exploring images of the church: church as bodhi tree in myanmar
DESCRIPTION
This is the master thesis of Maung John in Missiology. It talks about mission situation in Myanmar vis-a-vis inculturation, Christian-Buddhist Dialogue, and so on.TRANSCRIPT
TITLE PAGE
EXPLORING IMAGES OF THE CHURCH: THE BODHI TREE
AS IMAGE OF THE MISSIONARY CHURCH IN MYANMAR
BR. MAUNG JOHN
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts in Theology of Consecrated Life
Major in Missiology
GRADUATE DEPARTMENT
ST. ANTHONY MARY CLARET COLLEGE
April 2008
ii
Approval Sheet
The thesis attached hereto, entitled “Exploring Images of the Church: The Bodhi Tree
as Image of the Missionary Church in Myanmar” prepared and submitted by
BRO. MAUNG JOHN in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of
Arts in Missiology is hereby accepted.
(Signature)
Fr. Edgar Javier, SVD
Advisor
(Signature)
Fr. Domingo Moraleda, CMF
Member
(Signature)
Fr. Jose Ma. Ruiz Marquez, CMF
Member
Accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts
in Missiology.
(Signature)
Beulah D. Nuval, Ed. D.
Dean
iii
DEDICATION
To
Christians of Various Theological Persuasions
And
People of Different Religious Professions
In Myanmar
iv
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The Gift of Dharma Excels All Other Gifts.
“To pay homage to God, Dharma, Sangha, Teachers, and Parents” is the fivefold
Burmese socio-religious teaching (annandaw annanda nga pa) which the researcher is
deeply obliged to fulfill for the accomplishment of his thesis.
Fr. Edgar G. Javier, SVD his professor and mentor has fully deserved this homage
in a special way for his great enlightenment. Fr. Daniel F. Pilario, CM his professor in
methodology has equally deserved this homage for teaching him research skills. Dr.
Emmanuel de Guzman, Ph.D. his humble professor has duly deserved this homage for
challenging him to conduct this research.
Fr. Domingo Moraleda, CMF his academic supporter and protector has genuinely
deserved this homage for his various helps for studies. Dr. Beulah D. Nuval, Ed. D. dean
of Dean of St. Anthony Mary Claret College has deserved a big gratitude for her valuable
help for this research. The colleagues and friends of the student are given “a big thanks”
for their criticisms, suggestions, and insights in the process of this thesis writing.
The personnel of Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia (ICLA), St. Vincent
School of Theology (SVST) and Maryhill School of Theology (MST) are fully
acknowledge for the academic support and for all their generous supports throughout this
study. The anonymous supporters are gracefully thanked for their generosity. Again, all
these persons have deserved the greatest gratitude of the researcher for all their noble gift
of Dharma of intellectual support which surpasses all other gifts.
v
THESIS ABSTRACT
There were the images of the Church. They change throughout the history. But
some remain. Yet some disappear. Few emerge gradually. Each generation has their own
self-images. The new generation reflects its identity and nature with visual images. One’s
self-understanding changes in an environment and when the circumstances are changed.
There are many images of the Church. The nature and identity of the Church are
discovered by exploring its present images. Images mirror the reality. They become self-
discovery tools. We can envision, project the Church to be in a new way by giving new
images as we turn out to be as we dream. Thus, Christians propose many images for it.
Many images are so intangible in other contexts that the right images are required.
First, this thesis inquires the current images of the Church in Myanmar. It then explores
the historical images of the Church in the Bible, Church documents and theologies.
Thirdly, it proposes “the Bodhi tree” as an appropriate image for the missionary Church.
This research intends to be of help for lessening the foreign face of the Church
and the growth of Christianity. It finds out a new way of being the local Church in a
multi-religious context. In this new way of being Church we also discover the proper way
of doing theology of mission.
vi
ABBREVIATIONS
AAS Acta Apostolicae Sedis
ASEAN Association of Southeast Asian Nations
BEC Basic Ecclesial Community
BHC Basic Human Community
BIC Basic Interfaith/Interreligious Community
CBCM Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Myanmar
CRCM Catholic Religious Conference of Myanmar
EA Ecclesia in Asia (1999)
EU The European Union
EN Evangelii Nuntiandi (1975)
ES Ecclesiam Suam (1964)
FABC The Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences
FAPA For All the Peoples of Asia (Volumes I-IV)
EAPR East Asian Pastoral Review
GS Gaudium et Spes (1965)
LG Lumen Gentium (1964)
MCC Myanmar Council of Churches
NA Nostra Aetate (1965)
NT-OT New Testament - Old Testament
RM Redemptoris Missio (1990)
SPDC State Peace and Development Council
UK United Kingdom
US United States
vii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE…. ................................................................................................................ i
APPROVAL SHEET ........................................................................................................ ii
DEDICATION….............................................................................................................. iii
ACKNOWLEDGMENT ................................................................................................. iv
ABBREVIATIONS .......................................................................................................... vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................... vii
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1
A. Background of the Study ................................................................... 1
B. Statement of the Problem .................................................................. 3
C. Significance of the Study .................................................................. 3
D. Scope and Limitation of the Study .................................................... 5
E. Review of Literature and Related Studies ......................................... 5
F. Conceptual Framework ...................................................................... 9
G. Definition of Terms ......................................................................... 10
H. Methodology ................................................................................... 13
I. Organization of the Study ............................................................... 13
CHAPTER II IMAGES OF THE CHURCH IN THE BURMESE CONTEXT .. 15
A. Mapping the Genesis of the Catholic Church in Myanmar ............. 15
1. The Spread of Catholicism among the Ethnic Minorities ........... 15
2. The Church amidst Diverse Cultures after the Missionary Era .. 17
viii
3. Churches among Pagodas, Temples, Mosques and Spirit Houses
.................................................................................................... 19
B. Analyzing the Foreign Faces of the Church .................................... 20
1. The Cultural Faces of the Jesus-Community .............................. 20
2. The Political Portrait of the Christian Minority .......................... 21
3. Animist and Buddhist Images of the Church .............................. 23
C. Religious Encounters and Mission Challenges ............................... 26
1. Mission and Religious Pluralism ................................................. 26
2. Specific Mission Challenges of the Church ................................ 29
CHAPTER III IMAGES OF THE MISSIONARY CHURCH IN BIBLICAL,
TRADITIONAL, MAGiSTERIAL AND EPISCOPAL
STATEMENTS .................................................................................. 32
A. Biblical and Traditional Images of the Church ............................... 33
1. The Church in OT Typology and NT Imagery ........................... 33
2. Images of the Church in the Apostolic Writings ......................... 35
B. Images of the Church in the Magisterial Statements ....................... 38
1. Pre-Vatican II Models of the Church .......................................... 38
2. The Ecclesiology of Vatican II .................................................... 39
C. Images of the Church in the Asian Episcopal Texts ....................... 41
1. The FABC Imagery of Asian Ecclesiology ................................. 41
2. The CBCM Images of the Church ............................................... 44
D. Trends in Contemporary Missiology in relation to Images of the
Church ............................................................................................. 47
1. J.A.B. Jongeneel and J.M. van Engelen ...................................... 47
ix
2. David J. Bosch ............................................................................. 47
3. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder ................................ 48
4. Edgar G. Javier ............................................................................ 49
5. Felix Wilfred ............................................................................... 50
6. Aloysius Pieris ............................................................................. 50
7. Lode L. Wostyn ........................................................................... 51
8. Donal Dorr ................................................................................... 52
9. Avery Dulles ............................................................................... 53
10. Arnulf Camps ............................................................................ 54
CHAPTER IV THE BODHI TREE: IMAGE OF THE MISSIONARY CHURCH
IN THE MYANMAR CONTEXT .................................................... 56
A. The Bodhi and the Cross ................................................................. 57
1. Hindu Tree of Immortality .......................................................... 57
2. Buddhist Tree of Enlightenment ................................................. 59
3. Nats’ Residence Tree .................................................................. 60
4. Christian Fig Tree of Knowledge and Salvation ......................... 61
5. The Bodhi and the Cross in Dialogue ......................................... 63
B. Christianity, Church and Mission in the Bodhi Tree Allegory ....... 66
1. Bodhi Tree: Image of the Church in Myanmar ........................... 66
2. Christian Life as the Bodhi Tree ................................................. 68
3. Models of the Church and of Mission ......................................... 71
a. Church as Basic Interfaith Community .................................. 71
b. Church as Community of Disciples in Co-Pilgrimage ........... 72
x
c. Church as Sacrament of Universal Salvation ......................... 74
d. Church as Humble Servant ..................................................... 75
C. Mission Spirituality and Methodology ............................................ 76
1. Mission Spirituality under the Bodhi Tree .................................. 76
2. Mission Approaches: The Cross Encounters the Bodhi ............. 79
CHAPTER V SUMMARY, FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS ............. 83
A. Summary ......................................................................................... 83
B. Findings ........................................................................................... 85
C. Recommendations ........................................................................... 88
BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 91
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ....................................................................................... 103
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Background of the Study
Being brought up in a traditional Catholic family in a predominantly Buddhist
setting, the researcher examines the present images of the Catholic Church in order to
propose a fitting image of the Church which will lessen its seeming alien face in the
contemporary Burmese1 society since, as Christopher O’Donnell says, artists, poets,
preachers and theologians are challenged to present images of the Church suited for
each time and place.2
Reflecting on the Church as the center of its concern, the Second Vatican Council
(1962-65) attempts to bring the Church relevant to the modern times by presenting the
three images of the Church: “society,” “people of God,” and “servant”3 from its Conciliar
documents.
1 In this study, “Burmese” also refers to the citizens and expatriates of Myanmar/Burma and to the
official language of Myanmar/Burma. “Burman” or “Bama” refers to the dominant ethnic group. The
ethnic group that makes up the majority will be identified as “Burmese/Bama Buddhists” and the other
minority ethnic groups as Burmese.
2 Christopher O’Donnell, Ecclesia: A Theological Encyclopedia of the Church (Minnesota: The
Liturgical Press, 1996), 208. [Emphasis mine].
3 Lode Wostyn, Church Images and Pastoral Strategy (Manila: Communication Foundation for
Asia, 1976), 5-30. Here Wostyn classifies the Vatican II images of the Church into three. First, there is the
static, hierarchical and juridical picture of the “perfect society” (Lumen Gentium 20, 22, 23). Second, LG
17 presents the Church as the people of God, the Body of Lord, and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Third,
Gaudium et Spes (3, 40, 43, 44, 92, 93) characterizes the Church as a humble servant, a community of
dialogue, being dynamic and eschatological.
2
Since Vatican II, theologians have proposed different ecclesiological models, and
images. Images and metaphors play a powerful role in how we construct our communal
self-image, which in turn shapes and are shaped by our experiences of the Church.4 Such
ecclesial images and metaphors are informed by historical, social, cultural, as well as
political and economic conditions and agendas.5
Some images for the local Churches of Asia have been pictured by the Federation
of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) since its initiations. Such images touch the
realities of Asia. A product of the "sign of the times" spirit of the Vatican II, the FABC
has been taking seriously the multi-religious context of the milieu in its discernment of
what it means to be Church in Asia.
Being pre-dominantly a Buddhist land, the political structures and socio-cultural
ethos of the people of Myanmar are fundamentally Buddhist.6 Thus, the presence of
pagodas, temples, mosques, spirit houses and Churches proclaim Myanmar as a multi-
religious country. However, the image of the Church is so foreign to other religions.7 Our
challenging problem is to present some fitting images of the Church which are relevant to
our mission among peoples of different religious backgrounds.
4 “Images are language pictures which serve as tools of rhetoric to describe and convey what is
already known.” Barbra B. Zikmund, Discovering the Church (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), 37-38.
5 Emmanuel S. de Guzman, “Laity, Theology and Praxis” (Seminar, Quezon City, St. Vincent
School of Theology, Semester 2, SY 2006- 2007): 1-2 as of Power Point presentation and printed paper.
6 Samuel Ngun Ling, Communicating Christ in Myanmar: Issues, Interactions and Perspectives
(Yangon: ATEM, 2005), 74-75.
7 Samuel Ngun Ling, “In the Midst of Golden Stupas: Revitalizing the Christian Presence in
Myanmar,” RAYS MIT Journal of Theology 3 (February 2002): 113-115.
3
B. Statement of the Problem
This research is at the outset an attempt to explore the present popular models of
the Church, to search for contextual images for the Church and to propose that metaphors
for a new way of being Church in Burma. More specially, its aim is doing a contextual
ecclesiology in relation to mission by using the local popular icon as the starting point.
In the exploration of research problem, the following questions will be
investigated.
1. What are the contemporary images of the Church in Myanmar amid
multiethnic, multicultural, multireligious and socio-economic-political
scenarios?
2. What are images of the Church in Bible, Magisterial statements, FABC,
CBCM and Asian theologies and how are these images interdependent?
3. What are the appropriate images for the Church in Myanmar and how are
these contextual images relevant to the mission of the local Church?
The problem of the research is all about the proposed image for the Church as the
Bodhi tree which is drawn from the praxis, stories, lived religious experiences, and daily
life of the Burmese. Such metaphor, which exists side by side in Burmese society and in
the Burmese personality, will be able to, to some extent, eliminate the alien face of the
Church while it will help our mission of dialogue with other faiths improve.
C. Significance of the Study
The foreign face of the Church is a big problem in Burma not because Christianity
is introduced from the outside but because, in Felix Wilfred’s words, the local Church
4
stays aloof from the mainstream of life of the people, their history, struggles and dreams
and they have failed to identify themselves with the people, even though in terms of
charity many praiseworthy services have been rendered.8 Indeed, the Church appears so
alien to the people of other faiths due to its failure to be in solidarity with them.
This study hopes to contribute humbly and yet significantly to the following. To
the science of theology, major in Missiology, this study aims at enriching students in their
theological reflection about the missiological dimension of dialogue in a plural society.
To the Universal Church and the other Christian Churches, this study intends to be a
modest contribution in searching for image of the Church relevant to people of different
beliefs in the multicultural, multiracial and multi-religious context.
To the local Church in Myanmar, this study is an attempt to inspire further this
commitment together with other Christian Churches and other faiths. Our contribution is
to picture the Church imaginatively whose image is strongly connected to the local socio-
cultural and religious symbol. By doing that in a radical yet contextual way, this study
would improve, to some extent, doing the mission of the local Church.
To the researcher, through this study he will be enhanced and enable to be a living
promoter of “missio inter gentes” in collaboration with Christians of different theological
persuasions and people of different faiths. Being a student of theology, this study
significantly equips the researcher with various theological skills, biblical knowledge,
8 Felix Wilfred, “The FABC Orientations, Challenges and Impact” in For All the Peoples of Asia
1, Gaudencio Rosales and C.G. Arevalo, eds. (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 1992), xxiv.
5
religious attitudes, and academic qualifications particularly in the field of the mission of
the Church. It also prepares him for his near future mission.
D. Scope and Limitation of the Study
The over-all of this research is about exploring the images of the Church and
proposing an appropriate image of the Church. Explicitly, this study plans to search for
some predominant biblical, magisterial and theological images of the Church, and selects
the common significant icons for the Church in Myanmar. It, then, aims to adopt the
Bodhi tree as image for a new way of being local Church in Myanmar.
This study does not attempt to provide all the existing images of the Church. But
it tries to discover some predominant images of the Church, propose the Bodhi tree as the
image for the local Church together with models of the Church and of mission.
E. Review of Literature and Related Studies
In writing this thesis, the researcher consulted the following resources.
Festschrift Committee, ed., Our Theological Journey: Writings in Honor of Dr. Anna
May Say Pa. Yangon: Myanmar Institute of Theology, 2006.
The seventeen essays in this book by Protestant theologians cover the
contemporary situation of the Christian churches. Their concerns regarding the Christian
mission, relationship with other religions like Buddhism and nat worship are presented.
The issue of internal Church problems and the external ones are highlighted. The concern
of some essays are, “Nat Worship: A Theological Locus in Myanmar”, “A Brief Survey
of Mission in Myanmar from a Missiological Perspective” and the like. Ecumenically and
6
interreligiously, this book gives some lights on Christian and non-Christian relation. This
book was consulted in Chapters II, III and IV of this research.
Evers, Georg. The Churches in Asia. Delhi: ISPCK, 2005.
Evers’ study includes the genesis and growth of the Burmese Church. This book
presents the historical account of the Catholic and Protestant travails in pursuing their
mission on Burmese soil under the successive rulers and amidst the majority Buddhists. It
unravels how much or how little the “little flock” has rooted itself in the context and life
of the people. Ever diagnoses the specific issues, such as the problem of Church-State
relations, ecumenical problems, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, the Christians’ struggles for
indigenous and Christian identity. To highlight the crucial challenges that lie ahead and to
identify pastoral and missiological courses of action in the Myanmar context, this book
was consulted in Chapters II and IV.
Thoppil, James. Towards an Asian Ecclesiology: The Understanding of the Church in
the Documents of the FABC (1970-2000). Shillong: Oriens Publications , 2005.
The author summarizes the emerging contextual ecclesiology of the FABC. While
exploring the understanding of the Church in the FABC statements, this book strikes a
balanced note between the ecclesiologies developed by theologians and the ecclesiology
of Vatican II. Then, it also interprets the mission of the Church in Asia followed by the
emerging Asian ecclesiological trends. Finally, a new way of being Church in Asia as
well as a new mode of carrying out its mission in Asia is presented. This book was
consulted in the development of the Chapters III and IV of our research.
7
Ngun Ling, Samuel. Communicating Christ in Myanmar: Issues, Interactions and
Perspectives. Yangon: ATEM, 2005.
This book deals with contextualization. Its whole concern is to give a guiding
traffic light for the emerging Christian-Buddhist dialogue, representing a unique break
with the past Christian missionaries’ ways of communicating Christ. It discusses both the
country’s religious, cultural, social, economic, political scenarios and their impact on
Christian-Buddhist relationship. Here different faces of Christ, some images of the
church and diverse mission models to be found in Myanmar are included. Therefore, this
book was used in the discussion of Chapters II, III and IV of this thesis.
Driver, John. Images of the Church in Mission. Ontario: Herald Press, 1997.
Driver, at first, presents the images of the Church in Christendom with the people
in mission vis-à-vis the Church and mission. Next, he outlines the biblical images of the
Church in mission like pilgrimage images, new-order images, peoplehood images and
images of transformation. Images of the Church are explored from the biblical exegetical
point of view in relation to the mission of the early Christians. Finally, he talks about the
Church in mission of God as a community of transformation with a new image as a sign
of universal salvation. In fact, Driver studies twelve images for understanding of a
Church. In this thesis especially Chapters III and IV, this book was consulted to
investigate the changing images of the Church in mission.
Wostyn, Lode. Doing Ecclesiology: Church and Mission Today. Quezon City:
Claretian Publications, 1990.
8
Wostyn makes use of a See-Judge-Act approach in doing ecclesiology: Church
and mission today. In the See part, the author presents a thorough analysis of the Church
from different points of views and secular sciences. In the Discern part, he critically
draws up a framework in which the historical Jesus and the growth of the Church
including Vatican I and II’s models of the Church. In the final Act part, he emphasizes
pastoral and missionary praxis. This study consulted this book in mapping out the biblical
and theological developments of the Church metaphors, the present images of the Church
in support of the proposed model of the Church in Chapter III.
Dulles, Avery. Models of the Church. 2nd ed. Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 1988.
Dulles outlines some of the historical and theological "images" of Church that had
developed in the past two thousand years of its history. In developing some evaluation of
prominent "models" in ecclesiology, he identifies six models of Church (as institution,
mystical communion, sacrament, herald, servant, and community of disciples) and
critiques each. The models are evaluated on their basis in Scripture, their link to Catholic
traditional teaching and their resonance with the modern world. The biblical perspective
to missions is added to each model. Dulles’ critical assessment of the Church in all its
aspects was of great help in writing Chapters III and VI of this research.
Minear, S. Paul. Images of the Church in the New Testament. Philadelphia:
Westminster, 1960.
Minear's classic work identifies and explicates the ninety-six images for the
Church found in the NT, attempting to uncover the true nature of the Church through the
extensive gallery of images. The author considers images as being able to communicate
9
more than language alone. The minor images are investigated through to the people of
God and the body of Christ. The final part assesses the interrelation of the images
analyzed and the strategic inferences to be drawn from their interweaving. Some of these
images helped us explore the Church images in Chapter III of this thesis.
F. Conceptual Framework
The schematic presentation of the conceptual framework on page 10 shows the
main dimensions of the research to be discussed. “Tree” signifies the common religious
symbol in the Myanmar context. It is a fig tree. In different religions, it has various
names- “Bodhi,” “Bo,” “Banyan,” “Sacred Fig,” and many. For the Hindu, it symbolizes
“immortality.” For the Buddhist, it stands for “wisdom.” For the Christian, it is the cross
of “salvation” in Christ. For nat worshipper, it represents “the household” of spirits.
The image of the Church is “the Bodhi tree” in Myanmar. Tree is a symbol for the
growth and fruitfulness of Christianity. The roots of the tree are essential for its existence
and survival but it grows up and bears fruits by being interconnected with outside the
world. “The Bodhi and the Cross dialogue” refers to the interrelations of Christianity to
other faiths. In this sense, mission is dialogue. The missionary is like “a treasure hunter,”
crossing the boundaries in search of “the seeds of the Word” in other cultures. “A
spirituality of dialogue” is compatible with missio inter gentes method.
Image of the missionary Church as the Bo tree is reignocentric. In the Burmese
context, the Bodhi tree is the symbol of “one big network of relationships.” Any
theological trend under the Bodhi tree suggests to be eco-theological- eco-christology,
10
eco-ecclesiology, eco-eschatology, eco-soteriology, eco-anthropology, eco-culture, and
eco-missiology, to mention a few.
Things are seen clearer trough images. Image contains idea. Image dictates
praxis. The image of the missionary Church will not only eliminate the foreign mask of
the Christianity but also prepare the Missio Dei at home in Myanmar.
Schematic Presentation of Conceptual Framework
G. Definition of Terms
Bodhi: “The Bodhi tree” or “the Bo tree” (ficus religiosa) under which Gautama
Buddha got “the Enlightenment” is sometimes identified as “Banyan” or “Banian” (ficus
benghalensis). Its short form ‘Bo’ means 'supreme knowledge' or 'awakening' in the old
11
Indian languages.9 The tree is sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism. It has various names.
10
It is called Bodhi Nyaung Bin or Nyaung Bin in Burmese. It is the most sacred tree for the
Theravada Buddhists, nat worshippers and many sects of animists in Myanmar.11
Church comes from the Greek kyriake, ‘belonging to the Lord’. The Hebrew
word qahal (assembly, gathering) is sometimes translated ecclesia and synagogue in
Greek, ecclesia in Latin,12
and Church in English. The Bible offers no a single definition
of the Church or provides no doctrinal basis for understanding it.13
In the NT, ekklesia
signifies a gathering group of believers and this translated as “Church.” The term
‘Church’ (ekklesia) appears about more than one hundred times in the NT.
Image is a mental picture in which something is like or looks like and a word or
phrase that describes something imaginatively.14
Image perceives a reality. It may serve
as tools of rhetoric. It advances our self-understanding. Each image manifests its validity
9 Sal J. Foderaro, ed. Lexicon Universal Encyclopedia (New York: Lexicon Publications, 1993),
s.v. “Banyan” by Hugh M. Raup, 72.
10 Keith Crim, ed. The Perennial Dictionary of World Religions (New York: HarperSanFrancisco,
1989), s.v. “Bodhi” by P. L. Basu, 110-111. Various scholars present the bodhi tree, ficus religiosa, as the
banyan tree, ficus benghalensis, under which the Buddha/s got enlightenment. Therefore, in this research
these various names will be used synonymously.
11 John Zar Ring Thang (a.k.a. Maung John), “Church as a Banyan Tree in the Context of Burma”
A paper submitted during the seminar of Laity: Theology and Praxis on March 16, 2007 at St. Vincent
School of Theology, Quezon City, Philippines. This paper is the very original work of the researcher.
12 Edward Schillebeeckx, Church: The Human Story of God, trans. John Bowden (London: SCM,
1990), 146; O’Donnell, Ecclesia, 92.
13 John Driver, Images of the Church in Mission (Scottdale, Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1997), 9.
14 Sally Wehmeier et al, Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 6
th ed. (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2000), 646.
12
and exerts its power only within communal imagination. The image is the meaning.15
Images can inflame the imagination and provide us identities.16
Mission etymologically (Latin missio) means “a sending forth with a special
message to bring or with a special task to perform.”17
The Pre-Vatican II notions of the
purposes of mission are threefold: first, the conversion of pagans, and the extension of the
Church; secondly, the transplantation of the church; and thirdly, mission is the growth of
the Mystical Body of Christ; the internal dynamism of mission is the Spirit.18
Vatican II’s
aim of mission is the evangelization of the non-Christians and plantatio ecclesiae
according to God’s will (GS 7). For the FABC, it is the triple dialogue.
Myanmar only refers to “the Burmese ethnic group” and Burma refers to “all the
Burmese ethnic groups.”19
On June 18, 1989 the present junta (SPDC) promoted the
name “Myanmar” instead of “Burma” as a conventional name for their state. The change
was recognized by, the ASEAN, the UN, and by countries such as France and Japan, but
not by the US and the UK. The EU uses Myanmar/Burma. For Burmese minorities,
Myanmar is an illegitimate name created by an illegitimate military government.
However, the two words mean the same thing and one is derived from the other. Due to a
15
Paul S. Minear, Images of the Church in the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960),
17, 22-24.
16 Donald E. Messer, Contemporary Images of Christian Ministry (Nashville: Abingdon Press,
1989), 25.
17 Edger G. Javier, “Theology of Mission” (Lecture, Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia, Quezon
City, Semester 2, SY 2006-2007): 1.
18 Ibid, 7.
19 Gustaaf Houtman, Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the
National League for Democracy (Tokyo: ILCAA, 1999), 377.
13
number of other reasons, the researcher used “Burma” and “Myanmar” interchangeably
and inclusively in this research while not excluding either the former or the latter.
H. Methodology
This study makes use of the historical method of research which goes through
books, Church documents, handbooks, journals, periodicals, lectures and unpublished
materials from the libraries of Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia (ICLA) and St.
Vincent School of Theology (SVST) and Maryhill School of Theology (MST).
I. Organization of the Study
The structure of this thesis is based on an allegory of the Bodhi Tree: its seed from
the Christ is the praxis of the Christ, the tree itself is the reality of the Church and the
process of the seed becoming the tree is the mission of God. More specifically, the tree
allegory produces the division of this research into five unequal yet interrelated sections
corresponding to the seed, the roots, the trunk and the branches and the fruits.
Chapter I is like the seed which gives birth to the tree by taking roots because
after the table of content, it introduces the motivation, problem and significance of the
study, and presents its scope and limitation from the selected survey of related literature
presented with historical research method and documentary analysis method.
Chapter II, like the roots which drink from the water veins beneath the earth,
discusses briefly the Burmese context in terms of the present socio-cultural-political-
economic realities, and the genesis and contemporary situation of the local Church.
14
Chapter III, like the trunk of the tree which connects the roots and supports the
branches, sketches the images of the Church from the Bible, Church teaching, Asian
Episcopal texts, and it also highlights various theological reflections of the Church with
different images and models.
Chapter IV, like the branches contends with the contextual inspirational and
insightful interpretations of the various texts since it proposes a paradigm for contextual
models of the Church by using the popular image relevant to the people of different
religious persuasions.
Chapter V, among the evergreen heart-shaped leaves, bear fruits by which the tree
is known, in the sense it recaps the research and recommends for further study and
implementations followed by the selected bibliography of the research and the
bibliographical sketch of the researcher.
This thesis presented the background of the study, statement of the problem,
significance of the study, scope and limitation of the study, review of literature and
related studies, conceptual framework, definition of terms, methodology, and
organization of the thesis. The next chapter discussed images of the Church in the
Burmese context.
CHAPTER II
IMAGES OF THE CHURCH IN THE BURMESE CONTEXT
Introduction
Myanmar is a multi-religious country. It is home to primal religious beliefs and
major world religions such as nat worship, animism, Theravada Buddhism, Hinduism,
Islam and Christianity. Chinese temples are built in major cities. A Jewish synagogue and
a Silk temple are found in Yangon.20
However, Christianity is still so foreign.21
“Yes to Christ and no to the Church” mindset exists. So, our challenging problem
is to identify images of the Church and to present a fitting image which is relevant for the
mission. This chapter explores images of the Church in our context of ethnic diversity,
cultural multiplicity, religious plurality and socioeconomic-political upheavals.
A. Mapping the Genesis of the Catholic Church in Myanmar
1. The Spread of Catholicism among the Ethnic Minorities
The hidden presence of Christianity was found as early as 1278 in Pagan, an
ancient Burmese kingdom.22
Catholic missionaries- Portuguese, French and Italian- first
20
Wilhelm Klein et al, Insight Guides, Burma/Myanmar (Singapore: APA Publications, 2003),
141,273.
21 Ngun Ling, “In the Midst of Golden Stupas,”113-115.
22 The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Myanmar, The Official Catholic Directory of Myanmar
2006 (Yangon: CBCM, 2006) 7. (When followed by the year 2005, 2006, 2007…it refers to the year of
publications. For example, CBCM 2006).
16
entered into Burma long before the Protestants, in 1554,23
but organized missionary
activity began only in 1722 through the Banabite missionaries. Missionaries could not
convert the lowland Buddhists and they shifted their mission to the hilly indigenous
people.24
Soon after, Catholicism took its strong root among the ethnic minorities.
Geographically, the location of the ethnic Christians comprises rugged hills, steep
gorges and high mountains, which have made them isolated socio-culturally,
economically and even politically from the rest of the lowland. Demographically, the
country consists of about one hundred and thirty five national races with eight major
national ethnic groups. The religious affiliation of the fifty two million people in 2002 is
Buddhist 89.3%, Christian 5.6%, Muslim 3.8%, Hindu 0.5%, and animist 0.2%.25
Multiethnic reality is one significant identity. The country encounters with “the
most perplexing ethnic problems.”26
Yet, the Church survived for years. During the
nineteenth century three Anglo-Burmese wars were waged (1824-26, 1852-54, and 1885-
86).27
Christian mission got special privileges during the British regime. During the
Pacific War (1942-1945), the Catholics lost their personnel and properties. The British
23
Samuel Hugh Moffett, A History of Christianity in Asia, Vol. II: 1500-1900 (Maryknoll, New
York: Orbis Books, 2005), 330-331.
24 Georg Evers, The Churches in Asia (Delhi: ISPCK, 2005), 404-405.
25 Union of Myanmar, Myanmar: Facts and Figures 2002 (Yangon: Ministry of Information,
2002), 4-5, quoted in Ngun Ling, Communicating Christ in Myanmar, 11; Thomas C. Fox, Pentecost in
Asia: A New Way of Being Church (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 2003), 217, writes that in 2003,
Buddhists are 89.1%, Christians 4.9%, Muslims 3.8%, and others 2.2% out of 44.5 million people.
26 Ngun Ling, Communicating Christ in Myanmar, 53-54, 59.
27 Scott W. Sunquist et al, eds., A Dictionary of Asian Christianity (Grand Rapids, Michigan:
Eerdmans, 2001), s.v. “Myanmar-Christian Development Work” by Marip Ja Naw, 575.
17
reentered and resumed British colonial rule in August 1945 and Burma got independence
from the British rule in 1948.28
The Church still got some privileges until U Nu, the
Prime Minister, attempted to make Buddhism the state religion in 1961.29
Christianity in Myanmar was and still is viewed, by the postcolonial regime,
merely as a religion of ethnic minority groups that embody Western political and
religious-cultural ideals. Christianity is a threat spiritually and politically to the regime
because being a Christian is identified with being a Western.30
Foreignness of
Christianity is most problematic in the mission.
2. The Church amidst Diverse Cultures after the Missionary Era
“The Burman people” were formed into a nation by the union of Mongoloid
tribes.31
Burmese civilization with its architecture and other art forms is largely an
outgrowth of Indian influences. But the Burmese shunned such Indian institutions as the
caste system. The numerous temples have led Burma to become widely known as “the
Land of Golden Pagodas.”32
Historically, Burmese culture was mainly composed of
native, (Chinese) Mongolian and Indian elements.
28
Evers, The Churches in Asia, 105.
29 San No Thuan, “Overcoming Oppression of Ethnic Minority Christians,” CTC Bulletin 20, no. 2
(December 2004): 115.
30 Ngun Ling, “In the Midst of Golden Stupas,”113-115.
31 Arthur P. Phayre, History of Burma including Burma Proper, Pegu, Taungu, Tenasserim, and
Arakan (London: Trübner & Company, 1883; Reprint Bangkok: Orchid Press, 1998), 1-2. This book, the
first formal history of Burma by a Westerner, records that Mongoloid tribes formed “Burma” but the
earliest monarchs were Indians.
32 Norma H. Dickey, ed., Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia 5 (New York: Funk and
Wagnalls, 1983), s.v. “Burma,” by J.M.S, 50-51.
18
The Church grew up rapidly among the animistic minority tribes under the British
colony (1886-1848). However, the government closed or confiscated all Catholic schools,
hospitals and social institutions in 1965.33
All the foreign missionaries were expelled
from the country in 1966,34
leaving only seventy seven native Catholic priests to care for
sixteen thousand Catholics. The country then became a closed society for years.
The Church was cut off by this long isolation from important events in the
universal church, such as the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and the FABC (until
1982).35
Despite of it, the local Church is “gradually gaining momentum in its work of
evangelization and its activities are more on the pastoral and social basis without getting
involved much in secular education systems.”36
Today, the Church just feels at home in the hierarchical culture of Burma. Thus,
David Morland observes that the Catholic Church in Burma is very hierarchical and
clerical. The renewal and change both of structure and attitudes wrought by Vatican II
have only partially touched the local Church. Bishops and priests are too weak and
vulnerable as individuals for effective witness.37
33
Evers, The Churches in Asia, 411.
34 Louise Pirouet, Christianity Worldwide AD 1800 Onwards 4 (Quezon City: New Day
Publishers, 1990), 84.
35 Evers, Churches in Asia, 410.
36 CBCM 2004: 15; CBCM 2006: 15; CBCM 2007:16.
37 David Morland, “Suu Kyi’s Call to Catholics,” The Tablets 3 (October 1998): 1276-1278.
19
3. Churches among Pagodas, Temples, Mosques and Spirit Houses
Myanmar is home to cosmic and metacosmic religions. But Christianity was and
still is an alien religion to Myanmar people, Pau Khan En writes, due to three significant
factors: (a) identification of Christian mission with colonialism by Burmese people; (b)
negative attitude of missionaries towards the religion and culture of the people; and (c)
conversion en masse of tribal groups to Christianity.38
Besides these, there are more
significant factors for the appearance of the foreign images of the local Church.
Christianity is also considered a foreign religion because of (1) the alien baptismal
names and the Western religious culture of the faithful; (2) baroque style of buildings like
religious convents and seminaries; (3) foreign languages in liturgy, and the ghetto
mentality and the foreign aid of the Church; and (4) insufficient inculturation.
Due to fifty years of ethnic conflict which has caused protracted political, social
and humanitarian crises, the Church is in danger of “burmanization,” in which minority
cultures, histories, religions, and political aspirations have to be eliminated for a
“national” identity.39
Burmanization is nationalization which the tribal Christians are
afraid of. The problem of Burma is not essentially “nationalism” but “tribalism.”
The military’s slogan of “one nation (Myanmar), one language (Burmese) and one
religion (Buddhism)” is against the Christian axioms of “one Lord (Christ), one baptism
(Sacrament), one faith (Christianity),” “no salvation outside the Church,” and “I can do
38
Simon Pau Khan En, “The Quest for Authentic Myanmar Contextual Theology,” RAYS MIT
Journey of Theology 2 (2001): 40.
39 “ “They Came and Destroyed Our Village Again" The Plight of Internally Displaced Persons in
Karen State,” Human Rights Watch 17, no. 4(C) (June 2005): 16-17.
20
everything in Christ’s name.” Axioms of both parties are signs of obstacles for dialogue,
reconciliation and healing, “critical collaboration” and peaceful co-existence.
The statement of the 1st National Pastoral Assembly shows the urgent needs of the
local Church for fruitful evangelization to renew the missionary spirit, strong
commitment, participation, shared-responsibility, new strategy to sow the seeds of faith,
effective efforts at inculturation, dialogue and many more.40
It calls for “self-renewal.”
B. Analyzing the Foreign Faces of the Church
1. The Cultural Faces of the Jesus-Community
In Burma, religious identity is always identified with national identity. Buddhism
is strongly linked with national identity for Bama, Shan, and Rakhine tribes. Christianity
is the national identify of the majority ethnic tribes. Ngun Ling says that the main
problem of Christianity for the Burman Buddhists is not necessarily the Christ of
Christianity but the Western image of Christianity. Christianity brought with it to
Myanmar the alien and different images of culture, civilization, and socio-political
structures.41
For Ngun Ling, the challenge is basically christological.
Colonization made Christianity a culturally alien and socio-politically undesirable
element for the Burmese Buddhist nationalists.42
Indeed, the junta wants to homogenize
40
CBCM, 50th Jubilee of the Establishment of the Local Church & 1
st National Pastoral
Assembly: Report of Study Days for Bishops, Priests, Religious & Laity. Yangon, June 1-12, 2005, s.v.
“History of the Catholic Church in Myanmar” by Augustine Ko, 5. Henceforth, reference shall be “1st
Pastoral Assembly”.
41 Ngun Ling Communicating Christ in Myanmar, 33.
42 G.E. Harvey, British Rule in Burma, 1824-1942 (London: Faber & Faber, 1946), 25-26, quoted
in Ngun Ling, Communicating Christ in Myanmar, 14.
21
other cultures while using Buddhism as the foundation of and the cement of the society
for their political interests.
While Buddhists associate the culture of Christians with foreign way of life the
Christians themselves feel that Buddhist culture is anti-Christian. Christians are
considered as deserters and traitors of the Burmese culture, local religion and ideology.
Cacayan also notices that a number of Church project interventions in Burma show little
sensitivity to the cultures of the people.43
Hierarchy just fits for the Burmese culture.
2. The Political Portrait of the Christian Minority
The Burmese kings had tolerated the religions of minorities but the post-colonial
regime did not. While Christians are found in significant numbers among some of the hill
tribe groups in rebellion against the central government, Christians in the main centers
enjoy considerable freedom, and valued if limited contracts with outside world.44
The Church carries its foreign images as colonizer and conqueror. Philippe de
Britto, a Portuguese mercenary conquered Syriam (Thanhlyn) and ruled supreme.45
During his thirteen year reign, natives were converted, and worse Buddhist monuments
and relics were destroyed. In 1613, de Britto was killed.46
Since then, in the mind of the
rulers the Church was associated with colonization.
43
Bert Cacayan, “Burma: Rich Country, Poor People- Impressions and Recommendations,” East
Asian Pastoral Review 38, no. 4 (2001): 314.
44 Louise Pirouet, Christianity, Ibid.
45 CBCM 2006: 7; see also Bigandet, An Outline of the History of the Catholic Burmese Mission,
6-7.
46 Klein et al, Insight Guides, Burma/Myanmar, 41.
22
The present regime with anti-colonial sentiments attempts to Buddhistize all
citizens. Churches, crosses, buildings and cemeteries are confiscated and destroyed and
sometimes replaced by the Buddhist pagodas. There is no freedom of press. Military
power remains unchallenged. Georg Evers says that Burmese Catholics adopt the policy:
“To suffer in silence for the best of the Church”47
under “the culture of fear.”48
Buddhism permeates Burmese society and culture. Social life is regulated by a
Buddhist (lunar) calendar of activities, and art, architecture, and most literature have been
inspired by Buddhism. The nationalists looked on the Christians as Western in outlook
and pro-British in political sympathy. The junta becomes suspicious of the Christians to
be conducting rebellious gatherings against them.
Ngun Ling decries that the nationalistic Buddhists cannot overlook the
imperialistic image of missionary Christianity and they think of Christianity as an
imported Western religion being associated with the colonial schemes and movements of
the past.49
Historically, Christians suffer due to the missionaries’ mistakes and their
slowness to adopt the local culture, and their failure to dialogue with the country.
The Roman Catholic hierarchy had not opposed the moves to make Buddhism
Burma’s national religion in 1961 unlike the leaders of Protestant Churches and of the
47
Evers, The Churches in Asia, 412.
48 Cacayan, “Burma: Rich Country, Poor People,” 311.
49 Ngun Ling, Communicating Christ in Myanmar, 14.
23
Burma Christian Council.50
The hierarchy did not also involve in the 1988 student-led
revolution51
and the September 2007 uprising.52
The noninvolvement of the hierarchy
does not seem to lessen the foreign image of the Church life in Myanmar.
If silence is the best policy for the Church in Myanmar because of fear, the
Church leaders of today are challenged to be voice for the voiceless when it comes to the
issues of social justice, protection of human dignity, human rights promotion, democratic
equality, environmental care and many. Some ethnic Christians claim to be freedom
fighters who are branded by the regime as rebellious groups.
3. Animist and Buddhist Images of the Church
The Burmese Christians have to see “the image of the Church in the light of the
other religions”53
especially with the eye-glasses of Bama Buddhists and nat worshipper.
Nat worship and Buddhism serve as the very basic of folk culture and civilizations of
majority Buddhists. For minority especially the Christians primal belief serves as the
spiritual and cultural ground from which the basic ideas of tribal life principles,
worldviews, concepts and customs have been developed.54
50
John C. England et al, eds., Asian Christian Theologies: A Research Guide to Authors,
Movements, Sources 2 (Delhi: ISPCK, 2003), s.v. “Contextual Theology in Burma/Myanmar” by John C.
England et al, 50.
51 Morland, “Suu Kyi’s call to Catholics,”1276.
52 CBCM, “Statement Regarding the Stand of the Catholic Church in the Face of the Present
Situation that the Country is Facing,” CBCM Statement (26 September 2007): no. 3.
53 James H. Kroeger and Peter C. Phan, The Future of the Asian Churches: The Asian Synod &
Ecclesia in Asia (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 2002), 17. [Original Italics].
54 Ngun Ling, Communicating Christ in Myanmar, 60.
24
The Bama Buddhists and Burman nat worshippers perceive the Church irrelevant
and very often have the anti-Christian sentiments because Christianity does not tolerate
them. Buddhism exists side by side nat worship but indifferent to other faiths.
Christianity is considered as a good neighbor but notably as an antagonistic
outsider. Christian Churches have done many remarkable developmental activities,
charitable works and wonderful services for the country. However, the Church will most
probably be kept distant from the Buddhists, the animists and reality of the country due to
its weakness to implement triple dialogue with the culture (inculturation), with the poor
(liberation), and religions (interreligious dialogue).
There is a set of complex images of the local Church. There are some models of
the Church. We will tackle three of the most popular images of the Roman Catholic
Church in Myanmar.
The first model presents the Church as “a big Ship”55
in which the pope is the
captain who is helped by various seamen for the safety of the people. Amidst the heavy
storms, weaves, great danger and various hardships the pontiff is leading the faithful on
ship to the set destiny. It is “a pilgrimage to heaven”. The outsiders are the enemies of the
church. Satan together with his followers is battling the faithful. “Mama Mary” embraces
and comforts the injured pope. Finally, the church overcomes the outside enemies.
55
This image of the Church as a big ship (oabFm}uD;) is popularized by Charles Maung Bo,
SDB, Archdiocese of Yangon. Being a Salesian in Burma, Bo used to mention this theme frequently on the
feast days of St. Don Bosco and Mary Help of Christians. For instance, in his many speeches and homilies
on Feast of Don Bosco, Jan 31 and Feast of Our Lady of Mary Help of Christian, May 24 in Lashio
Diocese, Pathein Diocese, Mandalay Archdiocese and Yangon Archdiocese particularly recent decade.
25
Another concept of the Church in Burma is presented as “a train.”56
Train for the
Burma is one of the main means of transportation. This undeveloped country has to trust
such transportation for many purposes- travel, economics, pilgrimage and many more.
Most people, particularly the middle class, would take train to go to Yangon from
Mandalay and other cities. Travel by train is often more economical and comfortable than
travel by automobile. Thus, for some Catholics, the Church is like the train.
The third popular image of the Church is “a big bus” which carries the passengers
to the target. It facilitates the need of the people. It transports the goods from one town to
another place. The bus can reach to the places where the train cannot. For the hilly people
this model of the Church is more significant than the locomotive model of the Church
and that of the ship.
Still there are some more contemporary images of the Burmese Church. The
following images of the Church are excerpts from some Burmese Catholic academics in
the Philippines. Theologically, the Church is like “a little flock, people of God, body of
Christ, and the Temple.” Geometrically, the Church is like “a triangle, and sometimes a
square.” Humanly speaking, the Church is like “an old man, a caring mother, a good
teacher, an understanding leader and parents.” It is “a field, a tree, a garden, and a public
park.” Sociologically, the Church is “a home, a family,” a boarding house, a bridge, a
ladder, and the rock.”57
Thus, people have variety of self images as Church.
56
There have been some hymns, poems, religious articles in which the Church is symbolized as a
train (7xm;).
57 Personal interviews and conversations with Martha Aye Tin, Paul Ta San, Benedict Than Lwin,
Stella War War Khaine, Lucas Suan Za Lian, Dominic Jo Du and others, Quezon City: Institute for
Consecrated Life in Asia; Radio Varitas Asia; S.F.X. Convent, August- December 2007.
26
The Church is, an interviewee says, like “a herald” which speaks of the truth.
Another interviewee says: “the Church is like an old man who cannot adjust himself with
the modern development. But I want to see the Church like the boy Jesus who grows and
becomes strong, filled with wisdom in front of God and people” (Luke 2:40). One
religious Sister says: “the Church is like the military regime. Negative aspects of the
Burmese culture are also seen in the Church.58
In general, many of the interviewees’
comments on the Church have been critical of the present situation of the local Church.
C. Religious Encounters and Mission Challenges
1. Mission and Religious Pluralism
In the mind of the nationalistic Bama Buddhists, “the imperialistic image of
missionary Christianity” and “an imported Western religion” are associated with the
colonial schemes and movements of the past.59
The Bama Buddhist ecclesiology of the
church is “a one-way ecclesiology” branded with the alien images. A big number of
politics-minded Buddhists perceive Christ as a foreigner, Church as a college of
colonizers and mission as the weapon of the Western conquerors.
On the other hand, a good number of well-educated non-Christians tolerate
religious pluralism though they acknowledge that Christianity was largely introduced to
the Burmese soil thru the merchants, missionaries and militaries and Buddhism is not the
58
Ibid.
59 Nugn Ling, Communicating Christ in Myanmar, 14.
27
native religion either. They accept Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and native
religions as equally good as well as defective.60
Pau Khan En observes:
The gospel and Nat worship have not yet encountered each other
because Nat Worship was regarded as anti-Christian by the
Christians, and to uproot this primal religion therefore had become
the sine qua non of planting the churches in the country. As Nat
worship is the substance of the culture, and the culture is the form
and expression of Nat Worship among the Primal Society, Nat
Worship and the culture are two inseparable factors in Myanmar.61
Nat worship and Buddhism serve as the very basic of folk culture and
civilizations of majority Buddhists. For minority especially the Christians primal belief
serves as the spiritual and cultural ground from which the basic ideas of tribal life
principles, worldviews, concepts and customs have been developed.62
The Bama
Buddhists and Burman nat worshippers often have anti-Christian sentiments because
Christianity does not tolerate Buddhism and animism.
The predominantly Western-oriented Church life especially in theology, liturgy,
ecclesiology and missiology came not only through missionaries’ teachings but also
60
Al-Haj U Aye Lwin, “Interfaith Dialogue: An Islamic Perspective,” Engagement: Judson
Research Center Bulletin 2 (August 2004): 23-33; Thet Lwin, “Interfaith Dialogue: A Hindu Perspective,”
Engagement: Judson Research Center Bulletin 2 (August 2004): 34-37; Daw Khin Nweh Han Kyi,
“Interfaith Dialogue: A Buddhist Perspective,” Engagement: Judson Research Center Bulletin 2 (August
2004): 38-51.
61 Pau Khan En, “Nat Worship: A Theological Locus in Myanmar,” in Our Theological Journey,
30.
62 Ngun Ling, Communicating Christ in Myanmar, 60.
28
through their colonial rulers, administrators, and civil educators. So the Church took its
shape in the image of those who established it and administered its people.63
For many native theologians and Christians, “a Burmese theology which is
incarnational and indigenous, confessing, transformative and people-centered”64
appears
the greatest challenge. Many Christian leaders now become aware of the Western-
oriented theological trends unfit for the Burmese context to address religious pluralism,
cultural diversity, oppression, civil wars, injustice, and poverty.
Religious pluralism, and also interreligious dialogue, is a re-awakening challenge
for the mission of the local Church. The Symposium on Interfaith Dialogue held in
Yangon in 2004 shows that nat worshippers, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians
have a positive view on other religions.65
However, among the Catholics as it is said
“there is no shared mission in the Church.” Interreligious contacts and ecumenical
collaboration are at infancy stage in Myanmar.66
“Shared mission” among the Catholics
is a challenge.
Cacayan lists some challenging “realities facing the Catholic Church in Burma.”
Catholic minority Church is identified with a foreign and rebellious group. Catholics are
discriminated in various fields. Ecumenically, Catholic-Protestant relationship is often in
63
Ngun Ling, Communicating Christ in Myanmar, 15; Ngun Ling, “Communicating Christ Cross-
Culturally: A Dialogue Approach to Mission and Theology in 21st Century Myanmar” in Our Theological
Journey, 36.
64 England et al, “Contextual Theology in Burma/Myanmar,” 53.
65 Aye Lwin, “Interfaith Dialogue: An Islamic Perspective,” 23-33; Thet Lwin, “Interfaith
Dialogue: A Hindu Perspective,” 34-37; Khin Nweh Han Kyi, “Interfaith Dialogue: A Buddhist
Perspective,” 38-51.
66 Evers, The Churches in Asia, 413-414.
29
a “fighting mood.” The patriarchal and hierarchical Church structures exclude laity,
women and the religious in decision making.67
2. Specific Mission Challenges of the Church
Ngun Ling highlights, at least, five major challenges of the present Myanmar
context such as: (1) challenge of ethnicity, religion and contextual theology; (2) challenge
of religious co-existence: revitalizing the Christian presence; (3) challenge of violence,
poverty and peacemaking; (4) challenge of globalization and doing theology; and (5)
challenge of theological education.68
Mission challenge of the Christian Churches
according to Ngun Ling is mainly contextual theological problem especially the
Buddhist-Christian dialogue.
But for Pau Khan En, another Baptist theologian:
The fundamental challenge of Christian mission for the churches in
Myanmar today is how to inculturate the Christian gospel to
remove this alienation of Christianity in the country. In other
words, the two centuries with little success, and the challenging
mission of the Christians in Myanmar today is to Burmanise
Christianity so that the gospel may be seen as authentic and
relevant for the people.69
God is no longer depicted in one
particular religion alone. Christ is discovered in all religions. The
current theological challenge, then, is not to Christianize the
people, but rather to Myanmarize the gospel.70
67
Cacayan, “Burma: Rich Country, Poor People,” 312-313.
68 Ngun Ling, Communicating Christ in Myanmar, 53-129.
69 Pau Khan En, “Nat Worship,” 19.
70 Fabella Virginia and R. S. Sugirtharajah, eds., Dictionary of Third World Theologies
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2000), s.v. “Myanmar Theology” by Simon Pau Khan En, 151.
30
Pau Khan En uses the word: “inculturate the Christian gospel” or “Burmanise
Christianity” to describe the contemporary challenging mission of the Christians. He uses
another word: “Myanmarize the gospel” to highlights the current theological challenge.
He believes that inculturation will remove the foreignness of Christianity.
Mark Tin Win, a Catholic theologian observes inculturation as one big
missiological problem in Myanmar. He remarks:
Because of what the country had gone through under the Christian
colonizers and because of inadequate inculturation, or almost no
inculturation, some misunderstandings and misconceptions grew
up. And naturally, as the result, some were under the impression
that the Christians are strangers in Myanmar. The people,
especially in the upper Burma, put the foreigners and the religion
(Christianity) together and call the Christian as Kala and their
religion Kala Barthar. Inculturation, therefore, is that movement
which aims at making Christianity permanently be felt at home in
Myanmar by making it a people's religion and a way of life which
can cancel all the misunderstandings or hostility and gain more
appreciation and acceptance.71
Tin Win is very critical of the kala (Western) images of Christianity in Myanmar.
For him, “the importance of inculturation is for the inter-religious dialogue.”72
He seems
to suggest that incluturation and dialogue will eliminate the Western faces of the Church.
1st National Pastoral Assembly of CBCM, for the first time, clearly underscores
some noteworthy internal and external challenges of the local Church. Some significant
mission challenges to be mentioned are interreligious dialogue, globalization,
71
Mark Tin Win, “Inculturation today in the Myanmar Context,” (Lecture, CRCM, Yangon, 21-31
July 2006): 3. [Italics in original].
72 Ibid., 4. [Original italics].
31
incluturation, education, social justice, healthcare, option for the poor, prophetic voice,
reconciliation,73
promotion of social development, migration, and so on.
Conclusion
We have analyzed, examined and argued that different images of the Church and
various images for the Church are found, formed and emerged from the Church-State
relations, Church’s involvement in the socio-economic and political scenarios, the mutual
attitudes between the Christians and non-believers, the encounter of the Church to the
local cultures and from our experiences as Christians as well as disciples.
We explored contemporary images of the Church not just for the sake of
exploring our self-identity and nature but also for the benefit of our relation toward
outside world. In the next chapter, we will trace back the biblical, magisterial, and
theological images of the Church in relation to mission.
73
1st Pastoral Assembly s.v. “History of the Catholic Church in Myanmar” by A. Ko, 4-5; Ibid.,
s.v. “The Challenges of the Church in Myanmar” by Eikhlein, 9- 13; “Eucharistic Spirituality: A Renewed
Eucharistic People towards A New Way of Being Church in Myanmar” by J. Soe Tint, 20; and Ibid., s.v.
“First National Assembly and Jubilee of the Local Church Myanmar, 2005” by C. Bertille, 29.
CHAPTER III
IMAGES OF THE CHURCH IN BIBLICAL, TRADITIONAL, MAGISTERIAL
AND EPISCOPAL STATEMENTS
Introduction
Metaphors are excellent tools for pedagogy. To use the old saying, metaphors
“paint a thousand words.” Hence, we understand why metaphors are important. And in
Asia, metaphors speak well to the people. In theology, metaphors are also used.
According to McFague:
Images “feed” concepts; concepts “discipline” images. Images
without concepts are blind ; concepts without images are sterile
there is no suggestion of hierarchy among metaphors, models, and
concepts ; concepts are not higher, better, or more necessary than
images, or vice versa. The task of conceptual thought is to
generalize to criticize images, to raise questions of their meaning
and truth in explicit ways.74
In correlating images of the Church and the images of mission, Senior has
this to say:
Images of church and images of mission are closely linked and
have profound mutual influence. The foundations of this
correlation can be found in the Scriptures. Three domain images of
church in the NT are correlated with images of mission in a variety
of biblical traditions: the church as a community of disciples sent
74
Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), 26; George Lakoff
and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980) quoted by Messer,
Contemporary Images of Christian Ministry, 21.
33
into the world: as a community of visible witness: and as a
community of healing and reconciliation.75
Mission and Church are interlinked and interdependent in essence. Their
appearances have similarities. Images of mission, as it is believed, cannot be properly
understood without a thorough examination of images of the Church. Paradigm shifts in
mission models and Church models will be briefly expounded in this chapter. In other
words, the correlation of images of Church and images mission will be explored.
A. Biblical and Traditional Images of the Church
1. The Church in OT Typology and NT Imagery
The Bible gives us the plural images of the Church. Le Guillou writes that “the
word of God helps us to understand the Church through a multiplicity of concepts and
images.”76
Indeed, images explore the realities of the Church. Such realities, in return,
explain, reflect, and portray “what the Church is” through metaphors, images, and
models. Paul S. Minear lists some ninety-six images of the Church in the NT.77
These
ninety six images of the Church have connection with images of mission.
75
Donald Senior, “Correlating Images of Church and Images of Mission in the New Testament,”
Missiology: An International Review 23, no. 1 (January 1995): 3. [Original italics]. Senior notes, “the term
used here is “image”, understood as something short of a full-blown, systematic ecclesiology or missiology.
Image evokes those fundamental lead ideas, symbols, and metaphors that capture the driving force of one’s
understanding and experience.” Ibid., 3-4.
76 Karl Rahner, ed., Encyclopedia of Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi (Wellwood: Burns
and Oates, 1993), s.v. “Church: History of Ecclesiology,” by Marie-Joseph le Guillou, 210.
77 Some of Minear’s images seem to reflect the “big Church” concept: “The People of God,” “The
New Creation,” “The Body of Christ.” However, the minor images of the Church are also presented: “A
Letter from Christ,” “The Boat,” “Unleavened Bread,” “One Loaf,” “The Table of the Lord,” “Branches of
the Vine,” “Vineyard,” “The Fig Tree,” “The Olive Tree,” “God’s Planting,” as well as others. Minear,
Images of the Church in the New Testament, 28-65.
34
John Driver writes that the Bible relies on images and narrative to disclose the
meaning of the Church. Biblical symbolic language of images introduces richness and
variety.78
T. H. Sanks claims that “there are many images and symbols that refer to the
community in the NT. Some images are the familiar ones, e.g., Body of Christ, People of
God, Temple of the Spirit, the New Creation, and the Community of Saints.”79
Indeed, there is no articulated ecclesiology in the Bible though it offers “various
images for the Church.”80
The most important “images” of the NT Church are: “People of
God, Body of Christ, and Temple of the Holy Spirit”81
though the earliest communities
were preoccupied with “with christology, not with ecclesiology.”82
Brown explains that “the beginnings of Christianity and the diversities in the
missionary movements brought the local Church into being.”83
Brown remarks that there
were many varied models of Church already in the first decades of the Christian era. His
investigations find no evidence of any consistent or uniform ecclesiology, but rather the
different NT Churches with distinct and different emphases.84
78
Wilbert R. Shenk, foreword to Images of the Church in Mission, by John Driver (Scottdale,
Pennsylvania: Herald Press, 1997), 9.
79 T. H. Sanks, Salt, Leaven and Light: The Community Called Church (New York: Crossroad,
1992), 44.
80 Gerald O’Collins and Edward G. Farrugia, A Concise Dictionary of Theology, rev. and exp. ed.
(Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 2001), 71.
81 Richard P. McBrien, Catholicism, rev. ed. (New York: Harper-Collins, 1994), 597-602, 604.
82 Sanks, Salt, Leaven and Light, 52.
83 R. E. Brown, Biblical Exegesis and Church Doctrine (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 129-134.
84 Brown, The Churches the Apostles left Behind, 146.
35
Senior likewise asserts that “mission is at the heart of the NT but there is no
uniform notion of mission in the Bible. Mission is exercised in function of a people.”85
Senior argues that “the biblical images or models of Church, mission and dominant
theology/christology are interconnected because… these three images are not mutually
exclusive.”86
Brown and Senior’s writings suggest that mission is understood through the
Church. The Church, in return, is perceived through mission.
Christianity is primarily a way of life. The Church continues to be missionary
today.87
Biblically speaking, images of the Church and images of mission are correlated.
“We do not so much see images as see through images”88
and we see the missionary
Church through images. These images of the missionary Church are neither institutional
nor dogmatic. Rather, they are anthropological, communitarian, and movement-centered
or evangelical images.
2. Images of the Church in the Apostolic Writings
Patristic writings provide us models, images and figures of the Church. “For the
Fathers,” Guillou remarks, “the whole of Scripture spoke of Christ and the Church: they
saw it through the imagery of the Bible and the typological interpretation of the Old
85
Senior, “Correlating Images of Church and Images of Mission,” 3-5.
86 Ibid., 5-7.
87 Knox, Theology for Teacher, 184.
88 Stephen Bevans, “Seeing Mission Through Images,” Missiology: An International Review 19,
no. 1 (January 1991): 45. [ Original italics].
36
Testament.”89
In Ecclesia, O’Donnell includes several of the common patristic images of
the Church.90
The images of the Church, for Ambrose, are “the moon, the sea, mystical vine,
mystical flock, boat, people of God, the reign of Christ, temple, body and spouse of
Christ.”91
In Augustine’s mind, the Church is “Mother, a virgin, nest, queen, love, new
Eve, mother hen, widow, dove, God’s house, the moon, a ship, and the ark of Noah.”92
Bernard’s image of church is “Spouse.”93
The Church, for Ephrem, is “the bride and
mother, a spouse, people, the ark, the Body, Eucharist, vineyard, temple, rock, way,
voyage, a re-creation and paradise, the house of God, a tower, eschatological kingdom.”94
The Church, for the Shepherd of Hermas, is “an elderly woman” who becomes “a
young and beautiful woman.” The Church is “a spouse, God’s house, God’s vine, God’s
people, eschatological kingdom, and a tower built on the rock.” 95
For Hilary of Poitiers,
“it is God’s tent, the ark, a ship, the calm, light, mother, Jerusalem, and God’s house.”96
For Origen, they are “bride, spouse, city of God, people, believers, and Jerusalem.”97
89
Le Guillou, “Church: History of Ecclesiology,” 206.
90 O’Donnell, Ecclesia, 5, 33, 51, 157, 194, 197, 338.
91 Ibid., 5.
92 Ibid., 33.
93 Ibid., 51.
94 Ibid., 157.
95 Ibid., 194.
96 Ibid., 197.
97 Ibid.,338.
37
Images of the Church reflect the self-understanding of the Christian community.
Sinks remarks that this self-understanding was frequently influenced by world events: the
fall of Jerusalem, expulsion from the synagogues, Constantine’s conversion, and the fall
of Rome.98
Some images of the church are flexible, contextual and culture-bound.
The image of the Church in the first three centuries was determined by the
opposition between a hostile State and a docile Church.99
In this era, the Church was seen
as “the local communities, or regional Churches, or missionary Churches”100
and to some
extent “a spiritual movement with minimal hierarchical, liturgical and canonical
structures.”101
In the following centuries, however, the image was determined by the harmony
between an established church and the Christian empire.102
Henceforth, she became the
hierarchical church.103
Mission now became “internal and rural.”104
The missional image
of the Church has shifted to the “institutional model”105
of the Church.
98
Sanks, Salt, Leaven and Light, 60, 61, 63-64.
99 Küng, The Church, 6-7.
100 Joseph Komonchak, Mary Collins and Dermot A. Lane, eds., The New Dictionary of Theology
(Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1987), s.v. “Church” by Edmund Hill, 190-191.
101 Edgar G. Javier, “General Mission History” (Lecture, Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia,
Quezon City, 19 February - 4 March 2008): 21.
102 Küng, The Church, 6-7.
103 Hill, “Church”, 194.
104 Javier, “General Mission History,” 21.
105 Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for
Today (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 2005), 37,130,165. This work will henceforth be abbreviated
“Bevans-Schroeder.”
38
B. Images of the Church in the Magisterial Statements
1. Pre-Vatican II Models of the Church
“The metaphor of the Church,” until Vatican I era, was “a plank of salvation for a
shipwrecked humanity.”106
The Church was compared to “the boat of Peter” which
carried the faithful to the farther of heaven, provided they remained on board.107
And it is
“the eikon (image) of the Holy Trinity, the spotless virgin and bride of the spotless lamb”
and “a perfect society.”108
The Church is a prefect society in the prominent sociological image, i.e., self-
sufficient and independent; unequal, i.e., organized hierarchically, and supernatural, by
reason of its efficient and final cause.109
Being identified with the Kingdom, it is superior
to any other societies. Thus, Wostyn explains:
The three key words to characterize the pre-Vatican II ecclesiology
are legalism, clericalism, and triumphalism. The church is seen as
a perfect society, supernatural institution, entrusted to the
hierarchy, in possession of the gifts of salvation. The
understanding of mission follows this church vision. Mission is
planting of this perfect institution in territory where she was not
yet present. This task is accomplished by specialists, the
missionaries. Pagans have to enter the institution in order to obtain
salvation for their souls.110
106
Eugene Hillman, Many Paths: A Catholic Approach to Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll, New
York: Orbis Books, 1989), 43.
107 Avery Dulles, Models of the Church, 2
nd ed. (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1988), 41.
108 Wostyn, Church: Pilgrim Community of Disciples, viii, 12. See also Driver, Images of the
Church in Mission, 14.
109 Le Guillou, “Church: History of Ecclesiology,” 215.
110 Lode L. Wostyn, Doing Ecclesiology: Church and Mission Today (Quezon City: Claretian
Publications, 1990), 122.
39
David Bosch states that this understanding of mission and the Church has its roots
in Cyprian’s famous dictum, extra ecclesiam nullas salus (“there is no salvation outside
the [Catholic] church”).111
In this era, mission means saving souls and expanding of the
church. Thus, the Church is imaged as “sphere of salvation on earth.”
112
The Fathers of Vatican I saw the danger of a metaphorical expression- too vague
and imprecise- in the idea of the Body of Christ.113
However, the Pauline image of the
Mystical Body of Christ was popularized to soften the hierarchical imagery,
institutionalized by the Council of Trent.114
2. The Ecclesiology of Vatican II
The Vatican II’s focus was ecclesiology because it was the Council on the
aggiornamento or renewal of the Church.115
Its two pillars are Lumen Gentium and
Gaudium et Spes.116
LG treats of the inner nature of the Church. GS treats the Church in
relation to the modern world. Ad Gentes states that “the whole Church is missionary”
(AG 2). LG and GS without AG seem incomplete to inquire the images of the missionary
111
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 218.
112 Bruno Forte, The Church: Icon of the Trinity- An Introduction to Ecclesiology (Makati: St. Paul
Publications, 1990), 127.
113 Le Guillou, “Church: History of Ecclesiology,” 212-213.
114 Patrick J. Brennan, Re-imaging, 7.
115 Sanks, Salt, Leaven and Light, 122.
116 Forte, The Church: Icon of the Trinity, 24.
40
Church. Thus, “the new ecclesiology worked out by Vatican II in AG opens new horizons
for missiology today. Mission is central to the Church, since Christ is central to it.”117
The Council, which reaffirms the nature and image of the Church as “missionary
Church” (AG 2), “restored the biblical imagery through which the mystery of the Church
was first revealed: body, spouse, temple, city, vineyard, house, flock; all theses words
express collective realities whose gradual realization is part of a great design.”118
Vatican
II has abundant images to explain the mystery of the missionary Church.
Lumen Gentium, chap. 2, proposed an image of the Church as the People of God.
It is a strongly community-oriented image. The notion of community is basic to any
understanding of the Church.119
One single image of greatest importance in the revelation
of the mystery is the Church as the body of Christ (LG 7).120
As with the Body of Christ
image, the People of God image is community-oriented, focusing on the interrelationship
and mutual helpfulness of the members.121
Vatican shows that the Church has a
multifaceted reality, mystery and nature.
Vatican II, in trying to come to grips with the mystery of the Church in this
century, referred to the various images drawn from pastoral life, agriculture, building
117
René Latourelle and Rino Fisichella, eds., Dictionary of Fundamental Theology (New York:
Crossroad, 1995), s.v. “Mission” by Gianfranco Coffele, 714.
118 Le Guillou, “Church: History of Ecclesiology,” 210.
119 Knox, Theology for Teachers, 171.
120 Pedro Rodriguez, “Theological Method for Ecclesiology” in The Gift of the Church: A
Textbook on Ecclesiology in Honor of Patrick Granfield, O.S.B., Peter C. Phan, ed. (Collegeville,
Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2000), 141-143.
121 Knox, Theology for Teachers, 171.
41
construction, and even from family and married life…in the wirings of the biblical
authors’, listing the sheepfold, the flock, the tract of land, the vine, the building, the
temple, the bride (LG 6).122
Driver remarks that “the images which the Church uses for
its self-understanding will largely determine what the Church will actually become.”123
“The Trinitarian origin of the Church has been revealed in various names, images,
metaphors, figures.”124
The Church’s self-understanding of her nature, her master Jesus
and her role in the mission have been intertwined with each other and illumine each
other. Regardless of abundance of images, the Church is firmly portrayed as a pilgrim in
mission toward the Kingdom (LG 7, 8, 41; DV 7).
C. Images of the Church in the Asian Episcopal Texts
1. The FABC Imagery of Asian Ecclesiology
The FABC and its documents, being rooted in and drawing inspiration from the
Vatican II, attempt to live the vision of Vatican II and other Church documents
contextually. The idea of the Church as a universal sacrament of salvation, as the new
people of God, a communion, Church’s collegiality, and the like played an important role
in the development of the FABC’s theological vision.125
122
Charles Hill, Mystery of Life: A Theology of Church (Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1990), 67.
123 Driver, Images of the Church in Mission, 16.
124 Rodriguez, “Theological Method for Ecclesiology,” 141-143.
125 James Thoppil, Towards an Asian Ecclesiology: The Understanding of the Church in the
Documents of the FABC (1970-2000) (Shillong, India: Oriens Publications, 2005), 84-85.
42
The Asian Churches defined the central and most urgent mission duty incumbent
upon them: “the primary focus of the task of evangelization is the building up of a truly
local Church.”126
One prominent quality of the changing faces in Asia is its moment of
reawakening, characterized by “a new consciousness” and “a renewed self-image”.127
The FABC images of the Church are Kingdom-centered or reignocentric. In Asia,
the Church shifts its focus from building up the local Church to building up the Reign.
The Reign of God is the very reason for the being of the Church. “The Church exists in
and for the Kingdom.”128
The challenge is to make the Kingdom a reality.129
The very
existence of the Church in Asia is oriented towards God’s Kingdom.130
The Church has
attempted to be the image of the coming of the Reign in Asia.
126
FABC, Evangelization in Modern-Day Asia: The First Plenary Assembly of the Federation of
Asian Bishops’ Conferences (Hong Kong: FABC Secretariat, 1974), nos. 9-10. Henceforth, “FABC-1”.
127 See Edwin E. Mercado, “Emerging Images of the Asian Church,” Philippiniana Sacra 26, no.
76 (January – April 1991): 77-94. Reprinted as “Emerging Images of the Asian Church,” Theology Digest
39, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 143-146. We will quote Mercado’s work both form Philippiniana Sacra and
Theology Digest because the writer presents the same theme somehow differently.
128 Forth Bishops’ Institute for Interreligious Affairs on the Theology of Dialogue in For All the
Peoples of Asia 1, Gaudencio Rosales and Catalino G. Arevalo, eds. (Quezon City: Claretian Publications,
1997), 125. Henceforth, reference shall be “FAPA-1.”
129 FABC V 1.7, in FAPA 1: 230.
130 Jeffery G.L. Chang, “Ordained Ministry in the Mission and Ministry of the Church in Asia in
the Light of the Documents of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, 1970-2005” ( Doctoral
dissertation, Taipei: Fu Jen Catholic University, 2007): 79.
43
“The FABC’s reignocentric approach to the task of Christian mission”131
gives
reignocentric Church images. Yun-Ka Tan delves into the FABC official papers to reveal
a uniquely Asian ecclesiology.
This new way of being church is rooted in six predominant
propositions: (1) the Asian church is called to be a “communion of
communities” that is (2) shaped by, and responds to the immense
diversity and pluralism of Asia, (3) under guided by a commitment
and service to life, (4) inspired by an overarching vision of
harmony, (5) oriented a threefold dialogue with Asian cultures,
religions and the poor, and (6) seeking to build the Kingdom of
God in Asia.132
Mercado highlights the various images of the Asian Church as contained in the
FABC documents, reflecting its pastoral practices and concerns: Church as evangelizer,
disciple, sacrament, and community.133
He explains: “In the face of poverty, oppression
and pain, the Asian Church is called to evangelization, discipleship, servanthood and
community. In its quest to be an agent of true liberation it becomes a sign and instrument
of God’s salvific presence in the world.”134
The Spirit urges the Asian bishops to renew
their self-understanding and to project a new image.135
131
Jonathan Yun-Ka Tan, “A New Way of Being Church in Asia: The Federation of Asian
Bishops’ Conferences (FABC) at the Service of Life in Pluralistic Asia,” Missiology: International Review
23, no. 1 (January 2005): 87.
132 Ibid., 73. [Original italics].
133 Mercado, “Emerging Images of the Asian Church,” 77-94. Reprinted as “Emerging Images of
the Asian Church,” Theology Digest 39, no. 2 (Summer 1992): 143-146. Henceforth, references shall be as
“Mercado-Theology Digest” and “Mercado- Philippiniana Sacra.”
134 Mercado-Theology Digest, 143. [Original italics].
135 Mercado- Philippiniana Sacra, 81 and footnote 18.
44
George Evers remarks that becoming truly local Churches is the challenge to
develop from so-called "Bonsai-churches," replicas of Western Church models, to truly
Asian local Churches. Asian Churches are challenged to shed their image of being
"foreign implants" and to become communities which feel at home, and which are
accepted by the other communities.136
Becoming local Churches is a mission challenge.
Today, “too many Asian Catholics see other religions not only as bearers of truth,
but as alternate pathways to salvation or spiritual insights.”137
“The (Vatican II) Council
did not directly discuss,” Dulles notices, “the presence of the Church in the non-Christian
world.”138
Therefore, it is the duty of Catholics in Myanmar to discuss the presence of the
Church in the Burmese Buddhist context.
2. The CBCM Images of the Church
The local Church in Myanmar has adopted images of the Church from the (pre-)
Vatican II, and the succeeding papal and curial documents. Most significant images can
be seen from the Burmese bishops’ meetings with John Paul II. The pontiff states:
Catholics in Burma are like the leaven and the salt of the Gospel.
The Church remains a mystery. She is described as the Body of
Christ, the family of God, the temple of the Holy Spirit. She is the
community. She is the pilgrim People of God entrusted with the
Good News of salvation. She is a servant and teacher, a mother,
136
See George Evers, “Challenges to the Churches in Asia Today,” East Asian Pastoral Review
43, no. 2 (2006): 152-172.
137 David Gibson, “The Vatican’s Asian Vexation,” Newsweek (3 December 2007): 40.
138 Avery Dulles, The Dimensions of the Church (Westminster, Maryland: Newman Press, 1967),
12.
45
virgin and bride. She experiences the mystery of Christ’s Cross
and the mystery of Christ’s risen life.139
The Burmese Catholics might surely reflect images of the Church from “the
ecclesiology of John Paul II” which, Dulles observes, “may perhaps be characterized in
terms of five familiar models:” the Church as (1) institution; (2) mystical communion; (3)
sacrament; (4) herald; and (5) servant.140
The institutional images of Church are strongly
emphasized until the first pastoral assembly of the local Church held in Yangon in 2005.
The local Church recently moves toward the communitarian ecclesiology of the
FABC while maintaining the institutional model of Vatican II ecclesiology. Eikhlein
suggests the awakening young Church in Myanmar to move toward (1) a participatory
Church; (2) a Church of dialogue and solidarity; (3) an inculturated and contextualized
church; (4) an accompanying and empowering Church; (5) a Church of indigenous
people; and (6) a renewing Church.141
The local Church adopts the “ecclesiology of communion” recognizing its
“diverse ethnic groups, cultures and languages.” Its vision of communion goes: “Our
Communion as People of God and fully inculturated in the local soil of Myanmar, we are
139
John Paul II, “Meetings with Burmese Delegation During the Visit at Bangladesh: A
Community that Expresses the Mystery of Christ’s Cross” (24 November 1986), 6, quoted in Manuel G.
Gabriel, John Paul II’s Mission Theology in Asia (Agenda for the Third Millennium) (Mandaluyung City,
Philippines: Academic Publishing Corporation, 1999), 107-109,134,241
140 Avery Dulles, “The Ecclesiology of John Paul II” in The Gift of the Church: A Textbook on
Ecclesiology in Honor of Patrick Granfield, O.S.B., Peter C. Phan, ed. (Collegeville, Minnesota: The
Liturgical Press, 2000), 93-102.
141 Eikhlein, “Reflection on Challenges of the Catholic Church in Myanmar,” 273-280; see also
his “The Challenges of the Church in Myanmar,” 9-13.
46
sent to be at the service of God’s Kingdom together with all people of goodwill.”142
The dream of the Burmese Church to “Journey to a New Pentecost” is envisioning
the church as “Communion of People of God” through reconciliation and renewal of
faith. It is reviewing Christian life as church, reflecting on Gospel, and responding
anew.143
Bertille says: “our Church has to become more prophetic, participative,
dialoging, and communitarian to witness effectively to the challenges facing us.”144
The assembly is aware of the need to project some relevant images of the Church
in order to face her internal and external challenges. The participants - laity, religious and
hierarchy visualize the local Church as “the little flock of Jesus,” an alien Church,
minority but salt and light, a reconciling Church, perfect Church, justice Church, the seed
in the bush, priest centered Church, and so forth.145
Lay participants appear in favor of
the community aspects of the Church.
The multiplicity of images can be classified into two models of the Church-
institutional (the hierarchy) and communitarian (the basic ecclesial communities). The
pastoral assembly does not give emphasis on ecumenical ecclesiology. Rather, it tends
142
CBCM 2006: 16, reprinted from “Our Way Forward: Church as Communion through
Reconciliation: Message to the People of God in Myanmar from the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of
Myanmar,” Yangon (27 November 2005).
143 1
st National Pastoral Assembly, s.v. “Overview of the 3 Days Programme,” by Anthony
Rogers, 3.
144 1
st National Pastoral Assembly, s.v. “1
st National Pastoral Assembly and Jubilee of the Local
Church Myanmar, 2005,“ by Charles Bertille, 29. [Original italics].
145 See Ko, “History of the Catholic Church in Myanmar,” 4-8; Eikhlein, “The Challenges of the
Church in Myanmar,” 9-13.
47
toward interreligious ecclesiology with inclusivist approach. It does give some images for
the missionary Church toward especially the Buddhists and the other non-Christians.
D. Trends in Contemporary Missiology in relation to Images of the Church
1. J.A.B. Jongeneel and J.M. van Engelen
The contemporary currents in missiology are as follows: (1) Missio Dei theology;
(2) salvation-historical missiologies; (3) ecclesiocentric missiologies; (4) missiologies in
the context of secularization: presence, humanization, and other concepts; (5)
missiologies in the context of non-Christian religions: dialogue; and (6) missiologies in
the context of oppression and violence: from development to liberation.146
In the discussion of these missiologies, in general the official Roman Catholic
theory of mission and that of the evangelical movement are in essence missiologies “from
above” while those of the ecumenical movement and of liberation theology are contextual
missiologies- i.e., missiologies “from below.”147
In missiology from above, the model of
the Church is institutional. In missiology from below, the model of the Church is
communitarian- for example, dialogical, prophetic, and participatory.
2. David J. Bosch
The emerging “ecumenical paradigms or models in mission are (1) mission as the
Church-with-others; (2) mission as Mission Dei; (3) mission as mediating salvation; (4)
146
J.A.B. Jongeneel and J.M. van Engelen, “Contemporary Currents in Missiology,” in
Missiology: An Ecumenical Introduction - Texts and Contexts of Global Christianity, A. Camps, L. A.
Hoedemaker, M. R. Spindler, and F. J. Verstraelen, eds. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans,
1995), 438-457.
147 Ibid. 447.
48
mission as the quest for justice; (5) mission as evangelism; (6) mission as
contextualization; (7) mission as liberation; (8) mission as inculturation; (9) mission as
common witness ; (10) mission as ministry by the whole People of God; (11) mission as
witness to people of other living faiths; (12) mission as theology; and (13) mission as
action in hope.”148
Bosch’s masterful synthesis of missiology will be normative in some way for
many years to come. His history and theology of mission is detailed, ecumenically open,
and theologically rich.149
Indeed, these emerging ecumenical paradigms in mission
highlight the ecumenical images of the Christian Churches.
3. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder
Christian mission must preserve, defend and proclaim the constants of the
Church’s tradition; at the same time it must respond creatively and boldly to the contexts
in which it finds itself. The Church becomes missionary by attending to each context in
which it finds itself. It must be faithful to six constants- christology, ecclesiology,
eschatology, salvation, anthropology, and culture.
Mission is prophetic dialogue. The Church in mission must speak clearly for the
world’s excluded, against human and ecological violence, and on behalf of God’s reign
of justice and peace. It must also proclaim the name, the vision and lordship of Jesus
Christ. Mission today is composed of six elements: witness and proclamation; liturgy;
148
Bosch, Transforming Mission, 368-510.
149 Stephen B. Bevans and Roger Schroeder, “Missiology after Bosch: Reverencing a Classic by
Moving Beyond,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 29, no. 2 (April 2005): 70, cited by Javier,
“Mission and Anthropology,” 5-6.
49
prayer and contemplation; justice, peace and the integrity of creation; interreligious
dialogue; inculturation; and reconciliation. Mission must be lived out in a bold humility:
bold in prophetic witness and speech, humble in attentive dialogue.150
Mission is
prophetic dialogue and images of the Church are also prophetic images because the
Church and mission are one in essence.
4. Edgar G. Javier
Religions have become ideological tools for oppression and violence. Therefore,
mission is dialogue, and that dialogue is our mission especially for the Asians. Dialogue
becomes the integral part of the evangelizing mission of the church.151
The Church is
missionary for three reasons. It continues Christ’s mission, it is the instrument of the
Holy Spirit, and it receives the mission command from Christ.152
There is “a threefold contribution of Asia to mission”: (1) new mission theologies
[presence, accompaniment, dialogue]; (2) theology of religion [exclusivism, inclusivism
and pluralism]; and (3) contextual theologies [Asian theologies of liberation].153
Other
religious traditions have “good news” for us. And we come to know that “God’s dream
for humanity and creation” is “one earth – one people”, that is- “one people, one
150
Bevans-Schroeder, 1-4.
151 Edgar G. Javier, Dialogue: Our Mission Today (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 2006), vi-
vii.
152 Ibid., 156-157.
153 Edgar G. Javier, “General Mission History” (Lecture, Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia,
Quezon City, 21 February 2008): 8.
50
humanity.”154
Dialogue is an emerging Asian mission paradigm. And God’s dream for
the whole cosmos is actualized through dialogue.
5. Felix Wilfred
The wide spectrum of contemporary ecclesiologies is classified into four:
reformist, liberal, liberational and inculturational. But these four orientations are
“inadequate for Asia” because they let the theological precede the anthropological and
the cultural. An Asian approach is “towards an anthropologically and culturally founded
ecclesiology” in which “we need to perceive, understand and re-appropriate the essence
of the church itself in terms of Asian cultures, ways of life, interhuman relationships and
communitarian existence.”
Many of followers of Jesus in Asia are people of other faiths and do not belong
within boundaries of the institutional Church. Therefore, the Churches in Asia should not
simply sink their roots in Asia, but rather have Asian cultures as their roots in as much as
these roots are God’s own grace and gift to them.155
In this reflection, the mission of the
Church appears to be “intra gentes” rather than “ad gentes.”
6. Aloysius Pieris
The Western academic Magisterium which developed this theology in terms of
three categories: exclusivism, inclusivism and pluralism do not make sense in Asia as
154
Edgar G. Javier, “God’s Dream for Humanity and Creation: One Earth- One People,” Religious
Life Asia 10, no. 1 (January- March 2008): 6,12,14,19.
155 Felix Wilfred, Sunset in the East? Asian Challenges and Christian Involvement (Madras:
University of Madras, 1991), 231-241. [Original italics].
51
inter-religious dialogue is having its own way in Asia and reveals its own theology of
religions. The conversion of Asia to Christianity is not an urgent missionary task.
Likewise, the physical expansion of the Church is not the practical aim of mission.
Christianity in Asia has to dialogue with the metacosmic religions (i.e., Hinduism,
Buddhism, Taoism, Islam) and the cosmic religions (i.e., tribal and clannic religions, and,
the popular forms of metacosmic religions). The Basic Human Communities (BHCs) is
seen as the meeting point.156
7. Lode L. Wostyn
The Church’s mission has to be seen in the context of the world ecumene of
suffering humanity.157
A Church-centered vision has to be moved to a world-centered
ecumenical vision in which the Reign is the central concern. The task of announcing the
good news, of creating communities, of inculturation, of dialogue with other religions is
certainly part of a vision of mission. 158
“A missiology that focuses on Jesus’ ministry to the Reign of God implies a
rethinking of christology and ecclesiology.”159
Specifically, “this (a postmodern age)
understanding of mission presupposes a radical rethinking of our traditional christology
156
Aloysius Pieris, “Inter-Religious Dialogue and Theology of Religions: An Asian Paradigm,”
East Asian Pastoral Review 29, no.4 (1992): 365-376.
157 Wostyn, Church: Pilgrim Community of Disciples, 53.
158 Ibid., 54.
159 Lode L. Wostyn, “” Missio Dei”: There is Mission because God Loves the World,” Religious
Life Asia 9, no.1 (January-March 2007): 40.
52
and ecclesiology.”160
Wostyn’s writing shows that the Church in Asia has to go back to
Jesus of Nazareth in doing missiology from below.
8. Donal Dorr
There are three contrasting ‘models’ of mission. First, in ‘the crusader model’ or
‘the commando model’ of mission, the Church was to be ‘planted’ in the pagan land’.161
Second, in alternative model, the Spirit is seen at work outside the Church and
missionaries are seen as explorers and patient diplomats, peacemakers.162
There are some different images of mission within the crusade model of mission
and the alternative model of mission. The ‘sending out image’ of mission is “so closely
linked to a purely institutional and hierarchical model of Church that it does not fit in
easily with an understanding of the Church as a communion, as the People of God, or as a
prophetic servant of the world.”163
This ‘sending out’ image of mission is criticized by the ‘gathering in’ image of
mission for ‘the Greek name “ekklesia” means gathering or assembly.’164
However, the
above two images have to be supplemented, without conflict, by the ‘solidarity image’ by
160
Wostyn, “” Missio Dei,” 48.
161 Donal Dorr, Mission in Today’s World (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2000),186-187.
162 Ibid., 187-188.
163 Ibid., 189.
164 Ibid., 190.
53
picturing Jesus in the midst of his people. “Since solidarity was at the heart of the mission
of Jesus it must also be central to the mission of the Church.” 165
9. Avery Dulles
The five models of the Church are: Church as institution, mystical communion,
sacrament, herald, servant and community of disciples.166
In the institutional model, the
powers and functions of the Church are teaching, sanctifying and governing. This model
gives sense of Christian identity and mission. 167
The communion type of ecclesiology
fails to give Christians a very clear sense of their identity or mission. And motivation for
Christian mission is left obscure.168
The sacramental model of the Church has a tendency
to foster the virtues and values generally admired by Christians. 169
The understanding of
mission in sacramental model is not clear.
The herald model perceives mission as proclamation170
and it gives a clear sense
of identity and missionary thrust of the Church - especially the local Church.171
The
servant ecclesiology gives a new sense of mission - that is, humble service.172
In
165
Ibid., 191-192.
166 Avery Dulles, Models of the Church (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974; Dublin: Gill and
Macmillan, 1988), 18-32. The Church as “Community of Disciples” is added in the second edition of his
work in 1988. This research consults his latter work.
167 Ibid., 37, 191-193.
168 Ibid., 60.
169 Ibid., 192-193. [Original italics].
170 Ibid., 76.
171 Ibid., 84.
172 Ibid., 98.
54
discipleship model, mission to spread the faith belongs to the whole community.173
Each
model of the Church has the pros and the cons in relation to mission.
10. Arnulf Camps
There are five different models of the local Church in third world theology.
Elements of the five models fluctuate according to the concrete mission situation of local
Churches.174
These models may be paraphrased as follows:
The house Church model enables the Church to fulfill its mission within a
particular situation. The Church is equated with a family community (i.e., base
communities, independent Churches, and household communities).
The institutional model of Church is regarded as a prefect society with differed
from all other societies. Structures of doctrine, sacraments, and ecclesiastical leadership
were said to be drawn from divine revelation.
The incarnated and suffering Church tries to incarnate the good news by
following Jesus of Nazareth, the incarnated and suffering Lord. This local Church
endeavors to promote the inculturation and contextualization.
A sacramental and eschatological community model images the Church as a
foretaste of the coming of the Reign, inaugurated eschatology, or a Church on pilgrimage.
It makes dialogue and inculturation possible.
173
Ibid., 221.
174 Karl Muller et al, eds., Dictionary of Mission (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Book, 1997), s.v.
“Local Church” by Arnulf Camps, 289-291.
55
A prophetic and liberating movement image imitates Moses, the prophets of
old, and Jesus of Nazareth as prophets and liberators of the voiceless people. The Church
has also been and still is interpreted to be prophetic and liberative. It is dynamic.
Conclusion
This chapter explores images of the missionary Church. In the words of
Hebblethwaite, we confirm that this profusion of images has a common theme: they may
stress different aspects of redemption, but they are all images of unity.175
We do not
attempt to downgrade the “Roman” and “Catholic” aspects of the Church.
We want to considerably emphasize the “Burmese” and the “Christian” aspects of
the Church in mission together with Christians of all theological persuasions and amidst
people of other faiths. ‘A crisis of images’ claims that we have passed rapidly from one
image or figure or model to another in a way that has only unsettled the faithful.176
This research presumes that such crisis of image maybe lessened only if the
mission of the local Church is relevant to the Myanmar context. We have explored the
images of the Church in the bible, Church teaching and some theological reflections. In
the next chapter, we will select, propose, narrate and present the most fitting image of the
Church in relation to the mission of the local Church in Myanmar.
175
Peter Hebblethwaite, Theology of the Church (Cork: The Mercier Press, 1969), 30.
176 Charles Hill, Mystery of Life: A Theology of Church (Melbourne: Collins Dove, 1990)
introduction, no page number.
CHAPTER IV
THE BODHI TREE: IMAGE OF THE MISSIONARY CHURCH IN THE
MYANMAR CONTEXT
Introduction
Images of Church and images of mission are closely linked and have mutual
influence.177
The actual image of the Church is never perfect, as lovely, as holy or as
brilliant as that formative divine idea would wish it to be (ES 10). As one imagines
church, so one does, lives, behaves as Church. The dominant image dictates the praxis.178
This chapter proposes “the Bodhi Tree” as one relevant image of the missionary
Church in Myanmar, attempting to see the image of the Church in the lights of other
religions since “the Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in these
religions” (NA 2). This contextualized image of the Church in mission is believed to
lessen the foreignness of Christianity.
177
Senior, “Correlating Images of Church and Images of Mission,” 3-4. [Original italics].
178 Patrick J. Brennan, Re-Imaging the Parish (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 11.
57
A. The Bodhi and the Cross
1. Hindu Tree of Immortality
“Sacred trees” are found in the history of every religion.179
In Indian tradition,
“the cosmic tree” is connected with the bodhi.180
Hindu deities and the nats were
worshiped in Burma before the arrival of Buddhism.181
And “tree-worship” was found in
the earliest Burmese civilization of the Pagan Dynasty.182
This data suggests that the pre-
Burmese civilization’s practice of tree-worship and the Hindu rite of tree-veneration
mingle with the worship of native tree nats and also the Bodhi veneration in Burmese
Buddhism.
Banyan is known as Bodhi Tree and 'Bodhi'. Its short form 'Bo' means 'supreme
knowledge' or 'awakening' in the old Indian languages. It is also called ficus religiosa that
was already known as the Bodhi tree even before Gautama Buddha.183
The Bodhi tree is
an evergreen fig. It may attain a height of one hundred feet. Its roots often get embedded
in the ground and become minor trunks. It branches indefinitely and has thick prop roots
179
Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion: A Study of the Element of the Sacred in the
History of Religious Phenomena trans. Rosemary Sheed (New York: The World Publishing Company,
1958), 264.
180 Ibid., 273-274. [Original italic].
181 See Roger Bischoff, Buddhism in Myanmar: A Short History (Kandy: Buddhist Publication
Society, 1995), 13-14.
182 James George Scott, Burma: A Handbook of Practical Information, 3
rd ed. (London: Daniel
O’Connor, 1906; Bangkok: Orchid Press, 1999), 399-400,402.
183 Raup, “Banyan,” 72.
58
that support the extended branches. Its fruits are a purplish black and are a favorite food
of birds. Its leaves are broad, oval and glossy.184
It is a sacred tree to both Hindus and Buddhists. Some of its common names are
Bodhi tree, Bo tree, tree of enlightenment, Peepal, Beepul tree, Pipal, Pipalla, Sacred tree,
Ashwattha, Ashvattha, Sacred Fig, Buddha tree185
and finally Bodhi Nyaung Bin or
Nyaung Bin in Burmese. The Bhagavad Gita interprets the inverted tree as a symbol of
the unfolding of all being out of primal ground. The roots represent the principle of all
manifestation; the branches, the concrete and detailed actualization of this principle.186
The Bodhi tree is “the image of the Trimurti.”187
Vishnu is believed to be the bark,
Brahma, the roots, and Shiva, the branches. The huge tree has some connection with
creation story and the genesis of human being.188
Thus, banyan tree is a socio-cultural
religious symbol. Its bark, roots, leaves, fruits, seeds, and the like are used for medical
purposes and branches for various artistic decorations.
184
Basu, “Bodhi,” 111.
185 Ibid., 110-111.
186 Deborah Farrell and Carole Presser, eds., The Herder Dictionary of Symbols: Symbols from Art,
Archaeology, Mythology, Literature, and Religion, trans. Boris Matthews (Wilmette, Illinois: Chiron
Publications, 1993), 203.
187 J. C. Cirlot, A Dictionary of Symbols, trans. Jack Sage, 2
nd ed. (London and Henley: Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1971), 348.
188 In Hindu mythology, the banyan tree is also a 'wish fulfilling tree'. It represents eternal life
because of its seemingly ever-expanding branches. It symbolizes the true meaning of life. The Great
Banyan which covers several hectares in the Botanic Garden of Calcutta is more than a century old and is
reckoned to be the largest tree in the world. Norma H. Dickey, ed., Funk and Wagnalls New Encyclopedia
3 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, MCMLXXI), 267; see also Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion,
273-274, 276-280.
59
2. Buddhist Tree of Enlightenment
Bo Tree is sacred to the Burmese Buddhists and animists because it is the symbol
of the abode of the Buddha, the angels (or nats), and animistic spirits and ancestors. For
the Bama Buddhists, banyan leaf or branch from Sri Lanka and Bodhagaya in India is
greatly valued. Banyan is associated with wisdom, enlightenment and liberation. The
heart-shaped leaf is revered and used as a charm. Everything made of banyan is sacred.
In Burma, there are religious beliefs in the powers of trees and the rituals
associated with them.189
Banyans are popular homes for the animistic spirits, the nats.
People venerate the Buddha and the guardian spirits in the banyan tree. Buddhism is for
this life and the next, but the nats are only here for this life. On Kahson labyi (full moon)
day the Bodhi tree is ceremonially bathed and a nat ritual (natpwe) is also performed.
People meditate and pray under/near the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha
meditated and gained the enlightenment.190
Many Christian pilgrims from five continents
meditated with the exiled Dalai Lama and the Buddhists under the Bodhi tree in
Bodhgaya in north-east India where the Buddha attained enlightenment.191
The Bo tree
like the lotus has been a symbol of spiritual liberation, of the Sun, of creation and rebirth
and enlightenment. Meditating in a lotus position under the banyan tree is the most
charming, insightful, meaningful, and inspiring.
189
A. R. Radcliff-Brown, The Andaman Islanders, 3rd
ed. (Glencoe, 1948) quoted in Mircea
Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion 15 (New York: Macmillan, 1987), s.v. “Trees” by Pamela R.
Frese and S. J. M. Gray, 33.
190 Pategama Gnanarama, Aspects of Early Buddhist – Sociological Thought (Singapore: Ti-Sarana
Buddhist Association, 1998), 163-164.
191 Laurence Freeman, “Under the Bodhi Tree,” The Tablet (13 January 1999): 109-110.
60
In the Buddhist mission history, Emperor Asoka of India sent a branch of the
Sacred Bodhi Tree to Sri Lanka as an object of veneration and worship.192
That Bodhi
branch took root in Sri Lanka, as did “the new religion.”193
Burma received the Buddhist
traditions from Sri Lanka especially in the eleventh century of the Christian era.194
Oral
tradition speaks of four visits of the Buddha to Burma.195
In memory of the Buddha, the
Bo tree taken from India and Sri Lanka are transplanted and venerated in Burma today.
3. Nats’ Residence Tree
A tree is not just a tree. Especially, for the animists, nat worshippers and the
Bama Buddhists, a tree may symbolize something more than just a tree. The Bama
Burmese consider the Bodhi tree not only as the enlightening tree of the Buddha but also
the residence of the nats. The place around that tree is considered sacred because it is
guarded by various good spirits and the spirits of ancestors. At the foot of this tree, the
Buddha and the nats are offered lights, foods, water and other eatery.
Scott shows the abundant traces of fetichism, tree-worship, worship of crop
spirits, worship of nats, serpent worship, demonolatry rite and other forms of primitive
worship in Burma.196
Regarding the practice of veneration of the Bodhi tree, he observes:
192
H. R. Perera, Buddhism in Sri Lanka: A Short History (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society,
1988), 14-15; Kanai Lal Hazra, History of Theravada Buddhism in South-East Asia (Delhi: Munshiram
Monaharlal Publishers, 1982), 50.
193 Basu, “Bodhi,” 111.
194 Perera, Buddhism in Sri Lanka, 31-32; Hazra, History of Theravada Buddhism, 83-130.
195 Bischoff, Buddhism in Myanmar: A Short History, 20.
196 Scott, Burma: A Handbook of Practical Information, 367-418.
61
The adoration of trees, streams, mountains is all fetichistic. The
Burmans and the Shans worship chiefly the spirit of the house and
the spirits of village; and their tree-worship is rendered more
respectable by the legend that the Buddha Gautama died under the
Bo-tree. The Wa are particularly fond of rearing the Ficus
religiosa, not because they believe anything about the Buddha
Gautama, but because they believe in the tame country that the
village nat lives in it, and in the wild country. Everywhere in the
hills, dark coppices, or prominent trees, have shrines in them, were
Chingpaw, Shans, La’hu, Akha, all the hill tribes, worship and
make offerings. This may be called tree-worship, but it is none the
less demonolatry. 197
Until today, people respect big banyan trees. This is their meeting place where
with great reverential fear they exchange ideas and lived experiences, take shelter,
meditate, worship, pray, offer flowers and fruits to the various spirits including their
ancestors and perform religious rituals.
Everybody has equal access to that place regardless of their social status. That
place becomes next to their house. They feel at home. People enjoy life near/under the
tree depending on the locations and local cultures, events, issues and feasts. Urinal
activity near the tree is strongly forbidden. The tree-worship, one of the primal religious
practices of the earliest residents of the land of Burma, continues in a new form.
4. Christian Fig Tree of Knowledge and Salvation
The Bodhi tree of Hinduism is not only the natural ancestor to the Buddhist tree
of enlightenment, but it is, as it appears in this research, also the ancestor of the Biblical
tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden. For Christians, the tree-imagery has enormous
197
Ibid., 417.[Original italics].
62
significance, especially the tree, upon which was the death of the incarnated God and the
life of human.
The Bible mentions at least thirty-one species of trees.198
The Bible starts with the
tree of life (Gen 2: 9; 3: 22) and the tree of knowledge (Gen 2:9, 17; 3:3, 5). The tree of
life reappears in the Apocalypse (Rev. 2:7; 22:2, 14, 19).199
The tree of life in Genesis
reflects the belief of Ancient Near Easter mythology which sometimes thought of life to
be possessed through eating.200
The tree is “a cosmic symbol” and the cross symbolizes “the cosmic tree.”201
The
image of a person sitting under the shade of a fig tree is a proverbial portrait of enjoying
prosperity and peace (1 Kgs 4:25; Mic 4:4). In Jesus’ teaching the tree and its fruit serve
as a metaphor for actions as revealing the character of an individual (Matt 3:10; 7:17-19;
12:33). Paul uses the practice of grafting as a metaphor for salvation of the Gentiles (Rom
11:17, 24). 202
Typologically, Jesus who is nailed to a tree (Acts 5:30; 10:39; 13:29; Gal 3:13; 1
Pet 2:24) is frequently presented as the antithesis of Adam who has fallen due to the test
of tree (Gen 2-3). The tree of knowledge (Gen 2: 9, 17) becomes the tree of salvation
198
Carroll Stuhlmueller, ed., The Collegeville Pastoral Dictionary of Biblical Theology
(Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1996), s.v. “Tree” by Leslie J. Hoppe, 1014.
199 The New American Bible presents the background of the tree somehow thorough and different
from the New Revised Standard Version does.
200 Hoppe, “Tree”, 1014.
201 Maurice Dilasser, The Symbols of the Church, trans. Mary Cabrini Kurkin and others
(Collegeville, Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 1999), 13-14.
202 Ibid.
63
(Gal 3: 13) in Jesus Christ. The tree-metaphor is not only the image of the filial
relationship between Christ and the Father but also the image of the intimate relationship
between Christ and his followers (John 15:1-9; see also Matt 21: 33-46).
In Christian iconography the cross is often depicted as “the Tree of Life” which is
the prototype of all miraculous plants that bring the dead to life, heal the sick, restore
youth, and so on.203
It symbolizes victory over death. The cross on which Jesus died was
probably “a tau cross”, an ancient symbol of divine election, mentioned in Ezekiel 9:4;
Vulgate: “signa thau.”204
Dualistically, the cross as tree is a symbol of life and death.
5. The Bodhi and the Cross in Dialogue
Dialogue between the Bodhi and the Cross means a dialogue between Hinduism,
Buddhism, nat worship and animism, and Christianity. In Myanmar, dialogue between
them is imperative in their common search for meaning and values, liberation and
happiness in life. In fact, there are more similarities rather than differences among them.
For the early Aryans of Indus valley the banyan tree, which now represents the
Buddha Gotama, seemed to be regarded as the abode of a deity or deities.205
Similarly,
the Bama Buddhists and nat-worshippers nationwide believe that that banyan tree is
inhabited by the nats, for instance, a Yokkasoe (guardian spirit of the tree king).206
The
203
Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, 292.
204 Hans Biedermann, Dictionary of Symbolism, trans. James Hulbert (New York: Facts on File,
1992), 82-83.
205 Gnanarama, Aspects of Early Buddhist – Sociological Thought, 163.
206 See G.P. Malalasekera, ed., Encyclopedia of Buddhism 3 (Colombo: Government of Ceylon
Press, 1971), s.v. “Popular Religion” by S.K.N, 537-538.
64
Bodhi tree has been carved to represent Siddhārtha Gautama plus the previous
Buddhas.207
This tree is special in the Buddhist art symbols for religious edification.
A symbolic relationship between the Bodhi and the cross shows that the Bo tree
of illumination for the Indian Buddha208
and the Cross of Jewish Jesus are decisive
turning points in their life and message. The cross was raised on a hill near Jerusalem
amidst a scene of brutal violence (Mk 15:20-23), whilst the Bodhi nestled serene, lost in
the luscious verdure of the forest in the Gaya village in India. Both become trees of
life.209
Both are signs of liberation and victory through self-emptiness called kenosis.
According to C. S. Song, the lotus to the Buddhists and the cross to Christians are
two powerful symbols of a crucial human quest for life deliverance.210
The lotus is also a
powerful symbol for Christians.211
The lotus and the cross often symbolize the Christian-
Buddhist dialogue.212
As a person under the Bo tree depicts the lotus position, the Bodhi
207
Gnanarama, Aspects of Early Buddhist – Sociological Thought, 163.
208 Piyadassi Thera, The Buddha’s Ancient Path (Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1996), 15,
quoted in Leopold Ratnasekera, “The Bodhi and the Cross: Icons of the Two Spirit-Odysseys,” SEDOS
Bulletin 36, nos. 11-12 (November - December 2004): 290 and endnote 1.
209 Ratnasekera, “The Bodhi and the Cross,” 290.
210 Chong-Seng Song, Third-Eye Theology: Theology in Formation in Asian Setting, rev. ed.
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Book, 1990), 120-121.
211 The lotus, an Indian symbol has been used to convey the message of the soul emerging from
the darkness of sin into the light of Christ- from death into life through the resurrected Christ. P. Solomon
Raj, “Images and Religious Imaginations,” in Communication in Theological Education: New Directions,
Michael Traber, ed. (Delhi: ISPCK, 2005), 137.
212 See, for example, G. W. Houston, ed., The Cross and the Lotus: Christianity and Buddhism in
Dialogue (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985).
65
tree includes the symbol of the lotus.213
In fact, the Bodhi tree is a more powerful symbol
which points out human’s quest for liberation. The lotus and the Bodhi are the national
flower and tree of India.
In Burma, the idea of “not befriending unbelievers,” (2 Cor 6:14-16) as hell
bound people214
still remains among many Christians because Christianity was and is
regarded by many as “the only true and only saving religion.”215
Most Burmese live dual
religious life: Theravada Buddhism and animistic nat worship. There have been some
attempts for Buddhist-Christian dialogue. But “the gospel and nat worship have not yet
encountered each other.”216
There is no effective “the Bodhi-the Cross dialogue.”
The Asian bishops prefer to present Jesus to the Asians as “the Enlightened One
or the Buddha”217
rather than as the Son of God, and Christ the King. The background of
the bishops’ proposal is the story of Siddhartha Gautama’s enlightenment under the Bo
tree. Their intention is for interreligious dialogue.218
Thus, the Bodhi tree has
christological and soteriological applications from an Asian Christian perspective.
213
The lotus blossoms out of the dirty mud under the water. It symbolizes the spiritual rebirth. The
lotus can be one appropriate image of the church to stand for the resurrected or (re)incarnated church which
gives a liberating spiritual rebirth. This paper does not exclude the meaning of the lotus flower as the lotus
has connection with the Bo tree. For example, the Buddha meditates under the Bo tree in a lotus position.
214 Ngun Ling, “Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally,” 38-39.
215 Oscar Ante, “Proclaiming Christ in Asia,” Mission Outlook 39, no.4 (January 2007): 21.
216 Pau Khan En, “Nat Worship,” 30.
217 Peter C. Phan, Being Religious Interreligiously: Asian Perspectives on Interfaith Dialogue
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2004), 130, 132.
218 Ibid., 131.
66
“Telling the story of Jesus in Asia”219
is a new mission-paradigm of the First
Asian Mission Congress held in Chiang Mai, Thailand in 2006. “Asian ways of mission
through witness in the midst of life realities” means “narrative missiology.”220
In the
same vain, “Telling the story of Jesus, the Enlightened One under the Bodhi tree”
becomes a contextual paradigm for the mission of the local Church in Myanmar today.
To put “the Cross in dialogue with the Bodhi” is the mission methodology.
B. Christianity, Church and Mission in the Bodhi Tree Allegory
1. Bodhi Tree: Image of the Church in Myanmar
Wostyn remarks that until quite recently Catholics visualized Catholicism as the
trunk of a tree that was fully rooted in the soil of its origin. The other churches were seen
as branches which received only part of the nourishment from the roots. They were the
many dying or already dead branches.221
Catholicism here is identified with the trunk of
tree. However, such view has changed.
Wostyn continues that today’s Catholics see a sturdy trunk that branched out at a
very early stage of its growth. Catholicism is the largest branch and it remained faithful to
the original Christian tradition. The other Christian Churches are also branches of the
219
Mario Saturnino Dias, ed., Telling the Story of Jesus in Asia: A Celebration of Faith and Life
(Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporations, 2007), 79-355.
220 James H. Kroeger, “Asian Mission Congress Reflections: An Asian Tapestry-Created by the
Spirit,” Vidyajyoti: Journal of Theological Reflection 71 (2007): 120-121.
221 Lode L. Wostyn, ed. I Believe: A Workbook for Theology 1 (Quezon City: Claretian
Publications, 2004), 85.
67
Christian tree and many of them are fully alive. They bear a valuable amount of fruits.222
Christianity is a tree with many branches from an ecumenical perspective.
The Church when it is imaged as the Bo tree has an interreligious view. The
Bodhi tree is an appropriate image of the Burmese local Church amidst religious
plurality. This tree is the Hindu symbol of life. It stands for wisdom in Buddhism. It is the
residence of the nats. It is also the residence of ancestors in animistic worship. The
Biblical tree of knowledge and salvation seems to be a fig tree like the Bodhi.
The inclusive image of the church as the banyan tree may serve as a tool to
(re)connect the church with the “plural society”223
of Burma for peaceful co-existence
and pro-existence. This image calls for not merely ecumenical dialogue but interfaith one
also so that people of diverse religious persuasion will bear fruits for humanity.
The Vatican II’s declaration on the relation of the Church to non-Christian
religions is positive and the Church is willing to accept what is good in other religions
(NA 1-5). Thus, it is appropriate to propose image of the missionary Church as the Bodhi
tree because of its significant religious edification. The Church which is imaged as Bo
tree will give life, knowledge, enlightenment, salvation. The Bodhi is a Burmese symbol
for a new way of being Church.
222
Ibid.
223 “Plural society” is defined as “fragmented into different racial, religious or linguistic groups.”
Nicholas Abercrombie, Stephen Hill and Bryan S. Turner, The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology, 4th
ed.
(London: Penguin Books, 2000), 262.
68
2. Christian Life as the Bodhi Tree
To imagine or image the Christian life as the Bo tree means to live out life as one
imagines or images oneself. Patrick J. Brennan says that imagination, and the firing of
dominant images, always dictates behavior or action.224
As one visualizes Church, so s/he
lives as Church because image dictates praxis.
Diarmuid O'Murchu argues that Christian life has to be shifted from rootedness in
Christian identity alone to interconnectedness with other faiths, cultures, traditions and
ways of life. Quoting Thomas Aquinas, O’Murchu says that “if we don’t understand
creation correctly, we can’t hope to understand God correctly” and “we can understand
both God and human life with the metaphor of a tree.”225
He gives the assessment of the
botanical research on how the tree grows:
As for the tree, the main point is that only 2% comes the roots, so
98% comes from outside the tree - since the tree is an open system.
The medium of interaction between the tree and the environment is
what science calls photosynthesis, the means through which
energy from the Sun enters all living things. To make that more
accessible you can break it down to approximations of 50%
sunlight; 20% water; 10% air; 10% other biochemical interactions
- all adding up to 90% approx - these are rough figures because
strictly speaking they should add up to 98%.226
O’Murchu seems to suggest that Christian identity is essential for the existence
and survival of Christianity like the roots of a tree function. And interconnectedness with
224
Brennan, Re-Imaging the Parish, 7-8.
225 Diarmuid O’Murchu, “Religious as Ecological Prophets of Our Times (Lecture, Quezon City,
Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia, 21-24 January 2008).
226 Ibid; also the same Text received from Diarmuid O’Murchu sent by email on 28 March 2008.
69
other faiths, cultures, traditions and ways of life are essential for the health and growth of
Christianity. O’Murchu’s theological vision is cosmological.227
Paredes similarly explains that theology should become eco/theology. Mission
needs a new theological vision, an eco-theological vision.228
Eco-ecclesiology is like the
ecclesiology of the vine and branches (John 15), not the ecclesiology of a building or the
sacred spaces or a social structure around Peter.229
Mission in eco-theology needs to be understood not as mission “ad gentes”, but as
shared mission “inter gentes”, or better, as “servers of our own gifts in the network of the
human species, of their religious traditions and of the earth.”230
In Paredes’ theological
vision, everything is perceived pluriversal or interconnecting without a single center.
As Christianity has traveled to many nations, it grows up by adopting, adapting,
absorbing, socializing, inculturating, and evangelizing the local cultures. “The Jesus
movement” in the first eras was not aloof from the elements of Judaism. Again, in the
227
For the works of Diarmuid O'Murchu, see, among others Religion in Exile (New York:
Crossroad, 1998);Quantum Theology, revised and updated edition (New York: Crossroad, 2004); Our
World in Transition (Lewis: East Sussex: The Book Guild, 1994 ; New York: Crossroad 2000); Reclaiming
Spirituality (New York: Crossroad, 1997 ; Quezon City: Claretian Publications 2007); Poverty, Celibacy &
Obedience (New York: Crossroad, 2002); Asian edition: Vows For Non-Violence (Quezon City: Claretian
Publications, 2002); Evolutionary Faith: Rediscovering God in our Great Story (Maryknoll, New York:
Orbis Books, 2002; Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 2003); The Transformation of Desire (London:
Darton, Longman & Todd, Jan 2007; Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, March 2007); “Globalization:
Confronting the Reign of Earthly Greed with the Liberating Power of the Kingdom of God,” Religious Life
Asia 10, no. 1 (January -March 2008): 51.
228 José Cristo Rey García Paredes, “Eco-Theology: Only Wholeness Is Sacred. Towards A New
Theological Vision,” Religious Life Asia 10, no. 1 (January -March 2008): 54-64.
229 Ibid.,68.
230 Ibid.
70
forth century Christianity began to be reshaped according to Roman flavor. Christ gave
no blueprint for the church and therefore, the church is always flexible.231
The Church is the ecosystem. It is ecology of relation. Everything in the Church is
interrelated. And everything in the Church is ecological. From an Asian perspective,
Divarka says:
The Church is indeed like a large tree. It is not transplanted from
one soil to another; rather it grows anew in each soil from a seed
sown. The seed, that evangelization sows, is the Word. The seed
falls on the good ground and dies to bear fruit. We have the seed
which in dying does not lose its life and identity; rather it manifests
a new power, it draws elements from the native soil, and grows
into a tree that has an appearance all its own but is in perfect
continuity with the seed from which it springs. It may not look
exactly like other trees that have grown elsewhere from the same
seed, but it has the same life and bears the same fruit.232
In an institutional image, the Church can be like the Bo tree: the roots are the
clergy; the trunk symbolizes the religious life and the branches indicate the laity. The
fruits and the leaves are the productivity of the cooperation of the clergy, the religious
and the laity.
Nevertheless, in the community image, the Church is a pilgrim community of
disciples who dialogues with peoples of other faiths. The branches, the trunk and the
roots are interacting with one another in harmony. The tree grows up together with other
trees. Hierarchy is not the focus but the ministry which is due to one’s own charism
within the scope of a community’s vision-mission.
231
See Wostyn, Doing Ecclesiology, 25-35; see also Lode L. Wostyn, ed., Discipleship in
Community: A Workbook for Theology 3 (Quezon City: Claretian Publications, 2003), 3-28.
232 Parmananda R. Divarka, “Reflection on the Problem of Inculturation,” FABC Papers 7 (1978):
5.
71
3. Models of the Church and of Mission
a. Church as Basic Interfaith Community
The missionary task of a Christian Church is like a tree with many branches that
is multidimensional.233
In this Bodhi tree ecclesiology, the mission of the Church
functions various forms and models of the Church also are multiple. Thus, the applicable
models to Bodhi image of the Church are manifold depending on the mission emphasis.
Many of followers of Jesus in Asia do not belong to the institutional Church but
other faiths.234
They follow Christ as the Enlightened One who shows them the way, the
truth and the light (John 14:6). People at Bodhi tree can be named as the Basic Interfaith
Community or the Basic Interreligious Community (BIC). People of different faiths
gather for dialogue for becoming “religious interreligiously.”
This Basic Interreligious Community shares similarity with the Basic Ecclesial
Community (BEC) of Latin American ecclesiology235
and the Basic Human Communities
(BHC) of Pieris’.236
The BEC and BHC are a paradigm for a new way of being Church.
233
Kareng Zau Nan, “Mission as Multidimensional,” RAYS MIT Journey of Theology 7 (January
2006): 123.
234 See Wilfred, Sunset in the East?, 231-241.
235 Leonardo Boff, Church: Charism and Power- Liberation Theology and the Institutional
Church trans. John W. Diercksmeier (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 125-130.
236 Pieris, Fire and Water, 161; Phan comments on the harmony, mutuality of BEC and BHC. In
addition to Basic Christian Communities, there must be Basic Human Communities in which Christian
theology is incubated and grows. In other words, Christian mission must be both inculturation (including
interreligious dialogue) and liberation, which are simply two sides of the same coin. Phan, Christianity with
an Asian Face, 94-95.
72
Indeed, “to say Church is to say mission.”237
“Mission in Asia cannot today be considered
apart from a relationship with other religions.”238
Mission has to consider plurality of
cultures, religions and the disadvantaged. In this model, “the image of the missionary”, to
borrow Bevans’ phrase, can be best pictured as “a treasure hunter”239
who come “to
search for what is already hidden in” others’ cultures, traditions and religions. Missio
inter gentes is a mission paradigm for the Basic Interfaith Communities.
The inculturated image of the Church as the Bodhi tree is hoped not only to be a
symbol for religious pro-existence and it hopes to make the forms of the Church appear
home in the way her preaching/proclamation (keryma), teaching (didache), fellowship or
communion (koinonia), ministry (diakonia), and worship (leiturgia) will make sense to
the local residents. This image of the Church provides the biblical, theological, political,
social and anthropological contexts.
b. Church as Community of Disciples in Co-Pilgrimage
The first model of the Church is “the community of disciples in co-pilgrimage.”
The Church is “like a pilgrim in a foreign land” (LG 8). It is to dialogue with people of
other faiths (interreligious dialogue). The pilgrim Church moves towards a new heaven
and a new earth (LG 48). She is a pilgrim, God’s people in exodus towards the promised
237
United States Catholic Conference, Pastoral Statement on World Mission To the Ends of the
Earth (10 December 1986), no. 16, quoted in Bevans-Schroeder, 7.
238 Oswald Gracias, “Mission in Asia Today- Relations with Other Religions Existing in Asia,”
Vidyajyoti: Journal of Theological Reflection 71 (2007): 86.
239 Stephen Bevans, “Seeing Mission through Images,” Missiology: An International Review 19,
no.1 (January 1991): 45, 48.
73
land.240
Christians are a pilgrim people who dialogue with the modern world and the non-
Christians. “Indeed, Asians have a common journey. Dialogue is an element in the
common pilgrimage of all peoples towards the Kingdom.”241
The Church contributes to mankind's pilgrimage of conversion to God's plan
through her witness and through such activities as dialogue, human promotion,
commitment to justice and peace, education and the care of the sick, and aid to the poor
and to children (RM 20). The mission of the Church, like that of Jesus, is God's work or,
the work of the Spirit (RM 24). This pilgrim model with its image of mission seems best
for the Burmese context because the Bama Buddhists are pilgrim people by nature.
Interreligious dialogue constitutes part of the ministry of the Church which
accompanies all humanity in pilgrim to the Kingdom.242
This image of pilgrimage to the
Kingdom of God depicts the divine design of salvation which encompasses all peoples
regardless of the bounds of religions.243
They not only co-exist but also pro-exist. In this
pilgrim model of church, mission paradigm is shifted from ‘Missio ad Gentes’ to ‘Missio
inter Gentes’.244
Indeed, people of various religions are in pilgrim to the Absolute.
240
Forte, The Church: Icon of the Trinity, 109.
241 Javier, Dialogue, 160.
242 FABC III Statement 15, in FAPA 1, no. 60.
243 Chang, “Ordained Ministry in the Mission and Ministry of the Church in Asia,” 79.
244 See Jonathan Yun-ka Tan, “From ‘Missio ad Gentes’ to ‘Missio inter Gentes’: Shaping A New
Paradigm for Doing Christian Mission in Asia,” Vidyajyoti: Journal of Theological Reflection 68 (2004):
670-686 (Part I); 69 (2005): 27-41 (Part II).
74
c. Church as Sacrament of Universal Salvation
The second model of the Church is “sacrament.” Many twentieth-century
theologians have appealed to the concept of the church as sacrament.245
Vatican II, in
Lumen Gentium and Ad Gentes, says that the church is as a universal sacrament of
salvation (LG 1, 48; AG 1). In this model, the “seeds of the Word” (AG 11, 15) and the
Holy Spirit (LG 8, 17, 48) in other religions are acknowledged.
On the notion of the Church as sacrament, Henri de Lubac writes:
If the Church is the sacrament of God, the church is for us the
sacrament of Christ; she represents him, in the full and ancient
meaning of the term, she really makes him present. She does not
only carries on his work, but she is his very continuation, in a
sense far more than that in which it can be said that any human
institution is its founder’s continuation.246
The Church as a universal sacrament of salvation (LG 1, 48; AG 1) has to
acknowledge the presence and activity of the Spirit in every time and place- that is, in
other religions and cultures (RM 28-29). The NT vision of the Church sees the Spirit at
work through many mediations.247
Dulles says, “in the sacramental ecclesiologies, the
Church is understood as the visible manifestation of the grace of Christ in human
community.”248
245
Dulles, Models of the Church, 63.
246 Henri de Lubac, Catholicism (London: Burns and Oates, 1950), 29, quoted in Dulles, Models of
the Church, 63.
247 Lode L. Wostyn, Church: Pilgrim of Community of Disciples-Readings in Ecclesiology
(Quezon City, Claretian Publications, 1995), 56; Driver, Images of the Church in Mission, 222.
248 Dulles, Models of the Church, 89.
75
The image of the Church as sacrament from a missiological perspective suggests
contextualizing and evangelizing the good elements in other religions, thoughts,
traditions and cultures. That is mission as inculturation. The Church is not only sacrament
but also “sign and instrument of salvation” (RM 9). “If the Church is to be a sacramental
sign for Asia, it must be an intelligible sign to the Asian people.”249
The Church has to be
a sacrament of integral salvation for all.
d. Church as Humble Servant
Thirdly, the model of the Church is “servant.” The main characteristics of this
servant ecclesiology in Gaudium et Spes are fourfold. Firstly, the Church is a humble
servant (GS 3). Secondly, it is a community of dialogue (GS 22, 40). Thirdly, it is
dynamic (GS 44). Finally, it is eschatological and realizes the kingdom as the center.250
The Church is the Church only when it exists for others. The Church must share
in the secular problems of the ordinary human life, not dominating, but helping and
serving.251
The mission of servant Church is “not primarily to gain new recruits” but “to
help all men”, whatever they are and “to discern the signs of the times and to offer
guidance and prophetic criticism.”252
This model puts the kingdom as its center (EN 8) and exhorts to serve all peoples
especially the poor for their liberation. According to the Asian bishops and theologians
249
Thoppil, Towards an Asian Ecclesiology, 298.
250 Wostyn, Doing Ecclesiology: Church and Mission Today, 48-49.
251 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1967),
203-204, quoted in Dulles, Models of the Church, 94-95.
252 Dulles, Models of the Church, 97.
76
mission today takes the form of dialogue which focuses on the Reign and on the Church
as its symbol and servant.
Each model acknowledges that the Savior wills that all men be saved (1 Tim. 2:4)
(LG 16; NA 1). In the Bodhi tree allegory images of the Church are communitarian,
dialogical, prophetic and inclusive. Models of the mission point out the building up of the
Reign of God by being the Church as pilgrim community of disciples in dialogue with
people of other faiths, humble servant of “the Ultimate Reality”, sacrament of universal
salvation and basic interfaith community.
C. Mission Spirituality and Methodology
1. Mission Spirituality under the Bodhi Tree
Mission spirituality under the Bodhi tree has to be “a spirituality of dialogue.”253
This spirituality is challenged at the outset to be pro-religions and their adherents
because, in Javier’s words, “religions and their adherents should not only exist, nor co-
exist, but are challenged today to pro-exist.”254
In the Burmese context of cultural and
religious plurality, mission cannot happen without a spirituality of dialogue.
Augustine Ko decries that the seeds sowed by the missionaries are better than
what the local Church is doing today255
He highlights the value of “spirit”: “Buddhism
became more rooted in the ground, because they emphasized more the spirit and are not
253
Javier, Dialogue, 159.
254 Javier, “Interreligious Dialogue,” 233.
255 Ko, “History of the Catholic Church in Myanmar,” 4.
77
based on rules and regulation. The plant has to find its roots and expressions in the local
earth.”256
For Ko, the Church’s rootedness in local earth is essential above all.
Inculturated mission spirituality is imperative for the growth of the Christianity.
About a five hundred-year old Christianity (1500s-2008) in Myanmar has its roots which
are strong enough to sustain the existence of the Christian tree. It can be argued that for
the growth and fruitfulness of the mission of the Church “a spirituality of rootedness” has
to be shifted to “a spirituality of interdependence.” To be precise, a ‘missio ad gentes’
spirituality has to move towards a ‘missio inter gentes’ spirituality.
“A spirituality of mission” calls for openness and responsiveness to the message
and mystery of Jesus and to the reality of Asia. It begins with loving Asia, carrying her in
our heart, cherishing her features, nursing her wounds, and believing in her future.257
A
spirituality of mission has to be a kind of “a spirituality of ecclesiology.”258
This
spirituality calls for “a spirituality of involvement” which does “seek to understand God’s
presence with people who struggle for liberation in Myanmar.”259
“Christology is the key to ecclesiology”260
and missiology. “Christ is the basic for
Christianity spirituality”261
especially for the missionaries. Therefore, mission spirituality
256
Ibid., 6.
257 See Samuel Rayan, “A Spirituality of Mission in an Asian Context,” SEDOS Bulletin 29, nos.
6-7 (June- July 1997): 194-206.
258 Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality (New York:
Doubleday, 1999), 114-140.
259 San No Thuan, “Overcoming Oppression of Ethnic Minority Christians,” 119.
260 Thoppil, Towards an Asian Ecclesiology, 172.
261 Rolheiser, The Holy Longing, 73.
78
has to be based on “the liberating spirituality of Jesus Christ.”262
Any spirituality in
relation to mission should focus not on the institutional doctrines but on the gospel values
or the praxis of Jesus of Nazareth. A spirituality of mission is “Reign-Focus” spirituality.
Spirituality under the Bodhi tree is soteriological because the sacred tree has to do
with the concept of moksha for the Hindu,263
nirvana for the Buddhist, tukkha
(wellbeing) for the nat worship264
and new life for the Christian. Mission spirituality
under the Bo tree is “the Bodhi tree spirituality.” “Reign-focus” mission spirituality is so
prophetic that it is concerned with the common cause which affects people of all faiths. In
essence, “the Bodhi tree spirituality” is the same with “Reign-focus” mission spirituality.
This is the spirituality the people of Myanmar need today.
262
For a thorough discussion on the topic in question, see Pedro Casaldaliga and Jose Maria Vigil,
Liberating Spirituality, trans. Paul Burns and Francis McDonagh (Quezon City: Claretian Publications,
1996), 61-207.
263 For the understanding of salvation in primal religions and world major religions, see Javier,
Dialogue, 43-69, 83, 87, 88.
264 For a thorough explanation of the Bama Buddhist understanding of “nirvana” or “salvation” see
Maha Thera U Thittila, “The Fundamental Principles of Theravada Buddhism,” in Kenneth W. Morgan,
ed., The Path of the Buddha (New York: Ronald, 1956), 112, cited by Paul Clasper, Eastern Paths and the
Christian Way (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1980), 41-42; see also Henry Saing Kung, “Buddha as
a Libertarian Educator,” Engagement: Judson Research Center Bulletin 6 (June 2006): 125 and footnotes
10-12.
79
2. Mission Approaches: The Cross Encounters the Bodhi 265
The implementation of the liturgical, catechetical, pastoral and theological
changes of Vatican II was thus hampered by the political situation and by the oppressive
measures of the regime in Myanmar.266
Thus, the word “mission” is problematic,
dangerous, even violent. Relevant mission methods have to be selected contextually to
get rid of the foreignness of the Church and to build up of the Reign of God.
Authentic mission in Myanmar begins from and to the margins. The starting point
has to be from the margins because the realities of the society are reflected in the lives of
the marginalized. Missionaries in Burma never won the ruling elite class like Matteo
Ricci in China and Roberto de Nobili in India did. Thus, appropriate mission methods are
crucial for the growth and fruitfulness of the Christian tree, and for the faithfulness of the
Church to the Judeo-Christian praxis.
The first plenary assembly of FABC (Taipei, 1974) developed an “Asian
Paradigm” for missionary evangelization. The operative approach is the distinctive mode
of dialogue, triple dialogue: with the Asians, Asian cultures and religions. There are four
types of dialogue within this triple-dialogue pattern: dialogue of life, dialogue of action,
dialogue of spiritual experience, and dialogue of theological exchange.
265
This subtitle is different from the name of the seminar entitled “Doing Theology under the Bo
Tree” by the Protestants in Myanmar Institute of Theology, Yangon. The seminar is mainly oriented
towards interreligious dialogue (a.k.a. Christian-Buddhist encounters, dialogue, history, and relations)
while our sub-title is concerned with the ecclesiological and missiological issues. See Samuel Ngun Ling,
“Doing Theology under the Bo Tree: Communicating the Christian Gospel in the Bama Buddhist Context,”
in Called to be a Community: Myanmar’s in Search of New Pedagogies of Encounter ed. by Samuel Ngun
Ling (Yangon: ATEM, 2001), 172-174, quoted in San No Thuan, “Overcoming Oppression of Ethnic
Minorities,” 117.
266 Evers, The Churches in Asia, 409.
80
In the Philippines, the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (PCP II) uses
the three Ds methodology. This process involves dialoguing with the realities from
within, discerning the movement of God’s Spirit, and translating the Spirit’s impulse into
deeds.267
The first step is dialoguing with the realities of present context: religious,
cultural, political, and economic realities, and the local Church history. Secondly, it is
discerning these realities in the light of Christian faith: theology, christology,
pneumatology, ecclesiology and the like. Thirdly, it is translating into deeds:
inculturation, interreligious dialogue, and service of human promotion and so on.268
Latin-American theologians speak of the hermeneutical spiral which consists of
the following components or stages: see, judge/discern and act. The first stage is the
reflection and analysis of experiences (socioanalytic mediation). The second is the
hermeneutic mediation. Experiences are reflected in the light of Christian faith. The third
stage is practical mediation. It is oriented to pastoral planning. 269
The Bishops’ Institute for Social Action VII (Thailand, 1986) speaks of the
pastoral spiral methodology or “pastoral cycle.” The stages include the following: (1)
267
CBCP, Acts and Decrees of the Second Plenary Council of the Philippines (Manila: Catholic
Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines, 1992). [Italics mine].
268 Oscar Ante, “Mission in Asia Today” (Lecture, Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia, Quezon
City, 26 November- 16 December 2008): 5.
269 See Clodovis Boff, “Methodology of the Theology of Liberation,” trans. Robert R. Barr in
Systematic Theology—Perspectives from Liberation Theology, Jon Sobrino and Ignacio Ellacuria, eds.
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis, 1996), 1-21.
81
exposure-immersion; (2) social analysis; (3) contemplative dimension; and (4) pastoral
planning.270
For doing relevant mission, “new forms of lay apostolate” have been developed in
some dioceses of the local Church within the past two decades, for example, “Zetaman-
Movement”.271
This movement comprises young people of Catholics, non-Catholic
Christians, Buddhists, and nat worshippers who dedicate their qualifications for human
growth and development.272
Their mission agenda includes relief services, education and
animation, health and sanitation, infrastructure, socio-economy, and vocational training.
In our mission approaches, it is most appropriate to proclaim “Christ of the Asian
Peoples” or to begin with doing “a Burmese inculturated christology”273
under the Bodhi
tree because “christology is the key to ecclesiology and missiology.” Trends in
christology, ecclesiology and missiology are interrelated. Thoppil highlights this
interconnectedness:
One cannot understand the mission of the Church without knowing
its nature and one cannot grasp its nature without looking at its
mission. The Church realizes itself only by being missionary. The
mission of the Church is to proclaim Jesus Christ as Savior and to
make available to the world the salvation accomplished in Christ.
270
BISA VII - Seventh FABC Bishops’ Institute for Social Action (Thailand, 1986) quoted in
James H. Kroeger, “Asia’s Local Churches Awaken to Mission,” East Asian Pastoral Review 39, no. 4
(2002): 367-377; see also A. Alangaram, Christ of the Asian Peoples: Towards an Asian Contextual
Christology - Based on the Documents of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences, rev. ed.
(Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 2001), 40-45.
271 Evers, The Churches in Asia, 411. [Original italics].
272 Archdiocese of Taunggyi, Synodal Decrees and Socio-Pastoral Plan 2001-2013 (Taunggyi:
Catholic Church, 2001), 37-50.
273 John Zar Ring Thang (a.k.a. Maung John), “Burmese Faces of Jesus: Towards a Burmese
Contextual Christology” (Synthesis, Quezon City: St. Vincent School of Theology, 2008), 16-36.
82
The mission of the Church is realized through various services and
activities, such as, proclamation, witness, inculturation, action for
liberation, human promotion and harmony, interreligious dialogue,
etc., all forming integral parts of the one mission of the Church.274
Conclusion
Images of the Church, according to Yves Congar, are christocentric because the
NT speaks of the church as a building, a vine, a flock, a bride, a body, always in relation
to Jesus Christ.275
The Vatican II’s images of the church are dualistic: communitarian and
institutional and also christocentric and ecclesiocentric. The FABC’s images of the
Church are reignocentric. In the light of the FABC teaching we propose the kingdom-
centered church-images because the image of being a "foreign import" is one
characteristic of the Catholic Church in Myanmar within multi-cultural, multi-ethnic and
multi-religious context.
In the Myanmar context, any image of the Church needs to be “reignocentric,”
and the Church’s mission is to be at the service of the Reign of God. Christianity is still
an alien religion not primarily because of its failure to take deep roots in the Myanmar
context and not merely because of its slowness to adopt the local culture but because of
its failure to interact with the Burmese religions, traditions, cultures, thoughts and the
Burmese people. In general, the foreignness of Christianity, and also that of image of the
Church, is due to the mission problems. The next chapter will give the summary, findings
and recommendations of the research.
274
Ibid., 294.
275 Yves Congar, Diversity and Communion (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1985), 11.
CHAPTER V
SUMMARY, FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Introduction
This concluding chapter recapitulates the main ideas of each chapter. It includes
the general summary of the research, findings and recommendations. The general
summary briefly presents only the key ideas of each chapter. The findings deal with the
answers to the questions raised in the Statement of Problem. The recommendations are
threefold as there are three questions to be answered in this thesis.
A. Summary
Chapter I considers the foreignness of the Church as one of the challenging
problems of mission in the Myanmar context. It formulates three fundamental questions
in order to present a fitting image of the missionary Church among peoples of different
religious backgrounds.
This introductory part gives an overall view of the entire thesis. It includes the
background of the study, statement of the problem, significance of the study, scope and
limitation of the study, review of related literature and related studies, conceptual
framework, definition of terms, methodology and organization of the study.
Chapter II explores the images of the Church in the Myanmar context. It presents
a spectrum of views on Church and mission. Images are scrutinized from a Christian and
non-Christian perspectives. A picture of Christian Churches among pagodas, temples,
84
mosques and spirit shrines is presented vis-à-vis the historical, socio-cultural, economic,
political, and ecclesial realities of the country.
The historical method of research helps us in the process of discovering the
“locus” of the thesis in which we find out the identity and worldview of the local Church.
The method of interview and conversation provides us the present images of the Church
and the vision of the local Church from the various people of different parts of the local
Church.
Chapter III consults the bible, magisterial statements, papal documents, regional
episcopal texts and theological reflections as they relate to images of the Church, its
identity, nature and mission. The biblical writers used categories to image the Church. So
did the Church Fathers. The Vatican II restored and reused the fitting images of the
Church for the modern world. The FABC and contemporary theologians reflect and
propose the images of the local Church contextually in relation to mission work.
The nature and identity of the Church can be explored through its biblical,
theological, sociological, historical, and other images. Such images or models are a way
to explore realities of the Church that cannot be fully investigated or explored by
objective study or measurement. Images and models are contextual. They somehow
describe and prescribe the Church and mission. As time, situation and context change the
self-identity, self-nature and task of the Church change. As the Church responds to the
particular call, needs and demands of specific times its self-understanding transforms.
Chapter IV visualizes the missionary Church in the form of the Bodhi tree under
which the Christian stands in the lotus position. In many of the Asian religions, the Bo
85
tree is associated with religious experience and soteriological edification. The Judeo-
Christian tradition often pictures the cross of Jesus as a tree of salvation. Thus, dialogue
between the Bodhi and the Cross means a dialogue between Christianity and other
religions.
The Bo tree is envisaged as the model of Christianity and Church life. From a
mission perspective, the Bodhi tree is a symbol to break the religious walls, to build up
dialogue and to promote Basic Interfaith Communities (BIC). The images of the Church
correspond to the images of Jesus and mission. The image of Christianity as the Bodhi
tree has corresponded models of Church and of mission. Such images dictate praxis.
“A spirituality of dialogue” and “a spirituality of network” or “a missio inter
gentes spirituality” under the Bo tree prepare the ground for a peaceful and harmonious
interfaith inter-existence. “A spirituality of involvement” aims at the integral liberation of
all beings from any oppressive force. In the reignocentric mission methods, low
christology is the key to inculturated ecclesiology and relevant missiology which focuses
on the Reign.
B. Findings
Through the process of this study, there are three discoveries as this thesis has
raised three questions in the Statement of Problem.
1. What are the contemporary images of the Church in Myanmar amid
multiethnic, multicultural, multireligious and socio-economic-political
scenarios?
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Images of the local Church are found in the realities of the country. There are
political Church-images, sociological Church-images, anthropological Church-images,
divine-origin ecclesial images, human community-based images and the like. “Jesus Yes,
Church No” mentality among the Bama Buddhists is due to the mission history.
Christianity is still seen as the religion of invaders. Religion, ethnicity and politics are
intimately linked in Burma. They are also discovered in the experiences, praxis and
vision of the faithful.
Christianity bears the alien mask because of the problem of mission.
Contemporary trends in the mission of the local Church are contextual theology,
inculturation, interreligious dialogue, liberation, religious pluralism, evangelization,
Burmanization of the gospel, social involvement, and many more. When mission
strategies change the images of the Church also change. Thus, “the Bodhi tree” is an
appropriate image of the Church in mission.
2. What are Images of the Church in Bible, Magisterial statements, FABC,
CBCM and Asian theologies and how are these images interdependent?
The Bible contains about one hundred images of the Church. Christian tradition
and teaching as well as regional Episcopal documents give relevant images of the
Church. The mystery of the Church cannot be spoken of in analytic, categorical language
alone. Instead it must be spoken of by way of analogies, models, and images that reflect
and point to the realities of the Church. Images of the Church emerged, changed and
visualized due to the dynamics of the self-understanding, nature and mission of the
faithful as Church. A variety of metaphorical images are used to describe the Church.
87
The Church is spoken in dogmatic categories of mystery, infallibility, holiness,
oneness, apostolicity, catholicity, iron of the Holy Trinity; in cosmological categories of
the Sun, the Moon, the Star, the Light, the lamp, the city of God, the heavenly Jerusalem;
in financial categories of the saved, the justified, the holy people who are redeemed
through the blood of Christ; in the sacramental categories of communion, reconciliation;
and in pnematolocial category of the Temple of the Holy Spirit.
Again, it is also spoken of in geometrical categories of triangle, square, pyramid;
in physiological categories of the Head, the Body of Christ, People of God, mother,
teacher, leader, shepherd; in political categories of governance, teaching, propagation,
imposition; in botanical categories of field, tree, the vineyard, garden, park, the rock; in
filial categories of God’s children, assembly of God; in familial categories of the spotless
virgin and bride of the spotless lamb; in sociological categories of servant, pilgrim, a
perfect society, home, family, flock, bridge, ladder; and so on.
3. What are the appropriate images for the Church in Myanmar and how
are these contextual images relevant to the mission of the local Church?
Images of Church and images of mission are closely linked and have mutual
influence. Images of the Church are images of mission. To see image of the Church and
to (re)image the Church in the lights of other religions is crucial for mission work. The
Bodhi tree, among many religious symbols, is one fitting image of the Church which is
relevant to the mission of the Church not only for lessening the foreignness of
Christianity and for the growth as well as fruitfulness of Christianity but also for the
integral liberation of the people and creation.
88
Although Christianity is visualized in the form of the Bo tree, Christian mission
must preserve, defend, inculturate and proclaim the Church’s six constants - christology,
ecclesiology, eschatology, soteriology, anthropology, and culture in the Burmese context.
“The Bodhi and the Cross dialogue” must be able to do “an eco-theology, the theology
done for all citizens of our house.” These six constants in the Burmese context have to be
eco-christology, eco-ecclesiology, eco-eschatology, eco-soteriology, eco-anthropology,
and eco-culture. Any theological trend should be eco-theological. Thus, mission under
the Bodhi tree will become “missio inter gentes,” the “eco-missiology.”
C. Recommendations
There are three recommendations in this study for further study. A
recommendation has also some practical implications in mission.
1. Importance of Further Study on New Approaches to Misisiological Issues:
Myanmar is still “a closed society.” Many things remain unexplored. Missiogolical
studies remains a least developed treatise. As a result, the mission of the local Church
does not effectively respond to the challenges and realities of the society. Mission is often
done “from above” through doling-out or traditional methods. New missiological
approaches, which are to go in and fit for our contemporary times, have to be
experimented. Such research may promote not only “ecumenical ecclesiology” and
“ecumenical missiology” but also “interreligious missiology,” or “eco-missiology.”
2. Further Study on more relevant images of the Church in Mission: There
are many aspects of Church life to be investigated in the local Church of Myanmar. This
89
research may inspire other intellectuals to conduct more comparative studies in the fields
of other disciplines or related themes. Some examples for further study on some relevant
images of the Church are as follows: “Image of the Church as the Community of
Pilgrims”276
, “The Church as a House which promotes Harmony among the Laity, the
Religious and the Hierarchy”277
, “Seeing Mission through the Burmese Religious
Symbols”278
, “Image of the Missionary as Treasure Hunter, Teacher and Prophet in
Myanmar”279
, “A Spectrum of Correlated Views: Christ, Church and Mission in the
Myanmar Context” and the like.
3. Further Research towards A New Vision of Being Missionary Church: The
Bodhi tree as image of the missionary Church in Myanmar suggests a paradigm shift in
theological inter-disciplinarity from independence to interdependence, from
individualistic to interrelatedness and interconnectedness, from tolerance and dialectic to
dialogue, from religious to interreligious, from mono-centric direction to pluri-centric
networking, and from anthropocentric mentality to bio-centric or ecological vision. We
can firmly assert that the Bodhi tree as image of the missionary Church is a new vision of
being Church in Myanmar. Therefore, this new vision of being a missionary Church is
strongly recommended for further exploration.
276
George H. Tavard, The Church, Community of Salvation: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology
(Makati: St. Pauls, 1997), 27-75,185-242.
277 Roger W. Gehring, House Church and Mission: The Importance of Household Structures in
Early Christianity (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2004), 288-311.
278 Stephen B. Bevans, “Seeing Mission Through Images,” 45-57.
279 Ibid.
90
Conclusion
This chapter has presented the summary, findings and recommendations of the
thesis. This thesis proposed the Bodhi tree as image of the missionary Church in
Myanmar. This image is a universal religious symbol which is significant for people of
different beliefs and therefore, this image of the Church is most appropriate for the
mission of the Church. Thus, we have come now to the conclusion of the study.
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International Review 23, no. 1 (January 2005): 72-93.
E. Unpublished Materials
Chang, Jeffery G.L. “Ordained Ministry in the Mission and Ministry of the Church in
Asia in the Light of the Documents of the Federation of Asian Bishops’
Conferences, 1970-2005.” Doctoral dissertation, Taipei: Catholic University,
2007.
Zar Ring Thang, John. “Burmese Faces of Jesus: Towards a Burmese Contextual
Christology.” Synthesis, Quezon City: St. Vincent School of Theology, 2008.
102
G. Other Sources
Ante, Oscar. “Mission in Asia Today.” Lectures, Institute for Consecrated Life in
Asia, Quezon City, Semester 2, SY 2007 – 2008.
De Guzman, Emmanuel. S. “Laity, Theology and Praxis.” Seminar, St. Vincent
School of Theology, Quezon City, Semester 2, 2006 – 2007.
Javier, Edgar G. “Theology of Mission.” Lectures, Institute for Consecrated Life in
Asia, Quezon City, Semester 2, SY 2006 – 2007.
______.“Mission and Anthropology.” Lectures, Institute for Consecrated Life in
Asia, Quezon City, 22 January – 6 February 2008.
______.“General Mission History.” Lectures, Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia,
Quezon City, 19 February – 4 March 2008.
O’Murchu, Diarmuid. “Religious as Ecological Prophets of Our Times.” Lectures,
Institute for Consecrated Life in Asia, Quezon City, 21– 24 January 2008.
Tin Win, Mark. “Inculturation Today in the Myanmar Context.” Seminar, Catholic
Religious Conference of Myanmar, Yangon, July 21 – 31, 2006.
Zar Ring Thang, John. “Church as a Banyan Tree in the Context of Burma.” Paper
delivered during Laity, Theology and Praxis at St. Vincent School of
Theology, Quezon City, 16 March 2007.
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
Name: Maung John
Alias name: Zar Ring Thang
Date of Birth: 28 August 1977
Place of Birth: Tahan, Kalay Township, Sagaing Division, Myanmar.
Congregation: Missionary of St. Paul (MSP)
Address: St. Paul Center, Myetto P. O., Pathein 10011, Myanmar.
Date of Entrance: 16 April 1996
First Profession: 29 July 1999
Academic Background
2001-2003: Philosophy Studies,
St. Joseph’s Major Seminary, Pyin Oo Lwin, Myanmar.
2004- 2008: Theology Studies
St. Vincent School of Theology, Quezon City.
2005-2008: Master of Arts in Theology of Consecrated Life Major in
Missiology, St. Anthony Mary Claret College, Quezon
City.
Mission Assignments:
1999 – 2001: Assistant in Formation Program for Pre-Postulency
Formation Center, Pathein, Irrawaddy Division, Myanmar.
2003 – 2004: Teaching in Formation House
Formation Center, Pathein, Irrawaddy Division, Myanmar.