A study of Choan-Seng Song's Christology: An Asian approach

Asian theologians seek to reshape the image of Jesus in terms of Asian socio-political and religio-cultural contexts. Among them, Choan-Seng Song is one of the most exemplary. This dissertation is to investigate how Song uses Asian traditions, in particular the stories of Asian peoples, to reinterpret Jesus' story for Asians.; The first part of this dissertation presents how the context of Taiwan (where Song was born and had taught for many years) affects the development of Song's Asian theology. The second part investigates Song's theological method. It is different from that of Western traditional theology in his understanding of the nature of theology, his hermeneutics of the Holy Scriptures and Asian traditions, and his approach to correlate these two theological source materials. The third part focuses on Song's interpretation of how Jesus witnessed the reign of God already at work in people's lives from the beginning of creation. For Song, Jesus did not bring God's reign into the world, but made it more visible to people and encouraged them in their movements for liberation. He also explains Jesus' death from a historic perspective by identifying Jesus as the crucified people. Jesus' death is not a plan of God but one of human brutality. Finally, in the face of Asian religio-cultural traditions, Song tends to go beyond contemporary classifications of Jesus' salvific role (exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism) to promote a reign-of-God-centered universalism. The final part of the dissertation evaluates Song's christology according to two theological criteria: theological adequacy, i.e., to what extent has Song translated the biblical faith or Jesus' stories into Asian context and makes christology relevant to Asian peoples; and theological appropriateness, i.e., whether Song's understanding of Jesus remains faithful to the biblical faith or Christian traditions, in particular the christological creeds of the Council of Chalcedon.; Song has definitely contributed greatly to the construction of an indigenous, Asian christology. This study of his christology illustrates the importance of doing an Asian contextual theology or christology for all to understand Jesus as coming to Asia as savior, not as oppressor.