Hinduism - Lesson 25

I did remember the sacred thread. God is good. We'll pass this around here. We'll invest you as hit threads in the class. Well, I actually have several. That is a secretary. Now, that is the whole thing. Yeah. Basically, it is a white thread, which is why it's called the sacred thread and second rope. I will pass around the sacred thread if you feel led to cast this over your shoulder. Then I won't tell anybody. But you're not allowed. I also have here incense sticks. Whew. It's so familiar. This is partly what you'll smell when you're in India. This is one of the things that wafts steam. Pull this out and get little with. And you feel like you've been to India. I associate the smell only with India. I mean, you found this same smell actually, throughout southeast. This is some sandal incense that's actually sandal and in Hindi. So you can also kind of just smell that as well. Apparently, the gods love it. Okay. I told you, I do not give money to idle worshipers, so I don't unfortunately have like a chest. And you can kind of brag and bring home just chest of stuff. These are only things I've been given. Fair. Happy to give it to you. This is like something you find Brahmans wear on their neck. It means you're like, really cool, dude. This is a sacred necklace. But nowadays, almost anybody can wear them. It's like, no big deal. So it's not as sacred as it once was. The sacred thread is still a big thing, but this is, for example, the vermillion powder that you can use to sprinkle over idols. 

Or this is what you put on your forehead and in your mark of your hair if you're a married woman. So if any of you young ladies that are single would like to fool the crowds, you could put this in the part of your hair and everyone would stay away from you. This could save you so much grief. What is that? It's a powder. It's a powder. And the married women will not go out without placing this in the part of their hair. It rubs off very easily and comes in that you put a little water with it, you know. And what else do I have here? They have other stuff you can offer to gods and stuff. Incense, burners. I guess I'm a pessimist around, but these are just a few things. I mainly want to make sure I brought in a sacred thread, but to give you a little feel for some of that, this is my puja paraphernalia. Okay, Danielle, if you open some prayer. I mean, okay, just to set this in the context, because we don't spend a lot of time on this because we need to move on. But I have tried to lay out for you a couple of examples of how different major Indian theologians have responded to the Hindu tradition. We're going to add them later on in the course this lecture to talk about some general other parameters about Indian responses to Hinduism per se as a religion. But in terms of strategy of working with Hinduism, from a bunch of it, I was the one that really focused on trying to address the Vedic tradition at the highest level. So he believed that that was really the key, because even though this is a small percentage of Hindus, this is the most powerful, dominant group, they control the thought processes and therefore you must penetrate that upper some. 

On the other hand, Jefferson may have a different idea. He's also born in the 19th century, but later in the 19th century, 30 years after Obadiah and after some, he became the bishop of South India and he developed a Christian interpretation of what's known as the Manas. These are the indicators of devotion. Probably these are the best represented of his writings I have here with me. And the first is a book called and this I guess this title says it all. This is actually a collection of his writings from a man named Diane and done Francis. Again, that name Diana. And then you can again see the Ananda in there. That's a typical man is a teacher. Diane And and Francis has compiled a lot of key writings, not the some in this book called The Christian Bhakti of Agape Asami. Now, for some, he went to Oxford. He got his Ph.D. at Oxford, and his doctoral work was in the area of John's gospel and logos, theology. And John's gospel was a very, very brilliant man. No, I don't think he rises to the level of on top, in my humble opinion, but he's nevertheless one insightful man. So he decided that the better way would be to focus on the bucked tradition. So from a populist point of view, you must say that this is a waste of time, because even if you win the battle, you've lost the war from a apologist point of view because you can be victorious at the level of Sigona and speaking as an advocate in here, but it's all going to be illusory anyway. So what's the point unless you're victorious at the level of near goona, Upper Sami is actually spawning in a more on the ground grassroots level saying yeah, okay, maybe a few handful of that. 

They didn't say that, but for the vast majority of Hindus, they're not connected to the athletic tradition. They are involved in daily puja devotion to deities, all the things that we talked about in kind of latter part of the course. So let me just let you feel a little bit about what's in these writings. I'm going to read you. This is an article of his entitled The Knowledge of God. Most of this is collected from journals. And by the way, I have here a very prized possession of mine. I have this laminated so it won't fall apart. But this is the front cover of one of a bunch of open ideas journals. It's the only one in existence in the Western Hemisphere right here in my hands. I was given this by the librarians at the Jesuit College in India. I couldn't refuse them, though. That was totally against the law because librarians cannot give covers of journals to people. I don't think that's allowed. Is that allowed? You should ask your family anyway. Like, if you walked into a library and Mr. Klein were to say, okay, hey, you like this copy of. Here goes. This had already fallen off from the age, but I'd spent 20 months there working. They gave it to me, so I accepted it. And I have now a limited copy of this. I think I probably have the only personal possession of this in the world. Why is it so important? I don't know. But to me, it's meaningful. I but I bring this up only because this is so typical of 19th century India. Once you really get your head, the 19th century India, you discover that everybody and their brother had their own journal. It was like the way you got your ideas out. 

The printing press was going and big time in India at that point. They're all excited about it. Everyone get their ideas out. And some of the journals were. Very tiny circulation somewhere much larger. This is actually quite a successful journal by standard 19th century India. But what they found is these journals, even though the subscription subscriptions were in the thousands, not tens of thousands, though his at times got up to 10,000 or more. But generally what happened was, even though they might be only two or 3000, that he passed from person to person to person, house to house, even to this day in India, I had people bring me copies of Reader's Digest from 1970 to say, Have you read this in a Reader's Digest article and so on. So it's been passed around, is so old, you can't believe it. And you hope somebody has some art that they thought was meaningful and they save it and they pass it around. And so guideposts, Reader's Digest, all that kind of Krrish material is very popular among Indians and Christians. So journal reading is a big thing in India and in Bengal. They're the masters of it. From Avon to the course of his life. He just this one man single handedly founded over seven journals isn't how you count him because he changed the name of a journal and reconfigured it. But essentially about seven journals he himself founded and did most of the writing for so up a sum in the same way published a lot of journals he did publishing more in other people's journals than his own. But nevertheless, this is from one of those articles and just kind of listen to this. Don't worry about the details of it, just kind of feel what he's saying in the point he's making, because this is all familiar stuff to you now, from the earliest times it's been felt in India that God is infinite and glorious in the we cannot describe him sounds. 

He's kind of toying with the Vedic tradition here in the brain there in Yaka, the Rishi says a Brahman you could not see the seer of C and you cannot think the thinker of thinking. You cannot understand the understanding of understanding. He's quoting from the brain I get for two, though Brahman cannot be known as he isn't himself, knowledge of him can be gleaned from the various parts of the universe. Okay. Seeming to explain how even though there's this exalted Brahman, we can know things about him. So he develops this point. And finally, what he argues essentially is that over time the Hindu tradition has developed. So you essentially have a what we would call progressive revelation. So what he says is in the eponymous shards, they first start out by telling you about Nagarjuna, the God who cannot be known incomprehensible beyond all knowledge on, on and on. But then he goes on. I'm parts are a big part of this, but he goes on to say about time we get to the Bhagavad Gita, the idea of the incomprehensibility of God. We see the further development, the Brahman, the known and the incomprehensible becomes incarnate in human form. So it's in the Bhagavad Gita is is developing the idea not as a, you know, lower interpretation of Sigona, but is actually development of theology. So it is true that Brahman can't be described except in negatives, but for the sake of the world, he becomes Krishna. Arjan is charioteer and takes part in the affairs of man is the human friends and comrades, the Vishnu and the Borg about the piranhas speak of the transcendent, unknowable aspect of God. They teach, however, that God may be known by his devotees. All right, so the bottom line is he is going to be developing the whole idea of like Romans as it did that bhakti ism is the greatest expression of God, a love of God. 

So he's going to accept this. So in all of these books, the Christian Book of Sammy, this is a book actually by Arthur, some in a full length book, Christianity as Bhakti. Marga. You know, I apologize for these books because by our standards, these are poor quality because they're like in a shrink wrap and they look kind of cheap. But this is typical of a lot of Indian publications. So you have to kind of look beyond that because they're made for Indians to buy. This book. Here, for example, costs ₹40, which is less than a dollar. Well, you can print this book for less than a dollar in the US. So a lot of these books look like this. A definitely speaks to the Indian church. What shall we believe by age four? Some of these are important books of his where he delineates his ideas. So essentially. Yes. Well, I just had a question about the books. You said those books are written for Indians. Why are they in English? Because the great majority of Indian discourse regarding Christianity happens in English. So one of the problems, as well as one of the benefits of Christian discourse in India, the way it works in South India, is that every state has different language. And so because you can't publish in multiple languages very cheaply, English is the second language of everybody in South India. And so when you go to school, even in secular school in India, when you go to the college level, it generally takes place in English. Therefore, most of the serious book writing and all that happens in English. And I've kind of just accepted that fact in North India. This is one of the things we're trying to really challenge, because in north India, they have not got to that point yet. 

So you still have a very vigorous Hindi discourse in North India. The schools are largely still in English, but a lot of the literature just coming out and we're hoping to promote a lot of good, vigorous Hindi material. But these are some of the books that he's written. What he essentially does in this is play on a very well-known tradition in South India, and that is that knowledge is known by three testimonies scrubbed, which is scripture, a testimony, an amount of reason and projection, which is perception or experience now may not have anybody here who knows much about the Protestant tradition with John Wesley. So you may be aware that John Wesley is famous for what's known as the Quadrilateral. Basically, Wesley argued that in order to understand the gospel and approach it appropriately, you need to take into consideration all four of the Scripture courses. Priority has priority. But he talks of the role of experience, tradition and reason. I think we would interpret it from our point of view as taking the good here to historic Christianity, the creeds and so forth, as understanding certain things in Scripture from an otherwise not on to understand our exegesis involves plenty of reason. We follow certain logical, reasonable formulations and we discuss the order and so forth. This is not actually unknown in terms of how people come about reasoning and theological analysis. So this is something that's also popular in the South Indian tradition animus, reason. The akshaya is experience. The tradition is not part of this. But he later adds that in some his other writings, so some he develops this quite extensively and he demonstrates how this is used in Romans to promote the devotion of God. He has another book out I don't have to here, but it's called something like The Insights of Ramanujan or whatever. 

But he basically tries to build on a monitor the Way from Heaven to built on Shankara. He develops a lot based on his experience of your hunting theology, the relational aspect of this. This is also been published by Royce Scribner, a retired professor here, Gordon Conwell, who a number of years ago put out a book demonstrating the relational aspects of John's gospel that were not present in Synaptics. The father son relational language is very dominant. The family kind of connection is there in John's gospel. So I personally actually brings this out quite profoundly in showing that essentially Jesus has a devotional relationship with a father. It's a form of a bhakti model. He explores all the prayers in John's gospel, the all kinds of love and suffering in John's gospel. He does a lot with showing how themes in John's gospel are consistent with the whole book, the tradition. So he is trying to demonstrate that bhakti ism, though he doesn't believe it's sufficient, of course, but it is showing the propriety of Angelica. Preparation of the Gospel is preparing people for the true devotion which can only be found in Christ, is only truly modeled by Christ. But for the Father, this is His bottom line. I found up a summary in my view at times to overstate his case, but I nevertheless find that he's a very important, very influential person, deeply loved by South Indian Christians, by Christians all over, but particularly South Indian Christians. He lived all the way 1975. He lived into he was like 90 years old or something. He was he was extremely elderly. And so he's considered to be one of the great statesmen of the South Indian Church. So I guess for our purposes, my main purpose in showing this is not and you'll notice that none of these terms are on the handout three to No, but just the what you should know is realizing that major Christian leaders like Roman Bontemps coming from a high caste political background, Upper Sami, who's also comes from medical background but comes to the faith through the South Indian Tamil tradition that they are approaching Christianity or the way in which you can at the Gospel through very different means. 

One approach into the Nagarjuna. Signal distinction. And the other three, the more popular buck is. I mean, I think basically, if you were to look to line up all of the Indian Christian theologians, you'll find them gravitating to one of these two poles, for better or for worse. It's a matter of strategy. That's the real point here. Yes. At the popular level, yeah, Pentecostal. But if you are asking very precisely about the IPC church, the Indian Pentecostal church answered absolutely no, they will not even enter this discussion, which for next handout will make that clear. The IPC is extremely anti culturally, I may be putting it too harshly, but they simply will not. The other good only to wear the bangles. Women won't wear bangles. They wouldn't wear the nose ring anymore. They're not not that they're western. They're just very, very strictly not going to have anything to do with anything that might be even associated with Hinduism. And the result is they'd reject. A lot of things are just Indian. They're pretty hard for, you know, all over the world. Yeah. But there are other groups like, for example, the Church of South India, which are very much a part of this. For some he was was the bishop of Church of South India. So he was a bishop, not just as like mum of on top as like a layperson just writing this is an ordained bishop. So he is writing from a position of much more influence in terms of setting out what the church should do theologically. They just don't go far enough. I reckon he's focused on this case study number one. He believes that the medical tradition is the key. So he's not going to be in the tradition. 

He wants to focus on contextualizing, I think syncretism and in some cases his ideas with the the high Hindu tradition. Okay. I think Baron's question is actually probably one that's on all of our minds. But I think my best to summarize what I would say and this is an I'd develop myself, so it's always open for critique or further development. But what I've done is I've kind of thought through from my experience in India, five basic models of how people approach or don't approach witnessing in India. All of these we can learn from, all of these deserve critique. I do not view any of these models as the model. Some of that later, but I'm not I don't actually don't believe there is kind of like the standard model. I think some of these are weaker than others. I think all of these we can learn from. So what I want to do is just briefly highlight each of these and get your feedback and thoughts about what I'm trying to say here in each of these models. The first I call the Pentecostal Power and counter model. This is the pray for the sick. See people healed and God, I'll build this church. There are a lot of Indian Christians who are fit within this model. And I would say quite honestly, the group that I'm involved with in India, I would say most of our church planners subscribed to this model. I'll say more about our own strategy more later on at the end of this lecture. But I think that essentially Elijah on Mount Carmel is a really key paradigm, that we have a confrontation between the gods of darkness and the Lord Jesus Christ. The gods of darkness are counterfeit. They have no true power. 

They and they are putting on bondage. And Jesus Christ liberates and will destroy the darkness of Hinduism. It's very, very strong on confrontation with the falsity of Hinduism. I'm deeply, deeply appreciative of all that I've learned from my brothers and sisters in this camp. I have very, very close friends that are deeply involved, and I would say this kind of model, and I think there's so much to be learned from it. I have my own questions about it, which I'll raise in a moment, but they are very deeply convinced that the way Jesus broke into ministry is not a one off kind of exception, but it is a model for the way Christian penetration should take place. They basically say you have the Gospels first, then you have the epistles. So you must start with the Gospels theologically, and then you go to the epistles the way they apply. This is. Jesus begins with power encounter, praying for the sick, casting out demons, healing the oppressed. And then later, once the church established, you can establish doctrine, teaching the whole Pauline reflection on the meaning of the cross and all that. But that's not where you start. So practically, what does this mean? What this means is and this is exactly the way the vast majority of our churches have been established in India. The ones that I'm involved in, we have over 400 churches now planted. That includes churches that we planted in churches that our new church plants have planted. But those churches are largely started. I'll say more with the strategy kind of later on. But in terms of just this particular point, when you go into the village, you go to the village and you tell people that Jesus Christ is the great position and their gods have no power to heal Jesus alone, control, deliver and heal. 

And in order to prove that. They say if you have sick, needy, then possessed, bring them to the town square. We'll pray for the sick. I have seen this many times. In a way, I admire the courage because, you know, we will sometimes say, you know, we'll pray for you. And if it be God's will, you know, all that kind of like give yourself a back door in case the person is just as ill when you finish praying for him or you say, you know, brother, God heals everyone in the resurrection, you know, which is all true, by the way. And I believe that. But I admire the boldness. These people, you know, they're saying, oh, you have a lame leg. We'll pray for you in Jesus name. You know that that's that takes a lot of courage. And they see that in the New Testament. And so they want to emulate that. So they pray for the sick. And one of my most vivid examples of this, the kingdom comes to me is I was with the son of one of our pastors in a race, and we were in a resort together and we were in this village. We got there right as all of this puja was going on. I mean, it was like a major puja thing. And this guy, they had this big tent they had erected. And I, I don't have pictures to show you of this particular thing, though. I have slides of it. I need to get these put on PowerPoint. But essentially they have pujari is the term for the priest, the guy who does the puja, Pujari gets the Pujari is there and he is saying mantras and all this and he starts out with just a loincloth on. 

But eventually he gets dressed in this very elaborate garb. He has this like little crown, his hat and everything and this long robes and all that. And therefore in Pujan, he's burning incense. These incense takes that you're passing around here, he burns those and then he begins People all for money. That's a big part of it, of course, because how he gets his money. So they give money. He collects all the money together. You know, eventually he gets these mantras. They didn't preside over the fire. He has a little fire burning there of all the stuff. And so he's speaking the mantras into the fire and he's sprinkling some of this actually this stuff here. He's sprinkling some of this into the fire, makes the fire jump up, you know. And so he's saying the mantras. Well, then his assistants come and they open this box up and they put these mantras into this box. This box is on this long pole. Okay, so here's the pole. There's some chains holding the box under the pole. The pole is almost as long as this room is wide and they have one. This is on one end and we're on the other end. And this box is hanging in the middle with the mantras in it. And these men are going to circle the village and everybody's all kind of gathered together centers, little Hindu temple there, they're all gathered around and he's a circle. This village are all gathered together maybe four or five times. So these guys, I think it's pretty obvious, but they didn't think so. These guys are like slightly, slightly moving their shoulder. They're very good at this. It's very subtle. They have the ability to create some pressure on this pole to create some movement. 

So this box in the mood, this hang on chains, this line doesn't take much because the thing to move. But there's slight movements that can make this box begin to make circles. And so everyone's amazed because they believe there's power in this box. These mantras, this box is going around and they circle the city of the village several times or say various things. Well, we found out that this whole thing was being done by the village chief because he had a son who had malaria, which of course is a typical problem in India. And there's Dinham, malaria. So they went around. The boy was there, they brought him there. We felt like it was a cheap sign and he was sweating and he was obviously was very ill, young boy. So after Puja was over with and they even came over to us. We were standing there and of course we were a white face. I was the only white person. There was several as George Clooney was there and a few others that you may have met. And they came up and they had this familiar. And the red bar thing is being passed around and they tried to put it on our head. He was trying to include us in it so that we're like, Oh, we're part of it. A lot of Westerners travel all over India and they know anything in India they love. So he didn't know how we would respond. So we said, you know, not you know, he no, no on our head. So he is ignored up to that. So we stood there and I took some pictures. At the end of the whole thing is all over. The voice tells me they're suffering. So we went up to the leaders of the elders of the village and we said, Listen, this young boy is sick. 

We're Christians and we believe Jesus is the power to heal this young man. Well, pray for me with Jesus and he'll be healed. It's does not mean Madison is speaking. I'm there like, yeah, yes, Praise the Lord. So. All right, So the guy said, No, no, no, no, no. I paid. I paid the puja, I paid Puja, you know, no pray in Jesus name. No prayer in Jesus name. Okay, fine. So the reason we were in that village was to visit. There's one Christian family in that village. This is a this is like a several days or a day and a half with a long car journey of about a day, walk back, get back in there. And so this is a seriously remote place. This is where I saw the women with cigars. By the way, that story. I know the one with the cigars. All right. I never heard of the woman smoking a cigar in my life. All right. So I was in this village and in India, even the women don't smoke Cigarets cigars, right? Big fat cigars. All right, so I get to this village, and I can't believe it. There's these three women, about 80 years old. They looked 80, 75, 80 years old with three long cigars in their mouth. So I said to George, I said, Walk first, ladies have cigars, move, mouth. And I said, At least they're not lit. This is how stupid I was. I mean, I know better now. This has been than many years ago. Look, these are not lit. And he goes, Oh, no, they're lit. It's not. They're not that he's No, they're let you what? You wait. And sure enough, the cigar comes out. All this smoke, these women will light the cigar, can get it nice and lit, and then they'll flip it around and put it in their mouth. 

The fire on the inside of their mouth. So they have what looks like an unlit cigar. So there's that resonating with all the smoke in their body. And every so often, no, take it out while the smoke out and start over again. I like the idea of having the the fire on the outside waist smoke because it's like curly. Now that's like they don't have probably secondary smoke there, but they get the first and second. So I know that since they told me that now it's very cheap for women to smoke cigars now, okay, this has been done in India. This is a this is not a new thing. The Indian women have long figured this out. The cigar smoking is a really cool thing. All right. So there that's all this is that kind of village. I mean, like something I never seen before. So we're out visiting the couple that had the one Christian couple that's there to encourage them. They're not part of the cigar smoking crowd. And while we're a family, just two houses down comes over to our little this is like an accent house. It's like a very tiny little shack. I mean, you can't even stand up in it. You know, you walk in like this and just just sit down and have a cup of tea and you can't even stand up. And it's very tiny little place. This other couple comes down and says, We understand that you're here and that you're Christians. Our child has malaria, too. Would you pray for him? So we Sure. Well, so we went down there. There's a little boy just as sick as the village chief's son. Same thing, child sweating and shivering, shaking. And so we lay hands on him. 

We pray for him in Jesus name. And after we prayed for him, the boy sat up. He still looked delirious. But he said at least he set up. And we said, You know, God bless you. And we talked to the family. We left. Okay. What we didn't know was the next morning that boy got out completely whole well, and everybody knew that both these children had malaria. The village chief's son was just as sick as ever and continued to be sick for weeks after that. And I don't know if he lived or died. But the point is that the community took that as a definite sign that on the same day the Pujari showed up and this Christian I.D. soon showed up and one pray the name of a Hindu gods, one pride in Jesus name, and the one in president was healed. This guy wasn't Jesus more powerful there, God, Those guys for work have become Christians. And there's a whole group. People came Christians in that village. Because of that experience, I can replicate the kind of stories by the hundred. But that is typical of this whole paradigm. Going to sell a village, meet them where they are. Every village has sickness, illness, demonic problems, Everybody. Every village has that. Every city has that. So that's their need. Pray for the sick. See, God is pleased to heal people. And then from there go. So that's the Pentecostal power and counter paradigm. One of my concerns about it, and I had this reflection question here on the handout, what are the implications of a purely functional gospel? I believe that God in his sovereignty may not choose to heal people right away immediately. I actually do believe that some people and some people are healed now instantaneously. 

Summerhill Gradually. All are healed in the resurrection. I actually do believe that. And therefore, for reasons that we don't know in the New Testament self Jesus, for example, walk to the temple, beautiful gate many times. And we know that the man there was born in lame was there. The Bible says he had been there for years and was 40 years old. And Peter and John are the ones that were called to pray for him. You know, you could ask, why didn't Jesus touch him? I don't know why. Sometimes God delays people's healing and I don't understand. It's a mystery. It's part of God's sovereignty. And there's people who have died in illness in the faith but are ill, but in the resurrection. We know they are healed. So sometimes this particular paradigm can forget that God's sovereignty and God's work may not always be manifested in the particular way that we think it should in order to demonstrate that Jesus is more powerful. Sometimes God speaks and of God speaks to silence. And I think sometimes that's something it's hard for us to always understand. And some of my colleagues in the I think, or some of our churches on the field, I think at times are very deep in the area of Jesus will heal you, Jesus will save you, Jesus will redeem you, but not necessarily as deep and good theological roots. What if your children does died of leukemia? What then does that mean? Jesus is not powerful? How do we respond to those kind of issues? The whole theodicy and all of that comes into this. So I have my concerns about it. And I, I often in India a lot talk about I compare in my sermons often what I call power encounter and truth encounter and the need to balance power and account with truth encounter. 

And I basically say a nutshell, power encounter is really good. But don't forget that we also need to root people and disciple them in the faith and properly root them in good, solid Christian theology, which includes a dynamic view of God's intervention, but also includes plenty of space for God to operate in ways that are outside of our kind of visual paradigms. Any comments about the Pentecostal Power Encounter model so often? Do you think it goes off really in towards faith reality and says, Well, your kid wasn't hip, you didn't know nothing of our movement that we did? We very strongly preach against that, so we don't have that problem. But that does happen in India. Definitely. That whole movement is there that it's obviously it's all just a matter of instrumentality. You know, you didn't pray enough, you didn't fast enough, you didn't do whatever enough. I would say that that tendency can be there in some of our people. But I would say that they would not affirm that theology. I think, though, that I've had people who many times have come to me and and talked about, you know, we have fasted this many days, we've prayed for this many hours and this didn't happen. So we're going to go fast, more, pray more. And and that mentality, is there some of that is healthy, Some of that is very dangerous, you know, the motivation behind it, what's involved, because there's nothing wrong with persistence. But you're right thinking it's really a matter of almost a magical formula, obviously is is untypical. Okay. The second one is called Jesus Christ the perfect Embodiment of Dharma. This one really does bring out the emphasis that Jesus cannot be known through Western creedal formulations, doctrinal discussions that are often the center of how we discuss Christology. 

You should instead emphasize the life of Christ that points out that the Eastern already have a deep respect for Jesus, but they reject kind of the Western categorization of the whole thing, which sounds them a bit imperialistic. Here's a book, for example, I think, that epitomizes this. This is by God. But they're not tough. They're very by the mouth. This is a book called Finding Jesus in Dharma. Christianity in India is a subtitle. I don't think you could possibly find this book in the Western world for sale, but this is a typical of the book you would find in India in a Christian bookshop in India. Now, this kind of book is read by Christians and I think just reads the back of it at least a few excerpts. Christianity has flourished as an honored faith in India. In Kerala, for four centuries before the nations of Europe began being Christianized. Okay, so this guy, to his credit, is trying to demonstrate. Christianity precedes the British. That's a good thing. The Indian Christians have been an integral part of Indian society for as long as Christianity itself. They did not ever believe there was a conflict between the spiritual environment in which they had their roots and their faith in Jesus Christ as Savior. So he's trying to demonstrate the connection. The two is Christian missionaries from Europe and England, centuries later, who would insist there was a radical breach between the two. So he's trying to say, you know, before the Europeans there was much more of an assimilation of Christianity in Hinduism, which is true, but maybe tragic in some ways. Missionaries were obliged to rethink Christianity in relation to non-Christian religions, especially Hinduism. This book is about the history of the issues, which was Christianity produced in its encounter with Dharmic civilization. 

This is the last thing. This is in italics. This is his main thesis. Above all, beyond history, beyond theology, there is Jesus as the perfect embodiment of Dharma, faith, trust, caring, love and truth. These are the meaning of Jesus as they are in Dharma, in our troubled times. Hartford Heal and bring together what is falsely separated. Making a journey towards both. Very, very, very typical. You're going to find a very strong reaction against a careful theological reasoning behind the person of Christ, especially something like the Council of Charleston, or just basic New Testament Christological formulations that try to describe Christ as fully God and the incarnation and unique. And that is something that's going to be resisted by this kind of movement. And yet it's very, very popular. And one of the reasons popular as a next point makes clear, is that ethical teaching has been so much absent from Hinduism. We saw this because of the problem with the their view of of karma and of the migration of souls. So this has made Hinduism vulnerable. This is why Buddhism was able to strike such a deep blow to Hinduism, because they knew this was the Achilles heel of Hinduism. So Hinduism has always felt Hindu thinkers have felt like this was an area of vulnerability. So these thinkers want to import Jesus, not as the incarnation of the eternal God, but as an ethical teacher who brings ethics to India and can therefore, by virtue of that bridge, they bridge that with Dharma. The teaching in this way Dharma is used here as teaching the embodiment of truth. I have serious problem. In fact, just this past Sunday it was Easter Sunday, of course, and I preached on that text in First Corinthians 15 where Paul makes that three fold declaration. 

If Christ be not raised, you're still in your sense, if Christ be not raised, your faith is futile. I hope people develop more. Paul places the entire proclamation on this one reality. Now, I said in the sermon, I said, Paul does not say if Christ be not raised, follow his ethical teaching anyway because it will help you. He didn't say that his if Christ be not raised, he's still a good moral example. He didn't say that. Paul says if cries be not raised. We are of all men, most to be pitted. So Paul completely focuses the entire ethic of Christ on the fact that he's the risen Lord. And out of that reality, Christ speaks to the world. This group wants to downplay the resurrection of Christ, and that's why I asked the question in my reflection. How effective is this in communicating the distinctiveness of Christ and the Christian charisma? Because what they are going to actually accomplish and they have accomplished this 19th century. This has been a big movement. India. They have accomplished getting more and more Hindus to say Jesus is one of. We love Jesus. In fact, who was it? Oh, no, it wasn't. Wasn't this class. It was the last class. Went down to meet with some Hindus in a temple, and, oh, so many Hindus said to them, Oh, we're Christians. Do what Christians do. We love Jesus. No difference between you and me. You, Christian, you love Jesus. We Christian, we love Jesus is a Whoa, wait a minute. You know Jesus as the one incarnate Son of God who came to deliver us from sins and the unique Savior. No, no, no, no, no. Just kind of the idea of Jesus. Great ethical teacher. This is very, very strong. 

And yet this is infiltrated into the Church of South India and the Church of North India. I don't know that it's a problem over in north east, but it's certainly a problem in the main ecumenical churches in India. Are any questions or comments about the idea of Jesus as the perfect embodiment of Dharma? If you're a church historian, you're a church history major. How many other church history majors here? If you're a church history major, an area that you might like to explore some time, It's really interesting is the correspondence that took place between Joshua Marshman, one of the seven Power trio, and Raymond Roy, because Raymond Roy wrote this book and called The Precepts of Jesus or he goes through the entire New Testament, takes on all the miracles that the Thomas Jefferson, New Testament, same type of thing. Take the all the miracles of Jesus and just preserves his teaching, cause the precepts of Jesus. And He begins to publish those widely popular and is published in. Oh, when was it? Maybe like 1825, I think it was first published. Oh, everyone in Bengal especially read it. So Joshua Marshman wrote a article in the paper saying This is not the Gospel. He writes back and said, Wait a minute, everything that's there is right out of your New Testament. How can you say it's not true? And he wrote back and said, Wait a minute, you can't take even the teachings of Christ out of the correctement contacts of the risen Lord, the miracles of Christ, and call that true to the Gospel, because the gospel is a genre in itself to proclaim the resurrection. You can't just pick and choose like this. And so this is this goes back and forth, a lot of embittered, actually very embittered correspondence between the two. 

But this is actually a Indian promoting Jesus in India. And one of the unique features about Indian Christianity, the history of Christianity, is that most Indians, historically speaking, came to know about Jesus from Hindus, not from Christian missionaries. It's what's amazing, I think, unique features of Indian history, because these Hindus were all convinced that Jesus was a wonderful teacher and they want to promote him in India as a teacher. And so the Christians were actually going behind the scenes trying to clarify the gospel to people who already knew about Jesus rather than just kind of an empty void. Never heard of the man. Okay. The third model, Jesus Christ, the liberator from oppressive structures. Well, you can imagine how popular this is In the modern period, especially the last 40 years, the Dalit movement has exploded in India. When I went to Edinburgh, to my doctoral work, my supervisor, he eventually had to discard him or he discarded me. But we couldn't meet on the grounds because I wanted to study from on top of it here. He hated I'm little bit high up and he said to me with great exasperation, Why would you waste your time studying what a Brahmin says? Don't you know what's happening in India today? I see. I know what I need to ask. Why I want to study Randall Breyer. He said, No, no, no. You got it all wrong. The whole movement is towards Dalits, the outcast. Don't waste your time. So anybody in a saffron robe, any sun yat sen brahmins, they have nothing to say to India. Okay, I wrote an article in this theology, which is a famous turn on our field. It was an article that showed the connection between high caste political theology and Dalit theology and some of the reliance upon rabbinical theology. 

And so even the Dalit stuff, I got hate mail from that article, and I've never gotten hate mail for anything. You know, I'm a fairly, you know, affable guy. You know, I get along with people. All right? I never got any hate mail. I mean, I, I it's a funny, you know, I my wife and daughters, I've only really met hatred against me and my wife or my family from two times my life, both from fellow Christians. I'd actually never have met too much problem in the world. So I'm a missionary there. Much better. And the church, because the church will eat you up and spit you out. When I was in the pastorate, we had a ministry going there and God was busting it. Things were going great. And there was one little family, the church that always controlled the church. They had like they had all this money and they owned half of the town and we lived. And their daughter. I miss that. I don't get all the details. But since our daughter got into massive immorality in our town and discredited the Gospel, and so I took a stand. I mean, it was, I thought, a very modest stand, but, oh, this family got furious at me, and they took it as their single goal in life to get me out of the church of that church. And I had like this couple that that was their life goal. And they had all this money and influence and they devoted all to getting rid of me. I'll never forget one time I was in the sanctuary. I was actually there praying by myself in the sanctuary. When this one walked in the door, I got my knees and she shouted at me in the sanctuary. 

Here wasn't a prayer. She shot at me and she said, I'm going to do everything I can until you're out of here. And Jesus Christ is back in this church, as you put it. I wow, I didn't know how to deal with it. I thought, gosh, you know, I never took a course at Gordon Conwell to know how to respond to this. I mean, I was, like, hated. Eventually, she made the fatal mistake of calling the superintendent, this superintendent, and she told the superintendent that they pay all the bills in the church and they're going to leave the church about and get rid of me. And the sort would collapse. Well, he came to our church and he told the leaders what she told them. Oh, oh, they were just absolutely outraged. And the church, mostly in the flesh, partly in the spirit, had decided among themselves, we'll show them who pays the bills in this church. And I mean, money was flowing in. We we took in so much money that year. We did a special means to decide how to spend it. I mean, it's unbelievable. These people quit giving our church, of course, this big family. And they said, we're not giving the church and we'll show you that we're you know, we're the backbone of the church. The churches gave and gave and gave. We built a brand new parsonage. We doubled our sanctuary. We doubled our our fellowship hall. We built a new kitchen. We've got the Sunday school rooms. We doubled our parking lot and we were on a roll. And I said, Man, God, give me more of these enemies, because it brought all these people up to, you know, take up to the bat, you know. Anyway, I had these hate letters from these Christians in India who said to me, How dare you say that we can learn from Brahmans? And this is a very emotional issue. 

I gave a paper on this a couple of years ago at MTC, even my own home group. And we had our faculty understand where I'm coming from. They're very appreciative of all this. But there was guests from all outside right in. Oh, and I'd given a whole series of missionary lectures, and they're all like, Yes, yes, they've got their hands on that. But this lecture, oh, you could see the beads of sweat and the big veins while speaking. And this is a very, very vile tuition. And the I promise you, when you start talking about Dalits, the low caste, the outcast being in power, it's a very powerful theme in India. And I believe in that. I just believe that needs to be done in a way that listens to the high caste tradition. Because what's happened is the Dalit theology is largely void of any theological content. It's about basically saying, Oh, Jesus heals social structures, Jesus will deliver you from oppression and all that. But it actually doesn't capture the heart of the gospel. I compare it here to at least the more abusive examples of liberation theology in Latin America is the same exact thing, actually. So I think what they've done is they have to use the language of the Marxist captivity. They have traded a marxist captivity for rabbinical captivity. They have become so captive to being Anton Marx or in the case of India, anti Brahman, they cannot actually learn from them. They cannot grow from that. They cannot see anything in history as positive. So any white Christian has nothing to say to them. You come from oppressive structures in the West, nothing they learn from you. Well, the minute you start closing out the pathways to learn from the Christians and learning from church history and learning from even your own Indians who come before you happen to be visitors or are Qataris or Brahmans the move against the collapse. 

They have so much we need to learn now. There's so much they. Bring out, which is so true, that we do need to address oppressive structures. We do need to realize the power of Christ to liberate people from from social, systemic, evil, all of that I accept. But I think that to make that the gospel at that point I think is a huge mistake. But this is a very dynamic, powerful movement today. And I would say that the vast majority of theology being written today by Indians is come from this perspective is liberation theology of the seventies that's been recast in the Indian context. And rather than inserting kind of the Marxist paradigm of the oppressive structures and the proletariat and all that, you have the biomedical thing put in is that basically you change a few words and the theology looks very much the same. So they don't really deal with a personal devil, for example. I've never heard him ever mention the Satan. Satan is now personified into structures, societal structures. You never really hear much about personal redemption. It's always redemption as a people. I'm sure you're familiar with the liberation theology motif, and so that's kind of the way to think about this. Thoughts or comments about model number three? Yes. It's an Indian theology, but but it's very well read in liberation theology. They've read these books carefully, and they largely used them to write their own books. This has been completely inserted by Indians. There's one called Towards a Dalit theology and one called an emerging theology. And what they do and I get this one guy says, okay, I'm going to show you what theology is, how it'll work. This is his paradigm. This is one of their own theologians. 

He goes out in the interviews Dalits, and he collects poems they've written out of their oppression, and they're very powerful poems, many of them insightful parable about their pain and suffering. They went to an end in India, suffered the chains of caste. He publishes these in this little book, and he says, All the theology that you need can be learned from these poems. Now, I believe we can learn a lot from the poems, but I'm not going to draw a Christology from them. And so they're trying to recast Christology to mean the suffering of Christ is merely emblematic of the suffering of the Dalits. So you can imagine from a critical point of view what that means for the whole of the other structure. I think there's a I made a point also which has got me in trouble, but I notice how they always say in these books towards a theology or an emerging Dalit theology, no one has actually ever published a theology with that clear title because they know they can't do it. And so they always say, Well, this is the direction it should go. This is my idea of how it should happen. So everyone is very and that's been now 20, 25 years has been going on. So I think there's a real problem with their ability to really put on the table. Okay, This is our view of Christ of sin and redemption, of the traditional categories of Christian thought. They don't want to engage with that. I don't mean to be overly negative on this. I'm obviously negative on this. But I think that with all of these, part of the reason they've come up is they felt like that the Christians in the high caste tradition have not properly addressed many of these issues. 

So it's a lot of this is because of a void that we have not properly preached, that Jesus does speak to the poor. The gospel does speak to the poor and the oppressed. And so that's where part of the blame must be in our own fate.