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The Legacy of DT Niles

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The Legacy of DT Niles Lord to bruise him." No proximity to the human condition is more flattering self-witness. poignant than that. It is too lifelike to be mistaken for what it is, a Our perception of this truth is indispensable to our obtaining full-blooded encapsulation of the original divine intention. God a right and fulfilling relationship with God. Redemptive suffering through him would know our plight and feel our sorrow. Jesus is is at the very core of moral truth, and the prophets were all God-in full engagement. Put to grief in the unspeakable agony of touched by its fearsome power. But only One embodied it as a his­ human sinfulness, Jesus is the definitive measure of God's torical experience, although all, including the Prophet of Islam, "numbing" capacity to take on our suffering, the Suffering Ser­ walked in its shadow. Those who consult their hearts will hear for vant now unenviably receiving the double ~aliit of God and human themselves the persistent ordinance proclaiming God's ineffable beings. The Suffering Servant is God's self-portrait, and our un­ grace. The Legacy ofD. T. Niles Creighton Lacy "Evangelismis witness. It is one beggar telling another beg­ sen to replace the assassinated Martin Luther King, [r., to address gar where to get food."! Few Christians who have heard the Uppsala Assembly in 1968. that aphorism can identify its source; even fewer could identify, Meanwhile Niles had earned a doctorate from the University by time or nation or vocation or publication, the powerful evan­ of London, served as general secretary of the National Christian gelist D. T. Niles. In a sense it is not a representative figure of Council of Ceylon and as first chairman of the Youth Department speech, for Niles's grateful obedience to Jesus Christ poured forth in the World Council of Churches, planning and organizing the in a life of energetic service and joyous faith. World Youth conferences in Amsterdam and Oslo. From 1953 he For all the ecumenical conferences and distinguished pulpits occupied, concurrently, posts as executive secretary of the WCC that kept D. T. Niles "on the go," he said very little about himself. Department of Evangelism, principal of Jaffna Central College, "I am not important except to God," he once wrote, and a bit later, pastor of St. Peter's Church in [affna, and chairman of the World's "We who speak about Jesus, must learn to keep quiet about our­ Student Christian Federation. That link from local church to world selves.'? Nor did many friends and contemporaries say much Christian community was typical. At the time of his death in 1970, about the man; they were too busy listening to the message of God D. T. Niles was executive secretary (and chief founder) of the East he proclaimed in word and deed. Asia Christian Conference (EACC), president of the Methodist Church of Ceylon, and one of six presidents of the World Council Niles's Life and Ministry of Churches. In between these peripatetic commitments he shared a close Daniel Thambyrajah Niles was born near [affna, Ceylon (now Sri partnership with his wife, Dulcie, helped to rear two sons both of Lanka) in 1908, a fourth-generation Christian. His great-grand­ whom entered the ministry, was the first "younger churchman" father had been the first Tamil baptized in the American Board to occupy the Harry Emerson Fosdick Visiting Professorship at Mission in 1821; his grandfather was a Methodist minister. His Union Theological Seminary, New York, and published nearly a mother died when D. T. was only a year old, but his father's re­ score of books. "God never gives gifts without seeking to give marriage eventually brought eight younger siblings to be cared himself along with them," he wrote. "Those who minister ... for. Largely on that account, his father wanted Daniel to become must judge their success not by how much service has been ren­ a lawyer. It was a Hindu mathematics teacher who, on the very dered but by how many have been led to God."3 Niles would day of law-school registration, persuaded the father that D. T. surely apply that measurement to his own activities. Niles should enter the Christian ministry, and that God would look after the family. The Work of an Evangelist The year that he graduated from what is now United Theo­ logical College in Bangalore, South India, Niles attended the D.T. was above all an evangelist. "Evangelism is the proclamation Quadrennial of the Student Christian Movement (SCM) for India, of an event, it is also an invitation to an encounter."4 "Evangelism Burma, and Ceylon. Even then, in 1933, W. A. Visser 't Hooft, one is the impact of the Gospel on the world."> "Evangelism is not of the principal speakers, took note of a young Ceylonese student something we do, it is something God does.':" "Evangelism hap­ who was concerned with how the SCM might become an effective pens when God uses anything we do in order to bring people to evangelistic force. Five years later D. T. Niles was the youngest Him in Jesus Christ.'? "The recovery of wholeness-that is the delegate at the Madras Conference of the International Missionary purpose of evangelism."B "In our part of the world, the preacher, Council, paired with Henry P. Van Dusen in the workshop on the evangelist, is engaged in the work of disrupting people's "The Faith by Which the Church Lives." Ten years-and a world lives."? If there is an ambivalence in these sentences between war-after that Niles delivered the keynote address at the found­ God's role and ours, it is inherent in the writer-and in theology. ing of the World Council of Churches (WCC) in Amsterdam. He D. T. Niles was an Asian-and a Christian-who thought in terms addressed the Second Assembly at Evanston in 1954 and was cho- of both/and rather than either/or. One of Niles' major contributions was the blending, not the Creighton Lacy is Professor of WorldChristianity in the Divinity School of Duke contrasting, of Eastern and Western thought, of "orthodoxy" and University, NorthCarolina. As a Fulbright Research Scholar hespenttwoyears in "liberalism." This can be seen in the diverse men who influenced India and published two books on contemporary social thought: The Conscience him most profoundly. At the age of eleven Niles heard the great of India and Indian Insights: Public Issues in Private Perspective. missionary of the Middle East, Samuel Zwemer. During his Eu­ 174 International Bulletin of Missionary Research ropean studies, soon after meeting Visser 't Hooft, he became ac­ be, he affirmed in reply to J. A. T. Robinson's Honest to God, "it is quainted with Hendrik Kraemer and Karl Barth, who "befriends essential. to hold this command to love in conjunction with the Niles" (as a son later wrote)." John R. Mott visited India in 1937. command to believe in Jesus Christ."> Even closer associates and ecumenical colleagues were Pierre At the same time-and here emerges the paradox of all who Maury, one-time head of the Reformed Church in France, and engage in sincere interfaith dialogue-lithe issues of Salvation and John Baillie, whom Niles regarded as a "mediating bridge" be­ Damnation cannot be stated in terms of men's belief or unbelief in tween East and West. the special revelation of Christ: they can only be stated in terms of In India Niles deeply appreciated C. F. Andrews, E. C. De­ the outreach of the work and ministry of Christ himself."> "To wick, and E. Stanley Jones, who tended to stress the immanence speak about the finality of Christ is not to tie oneself to where his of God, and Paul David Devanandan and M. M. Thomas, com­ name is actually pronounced."24 "There is no Saviour but Jesus mitted to the social application of the gospel. Niles himself ac­ and they who are saved are always saved by him. That is true knowledged the contrasts insightfully: without qualification."> "There is no salvation except in Jesus Christ, but who shall decide how and in what guise Jesus comes Hendrik Kraemer and Paul Devanandan are the two men to whom to men and claims their acceptance!"> To some this is the hidden I am most indebted for the way in which I have learned to study or anonymous Christ; to others it is the universal word of God. other religions and to be in normal converse with adherents of these Doctrinal debates, which divided the early church and still religions. Kraemer taught me to approach other faiths and to enter produce fissures in the body of Christ, merited little concern for D. into them as a Christian; Devanandan taught me to see and under­ T. Niles. Intellectual arguments about the preexistent Son or the stand the Christian faith from the vantage ground of other faiths. 11 "two natures" dissolved for him into a personal experience of the Add to these contemporary "gurus" the influences that Niles Savior. The question, he wrote, is "not whether our understand­ absorbed by osmosis from his Asian and Christian environment: ing of God is illumined for us by the person, teaching, and work worship in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the hymns of Charles of Jesus Christ; nor whether in him is found a supreme illustration Wesley, the mysticism and devotion of Hindu jnana marga and of God-consciousness; but whether our faith in God is such as to bhkti marga. As his son Dayalan described him, "Niles was cer­ find its one possibility in him."27 "The crux of the finality issue is tainly no systematic theologian in the technical sense of the whether or not in Jesus Christ men confront and are confronted by word."12 Rather, he chose a pragmatic stance in dealing with both the transcendent God whose will they cannot manipulate, by local and ecumenical issues, a kind of action/reflection model.
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