own doctrine of nonviolence.
3 Church and State
This emphasis on the universal Lordship of Christ inevitably led to a shift in understanding of what it means to be the church over and against the politi- cal order and how the Christian life is to be conducted. That shift would be manifested within the six articles of Barmen Declaration of 1934. The six are tightly bound together in logic and content.27 One flows into the next. George Hunsinger, nevertheless, isolated two in particular: “One is Barmen’s re- interpretation of the two-kingdoms doctrine and the other is Barmen’s suggestion
22 Moe, Pyithu-Dukkha Theology, pp. 8–9. See also Elsa Tamez, The Amnesty of Grace: Justification by Faith from a Latin American Perspective (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1993), pp. 13–36. 23 L.P.N Perera, Buddhism and Human Rights: A Buddhist Commentary on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Colombo: Karunarane and Sons, 1991), p. 50. 24 Ibid., p. 10. See also Sallie, B. King, ‘Buddhism and Human Rights’, in John Witte and Christian Green, eds, Religion and Human Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 103–118. 25 Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p. 170. 26 See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1lmXnQldMY (accessed on January 10, 2015). 27 For the sixth articles of the Barmen Declaration, see Green, ed, Barth, pp. 148–151.
International Journal of Public TheologyDownloaded 12from (2018) Brill.com09/26/2021 416–439 01:27:14PM via free access Reading Karl Barth in Myanmar 423 that theology and politics stand in a pattern of unity.”28 For the present pur- pose there is no harm in summarizing all six insofar as they speak into the significant relationships of how Christ relates to the world, the church to the state and faith to works.29 They may well have been constructed for another time and place—Nazi Germany—but they resonate with what it means to be the church under a military regime in Myanmar. The political implications of the first article are expressed, directly and in- directly by the rest of the Declaration. Article I (Jn. 14:6) makes the claim that in Christ, God fully and finally revealed Himself in the world, recoded by the Scripture. There are no other sources of revelation for the church. “Jesus Christ is the only one Word whom we have to hear, whom we have to trust, whom we have to find truth and obey in life and death.”30 Article II (1Cor. 1:30) claims that Jesus is Lord over the universe and over all powers. There are no areas in which Christian must hear other powers and lords alongside the voice of Christ. No area of life can be said outside the Lordship.31 Article III (Eph. 4:15–16) claims that the church should be united as brothers and sisters in their common re- sponse to the unjust rulers. The church should not be subordinated to the un- just lordship of state. While article II implies that theology and politics may not be separated, article III implies that they may not be confused when the state misuses its power. Article IV (Matt. 20:25–26) implies rejection of any imposition on the church from an alien form of polity. The whole church has been entrusted with the ministry of Christ alone. Article V (1Pet. 2:17) tells us that by divine appointment, the state in this still unredeemed world in which also the church is situated, has the task of maintaining justice and peace. Since the state is appointed by God, it has to do the common and honourable good for itself and for the church. This article interprets “the two-kingdoms theory in a Christocentric way, so that our hierarchy of loyalty is clear in subordination to God.”32 Article VI (Matt. 28:20) rejects any arbitrary chosen desires, while af- firming the message of God’s grace and freedom. All political activity engaged in by church must carry the basic status of a political witness to freedom.33 The Barmen Declaration provided an alternative vision and confession. The risk that lay within the received doctrine of the two kingdoms was how the separation between church and state could lead to the silence of Christians
28 George Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace: Studies in the Theology of Karl Barth (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000), p. 81. 29 Karl Barth, Fragments Grave and Gay (London: Collins Fontana, 1971), p. 72. 30 Green, ed, Barth, p. 149. See also Moltmann, On Human Dignity, p. 83. 31 Green, ed, Barth, p. 149. 32 Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace, pp. 80–81. 33 Green, ed, Barth, p. 150.
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access 424 Moe in the face of Nazism—and any other fork of oppression. Luther said, “God ordained two regiments—one is ruled through faith and the other is ruled through law.”34 Article 16 of the Augsburg Confession had declared that “[o]ne should obey the state and its law.”35 Through such it became possible for those German Evangelical Christians to justify support Hitler. This reading of the two kingdoms theory significantly failed to provide a basis for resistance. The two kingdoms theory holds that to obey the state, even unjust state, is to render obedience to God.36 By contrast, Barmen distinguished obedience to the just God and obedience to the unjust state.37 This became the political question of Christian faith—whether Hitler or Jesus was Lord. Barth uttered an absolute No to Hitler. By referring to what Peter and other apostles said in the book of Acts 5:29, “we must obey God rather than human beings,” Barth insisted that obedience to Christ’s Lordship of justice means to disobey and resist an unjust lordship of Nazism.38 For Barth, saying “yes” to Jesus Christ means saying to “no” to Hitler. This echoes article II of the Barmen Declaration. What might it mean then to apply the contextual significance of the Barmen Declaration to a political theology in the rather different setting of contem- porary Myanmar? That might be done in two ways. The first is established in the dialectical relationship between church and state, of which Christ is the centre. Of particular relevance here is the way in which Barth, unlike Luther, described church and state not as two kingdoms, but as two communities. The church is the inner circle of the faith community and, as such a foretaste of God’s kingdom. The state is the outer circle of civil community—it is a par- able of God’s kingdom. They have different identities but in their vocations they are both God’s servants.39 The state is to care for justice by the use of law.40 Since both communities have the same centres in the one Lord, their common goals ought to strive for political justice. From the perspective of political theology, the primary task of church is not to Christianize the state, but to see itself as a companion of the state for the common good of both.41 The Barmen Declaration, nevertheless, presumes a level of conflict between
34 Brandt, Luther’s Works, pp. 91–92. 35 Ibid., see also, Moltmann, On Human Dignity, p. 77. 36 William J. Wright, Martin Luther’s Understanding of God’s Two Kingdoms (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2010), p. 19. 37 Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace, p. 81. 38 Gerald A. Butler, “Karl Barth and Political Theology,” in Scottish Journal of Theology, 27:4 (November 1974): pp. 441–456. 39 Barth, Community, State and Church, pp. 150, 157. 40 Barth, Against the Stream, p. 26. 41 Ibid., p. 23.
International Journal of Public TheologyDownloaded 12from (2018) Brill.com09/26/2021 416–439 01:27:14PM via free access Reading Karl Barth in Myanmar 425 church and state. That conflict emerges when the state becomes the oppressor of the church. Faced with that prospect Barth declared that “[w]hen the state fails to apply just law and order, the church must necessarily stand for a pro- phetic witness against the state.”42
4 Being Liberationist
The tenor of this Barmen discussion is inclined towards a political theology. It is grounded in a particular experience that lies at a remove from work done on covenants, social contracts, theology, the public, suffering and marginality by Oliver Byar Bowh Si in the interests of a civil society in Myanmar.43 It is not unrelated but its accent is heading more in the direction of a liberative under- standing of a public theology associated with the hill tribes rather than that arising in different socio-political locations on the lowlands. That this might be the case enables a connection to be made with liberation in general—and, in particular, with the Kairos Document coming out of apartheid South Africa. These documents have been described by John W. de Gruchy as the “liberat- ing symbols for the global Christian reaction to oppression.”44 For Wolfgang Huber they should be held together insofar as both are concerned with the relationship between confession and politics.45 They should be seen as situa- tive confessions. It is arguably the case that Barmen is the more doctrinal, while the Kairos document is a practical profile of political analysis. Barmen starts with a strong theological declaration of Christological Lordship and rejects the church’s blind obedience to Hitler. The great strength of the Declaration lies in how it takes Christ’s Lordship or kingly rule as a centre and the church is seen as the body of Christ. By way of comparison the Kairos document is directed against a “church theology.”46 It privileges Christ’s prophetic role and the church be- comes a prophetic community in an unjust world. It becomes then a mode of
42 Barth, Community, State and Church, p. 34. 43 Oliver Byar Bowh Si, God in Burma: Civil Society and Public Theology in Myanmar (Milwaukee, WI: Oliver Byar Bowh Si, 2014). 44 John W. de Gruchy, Bonhoeffer and South Africa: Theology in Dialogue (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984), p. 130. 45 Wolfgang Huber, ‘The Barmen Declaration and the Kairos Documents: On The Relationship between Confession and Politics’, in Journal of Theology for South Africa, 27. (June 1991), pp. 48–60. 46 Kairos Theologians, Kairos Documents: Challenge to the Church, A Theological Comment on a Political Crisis in South Africa (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1986), pp. 8–14.
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access 426 Moe prophetic resistance to a “state theology” that can justify the status quo with its oppression. It reduces the oppressed to passivity and blind obedience.47 The Barmen Declaration distinguishes obedience to God and obedience to the state so that there is no confusion between two obediences. How might the coming together of these two confessions inform a public and political theology that may be developed in Myanmar? The Kairos docu- ment has inspired elsewhere a liberation emphasis evident in the belief that such theologies should possess a preferential and prophetic voice for the voiceless.48 John de Gruchy has identified this concern as one of the seven basic principles for the good praxis of a public theology. For Kjetil Fretheim the very idea of a Kairos moment suggests a time of crisis organized around themes of resistance and liberation.49
5 Religious Pietism and Political Quietism
Pum Za Mang warns of the tendency of the ethnic Christians in Myanmar to remain silent in the face of political oppression. They do so on two inter- related theological grounds—that is “the political principle of the separation between church and state and the subjugation of church to the corrupted authority.”50 The first lends itself to a form of religious pietism or privatization of faith (which corresponds to the church theology of the Kairos Document), and the latter to the political quietism of the state theology. My aim is to criti- cize the privatization and passivity of faith and to offer the necessity of a politi- cal theology of Confessing Christ and church. The Hong Kong theologian Lap Yan Kung observes that “one of the charac- teristics of Burmese Christians is the separation between politics, and religions and it becomes an excuse for the [Baptist] church to refrain from the state.”51 It is unclear how and when that came to be so. What does appear to be the case is that the traditional two-kingdoms doctrine was adopted by the Myanmar Christians as the basis for the distinction between the two realms of church
47 Ibid., p. 3. 48 Huber, ‘The Barmen Declaration and Kairos Document’, pp. 56–59. 49 Kjetil Fretheim, Interruption and Imagination: Public Theology in a Time of Crisis, (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016), pp. 59–73. 50 Pum Za Mang, ‘Separation of Church and State: A Case Study of Myanmar (Burma)’, in Asia Journal of Theology, 26:11 (April 2012), pp. 42–75. 51 Lap Yan Kung, ‘Love Your Enemies, A Theology for Aliens in Their Native Lands: The Chins in Myanmar’, in Studies in World Christianity, 15:1 (2009): pp. 81–99.
International Journal of Public TheologyDownloaded 12from (2018) Brill.com09/26/2021 416–439 01:27:14PM via free access Reading Karl Barth in Myanmar 427 and state, of religions and politics. From this distinction has followed the con- viction that the church must be nonpolitical, and politics nonreligious.52 This way of reading the relationship between church and state depends upon a misinterpretation of Romans 10:9 and 12:2 respectively. The first of these texts binds the confession of Jesus is Lord and the heart-felt belief that God raised Him from the dead with personal salvation. The risk lies in the reference to “believe in your heart” with its likelihood of the privatizing of faith. It can do so at the expense of a public engagement of faith in the world where Christ rules and which the language of lordship suggests. This privatization of faith is effectively a sibling to religious pietism. The evident good of religious pietism is to be found in prayer, worship and preaching. These are the devotional char- acteristics of the church.53 The difficulty for a public and political theology lies then in a misinterpretation of Paul’s exhortation not to “be conformed to this world” (12:2). The Christian tendency in Myanmar is to regard this world then as evil. This popular practice is called into question by Leander Keck, however. Keck argues that “Paul’s use of the ‘world’ refers not to the material creation, but to the systems of humanity’s immoral acts in opposition to God’s will.”54 Another aspect of separating Christian faith from the state in Myanmar lies in the reality of the state being a Buddhist-dominated community. The ten- dency is for Christians to think that being involved in a public and political sphere to be ungodly. This is a result of two kingdoms theory, which demar- cates between two regimens: “one realm is made up of Christians and pious ones, the other worldly realm is made up of non-Christians.”55 The private faith of Christians is concerned strictly with the saving of one’s soul, and the inner peace of one’s heart, not with politics. The church should not directly inter- vene the state affairs. Barth criticized the privatization of faith as being opposed to Jesus’ com- mission of His disciples into the public world. To have faith is to be caught up in Christ’s movement. That movement is not born by the individual but by the Christian community. In reply to the question, “what is the Christian to do in the world?” Barth responded that it is to follow the movement of God into the world.”56 What that means is, firstly, to confess God as Creator and ruler of the world, and secondly, to witness to God’s social justice and charity in the world. God has called the church out of the world, placed in this world as an
52 Moltmann, On Human Dignity, p. 63. 53 Barth, Community, State, and Church, pp. 150–151. 54 Leander E. Keck, Romans (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2005), pp. 201, 290–295. 55 Brandt, Luther’s Works, pp. 91–92. See also, Moltmann, On Human Dignity, p. 69. 56 McCormack, Barth’s Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, p. 199.
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access 428 Moe inner circle, and sent it into the world as an outer circle to witness to God’s social-political ministry in the world.57 For Clifford Green this movement is bound up with a particular kind of freedom for humanity that Barth discerned that was in the service of the good. It was not a self-serving freedom to do as you please. Green thereupon established a textual connection with the way in which an apostolic ministry, the Eucharist and economics are interwoven in the experience of Pentecost. All who believed were together, and had all things in common; they sold their possessions and distributed the money to all those in need.58 The practice of the church is a political witness. For the church in Myanmar the link between the privatization of faith and political quietism is compounded through an unfortunate reading of Romans 13:1–7. It has, of course, been possible through Christian history for rulers to cite this text in order to justify obedience to their authority and imperial lord- ship. Both Oscar Cullman,59 and Ernst Kaseman60 have exposed its misuse. In the context of contemporary Myanmar it is problem with a different. It is not the Buddhist regimes themselves that do damage to the text: Paul’s epistles are not a part of their corpus of justifying scriptures. It is Christians themselves who have allowed the government to justify their ruling power by assuming that their state authority is given by God.61 The dilemma now becomes how to read—and perhaps redeem the text— for a more liberating purpose. With the situation in Myanmar as one horizon for the hermeneutical task it is best not begin with Romans 13:1. Its declaration is to “be subject to the authorities.” The alternative is Paul’s use of the “state as God’s servant for the good” (Rom. 13:4). The state necessarily exists as God’s servant and is appointed by God (13:2). The underlying assumption here is that the state can only fulfill God’s purpose with the observance of a just law and order.62 Now it is evident that Romans 13:1–7 is not addressing this particular issue of whether the state is just or unjust. Paul knows only that the state is necessary; he does not demarcate between a just and an unjust state.63
57 Barth, Community, State and Church, p. 153. 58 Clifford Green, ‘Freedom for Humanity: Karl Barth and the Politics of the New World Order’, in George Hunsinger, ed, For the Sake of the World: Karl Barth and the Ecclesial Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004), pp. 95–108 at p. 105. 59 Oscar Cullman, The State in the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1957), pp. 55–57. 60 Ernst Kasemann, Commentary on the Romans (London: SCM Press, 1980), pp. 354–357. 61 See David Thang Moe, “Reading Romans 13:1–7 as a Hidden Transcript of Postcolonial Theology in Myanmar,” in Journal of Theology for South Africa, 157 (March 2017): pp. 71–98. 62 Barth, Community, State and Church, p. 28. 63 Kairos Theologians, Kairos Document, p. 4.
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Within the “specific … [and] given social site” that is Myanmar it is perti- nent, then, to read the text in the light of the distinction that the sociological theorist, James Scott, has made between a “public” and a “hidden transcript.”64 This distinction is put to use in order explore what lies “behind the official story” of power relations where there is subordination of one to another. Scott seeks to delve beneath the kind of civility that must characterize the “public performance” of those who are vulnerable towards those who exercise power over them. What lies hidden beneath the mask of such acting can be a mix of tactical prudence, fear and “the desire to curry favor”. The public performance can itself acquire almost a ritualistic nature: “the more menacing the power, the thicker the mask”.65 There is, nevertheless, a hidden transcript: it is “off- stage” and not immediately accessible to those in positions of power. It may be expressed through gestures, murmurings and mutterings, the occasional ex- plosion of feeling. It is a mode of ethical resistance that stands over and against a blind subjection to the public transcript of domination. The potential prob- lem that Scott identifies is the prospect of the subordinates finding that their faces have grown to fit the mask.66 The pathway to political quietism is readily affected. The issue in Myanmar then may become of how might it be determined whether the state is acting justly or unjustly. Its public performance, its tran- script, is not indebted, of course, to Paul’s epistles—let alone Barth’s political theology or any one of several Kairos documents. It is now not uncommon for media and political commentators to describe her as a “fallen idol” and de- scribe her leadership in terms of “deadening silence” and “an extraordinary fall from grace”.67 All these judgments are made on the basis of her compromised leadership on matters to do with the plight of the Rohingya Muslims. While in opposition Aung San Suu Kyi made the case for a just government based on Buddhist categories of ten duties that must be met, however. Those duties
64 James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), p. 14. 65 Ibid., p. 3. 66 Ibid., p. 10. 67 Andrew Selth, ‘The Fallen Idols: Aung San Suu Kyi and the Politics of Personality’, ABC Religion and Ethics, 12 September, 2017,
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access 430 Moe identified are liberality, morality, self-sacrifice, integrity, kindness, austerity, non-anger, non-violence, forbearance, and the will of people. These ten duties are directed towards the welfare of people.68 Her mere listing of them was a sign of them not being observed by the ongoing sequence of military rulers. In the context of apartheid in South Africa the Kairos Document took issue with this submissive reading to unjust rulers. It did so on the basis of how elsewhere in the Bible—from Pharaoh to Pilate through into apostolic times—God did not demand obedience to oppressive rulers. God allowed them to rule for a while but did not ordain their works.69 It can be argued, then, with some degree of biblical warrant that God ap- points Myanmar’s government to rule the nation; it does not follow that God ordains or approves of what they did or do unjustly. The church as a witness to God’s justice must reject the traditional doctrine of “two rules” and speak out against the state’s oppression. Following Peng Kua-Wei, Romans 13, when set within its larger literary context, should be seen as a text, which demands our conditional obedience to what is just, not to what is unjust.70 Reading Romans 13 in this way, Barth declared that the “church is commanded not to follow principles of evil but to judge them and to discover God’s will in an unjust world.”71
6 The Heartache of God: The Ground of Liberation Theology
Barth, of course, was not writing with Myanmar in mind. That would be to make an anachronistic claim. His thinking on the Lordship of Christ along- side his understanding of “freedom for humanity as God’s gift” is nevertheless of great benefit insofar as it coincides with the idea of liberation theology.72 On the surface, freedom looks the same as the idea of liberation, but libera- tion as a state of being cannot be used in conjunction with a noun (liberation of speech), while freedom can be used in conjunction with a noun (freedom of speech). In his book Disruptive Grace,73 George Hunsinger placed Barth in dia- logue with Gutiérrez’s hermeneutics of liberation theology. Hunsinger argued
68 Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, pp. 170–173. 69 Kairos Theologians, Kairos Document, p. 4. 70 Peng Kua-Wei, Hate the Evil, Hold Fast to the Good: Strutting Romans 12:1–15:13, (London: T&T Clark, 2006), see appendix, 203–211. 71 Barth, Community, State and Church, pp. 42. 72 Green, ed, Barth, p. 285. 73 Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace, pp. 42–59.
International Journal of Public TheologyDownloaded 12from (2018) Brill.com09/26/2021 416–439 01:27:14PM via free access Reading Karl Barth in Myanmar 431 that “what Barth and Gutiérrez have in common is a belief that theological integrity is subject to practical political tests.”74 That consensus across different types of theology comes despite a divergence is a theological method. Gutiérrez regarded theology as a critical reflection on praxis, born of the meeting of faith (orthodoxy) and work (orthopraxy).75 His programmatic claim that phrase liberation theology best seen as a “commit- ment to the poor as a first act, as theology as a critical reflection that follows the commitment for liberation is a second act.”76 Gutiérrez emphasized that major themes of doing theology come from a Christian faith as praxis con- ducted in society: Barth, on the other hand, emphasized a theological reflec- tion on God’s nature. For Barth a theological reflection on Christ’s orthopathy becomes the starting point for the church’s orthopathic struggle for justice of the oppressed. This has become known as Barth’s concept of “Jesus Christ and the Movement for Social Justice.”77 Gutiérrez called the practice of faith “orthopraxis,” whereas Barth saw the practice of faith as “political ethics.” In Barth’s view, the practice of faith/ethics begins with God’s act of covenantal partnership with humans and ends with His command of humans.78 Barth saw Christian ethics as obedience to the command of God. Barth saw poverty not as a natural condition but as a result of corrupted rulers.79 Gutierrez likewise argued that poverty is part of moral evil and is in- imical to human dignity.80 In the case of Myanmar the second truth of the Buddhist doctrine (one’s desire as the cause of suffering) should not be seen as justification for the sociopolitical suffering and economic poverty. They are rather the results of the military regimes’ immoral acts.81 It is true that the Buddha teaches the reality of suffering as a result of one’s desire for something. But the Buddha also taught a summary of dharma or law: “not to commit evil,
74 Ibid., p. 44. 75 Gustavo Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1973), pp. 6–19. 76 Ibid., p. 9. 77 See Green, ed, Barth, pp. 98–113. 78 Barth, CD, Church Dogmatics II.2., pp. 510–512. Barth developed four criteria of ethical question: “what ought we to do?” “What” means the ethical question is open. “Ought” means that it is self-validating. “We” means that it is communal or public confession. “To do,” means that it is concrete, see Church Dogmatics, II.2, p. 652. 79 Barth, Against the Stream, see especially, “Poverty,” pp. 243–246. 80 Gutierrez, A Theology of Liberation, p. 291. 81 Suu Kyi, Freedom from Fear, p. 170.
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access 432 Moe but to do good and purify one’s mind.”82 This leads us to the final point. How do Barth and Gutiérrez talk about God in the suffering context of unequal re- lationship between the oppressed and the oppressors? Barth and Gutiérrez regarded God as the defender of the poor and the op- pressed. In the first edition of Romans, Barth said, “God is one-sidedly a God of the lowly.”83 Similarly, Gutiérrez popularized a phrase: “God’s preferential option for the poor.”84 The poor are privileged, not because they are morally good, but because God is compassionate and always prefers the least in an unjust world (Ps. 146:7–9). In the context of suffering caused by the oppressors, a locus for liberation theology is God-talk. How do we talk about God in the context of innocent suffering? Gutiérrez turned to the Book of Job because he found here how the innocent suffering of Job helps us understand the love of God, the problem of evil and the innocence of the oppressed.85 Job states two ways of talking about God. One is meditative language and the other prophetic language. Meditative language acknowledges God’s preferential option for the oppressed.86 Prophetic language attacks the unjust systems that deprive the oppressed. What we see in On Job is a shift in Gutiérrez’s methodology. In place of commitment to the oppressed as the first act in the doing of theology Gutiérrez now substituted meditation on God.87 For the sake of the situation in Myanmar these two different kinds of the- ologies need to be brought together. The noted Asian theologian C.S. Song is right in saying that “Asian theology must begin with the heartache of God.”88 The accent falls on the orthopathy of God, which becomes the ground of our orthodoxy or right belief and orthopraxy or right practice. The spiritual and social reflection on God’s orthopathy can lead to the ecclesial orthopathy and orthopraxy.
82 Masao Abe, ‘The Problem of Evil in Christianity and Buddhism’, in Paul Ingram and Frederick Streng, eds, Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Mutual Renewal and Transformation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986), pp. 140–160 at p. 141. 83 Barth, Romans, (1st ed), p. 366. 84 Gutiérrez, A Theology of Liberation, pp. xxv–xxvii. 85 Gustavo Gutiérrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1987), p. xviiii. 86 Ibid. 87 Ibid. 88 C.S. Song, Third-Eye Theology: Theology in Formation in Asian Settings (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1979), p. 35.
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7 Toward the Ethnic Trinitarian Public Ecclesiology
The task before a public theology for these ethnic communities in Myanmar can be seen as one of needing to draw out the implications of these two kinds of theology. It is to move beyond Aloysius Pieris’ description of political theol- ogy and liberation theology as being two siblings for the poor.89 Barth’s political theology clarifies the need for how a Christian community should respond to the misuse of state authority;90 the tenor of Pieris’s and Gutiérrez’s liberation theology is to focus on how the church should relate its faith in the compas- sionate God to ethics by standing with the oppressed against the oppressors. In the case of Myanmar this task now assumes the form of seeking to serve three discrete but inter-related goals. These may be listed as: i) advocating for the oppressed and transforming the unjust oppressors; ii), reforming or renewing the silent church; and, iii), and building an embracive community in Myanmar. The first step is the construction of an appropriate ecclesiology. There is an evident need to negotiate a way through the two possible options of being the church in this oppressive context. The grassroots ethnic Christians are likely to see the church as a gathered community of private faith escaping from politi- cal and public issues. For them the church’s social involvement in political and public issues of injustice is deemed to be liberal and impure. The comparison can be with those who might be described as ‘elitists or intellectual theolo- gians. Their intention is to pursue the model of being an engaged church. It is a debatable point as to whether this stance is always accompanied by an adequate underlying theological reason for the church to be engaged with the world. It is arguably the case that the nurture and renewal of an ethnic public ecclesiology should be grounded in the Trinity. This trinitarian-shaped theol- ogy is able to address matters of identity—that is, what it means to be the church—and vocation which, in this instance, concerns itself with how the church might engage public issues while bearing witness to the Trinity’s work of justice and peace. According to Miroslav Volf, Barth was indeed the most sig- nificant advocate for the role of the church for the world.91 For Barth, “the first
89 Aloysius Pieris, ‘Political Theologies in Asia’, in Peter Scott and William T. Cavanaugh, eds, The Blackwell Companion to Political Theology (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 256–270. 90 Barth, Community, State, and Church, pp. 101–190. See also Nicholas Wolterstorff, The Mighty and Almighty: An Essay in Political Theology (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 186. 91 Miroslav Volf, ‘Faith, Pluralism and Public Engagement’, in Political Theology, 14:6. (2013): pp. 813–834 at p. 823.
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access 434 Moe task of the church is to be the church and is about God’s kingdom of justice.”92 Barth has a high view of the role of the church for the world or as Volf terms it, “church theology.” Barth defines the church Christologically and Christ po- litically in terms of their public witness of justice for a civil community where God reigns.93 Barth’s political theology was grounded in what Kevin Vanhoozer calls “first theology.”94 First theology is rooted in a threefold relation of the Trinity-Bible- Church, and the church is a hermeneutical community of faith and worship.95 First theology proceeds to what I would like to call “second theology, which is rooted in a threefold relation of the Trinity-Church-World by reading and interpreting the newspaper from the Bible. The trinitarian church has a role in both first and second theologies. It plays a hermeneutical role in first theol- ogy by exegeting the ecclesial identity and the relevance of faith for a politi- cal theology. Moltmann rightly discerned that “[t]here is no Christian identity without public relevance.”96 The church also plays a role in second theology by asking how the church should engage with the world as God’s trinitarian reign of justice. A trinitarian political theology reforms and renews the church as a trinitar- ian community in a couple of ways. It recognizes the church’s identity is to be found in the love of the Trinity through a spiritual engagement of worship in a private space and for the love of suffering neighbors in a public society through a social engagement.97 Overemphasizing the economic Trinity, we often ignore the significance of the immanent Trinity for God’s mission. A church-centered political theology rediscovers the significance of the immanent Trinity for Christian inner communion of spiritual engagement, whereas world-engaged political theology embodies the economic Trinity by virtue of the church’s so- cial and public engagement with the world. The renewed ethnic church must be grounded in this dialectical tension of social and personal engagement with God and of social and public engagement with the world as the realm of God’s reign. The second goal flows from this reframed understanding of the church. Its public vocation seeks to transform the unjust rulers and liberate the oppressed. This liberative calling sits within the kind of covenantal Christology adopted by Pieris. His model of an Asian liberation theology is bound to the command to
92 Ibid. 93 Barth, Community, State and Church, pp. 157–172. 94 Kevin J. Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture and Hermeneutics (Downer Groves, IL: IVP, 2002), pp. 28–31. 95 Ibid. 96 Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), p. 1. 97 Volf, ‘Faith, Pluralism and Public Engagement’, p. 823.
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[l]ove God, and love your victim neighbors as Jesus loved us. In this cov- enantal Christology, Christ is: 1) the irrevocable antimony between God and the oppressor (love of God) and 2) Jesus is the irrevocable defense pact between God and the oppressed (love of victim-neighbor).98
The relationship between love for God and love for the suffering neighbour constitutes a liberation praxis. Hunsinger has noted that Barth, Gutiérrez and Pieris have contrasting approaches to love for God and love for the suffering neighbour. For Barth the passion to love God above all else can be discerned as his celebration of God’s grace. Following the Chalcedonian Christology Barth treats Christ as a union of a divine who reveals God’s orthopathic heart and a human who stands with the poor. The comparison can be made with Gutiérrez and Pieris. The passion to love the suffering neighbours can be dis- cerned as Gutiérrez’s and Pieris’s compelling incitement to liberation.99 They see Jesus as the one in whom God and the suffering victims are encountered as inseparable. Hunsinger concluded that all three of them are “right”: Pieris and “Gutiérrez are right in practice, Barth is right in principle.”100 For Pieris an Asian liberation theology is victim-oriented and the oppres- sors are exclusive of God’s covenant. The obvious consequence of this other- wise admirable zeal for Christ’s solidarity with the victims is how a liberation theology can end up as liberation for the oppressed, not for the oppressors. The problem is not liberation itself (God’s liberating act for the oppressed), but what may be called an “exclusive liberation.” The way in which a libera- tion theology is conceived along the lines of ethnic minorities and dominant majorities is not necessarily the same as it is where the lines of oppression fall on issues to do with class, wealth, and gender. For the sake of an inclusive lib- eration, there is a need to rethink the structural relationship between sin and victims. Sin and suffering are indivisible in the context of people’s suffering and poverty in Myanmar. It is, of course, not right to play down the suffering of victims. The suffering of the Pyithu’s dukkha in Myanmar is a consequence of the sin of the oppres- sors. It is a state that bears witness to Andrew Sung Park’s claim that “[s]in is of the oppressors and suffering is of the oppressed.”101 Those who are oppressed are not sinless (Rom. 5:1–12), but they are innocent, as Chan has argued, with respect to their being the victims of oppression.102 This domination of humans
98 Pieris, ‘Political Theologies in Asia’, p. 262. 99 Hunsinger, Disruptive Grace, pp. 54–55. 100 Ibid., p. 55. 101 Andrew Sung Park, The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1994), p. 69. 102 Chan, Grassroots Asian Theology, pp. 81–82.
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access 436 Moe by other humans is contrary to Christ’s just Lordship. From an ethical perspec- tive the oppressors are the greater sinners but that is not the end of the matter. Liberation must be pursued by re-naming what is sin in terms that are sote- riological as well as ethical. Liberation theology is not only victim-oriented, as Pieris and Gutiérrez insist, but also sin-oriented. The goal of twofold ethics of solidarity and resistance is an inclusive liberation of both the oppressed and oppressors. Moltmann has called for the reciprocal liberation of the oppressed and the oppressors. That liberation of the oppressors is identified as “psychological liberation” while the liberation of the oppressed constitutes a “socio-political liberation.”103 Whether Moltmann is right to emphasize how the liberation of the oppressed leads to the liberation of the oppressors is doubtful. In the con- text of Myanmar it seems like a reversal of what is required. Here the liberation of the oppressors is more likely to lead to the liberation of the oppressed or Pyithu-dukkha. A psychosocial liberation of the oppressors is a prerequisite for a sociopolitical liberation of the Pyithu-dukkha. The oppressors are unaware of the immoral sin they commit. The ethics of the ethnic church is to cooperate with the oppressed non-ruling and non-Christian groups in resisting to the un- just rulers as their common enemies. Barth’s political theology insists that the church must confront the unjust rulers when they rule lawlessly and misuse their power against God’s Lordship of justice and peace. If we say “yes” to Jesus Christ as Lord, we must say “no” to the unjust lords (Acts 5:29).104 The slogan of a liberation theology—“the preferential option for the poor or oppressed” has been misused as loving the oppressed and as hating the op- pressors. Barth pushed justice toward peace based on the command to love the enemy;105 whereas Gutiérrez stopped at justice, advocating confrontation with oppressors.106 The soteriology of liberation must also be beneficial for the op- pressed and for the oppressors. It must be transformative. Those who oppress are called to rediscover truth and humanity. The main thrust of Myanmar’s political theology is to restore justice and peace. These two are inseparable, but their ordering is crucial. There is no peace where injustice rules.
103 Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology (London: SCM Press, 1974), pp. 419–494. 104 Barth, Community, State, and Church, pp. 108–113. 105 George Hunsinger, ‘The Politics of Nonviolent God: Reflections on Rene Girard and Karl Barth’, in Scottish Journal of Theology, 51.1 (February 1998): pp. 61–85. 106 Gustavo Gutiérrez, The Kairos Document: A Challenge to the Church, (Braamfontein: The Kairos Theologians, 1985), pp. 10–11.
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The kind of justice that is required is a restorative justice. It is what John Rawls calls the “justice of fairness.”107 In order to restore the justice of fairness, God uses the justice of compassionate solidarity and prophetic resistance. It is through the justice of compassion and resistance that the unjust rulers are converted to justice with a new realization of humanity and truth and those deprived of their rights receive their inherent rights.108 There is need for libera- tion on both sides. The oppressed need to be liberated from the oppressors; the oppressors need to be liberated from their sin of an imperial and colonizing mentality. It is here that a public theology comes more explicitly into focus. The em- phasis on liberation has often led, understandably, political and liberation theologians to focus on the theme of the liberation of the oppressed from the oppressors. The nature of a public theology is to concern itself with civil soci- ety and the ideal of the well-being of all. It possesses the potential to shift the focus away from liberation from to liberation for. That shift does not compro- mise the radical urgency of a liberation from in Myanmar. It situates inside a wider horizon of purpose. If liberation from is the basic goal, liberation for is the ultimate goal. The two are interrelated. It is not a simple task to pursue this objective of a liberation for as social reconciliation or peace. The complexity is evident in the seemingly impossible politics facing Suu Kyi. Andrew Selth has asked did she receive ‘a poisoned chalice’?109 On coming to power her prior- ity was to establish a national reconciliation between her party (the National League for Democracy) and her regime enemies (the Union Solidarity and Development Party); the intention was to end civil wars caused by the regimes and thus be a catalyst for a liberation from to a liberation for.110 To the outside world this aim has been severely compromised by her fail- ure to speak out in this cause on behalf of the Rohingya Muslim refugees flee- ing Rakhine state. Once Suu Kyi was deemed to be the “messiah”; now that is not so:” her halo has evaporated”.111 Sharing her power with the military rulers,
107 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 251–257. 108 Jürgen Moltmann, ‘Political Theology and the Ethics of Peace’, in Theodore Runyon, ed, Theology, Politics, and Peace (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989), pp. 31–42 at p. 38. 109 Andrew Selth, ‘Be Careful What You Wish For: The National League for Democracy and Government in Myanmar’, Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University, Regional Outlook Paper 56 (2017), 6–7,
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Suu Kyi is in a hard leadership position, and she cannot freely speak out what- ever she wants to say. We, however, hope she is listening to the critical voices of the global community and is trying to resolve the problem of identity and injustice between the Rohingya Muslims and Rakhine Buddhists. The vision of a Myanmar political/liberation theology is to restore justice and peace between the regimes and victims by ending the militarism that cre- ates violence and suffering. It is stressed that there can be no two or more kinds of justices.112 If there is more than one kind of justice, a conflict of “justices” is inevitable and no justice will ever be done. God’s act of justice must be one and inclusive—and, in effect, lend itself to reconciliation. Now liberation is not the same as reconciliation; it must come first. It should be seen as a condition for reconciliation. The Kairos Document rightly asserted that “no socio-political reconciliation or political peace between the oppressors and the oppressed is possible without justice.”113 If an inclusive liberation in the name of transforming the unjust rulers and restoring the rights of the oppressed is a condition for socio-political recon- ciliation, a certain degree of justice through resistance must first be restored before reconciliation takes place. For Volf this seeking of a liberating justice and struggle against social injustice must also include a willingness to embrace the unjust doers.114 This difficult posture links reconciliation with an inclusive liberation for. Reconciliation (katallasso in Greek) means the exchange of hos- tility for a new hospitality (Eph. 2:14–22).115 The vertical and spiritual reconcili- ation between “God and us” can become a political model for a horizontal and social reconciliation between the oppressed and the oppressors in Myanmar. The ultimate goal of such an inclusive liberation for is what Volf nicely calls the “double vision”116 of building an embracive communion of love in which the oppressors will live side by side with the oppressed, rather than an exclusive vision of winners and losers that promotes hatred. In the service of this vision Jesus must be seen as a hope-giver as much as being a liberator. For the sake of this embracive communion the healing role of the Spirit— and hence a strengthening of pneumatology—should stand beside the lib- erating praxis of Christ and the healing role of the Spirit as the inseparable
112 Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1996), p. 197. 113 Kairos Theologians, The Kairos Document, p. 9. 114 Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, p. 220. 115 Stanley E. Porter, ‘Reconciliation as the Heart of Paul’s Missionary Theology’, in Trevor J. Burge and Brian S. Rosner, eds, Paul as Missionary: Identity, Activity, Theology and Practice (London: T&T Clark, 2011): pp. 169–179 at p. 173. 116 Volf, Exclusion and Embrace, p. 250.
International Journal of Public TheologyDownloaded 12from (2018) Brill.com09/26/2021 416–439 01:27:14PM via free access Reading Karl Barth in Myanmar 439 grounds for a trinitarian public ecclesiology of liberation, healing and recon- ciliation. Volf has drawn a distinction between the memories of those who are oppressed and those who oppress. The former have longer memories of pain while the latter have shorter memories of the injustices they have committed. Volf argues that the reconciliation between the two is not the “work of humans but of God,”117 The empowering and healing work of the Holy Spirit is vital.
8 Conclusion
The intention of this political-cum-public theology is to make the case for the coming together of a number of diverse stands in the interests of the Pyithu- dukkha. Of particular importance is Barth’s understanding of the universal Lordship of Christ and his rejection of the received theory of two kingdoms. Rather than seeing the church and state as two kingdoms—one ruled by Christ and the other by evil—Barth saw them as two circles, of which Jesus Christ is Lord and the centre. This line of thought encourages the church—even in Myanmar—to see itself as a companion of the state in the pursuit of the com- mon good. His political theology further enables the church to distance itself from the state when it becomes unjust and oppressive. The invitation becomes one of calling upon the church in this political context to distinguish between obedience to the just Lordship of Christ and unjust lordship. There is an imper- ative laid upon the church to bring together personal faith and public interest for Christ’s sake. It is not sufficient for the ethnic churches in Myanmar to be no more than denominations marked by pietism, quietism and the privatiza- tion of faith. It cannot do so in the face of a radical sociopolitical crisis. The “public transcript” of subordination and quietism should be relin- quished in favour of a prophetic ministry that seeks to engage with the world through the power of the Spirit. The church itself should be transformed into one which allows itself to witness to God’s social justice in the world where the triune God reigns. Its “hidden transcript” should be enacted in a way that presents a more visible and overt challenge to the unjust ordering of society— while, at the same time it aspires to establish an embracive community where the liberated oppressors and the oppressed live side by side.
117 Ibid., p. 110. See also Miroslav Volf, The End of Memory: Remembering Rightly in a Violent World (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), pp. 117–120.
International Journal of Public Theology 12 (2018)Downloaded 416–439 from Brill.com09/26/2021 01:27:14PM via free access