The Pilgrim

The Quarterly Bulletin of the Christian Society for the Study of Hinduism

Editor: Rev. A.J. Appasamy, M. A, (Harvard) Ph.D. (Oxon.)

MANORAMA, PALAMCOTTAH

The Christian Society for the Study of Hinduism

Patrons: The Metropolitan of India, Calcutta Bishop BRENTON T. BADLEY, Delhi.

President: Bishop CLEMENT D. ROCKEY, Lucknow.

Vice-Presidents: The BISHOP of LUCKNOW, Allahabad Dr. A.J. APPASAMY, M.A., Ph.D., Palamcottah. Rev. G.H.C. ANGUS, M.A., Serampore College.

Secretary: Mrs. W. STANLEY GOULD, Ewing Christian College, Allahabad

Treasurer: Dr. C.H. HAZLETT, Holland Hall, Allahabad

Convener, Benares Institute: Rev. R.C. DAS, M.A., Benares United City Mission, Ramkatora, Benares Cantonment.

Committee: Rev. H.C. BALASUNDARAM, Allahabad Rev. M.P. DAVID, D.D., Raipur Prof. V.E. DUTT, M.A., Serampore Mr. PAUL DAS, B.A., Banaras

Editorial Board:

Bishop Clement D. Rockey, Lucknow Mrs. W.S. Gould, Ewing Christian College, Allahabad Rev. G.H.C. Angus, Principal, Serampore College Rev. R.C. Das, Benares United City Mission Dr. A.J. Appasamy, Palamcottah (Editor)

The objects of the Christian Society for the Study of Hinduism are,

1. To create and maintain adequate interest in the study of Hinduism by Christians
2. To carry on the study in a sympathetic, constructive and critical way for the purpose of effective evangelism and
3. To achieve the above objects in co-operation with Church and Mission bodies.

The activities of the Society are,

1. To conduct in Benares (and if possible in a South Indian centre) an Institute of Hinduism stressing its popular aspects
2. Publish The Pilgrim, a quarterly bulletin, bearing on Hinduism, its relation To Christianity and work among Hindus and
3. To encourage the organisation of a permanent School of Hinduism.

The minimum annual subscription is Rs. 2/-. Membership fees and gifts may be sent to the treasurer, Dr. C.H. Hazlett, Holland Hall, Allahabad.

Every member will receive The Pilgrim free.

A Modern Brahmo

BY THE EDITOR

Dr. J.N. Farquhar’s Modern Religious Movements in India was published as long ago as 1915. During all these years it has remained a standard book on the subject. Dr. Farquhar was in many ways specially fitted to write a book of this type. He had been a missionary in India for over a quarter of a century and had many opportunities for understanding and evaluating the new movements in India. When he wrote this book, he devoted his entire time to literary work. He was able to gather a mass of information from books, pamphlets and magazine articles and to present it attractively. He had also unusual facilities at that time for travelling over the whole of India and for checking up by personal enquiry many of his facts and figures. In this book Dr. Farquhar has given 11 Frenchay Road, Oxford as his address. I have called on him many a time at this residence, On account of ill-health he was obliged to leave India and make Oxford his headquarters. During the cold season of every year he came out to India and travelled widely collecting by personal investigation the information which he needed for his books. It has sometimes, been said that there are inaccuracies in this book. No doubt in dealing with living religious movements, spread over such a large area like India, there is always the danger that one’s information is incorrect at points. It is quite likely that, in spite of the greatest care and accuracy which Dr. Farquhar exercised in the collection and statement of his facts, some errors have crept in. Notwithstanding this, the book has remained an authoritative work on the subject; it has been a boon to students of contemporary religion in India to get the essential facts about modern movements in so convenient, accurate and readable a form.

A great deal has happened in India since this book was written over twenty-eight years ago. New movements have come into existence; new personalities have emerged; some of the old movements have gone into the background and others have grown to much larger proportions than in Dr. Farquhar’s day. It is essential that another book should be written now giving reliable information about the modern religious movements. I understand that the Indian Christian Book Club of Madras is contemplating such a book. This will be a great help to students of contemporary religion in India. In the meanwhile, all such information is available about the present status and work of modern religious movements are welcome. Recently a book entitled My Life Story being the autobiography of Dr. T.O. Khandwala, has been published.¹ In introducing the book Mr. J.K. Mehta says that Dr. Khandwala has ‘never claimed to be a big leader in any of the fields of life’. (P.V.) The readers of The Pilgrim will be interested in this book because of the many side lights which it throws on the present position and work of the Brahmo Samaj.

Religion in Childhood

Khandwala was born in 1858 at Surat. His people belonged to the Vallabhacharya sect. When he was aged four he was taken on a pilgrimage to Nathdwar in Mewar, the most important shrine of the sect. The journey took more than three months and part of it had to be passed, through the hilly country of the Bhils, a wild, aboriginal tribe. The pilgrims travelled in large caravans of country carts for safety. At that time he received his initiation from the Maharaja, the head representative of Sri Vallabhacharya. He thus describes the event: ’I was too tender of age for the ordeal of the initiation. I had not sufficient understanding knowing its meaning or grasp its mystery. But lapse of time has not erased it even now from my memory. A day before the ceremony, the to-be-initiate has to observe fast. Very early before dawn, in the morning of the day of the initiation, he or she is given a bath in wintry cold water, and thus prepared, is presented before the Guru who then gives the _Guru Mantram of Shri Krishna Sharanam Mama (Shri Krishna is my refuge, or object of my surrender)’ (p. 4).

There is an interesting paragraph in which Khandwala describes some of the ceremonies which he witnessed with interest and devotion in early life. ‘As a child I took great delight in visiting the Havelis, or the house of the God of the Maharajas, the lineal representatives of Shri Vallabbacharya, and as such of Lord Krishna. It was not merely for darshan or for seeing God Krishna in his child form to render him obeisance that I frequented these havelis; for they had other attractions for a child like me. It was the pomp and splendour of the ceremonies that lured me to them during the darshans. The courts of the havelis were gorgeously decorated; the idol of the God was decorated with jewels: fountains played in summer; nicely decorated hindolas or swings were rocked to and fro with the idol of Krishna seated in them during the first part of the rainy season; cradles with child Krishna were rocked by the Maharajas after the birthday of Lord Krishna; Ras-lilas or dramatic representations of the life of Lord Krishna as a boy in the company of Gopis, the rustic maidens of the cowherd caste of Brindavan, were staged. And all these had their emotional and artistic appeal for a child like me. This appeal deepened in course of time and became a passion. I took delight in frequenting all temples in the vicinity, whether Vaishnava or Saiva, as well as of different goddesses’ (pp. 8, 9).

It is not clear from the later narratives as to how far the simple Brahmo Samaj method of worship met these aesthetic and emotional interests of Khandwala’s childhood.

A hatred against the Vallabacharya sect came when Khandwala realised the gross immorality of the Gurus belonging to it. Let him tell this in his own words. ‘I happened one Sunday to attend the Divine Service at the Mandir (Church) of the Prarthana Samaj of Bombay. The Minister was Mr. Murlidhar Ghodi and the sermon was in Gujarati. The Minister insisted on the unity between religion and morality and on the danger involved in a divorce between them. Religious life must be moral; immorality was incompatible with religion. Piety is emptied of all meaning and ceases to be consistent, if not based on morality. It would be fateful to divorce religion from morality; to attempt it, is to destroy both. The stream of impassioned, eloquent, soul-stirring words that flowed from the depths of the soul of the Minister were but the outward expression of the purity and beauty of his soul. I sat enthralled. The lofty words sank into my soul. I felt a new awakening. It was my new birth, my spiritual baptism. A new life dawned upon me. I now felt a deep abhorrence for the Maharajas of our Vallabbacharya sect on account of their gross immorality. The notorious Maharaja Libel case came as an exposure and all credit is due to the late Karsondas Mulji and his co-workers for their fearless fight’ (p. 12)

The Arya Samai or the Brahmo Samaj?

For a period of nearly forty-four years, there seems to have been some conflict among his loyalties. During the long period he was closely associated with the Arya Samaj and even became the president of the Arya Samaj of Bombay and yet his final allegiance after a long period of hesitation was given to the Brahmo Samaj or the Prarthana Samaj as it was known in Bombay. In 1874 Swami Dayanand Saraswathi went to Bombay. Largely attended lectures were given by him in a spacious Pandal erected for the purpose. The Swami emphasised the importance of the Vedas and held that their authority was final. There was no idol worship in the Vedas, and he advocated that it should therefore be given up. He also maintained that the four-fold division of Hindu society into Brahmans, Kshatriyas, Vaisyas and Sudras was based on Guna or innate and acquired qualities and Karma or action. The many castes and sub-castes which sprang up later were wholly wrong.

‘I attended the lectures of the Swamiji and public discussions on them, both in the Pandal and in the Framji Cowasji Halli and I read with zest the literature on either side. All this steadied and strengthened me in my ideas of religion and morality. The Swamiji’s discourses appealed to cold reason and his method was argument. There was another personality in Bombay at the time whose words burnt their way into my heart, consuming my whole life. He was the Rev. Pratap Chandra Mozumdar, a missionary of the Bramho Samaj of Calcutta who came to Bombay a few months after the advent of Swami Dayananda. His method was to appeal to the soul of man, to his heart and emotions, besides his intellect. He gave his lectures in the Mandir of the Prarthana Samaj and conducted, divine service almost every morning at his residence. Here was a man of God, a God-intoxicated soul. His devotions were the spontaneous outpourings of his heart. Those who heard him were enthralled and were happy to be near him in the sublimity of the divine atmosphere of his prayers. I attended all his lectures and services, and felt a quickening of my life’ (Page 16).

It will be remembered that P.C. Mozumdar was the author of the book entitled The Oriental Christ in which for the first time he dwelt upon Christ from the Eastern point of view.

Though young Khandwala was thus attracted by the preaching of Mozumdar, he actually joined the first Arya Samaj in India which was established in Bombay in 1875. A few people who were dissatisfied with their ancestral religion were attracted both by the Arya Samaj and the Prarthana Samaj and sought to bring about a fusion of the two movements. They felt that there was a good deal in common, both in theory and in practice, between the two movements and that, therefore, they might well be amalgamated. They both revolted against idolatry and advocated the worship of God in spirit; they both condemned priest craft; they both protested against the many evils in Hindu Society such as the denial of education to women, child marriage and caste exclusiveness. But there was a fundamental cleavage between the Arya Samaj and the Prarthana Samaj. The Arya Samaj looked on the Vedas as the final, authoritative and infallible source of Truth, though it interpreted the Vedas in its own way. The Prarthana Samaj could not accept the great authority which was claimed for the Vedas and rejected their infallibility. The attempt to bring the two movements together failed. In 1919 Khandwala resigned his membership of the Arya Samaj and was initiated into the Prarthana Samaj by Sir N. G. Chandavarkar.

The Brahmo Samaj Centenary

Dr. Khandwala devoted several years of faithful service from 1884 to 1920 to his work as a Government doctor, Except four years in the city of Bombay, all this time was spent in the mofussil towns of the Bombay Presidency. In several of the places where he worked he found Prarthana Samajes; except those at Ahmedabad, Poona and Satara the others were poor and feeble organisations.

The centenary of the Brahmo Samaj was celebrated in 1928 in an elaborate manner all over India. The celebrations went on for a full year. Many Unitarians from America and England came over to India to take part in the celebrations. The gatherings in Calcutta, the headquarters of the Brahmo Samaj, were, to use Dr. Khandwala’s language, ‘unprecedented’ (p. 69). He was appointed that year as a lay missionary of the Brahmo Samaj and did a good deal of missionary work on its behalf. He was instrumental in getting Brahmo Dharma of Maharishi Devendranath Tagore translated into Gujarati and published as a part of the centenary celebrations. Dr. Khandwala and another friend went to Japan to preach the ideals of the Brahmo Samaj.

After the celebrations in Calcutta the delegates, including the foreign visitors, toured all over India. To the student of modern religious movements the names of the places visited are of great interest as the Brahmo Samaj had more or less active branches in them. At Cuttack addresses were given in the local Mandir. Cocanada and Rajahmundry were visited. In Pithapuram the ruler is described as being in sympathy with the Brahmo Samaj. Here also lived Sir Venkataratnam Naidu, the well-known Brahmo Samaj leader and for some time the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Madras. In Madras receptions to the delegates were given by such prominent people like Mrs. Muthulakshmi Reddi and Mrs. Subbarayan. There was held a hearty reception at the Brahmo Samaj Mandir in Bangalore. In Calicut many men of the depressed classes are members of the Brahmo Samaj. Mangalore is the centre of Brahmo Samaj activities in Western India. He says, ‘We went to Allepper, a stronghold of Harijan Brahmos. It was a pleasure to see their clean huts and ever smiling faces, content with what little of worldly goods they possessed, but rich in spiritual wealth. We went into raptures of delight as they sang their hymns in chorus in their sweet language, in the Church and in Nagara Sankirtan’ (Pages 72, 73).

As a lay missionary of the Brahmo Samaj Dr. Khandwala undertook several tours. ‘Indore is a native State, and an old stronghold of Brahmoism. The royal family is in sympathy with it, and many of the State officials are its members. The President of the Samaj was Dr. Sukhtankar, an ordained missionary of the Brahmo Samaj who had received his training in the Manchester College of Unitarian Theology. We found that Brahmo teachings had penetrated even the fold of the depressed classes here which were verily transformed in life, manners and conduct that it would, no longer be possible to recognise them as once belonging to the depressed classes’ (p. 74). ‘From Devas we went to Ujjain where we were the guests of a prominent Brahmo. We found here many members of the depressed classes who had joined the Brahmo Samaj. We were invited to an “At Home” in one of their families. We were very delighted to find a high and clean tone in the life which they led. We addressed some meetings at this place, and also spoke to the students of the High School at the request of its Headmaster’ (p. 75).

During my stay of four years in Calcutta I made some Brahmo friends. One of them I knew intimately; years before we had been sharing the same rooms at Harvard University. It was a pleasure to renew his acquaintance in Calcutta, I found that many of the Brahmo families in Calcutta were people of light and leading. But I did not realise until I read this book that the Brahmo Samaj has also been able to teach and help members of the depressed classes. I had the impression that the Brahmo Samaj was a movement among the cultured few.

The Message of the Brahmo Samaj

In 1933 Dr. Khandwala attended a meeting of the World Fellowship of Faiths in Chigaco. Exactly forty years earlier in the same city there had been held the Parliament of Religions in which Swami Vivekananda had risen to prominence. The World Fellowship of Faiths met for twenty-two days. Over two hundred and forty addresses were given on the different faiths of mankind. The opening address was delivered by the Gaekwar of Baroda. There were several delegates from India, of whom Dr. Muthulakshmi Reddi, Mr. Manilal Parekh and Mr. K. Natarajan are well-known to the readers of The Pilgrim. The Fellowship met in the spirit of the Rig Vedic hymn:

'May He who is One without second,
Who is beyond all distinction of colour, caste and creed,
Who, knowing all our needs, meets them with manifold powers,
May He who is in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end;
May He unite us in fellowship and understanding' (p. 173).

Dr. Khandwala gave an address at this gathering which is produced in full in the book. I shall quote one or two paragraphs from this address to show the message of the Brahmo Samaj as it is given today. ‘The conception of God in the Upanishads, is expressed in lines such as the following: Know that is Brahma from whom all beings come into being, by whom the created beings live, and into whom they enter when gone from here. Brahma is Truth, or Ultimate Reality. He is the all-pervading Reason. He is Infinite, He is Love and Bliss, He is Immortal, He is Unchanging. He is the God. He is One who makes a self-revelation of Himself. He is One without a second. He is the All-pervading Essence who is the Inner Self of all Beings. He is the One, but makes Himself manifold. Brahma is the Indwelling Spirit Brahma is the One Reality. Who is in fire and water, and Who dwells in the whole universe. He is one power. Who moves the sun, the moon and the stars. He is the one All-pervading Reality that dwells in the souls of all. He is the ear of the ear, the mind of the mind, the speech of the speech, the eye of the eye, the life of life, the soul of our soul He is beyond the reach of the senses and the mind, and is incomprehensible in His fullness through the majesty of His Infinity, yet He is knowable in a way, not by any merely intellectual process, but by the discipline of the senses, purity of life, and earnest meditation. One whose inmost self has been purified, he alone sees the Holy One in meditation. Yet whomsoever He makes, by Him, He is attainable. The attainment of God is the free gift of God. Here is the genesis of the doctrine of Grace or Divine Mercy. God-vision is not the end, but the means to an end. The final goal is immortality, Immortality is rising above sorrow, suffering and sins and dwelling in eternal peace and happiness in the company of God, Who is Bliss and Love. Pari Passu, with this conception of Divinity, the conception of humanity in the Upanishads was equally high. The human soul is a spirit. This spirit the sword cannot pierce, nor fire burn, nor water drown. In its very essence it is free, holy, pure and perfect. It is eternal and immortal. It is a mirror of Divinity. It is the image of God. It is the embodiment of the nature of God. It has kinship with God. It is a scattered ray of the Divine Light and Love. It has the germ of Divinity within itself. With a bold stretch of thought, the Upanishads declare that the human soul has identity with the World-Spirit, as expressed in the celebrated passage, TAT TVAM ASI, that is to say - “Thou art That”; that is to say, The human soul is one with the Supreme Soul”. As such, the human soul has the potential capacity for infinite expansion and evolution, into the fullness of its divine attributes and perfection of itself. The goal of humanity is to attain this perfection. It is the mission of man’s life to endeavour to realise this soul He must struggle to reach an ever higher stage of life, of purity, of love, triumphing over the base elements that drag life downwards, and conquering selfish passions.’ (Pages 176-178)

The Achievements of the Brahmo Samaj

In his address before the World Fellowship of Faiths, Dr. Khandwala: went on to give a summary of the achievements of the Brahmo Samaj: ‘The achievements of the Brahmo Samaj during its life of a little more than one hundred years are in all fields of life - religious, moral, social and political. Its influence was first felt among the Hindus. The Hindus worshipped idols, but it should never for a moment be thought that they believed that stocks and stones were divinities in themselves. They used them for the concentration of their mind on the Unseen Power behind them. This Unseen Power they worshipped. The contact of the Brahmo lives and the influence of the Brahmo teaching have emphasised this attitude of the Hindu mind. And, although idol worship is not eradicated, behind all rituals and behind all worship of images, there is the attitude of the belief in One, Universal, All - pervading Spirit … Brahmo Dharma has its roots in the spiritual soil of the Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita of the hoary Hindu religion. This spiritual atmosphere has created a highly elevating moral atmosphere. The corrupt ideas of a century ago have undergone a transformation; the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are having their proper values in life. All this has had the effect of purifying home and social life and institutions. A century ago Hindu society was beset with many social evils such as child marriage, polygamy, Purdah system, prohibition of widow-remarriage, Sutteeism, the rigid caste system, prejudice against literacy of the female sex, etc. The Brahmo Samaj took the lead in the campaign against all these. It pleaded for education and the introduction of the English language in the public schools and, through it, English literature, and the Western sciences. It laid special emphasis on female education, the participation of woman and her uplift in the social scale, giving her an equality with men, in all the fields of life. The endeavours of the Brahmo Samaj had their repercussions on Hindu society, and at present Hindu Society is on its way to its old status of freedom from these social evils and can boast of a Sarojini Naidu, a Kamaladevi, a Mrs. Muthulakshmi Reddi, and, a Mrs. Nehru, and a host of other highly cultured ladies, and among its men a Dr. Bose, a Dr. Raman, and a Dr. Ray. In the field of politics Rajah Ram Mohan Roy leads the way. He was for the freedom of all peoples. His heart glowed with enthusiasm when he learned of the newly achieved freedom of any people. He worked for the freedom of the press and platform in India, when the ruling authorities strove to suppress these agencies whenever they were inconvenient to them. He awakened the political national consciousness. The Brahmo Samaj followed his lead. The political national consciousness has grown in volume and intensity since then.’ (Pages 182-184)

In his enthusiasm, Dr. Khandwala has claimed for the Brahmo Samaj the credit for all these achievements. It must be remembered that there have been several other factors at work. Christian Missions have taken an active part in awakening the new life in India. Western education has had its large share. Travel has given many of the leaders of India a new inspiration and stimulus.

Dr. Khandwala himself confesses that the Brahmo Samaj in India is not a large one. ‘It is numerically not a large congregation, but its leavening influence has penetrated into the homes of the masses, and has been moulding lives. Its hymns are popular and sung in homes, and even in orthodox temples’ (p. 111), I wish he had given some figures to indicate the present strength of the Brahmo Samaj in India. My. information is that all over India there are about ten thousand adherents of this movement. It is no doubt very difficult to get exact statistics for a movement of this type spread over such a large area. The figure I have mentioned may be regarded as an approximate one. The student of contemporary religion in India is led to ask why the Brahmo Samaj has not grown. The Ramakrishna Mission has expanded immensely. The Arya Samaj has gathered into its fold millions of people. The Brahmo Samaj can point to an unusual galaxy of spiritual leaders; Raja Ram Mohan Roy, Devendranath Tagore, Keshub Chunder Sen, Rabindranath Tagore, P.C. Mozumdar, and Sitanath Tattyabhushanan are from Bengal. Sir Venkataratnam and Mrs, Muthulakshmi Reddi are some of the leaders in the South; Mr. Justice Ranade, Sir N. G Chandavarkar, Dr. Bhandarkar and Mr. K. Natarajan are the leaders in Bombay. This is a distinguished list and yet the movement does not seem to have grown. It has been a half-way house between Hinduism and Christianity and a half-way house is never full. The Arya Samaj has been exclusively Hindu and has spread widely. Christian Missions, with their unique message of hope and salvation, have brought millions into the Christian Church. The Brahmo Samaj has been neither wholly Hindu nor wholly Christian and its influence has been therefore steadily dwindling.

Sri Aurobindo - His Message

BY MR. P. CHENCHIAH, B.A., M.L.

Of the religious movements in contemporary India that naturally:attract the attention of the Christian, partly by their affinity to the fundamental notions of his own faith and partly by their clarity of thought and clearness of exposition, that associated with Sri Aurobindo stands foremost. In its main features it is the ripe fruit of the Hindu religious genius. It is initiated by a remarkable, personality, who in the richness of intellectual endowments, the sensitiveness of soul and vision and the opulence of expression has hardly an equal among the children of India in the last and this generation Mahatma Gandhi belongs to a yet earlier age. Sri Aurobindo was educated in England, appeared and won distinctions in the I.C.S. competitive examination, was an educationist, journalist and politician of the highest grade by turns before he sought refuge in Pondicherry and devoted his mind to, what to an Indian is still the supreme pursuit, the search of Brahman and the realisation of human destiny. At Pondicherry, he started an Ashrama which soon attracted the attention of the religious world. India soon realised that here was a world-teacher who has something to say for which the soul has been longing in the midst of the glory and the dazzle of modern civilisation. He is a world-teacher indeed as his mind is steeped in the classic lore of the East and West and his life has matured in the currents of the social and moral thought of the modern age. He has devoted his intellect to the all-engrossing study of Theology and to the prolonged discipline of Yoga - an essential in India for the perfection of soul. Above all, he has the power of potent expression, adequate to all subtleties of thought and a style that in cadence, clarity, beauty and vigour is almost classic. No wonder, then, that his Ashrama has been a beacon-light for all the seekers after truth among the educated in India and outside. Sri Aurobindo’s religious movement has all the birthmarks of an indigenous movement. It is the message of a Rishi; it issues out of an Ashrama; it concerns itself with Yoga - new Yoga though it is.

The Religious Situation in India

Before I proceed to state the message of Aurobindo and its meaning and significance in the context of our national life, let me advert to one or two prominent features of the religious situation in India as it is necessary to understand the drift of religious currents in India and also to fix the attitude of the Christian to them. There is perhaps no country in the world where so many religions live and grow side by side as in India - Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Islam and Christianity, each counting millions of followers, carrying on its ministrations, offering solace and inspiration to its followers and commanding the allegiance of its devotees. For a situation so pregnant with possibilities we have to travel back in history to the era of the birth of Christianity, when Judaism in its universal aspects and Paganism in its noblest countenance existed side by side in the energising environment of Graeco-Roman thought. When living religions function side by side, they are bound to influence each other and to be influenced by each other, whatever resistance the conservative mind in its orthodox mood might offer. The fusion of religious influences outside the territorial bounds of orthodoxy is the most significant fact in the religious situation in India. It is in this commingling of religious streams that the virtue and potency of spiritual life, its healing and saving lies. Each religion has its traditions and philosophies, its priests and practices, its apostolic successions and creeds, its crystallised forms and petrified expressions. Here gain and loss are numerical. What the Christian Church gains the Hindu fold may lose and what the Christian religion may lose the Hindu and Islamic faiths may recover. But if you want to measure how the spirit of one religion is influencing the other and how in this sacred meeting rich blessings are conferred, you must look both beyond and behind historical borders and traditional limits, into the faces and features of the movements that are born but yesterday and yet bespeak careers of hope and influence. The foreign missionary and research student may not detect these new centres of influence for he can only recognise them when they are baptised by name, recognised by government, embodied in institutions and easily available in literature. There is no excuse for us who move with our Indian brethren in secular life and work with them not to recognise and understand those first signs of birth, those subtle appeals of childhood, those vigorous challenges of youth of the new religious movements in our midst. If you do not, it is because the eye is not open and when opened, is not purged of mists that blind. When the Christian recovers the capacity to move towards and meet life that calls to it as depths call unto depths, he will find himself all attention to two movements among many - that of Sri Aurobindo at Pondicherry: and Sri C. V. V. at Kumbakonam. It is my purpose to deal with the first of these in this paper.

The Interaction of Hinduism and Christianity

That Hinduism and Christianity are interacting on each other, determining their respective ideologies, shaping their thoughts and directing their activities hardly admits of doubt. It is only the other day that a senior member of the Christian community, not hitherto suspected of latitudinarian tendencies, spoke of the home-call of Hinduism to Christians. In the forms of worship, in the language of devotion, in the appropriation of religious heritage, in the resistance to alien theology and church governments, the influence of Hinduism on Christianity is felt and acknowledged. But you seek in vain for this influence within the precincts of tradition and orthodox forms, in the Churches and in the literature arising under their auspices. So also you seek in vain in the temples and the conclaves of Pujaris, in the orthodox journals and exponents of Hinduism for any signs of the influence of Christianity. Sri Aurobindo rarely refers to Christianity or to Christ. It may even be regarded as a point of horror for accredited agents of religions to neglect each other and deny the existence of their neighbours. But when you march out of the citadels of religions, when you leave behind the churches and temples, priests and Padres and step into the open spaces of life where we wear no masks, have no interests to defend, a brotherhood is felt and a bond of love draws us together; should we have the grace to commune with each other, we find that God is working out a common pattern out of the pliable material in each religion. In the region of religious thought not yet worked out in rigid forms and formularises, whether it be in Christianity or Hinduism, in the realm where the soul is not firmly established in tradition, the spirit of God moves and effects His purpose, for here alone is life that can yet respond to the breath of the Spirit and issue in creative action. Here Hinduism is imprinting on Christianity forms of thought which are its distinctive contribution to spiritual vision, and here Christianity is drawing out of Hinduism the forms of the new creation, of which Jesus is the prototype. One reason, perhaps the supreme reason, why we should study and study diligently these two movements lies just here that they are influencing and are being influenced by each other towards a common direction, though a conspiracy of silence exists on both sides. They are throwing out an ideology in which the thoughts of divergent religions approximate and in which a common pattern of life is evolved, the soul reaching out for a new power or Sakti. I say that a Christian should study Sri Aurobindo not so much to exult over his influence on Hinduism but to recover an ideology which alone can reveal the true nature and purpose of Christianity. I say with equal emphasis that a Hindu, anxious to know how revolutionary Sri Aurobindo’s message is, how he reverses the pulse-beats of Hinduism, how he directs them to a new goal should read the Gospels and the interpretation of Christ by St. Paul and St. John. We are not in a spiritual stock exchange casting balance sheets of assets and /liabilities, of borrowings and lendings. We are on the sacred ground where God is working out His purpose in human hearts, forcing them out of tradition where necessary and bringing them together where needed. In short, when we read about these movements, we stand where the Spirit is moving towards a universal creative purpose, which He established in Christ and which He works out by planting common trends, ideologies, “movements in different religions and traditions. With this apologia for the study of Sri Aurobindo, I proceed to sketch, in bare outline, his message and philosophy.

The Philosophy of Sri Aurobindo

Sri Aurobindo starts with what ought to be the postulate of Religion, but unfortunately never is, that Religion has to do with life and as such its primary concern is with Evolution. Life is a term in the creative process and human life is also a term, though a middle term. Hence, the intimate relation in Aurobindo’s scheme of thought between Religion and creative process. Science and Religion are both concerned with this life process, of which we ourselves are luminous self-conscious centres. The first thing Religion ought to do is to study the creative process with a view to gain some illumination as to the purpose and will of God, as to the method, and manner of His dealing with men. We easily recognise this when we say that Truth is not a fact or a norm, not a proposition or a dogma but life. Yet once we perceive the essential fact, how easily and by what imperceptible degrees do we stray away from it by calling it a doctrine of life and then seek vitalising and regenerating powers not from life itself but from institutions and theologies. Christianity is Christ; Hinduism is a way of life. Yet life is soon overlaid with the ashes and dust of doctrines and rites. Sri Aurobindo calls us back, as Jesus has done, from all these wanderings to the life process, the only book which Science and Religion can and ought to read. God speaks by creation, reveals by creation, realises by creation. Placing man in the context of the creative process, with the antecedent terms of matter and life, what do we find to be his status, prospect and testing? How does Sri Aurobindo read the scroll of life?

The Story of Creation

Diverging from the scientific conception of Evolution in many respects, yet taking it as an adequate type-form, the dialectic of creation as it were, Sri Aurobindo tells us that Evolution has meaning to us by reason of the precedent involution. It is a descending and ascending movement. Thus regarded matter, the last term in the involution, is not entirely inert and inconscient but latently conscient. ‘God descended through an entropy of self-concealment, the main grades being supermind, higher mind, mind, life and lastly body or matter, In Evolution He recovers Himself by reversing the order and mounting these steps of the ladder’. ‘The drive of Evolution is incessant and permanent and nature is in travail to bring about higher and higher stages of material transformation. At every higher, mount of Evolution a power from without enters and descends to the lowest step of the ladder and ascends transforming the nature of every one of the antecedent terms’. Matter in fact has triple birth. ‘It is a physico-chemical entity. It undergoes transmutation when it is taken up by life, becoming the receptacle of living organism. A further and greater change is brought about in matter when it integrates with mind and responds to its wishes.’ This view predicates two aspects of Evolution which are of great import to Religion. The higher grade: invariably arises out of the lower; the Sons of God arise, out of the sons of men; the Saviour of Mankind is born of, woman. Secondly, the higher grade is never attained by the cancellation or dissolution of the lower. In the process of recovery matter is not dropped but transformed. The New Man, the Son of God, is not a spirit but also a body - the body being a transfigured body, like the resurrection body of Jesus.

The Status of Man

Here comes the message of Sri Aurobindo as he spells it out of the story of Evolution and here also is his departure from the position of the materialistic scientist. Since in the involution the highest has descended, so Evolution and its consummation are cosmic facts. The recovery of God is a divine necessity, which cannot be arrested. In the Buddhist theology, perfection necessarily means Nirvana annihilation. In Science perfection spells stagnation. It may be asked why it should be thought that man is not doomed to this stale end of death. Science by making man the crown of creation bars his future advance. He is the copula and dome of creation. He completes the structure and hence has no future. Christianity sees a further future for man. He has the possibility of becoming the Son of God. Sri Aurobindo also visualises a further advance for man. The necessity is derived from the fact that mind in itself is an incomplete and inchoate instrument of life, making a demand imperiously for completion. Mind is a middle term, a bridge, a stepping stone. Hence, nature by its own inner propulsion, urges and drives must consummate itself in something better. ‘Unless’, says Aurobindo, ‘therefore the race is to fall by the wayside and leave the victory to other and new creations of the eager travailing mother, it must aspire to the ascent leading to the supra-mental unity which transcends and fulfils human destiny’.

There is no natural balance for life at the stage of Mind. It cannot walk; it hops on one leg and then on the other. Philosophy vacillates between subject and object.

Life moves between growth and decay. The State holds us to the contradiction of Law and Liberty. Humanity moves alternately towards peace and war. Man must either end in death or else continue as a new being with greater integrity and balance, with a new accession of God into him.

The message of Aurobindo does not stop with the prediction, of Super-man or Gnostio man, as he calls him. He does not see him far off in the horizon. Following Jesus, he not only proclaims the advent of the sons of the Kingdom of God but also announces that the Kingdom of God is at hand. The catastrophes of our civilisation have convinced him that Mind has reached the crisis of its destiny. Science and Government have reached their heights and have to move in endless circles like a dog chasing its own tail, if the iron walls do not break and a new opening is made for the Spirit. The power, that is to start man on the higher plane, rescuing him from stagnation and death, the reward of perfection, he calls Supra-mind. It is not in us, but it descends on us from above. Supra-mind is the architect of the new creation-the father and pro-creator of the New Man. He presses on us. He knocks at our door. He seeks an entry into our life. Either you open the door or He breaks it. The dyke cannot much longer withhold the pressure of the sea.

Christianity and the Way of Sri Aurobindo

It is time that we see this philosophy in the light of Christianity. It is alien to what is stereotyped in our Church creeds and formulas. It has no resemblance to our dogmas and doctrines. Work back to Our Lord or to St. Paul and You see the family resemblance. Both systems agree for different reasons that man is doomed to death-Christian Theology reaching this conclusion on the ground that he has rebelled against God and Aurobindo on the ground that he has worked out his possibilities and reached a perfection. Both systems hold that the new term of the evolution awaiting creative expression is the Son of God - a human being who embodies fullness of divine consciousness in flesh. To both Incarnation means not merely that God has been with us but that He inhabits our flesh and becomes one with it, The ambition or urge of man to be one with God is realised not in heaven but on earth. The Son of God is the Son of Man entering on his new inheritance. The Son of Man attains his salvation by becoming the Son of God. The Power that presides over the new creation is the Holy Spirit according to Christians and Supra-mind according to Aurobindo. It descends and resides in us. It guides and shapes us. One difference remains. The Christian sees in Christ the new destiny of man realised. Sri Aurobindo does not, at any rate in his writings. We say the new Man has arrived in evolution; Sri Aurobindo expects him. The interaction of these two schools has this curious and tangible result. To the Christian, Christianity assumes a new shape gives a new meaning, sets a new task It tells us what the Indian apprehension of Christ is likely to be and gives us a glimpse of future Indian Christian Theology. Christianity gives to Hinduism the image of the New Man, the fact that holds the power of the new creation.

Integral Yoga

In India, unlike in the West; religion is not an ideology. It cannot stop with the statement of the way of life. Religion is realisation; if it is not realisation, it is useless. Christianity is not knowledge of the Son of God but being the Son of God. Christianity is not a text-book on rebirth; it is being reborn. Unfortunately Christ who has come into History remains solitary. It is a true saying that there has been only one Christian and that is Christ. Christ is revealed, but the process of the reproduction is called Yoga in Hinduism. Without it religion remains an idea and not an accomplishment. What is the Christian Yoga? How does the life of Jesus become ours? How are we born in Spirit? There are many answers to these questions but tested by fruits they seem to be unsatisfactory. It may be that the task of Indian Christianity is to perfect a Yoga for the realisation of Christ. That problem is also with Hinduism. In a letter written to Desabandhu Chittranjan Das in November 1922 Sri Aurobindo said, ‘I think you know my present idea and the attitude towards life and work which it has brought me. I have been confirmed in the perception that the true basis of work and life is spiritual, that is to say a new consciousness to be developed only by Yoga. I see more and more manifestly that man can never get out of the futile circle the race is always treading until he has raised himself on a new foundation. I believe that it is the mission of India to make possible this great victory for the world. But what precisely is the nature of the dynamic power of this great consciousness? How could our present instruments - intellect, mind, life and body - be made true and perfect channels for this great transformation? This is the problem I have been trying to work out in my experience and I have now a sure basis, a wide knowledge and some mastery of the secret. Not yet its fullness and complete imperative presence; therefore I have still to remain in retirement. For I am determined not to work in the external field till I have the sure and complete possession of this new power of action, not to build except on a perfect foundation’. This was written twenty years ago. Sri Aurobindo has not yet come out, and it may be presumed that the completion of his Yoga is not yet. His disciples believe that it may be any moment.

Of the integral Yoga, I can only speak as an outsider, not being an initiate of it. It is no use to speak of Yoga from book-knowledge; this much I feel certain. We need a Christian Yoga desperately, We should be prepared to receive it from any hand and bless the giver in gratitude and thankfulness. Here is our common adventure. Light may come from where our narrow minds never expect it. Two great minds have sought the Holy, Spirit and are making great experiments in new creation. Why not link hands with them? At any rate, why not be inspired by these teachers to make the great research ourselves? In, Sri Aurobindo and Sri C. V. V. we have brethren in faith - the first fruits of the real flowering forth of Christianity in the Indian soul. I wait in prayer and expectation for the consummation of the Christian process in our midst.

The Gospel and India’s Heritage

By CANON E.C. DEWICK²

The author defines his purpose in writing this book as follows: - “To study afresh the life and teaching of Jesus Christ as they are recorded in the Gospels, and to explain them, in relation to the spiritual heritage of India”. (p. 20). He tells us that under “the spiritual heritage”, he does not include India’s cultural and artistic tradition; nor does he attempt to deal with the heritage of Indian Islam, but limits himself to the heritage of Hinduism. (pp. 5, 6).

Even with these limitations, the subject is a vast one; but there is probably no one better qualified to deal with it than Dr. Appasamy. His acquaintance with Christian theology is wide and balanced; and in knowledge of the Hindu Scriptures, he stands pre-eminent among Indian Christian scholars of today.

The book is, in our judgement, both timely and courageous. It is timely because in the last twenty years there has been a regrettable decline of serious and of scholarly study of Hinduism by Christians in India; and the presentation of the Gospel to Hindu India has suffered loss thereby. It is also courageous, because in several respects it challenges some of the popular trends in recent missionary theory and policy, and upholds the ‘liberal’ tradition of Christian thought, which is often regarded today (mistakenly, we believe) as ‘out of date’.

In the last few years, under the influence of Kraemer Visser’t Hooft and many of the younger Indian Christians leaders, great emphasis has been laid upon the essential separateness of the Christian Gospel, as compared with all other religions, and the uselessness (or even harmfulness) of attempting to find points of contact between them and the revelation of God in Christ. If the missionary is to study them, it will only be with a view to discover how to present the essential Gospel in forms that will not needlessly antagonise its hearers; not with the idea of discovering any real affinity between the Gospel and the non-Christian faiths.

But to Dr. Appasamy, the value of studying the Hindu heritage of India is more than this. He believes that through that heritage, God Himself has been speaking and working, and he repudiates the idea that “in the Christian religion He has spoken, and in the other religions, He has not” (p. 16). Now, if God has really spoken, “in sundry places and diverse manners”, through the Hindu tradition, and if the same God “hath spoken unto us by His Son”, - then there must be a real, ‘organic’ connection between the two; because both are, in varying measure; inspired by one and the same Divine Spirit. That is not to put them on the same level,-which Dr. Appasamy certainly does not do. (pp. 246; 247 etc.).

In comparing the Christian Gospel with Hinduism, the method he adopts is this. He begins with an interesting introduction in which he refers to his father, a convert from Hinduism to Christianity, who after his conversion never ceased to regard his ancestral faith with respect. Then he defines his main theme, and develops it, first by setting forth the teaching and example of our Lord in relation to certain great themes, the Life of Prayer, Public Service, the Nature of God, Sin, Forgiveness, Fellowship with God, the Future Life, the Church and under each theme, he also gives extensive quotations from the Hindu Scriptures, indicating the points both of resemblance and contrast. Dr. Appasamy’s wide range of reading stands him in good stead here, and enables him to draw upon an immense storehouse of knowledge for his quotations and illustrations.

A perusal of these chapters leaves on our mind two outstanding impressions. First, that of the clear supremacy of the life and teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. Under each of the headings, it seems to us that it is He who strikes the highest note in His, teaching, and achieves the highest level in His life. This extensive survey of His words and example, Set side by side with some of the noblest products of the Hindu tradition, confirms our belief that He alone is worthy to claim our ultimate loyalty.

But side by side with this is another impression, no less clear; and that is, the real affinity between all types of religious experience, Christian and non-Christian. Throughout these quotations, we seem to hear notes of One Voice; not indeed with uniform clearness, nor always at the same level of inspiration, but resonant with a profound spiritual unity of note. Take, for instance, the Tamil Manikkavachakar’s sense of sin and forgiveness and see how closely akin it is to St. Paul or St. Augustine: -

"To me, mean as I was, with no good thing. Thou didst grant grace,
Thou can in grace on this same earth, didst show Thy mighty feet
To me, who lay mere slave, - meaner than any dog,
Essential grace more precious than a mother's love!"
(p. 97)

Or note how Tulsidas teaches that true service to man must be rooted in the love of God and inspired by the Spirit of God. - the Two Great Commandments hanging together, as in our Lord’s teaching: -

"Grant me, O Master, by thy grace
To follow all the good and pure;
To be content with simple things;
To use my fellows, not as means, but ends;

To speak no ill of others;
To have a mind at peace;

Set thou my feet upon this path,
And keep me steadfast in it;
Thus, only shall I please thee, serve thee right"
(p. 142).

Such quotations could be multiplied from Dr. Appasamy’s pages; and we think that most readers who study them without dogmatic pre-suppositions will come to the conclusion that here we can catch echoes of the same Divine Voice that spoke by the Hebrew prophets, and, with unrivalled clearness, by Jesus our Lord. In varying measures each tells us not only of man’s up-strivings towards God, but also of God’s down-coming to man.

At certain points, Dr. Appasamy further suggests that Christians may learn fresh aspects of truth from the heritage of India. Among these is the thought of God as Mother, which is prominent in. Hinduism, but almost entirely absent from the Bible. On this point Dr. Appasamy writes: -

“Probably, as Christianity becomes naturalised’in India the idea of God as Mother will find rapid entrance into Christian thought, as it is so deeply rooted in the soil of India. It is a beautiful way of thinking of the tender, devoted and unselfish love of God. Provided we realise some of the dangers to which the doctrine has led in the past, and are on our guard against them, there is no reason why we should not think of God as Mother. While Jesus does not speak of God as Mother, the doctrine is not in any way opposed to the spirit or the letter of His teaching and life” (p. 73).

Not all readers will agree with Dr. Appasamy in this or in some other of his contentions. But we believe they will all be grateful to him for bringing before them an array of facts, not hitherto easily accessible to the average student, which require serious consideration by all thoughtful Christians and especially by those who maintain that there is no ‘point of contact’ between the Christian revelation and the non-Christian religions.

Dr. Appasamy’s method of appeal to the Christian Scriptures is sober and scholarly and reminds us of his former friend and co-author, B.H. Streeter. He accepts the evidence of the Synoptic Gospels as broadly reliable, while admitting that here and there certain passages are open to question. While he quotes from the Fourth Gospel and Synoptists alike, he is careful, when quoting from the former, to recognise that its evidence is not of the same kind as that of the Synoptists; and at the same time, he does not go to the other extreme of dismissing its evidence as unhistorical and valueless. (p. 269 etc.)

Here, and there, the present reviewer finds himself unable to agree with Dr. Appasamy’s exegesis; e.g., in the suggestion that our Lord applied to Himself the term ‘Son of Man’, not merely to indicate that he was the Messiah, but also to imply that He was the Ideal Man. (p. 248). It seems to us that Dalman and Schweitzer, among others, have shown conclusively that the title ‘Son of Man’ was, in our Lord’s day, simply a recognised title of the Messiah, derived from Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Apocalyptic books; and that the attempt to read into it the idea of ‘Representative Manhood’ is really an anachronism.

But this is but a small point. As a whole, we cordially welcome Dr. Appasamy’s book. Its appearance is an encouraging reminder that the Indian Church is producing thinkers today who can deal in a scholarly and careful way with some of the larger issues which are confronting the Christian movement in India. We believe that the challenge of Neo-Hinduism to the Christian Gospel can be met far better by patient, scientific methods, such as Dr. Appasamy adopts than by merely ‘confronting’ Hinduism with the Christian Creed, as a fixed and final dogmatic system. Most readers will, we think, find in it much that will strengthen their Christian faith; and will be able to echo the words quoted by Dr. Appasamy from an outstanding student of Comparative Religion, Dr. R.A. Hume: -

“I would testify that the study of the various religions has produced a greater confidence in the unequalled religious value of the Christian Bible, and especially in the supremacy of Jesus Christ” (p. 260).

Can God Suffer?

BY RT. REV. J. SANDEGREN, D. D., The Bishop of Tranquebar.

(At the Kodaikanal Missionary Convention in May 1943 Dr. J. Sandegren, the Bishop of Tranquebar, delivered four addresses under the general heading, ‘The Suffering God’. The four addresses dealt with:

1. Can God Suffer?
2. The Love of God constraineth God,
3. The Love of Christ constraineth Christ and
4. The Love of Christ constraineth me

The C.L.S. Madras has asked to be allowed to publish the addresses and the Bishop has sent the manuscript there. The first chapter, which is an introduction to the following three addresses, may be of special interest to the readers of The Pilgrim. I have obtained the permission of the Bishop of Tranquebar to print it here though the whole book will appear later. I hope that many of those who read this chapter will want to read the whole book when it is published by the C.L.S. - Editor, The Pilgrim).

Indian thought has dealt much with whether God can suffer. One clear answer is given by the Vedanta philosophy in the name used for God: Satchitananda. This name shows a high and noble conception of God as existence, consciousness and bliss. The word Sat reminds us of the name Jehovah, “I am that I am”, or “The Eternal” as Moffat puts it. When we get Indian Moffats who translate the Bible into their Indian mother tongues I would not be surprised if for Jehovah they form a proper name to denote God’s existence and truth from the word Sat, or from the corresponding Dravidian word “Iruvan” which according to Father Heras is found in Mohenjodaro. We can picture God who is Sat, eternal existence, and Chit, consciousness knowing everything, and Ananda, perfection and bliss. It is a worthy conception of the Vedanta philosophy and of Sri Sankarachari (1100 years ago), one of the ablest brains produced in India, a country of so much brain power. Sir Radbakrishnan carries the discussion beyond Sankarachari and Ramanujachari defining Ananda as “active enjoyment or unimpeded exercise of capacity! It is not sinking into nothingness, but the perfection of being” (The Philosophy of the Upanishads).

And still a Christian cannot be satisfied with this picture of God. Satchitananda has no moral attributes. He is “beyond good and evil”. He cannot suffer. He is not the God revealed to us through Christ. Unless to this picture of God is added love and suffering, the conception ultimately is comfortless, yea cruel, for frail human beings. If Christ had used the name Satchitananda; it would have been quite correct, because then we should have seen this God through Christ and the need of a God who can suffer would have been filled. Here is an irreconcilable contrast between the Christian religion and monistic Vedanta or Advaita. If we ask: “Can God suffer?”, our answer is not: “He can”, but: “Unless the conception of suffering love has its proper place in our picture of God the picture would to a Christian today seem so incomplete as to be definitely wrong”. Where Vedanta, or any human religion at its best ends, there the Gospel begins adding the picture of a God who is active and suffering love. Thereby the Gospel acts like a leaven hid in the meal; “all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17); or to use Moffat’s translation: “the new has come”.

If Satchidananda is an expression of something of the best of Aryan Hinduism, we can also ask the Dravidians to give us their name for God. The new Tamil Bible translation has introduced the name Kadavul to denote God. Kadavul is a pure and lofty conception. It is usually translated “He who is beyond our understanding”. But if a concrete meaning is earlier than an abstract meaning, the name might originally denote “He who has stepped beyond the normal measure of man”, i.e., “Prapternatural”, “Deified man”, or it may mean “He who after completing creation has stepped, beyond His world and now rests on the high and distant heavenly mountain, as a watcher of right and wrong”. It is a somewhat pale picture of a God who is resting, inactive, retired. Therefore, worship is not given to this distant inactive God, but rather to the many, deities or demons, filling the space between the far-away resting God and man here in his distress. If the Tamil Bible takes up this name and lets us see this God through Christ He becomes changed through the leaven into a near and active God, and we get a correct picture of the high Creator who is active and therefore also can suffer.

The highest and most comforting name for God which Christ has shown us is found in the Lord’s Prayer. Christ taught us to pray: “Our Father which art in heaven”. This name can also be used and has been used without Christ.

But then instead of being our dearest and most comforting name it will be a cold and disappointing name. What does it mean without Christ? It says that God is our Father, i.e., our Originator to whom we owe our existence. But alas! He is in heaven, that is far away without contact with weak, suffering man. What comfort is it to me to know that this God is my Originator when He is so distant that I cannot get in contact with Him, and He does not come into contact with me!

The picture of a Suffering God is not something accidental which may be added or left out. It is to that extent essential that without it our conception of God becomes wrong and comfortless.

Indian thinking has not much room for the idea of a Suffering God. If history is conceived as a ring or as a wheel a snake biting its tail, as in India or as a steady evolution upward, sometimes in the West, there is no need for God to suffer. But if history is conceived as a drama, i.e., action, where God acts and is in constant battle with a strong opponent, a battle in which all men have to take part on one side or the other, and where the battle line sways to and fro so that at the moment it seems difficult to decide who of the two opponents is victorious, if, in other words, we have a dramatic and dualistic view of history, then it is unavoidable to conceive of a Suffering God.

In India, we use the terms Advaita, Dvaita and Vishishtadvaita, i.e., monism or unity, dualism or plurality and modified monism or unity in plurality. In the Bible and in Christian theology we can find similarly monistic tendency emphasising God as holy sovereign will and ascribing everything to Him, and we find a dualistic tendency realising that there is a constant struggle between two opposing willpowers, good and evil, God and the devil; and again we meet; attempts to find the synthesis in the tension between these two opposite views.

A purely monistic view of God and the world is more logical and easier to defend and has, as we have seen, no need of a Suffering God. As soon as you break the logical monistic outlook, refusing a mechanical view of the universe or a deterministic conception of history, you are led: to conceive of a God in struggle and agony.

Jesus was rejected by the orthodox Jews because He presented a picture of God other than theirs. Their view of God, was legalistic or “forensic” from the “forum” at Rome where the courts were held and rational or doctrinaire. They viewed God as a holy and sovereign giver and dispenser of the law which says: “So much sin, so much punishment” That is logically clear. But Jesus broke this logical and rational world-order and without diminishing God’s holy sovereignty and stern justice, provided a way for salvation which seems “irrational”, because it goes against human understanding: viz., the way of suffering love. We may e.g., compare the teaching of Jesus with that of John the Baptist of whom Jesus said: “Among those that are born of women there hath not risen a greater than he” (Matthew 11:11) John said: “The axe is laid unto the root of the tree; every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire” (Matthew 3:10) Jesus added: “Yes, the tree deserves to be cut down; but let it alone this year also, let me toil and suffer for it” (Luke 18:8). John said about the coming Messiah: “He will gather His wheat into the garden; but burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire”, (Matthew 3:12). Jesus added: “Let the wheat and the tares grow together unto the harvest” (Matthew 18:30) He gives a time of grace which can only be obtained through His suffering. There must be suffering because there is the fight with the enemy. If we ask: “From whence are the tares, the evil, the wars? (Matthew 13:27), Jesus answers:”An enemy hath done this”. He does not explain the existence of the enemy or the origin of evil. He knows that there is a fearful battle to be fought between two strong opponents. And He knows two more things. Not only that the outcome is quite clear and the final victory absolutely sure; but also that even now -while the battle line sways to and fro - God’s sovereignty is so unlimited that not a sparrow falls to the ground without the will of the heavenly Father and that the very hairs on our head are numbered (Matthew 10:29,30).

If the great prophets of the Old Testament tended to have a monistic outlook ascribing the calamities which befell the Jewish nation to God’s punishment the Gospels in the New Testament: add something to it viz., dualistic outlook acknowledging the power of the enemy. God has not willed the present war. “An enemy hath done this”. Shall we then go to the opposite extreme and say: “God tried to prevent the war but failed”? No: that would be to go too far in dualistic thinking. Instead, we shall say: “The present war is a suffering for God, even greater than for you or me or any man, so great that if God were a man He would not be able to bear it. He works day and night to overcome the causes for war, the sin and selfishness in individuals and in groups”. He “outsuffers” it, i.e., He overcomes it through suffering love. If we are not to grow bitter on account of the evil in the world we must either close our eyes and hearts or we must realise that God is in agony even more than we and that He in His time will carry His gracious plans to perfection.

We are just now in the midst of a discovery deeper than ever before that God suffers. It is partly a blessed fruit of the suffering of the last and present world-wars. This does not mean that God has allowed millions of human beings to suffer through the war in order that some theologians might find a new definition of God to be valid for some years until it is superseded by some other definition. But ifs we believe that God is Sovereign also in cruel wars and that He through them can lead those men who are willing to be led by Him to a deeper realisation of truths which already are contained in the Scripture but not yet so fully realised; or if we believe that the Holy Spirit works even now taking the words of Christ and through the sufferings which the human race is undergoing, letting us see therein a depth and fullness richer than anything known before, we can see faintly that God has His gracious plans also in the present evil: time and that those who have eyes to see will be able to get through these calamities a richer view and a more complete conception of a Suffering God. Psalm 103:7 says: “He made known His ways unto Moses. His acts unto the children of Israel” The children of Israel only saw the acts as they were completed. But Moses was privileged also to see a little of the way along which God prepared His acts. So at this time some can see a little of the agony of God even before, His final acts are known.

It is an amazing fact that, according to J.K. Mozley; between the third century when Gregory Thaumaturgus wrote his book, Concerning the Possibility and Impassibility in God, and the year 1900 no Christian writer published a book on the subject. “The Suffering God”. Till the beginning of this century Christian theology has with few exceptions maintained the impassibility of God, i.e., that God cannot suffer. The Thirty-Nine Articles say that God hath no passions (Article I). The Westminister Confession says the same.

Luther treads other ways in his controversy with Erasmus. In his book, On the Free Will of Man (De Libero Arbitrio), Erasmus tries to show the absurdity of making God responsible for calamities falling on men who have their free will, and he writes: “Would the righteous God deplore that death of His people, which He Himself works in them? This would seem quite absurd”. In refutation of Erasmus’ clever book Luther, an angry titan, wrote his difficult book, On the Unfree Will of Man (De Servo Arbitrio). The Methodist minister who prepared the last English edition of the book calls it, The Bondage of the Will. As Hinduism differentiates between the impersonal and impassible and higher Brahman and the personal and self-limited and lower Isvara, so Luther sharply distinguishes between “the hidden God” (Deus absconditus) and “the revealed God” (Deus revelatus). The hidden God, says Luther, “is nothing to us and does not concern, us”; “God hidden in majesty neither deplores nor takes away death”. But, when Luther speaks of God revealed through Christ he shows a strongly dualistic outlook, as if sin, death, devil’s power and even the law and the wrath of God were enemy powers in constant struggle with God. Barth has been deeply, influenced by Luther’s conception of “the hidden God”. But we are here concerned with “the revealed God”. I believe that Isvara in Hinduism cannot suffer, and that any suffering which Siva may seem to undergo in his_Lila is not real. But Luther’s “revealed God” is far from impassible.

From the beginning of this century we note a strong change and a growing appreciation of the fact that God suffers.

One of the first theologians instinctively to feel it and increasingly to teach it was Archbishop N. Soderblom in Sweden, a man who more than many others during the first three decades of this century felt the burden of mankind as his and had visionary glimpses of things which others only saw much later. From 1901 onwards he pointed out that the dualism in the Christian religion is not a metaphysical dualism between spirit and matter or between finite and infinite but a moral dualism between God and the devil, between divine suffering, conquering love and radical, unexplainable evil.

Typical for the present growing understanding of the need of a Suffering God is that one of the books of Dr. E. Eidem, the present Archbishop of Sweden, bears the title, The Suffering God. Before the world-wars probably no Archbishop or theologian would have thought of publishing a book with that title. In his remarkable book the Archbishop portrays the suffering of God in the Old and New. Testaments and now, and shows that forgiving love cannot exist unless it also suffers.

Albert Schweitzer tells us that many men who experienced the horrors of the first world-war lost their faith in religion. But some of the soldiers whom he had earlier taught in the confirmation class thanked him for teaching them that the Christian religion does not explain everything and that there are strong forces constantly opposing God and causing Him agony.

Of special importance in this connection is a statement by a young English theologian in his book, The Faith and Modern Thought, 1910. He writes: “When Reason says, ‘It is God who made all the world; He therefore is responsible; it is He who should suffer’, we answer, ‘Yes, of course; He does suffer; look at the Cross’. And when Reason cries: ‘If God were the loving Father of whom you speak he could not endure the misery of His children; His heart would break’; we answer. Yes, of course; it does break; look at the Cross”. These are brave words, and the person who wrote this in 1910 before the first world-war deserves to be elevated to the biggest post in his Church. The author of this statement is William Temple, the present Archbishop of Canterbury. In his book Christus Veritas, Temple clarifies his previous statement: “It is truer to say that there is suffering in God than that God suffers … If Christ is the revelation of God, then God is not impassible. But to say baldly that He is passible is not true either. There is suffering in God, but it is always an element in the joy of the triumphant sacrifice”.

Some may not agree that the statement by the young William Temple before the war was daring. They may say that they always knew that God suffers. Their criticism might show that they have been blind and not seen how through the unprecedented sufferings of our time the Church was advanced to a deeper conception of the agony of God. Again, it may show that we have learnt many things since the first world war began so that a thought which in 1910 was daring now seems natural, and that we have grown with the times in the proper way, i.e., scarcely noticing it ourselves.

An indication of the fact that since the beginning of this century and especially through the cruel wars, the Church has progressed in its view of God’s agony is found in our hymn books and prayer books where we seldom see reference to a Suffering God in the sense in which this term is used in these addresses. Poets have a “licentia poetica”, a right to say things which others may not express as they do. Thus, there are hymn writers speaking of a Suffering God in a way which we would not like to do in prose. Charles Wesley sings of “A Crucified God” who “died to save my soul from death” and in other hymns speaks of God’s death “for me”. Isaac Watts, in what we may consider to be the finest hymn in the English language, sings of “the death of Christ, my God”. J. Rist (died 1667), one of the best known German hymn writers of his time, sings: “God himself is dead. He died on the Cross”. The Swedish translation has tried to retain the good poetry, avoiding the bad theology of the original.

The conception of God’s agony which is now growing in the Church is not so much that God was in Christ, even when Christ hung on the cross (2 Corinthians 5:19), but rather that God’s suffering began long before the Word became flesh and lasts after the resurrection and ascension of Christ until now.

A Neoplatonist like Dean W.R. Inge ought to oppose the idea of a Suffering God. But he writes in Speculum Animae: “The good news of Christianity is that suffering is itself divine It is not foreign to the experience of God Himself”.

B.H. Streeter, in “God and the World’s Pain” (in Concerning Prayer), says: “If Christ truly gives to us the portrait of the unseen God the crucifixion is not merely an event which happened once during three hours of time; it stands for something which is eternal in the life of God-but so also does the Resurrection”.

A.S. Pringle Pattison, in The Idea of God says: “No God, or Absolute, existing in solitary, bliss and perfection, but a God who lives in the perpetual giving of Himself, who shares the life of His finite creatures bearing in and with them the whole burden of their finitude, their sinful wanderings and sorrows and the suffering without which they cannot be made perfect”.

God’s love is often rebuffed love and therefore suffering love. But it is not therefore helpless passive suffering, but active.

A word of caution is here necessary because every correct idea is apt to be misunderstood and misused, and we are on dangerous ground when nowadays we meet numerous references to a finite God or a growing God who is not yet complete. It is true that the new Tamil translation of Ephesians 1:2 tells us that the glorified Christ is not yet complete. The Authorised Version says: “The Church is the fullness of Him (i.e., Christ) that filleth all in all”. Even Moffat is conservative and says: “The Church is filled by Him who fills the universe entirely”. But the new Tamil version says as correctly as the English versions but unlike them: “The Church is the fullness of Him who all in all is being filled”. If this Tamil rendering is a sign of “Indian Christian Theology”, of influence from Indian thinking or Indian atmosphere on Theology, it should be noted with interest. This translation implies that as long as the Church, the Body of Christ is incomplete, Christ, the Head, is also incomplete. That is biblical and correct. But to speak of a growing, struggling God is dangerous and will lead, us astray as soon as we leave God’s revelation in Christ Jesus. When Tennyson sings: “Ring in the Christ who is yet to be”, it is beautiful. But when H.G. Wells in his book, God the Invisible King, speaks of a God who is courageous, youthful and vigorous, though limited in strength, and who grows inasmuch as humanity grows, then a Christian will be unable to follow him. H.R. Mackintosh writes in Some Aspects of Christian Belief that our time has become more than usually familiar with the talk of a “finite” or a “growing” God.

We must therefore respect the fear that through our talk of a Suffering God we make God too human” and like us. But if our thinking is securely centred in Christ it is not only safe but necessary to realise that God is in agony more than any human being can understand or describe. In fact both the Old and the New Testaments are full of it. When we now turn to see a little of what the Old and the New testaments have to speak about the suffering of God we must note three things. Firstly, the Bible is chaste and reticent. It does not give us a purana about the fierce struggle between the goddess of love and the demon of anger. But it lets us see glimpses of God’s heart and the struggle there between wounded holiness and saving love.

Secondly, it is not only the peace of God which passeth all understanding (Philippians 4:7) but also the suffering of God yea, everything we have to say about God. Therefore, the Old Testament often adds the words “as it were” or “like unto” or similar words when speaking in human language of divine things. E.g., in Exodus 24:10 we read: “There was under His feet as it were a paved work of sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in its clearness”. Or we read in Ezekiel 8:3, “He put forth the form of a hand and took me”. As the agony of God cannot here on earth either be fully understood or adequately described we must always, at least mentally, have an “as it were” before our statement on it.

Finally, God’s bliss and the agony of His love exist together. Nygren and Eidem point out that Plato in his Symposium tells of the birth of Love (Eros) and calls one of the parents Poros, i.e., resourceful initiative and energy and the other parent Penia, i.e., poverty and want. Thereby Plato has tried to show that love is composed of bliss and suffering. Is this not our own experience? In John 16:21 Jesus says: “A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come; but as soon as she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for joy that a man is born into the world” In Acts 5:41 we read that the apostles rejoiced “that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name”. In Acts 16 we read that Paul and Silas were beaten with many stripes and cast into the inner prison, and there they sang praises unto God. Such instances show that suffering and bliss can be combined among men. In 1 Timothy 1:11 we read about “the glorious gospel of the blessed God”. The word “blessed” means full of bliss or ananda. That idea is further strengthened in 1 Timothy 6:15,16: “The blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who only hath immortality”. The “glorious gospel” is the good news of the suffering and victory of Christ. Again ananda and agony are mentioned together. We must accept the paradox. On the one side: none can suffer as God. On the other side, God is the blessed and only Potentate. Both statements are true and both are needed for a full-orbed conception of our God.

When my Danish friend Skorgaard Petersen forty years ago spoke about the subject with which we are dealing here he told a little story. As a school boy, he was interested in Botany and took various flowers which he pressed in his album. One day his teacher saw the flowers and said: “If you really want to study a flower, you should also have the stem and the root from which the flower was grown”. So my friend said, the flower of God’s suffering love is seen on the Cross on Golgotha. But if we really want to understand that flower we must study the life of Christ on earth before the final passion which may be likened to the stem and God’s suffering in the Old Testament which may be called the root.

Bibliography

A few books may be mentioned dealing with the subject of the Suffering God. I have learnt most from Swedish teachers whose books as a rule are not available in English, e.g., Archbishops N. Soderblom and E. Eidem and particularly Bishop G. Aulen. Foremost among the latter’s writings I place The Christian Picture of God. One book by Aulen is available in English under the title, Christus Victor. Other Swedish books available in English are N. Soderblom, The Passion of Christ, and A. Nogren, Eros and Agape. These three books are translated (and abridged) by Father Hebert whose name is a guarantee for a good translation. Luther’s, The Bondage of the Will, is translated by H. Cole, 1823, corrected by H. Atherton and published by the Sovereign Grace Union, The Parsonage 98 Camberwell Grove, London, S.E. 5 1931. The library of the Kodaikanal Missionary Union has a copy. Though Luther considered it his best book; few will now care to read through it completely. A purged and abridged edition with introduction and explanatory notes would be a suitable task for a student aspiring for D. D. degree.

A.E. Garvie, The Christian Doctrine of the God-head is useful. Further, books by W. Temple, e.g., The Faith and Modern Thought and Christus Veritas are valuable. The first English book in our time on the subject was Marshall Randles, Impassibility or the Blessed God, 1900. J. K. Mozley, The Impassibility of God, 1926, contains a list of later English literature on the subject. Both Randles and Mozley, as also Von Hugel in his Essays and Addresses, 1926, oppose the idea of God’s suffering. E. Eidem gives the opposite view in his book, The Suffering God, second edition 1926 (only in Swedish). In India C.S. Paul has written a good monograph, The Suffering God, 1932, one volume of the Indian Studies, edited by, Dr. A.J. Appasamy. D. S. Sarma, What is Hinduism?, 1939, presents a very attractive view of Hinduism and the non-suffering God. Modern treatises on the Christian Idea of God, such as H.M. Hughes’ book with this title, cannot but contain a chapter dealing with our problem.

Benares Institute of Hinduism

The next session of the Institute is expected to be held from the 4th Oct. to the 5th Nov. 1943. Hospitality will be arranged by the Benares United City Mission. Tuition fees will be Rs 5/- and upwards according to salaries. Entertainment, charges will be Rs. 1/- per day Indian style, Rs. 3/- European style and Rs. 2/- for a mixed style The following Christian teachers besides local Hindu scholars are expected to lecture viz., Dr. Appasamy of S. India; Dr. Paranjothi of Isabella College, Lucknow; Prof. V.E. Dutt of Serampore College; Mr. Ashananda Nag of Calcutta. Various subjects will be dealt with such as the Vedas, the Gita, the Bhakti Movement, Saivism, the Vedanta, Modern, Movements, Orthodox Living Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, etc. Ample time will be devoted to practical investigation of Hindu beliefs and institutions. A Prospectus giving further details is available. Interested friends and prospective students may kindly register their names as soon as possible with Mr. R. C Das United City Mission, Benares Cantonment

Printed at the Hilal Press, Tirunelveli 7-1943

Indian Contributions to Christian Thought

The Gospel and India’s Heritage. By A.J. Appasamy. London and Madras. S.P.C.K. 8s. 6d. New York, Macmillan.

A New Social Order. By Eddy Asirvatham Foreword by the Rt. Hon. Srinivasa Sastri, Madras, Indian Christian Book Club. Rs. 3 and 3-8-0.

Bishop B.F. Westcott once spoke of the raising up in India of ‘men who shall interpret the faith of the West to the East, and bring back to us new illustrations of the one infinite and eternal Gospel’. That vision still awaits adequate fulfilment, for notable constructive thought can hardly be claimed hitherto as among the many encouraging signs of life and growth in the Indian Church. These two books, therefore, are warmly to be welcomed as a distinct stirring of the waters. The one is a thoughtful presentation of the life and teaching of Christ in the light of Hindu religious thought; the other a painstaking and detailed discussion of all the main questions involved in the concept of a new social order.

Dr. Appasamy’s, book strikes deeper. Written with a scholarly, knowledge of both Hinduism and Christianity, it represents a different trend in Indian Christian thought. The author is convinced of the uniqueness of the Christian revelation and writes persuasively of the Christ as the sole Avatar of God and, in contrast to Dr. Asirvatham and his fellow-authors of Rethinking Christianity, is sure of the indispensable value of the organised Church and its fundamental doctrines. It is perhaps a weakness that no theological exposition of these is attempted; so that we are left, for instance, with the apparent antinomy of such statements as the following unresolved: ‘God Himself became incarnate, lived as a man’; ‘“I and my Father are one” did not refer to any oneness or identity in the real nature of God and Christ’.

But the special purpose of the book is to present the Gospel in the light of the ‘rich spiritual heritage of India’, especially that contained in the Bhakti movement. He is alive to the possible dangers in this, and warns readers of them. Nothing Christian should be neglected because it is not Indian, nor anything retained which is not true to the mind of Christ. But he thinks the foreignness of the presentation of the faith often results in some unreality and lack of depth; a richer and deeper spiritual life would be possible if cultivated ‘along lines congenial to the Indian soul’. The Indian orientation leads him to demand a greater emphasis on communion with God and Christ as the central Christian experience, while still insisting on the fact of sin and the need of forgiveness, a sense of which ‘is not very deep among Hindus generally’. In this connection the doctrine of Karma is carefully examined and the truth and error in it disentangled. The idea of God as Mother he would retain despite some dangers in it, as a ‘beautiful way of thinking of the tender, devoted and unselfish love of God’. While rejecting the notion of a series of rebirths, he pleads for the idea of ‘spiritual development through eternity’ as an unobjectionable Christian equivalent. Wherever possible he illustrates the teaching of Christ by analogies from Indian religion, but sees them always as ‘broken lights’, and rejects everything out of line with the fuller truth in Christ. Thus, ‘in India there is no clear recognition of the social character of religion’; but Christianity should not follow the individualistic lines of Hinduism. This is a book to be welcomed as a step towards that ‘original or creative Christian theology in India’ the lack of which the author recognises.

C.B. Young in the International Review of Missions, April 1943.

The Gospel and India’s Heritage is available from the S.P.C.K. Post Box 501, Madras.

Price: Stiff board Rs. 2-4-0; Cloth Rs. 3-0-0.