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Tupou IV’s Concern for the Spiritual Well-being of his P

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Last updated: Sunday, November 12, 2006

Tupou IV’s Concern for the Spiritual Well-being of his People – A Tribute

Rev. Dr. Ma’afu Palu
Moore College, Sydney

In the great loss that has come upon our nation through the death of King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, there is a Latin saying which is most appropriate: De mortuuis nihil nisi bene – “Concerning the dead [say] nothing but good”. I say this is most appropriate not because there is hardly anything good to say about Tupou IV but quite the opposite. One must apply an extreme form of selectivity in order to prevent writing endlessly about the accomplishments of the late King in all aspects of life for us, his people.

I wish to congratulate Dr. ‘Epeli Hau’ofa for a splendid written and remarkable tribute to the late King. With characteristic clarity he stressed the fact that in the Tongan mindset, the King is (symbolically speaking) the ‘heart’ of the nation. Dr. Hau’ofa has given a timely reminder of the degree to which Tupou IV was relentless throughout his entire reign in his tireless effort to provide for the economic welfare of his people. This, according to Dr. Hau’ofa, was driven by a conviction Tupou IV appears to have adopted while he was the Crown Prince that the social security of his people largely depended on their economic well-being. In this contribution, I wish to add that the scope of Tupou IV’s concern for the general welfare of his people extended well beyond the mere materialistic dimension, to embrace even their spiritual aspect of his people. I join with the majority of Tongans both local and abroad who express their heart-felt appreciation of Tupou IV and his reign by drawing on personal recollections of him which clearly countenanced a deep-seated concern for our spiritual welfare.

Before I continue I must briefly digress from the general thrust of this article in order to offer some clarifications in relation to the terms employed here. By distinguishing the ‘material’ and the ‘spiritual’ dimensions of human existence I am of course concurring with conceptual conventions firmly rooted in the contemporary Tongan mindset. Generally speaking, most Tongans embrace an Anthropology in which the human person is defined in terms of three watertight ontological compartments – the ‘body’, the ‘mind’ and the ‘spirit’. Whether these aspects are in line with biblical teaching would perhaps be the subject for some other time. Suffice to say that while these terms are employed in the Scriptures, they are not separate aspects of the human person. Rather, from time to time each term is utilized in reference to the ‘whole’ person (e.g. Mark 7:20-23; Romans 12:1-2). St. Augustine of Hippo in the fourth century A. D. – owing to the strong influence of Greek philosophy in his thinking – can probably be credited with the origin of this popular Tongan Anthropology. The distinction between the ‘material’ and the ‘spiritual’ that I maintain in this presentation is to be found in the Jewish Rabbinic background of the Apostle Paul. He seems to hold that the whole person has an “outer person” and an “inner person.” The “outer person” is the ‘material’ person subjected to a daily process of irreversible decay and ultimately to death. Not so for the “inner person”. On the contrary, the “inner person” appears to be immortal. While it remains untouchable even by death, it can be enslaved. On the one hand, it can be enslaved by the “dominion of darkness”. This refers to a rebellion against God which results in rejecting the possibility of being redeemed through the cross of Jesus and which thus awaits the wrath to come on the Judgment Day (2 Corinthians 5:10). On the other hand, the “inner person” can be rescued by God through the cross and therefore be transferred to the “dominion of His Son”. While the “outer man” undergoes irrevocable decay, the “inner person” who has been saved by God through His power demonstrated in the death and resurrection of Jesus is undergoing a progressive daily renewal. Whilst this is hardly a visible dynamic for the believers and onlookers alike, nonetheless it has been promised by God. It is in these terms that I wish to maintain the ‘material’ and ‘spiritual’ distinctions of human existence throughout this essay. My recollections of Tupou IV confirms to me in a strongly personal note of course that as the “heart” of the nation, his ‘life-maintaining’ function ultimately serves ultimately for the enhancement of the “outer” and the “inner” person, the material as well as the spiritual as the ontological constitution of the whole person.

As a young man I was fortunate enough to attend the congregation in which Tupou IV was a member and where he was frequently assigned, being a laypreacher, to preach. One such memorable occasion was a sermon in which he declared that if “one were to test all the world religions they would be better off considering the graves of each of the great founders of world religions. He asserted that if it were possible peek into their graves, we were bound to find in each of those graves the remains of each of them. The only exception was of course Christianity. Although Jesus Christ died, He was raised from the dead on the third day. For Tupou IV, this was the sole proof that amongst the major world religions, Christianity was indeed the only Truth. Jesus Christ as the ‘founder of Christianity’ was the only one who had withstood death. He had done this by his resurrection.

The significance of this message can be grasped more fully if projected against the Tongan political and religious contexts. The Tongan Constitution, under which the Tongan monarch is subjected, allows for the freedom of religion. Thus, in Tonga, almost all the major world religions are proportionally represented in the population no matter how insignificant. I remember there was a time in which Tupou IV was criticized in general for welcoming the Moonies. But as a constitutional monarchy, there could be no other way in which he could have acted in that situation. Constitutional freedom of religion simply means what it says – every religion must be welcome. Therefore, under his constitutional responsibility Tupou IV had to welcome all religions. However, his profound commitment to Christianity as a laypreacher meant that he also had to unashamedly declare Christianity alone to be the one true religion for his people. Only Christianity promised hope for this life and more so for the life to come. In that respect, Tupou IV has provided a template for the laypreachers and church ministers in the church to which he belonged for both the present and future generations. All religions must be welcomed in Tonga. However, Christian laypreachers and ministers alike must publicly and boldly proclaim that its ‘founder’ alone, the Lord Jesus Christ, is the sole death-proven Truth.

My second recollection of an encounter with Tupou IV was when he was the guest of honour at the 1990 Sia’atoutai Theological College’s graduation ceremony. He was asked to confer upon us the first group of students to have completed the Bacherlor of Divinity degree in Tonga, our certificates and a word of exhortation. In his graduation speech, he encouraged all the graduants with a vision of producing Christian reading materials for Tongans. He longed to see new books written as well as other Christian books translated into Tongan for he understood the importance of literature of that sort in their capacity to foster sound Christian thinking.

I am not sure how my fellow graduants took the late King’s message. For me, I took it as the King bestowing upon us the legacy of Tupou College and more specifically that of its founder, Rev. Dr. James Egan Moulton (1845-1909). It was indeed Dr. Moulton who single-handedly translated the Bible into Tongan from the original languages. Moreover, he generated Tongan Christian literature by his translation of highly significant Christian books such as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Introductions to both the Old and New Testaments and there is evidence that Dr. Moulton even started a project of writing critical commentaries on each book of the Bible. It seems to me that it was this legacy that Tupou IV wanted us to capture and continue.

These recollections are chronologically remote from each other. One might even say that these are merely unimportant incidents in the long and fruitful life of the late King of Tonga. To be sure, the overall achievements and problems of Tupou IV’s reign will have to await the critical accounts of dispassionate and interested historians and biography writers. To me, however, these memories can be placed consecutively in the archive of personal consciousness. They unanimously declare that Tupou IV’s commitment to the spiritual welfare of his people was of the most fundamental kind. He has bequeathed upon us the profound way in which we may hold together the tension between Christianity and Politics (Lotu mo e Politikale). Under the Tongan Constitution, we must be prepared to welcome all religions in Tonga. On the other hand, we must not do so with the syncretistic conviction of philosophical relativism under which all religions are supposed to lead to one truth. King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV was firmly convinced that there is but one true religion for his people – Christianity. Jesus Christ, the archegos and the teleiotes, the ‘founder’ and the ‘perfecter’ of our faith (Hebrews 12:2) is in fact the Truth. His lordship has been extended to include in its embrace the ultimate enemy of human existence, and even of our beloved King, namely, death. This, however, is no Truth to be safely shelved somewhere in the “oblivion” sector of our personal consciousness as believers. It seems that Tupou IV strongly wished that those amongst his people who had been fortunate enough to deepen their understanding of the Bible in theological scholarship, to not only proclaim the Truth with no hint of embarrassment, but also to publicize that message by multiplying Christian reading materials in order for whole Tongan community to come to a better understanding of the sole victor over death—Jesus Christ.

Although these memories may not engender the full scope of Tupou IV’s pastoral concern for his people, they are sufficient to demonstrate that our experience as Tongans under the reign of Tupou IV was not limited solely to the reconfiguration of our economic status. His pastoral concern was wider and deeper, including in its overarching embrace all aspects of his people’s life. To be sure, the material well being of the Tongan people was a priority under Tupou IV’s reign, as his annual speeches in the opening of the Tongan Parliament would testify. But that was not all. His royal concern included the state of our spiritual life. He was heavily instrumental in making sure the majority of his people were literate. But it seems that literacy was not meant to be an end in itself. It was rather a means towards a noble end. That end appears to be that his people would be able to read the Bible and other Christian documents at their disposal in order to deepen their understanding of the One who has emerged triumphantly over death, the Lord Jesus Christ and His truth claims. As a student of the Bible, I will be forever grateful to God for the example that Tupou IV set forth in holding together the tension of living under the Tongan Constitution as well as under the Divine Constitution of the Word of God. Soli Deo Gloria.

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