Christianity
By tradition, Christianity is said to have
arrived in India with Saint Thomas, one of the apostles of Jesus Christ, who
spent some years in South India and possibly died there. However, others
believe that the first missionary to arrive in the country was Saint
Bartholomew. Historically, Christian missionary activity started with the
advent of Saint Francis Xavier in 1544. He was followed by Portuguese
missionaries at first and eventually by missionaries from other countries like
Denmark, Holland, Germany and Great Britain. Throughout the 18th and 19th
centuries Catholic as well as Protestant missionaries preached Christian
doctrines in India and also made important contributions to social improvement
and education in India.
Much of the modern influences in the Indian society can be attributed to the
role of Christianity in India. Christian missionaries helped in setting up
schools and colleges all over India and also spread the message of faith and
goodwill in the country. Christianity and its teachings influenced a number of
intellectuals and thinkers in India, including Mahatma Gandhi.
Today, the Christians in India number about 30 million and consist of people
from every denomination of Christianity.
Just as Budhism and Islam were positive personal and universal religions,
christainity also had the same characteristics and was founded by Jesus Christ
like Buddha and Mohammad, through his own experience, teaching and deliberate
policy. There are essentially said to be 3 things in a founded religion.
1. Human need for some good, physical, moral or spiritual being.
2. Conception of some.divine or supernatural being or object which satisfies
this need.
3. Attitude or conduct of man showing that the need is fulfilled by the divine
or God or is being fulfilled The need can be negatively speaking deliverance
from evil, suffering, sin and death and positively the attainment of the
enternal and the blessed life in union with God. Buddhism is defective on these
two counts. To it evil is suffering and deliverance is in individual; moral and
spiritual self-culture. The end is described as Nirvana, which (even if it
implies conscious immorality) is a negative concept meaning deliverance from
suffering. Buddhism weary of Hindu abstractions and sutalties was content with
agnosticism in regard to the divine.
Islam is also defective due to its imperfect conception of sin and an
unspiritual view of the realm of bliss while its view of God as absolute,
unconditioned till it (as advance on Buddhism) presents a joyous faith in Him
as the Saviour and Friend of its own people. He is more like an authoritative
despot to be feared.
The personality of the founder must be viwewed as the exampler or prophet or
redeamer or their combination. Buddhism in the first stage knew the founder as
an exampler of the process of enlightenment. But later Buddha was looked upon
as a prophet and from his experience as a redeamer. The founder of Islam was a
prophet inspired with definite and direct messages from God. In Buddhism the
prophet and in Islam the exampler were obscure but still the personal character
and conduct of the prophet had moulded the ethics of his religion. The
"Imitation" of Mohammad is confined to the external acts, but the influence of
his spirit and personal life had gone deeper. Christ was a perfect exampler of
the character of God, the father & full revealer of religious truth and
also as the redeamer whose personal experience, interpreted as His 'work'
changed the moral relations of God and men.
Though Buddha was agnostic about the Absolute Being but his followers later
thought of him as the incarnation of the Supreme spirit, Christianity from the
begining thought of christ as a super human being and an incarnate and as
exampler, revealer & redeamer. Mohammad gradually was the christ to his
followers as incarnate and redeamer.
The consciouness of christ about Himself was the basis of his whole attitude,
action, purpose and utterances or speech. He thought himself as the divine, a
superhuman conscious will. He called himself Messiah son of God and son of Man.
He was conscious of a new hitherto unknown relation to God. In his
self-consciousness, his self revealed as a jew. He went to the synogogue and
there be heard the law read out to him from tender years. And so also to the
Temple for the performances of his inherited duties. His study of scriptures
seemed deep, as his teaching was full of quotations & references from
scriptures and their new interpretations.
He held that God was creator and sustainer of nature and man and ruler of all,
and as Father he promulgated his law through Mosses. He was taught all this and
held them true. But differences arose about Temple worship and about
application of law to the details of daily conduct. God in his transcendent
holiness seemed to have vanished from the sin stained law. The voice of
prophecy had long ceased. The temple was defiled by conquerors and the holy
city was under foreign rule. The sense of fellowship with Jahwoh was broken,
yet the law was said to be there in written form. He grew up in such
humiliation and attacked the hyporacy of the followers of the law. He
emphasised what a man is "Inwordly" as from the heart all evil things proceed.
In his heart many may commit the vilest sins. It is the pure in heart he said,
"that shall receive the wisdom of God. For jews, the supreme law is love to God
and love to man. This manifested itself in faith, which should know no bounds
in obedience at all costs and in prayer, which should be frank, confident
energetic, persistant and unostentatious, there should be no formalism,
worldliness, superstitious or mere ceremonialism.
Idea of God
He assumed that God was holy and supreme. Man's awe of God, his majesty,
wisdom, purity of Jahweh of Jews are all justified. But Jesus with one word
transmuted the whole.
He taught men to think of God as a Father. By this one stroke a new meaning was
shot through the whole picture of God and a new light dawned on man. Though the
jews also talked about God as Father of Isreal or as Father of individual
Israelite yet Jesus made the name central and supreme in entirely a new way,
while avoiding many time other titles for God given by jews. This teaching came
out of the inner consciousness of Jesus and changed the face of God for the
hearts of men. There was continous moral harmony with the will of the father
and jesus was sinless and this sinlessness of christ was a fundamental
presuppotions of the essential Christian doctrines. The messianic note can be
judged in the statement, "He that hath seen me hath seen the father" or in "I
and my father are one". Those who will enter the kingdom of God must pass
through a great moral renewal but Jesus never appealed for pardon as he had
commited no sin as that would have produced intolerable agony in him. He called
himself as son of man but as a superman or a superhuman being and as king in
the kingdom of God which shows frankness humility and utter purity of soul and
freedom from personal guilt as God was mirrored always in the placid, teeming
depth of His own soul, though it is alleged that he was disobedient in
childhood unkind to a woman, impatient with his disciples, disloyal to his
mother, lawlessness in destroying swine, passionate in the temple towards
scribes and pharsies and sense of dishormony in his relations with God or
calling himself God as God alone is good or goodness is attributed to him.
Kingdome of God-His religion was that man depends upon God for all his needs
and things, temporal and spiritual, needs for the body and goodness for the
will. By kingdom of God he meant the inward spiritual and ethical state of
man's mind and heart in which by communion with God and the development of a
holy character, he shall fulfil the divine will and embody the divine spirit in
all his social relations. In heaven kingdom of God was complete, it was to be
brought on the earth in this way. It shall appear in acts of overwhelimging
power and glory and be seen by all men for their weal.
The jews then believed in many "existences" apart from Heaven and Hell, in evil
spirits with satan in command and in Angels of various grades and functions in
the service of God. Many beleived in the final and universal judgement and the
allotment of rewards and punishment. They had many such dreams. But jesus said
what is being done and what is to be done all are through Himself. The act of
God in the establishment of His Kingdom has for the fundamental and essential
element the sending of jesus. His idea of God was to be used to discover his
idea of the kingdom of God whose spirit and methods are seen now in nature and
providence jesus views the coming of the kingdom of God, as conditioned by
human historical events and acts. The kingdom can not be brought about with
force but by faith which is the basis of prayer. For Jesus the kingdom of God
is the active, direct rules by God of human life on earth as in heaven and is
to be established by acts of God as the coming of the son of Man and not by
cosmic catastrophies. The kingdom appears in works of healing, moral judgement
consequest of forgiveness of sin and in revelations of the father for this
day's faith and obedience to it through Himself as the Meshiah that the supreme
acts of God being performed in which the coming of that kingdom is to be
realised.
Miracles - Jesus as the Messiah reveals the father or God. This is his function
he has conquered the evil spirits and has power over lesser spirits of evil.
The miracle so called miracles were either inventions or legendary growths
arising from the desire to illustrate His teaching or defend his superhuman
claims. The later rationalism draws a distinction between the miracle of
healing and nature miracles such as multiplying the loaves, raising the dead,
walking on the sea etc. The former are retained and attested and historical,
the latter are rejected. The sins were forgiven by God and not by Jesus
(according to one view) as representative of God and as the Messiah. Against
the idea of the Jews that their Messiah is not expected to Die. Jesus said
"that a man should lose his life and this was the fundamental principle of the
kingdom. At the time of his death he preserved a calm consciousness which was
natural for a great mind and to think otherwise was absurd and below the
standard of many brave men and women. Regarding his ressuraction it can be said
that in his consciousness he carried more than the human hope for a future
life.
Sonship He even prophesied about his ressuraction. He seemed to have in his
consciousness the filial relationship with God, the Father and that is why he
called himself as his son. He was sent or that he had come showed his
Messiahship.
Son of Man
"Son of man" in actually the phrase equivalent to the human being " or the man
is Armanian language used by Jesus in his trial and has no other significance.
Messiah
In Jewish literature the word Messiah is also used for a powerful historical
king a warrior, an army a sudden and resistless revolution. So when at the
trial of Jesus it was told to the judges (who told Pilate the chief) That Jesus
claimed to be Messiah they did not lay the religious but the political charge
that he was claiming to be king or king of all the Jews. When Pilate was
unimpressed by this foolish idea he ordered executions. He was called "emissary
of Satan"
Revolt or hostility/Rebellion
He while preaching in the temple, called the jews "The lost sheep of the house
of Israel. He showed his unbroken will to bring Israel to repentance and into
subjugation to himself. His disciples maintained that he exposed the hypocracy
of the jews by his erudition and intuition & it seemed a Warfare between
the two kings of Israel and the sons of the kingdom and before his death his
disciples began to understand that it was a rebellion. On the cross he prayed
for the pardon of those who had rejected his kinship.
Some repented after his death and followed in his footsteps. They were called
the "Salt of the earth" or light of the world" and distinguished their
rightousness from that of the Parisees. After all they thought that Jesus was
essentially a teacher and a personal revealer and he went about doing good just
as he expected others to do and pictured to himself as to others certain
transcendental acts of God lying for the future through which the kingdom would
be established. Out of a multitude of his followers he selected 12, who were
bearers of his gospels as Apostles.
His teaching:- He had no set rules, nor any institutional machinery to have
penitence, no rules of worship, but wanted worship, no long prayers, but wanted
them to have a brief prayer. He insisted on doing the will of the father but no
set commandments. He made love to God and man as a universal and fundamental
law that must be obeyed by all men above all things. All the help by way of
rules, ceremonies, symbols, creeds are absent= from his teaching. His bases
were Tightness and love and his own example awoke in the disciple's hearts a
like faith in their own sonship towards God and that "enthusiasm of humanity"
from which all collective reforms of society must spring. He did not claim to
be the mediator" for the Father's love as the approach is to be direct between
Father and the man. It was the admiration and gratitude of the disciples that
clothed him with the categories of Messiah and Redeamer, drawn partly from
Jewish and partly from Hellenistic life and thought and in time added the
remotor conception of pre-existence, deity atoning sacrifice and universal
authority.
Every clause of Lord's prayer involves the God's present action in our human
life in anxiety, in father's love in repentence in faith and in self-sacrifice.
Ethical Teachings
1. He abolished all outword ceremony as a means of salvation. Faith and love
unite men with one another and with God. God's response is like that of good
parents to their children.
2. Secondly he did not announce an organised system of laws. His teachings
penetrate to the fundamental principles of conduct and rather to the inner
spirit and to the selfdetermination of man as we find in love, service,
forgiveness, faithfulness, secrifice etc. These principal are impressive,
solemn and religious experience is their final explanation, justification and
sanction and these are not accidental, external or confusing to the conscience.
His personal example of a holy and merciful life is cherished in the heart of
his followers. There was serene and lofty fellowship built up in their heart by
the supreme religious genius. It was built up by the conscious will, the
authoritative energy, the deliberate self revelation of Jesus as Messiah, son
of God, son of man. He was accepted as incarnation of God as son of God, the
redeamer of man by the cross and ruler of our experience of His spirit.
Reformation
Luther discovered that the grace of God is a living force which has entered in
christ and which lays hold of this individual directly. The central fact for
the reformers was that the chirstian faith is a living experience made possible
by the full revelation of God in the historical christ. Apart from him there is
no knowledge of God as where christ is, the presence of living eternal God is
immediately realised. He is the invisible spiritual and divine power or will
which is directing man to his true goal. Jesus said that there is one living
God who has created the entire universe for ends worthy of his own character.
This great conception consecrated nature and abolished the crude ancient
dualism. Modern science has began to realise that all material universe seems
to be undergoing, through scientific investigations, a complete transformation,
in virtue of which all its elements are seen to be symbols and instruments of a
spiritual univese. The modern mind, through christological controversies
realizes that ancient words like "nature" substance" body" essence" Humanity"
and parts of humanity require to be thought afresh. A new consciousness has
arison in reference to the acquirement of knowledge and the interpretation of
life. The process of revolution has been discovered by science by Darwin and
Spencer. All this involves reason or rationalism in the light of which things
have to be explained and judged and on this basis nature seems to be a unified
system of facts. All this being so the Christian religion believe that the
consciounsess of christ and his permanent spiritual presence and power is
always there and can not be made void. "The image of jesus will always remain
inseprable from all efficacious Christian belief in God. The Christian
mysticism will always remain the central point of true and genuine Christianity
as long as it exists, otherwise belief in God itself would pine away and die".
Even in Hegels, absolute idealism according to which the world spirit
struggling to free itself from the bonds of nature and to rest in a perfected
self consciousness, the conscious spirit is appearingin the person of christ,
as the immanent principles. In the case of christ an individual rose through
the process of human birth whose self conscious nature manifests itself as of a
new type, a different man due to his active self consciousnes He is a different
man because of his unusual mystical piety living close to God, though he has
arisen within that process of human life having all the human traits. Yet he
belonged to another moral universe and had no sin committed. There is something
superhuman in this wondrous of personality with heart of redeamer beating in
his heart type breast. The mind and will of Jesus were more than human.
The Main Belief of Christian (atleast protestants) : The self conscious being,
the pre-existent christ, the son of God, entered as an invidiual, vital and
mental organism into the process of physical, organic history in the womb of
His earthly mother and grew up among men as a new type of personality and no
monoster, neither God or man which would be a mere outrage of reckless thought
in our rich and complicated universe. Jesus tasted what it is to be a man and a
man in love?