Introduction: The Indian Experience
A characteristic that until recently was common to Asia only, but today increasingly becoming a global phenomenon, due to the massive people movement and the rapid communication, is religious plurality. Having people of other faiths as one’s next door neighbours is an experience no more confined to Asia alone. In this context the Christian God-talk must take into account the religious experience of others as well. The triumphalistic Christian claims of uniqueness and exclusive monopoly over divine revelation cannot find buyers in a world characterised by a plurality of religions. Nor are such claims justified by the Bible that presents a universalistic perspective where all are permeated by the Mystery that the Johannine prologue names as the Logos (Jn 1: 1-9), not to speak of the fact of creation. Vatican II too adopted this universalistic perspective with regard to revelation when it said revelation is through word and deed (DV 2) and creation through the Word is God’s enduring self-revelation (DV 3). India is not only a country that is known for its religious plurality and religious tolerance from ancient days, but, perhaps, it is also the only place where Christianity existed in living dialogue with the followers of other religious traditions, right from the inception of Christian history. This paper examines some of the ways in which Indian Christians have been trying to talk about God in the light of their lived experience.
Historical context, one of Pluralism
Traditional Asian thought, while sharing western abstract thinking, is very much context-dominated. The abstraction is not free from the context in which it is made, the reality of experience. As opposed to the western abstract noun constructed by means of the universal meaning, Asians think of the abstract notion as what is included within the experienced facts, for instance the notion of the Ultimate Reality.
Traditional Indian openness to pluralism is ingrained in its very understanding of the Ultimate Mystery. In contrast to the Christian understanding of God as uniquely revealed to the biblical tradition, the Indian seers present the Ultimate Reality as an inexhaustible ocean into which many rivers flow or as an immense mountain to which many roads lead. None of the rivers or the roads can claim a monopoly of the Reality of the waters of the sea or the mass of the mountain. Similarly, no one particular religion can have an exclusive claim over the divine reality. This is not a question of syncretism, or passive relativity, as it is generally interpreted. The focus is not on religions, as though they are all the same, but on the inexhaustibility of the Reality that no religion can exhaustively explain. Hence, we have the acceptance of the plurality of religions. Traditionally, India was open to other religions and welcomed them as they came to India either to propagate themselves, like Christianity, or to flee from persecution, like Zoroastrianism, or those who came as traders like the followers of Islam. As to themselves, the Hindus consider their religion as the Sanatan Dharm (eternal religion not traceable to any founder), and, thus, unique.
Along with the understanding of the Mystery goes also the Asian epistemology that works not so much on the principle of contradiction, as on the principle of relationship. Whereas the principle of contradiction advocates separation and isolation, the principle of relationship places one in the web of relationship with others as the mark of meaning. The principle of contradiction emphasizes that a thing has to be what it is. It cannot be at the same time A and non-A. The meaning of A is derived from the fact of its being in opposition to others. Hence, there is room for uniqueness, in so far as what one is, the other is not. The western Christian understanding of God and revelation is considered to be unique in so far as others do not have that revelation and that understanding of God. Christian identity is defined in terms of negation to others what they have in the bible. This made Western Christians to hold that Christianity alone is the true religion. In contrast, the Asian epistemology understands the meaning of a thing by relating it with others. Meaning is derived from the relationship, by reaching out and identifying with others. In this sense, being and non-being are the characteristics of the Ultimate Reality. Sat (being) and asat (non-being) are the qualities of the unknowable Brahman. Reality cannot be conceived in terms of either-or but of both-and.
This is similar to the Hap Map of the human nature, i.e., while humans have 99.5% of the DNA in common the individual differences of all human beings are traceable to the 0.5% of different DNA. Similarly, all religions believe in the same God while the differences can be accounted through the different perceptions and experience of the same Infinite Reality.
This makes a religious person humble and unable to be indifferent to the followers of other religious traditions, and far less to negate the value of other religions. What one has experienced is touching the person in that person’s totality at the deepest roots. It is something specific and cannot be traded with others. Thus, the Asian religious traditions, while rooted in each tradition, are open to religious pluralism with an attitude of acceptance of all religions. Commitment to one’s faith implies also respect for others leading to interrelationship. To be religious is to be inter-religious.
A God who offers different Ways
Christianity is believed to have been brought to India by one of Christ’s own disciples, St. Thomas. The Christian community that traces its origin to Apostle Thomas is known as St. Thomas Christians. There is no historical record of its theological articulations before the Portuguese encountered this community in 1498. But this community’s understanding of God can be seen from one of the decrees of the Synod of Diamper that the Archbishop of Goa, Dom Alexio de Meneses, convened in 1599 in order to subjugate that community to the Portuguese jurisdiction.
In Act III, Decree 4 of the Synod we read: “Each one can be saved in his own law, all laws are right: this is fully erroneous and a most shameful heresy. There is no law in which we may be saved except the law of Christ our saviour.”[1] From the quote it is obvious that the St. Thomas Christians held the position that each way (religion) is salvific and this is condemned by the synod. While the Portuguese adhered strictly to the then Western theological position of extra ecclesiam nulla salus (outside the church there is no salvation), the St. Thomas Christians accepted that each religious tradition is a vehicle of salvation for the followers of the tradition. For this paper what is important is the implied theology of that position. While these Christians adhered to their faith in Jesus Christ that they lived and celebrated in their liturgy, they believed also that God who sent Jesus Christ is the God of all and reaches out to all peoples through their own religious traditions. What enabled them to such openness was their living experience of these religious traditions as they were lived out by the followers (the Hindus). This made the theological vision of the St. Thomas Christians broader and more liberal than their Western counter parts whose religious experience was only that of Christianity.
The theological vision of the St. Thomas Christians was an anticipation of Pope John Paul II who taught how other religions have soteriological elements (Ecclesia in Asia 2) and how inter religious dialogue is an essential part of the Church’s mission because it has its origin in the Father’s loving dialogue of salvation with humanity through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit” (Ecclesia in Asia 29). This enlightened position of the St. Thomas Christians with regard to the followers of other religions was only a logical outcome of their ecclesiology, according to which each church founded by the apostles had its own distinct individuality derived from Christ. This position too was condemned by the Diamper synod in Act III, Decree 7. However, true to the Indian spirit of conviviality and tolerance, the St. Thomas Christians looked with respect the followers of other religions in so far as they too were pilgrimaging to the same God. This, again, was reflected in Pope John Paul II s address to the Leaders of the Religions in Delhi on
[1] A.M. Mundadan, Paths of Indian Theology, (Bangalore: Dharmaram, 1998), 38.
November 6, 1999. The Pope declared: “Religious leaders in particular, have the duty to do everything possible to ensure that religion is what God intends it to be — a source of goodness, harmony and peace.”[1]
Forerunners of modern Indian Christian God-talk
Interestingly the modern initiatives to express Christian theology in terms of the Indian context of religious pluralism came from some of the Hindu thinkers and Hindu artists which not only gave impetus to Christian thinkers to pursue the suit but also led to reform within Hinduism itself leading the way to a Neo-Hinduism. Two of the prominent Hindu seekers who tried to understand Christianity were Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1772-1833) and Keshab Chandra Sen (1838-1884).
Ram Mohan Roy, a Bengali Brahman, the father of the Hindu reformation,[2] found the sources reformation in the Upanishads and the moral teaching of Christ. Jesus is the messenger of God, known as the Son of God, though Roy would not accept his identity of being with God. The saving work of Christ, for Roy, is his teaching and his ministry, the death is the illustration of his teaching. He denied the idea of a vicarious and sacrificial death. Following Jesus is our call and our repentance is the most acceptable atonement on our part to the all-merciful God as is spelt out in the parable of the prodigal son. Nor is Roy attracted by the doctrine of the Trinity, as God is the Absolute, the Eternal and Unsearchable and Immutable Being, the author and Preserver of the universe.[3]
Similarly, Christ was the centre of Keshab Chandra Sen’s life and the guiding force of his thinking. Using the Upanishadic terms of Sat (Being), Cit (Consciousness) and Anand (Bliss) he described the Trinity as Satcitananda. Logos is the divine wisdom (Cit), ever at work in creation and continues to work in human history and was born in Jesus of Nazareth. He became a transparent crystal reservoir in which are the waters of divine life.
The unity between the Godhead and the Logos is one of transparency so that the God of truth and holiness is seen in Christ. Thus, the unity is not a question of metaphysics, but one of profound communion that Jesus explained in John 14 through the parable of the wine and the branches. This is true also of Jesus and the believer. Jesus extends his spiritual oneness that he had with the Father to others. “I in my Father” and “you in me” is the basic thing of Jesus. This is expressed in the Upanishads as “Tat Tvam Asi” (That art thou) (Chand.Up.6:13).
God is a journeying God, from the absolute to the Logos, creating and becoming human and carrying all to the new creation, new humanity. In this the cross is the sign of the self-sacrificing love, unto the glory of God. We too must sacrifice ourselves for the good of the nation, for the good of the world. Christ is the atonement in the sense he brings God and humans together, ‘at one’ and in this he is also the Mediator, the link between humans and God.
Sen was the first one to expound the meaning of the Trinity in relation to the Upanishadic definition of Brahman in terms of Sat, Cit and Ananda. He presents Trinity through the image of an equilateral triangle where the apex “is the very Jehovah, the Supreme Brahma of the Vedas. From him comes down the Son in a direct line, an emanation from Divinity. Thus, God descends and touches one end of the base of humanity, running all along the base, permeates the world, and then buy the power of the Holy Spirit drags up regenerated humanity to Himself. Divinity coming down to humanity, is the Son; Divinity carrying up humanity to heaven is he Holy Spirit. This is the whole
[1]Vatican.va/content/john-paul-ii/en/speeches/1999/-Nove-mber/documents/hfjp-ii_spe_19991107_religioni-new-delhi-html (accessed on January 9,2021)
[2] Panikkar K.M, Asia and Western Dominance, (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1959), 241. The impact of Vasco da Gama’s arrival in India followed by waves of missionary teams and English Education is felt not only on political terms but also on religious transformation as well in which Ram Mohan Roy played a major role with an intellectual awakening and a sense of world community.
[3] Cf. Selected Works of Raja Rammohun Roy (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1977), 202-260.
philosophy of salvation.”[1]
Unlike the Greek mind of the Chalcedonian formula, Sen does not speak of Persons, rather more biblically, describes the Trinity in terms of the operation, relationship, the coming down and the sanctification. So he puts forward the Indian way of understanding the divine activity in terms of the Mystery in terms of the Sat, Cit and Ananda which can be more effective to the Indian mind that would want to avoid three vyakti or Purusha (person in English), implying as three individuals.
Though Sen speaks to the Indian mind he was spurned by the organized Christianity with its western trappings. However, we must bear in mind how Jesus in the Gospels was always in radical trust and dependence on the Father, without considering himself identical with the Father (Jn 17:3).
Maya: Divine Creative Power
Roberto de Nobili (1577-1656) the Italian Jesuit who reached India in 1605 can be described as the trail-blazer of an Indian theology as he attempted to reach the Hindu world in its own religious sources by making the Gospel intelligible to the Hindu mind. De Nobili evolved a Christian theological vocabulary and thus laid the foundation for today’s inculturation. However, de Nobili’s attempts did not take off in the long run, as it led to the eventual banning of any experiment with local cultures by a papal bull in 1754.
Almost a 150 years later, a Brahman convert, Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861-1907) was profoundly influenced by the writings of Mohan Roy and Chandra Sen.[2] He held that Advaita (One without a second), both as the theory of the Ultimate advocated by the Upanishads and as the philosophical and theological system developed by Shankara, the eighth- century philosopher-theologian, was the core of religious Hinduism and could serve as a source of theism in conformity with Christianity. Following the Thomistic distinction of nature and grace, Upadhyay took Vedanta, the Advaita teaching, as the nature on which the divine revelation, Christianity, is to be constructed. The task of philosophy is to support, defend, clarify and expound revelation and show how it is relevant for life. As in the west this purpose was served by Aristotelian philosophy at the hand of Thomas Aquinas, in India, Vedanta must be made use of because, he argued, the Asian mind is synthetic and speculative, not analytic. Vedanta must be made to ‘hew wood and draw water for the Catholic Church’, he believed.
Making use of the Upanishadic understanding that described the Absolute in terms of the Sat, Cit and Ananda, Upadhyay held that the essence of divine being that was understood by neo-Thomistic reasoning could be expressed as Satcitananda. The Supreme Being is essentially Sat, that is, whose nature is to exist in and for itself. It is the first cause of all. It is self-sustaining. It is also cit; that is, consciousness in the form of self- awareness, as self-productive. Hence, it alludes to the procession of generation of the Son from the Father. He who proceeds from Being and Consciousness, replete with the breath of perfect bliss, is Ananada.
Satcitananda is ‘the seedless Seed of the tree of becoming’. Thus, the Upanishads prefigure the Christian revelation. Combining ideas from Scriptural, Greek and Hindu sources, Upadhyay provided for the Hindu mind a ‘stepping-stone’ towards the full understanding of Christian doctrine.
Vedanta explained creation in terms of maya, unreal at the ultimate level. God is related to the world by maya. While God is sat (being) everything else is asat (non-being). Upadhyay interpreted this to mean, while God as sat is necessary being, creation is asat, contingent being. Creation exists, however it has no right to be. Maya is a quality of all that is not Brahman (God). Maya is illusion in the sense all creatures, apart from Brahman are darkness, falsity and nothingness. It is the fecund divine power which gives birth to multiplicity, bringing creatures into existence. Thus, through the help of the Vedantian principle of Maya Upadhyay made the Christian doctrine of creation intelligible to the Hindus.
[1] Keshab Chandra Sen, Lecture on That Marvellous Mystery – The Trinity, (Calcutta: Baptist Press, 1882), 16.
[2] Cf. Julius Lipner & George Gispert-Sauch (eds), The Writings ol Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (2 Volumes), (Bangalore: The United Theological College, 1991,2002).
Upadhyay’s vision of the Trinity as Satcitananda was taken up by Abbe Jule Monchanin, a French missionary who arrived in India in 1939 at the age of forty-four. He took the name of Parama-arupya-ananda (joy in the Supreme Formless One) and founded an ashram (Indian form of monastic life centred around a God-experienced person) on the banks of the river Kaveri in South India and it was called Saccidananda Ashram, with the purpose of contemplation and adoration of God, One in Three, Saccidananda. Monchanin believed Trinity is the answer to India’s search for solving the antinomies of monism and pluralism, between the personal and the impersonal God. In Saccidananda, filled with the Christian meaning of personal colloquy of the Trinity, monism and pluralism – the one and the three – are reconciled. According to Monchanin in Trinity, the contemplation of India will culminate, in the abyss of the Father, the Person un-manifest in Himself, whom the two others manifest in eternity by the generation of the Word and the procession of the Holy Spirit, and in time, by the divine missions, the projection of the eternal processions: The Incarnation of the Word and the sending forth of the Spirit.[1]
Meeting the Mystery at the Cave of the Heart
Abbe Monchanin’s companion in founding the Satcitananda ashram was Dom Henri Le Saux (1910-73), a French Benedictine, who came to India in 1948 adopting the name Abhishiktananda (joy in the anointed one; i.e., Jesus Christ). He was of the view that the western intellectual formulations of Christianity could not adequately express the spiritual reality of the Christian faith; for this we have to turn to the Upanishads which offer experience based on the spirituality of wholeness. Abhishiktananda, convinced as he was that for a meaningful dialogue with India the church has to enter into its mystical traditions, develops his theology based on this mystical dimension. He became the first Catholic priest to sit at the feet of a Hindu Guru, when he made himself a disciple of Sri Ramana Maharsi and later of Swami Gnanananda, who introduced him to the Hindu
[1] R.H. Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology, (Madras: CLS, 1975), 219.
contemplative tradition. At their feet he learnt what it means to enter into the cave of one’s heart.
He held the view that the great primitive Upanishads, like the Chandogya and the Brihadaranyaka, are incomparable witnesses to the awakening of the soul to the Mystery of being and of the self (atman), and these earliest formulations of that experience have never been surpassed. Hence, he starts from the Upanishadic relationship of the Brahman and atman, which for him, ensures a solid foundation for the Christian encounter with traditional Indian thought. The Christian turns to Vedanta, according to Abhishiktananda, as an encounter between the Word of God communicated by means of speech and thought on the one hand, and on the other as an inner experience springing from those levels of the Spirit that transcend words and concepts. Hence it is the highest experience of the Spirit that the Christian can come to terms with and crown the Vedantic experience. While in the Bible God’s inaccessibility is symbolized by turning to heaven (Our Father who art in Heaven, Mt 6:9), the Indian tradition expresses the same by emphasizing the need to enter ever deeper within.
According to Abhishiktananda, the Johannine prologue, through its identifications and its deeper penetration into the Mystery of God, recalls the Upanishadic experience. Abhishiktananda shows how John, as in the case of the Upanishads, starting from God and proceeding to the lowest level of the creature, discovers the presence of the Mystery of God in each stage. The identification that is in John of Logos-God-Life-Light with Jesus Christ, enables one to see how all that was said in the Upanishads is, in reality, said of Christ. Hence, in John we have not only the Upanishadic method, but also the fundamental themes contained therein. The ‘I am’ statements in John remind one of the Upanishadic mahavakyas (great sayings) such as “I am Brahman’. Abhishiktananda is not using the Bible to understand Indian scriptures, but his knowledge of the Indian texts enables him to interpret the Bible.
Based on Matthew 11:25, ‘No one knows the Son except the Father, just as no one knows the Father except the son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him’, Abhishiktananda believes that the knowledge in which the Father begets the son and in which the Son receives existence from the Father, is the ‘revelation’ of God within himself which the Son came to make known to the world, inviting whoever ‘receives’ this revelation to share in his own divine sonship (John 1:12; 18). As the Father and the Son are one, so the Son and his own are one. Ultimately, in him, they are one with God. Similarly, the Father has given the Father’s glory to the Son from the beginning (Jn 17:5) and it is given to them as well. Just as there is only one glory, there is only one life; the life that was in the bosom of the Father from the beginning (Jn 1:14). Through other concepts like joy (Jn 17:13), name (Jn 17:26) and love (Jn 17:23), Abhishiktananda concludes that just as in the inner silence the sages of India hear the primordial OM, the murmur of Satcitananda, so in the depths of the silence of the Spirit, springing up from the Word, the Christian hears deep within his or her own soul the echo of the same Satcitananda[1].
One who has never experienced the non-duality of being cannot understand the Mystery of God manifested in Jesus Christ. As long as we look up to God or Jesus Christ as another, we cannot grasp what God is or what we are. For Abhishiktananda ‘the Ultimate Mystery lies at the very heart of non-duality. The Spirit of unity alone silently teaches that essential reciprocal Gaze of Love in the depths of Being of which all earthly “otherness” is simply a sign.
The Christian knows how God is in all things; and in order to meet God one has to plunge deep within oneself and within all things in pursuit of his final secret. But in this search the soul finds that every atom of it is ablaze with the Glory of God and the ‘I’ and the ‘Thou’ disappears like a person shipwrecked in a high sea, tossed from wave to wave that sweeps him away. In the end it is in the mystery of the essential koinonia of the divine Being that man can rediscover himself as simultaneously one with God and yet present to him. The enlightened Christian knows in truth that in the Mystery of God, at the
[1] Abhishiktananda, Hindu Christian Meeting Point, (Bangalore: CISRS, 1969), 96
very heart of Being, the Son and the Spirit proceed from the Father, alike in the non-duality (advaita) of nature and in the threefold communion (koinonia) of Persons. However, in Hindu understanding everything stops with Being, the indivisible and attributeless Brahman (Mundaka Up.22.2. II), the Christian passes on to the communion in love, within the indivisibility of unity of being. However, it is a mystery of faith.
Abhishiktananda’s concern was to go beyond (or below) the world of multiplicity (namarupa) to Reality itself. In the spirit of the Upanishadic tradition, he had a distrust of all mental forms, which he considered as belonging to the realm of maya, entering the realm of the Real. Towards the end of his life he acknowledges the relative value of the realm of the world of the sense (vyavaharika), which loses its significance when the absolute Truth (pammartha) dawns in the heart of the world of multiplicity and history. The vyavaharika is left behind when the paramartha dawns, as one leaves behind the boat that one has used to cross the river.
For Abhishiktananda, though much of the Christian faith was part of the vyavaharika, the deepest Mystery of Jesus who said, I AM, the pure being of non-duality, is interiorized and is seen as one with the Godhead. He wrote in his diary about a year before his death:
Saving mystery can only emerge from the cave, from the depth of consciousness. Christianity believes that salvation comes from outside, through thoughts, rites, sacraments. The level of namarupa. But actually, in truth, Christianity is first of all Upanishad, correlation, not direct teaching. Direct teaching only gives namarupas. Correlation causes the spark of experience to flash, that alone gives fulfilment… The pure act of love or service, that is what awakens one to oneself. That is what awakens one to God, not to the God of namarupas but to God in God’s own self! It is on this inner experience that all real religion should be based, not on ideas that come and are passed on to us from outside.[1]
[1] G. Gispert-Sauch, “Christ and the Indian Mystical Tradition – Swami Abhishiktananda,” Jeevadhara 28/165(1998): 199.
What is happening in Jesus the Incarnate One is his awakening to the Father’s intimate presence in him. In his awakening the awakening of all are included. A few months before his death he wrote: “There is in truth only one act by which Jesus – every human being – goes to the Father (to use biblical terminology): it is the act of awakening. As soon as you awake, on account of the essential connectedness of all human beings, you awake with, on behalf of all.”[1] Thus, Abishiktananda’s understanding of the Ultimate Mystery evolves out of his grasp of the Upanishadic traditions as well as his Christian Faith.
Bede Griffith’s Theological Epistemology
Bede Griffiths, a Benedictine monk who came to India in 1955, carried forward that tradition Abbe Monchanin and Abhishiktananda left behind. He was blessed with a mystical sense and a sense of a spirit of contemplation that generated in him a regard for cosmic revelation.
His exposure to Hindu and Buddhist mysticism convinced him of the need to develop a valid and creative synthesis of the inner encounter of Christianity and Hinduism, relating the Oriental tradition to Christianity. He was influenced also by modern science, especially Fritjof Capra, David Bohm, Ilya Prigogine and others. He was attracted by the scientists’ advocating a cosmic whole, as the vedic revelation sees it.
Hence he asserts:
The one divine Mystery is beyond word and thought, reveals itself in different ways in each religious tradition. Each religion manifests the one Reality, the one Truth, under different symbols, a symbol being defined as a sign in which the reality is really present. In this sense it is true to say that Jesus Christ is a symbol of God.[2]
Beyond the physical world of differences there is a deeper dimension, the world of the transcendent, as manifested by all great revelations that give an intuitive insight into the ultimate, the transcendent. All great revelations
[1] Ibid, 200.
[2] Bede Griffiths, “Reflections and Prospects,” in Michael von Bruck (ed), Emerging Consciousness for a New Humankind (Bangalore: Asian Trading Corporation, 1985), 123-124.
are messages from that transcendent reality. This revelation he describes in terms of the myths understood as the mystical. All religions have their origin in some sort of mystical experience. Even the biblical books gain their meaning from the mythical elements they contain. It is the myth that relates the events contained in the Bible to the eternal drama of human salvation.
In the Christian tradition this One Reality is known as the Father, the Source of all Godhead. The Father signifies the Absolute from which everything originates. Bede Griffiths writes:
The understanding is that from this ground, from this source, there springs a Word, a wisdom, an image of the Godhead, and that is this cosmic Person, who reveals the Father, the Source. In that cosmic Person in the Word or Son, all the archetypes of all created beings are contained. The archetype of every being in the universe is contained eternally in the Word, in the Godhead.[1] In the Son all created universe is contained as the archetype, unfolded.
As the Word/Son is the source of all forms in creation, so the Spirit is the source of all energy. It is the uncreated energy flowing forth eternally from the Godhead and brings into being the energies of matter and of nature. Thus the universe is an overflow of the energy of the spirit, the energy of love. In other words, the Spirit is the love-energy of God.
The Spirit flows out in this love to effect the creation and the Word organizes all those energies of matter and creation gradually bringing it back to its source in the cosmic Person, Purusha. The Spirit is active throughout history, and at work in all religions. As part of this cosmic process at times certain centres, like Israel, are formed, in and through which the cosmic process of redemption is consummated. Through Israel, the organizing power of the universe, the archetypal man, Jesus, manifests to overcome the power of sin and death. Through his resurrection the redemptive power of the Spirit is poured out to the world. The Spirit’s coming on the church is part of that
[1] Bede Griffiths, A New Vision of Reality: Western Science, Eastern Mysticism and Christian Faith (London: Collins, 1989), 269.
outpouring, though the Spirit is everywhere and not limited to the church.
The universe and humanity return to the divine unity and each element and each person discovers its original archetype. So he writes: “In love the whole universe is pouring out and that love is drawing it all back to itself.”[1] All are regenerated into the one. All are held together in Christ, the Supreme Person, and all become persons in the Person. However, it is not a matter of dissolving into the One, as Hinduism says. Rather, it is a reintegration into the One in total unity. It is an eternal and infinite reality, though Bede Griffiths takes pain to point out that Reality, the Absolute is beyond all human comprehension and we use words and images and concepts taken from everyday finite experience in order to direct our mind, our will and our heart towards the Infinite and to allow that Infinite to enter into our lives and transform them.[2]
Thus, Bede Griffith’s contemplative theology springs from his spirituality, mystical experience and the reading and reflection on the sacred texts of eastern religions and the Bible. In this sense it can be described as a ‘theological epistemology’ paving the way for a new world order through religions renewing themselves in relation to one another.
Raimon Panikkar, The Confluence of Religious Traditions
Raimon Panikkar stands at the boundary between the East and the West, between Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and the secular culture. He described himself as standing “at the confluence of (sangam) of the four rivers: the Hindu, the Christian, the Buddhist and the secular traditions.”[3]
Unlike the previous thinkers who were mystics and used the Sat-chit- ananda model, Panikkar, with a philosophical mind, describes the Trinity in terms of the three traditional Indian ways of spirituality: jnana (knowledge), karma (action) and bhakti (devotion). The silent, the apophatic jnana corresponds to the Father who expresses himself only through the Son and of himself has
[1] Ibid, 273.
[2] Ibid, 275.
[3] Raimon Panikkar, The Unknown Christ (Bangalore: ATC, 1982), x.
no word or expression. This apophatic spirituality Panikkar relates to the Buddhist experience of nirvana (cooling off, liberation). Karma is related to the Son who is the mediator between God and humans and through whom creation, redemption and glorification flow. Bhakti is applied to the spirituality of the Spirit who is immanent.
Responding to the Hindu problem of bridging the gap between Brahman and World, for which Hindu philosophy had introduced the notion of a creator God, Ishvara, in contrasts to God the Absolute, Brahman, Panikkar said we can solve the Hindu antinomy of the One and the many if we realize that Ishvara is no other than Christ, the logos, the Agent of creation, the Mediator between God and humans. “That from which this world comes forth and to which it returns and by which it is sustained, that “that” is Christ.”[1]When Hinduism admits Ishvara as the true revealer of Brahman, the personal aspect of Brahman, agent of creation, origin of grace, yet at the same time himself fully Brahman, then they are in fact, without realizing it, acknowledging the hidden Christ. The task of Christian mission is unveiling this Christ.
Concluding Remarks
What I have attempted in this article is only a presentation of one stream of Catholic thinkers to talk about God, the Ultimate Mystery. Indian church is making steady progress in its theological reflection. There are many who are concerned about the dehumanizing poverty in which millions in India live and many Indian theologians present an understanding of God from that perspective. However, India’s specific contribution is in the lived spirituality and in the writing responding to Indian religiosity. Though most Indian theologians have something to say about the Ultimate Mystery, most of the time what they say is from the perspective of understanding Jesus Christ as the only medium of salvation and articulating the mission of the church emanating from that understanding.
In the Christina God-talk what is essential is the readiness to accept others and respect the space of others, Indian approach to the Ultimate Mystery, as not exhausted by any particular religion’s understanding of that Mystery, can serve as a corrective to any tendency to excluvism and claims of monopoly, Equally, the Indian approach is a corrective to another spin-off from market-oriented globalization: a trade mentality with respect to others and to the world– how to make the best of them for one’s own advantage. The Indian approach insists on a sort of detachment (nishkamakarma) in the pursuit of interests, keeping the Ultimate Reality in focus, in the midst of the relative reality (maya) of the world of senses (namarupa). The Indian approach reminds us of the need to concentrate on the experience of the Ultimate Reality, which is all-pervading and thus invites us not only to be tolerant but respectful of others.
[1] Ibid, 131.
Here religions will have to underplay doctrinal expressions and must concentrate on the Mystery itself that unites all.
A Christian’s openness to the divine presence in other religions is not at the expense of what is specific to the biblical revelation focusing on compassionate love. God in the bible is one who has seen the affliction of the people and heard their cry” (Ex 3:7) and whose basic mandate is that humans love God (Dt 6:4) and one another (Lev 19.18, Mk 12. 20 21). This was lived out by Jesus that he could say “Those who have seen me have seen the Father” (Jn 12:45 & 14: 9). The Christian call is precisely that of following Jesus and of becoming a light to the world (Mt 5: 14), that “God may be everything to everyone” (1 Cor 15:28).
(Ref: Ishvani International Journal of Mission
Studies. Vol. 1, No.1 January-June 2021,
pp.30-44)
SEDOS WORKSHOP ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
A Three-day online workshop was organised by SEDOS on 13th, 17th and 20th October 2024. The theme of the Workshop was “Harnessing Artificial Intelligence for Religious Missions and Social Good.”
The resource persons were, Fr. Anil Fernandes, the Google Certified AI and media Professional and Mr. Leo Victor Zalki, the Google Certified AI and AI Evolution Mentor from India. There were 77 SEDOS members from all over the world who participated in this workshop. This workshop was designed for SEDOS members belonging to various missionary congregations to explore the transformative potential of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their mission and social good. Over three days, participants gained insights into foundational AI concepts, ethical considerations, creative AI tools, and practical applications for their missions. All the participants appreciated the workshop as it was very useful and beneficial to them.
