Abstract
Adoniram Judson (1788–1850) was an American Baptist missionary. His Burmese name was Yuhdathan. His coming to Myanmar “was not originally intentional, but it was providentially accidental” (American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1923: 16). This article will read Judson as a dialectical1 missionary because of his negative view of Buddhism as a false religion, and yet his use of Buddhist religious terms for translation of the Burmese Bible. I will also argue that Judson did not bring God to Myanmar because God has already been there prior to his coming. Rather, he brought the foreign Gospel and gave the Bible to the Burmese. This article is written from a twofold perspective: to offer a description of Judson’s mission work, and to offer a prescription of how Judson’s success should be appreciated and his failure should be appropriated in a post-Judson age.
Introduction
Adoniram Judson was the first child of Adoniram Judson Sr and Abigail Brown. He was born on 9 August 1788, in the parsonage of First Congregational Church of Malden, grown up in Wenham, Braintree, and Plymouth, MA (Brackney, 1998: 122–123). His father was an evangelical pastor and his mother was a homemaker and Christian activist in her local congregation. As a young boy, he rejected the faith of his parents and prided himself in being a skeptic (Brackney, 1998: 123). As will be seen later, Judson was converted and dedicated to his calling as a missionary while he studied at Andover Theological Seminary, Newton Center, MA.
He became one of the pioneer oversea missionaries (Hull, 1903). He was considered to be one of the most successful modern missionaries in the “Great Century of Missions” (1792–1910) (Neill, 1964: 22). Two of his mission successes will be studied: (1) the conversion of Burmese Buddhists through conversation and (2) his translation of the Burmese Bible. The latter is the result of the former. Without converting Burmese Buddhists, he would not have been able to accomplish his translation work. More interestingly, Buddhism provided Judson with vocabularies in his translation of the Burmese Bible. Without this twofold success, any discussion of Judson’s mission work would not be meaningful.
History tells us that Judson’s main target groups were Burmese Buddhists, who make up an estimated 68% of Myanmar’s population of 60 million (Wessendorf, 2009: 368). Therefore, the scope of this article will deal mainly with Judson’s mission work among Burmese Buddhists. This study is divided into three parts. First is a biographical sketch—a brief study of Judson’s background and exploration of how he became a missionary to Myanmar. Second is a missiological exploration, Judson’s mission activities and strategies among Burman Buddhists. Third is a missiological and theological evaluation of his legacy, his mission success as well as his failure. The aim is to employ the former as a model for contemporary mission and the latter as a source for re-appropriating mission methods in a post-Judson period.
How Judson became a missionary to Myanmar
The years from 1788 to 1812 were Judson’s formative years (conversion, consecration and commission). With the encouragement of a theological professor, Moses Stuart, on 12 October 1808, Judson went to Andover Seminary as a non-Christian student (Judson, 1883 2 ; see also, Judson, 1823). Still only 20 years of age, he had self-reliance that prevented him from returning to Christ. Yet he continued his exposure to the Word of God. During his seminary studies, the reading of Psalm 130 touched Judson’s heart and he became a believer (Eddy, 1851: v). On 2 December 1808, Judson dedicated himself to God and he pursued an interest in overseas missions that soon became his passion (Judson, 1913: 6; see also, Judson, 1883). At the start of his second year at Andover, Judson began to reflect on the personal duty of consecrating his life to go to the causes of missions (Wayland, 1855: 29). While at Andover on 26 February 1809, he was inspired by Claudius Buchanan’s sermon on Matt. 2:2: “. . . for we have seen his star in the East, and are come to worship Him” (Buchan, 1809: 4). Buchanan’s sermon on the wise men following the star in the East inspired Judson to attempt to rescue the perishing millions of the East (Wayland, 1855: 52–53).
After graduating in 1810, Judson married Ann Hasseltine (1789–1826), a school teacher, on 12 February 1812. A week after his marriage, Judson and his wife, together with Luther Rice and another missionary couple Samuel and Harriet Newell sailed from Salem, MA to the East on 19 February 1812, arriving in Calcutta, India on 17 June 1812 (Anderson, 1956: 106), after a voyage of four months. During this time at sea, Judson devoted most of his time to theological study. His study focused on the doctrine of baptism. There were two reasons for this study.
First, Judson took the doctrine of baptism as a key factor because he considered it to be an essential part of Jesus’ Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–19). The second reason he studied baptism was polemical (Wayland, 1855: 95). To take the latter seriously, Judson rejected infant baptism. Although Judson had already been baptized as an infant at his home church by the sprinkling of a few drops of water on his head (Anderson, 1956: 127), he was baptized again by immersion by William Carey, a prominent British Baptist missionary (1761–1834), on 6 September 1812 in India. During his time in India, Judson was inspired by Carey in many ways, especially Carey’s description of the need for disciplining of the nations, baptizing new converts and translating the Scriptures into various local languages (Finn, 2012: 77–100).
Despite the desire to translate the Scriptures in India, the Judsons were ordered out of India by the British East India Company. The Judsons sought other mission fields. In 1813, they left India and en route his wife miscarried their first child aboard the ship. They accidently arrived in Myanmar on 13 July. After considering a number of options, they decided to evangelize Myanmar (Finn, 2012: 127, 139). They were attracted by the golden shores of Rangoon and they wondered if this place was actually a mission for life. Ann said, “. . . it was in our hearts to live and die with the Burmese, and we in this place, induced to pitch our tent” (Hull, 1903: 27). Originally intent on service in India, Myanmar was not in their thoughts when the Judsons left the US. Myanmar’s gain was India’s lost. The coming of Adoniram and Ann to Myanmar “was not originally intentional, but it was providentially accidental” (American Baptist Foreign Mission Society, 1923: 16).
Establishing Burmese mission in the midst of crisis
Judson faced several crises, of which two are most important for our study. One was his experience of political crisis, and the other was family crisis. When Adoniram and his wife Ann arrived in Myanmar on 13 July 1813, the country was not a pleasant setting for foreign missionaries. The community was religiously Buddhist and politically controlled by officials who had no understanding of religious diversity. The Judsons first settled in Rangoon (now Yangon), where they lived from 1813 to 1823 at the mission compound founded by Carey Felix. After 10 years of settlement in Rangoon, they moved to Ava, the royal city, where in 1824 Judson was taken prisoner as a suspected spy for the British government, then at war with Myanmar (Finn, 2012: 80).
Having arrived in the period of British colonialism (1824–1948), Judson was suspected by the officials as being an agent of British colonialism. Owing to a concurrence of British colonization and American missions, they could not understand how to separate the two. For the locals, American missionaries and British colonizers were of similar western groups with different brands, working for the same purpose: subjugating the Burmese to the colonial schemes—the former religious case and the latter political. Consequently, Judson was arrested by the officials several times (Pearn, 1962: 52). As a missionary wife, Ann negotiated with the local officials. It was likely that her negotiation with the local officials, which proved that she and her husband were not associated with British colonization, was one of the reasons for Judson’s release (Robert, 2006: 834–844).
As a missionary wife, Ann was not only a negotiator, but also the preserver of the manuscript of Judson’s translation projects by hiding them in her pillow. The locals’ misperception of Judson as a broker of British colonialism was an important feature of the political crisis. Judson, upon his release, explained to the officials that they were “Americans, not English, by which he meant that American missionaries had nothing to do with British colonizers. Upon Judson’s release in 1826, they returned to Rangoon, and eventually back to the US, Amherst” (McElrath, 1976: 123; see also, Brackney, 1998: 123; Judson, 1883: 233).
The second crisis that Judson had faced was a family one. In the same year of moving back to Rangoon in 1826, Ann died. After Ann’s death later that year, Judson moved between Mawlamyaing and Yangon. Without a wife, Judson carried out his mission work for about eight years. In 1834, Judson married his second wife, Sarah Boardman (1803–1845), and permanently moved to Mawlamyaing in southeast Myanmar. There, they remained until 1845, when Sarah died of childbirth complications and Judson returned to the United States on furlough for 1845–1845. Judson returned to Myanmar with his third wife, a fiction writer, Emily Chubbock (1817–1854), who helped Judson write his biography and created his heroic profile (McElrath, 1976: 124).
The feminist biographer of Judson, Rosalie Hunt argues that a compelling picture of partnership exists between Judson and his three wives in service to God in Myanmar. Interestingly enough, she shows that behind the successful missionary were three remarkable women. During Judson’s mission labors, God appointed each of these women to be in partnership with Judson. In succession, Ann translated tracts and kept Judson alive while he was in prison for 12 months; Sarah proved herself to be a remarkable linguist and evangelist; Emily was a talented writer and expositor of her husband’s mission labors (Hunt, 2005: 254–255). Despite his dark moments of personal crisis, Judson remained devoted throughout his life to Myanmar until his death in 1850. He was buried at sea. Amid great hardship, Judson served the Lord by establishing the Burmese mission and translating the New Testament (Hunt, 2005; see also, Johnson, 2006: 1–4).
Conversation, conversion, and cooperation: Judson as a learner and translator-missionary
The conversion of non-Christians and Bible translation have been the central components of cross-cultural missions since the earliest days of the “Great Century” (1792–1910) (Smalley, 1991: 5). As a missionary in the “Great Century,” Judson also had the same twofold aim. One was to make disciples of all nations and to baptize them (Matt. 28: 19). The other was to translate the Scripture into the local languages. The former has to do with conversion, the latter with translation. This twofold goal was necessary for Judson to gain for the Gospel a foothold in Myanmar. As noted in my introduction, Judson’s aim was to convert Burman Buddhists and to translate the Bible for the new converts.
In order to fulfill his twofold aim, Judson spent much of his time making friends, learning Burmese (the national language) and Pali (the religious language of Theravada Buddhism) (Trager, 1966: ix). That meant that a working knowledge of the common speech and the nation’s religious language was indispensible for Judson. He believed that the first important task for any foreign missionary was to befriend and to converse with the locals in their languages so that the former could be able to communicate the Gospel comprehensibly to the latter. The goal was to convert the locals into Christianity. In a letter written on 14 January 1814 to Joseph Emerson, Judson said this: “My only object at present is to prosecute, in a still and quiet manner, the study of the native language, trusting that for all the future God will provide” (Judson, 1883: 78).
Judson as a dialectical missionary and dialogical evangelist
Learning the Burmese language and being immersed in the Burman culture were the keys to providing Judson with a contextual way of mission. Instead of making the Burmese Americanized, Judson allowed himself to become an American Burmese. By American Burmese, I do not mean he became a Burmese citizen. Rather, he dressed and acted like a Burmese. Judson befriended the locals. U Aung Min and U Shwe Gong were his best Buddhist friends and linguistic teachers. Judson was fortunate to have such kind friends and skilled teachers. Despite their early struggles to understand each other, Judson and Ann learned a great deal from their teachers, not only Burmese and Pali, but also Buddhist beliefs and worldviews (Finn, 2012: 77–100).
As Judson acquired a good knowledge of the Burmese vernacular and some knowledge of Pali and Buddhism, he started writing some tracts in Burmese with the aim of evangelizing Burmese Buddhists. Judson wrote eight tracts, which included theological, catechetical, liturgical, evangelistic and apologetic works. Of the eight, Tract No. 1—“A View of the Christian Religion,” and Tract No. 3—“The Golden Balance,” which he completed in July 1816 and Mach 1829, played the key roles in Judson’s mission labors (Finn, 2012: 85). As his language skills improved, Judson began to evangelize the Burmans, including his two teachers U Aung Min and U Shwe Gong. Judson adopted a contextual approach to mission and evangelism by using the zayat for the public conversations. The zayat is a Burmese term for a small open-air rest shelter erected beside the roads. The zayat served as a convenient place where Judson could converse with the passers-by.
Like the Buddhist teachers, Judson sat on the front porch of the zayat and conversed with any interested inquirers. Many Buddhists—lay Buddhists, Buddhist kings and Buddhist scholars, including his two language teachers—came to listen to his preaching and asked him about Christian faith. Judson’s form of spreading the Gospel was a two-way communication of conversation and the content of the Gospel, emphasizing the doctrines of the eternal God, sin and salvation/atonement. These three main doctrines of the Gospel, however, appeared contradictory to Buddhist doctrinal teachings.
First, in order to convince Buddhists, Judson tried to compare and contrast the Buddhist doctrine of god (phayar) and the Christian doctrine of God. In his exposition, Judson treated the Buddhist concept of god as an impersonal and a visible being, whereas he described the Christian doctrine of God as a personal, an eternal and invisible being. In Judson’s view of Buddhism, the impersonal image of their god signifies the idolatrous image of the Buddha, whereas the visible image of god signifies the Buddhist pagodas. To state the example of the latter, a Burmese Buddhist says, Phaya Phu Twemey, which means “I will go to the pagoda for the pilgrimage of the Buddha” (Stevenson and Eveleth, 1953: 728–729). By contrast, Judson stressed the Christian notion of God is personal, invisible and eternal by His natures.
Second, Judson proclaimed the Gospel of salvation in his dialogue with Buddhists. When Judson spoke about salvation as not being self-earned, but as divinely offered (Eph. 2:8–9), Buddhists found this contradictory to their doctrine of salvation or enlightenment as being self-earned through meditation and self-effort. In Buddhism, there is no savior outside of the self. Buddhists, especially Theravadas do not see the Buddha as a savior, but as a guide who showed the eightfold path that leads to nirvana. One of Judson’s teachers, U Aung Min argued against the Christian concept of an other-oriented Savior by saying that nirvana is the only place of salvation, free from suffering (Stevenson and Eveleth, 1953: 573).
Though still learning the Buddhist doctrine of salvation or nirvana, Judson continued trying to convince Buddhists that they need a Savior—Jesus who saves and forgives their sin. This leads us to explore Judson’s exposition of the problem of sin in his dialogue with the Burman Buddhists. In Buddhism, there is no clear doctrine of sin. Thus, when Judson told Buddhists that they are sinners and they need Jesus who forgives their sin, their response was: “we did not kill anyone and destroy anyone’s house, why do you call us sinners?” Judson treated sin more as a state (Rom. 5:12–21), whereas Buddhists regarded it more as an immoral act. 3 Consequently, it was difficult for Judson to convince Buddhists that they are sinners and that they need a Savior.
Until 1819, Judson made no Buddhist converts who confessed Jesus as their Savior. Only after six years, Judson convinced U Naw, who became the first very first Burmese convert. On 27 July 1819, Judson baptized U Naw in the name of God the Father, of Jesus the Son and of the Spirit (Anderson, 1956: 223–234; Moe, 2015: 17).
When U Naw was converted, many Buddhists became more curious about Christianity. Judson continued to share with Buddhists about Christian faith. Some came to feel convinced and others remained unconvinced. Among the convinced Burmans were Maung Ing, the second Burman convert, Ma Min Lay, the first Burman woman convert, followed by his two teachers, Shwe Gong and Aung Min (Anderson, 1956: 242–255). In his 37 years of mission work, Judson led 100 converts from the Burman Buddhism (Hiebert, 1985: 55ff).
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As the new converts increased, Judson built and used the zayat-chapels as the ecclesial forms for worshipping God with the new converts. Moreover, Judson used the zayat erected beside the roads in public conversations with non-Christians (Judson, 1883: 124–125). Robert Tobet (1955: 39) wrote about the zayat mission: The zayats were the proper places for preaching the gospel and for the exchange of faiths—Judson learned from the locals as much as they learned from him. The whole basis of Judson’s mission approach was person-to-person teaching in an informal atmosphere in which the Buddhist zayat visitors and inquirers where perfectly free to express their views as well as to hear his preaching.
The zayats served as the public places for the mutual engagement of missions. The zayats were the public places where Judson learned from, listened to the Burmans, and taught and preached. By contrast, Ann, Judson’s wife, concentrated on private conversations with Burmese women and weekly prayer meetings with interested women. This shows that the Judsons had different methods of missions—one used public conversation and the other used private conversation for their common goals.
Judson as a translator-missionary
Judson was best-known for his translations of the Burmese Bible and the Burmese–English and English–Burmese dictionaries, all of which are still in use today. The entire Bible was translated into Burmese by 1834, and was published by 1840 (American Baptist Foreign Missionary Society, 1923: 22; see also, Bailey, 1955: 106). At the end of his life, Judson worked on the Burmese-English dictionary, which was published before his death in 1850. The English-Burmese dictionary was finished by his associate Jonathan Wade and published in 1852 (Bailey, 1955: 106). In the course of Judson’s translation work, the cooperation of several other people was evident. These include his wife Ann (Robert, 2009: 834–843) and especially his two language teachers, and some new converts, Aung Min and Shwe Gong, whose proof-readings improved the accuracy of his translation work (Pleasants, 2007: 23).
One of the most impressive of Judson’s literary works was his intelligent expression of the Gospel in Buddhist terms, which are comprehensible to the local readers. A key element of Judson’s translation was his use of the Pali in the Burmese Bible. Just as the Hebrew and Greek languages occupy key places in the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and the New Testament, Pali served as a necessary vocabulary for Judson’s translation of the Burmese Bible and his use of Christian terms.
In the Burmese Bible, Judson employed a number of Burmanized Pali and Buddhist terms, whose meaning implies the equivalent meaning in the usage of the Buddhist literature. To mention only a few examples, first, dhamma sayar, which literally means “teacher of the teachings of Buddha,” which is also used by Christians as pastors who embody the teachings of Christ. Second, Judson used a Buddhist honorific term; “taw” to express the divine attributes of glory. Judson used taw with the triune God, such as khame-taw (Father), tha-taw (Son) and wit-ngyin-taw (the Spirit) (Matt. 28:18–19), and taw with logos as hnuk-ka-pat-taw (Holy Word) (Jn. 1:1–14). Taw is also used for any revered persons. Third and finally, Judson used the Buddhist term dukkha to indicate suffering, misery, pain and groaning (Ps. 22:1-2; Rom. 8:18-27; Job. 30:27; Jn. 16:33).
The same can be said about Pali bhasa, the corresponding Buddhist term for “religion”—for instance, Buddha bhasa (Buddhism) and Christian bhasa (Christianity). Additionally, he used the Burmanized Pali thavara phaya to describe the “eternal God.” Thavara phaya is a combination of two Pali terms—thavara (eternal) and phaya (God).
There were many more Pali-derived terms, which were used by Judson in the Burmese Bible to illustrate the affinity between Buddhist terminologies and Christian categories. These are enough to show that Buddhism and its sacred language (i.e. Pali) were indispensible for Judson’s translation work in Myanmar. It can therefore be inferred that the translatability of Christianity and the Gospel cannot be imagined without the adoptation of Buddhist worldviews and the Pali terms in Myanmar context.
Apparently, Judson’s translation of the Bible had a lasting influence among Burmese Christians as well as Buddhist scholars. According to Judson’s most recent biographer, Rosalle Hunt, a committee of Burmese biblical scholars met years ago to consider translating and publishing a new edition of the Burmese Bible. “But the committee disbanded after opting to leave Judson’s translation unchanged, claiming it was so beautiful and compellingly rendered that it could not be revised and improved upon” (Hunt, 2005: 254–255). Although Hunt did not provide the year the translation committee met, I personally often hear Burmese scholars say with appreciation that Judson’s translation of the Burmese Bible remains usable enough, although it is not perfect.
In sum, Judson’s mission success in Myanmar can best be described as the conversion of Burmese Buddhists and the translations of the Burmese Bible and the dictionaries. Taking discipling of the nations as a missional aim, Judson converted Burmese through conversation and baptized them to be disciples of Christ. This evangelistic form of mission was followed by his translating of the Burmese Bible. In other words, the translation of Burmese Bible was the basis for the continued spread of Christianity. As Phyllis Pleasants (2007: 22–23) said, “Judson was translator par excellence for his intended audiences—the new converts in particular and Burmese in general.”
Judson’s conversation with the locals led to the conversion of Burmese Buddhists, and conversion led to cooperation in the translation work. As pointed out earlier, Shwe Gong and Aung Min played important roles in Judson’s translation works both before they were converted and afterward (Howard, 2013: 9). Doing mission in Myanmar, a Buddhist country, conversion was necessary for Judson. If he did not make any converts, he might not have translated the Burmese Bible. He did the latter as a consequence of the former.
The legacy of Judson: Appreciating his successes and appropriating his failures
Southern Baptist scholars have recently published a book in an appreciation of Judson’s bicentennial mission (1813–2013) (Duesing, 2012). They appreciated Judson’s legacy of successes, but they neglected his failures. As a Burmese Christian scholar, my claim is that we must acknowledge both the successes and failures of Judson precisely because the theme/goal of mission remains the same, but the methods of mission must change as time (history) and space (context) have constantly changed. The legacy indicates Judson’s success and failure: success in terms of his superb translation of the Burmese Bible in using Buddhist terms; failure in terms of his hostile and exclusive view of Burmese Buddhism and his attempt to totally replace it with Christianity.
Judson’s adoption of the Buddhist terms in translation of the Bible and his hostile view of Buddhism as a false and an idolatrous religion is described by a Kachin scholar, La Seng Dingrin, as “a conflicting legacy of Judson” (Dingrin, 2009: 485). I would call it Judson’s dialectical model. Although Dingrin is right in pointing out the conflicting legacy of Judson and saying it is widely unknown to the world (p. 485), he does not integrate the success and failure of Judson. Over-emphasizing Judson’s failure, Dingrin does not adequately mention Judson’s success. This article distinguishes from Dingrin in a way that I will appropriate Judson’s legacy of mission failure as well as to appreciate his legacy of success.
First, Judson’s failure was his negative and hostile view of Buddhism. In his Tract 1, “A View of the Christian Religion”, and in Tract 2, “The Golden Balance,” Judson described Burmese Buddhism simply as “atheistic, false, fictitious and idolatrous” (Judson, 1883: 123, 149–150). His wife, Ann also viewed Burmese Buddhism simply as idolatrous and false. She said, “The Burmans are Boodists or a nation of atheists—there was no eternal God” (Judson, 1823: 3–5, 96–99). Ann’s view of Buddhism was very similar to that of Adoniram. They both treated Myanmar simply as a nation of darkness and Burmese Buddhism as a religion of idolatry. Both of them came to the conclusion that “there was no eternal God in this idolatrous nation, Myanmar” (Judson, 1883: 78–79; see also, Dingrin, 2009: 489).
Second, the replacement model was the result of Adoniram’s and Ann’s negative view of Buddhism. With the assumption that “there was no eternal God in Myanmar” (Dingrin, 2009: 489), Judson attempted to bring a foreign God to Myanmar and to replace the local Buddhism with a foreign Christianity. In “A View of Christian Religion,” Judson predicated that “In about one hundred years, all false religions (mechha bhasa), including Burmese Buddhism, will disappear and the religion of Christ will be established” (Dingrin, 2009: 486). With the tone of offensive and hostile manner, Judson wrote this in “The Golden Balance”: Whereas Buddhism has been slowly decreasing and is now almost extinct, and will soon totally become extinct, as Lord Gautama himself freed from this world and attained nirvana, Christianity has been increasingly thriving and will soon overpower and replace Buddhism as Christ is never lost, but will exist forever. (Dingrin, 2009: 487)
Third, it was unlikely that Judson realized the possibility of God’s prevenient grace among Burmese Buddhists. As noted, Judson and Ann affirmed that “there was no eternal God in Myanmar” (Judson, 1883: 78–79). Consequently, they failed to recognize that Burmese Buddhist cultures pave the way for the Gospel of God’s general revelation. Thus, they tried to replace Buddhism with Christianity. For example, Judson tried to replace the Buddhist concept of kusala (human merits) with kye-ju taw (grace) instead of integrating them (Dingrin, 2009: 488). These three aspects reveal a great deal of Judson’s mission failures. Today, some local Burmese Christians uncritically adopt Judson’s legacy of replacement theology. In this regard, postcolonial discourse critically re-considers western missionaries and their local converts as the chief agents of religious colonialism (Robert, 2009: 96). 5 The traditional missionaries transfer the legacy of religious colonialism to their local Christians (Robert, 2009: 90).
I want to build on the third aspect of Judson’s mission failure, his missiological failure to recognize God’s prevenient grace among Burmese Buddhists. By this, I mean his hostile view of Buddhism and his imperial view of total replacement of Buddhism with Christianity lead him to the failure to recognize God’s prevenient grace and mysterious presence among Burman Buddhists. In order to appropriate Judson’s failure, I would propose three bridges: the mysterious bridge between the eternal God and Burmese Buddhists, the religious-ethical bridge, and the cultural-linguistics bridge between Christianity and Buddhism. 6
The Mysterious bridge between God and Burmese Buddhists
First, in order to argue against Judson’s failure to assume that “there was no eternal God in Myanmar,” I would affirm that God has already been in Myanmar as the creator, redeemer and sustainer of the world prior to Judson’s mission. This mysterious bridge can be expressed in terms of God’s general revelation to Burmese Buddhists through their religious beliefs and practices. God is never revealed in a cultural vacuum. God is always in contact with His created order, even in Buddhist cultures (Ps. 19:1; Rom. 1:19-20). The best example of mysterious bridge between the creating God and the created order is found in St. Paul’s description of God as an “unknown God among pagans” (Acts. 17: 23). Realizing God’s general revelation among pagans (17:24–29), Paul does not see himself as the bringer of a foreign God to pagans, but he sees himself as a messenger of the Gospel who proclaims the unknown God through their cultures (Flemming, 2005: 75–77).
Echoing Paul’s mission among pagans, I argue that Judson did not bring a foreign God to Myanmar from America; rather he brought the foreign Gospel. In light of the mysterious bridge between God and Burmese Buddhists, it is right to affirm that God’s prevenient grace precedes Judson’s mission works in Myanmar. Related to this, Lamin Sanneh is right in saying: “God’s prevenient grace precedes missionaries into an un-Christianized culture and imbues it with salvific value so that the missionaries are able adopt existing local religio-cultural concepts for communicating the gospel into that new cultural setting” (Sanneh, 1995: 54). If God’s prevenient grace precedes Judson’s mission work, it is right to note that God uses Burmese Buddhist culture as the local medium not only for His general revelation, but also for the reception of the Gospel, which Judson brought.
Since God is already in contact with Burmese Buddhists before our contact with them, the task of Burmese Christians in a post-Judson period is not to bring God to Buddhists, but to find the “unknown God” and to communicate the Gospel through their religious beliefs and practices. 7 This demands a twofold way communication between Christians and Buddhists. In his interreligious communication with pagans, Paul uses such a twofold way communication. As a result, some of his hearers felt convinced and joined his ministry, while others remained unconvinced (Acts 17:31–34). Likewise, Judson’s conversation with Burmese Buddhists led to the conversion of few Buddhists. But the difference between Paul and Judson is that the former communicated the Gospel to pagans with recognition of God’s prevenient grace among them, while the latter communicated the Gospel without realizing God’s prevenient grace among Buddhists.
The religious ethical bridge between Burmese Buddhism and Christianity
Judson’s weakness lies not only in his negative view of Burmese Buddhism, but also in his failure to recognize some bridges, or points of contact, between Burmese Buddhism and Christianity. Consequently, he wrongly assumed that there is nothing in the Burmese Buddhist culture in which the Gospel could be inserted, and thus, every aspect of Buddhist culture had to be abolished before the Gospel is inserted. 8 I will classify this as Judson’s view of a total replacement of Burmese Buddhism with Christianity. In a post-Judson period, can we Burmese Christians accept total replacement model? 9 My answer is no, though a partial replacement model is acceptable. I will show why total replacement is unacceptable and how partial replacement should be acceptable.
To argue against Judson’s view of total replacement, I will first meditate on what Jesus said when He came to the world or what Karl Barth calls “the far country as a missionary God” (Barth, 1956: 157–210). Jesus said, “I came not to abolish Jewish law and prophet, but to fulfill it” (Matt. 5:17). Jesus’ word implies many meanings, but one thing for sure is that He did not intend to totally abolish Jewish law, but to fulfill it for a transforming purpose. In this regard, a fulfillment model and a partial replacement model are mutually related to each other in the transformative process of Christian-Buddhist relations. 10
In his book, Why Study Religion?, a renowned scholar of religions Terry Muck (2016) argues that the Edinburgh 1910 Conference was a point of departure for fulfillment theology. Fulfillment theology sees other faiths not as the mere objects for conversion, but as neighbors from and to whom religious and ethical insights must be both received and given with the hope of mutual enrichment (Muck, 2016: 99). If Muck’s suggestion is right, fulfillment theology allows us to see Buddhist religious worldviews and cultural practices 11 not only as the vehicles for God’s general revelation or saving grace, 12 but also as the sources for cultivating Christian faith and discipleship. 13 This leads to my purpose of argument.
A prominent Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong (2005: 180) suggests that “all religions have continuities and discontinuities in various forms.” However, Yong is not precise about what kind of discontinuities and continuities he means. In the particular case of Burmese Buddhists, I would suggest that Buddhists must discontinue worshipping the idolatrous image of Buddha when they are converted to Christ. They must replace the Buddha with Christ, who would transform them from within their idolatrous practices and beliefs. In this regard, the mission goal is not primarily to convert Buddhists to Christianity and to totally change their culture, but “simply to introduce them to Christ who would eventually transform them from within their beliefs and practices rather than forced from the outside” (Robert, 2009: 90). It is likely that because of his view of total replacement, Judson’s primary goal was to convert Burmese Buddhist to Christianity rather than to Christ.
In a post-Judson period, I prioritize conversion to Christ over conversion to Christianity. Based on the primary motivation to change one’s culture, conversion to Christianity is sometimes identified with proselytism. When I prioritize conversion to Christ, cultural change occurs as a result of encounter with the Gospel rather than forced from the outside. The idea of conversion to Christ involves Christians’ continuing conversion into the likeness of Christ. 14 Converted Buddhists may discontinue venerating the idolatrous image of the Buddha, but their doctrine of eightfold path of the threefold principle—morality, meditation and wisdom—continues to shape their transforming lives of becoming more prayerful believers, ethical disciples in nation-building or promoting justice and right relationships with God and neighbors. Thus, I affirm that there is the possibility of a partial replacement model for transforming process.
To be sure, the Buddhist eightfold path could enrich the Christian concept of salvation not merely as a forensic sense of justification (right relationships with God), but also as a transformative sense of sanctification or holiness (right relationships with God and with neighbors). Indeed, God saves us by grace, not by law. But God saves us for the moral law. This leads me to nuance Judson’s negative view of the Buddhist doctrine of self-effort and his attempt to replace it with grace (see Dingrin, 2009: 488). Echoing Jesus’ word, “I came not to abolish the Jewish law, but to fulfill it” (Matt.5:17), I affirm that God’s grace does not compete with the Buddhist doctrine of self-effort, rather it compliments and fulfills it.
Divine grace and humans’ efforts are not mutually exclusive, rather they are compatible with each other for a transforming journey of becoming the moral disciples of Christ. God saves us not just from something (the power of sin), but for something good (moral discipleship) or the likeness of Christ (Eph. 2:9). In order to become moral and sanctified disciples of Christ, we must depend on both the gracious power of the Spirit and the power of our self-struggle for sanctification by way of cultivating our faith (Phil. 2:12). Contrary to Judson’s exclusive view of no points of contact between Burmese Buddhism and Christianity, I am convinced that there are more religious ethical bridges between two religions than Judson and Burmese Christians would ever think. 15
The cultural-linguistic bridge between Burmese Buddhism and Christianity
Third, there are the cultural-linguistic bridges between Burmese Buddhism and Christianity. Even though Judson had a hostile view of Burmese Buddhism as a false religion, he accepted the necessity of Burmese Buddhist religious and cultural terms for translating the Gospel and the Burmese Bible. Judson’s use of Buddhists term in his translation project is promising. But, it is likely that Judson did not imagine the necessity of Buddhist cultural-linguistic and religious worldviews for developing Christianity in Myanmar. What he knew was the need for Bible translation. In a post-Judson age, my aim is to affirm the cultural linguistic bridge between Burmese Buddhism and Christianity for the twofold goal of translating the Gospel and developing Christianity in Myanmar.
In an age of world Christianity, renowned scholars, such as Andrew Walls and Lamin Sanneh, recognize that the cultural-linguistic bridge between Christianity and other religions have theological significance for the twofold process of translation the gospel and developing Christianity. For them, translating the gospel into every culture is the key to developing Christianity in each local context. One gospel must be translated into all local cultures. Walls in particular takes up the incarnation of Christ as the ground for the translatability of the Gospel and localization of Christianity (Walls, 1996: 26–27). As Walls (1996: 27) claims: “When God in Christ became human (Jn. 1:14), divinity was translated. When divinity was translated into humanity, He did not become generalized humanity. He became a person in a particular locality and in a particular language.”
Since God is revealed and translated through the incarnate Christ for all humanity, the concepts of the Christian Gospel and of faith have also to be expressed in human culture, including Burmese Buddhist culture (Walls, 1996: 26). In line with Walls, Sanneh (1989: 47) asserts that God’s purpose is mediated through particular cultures and religious languages. The vernacular terms determine the translation of the Gospel and the localization of Christianity. Although Judson had a hostile view of Burmese Buddhism, he affirmed the necessity of Burmese Buddhist terms for his translation project. In this regard, local Christians in Myanmar must not only appreciate Judson; but also imitate him as a model translator for translating the Gospel and for localizing Christianity. His willingness to adapt to Burmese culture and to adopt Buddhist terms must necessarily be imitated.
By adapting to Burmese Buddhist culture, I do not mean to be assimilated to its religious beliefs, nor are we to be conformed to its idolatrous practices. My point is to communicate and to translate the Gospel from the inside of Burmese Buddhist culture by appreciating and learning their culture. Translating the Gospel from the inside of Burmese Buddhist culture imitates the purpose of incarnation of Christ in terms of entering into a human world without ceasing to be divine. The incarnation of Christ implies two principles for our translation process. One is to continue to seek the intercultural meaning of the Gospel in dialogue with Burmese Buddhists. The other is to maintain the integrity of the Gospel without compromise, as Christ remains divine despite incarnate humanity. 16
In the translation process, I suggest that our task is not only to borrow Burmese Buddhist languages, but also to treat Buddhists as the co-translators of the intercultural meaning of the Gospel. Burmese Christians must see Christian-Buddhist dialogue as a privileged moment where people from both sides—the communicators of the Gospel and the recipients of the Gospel with different experiences of the mysterious God— can speak and listen to one another in love to grasp an interculturally fuller meaning of the Gospel (see Phan, 2003: 8–19).
In sum, the localization of Christianity depends on the success of translating the Gospel into Burmese Buddhist culture and language. Burmese Christianity cannot/should not be built against Burmese Buddhists and their cultural languages. To stress the cooperative roles of local Burmese Buddhists and their native languages in the translation process of the Gospel or the Bible, I would argue that Judson’s brilliant accomplishment of translating the Bible was not his alone. It is likely that two of his Buddhist language teachers’ cooperative roles made his translation of the Burmese Bible more readable. Of course, God is the one who made Judson’s brilliant translation projects possible.
Conclusion
I have argued in this article that Judson is a dialectical missionary. Should we Burmese Christians imitate him? My answer is the dialectics of yes and no. No, we should not imitate him in two aspects: his failure to recognize God’s prevenient grace among Burmese Buddhists and his failure to recognize the religious-ethical bridge between Christianity and Buddhism. In a post-Judson period, Burmese Christians must recognize not only the mysterious bridge between God’s prevenient grace and Burmese Buddhists, but also the religious-ethical bridge between Christianity and Buddhism. Rejecting such a twofold legacy suggests that the mission task of Burmese Christians is not to bring a foreign God to the native Buddhists, but to find the mysterious God, to insert the Gospel in their religious practices and to adopt Buddhist ethics and cultural values as the local sources for developing a Christian moral theology and Christianity.
But yes, Burmese Christians should imitate Judson’s legacy of mission in two aspects. First, we must imitate his costly commitment. He willingly chose to leave the comfort zone of his home country in order to bring the Gospel of salvation to the unfamiliar country of Myanmar. Just as he willingly bridged the American–Burmese cultures and to communicate the Gospel to Burmese by the motivating power of love, so Burmese Christians must break the Christian–Buddhist barriers and build some bridges between the two religions. 17 The act of boundary-breaking is a mission imperative in Asia’s pluralistic world in general and Myanmar’s pluralistic context in particular. Asian scholars of mission, such as Peter Phan (2003) and Lalsangkima Pachuau (2000) stress that the act of border-crossing lies at the heart of the mission of God in and through the incarnate Christ.
Pachuau (2000: 540) rightly argues that “Christian mission is about the border-crossing or boundary-breaking activity of Christians—following God who crossed the border between heaven and earth or divinity and humanity in and through Christ.” Similarly, Phan (2003: 16) boldly states that “Jesus is a border-crosser—from incarnation to resurrection.” In line with Phan and Pachuau, I argue that without border-crossing over to the Buddhist world, Burmese Christians cannot imitate Jesus and Judson in Myanmar. The question we must ask is: what is the purpose of crossing-borders over to the Buddhist world? The answer to this question suggests the second aspect of imitating Judson’s mission success.
When Judson came to Myanmar, he did not come as a tourist to observe Burmese Buddhist culture from the outside, but he came as a pilgrim to proclaim the Gospel and to give the Bible to Burmese from the inside of Buddhist culture in adapting to their native cultures and adopting their languages for translating the Burmese Bible. Burmese Christians must imitate Judson in terms of his willingness to learn the Burmese Buddhist culture and language in order to communicate the Gospel more effectively.
The unfinished task Judson left for Burmese Christians is twofold: one is to make the ‘unknown God’ known to Buddhists through their cultures, the other is to translate the Gospel and to re-translate the Burmese Bible into all vernacular languages. One is the evangelistic task, which is to communicate the Gospel of salvation to Buddhists and to transmit Christian faith to Buddhist faith by the power of the Spirit, not by human force. The other is the contextual task, which is to transform Buddhist cultures and to make the translation of the Gospel comprehensible to Burmese cultures in partnership with Buddhists. These two tasks are not in opposition, but they are complimentary in tension.
Judson’s dream was that “the future of Myanmar is as bright as the promise of God.” 18 Despite 204 years of Judson’s mission (1813–2017), Christianity is still seen by Burmese Buddhists as a foreign religion, and the Gospel remains alienated. In light of this challenge, Burmese Christians must realize that the future of Burmese Christianity depends not only on their positive view of Buddhism as a religion from which religious and ethical insights must be taken for the opportunity of communicating the Gospel and for cultivating faith, but also on their willingness to humbly to engage with Buddhists.
The mission task remains unfinished, “yet, Faith, Hope and Love abide.”
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
I am very thankful to Dr Dale Walker who proofread this article with the competent eye of both a scholar of religions and a foreign missionary to Indonesia. Any errors of fact and the presentation of ideas in the article remain my own responsibility.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.