Introduction: Christology,
a reflection on God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, lies at the core of Christian
theology and Christian mission. The
first Christian theologian, St. Paul, claims that he received the Gospel
‘through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ (Gal.1:12). Though Jesus Christ is the same yesterday,
today and forever (Heb.13:8), the understanding or interpretation of the
experience of Jesus Christ varies according to the context of the person or
community. Such variations are found
already in the NT. For instances, while
Peter confesses Jesus to be the Anointed One (Mk.8:29), Paul presents Jesus as
the man whom God raised from the dead and through whom God will establish his
justice (Acts 17:31). This process of
seeking fresh images of Jesus in the life of the believing community has never
ceased. Similarly, we will attempt here
to examine how such interpretation continued in the Indian understanding of
Jesus Christ.
Indian concepts
about Jesus Christ: It is interesting to note that the first
attempts at an Indian Christology came from a group of informed Hindu leaders
who believed that Jesus helps Hindus to become better Hindus and shows the way
to make India a better place to live in.
We will study the earlier attempts to express the mystery of Jesus
Christ in Indian terms as follows:
1 Jesus the guru: Ram
Mohan Roy (1772-1833), a pioneer of liberal reforms of Hinduism, felt, that
though the love of God was strongly present in the Hindu tradition, it however,
lacked the love of one’s fellow men. So
he found Jesus to be the teacher (Guru) of service to fellow men and women, irrespective
of caste, rank and wealth.
2 Jesus the avatar: The
object of the perennial Indian seeking had been the true Self, the center of
human being. The Self, the Atman, is one
with Brahman, the ultimate mystery. It
is that by which everything is known, yet which itself remains unknown. It is in this background of pure knowledge and
consciousness that thinkers like V. Chakkarai, P. Chenchiah, Abhishiktananda
and others have developed a Christology that can be termed as mystical
Christology.
For
Chakkarai, the Christ experience centers on the Spirit through whom we know
Christ. In fact the Holy Spirit is the
Christ. Chakkarai understands avatar as
a progress from historic to the spiritual, from external to the internal, from
time to eternity. This process happens
in the Spirit. Jesus Christ is the
avatar of God; the Holy Spirit in human experience is the incarnation of Jesus
Christ. Thus in Chakkarai, the
historical Jesus is subsumed by the spiritual Christ. Jesus is the only full revelation of
God. God is the unmanifest and Jesus is
the manifest.
3 Jesus the Adipurusha: For one of the best known creative Indian thinkers, P. Chenchiah
(1886-1959) Jesus Christ is the
Adipurusha (the original cosmic Man) of a new creation. Thus he is the starter of a new stage in the
process of evolution. Chenchiah is more
interested in the fact of Jesus than the act of Jesus. “Jesus is beyond creeds, churches and they
can at best only point to him.” P.
Chenchiah feels that “In Jesus, God has come down to us to abide with us for
ever as a new cosmic energy.” Thus Jesus
is the power of God and the first fruit of a new creation. Chenchiah sees Jesus Christ more as the one
who brings humankind and cosmos to a new creative destiny than as one who saves
humans from sin by a sacrificial death.
In this sense he says Christianity begins not with Genesis but with the
new Adam Jesus.
Conclusion: The
Christology that we have seen above is a logical sequence of the Indian
renaissance. These thinkers made bold
attempts at developing a Christology relevant to the Indian context. It absorbed the spirit of the renaissance but
left untouched the social and religious roles of the lower ranks. Our understanding of Jesus must lead to a commitment
to the enhancement of life in all its humanness because Jesus takes people’s
life in its wholeness.
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