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ОглавлениеThe previous chapter has highlighted important steps in the mission history of Fiji and Papua New Guinea. It became clear that the present Melanesian Christianity is formed by both the traditional Melanesian religious worldviews and the Christian worldview the missionaries proclaimed. The relationship between the two appears in many different variations and forms, from syncretistic fusion to competition and rejection, and it is also influenced by the colonial and postcolonial history. Most interviews can only be understood if the implicit and explicit ways of experience are worked out. This chapter will try to summarize in typological manner these experiences of God so far as they appeared to be relevant to the interview partners in their view of conversion and renewal.
Blessings for This Life
For Melanesians, religion is experience. While most Christians would agree with that statement, fewer would agree that God must be experienced here and now in visible material signs and actions. As the pastor of a Lutheran congregation (mL) declared, “Papua New Guineans operate on the concrete level. They want to see God. God is an abstract concept. And that is why they want to see something in real life” (mL).
(Note that henceforth I will mark quotations from the interviews with the following abbreviations: m for male, f for female, p for male pastor; followed by L for member of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in PNG, M for member of the Methodist Church in Fiji, and P for member of the Pentecostal Church. Thus, pL means pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in PNG. I have omitted repetitions and pruned the quotes, and if necessary, edited in brackets.)
God’s love is an abstract concept; its visible manifestation is material blessing. “They expect more material blessings rather than forgiveness from God. God’s love must come in a material form. If God really loves me, he will make my trade store be a good profit-making trade store” (pL).
Salvation is for Melanesians not transcendent but immanent, a total well-being or the state of liberation from hunger, fear, distress, and burdens and the restoration of the blessings believed to have been lost through some fatal mischief of the ancestors. The basis of this religious experience is the relationship to nature that provides what is necessary for life. “When you talk about creation you live it, you don’t just talk about it. You see the water fall, you see the corn seed; you put it in the soil and you see it grow. You see everything. The creation really comes to you, so the experiencing of God is not something remote, but it is something that is close to you” (pL).
Nature becomes an experience of grace, in Christian perspective provided by the Creator, in Melanesian perspective mediated through the ancestors and the spirits. Religion is “the belief in a cosmic order” with visible and invisible forces.1 According to Mantovani,
Melanesian religions, in general, are concerned with the acquisition, maintenance, increase, and celebration of “life.” The signs of life are health, wealth, prestige, success, security, abundance of what is needed, good relationships [. . .]. The main practical concern of this religion is to keep the channels of ‘life’ unclogged: to create, mend and strengthen relationship with everybody and everything; with the whole cosmos [. . .]. Religions are not concerned with the truth but with success, i.e. with the acquisition of “life.” True, in a way, is what is successful and untrue what fails [. . .]. Cosmic religions are not the answers to an intellectual quest for meaning but for the pragmatic quest for survival. “Life” is basically a gift and the only access to it is through blind obedience to the prescribed way, i.e. to the ritual [. . .]. Religions are not eschatological but immanent: the “life” must be experienced here and now, not in the life to come.2
For Christians this cosmic pattern, which is clearly recognizable in the search for a blessed life, is molded into the theistic pattern. It is God who provides everything, and the right relationship to God determines the success in life. However, the expectation remains that faith and the church brings practical material benefits. This explains much of the disappointment if the church fails to deliver these.
It is useful to summarize some basic principles of the Melanesian religion and briefly indicate how they contrasted the Christian teachings brought by the missionaries, although such a generalized abbreviation is always problematic.3 The present results of the consecutive encounters and transformations are one theme of this study.
(1) Melanesian religions did not separate transcendence and immanence. It aimed at good life in terms of material and spiritual well-being. The material and the spiritual realm were undivided. A good life was a life in harmony with the group, with abundance of food, children, strength, and success in wars and barter. A religion was useless if it did not offer access to better life. The afterlife was of little concern. Melanesian religions did not expect retributions such as reward and punishment in the afterlife, they reckoned however with reward and punishment in this life.4
Christianity introduced the quest for eternal salvation and the twofold expectation of heaven or hell. It cared also for a better life here and now with schools, health stations, and agricultural and industrial schemes.
(2) In Melanesia the natural and the supernatural worlds were intertwined with deities and spirits directly affecting the well-being or ill-being of the people. The forces of the spirits directly affected life, health, well-being, and death. A lot of energy was spent on relating to the spirits in order to access these powers of life. The question of their origin and the High God behind their power was less relevant. Christianity also knows about the power of spirits and demons and the biblical stories are full of them, but their power is broken by the transcendent God. The focus is on the direct relationship to God and the spirits are rather a subversion and danger to it.
(3) Life was experienced as relation between humans, spirits, and the cosmos. Salvation happened only in relation with the group, not individually. If the relations were in disorder, people experienced mischief and the reasons had to be established and removed. The mischief of one affected the others; therefore, the salvation of one depended on the others. Until today the basic social relationship has been reciprocal exchange. Giving and receiving establishes relationship, social boundaries, and status. This is not limited to singular transactions; it is a continuous flow over generations. This includes the spirits, who must be placated with gifts, but can also be manipulated like other humans. Reciprocal exchange is also part of the biblical view of relationship, especially in the Old Testament; gifts and manipulations of spirits are however forbidden, and a manipulation of God is impossible.
(4) The “logic of retribution” is, according to Trompf, the fundamental religious orientation of the Melanesian society. It connects the everyday experience of survival, growth, fertility, and success with the cosmic time of a new beginning or cosmic reconciliation, to which the so-called cargo cults allude (see below). Retribution does not only regulate the exchange through which wealth is generated, but it also provides explanation for contingent events and catastrophes such as sickness, death, natural catastrophes, and success. The gods and spirits act according to the pattern of reward and punishment in this life.
Also the Old Testament knows a “logic of retribution”—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth—and a punishment of the people of Israel according to their sins. In the latter prophets and the New Testament this logic is however transformed into the “logic of love” which is offered freely to the other person who may not deserve this love at all. The love of enemies (Matthew 5:43–48) and the renunciation of resistance overcome the logic of retribution. All retribution in the relation between God and humans finishes with the once-and-for-all vicarious sacrifice of Jesus Christ at the cross. After this event, humans cannot contribute anything to their salvation.
(5) The person is defined through his or her place in the community. Identity is given by the group’s descent from a common ancestor. The individual depends on the community for his survival and will therefore give precedence to the community. “The realization of a person’s identity, therefore, lies not in himself/herself, but in the people and the world around him/her.”5 The socialization of the child consists in learning the obligations toward the family members and the group so that welfare is achieved for the group. Status depends on the relations to others in terms of reciprocity and kinship. Religion aims at the prosperity and strength of the group rather than the individual. It can be achieved, if the proper order and service in the group is maintained. This includes the relation to the ancestors.
The relational anthropology is shared in the Bible, though the Bible also emphasizes the individual dignity of humans as created in the image of God. God searches for the individual (Luke 15). Salvation and judgment is a personal act between the individual and God. Christianity’s emphasis on the individual relationship to God is balanced by the relationship of Christians to one another and to Christ in the church, the body of Christ.
(6) Some Melanesian cultures knew mythological stories about the sin of the ancestors, whose consequences the present generation has to bear. Prominent in some areas was the myth about the white-skinned brother who was driven away by his black-skinned brother and now returns in form of the whites. There is a promise that some time the guilt will be atoned for, thus allowing for the arrival of a new and better time of more equality and peace. These myths could merge with the Christian myth about the lost paradise and its reopening through the atonement of Christ.
The Christian concept of universal individual sinfulness and a distorted relationship to God was new to Melanesia. Universal sinfulness results in the complete dependence on grace. No human can achieve salvation by himself, and God is free to bestow or withdraw his grace though his love is certain in Jesus Christ.
(7) Some Melanesian groups knew eschatological expectations of destruction and renewal at the end of time linked with the return of the ancestors, but this was part of a cyclical revival of life different from the Christian hope of an end and goal in history through the coming of a new heaven and new earth. Christianity introduced the concept of historical time and the directed history of salvation.
(8) Rituals gave access to the spirits and powers. Many Melanesian societies practiced ritualized feasts or exchanges. If the ritual was performed correctly, it brought about well-being, but it also had the power to manipulate spirits for certain aims. Though it was not easy and needed special knowledge to know and perform the right rituals, they served as a kind of religious technology to elicit wished-for results. The most powerful rituals were often kept secret. Missionaries were also accused of keeping the true rituals of their power secret.
Rituals or rites in Christianity are seen as expressions of the communicative and symbolic dimension of worship. They derive their power from the promise of God—for instance in the Holy Communion—and are not powerful in themselves as means of manipulation.
(9) The society in Papua New Guinea is more egalitarian while the one in Fiji is hierarchical. Leadership in PNG used to be demonstrated through special knowledge of rituals and directions of the ancestors, through generosity and the distribution of wealth. In Fiji the hereditary chief is different from the people and used to receive a nearly divine reverence.
This creates problems for the church leaders whose position is in competition with the traditional leaders. For instance, in PNG the expectations of the traditional leader are projected on the church leader: “Nowadays in the village and the community they want to be respected as a good leader with visible wealth, so that when the community or the village has any trouble, he can go in front of the village people and say: ‘I’m the leader here’” (mL).
This expectation makes it easy for some foreign-based missions to attract people with the display of their wealth. Preaching a gospel of prosperity, according to which God promises all kinds of blessings in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, falls on fertile soil. This expectation, however, causes problems for a church such as the ELCPNG, which does not have a lot of material resources. People easily conclude that a church which can no longer provide services must have lost the blessings of God.
Images of God
Melanesian experiences with God have found their expression in various images of God. These images generate expectations and new experiences which confirm or transcend the given image. Therefore, these images shape the expectation of conversion and renewal. In the interviews with Fijian and Papuan Christians three images dominated: the first is God who takes care and provides all that is needed, the second is God who punishes wrongdoings, and the third is God as loving father. While the first and the second images are in the realm of the creed’s first article (God, the Creator), the last relates to the second article (God as Savior).
The Providing God
