The post-synodal document The Church in Asia acknowledges that Jesus, though born in Asia (2) “is often perceived as foreign to Asia” (20). It suggests that “the ontological notions involved, which must always be presupposed and expressed in presenting Jesus, can be complemented by more relational, historical and even cosmic perspectives.” (20) It mentions various images of Jesus mentioned by Asian Bishops at the Synod: “the Teacher of Wisdom, the Healer, the Liberator, the Spiritual Guide, the Enlightened One, the Compassionate Friend of the Poor, the Good Samaritan, the Good Shepherd, the Obedient One”. (20) Asian images here merge into scriptural ones. Looking into the story of the encounter between Jesus and the Indians we see that that they give names to Jesus that come out of their cultural and religious context. They also occasionally challenge the ‘ontological notions’ that are involved in the presentation of Jesus by the missionaries. According to a strong tradition, St. Thomas, the Apostle, came to preach in south India and was martyred in Chennai. Franciscan and Jesuit missionaries came with the Portuguese traders and armies in the 16th Century. Roberto de Nobili initiated an Indian Christian way of life, living like a sannyasi (renouncer ). He and his successors created a Christian literature consisting of catechetical, polemical, devotional and poetic texts in the Indian languages. But a real encounter between Jesus and the Indians starts only in the second part of the 19th century. Surprisingly, the first Indians to respond to Jesus were the Hindus, later followed by (Indian) Christians. The story of this encounter has been written. I shall not attempt to recount this story of more than 150 years in the space of an article. What I intend to do is to present some selective responses that throw a characteristically Indian light on the understanding of Jesus in relation to life in the Indian context.
Ram Mohun Roy
The Portuguese missionaries did convert the poorer Hindus along the southern coast of India teaching them some basic Christian doctrine and enabling them to participate in Christian rituals. When the British colonialists came in the 18th century they began to establish schools in which a western education was given to the Indian youth in the medium of English. This was done to prepare Indian bureaucrats to help the British in their administration. But in the process the Indians were exposed to British culture, including Christianity and the Bible. The British (mostly Protestant) missionaries hoped to convert the Hindus to Christianity. But the Hindu elite was motivated by the Bible rather to reform and renew Hinduism, trying to do away with what was seen as superstitions like polytheistic rituals and with inhuman social practices like the sati – that is, burning of the living wife together with the dead body of the husband or child marriages. They established groups like the Brahmosamaj (1828) which promoted a rational Hinduism. Raja Ram Mohun Roy (1774-1833), the founder of the Samaj, saw Jesus as a moral teacher. He wrote to a friend in 1815:
The consequence of long and uninterrupted researches into religious truth has been that I have found the doctrines of Christ more conducive to moral principles and more adapted for the use of rational beings than any other which have to come to my knowledge.
- Here and in the following pages the English word(s) within brackets is a translation of the Sanskrit.
- For example: Robin Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1969; S.J.Samartha, The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ.
- Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1974; Jacob Parapally, Emerging Trends in Indian Christology. Bangalore: Indian Institute of Spirituality, 1995.
He refused to accept the Christian doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. In 1820 he published The Precepts of Jesus , which consisted of a collection of quotations from the teachings of Jesus mostly from the first three gospels. He considers Jesus “the most highly exalted of all creatures”, who exposed his own life for the benefit of his subjects, purged their sins by his doctrines, and persevered in executing the commands of God even to the undergoing of bodily suffering in the miserable death of the Cross, a self-devotion of sacrifice of which no Jewish high-priest had ever offered an example. Roy engaged in active controversy with the British missionaries, trying to prove his opinions like Unitarianism from the Bible. In his own religious practice he used the Hindu scriptures like the Upanishads side by side with the Bible. Roy is representative of a whole group of Hindus during the past two centuries who consider Jesus as their Guru who teaches them the right path to a fulfilled life. They admire Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount and his self sacrificing care and concern for the people. But they will affirm the humanity of Jesus, however special it may be, and deny his divinity. Jesus is the teacher and the model to follow.
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) is probably the most well known among such disciples of Jesus. In the course of his struggle for freedom both in South Africa and India he had developed the technique of Satyagraha. This means ‘holding on to the Truth’. Truth is his preferred name for God. Holding on to the manifestations of Truth in life in the form of freedom and justice Gandhi was ready to struggle and suffer for attaining Truth. The way to Truth is love which takes the form of non-violence in the context of a struggle for justice and freedom. So he became a Satyagrahi. A satyagrahi is someone who is committed to Truth or God and clings to it. Truth can however be attained only by non-violence, because end does not justify the means. In the pursuit of truth a satyagrahi is ready to suffer, but not to be violent towards others and make them suffer. S/he treats the opponents as human beings who are sensitive and reasonable.
3. Cf. David Kopf, The Brahmo Samaj and the Shaping of the Modern Mind. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
4. Quoted in Robin Boyd, op.cit., p. 19.
5. Calcutta, 1820.
6. Quoted Ibid., p. 24, from M.C. Parekh, Rajarishi Ram Mohan Roy. (Rajkot, 1927), p.88.
Non-violence challenges the ‘reasonable’ others to reflect and question themselves, their own attitudes and behavior. Such questioning and reflection in the context of an ongoing struggle can lead to a dialogue, negotiations and, possibly, conversion. The other then becomes a friend and a collaborator in the cause of freedom and justice. Gandhi saw Jesus as a perfect Satyagrahi. He says:
The gentle figure of Christ, so patient, so kind, so loving, so full of forgiveness that he taught his followers not to retaliate when abused or struck but to turn the other cheek – it was a beautiful example, I thought, of the perfect man… Through I cannot claim to be a Christian in the sectarian sense, the example of Jesus’ suffering is a factor in the composition of my underlying faith in non-violence, which rules all my actions, worldly and temporal. Jesus lived and died in vain if he did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal Law of Love.
The Sermon on the Mount and the cross point to a way of life: “Living Christ means a living cross, without it life is a living death… Joy comes, not by the infliction of pain on others, but of pain voluntarily borne by oneself.” Jesus, then, becomes for Gandhi a model and a Guru who shows us a way through his own experience. He becomes a universal teacher, relevant everywhere and always.
I refuse to believe that there now exists or has ever existed a person that has not made use of his example to lessen his sins… The lives of all have, in some greater or lesser degree, been changed by his presence, his actions, and the words spoken by his divine voice… He belongs not solely to Christianity but to the entire world, to all races and peoples even though the doctrines they hold and the forms of worship they practice might be different from each other.
Gandhi, of course, does not believe in the special divinity of Jesus, except in the sense that in India all humans are meant to realize the spark of divinity in themselves. Gandhi is representative of a lot of Hindu Indians who claim to be the disciples of Jesus, following his teachings, but who will have nothing to do with the institutional Churches which are often seen as foreign implants whose claims for special revelation cannot be accepted.
7. Cf. I. Jesudasan, Gandhian Theology of Liberation. Anand: Gujarat Sahitya Prakash, 1987.
8. M.K.Gandhi, The Message of Jesus Christ. Bombay, 1940, p. 79.
9. Ibid., p.36.
10. Young India, December 31, 1931. Quoted in S.J. Samartha, The Hindu Response, p. 93.
11. M.K.Gandhi, The Modern Review, October 1941. Quoted in Samartha, The Hindu Response, p. 94.
Some Hindus go one step further in their appreciation of Jesus. They consider him an Avatar or manifestation of God. The word avatar can be very tricky. In different Indian languages the Christians use the term as a translation of the word ‘incarnation’. But for the Hindus, avatar means a manifestation, a human appearance taken by the divine. Sometimes they tend to divinize extraordinary human beings as avatars. The devotees of Vishnu speak of ten of his avatars, the most important to date being Rama and Krishna, and the tenth (Kalki) being still awaited. Many of them have no problem in seeing Jesus as another such avatar for a different people at a different time and place. But as an avatar of God he can be meaningful also to the Hindus. We shall see later how some Christians see Jesus as an avatar, but the only and true one. But before that we have to consider another Indian who was on the borderline between Hinduism and Christianity.
Keshub Chandra Sen
Keshub Chandra Sen (1838-1884) joined, but reorganized the Brahmosamaj, attacking the caste system and increasingly focusing on Jesus Christ. Sen had no problem with the Trinity, looking at it from the Hindu tradition which considered Brahman or the Ultimate as Sat, Cit and Ananda or Saccidananda, meaning “Being, Intelligence or Consciousness, and Bliss”. Jesus is seen as the Cit, compared to the Logos in the Christian tradition. Sen says: The Logos was the beginning of creation, and its perfection too was the Logos, – the culmination of humanity is the Divine Son… But is the process of evolution really over?… If sonship there was, it was bound to develop itself not in one solitary individual but in all humanity. Surely universal redemption is the purpose of creation.
Jesus empties himself of his humanity. “The Spirit of the Lord filled him, and everything was thus divine within him.” Sen speaks of the ‘divine humanity’ of Jesus. Citing Biblical texts like “I and the Father are one” (Jn 10:30) and “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us” (Jn 17:21) he compares them with the Upanishadic mahavakyas (great sayings) like: “Thou art That” (tatvamasi) and “I am Brahman” (aham Brahmasmi). We shall see later how these texts are interpreted in a more orthodox Christian way by (Indian) Christians, without losing the thrust given by Sen. For Sen, Jesus is a model for all humans. “He shows us not how God can become man nor how man can become God, but how we can exalt our humanity by making it more and more divine.” Or again: “The problem of creation was not how to produce one Christ, but how to make every man Christ. Christ was only a means, not the end. He was the ‘way’.” Robin Boyd here evokes the ‘Christification’ of Teilhard de Chardin. Sen did not appreciate any of the institutional Churches either in India or England and turned the Brahmosamaj into “the Church of the New Dispensation”.
Brahmabandab Upadhyaya
Brahmabandab Upadhyaya (1861-1907) was a younger contemporary of Sen. He joined the Brahmosamaj, but later became Christian, first Anglican and then Catholic. He became a sannyasi or renouncer, but his efforts to found a Christian ashram were not approved by Church authority. He became a nationalist, educator and a journalist. He adopted the term Saccidananda to speak of the Trinity and wrote a beautiful hymn in Sanskrit Vande Saccidanandam which can still be heard in some Christian assemblies. He also wrote a hymn to Jesus Christ. This is worth quoting since it shows how Jesus can be praised using Hindu religio-cultural terms. The English version lacks the Indian flavour, as it misses Sanskrit terms like Cit, Nara-Hari (Man-God), Brahman, Saguna (with qualities), Nirguna (without qualities), etc. However, the imagery comes through even in translation, though the Indian music is missing.
12. See David C. Scott, Keshub Chandra Sen. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1979. Also Boyd, op.cit., pp. 26-39.
13. Quoted in Boyd, op.cit., p.28.
14. Ibid., p. 29.
15. Ibid., p.31.
16. Ibid., p.32. All these quotes are taken from Keshub Chandra Sen’s Lectures in India. London: Cassel, 1909.
The transcendent Image of Brahman,
Blossomed and mirrored in the full-to-overflowing
Eternal Intelligence –
Victory to God, the God-Man.
Child of the pure Virgin,
Guide of the Universe, infinite in being
Yet beauteous with relations,
Victory to God, the God-Man.
Ornament of the Assembly
Of saints and sages, Destroyer of fear,
Chastiser of the Spirit of Evil –
Victory to God, the God-Man.
Dispeller of weakness
Of soul and body, pouring out life for others,
Whose deeds are holy,
Victory to God, the God-Man.
Priest and Offerer
Of his own soul in agony, whose life is sacrifice,
Destroyer of sins’ poison, –
Victory to God, the God-Man.
Tender, beloved,
Soother of the human heart, Ointment of the eyes,
Vanquisher of fierce death, –
Victory to God, the God-Man.
17. Quoted in Boyd, An Introduction, pp. 77-78.
Various images of Shiva, the destroyer of poison, of Vishnu (Hari, the term used for God in the refrain), and of Brahman, with and without qualities, personal and impersonal, are evoked in the hymn.
Some Poets and Artists
This is an appropriate moment to evoke the various ways in which the artists have evoked their experiences of Jesus. Indian Christian poets use many images taken from their natural and religious experience to refer to Jesus. H. A. Krishna Pillai (1827-1900) sings of Jesus as the river of life from heaven (Ganga), the mountain of salvation, the ocean of bliss, the cloud that showers the rain of grace, life-giving medicine, gem of gems and finally mother. Narayam Vaman Tilak (1862-1919) also sings of Jesus as mother: “Tenderest Mother – Guru mine, Saviour, where is love like thine?” The association of the images of mother, guru and saviour is interesting. Sara Grant (1922-2002), a Britisher, who lived in an Indian ashram, speaks of Jesus as the dancer.
The Word who became flesh and dwelt among us, who underwent death and is alive unto endless ages, can surely be called Lord of the Dance, who makes visible for us the hidden rhythms of the Creator Spirit at work within us and in our confused and torn-apart world to bring all things to their mysterious consummation. The term “Lord of the Dance” refers certainly to Nataraja, the Shivite image for God, in which God is seen as dancing the world into being, in evolving and in reaching consummation involving the destruction of everything. Jyoti Sahi (1944- ) depicts the risen Jesus as a dancing figure and links dancing to healing and liberation: To dance is to celebrate the body, to discover a new kind of freedom which is spirit-filled. The spirits can chain the body, making of it a prison. But the spirit of life can liberate the body, and convert it into an instrument of joy. The healed person leaps for joy. This leap into the future is the essence of dance. To dance is to leap, to step over all the obstacles which hinder us on the way.
Pandipeddi Chenchiah
Pandipeddi Chenchiah (1886-1959) was a convert from Hinduism. He was influenced by the Hindu philosopher Sri Aurobindo (1872-1950) and believed in the theory of evolution. He rejected the official teachings of the Churches and reflected on the “raw fact of Christ”. He sees Jesus as primarily human unwilling to identify him with God. But he becomes the Son of God, transformed by the Spirit of God. What is important is that with Jesus a new era in history is inaugurated. The fact of Christ is the birth of a new order in creation. It is the emergence of life – not bound by Karma; of man, not tainted by sin, not humbled by death; of man triumphant, glorious, partaking the immortal nature of God; of a new race in creation – sons of God. Jesus is not a divine avatar, descending from above. “He is adi-purusha (the primordial human) of a new creation.” Chenchiah makes an interesting comparison between the European and Indian approach to Jesus which Indian theologians will have to address. If evolution is going to be the crucial concept of Indian Christian theology, it is not the pre-existence of Jesus but his entry as a new form and power into the cosmic process that demands attention. Anyhow the Latin isolationism which in its anxiety to present Jesus as unique lifts Him out of all human context, can never take root in the Indian mind which after the ministrations of Upanishads and Sankara, can never reconcile itself to the doctrine of unbridgeable gulf between God and man though it may find considerable difficulty in identifying man with God. God and man united in Jesus, “fused and mingled into one.”
18. Cf. Boyd, An Introduction, p. 113.
19. Quoted in Boyd, An Introduction, p.115.
20. Sara Grant, The Lord of the Dance. Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 1987, p. 195.
21. Jyoti Sahi, Unpublished Manuscript.
Hinduism always longed for a state in which we could say, as Jesus did, ‘I and my Father are one’ – what was our Lord’s affirmation of the Brahma Vakya Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahman)… In Jesus it was, for the first time in history, an accomplished reality, not an unrealized aspiration.What we see here is the struggle between the absolute, conceptual categories of the West and the relational Indian theology, as we shall see later. Chenchiah does not wish to remain simply a disciple of Jesus, but to be reborn in the image of Jesus, to be identified (sayujya) with Jesus and to say as St. Paul did “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” (Gal 2:20)
Vengal Chakkarai
Vengal Chakkarai (1880-1958) became a Christian only when he was 23 as a result of deep study. His father was an advaitin and his mother a bhakta. He wrote Jesus the Avatar.
He sees Jesus as the manifestation of God. The way in which he talks about this manifestation implies that it is unique.
We see God in the face of Jesus… We see the face crowned with thorns and the blood trickling down. We see the face looking with tragic grandeur as He sits at the table giving the bread and wine… It is Jesus who gives, as it were, colour, light and rupa to God… God is the unmanifested and Jesus in the manifested. God is the sat, or being, and Jesus is the cit or intelligence, wisdom and love which indicates the nature of the being of God. Jesus is the immanence of God in the world and in us, the antaryamin (indweller). As such he is the Holy Spirit. Chakkarai says that “the Holy Spirit is Jesus Christ himself, taking His abode within us.”
22. Quoted in Boyd, An Introduction, p. 148 from Rethinking Group, Rethinking Christianity in India. Madras, 1938.
23. Ibid., p. 150.
24. Quoted Ibid., 150.
25. Ibid, p. 150.
26. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1932.
As Christian anubhava (experience) and sruti (revelation) have agreed in emphasizing, the Lord Jesus, the Galilean, is still with us; and His once historical personality, His life and death, have in some unaccountable way established this immanence… Our contention is that the avarohana (descent) of Jesus and his arohana (ascent) are the rhythmic processes of the one indivisible divine act… The historical Jesus and the spiritual Jesus constitute the two sides of the one reality. The incarnation is seen, not as something static, but as progressive, advancing “from stage to stage, from the historical to the spiritual, from the external to the internal, from time to eternity.” While refusing to make a metaphysical identification between the human (jivatman) and God (paramatman) he sees a dynamic and spiritual unity between them. The mahavakya ‘tatvamasi’ (Thou art That) is a tremendous assertion of possibility. In Christian anubhava, it is not a mere metaphysical postulate to start with or to end in. It is an achievement, a sambhava (happening). This advaita (aduality) has been wrought on the anvil of the life of Jesus.
A.J.Appasamy
Aiyadurai Jesudasan Appasamy (1891-1975) was an Anglican Bishop. His experience of Jesus was guided by the philosophy of Ramanuja. He saw Christianity as a Bhakti Marga (way of devotion/love). He distances himself from those who seek to identify the divine and the human in a monistic manner. He finds such a relationship of love in God in whom the Son is conformed to the Father’s will in such a manner that there is a perfect moral (not substantial) unity between them. Jesus related to God as his Father and declared: “The Father is greater than I.” The Logos (the Word), who enlightens everyone is also the antaryamin (the indweller) present in every one. But he becomes fully embodied in Jesus. Appasamy writes: “We believe that Jesus was the Avatara.
27. Quoted in Boyd, op.cit., p.167. Quotes from Chakkarai are from Jesus the Avatar.
28. Ibid., p. 173.
29. Ibid., p. 169.
30. Ibid., p. 171.
31. Ibid., p. 175.
32. Ibid, p. 128. Quoted from A.J. Appasamy, The Gospel and India’s Heritage. London and Madras: SPCK, 1942.
33. Quoted in Boyd, The Introduction. ,p. 130.
God lived on the earth as a man only once and that was as Jesus.” Avatars in Hinduism were many and they were mere manifestations than real incarnations. Still “the incarnation is but a working hypothesis helping and guiding men to reach a knowledge of the Divine and does not exhaust all the infinite grandeur of God.” We reach out to God through loving obedience, identifying ourselves with the sufferings of Christ on the cross. This is the way of love. Appasamy also uses the analogy of the spirit-body relationship in the human to understand God’s relationship with the world. Following Ramanuja he sees the world as the body of God – a view which avoids both monism and dualism. Similarly he credits the Logos with a triple body: his own humanity as Jesus, the Eucharistic body and the Church as his body.
Jesus as Liberator
In the second part of the 20th century, at the end of colonial domination (1947), the poor become increasingly aware that their poverty is not simply natural and God-given, but something which they can free themselves from. The poor then identify with Jesus suffering and see him as their liberator. In India, the artists seem to have been the first to do this. Hindu artists have painted Jesus. Their usual subjest are the child Jesus with his mother and Jesus on the cross. are usually attracted to depict the child Jesus with his mother and the suffering Jesus on the cross. But what is special is that they see the suffering Jesus as the symbol of human suffering. K.C.S. Panikkar, a Hindu, wanted to paint the ‘agony’ of the humans and he thought of Jesus as an appropriate subject. Arup Das, also a Hindu, had an art show with the title ‘agony’ and explained it in this manner:
There is no room for the good man on earth when he does appear amidst us. His life is cut short by the same people whom he loves. One such soul was Jesus of Nazareth. Near home we had Gandhiji… I chose Christ above Gandhi quite unconsciously in the beginning and then I realized that nobody suffered as much as He in all history. His crucifixion was transcendental and his agony unparalleled. In fact Agony is the theme of my paintings: agony, not of Christ and Gandhi alone, but of Man, miserable man.
The Dalit Christians today follow this approach and see Jesus sharing their experience of exclusion and oppression. They focus on Jesus’ option for the poor and the marginalized during his life and trust that he will liberate them. They evoke his table fellowship with the sinners and the publicans as prophetically showing the experience of community in the kingdom of God that is to come.
The Advaita
We have occasionally come across the word advaita (aduality) in the preceding pages. Reality is not simply one. That would be monism. It is not two or many either. God is the Absolute and there cannot be ‘other realities’ outside God. This is dualism. A-dvaita affirms that Reality is not-two either. There is one Ultimate Reality. Other beings are dependent on IT. They are neither an emanation from within the one Reality. Nor are they independent objects posited outside. The others are absolutely dependent on the One. There is only one really Real. The others are only dependently real. Advaita seeks to hold a middle ground between monism and dualism. This cannot be conceptually grasped, but only experienced. In Indian tradition advaita has been interpreted in a monistic sense. Many attribute this view to Sankara though others would dispute this. Swami Abhishiktananda uses advaita to understand the divinity and humanity in Jesus and asserts that we too are called to participate in this advaitic communion.
34. See Richard W. Taylor, Jesus in Indian Painting. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1975.
35. Ibid., p. 72.
36. Ibid., p. 83.
37. Cf. Samuel Rayan, “Outside the Gate, Sharing the Insult,” in Felix Wilfred (ed), Leave the Temple: Indian Paths to Human Liberation.
38. M.R. Arulraja, Jesus the Dalit: Liberation Theology by Victims of Untouchability, an Indian Version Apartheid. Hyderabad: Volunteer Centre, 1996; Arvind P. Nirmal (ed), A Reader in Dalit Theology. Chennai: Gurukul, n.d.
39. George Soares-Prabhu, “The Table Fellowhip of Jesus: Its Significance for Dalit Christians in India Today,” Jeevadhara 22 (1992) 140-159.
In one of his last writings he explains this: The absoluteness of the ultimate mystery is discovered in the absoluteness of the self itself, of oneself seen in its full truth. The Self is then seen in the self. In the light of pure consciousness, Being shines with its own light. Then the eternity, the aseity, the absoluteness, the sovereignty of God are no longer notions which man tries desperately to understand by way of analogy or negations. They are realized in their own truth in the discovery that oneself is, beyond all conditioning. Then God is no longer a HE about whom men dare to speak among themselves, nor even only a THOU whose presence man realizes as facing him. Rather, necessarily starting from oneself, God is discovered and experienced as I, the “aham asmi” of the Upanishads, the “ehieh asher ehieh” of the Burning Bush. It is not an I which I abstract or conclude from the Thou that I say to him, but an I of which I am aware in the very depth of my own I.
Swami Abhishitananda
Abhishiktananda suggests that Jesus was in communion with the Father in an advaitic way. Jesus may not always have been conscious of this relation – as a child, for example. But he becomes aware of it, awakens to it, when he experiences God as his “Abba”. This is what he means when he says: “The Father and I are one.” (Jn 10:30) His goal is to share this experience with every one (and everything ). He prays to the Father on the last day of his life: “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” (Jn 17:21) He writes to his disciple Marc about this.
Jesus did not cudgel his brains to make a philosophy about his advaita with God. He lived this non-duality with absolute intensity simply by gazing like a child at his ‘Abba’. And he taught his people to live, simply but deeply, a life of loving union with their brothers – a union of mutual giving without limit. And in the absoluteness of their self-giving to God and the neighbour, the non-dual Absolute is found and lived with far greater truth than in Vedantin speculations.
40. His French name was Dom Henri Le Saux.
41. Swami Abhishiktananda, “The Upanishads and Advaitic Experience”, in The Further Shore. Delhi: ISPCK, 1975, p. 116.
42. Cf. Rom 8:14-17; Gal 4:6-7. We too can call God ‘Abba’.
43. Cf. Rom 8:19-23; 1 Cor 15:28.
For Swamiji Jesus Christ is the great manifestation who assumes all of us in his own advaitic communion with the Father.
Jesus is a person who has totally discovered, realized his mystery… His name is ‘I AM’… Jesus is saviour by virtue of having realized his NAME. He has shown and has opened the way out of samsara, the phenomenal world, and has reached the guha (cave), the padam (step), beyond the heavens – which is the mystery of the Father. In discovering the Father, he has not found an “Other”: I and the Father are one. In the only Spirit, he has discovered his non-duality with Yahweh; it is the Spirit that is the link, the non-duality.
We see here the advaitic experience leading to the Trinitarian one. Jesus is therefore the great Advaitin. The mystery of salvation too will have to be re-imaged from a transactional project of sin and punishment into a restoration of relationships. The Eastern Fathers called this theosis (divinization)
Raimon Panikkar
We find a similar vision in Raimon Panikkar. One of his earlier books was The Unknown Christ of Hinduism. His idea was that Christ is present and working in the world everywhere and always. He may be known by various names in various religions. He suggested that the name by which he could be recognized in Hinduism was that of Ishwara – the Lord. He would say that the name by which he is recognized by Christians is Jesus. But Jesus refers to a reality that is cosmic. The different names by which Christ is known are not just names. They may be historical manifestations like Jesus. In a later book, Christophany , he summarizes his vision of Christ in a certain number of sutras (concise statements). The first one says: “Christ is the Christian symbol for the whole of reality.”
44. James Stuart, Swami Abhishiktananda. His life told through his letters. (Delhi: ISPCK, 1989), pp. 329-330.
45. Swami Abhishiktananda, Ascent to the Depth of the Heart. (Delhi: ISPCK, 1998), p.376.
46. Cf. M. Amaladoss, “Theosis and Advaita: An Indian Approach to Salvation”, Vidyajyoti Journal of Theological Reflection. 75 (2011) 887-901.
47. Raimon Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany. (revised edition) Maryknoll: Orbis, 1981.
48. Raimon Panikkar, Christophany.The Fullness of Man. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1970.
49. Ibid., p.144.
He explains it: When we say that “Christ is the symbol of the whole of reality,” we intend to say that not only are “all the treasures of divinity” included in Christ, but that “all the mysteries of man” as well as the thickness of the universe are also hidden in him. He is not only the “first-born” but the “only begotten,” the symbol of reality itself, the cosmotheandric symbol par excellence.
Panikkar uses the term advaita to understand Christ’s reality. His description of this term can help us to understand it better. He says that the advaita is not
a dialectical negation of duality… It is a direct vision that transcends rationality (without denying it). I do not intend to say that duality comes “first” and is subsequently denied but that we see relationality immediately “before” any duality. In this sense we may also call it “non-unity”. The constitutive relational nature of reality – or, better, its correlationality – cannot be characterized as either unity or duality.
It is the advaita that helps us to understand Christ. The divine and the human, the spirit and the body are united advaitically without confusion or separation. Panikkar calls it the cosmotheandric communion. As I had indicated earlier, the second sutra of Panikkar is: “The Christian recognizes Christ in and through Jesus.”
Contemporary Indian Theologians
This distinction between “Christ” and “Jesus” has been used by recent Indian (and other) theologians to understand how Jesus Christ can be the only savior of humankind. They suggest that Christ is the Word of God who is present everywhere and always (cf. Jn 1:1-4) It enlightens every person. (cf. Jn 1:9) While the Christians encounter this Word in and through Jesus, other believers may encounter him through other historical symbols and manifestations, which need not be incarnational. The Church, following Jesus, is the sacrament or symbol and servant of the wider mystery of Christ and his kingdom. A group of Indian theologians, exploring the question, said We gratefully acknowledge that it is our experience of the incarnate Jesus that leads us to the discovery of the cosmic dimensions of the presence and action of the Word. We realize that we can “neither confuse nor separate” these different manifestations of the Word in history, and in various cultures and religions. We joyfully proclaim our own experience of the Word in Jesus, on the one hand, and on the other we also seek to relate in an open and positive way to the other manifestations of the Word as they are part of one divine mystery.
Conclusion
Encountering Jesus the Indians, Hindu and Christian, have tried to understand his significance for themselves in terms of various images familiar to them from their cultural and religious tradition. Thus Jesus has been experienced and called a Guru, a Sage, a Satyagrahi, a Dancer, the Way, the Compassionate one, etc. With the term avatar one stream of Hinduism comes to the fore. The Vaishnava tradition believes in many avatars or manifestations of the divine in history in human and other forms. For the Hindus Jesus was one more avatar. But for the Christians Jesus is not merely a manifestation, but an incarnation through which God becomes human.
50. Ibid., p. 147.
51. Ibid., p. 182.
52. Cf. Raimon Panikkar, The Cosmotheandric Experience: Emerging Religious Consciousness. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1993.
53. Cf. M. Amaladoss, “Other Religions and the Salvific Mystery of Christ”, VJTR 70 (2006) 8-23.
54. Errol D’Lima and Max Gonsalves (eds), What Does Jesus Christ Mean? The Meaningfullness of Jesus Christ amid the Religious Pluralism in India. Bangalore: The Indian Theological Association, 1999.
They also believe that while God can manifest Godself in various ways at various times, there has been only one incarnate avatar. The term avatar brings God near to us. As an avatar Jesus becomes divine-human. But the Indians believe that the human dimension can evolve, if only in its awareness of the divine dimension. On the whole the Hindus and the Protestant Christians feel more free to speculate on the divine-human identity of Jesus, while the Catholics are more sensitive to the dogma of Chalcedon. But the advaitic understanding of reality helps, specially Abhishiktananda and Panikkar, to adopt an integrative-mystic approach to the divine-human in Jesus and the relationship of Jesus to the Father and the Spirit in the Trinity. Panikkar suggests that a mystical ‘third eye’, beyond sense perception and conceptual reason, is needed to experience and understand the advaitic dimension of reality. This third eye integrates, besides the senses and reason, also intuition, emotion and experience. An advaitic experience of Jesus also makes it easier to understand salvation as theosis or divinization and Jesus Christ as the only saviour of the universe.
55. Cf. M. Amaladoss, The Asian Jesus. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2006.
56. Brahmabandab Upadhyaya, Sara Grant, Swami Abhishiktananda and Raimon Panikkar.
57. See Raimon Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being. Maryknoll: Orbis, 2010, p. 177.
Michael Amaladoss, S.J.
Institute of Dialogue with Cultures and Religions,
Chennai, India.