up from the earth (12:32). The universal importance of Jesus is also underlined by the use of many different titles of Christ; this is particularly evident in 1:35–51, cf. “Images of Christ” in Part Two.
The tendency to move from the more particular to the universal is characteristic of many religious systems of that time, since their location in the Eastern Mediterranean area brought them under the influence of Greek culture. A similar development might well have taken place within the Johannine tradition. A growing number of scholars have noticed that the Johannine community was in dialogue with a wide spectrum of groups and ideologies in the first century.60 The gospel in its present form may represent an attempt to communicate with a great variety of dialogue partners. Nevertheless, John’s insistence on the universal dimension is not due simply to the impact of a more cosmopolitan culture. Rather, the universalism of the message flowed from the universal significance of Christ himself. Jesus revealed God, and only faith in this Jesus was an adequate response.61
The Gospel, then, is not the end-product of a succession of encounters with other groups and viewpoints that have influenced John’s theology. On the other hand, the author seems to be quite sensitive to movements and currents of his time. John’s attempt to express his Christian experience in a language that would awaken echoes in a non-Christian world around him should always remain an inspiration and model for us to continue the same process in our own times.62 In what follows we shall see examples of how contemporary religious dialogue has been inspired by the Prologue and the Logos Christology.
Contemporary perspectives
Syncretism and accommodation
The first example is the Norwegian theologian and missionary Karl Ludvig Reichelt who in his mission to Buddhism did not hesitate to translate Logos with the Chinese term Tao.63 Reichelt rejects the charge that this implies syncretism. On the contrary he argues that “Tao has found its full realization in Christ.”64
According to Filip Riisager, a specialist in Reichelt’s theology of mission, two reasons can be given for this identification of Logos and Tao. First, Reichelt’s Christology has a platonic tendency; and his Logos is interpreted more in a Hellenistic way as a transcendent-cosmic principle than straight from its biblical and Old Testament background. This implies a weakening of the incarnation and the historical dimension; the cosmic dimension in Christology becomes more important than the historical dimension. Second, Reichelt’s approach to the issue of Logos-Tao comes through a mystical experience that includes a search for the foundation of existence; and as a mystical experience it also has a sense of the encompassing, divine power behind everything. According to Riisager, Reichelt did what is justifiable and natural when his premises are taken into consideration, that is, he did what we always have to do when the Christian gospel is translated or interpreted into a new cultural situation: we employ words and concepts from that culture and give them a new content. In the time before Reichelt Protestant Christians in China did the same as him, using the term Tao to render the Johannine “Logos.”65
Yet, in other contexts Reichelt underlines the importance of the incarnation. In an article from 1939 (originally presented as a lecture at the mission conference in Tambaram in 1938) Reichelt observes that from the hour of incarnation “we have not only the Logos as a grain of seed or as small beams of light flashing out from the religious systems, but now we have God revealed in His fullness.”66 The uniqueness of the incarnation is given in the closing sentence in 1:18. Here it is said that God the One and Only “has made him known (i.e., the Father).” As Reichelt puts it, he “declared him, not only by giving one side of the godhead, like an Indian Avatara, not only by giving the essence of an inner pattern, as the Buddhists have it in their idea of the Bhuta-ta-tha-ta and the Tatha-ga-ta, but giving in a historical and personal life in all-embracing love and power, the full expression of the heart of God.”67
Many Indian theologians have likewise argued that Logos may be compared with atman and Brahman or similar notions. Matthew Vellanickal considers John’s presentation of Jesus as Logos very interesting in the Indian context. The corresponding Vedic term for Logos is Vac or Vak which means word or wisdom, and is the first-born of Rta (direction/destiny). “The similarity between the ‘Word’ in John’s Gospel and the Vak of Hindu scriptures seems to show that the Incarnation was the answer to the age-long prayer of the pre-Christian religions.”68 The Logos in the thought of John seems to be in the last resort the very principle of all that is and all that lives. It is connected to the concept of atman and Brahman, self and absolute. This principle is in the depths of God and is itself God. These attempts to combine Logos with central concepts like Tao or atman and Brahman are sometimes seen as an expression of syncretism. It is therefore relevant to ask: What is the difference between syncretism and a necessary accommodation?
This question is addressed by the Japanese theologian Kosuke Koyama in the book Theology in Contact (1975). According to Koyama we must differentiate between syncretism and accommodation. In the new translation of the Thai New Testament, John 1:1 is translated as “In the beginning was tamma” (dharma). Koyama sees this as the insight of an accommodating and not a syncretistic mind. “The word tamma in Buddhist Thailand is as rich as logos in the Hellenistic world of the New Testament times.”69 In the light of this we may ask: Can the purity of Christian doctrine be maintained with the introduction of such a central Buddhist word? Would it not be possible to find a more neutral word? Koyama has three observations in relation to these questions.
First, if tamma is too strong a word and a danger to the purity of the Gospel (and thus expressive of an encroaching syncretism), we must remember that so it was with the word that John himself chose. In both cases it was a dangerous situation. When the Bible was translated in 1967 tamma was used out of the conviction that the power of the living Christ can capture it and baptize it with new meaning (2 Cor 10:5). It is the context of Christ which can baptize such strong words as tamma and Logos. The context is that of grace. It speaks of God’s initiative in coming to the world in the ultimate event of the incarnation of the Son. “How profoundly in the incarnation God accommodated himself to realize his love in the world (cf. Joh 3,16).”70 It is this love which is the substance of God’s method of accommodation.
Second, Koyama asks: How do we maintain the purity of the Gospel in the process of accommodation? He is not alarmed at “In the beginning was the tamma.” But if Jesus the Buddha rather than Jesus the Christ is proposed in the present-day religious context of Thailand, he would be alarmed. Yet he does not immediately condemn Jesus the Buddha as dangerous syncretism. First he must find out whether this suggestion is contextualization or syncretism. Is the concept of “the Buddha” here baptized into the new Christian context? Will Jesus the Buddha mean Jesus the Light in the Johannine sense: “the true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world” (John 1:9)? If so, it is an accommodation, and is too great a risk to take. This line of thought may make sense to a small group of theologically sophisticated people, but it will cause only immense and unnecessary confusion in the minds of both Christians and Buddhists.71
When “Jesus the Buddha” is said with the understanding that “here is no unique revelation in history, that there are many different ways to reach the divine reality,” then it is a straightforward syncretistic affirmation. What is meant is that Jesus of Nazareth plus Gautama
