On Kosuke Koyama's Water Buffalo Theology

April 1, 2004

A Reading on Kosuke Koyama’s Water Buffalo Theology

I. Water Buffalo Theology - Theologia Crusis in Asia: A Summary

Reading Koyama’s Water Buffalo Theology thirty years after it was first published requires the recognition of the radical changes that have taken place in the Asian context from which Koyama drew his reflection. In his preface to the twenty-fifth anniversary edition Koyama re-affirmed his original preference of Water Buffalo theology as a “theology in Asia,” and not “tribal theology,” to recognize Asia as it is “webbed-with the whole oekumene [sic!]”(x). Water Buffalo theology, thus, is Koyama’s definition of doing theology in Asia, meaning re-rooting theology in the life of Asian people, that is shaped by two integrated characters: historical and missiological.[1]

The starting point of doing theology in Asia must be the clear recognition of Asia’s own history, which is located in “the historical perspective of the West ‘gun’ (wounding) and ‘ointment’ (healing)” (32) that implies Asia’s missiological understanding through her participation in such history. Thus, Water Buffalo theology is Koyama’s way of doing theology in the “living [Northern Thailand people] in [their] concrete historical situation”(151). Accordingly, it is a theology that emerges out of Koyama’s life story as a missionary in Northern Thailand.

Central to Water Buffalo theology is the intertwined questions of: “who we [Asian people] are” and “who God is”(160-162). Koyama affirms vividly that God is “the Crucified God” and, therefore, Asian people are “the crucified-Christ-with us” (160). This, for him, is the Asian new identification that is rooted biblically in the theologia crusis and historically in the theological situations in Asia. Thus, similar to other Third World theology Water Buffalo theology begins by raising issues (76), specifically, the “ten key theological issues facing theologians in Asia: interdependent world; the Bible; proclamation, accommodation, and syncretism; people of other faiths and ideologies; the West; China; the haves and have-nots; the animistic world; spirituality; doctrinal clarity” (76).

Such identification implies the new understanding of being-in mission through “three-modes of Christian presence”: stumbling presence, discomforted presence, and ‘unfree’ presence (163-170). These three modes reflect profoundly the paradox of the two realities: the reality that “in [Christ] all things hold together” and the reality of the brokenness of the world (162). Thus, being-in mission means being in the paradox of these realities as Christ lived in the paradox of being the Crucified Lord (ibid). It is also the paradox that characterizes the saving act of God in the history of “lost-found” and “dead-alive”.

Living the “life in paradox” requires the “crucified mind.” It is the mind that
appreciates the complexity of people and history, and that imitates Christ in the way he participates in the paradoxical history of the cross and the resurrection. Thus, it is neither a pathological, nor neurotic, nor, obviously, “crusading mind” (159). The crucified mind must be the mind of all missionaries and all Christians (157-159). It is the mind that defines the identity of a missionary as “anyone who increases by participation the concretization of the love of God in history” (158). A missionary is a communicator who lives out the message that s/he communicates. Thus, the message is incarnated in the life of the messenger. It is a radically different life in which the messenger participates in the life of the Crucified Christ. It is a life-in mission that requires the new mission paradigm: mission as the movement from the center to the periphery. It is a radically different life since it employs the self-emptying process that “will give us [Asian people] a perspective in which we can look at, and participate in, the suffering of humankind” (162).

In conclusion, Water Buffalo theology is a theology of the cross that communicates with Asian language(s). It enables Christians to live the comforted-discomforted life as they experience the presence of the crucified God in the lives of their neighbors (167). It listens to the “frog croacking” and “mosquito humming” of the paddy field in northern Thailand. It responds boldly to the imperative task of communicating the Word of God while recognizing humbly the critique towards the noisiness of Christian proclamation (160). It is translatable in the language of northern Thailand people since it “begins and grows in northern Thailand, and nowhere else” (xvi). However, its particularity “can flourish only if it maintains its ecumenical linkage” (ix).

II. The Mission of the Crucified God: A Reflection

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.… I led them with cords of human kindness, with bands of love. I was to them like those who lift infants to their cheeks. I bent down to them and fed them. (Hosea 11. 1-2, 4) (NRSV)

Hosea’s interpretation of the liberation of Israel from Egypt resonates with the image of the crucified God in Koyama’s Water Buffalo theology.[2] Hosea’s picture of God as a God who liberates the suffering people of Israel under the yoke of Egypt creates a radically different picture of God’s power of love and liberation (cf. the Exodus’ image). It is the “love that is based on the pain of God” (83) that makes the nonviolent liberation for God’s people is possible. Hosea’s image of God as a liberator, thus, reveals another way of looking at the history of God’s people in the Bible. It is the history of the people under the yoke of oppression (like “a herd of water buffaloes grazing in the muddy paddy field in Thailand”) who are liberated by the God who bends and feeds them (like a mother who breast feeds her child). The vulnerable God liberates God’s people. In the liberation we find the suffering God. What a paradox!

Water Buffalo theology, as one of Koyama’s early writing, needs to be read with his latter writings in order to see the process in which Koyama himself re-discovered some issues that were already dealt with in this book. Such a re-discovery points toward the implication of his theology of the cross, which pictures Jesus as the person who has gone from the center to the periphery, in the interreligious encounter. Here his christology of the peripheral Christ implies a critical dimension in such an encounter, as he states “this [peripheral Jesus] will give us a new possibility in our encounter with the people of other faith and ideologies. We can be critical about them because we are critical about ourselves.”[3]

The same criticism applies to the other way of looking at the meaning of suffering in Asia. As an Indonesian woman I find Water Buffalo theology provides an open place to affirm Asian women’s experience as an authentic starting point to respond to the question of “who we are” and “who God is,” which is rooted in the question of justice and transformation in Asia. Despite their common experience of suffering, poverty, and transformation, Asian women define such commonality from the experience of sexism. Thus, Asian women’s experience of sexism becomes a particular basis for their interpretation of justice and transformation in the midst of the “overwhelming poverty” and the “multifaceted religiosity”[4] in Asia.

A feminist interpretation of justice is needed to accompany Koyama’s theology of the cross in Asia. Such an interpretation rejects the absolutized and universalized masculine norm that results in the oppression of women in all areas of life. Asian women’s experience of the overwhelming poverty and religious diversity in Asia will challenge every criterion for universalization which, thus, makes the question of “who defines justice” is parallel to the question of “who defines God” vis-à-vis the question of “who defines Christ.” From such a perspective, thus, the mission of the crucified God that “heals our history by giving it hope and life”[5] means also the mission that heals the brokenness of human dignity under the patriarchal power. It heals and embraces the full humanity of women and men. Here the movement from the center to the periphery should be in constant dialogue with the movement from the periphery to the center, meaning the other-ness of women becomes the self-ness which creates open spaces for the silenced, the marginal voices within Christianity to voice their authentic images of God. Thus, Koyama’s argument about “suffering [as] the point of indigenization” (17) needs to be read in relation with other claim that states that “liberation is the point of contextualization” (cf. Robert Shcreiter’s definition of contextualization).

Finally, Water Buffalo theology is still relevant in the early twenty first century of Asia

Its authenticity and relevancy lies in the profound re-affirmation that Koyama makes in the epilogue of this book:

“We need to remember that theologia crusis is a doctrine of love, not of sacrifice… the primary duty of theologia crusis is to confront violence and destroy it…My New York theologia crusis began to have the two themes simultaneously: grace and violence (178).

Water Buffalo theology remains authentic in the Western soil since it is rooted in the concrete human’s struggle in the concrete history. As a theology of the cross, thus, Water Buffalo theology, which speaks in and through Asia, is also an authentic missiology of the cross that defines mission as the Crucified God’s mission in “[bringing] forth the wholesomeness of abundant life to all upon the earth” (179).

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[1] This definition resonates with the formulation of the term contextual theology at the Theological Education Fund in 1970 (15). Thus, in his new preface, Koyama recognizes the three challenges to his Water Buffalo theology, one of which is contextualization of theology, which is intertwined with the dialogue between Christians and Buddhists, and the commitment to the protection and maintenance of ecological health and justice (xiii-xiv).

[2] This is true if it is compared with one of Koyama’s later writings, Mount Fuji and Mount Sinai: Critique of Idols (Maryknoll: Orbos Books) in which he discussed Hosea’s concept of the “agitated mind” of God (11.8) as the starting point of his theology of the cross (1984, 241).

[3] Ibid., 244-5.

[4] These identification provided by Aloysius Pieris, a Sri Lankan theologian of liberation. While the “overwhelming poverty” constitutes a commonality shared with the rest of the so called Third World countries, the second points to the unique character of Asia.

[5] Ibid.