East & West -- Books: Author unravels Gandhian take on salvation

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GANDHI & JESUS: THE SAVING POWER OF NONVIOLENCE
By Terrence J. Rynne
Orbis Books, 228 pages, $20

In Gandhi and Jesus: The Saving Power of Nonviolence, author Terrence J. Rynne, founder of the Marquette University Center for Peacemaking in Milwaukee, explains how studying Mahatma Gandhi’s practice of Satyagraha, the bold nonviolent resistance for which he became famous, enhanced Rynne’s own understanding of Jesus and Christian salvation.

The first chapter of Gandhi and Jesus introduces us to Gandhi’s political impact and to his knowledge of both Hinduism and Christianity -- knowledge influenced by people he encountered while studying law in England in the late 1800s, and later practicing as a lawyer in South Africa. At the instigation of friends in England, for example, the young Gandhi read a translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, gaining a new appreciation for this sacred Hindu book. At the suggestion of another friend there, he read the Bible and was impressed with the New Testament, especially the Sermon on the Mount. Rynne also explains how Gandhi was affected by his reading of Leo Tolstoy, whose book The Kingdom of God Is Within You “forcefully reclaims the idea that nonviolence was central to the teaching of Jesus.”

Chapter 2 explains the components of Gandhian Satyagraha (literally, “firmness in the truth”), the term Gandhi coined to describe his Indian campaign to resist British domination without using the inadequate English “passive resistance.” Rynne explains that satyagrahis were to be steadfast even when they were faced with death, and compares this with Jesus’ own refusal to use violence even in the face of execution. As Jesus called us to love our enemies, says Rynne, Gandhi saw Satyagraha as a force of love that could convert even the most powerful oppressor.

-- Reuters/Michele Crosera: A sand sculpture depicts Indian pacifist leader Mahatma Gandhi in the northeast Italian town of Jesolo in December 2007.In the following chapter, Rynne discusses Christian theologians who in turn were influenced by Gandhi’s thought. For example, Bernard Häring, German moral theologian and expert at the Second Vatican Council, “believed Satyagraha was the way the whole church should approach its reform.”

Rynne’s final chapters move to a discussion of Christian salvation. While Eastern Christians have focused on how humans were deified a result of the incarnation -- “For he was made man so that we might be made God,” wrote Athanasius (c. 295-373) -- Western Christians have tended to see the cross as a violent sacrifice thanks to the “substitution theory” that Anselm of Canterbury propounded in the 11th century, which says that Jesus paid the debt for our sin. This idea has held sway in Western Christian teaching and imagination for almost 1,000 years. Rynne says we need a new, nonviolent understanding of salvation in the West and believes that “rethinking salvation in the light of Gandhi’s Satyagraha” can help bring this about. Just as Gandhi was focused on praxis more than theory, our following of Jesus should focus on Jesus’ life and teaching and on human responsibility for history; just as Gandhi found support in his nonviolent stance by founding ashrams for satyagrahis, Christian believers must struggle together in a church community.

Gandhi and Jesus is based on Rynne’s doctoral dissertation, and at times it reads like a dissertation, with dense academic sentences or block quotes from supporting scholars, breaking up the flow of Rynne’s text. But that aside, the book is a creative exploration of how Eastern and Western spiritual ideas can cross-pollinate and give new life to each other.

Erin Ryan is an NCR writer. Her e-mail address is eryan@ncronline.org.

National Catholic Reporter October 31, 2008