Introduction
1.1 Life
Keshub Chuder Sen was born
on 19th November 1838 in Colutolah in Calcutta, as second son in the
vaidya caste family, to Piari Mohun and Sarada Devi Sen. Losing his father at
the age of ten, Keshub came under the vaishnavaite influence of his mother. It
was during his teen-age that he became dissatisfied with Hinduism, a strong
impulse to pray became the driving force of his life. At this time he began to
study the Bible, came into contact with missionaries and philosophies. The
traditional marriage to a nine year old village girl was traumatic for him and
he decided for ascetic life. He joined Brahmo Samaj in 1857 signing the
membership covenant. This seems to have given him a new identity he was longing
for. It was under the tutelage of the Brahmo leader Debendranath Tagore that
Keshub bloomed in his brahmo convictions. Devendranath says about him:
Whatever he thought in his mind he had the power to
express in his speech. Whatever he said, he had the power to do. Whatever he
did he had the power of making other men do.*
He was a born leader and
organizer. In 1856 he started the Colutolah Evening School with P.C. Mozoomdar
and Narendranath. In 1857 he founded the British India society to discuss
issues of culture, literature and science and in the same year he organized a
religious and devotional organization with the name Good Will Fraternity which
was absorbed into Brahmo Samaj after two years. When Keshub joined the Brahmo
Samaj in 1857, Debendranath Tagore, who was then the leader of Brahmo Samaj,
saw in Keshub a possible successor and Keshub saw in Tagore a spiritual guide.
Soon after leaving the
college, following his family tradition, he accepted a job in the Bank of
Bengal, as a clerk in 1859. But the routine work of a bank clerk did not suit
his temperament and ambitions. In 1861 he resigned his post in the bank to
become Brahmo missionary. Before his resignation from the bank he published a
series of tracts in which one could see his apologetic tone, which was in line
with the Christian understanding of social work. Following the publication of
these tracts in 1861 he started the Indian Mirror as a weekly to give
expression to his opinions. His public lectures on Brahmonism attracted large
crowds. While his popularity grew, controversy with Christian missionaries such
as Lal Behari Day also grew. Christian missionaries thought that his efforts
would prove to be a threat to their enterprise.
Debendranath
had high regard for Keshub as was clear from installing him as Acharya (minister)
of Brahmo Samaj. Some of his colleagues in the Samaj were envious of his
popularity and while Keshub was on a preaching tour they managed to convince
Debendranath of their fears of the radical changes which Keshub had in mind.
Thus two distinct parties emerged in the Samaj which finally led to a division
into two groups in 1866 one under the leadership of Debendranath under the name
Adi Brahmo Samaj and the other under the leadership of Keshub under the name
Brahmo Saamaj of India.
When Keshub became the sole leader of the Brahmo
Samaj of India he gradually began to assert his opinions. His respect for
Christ also grew. He even considered himself as a slave of Jesus (Jesudas). But
his understanding of Christ was different from that of Christian Missionaries
and they became alarmed when he said in one of his public lectures that India
was not yet ripe for Christ’s teachings. His mission tours in 1865, 66 and 68
helped the Samaj to grow and he could establish many new branches in India and
consolidate the division, which he headed.
In 1870 he undertook a preaching tour in Britain, to
preach non-Christian faith. His visit was a success. He went to England in the
hope of finding a great Christian nation. But he came back with the awareness
of the Church’s limitations. He also became conscious of India’s claims of
greatness. His visit shattered his idealized views about Christianity. He began
to think that the movement which he led was a special dispensation of
providence. He developed a doctrine which he called ‘Ades’, by which he
meant ‘divine command.’ His followers in the brahmo Samaj of India could not
understand all his positions. They could not understand the stand taken by him
in connection with the marriage of his daughter and his use of Ades in
that connection which finally led to a second schism. The majority of its
members left Keshub and founded the Sadharan Brahmo Samaj and Keshub organized
a new movement with the name Navavidhan (new Dispensation). In the New
Dispensation, Keshub could manage to synthesize Hindu and Christian elements
and transformed it into something new. He was a dynamic person and as such he
could carry on the work of the New
Dispensation with the small group of his followers. He died on 8 January 1884.
1.2 His Theological Writings
Most of Sen’s
theological writings are to be found in his annual lectures to the Brahmos,
which he prepared with meticulous research, especially those given between 1863
and 1866 are rich in content. These have been published in two sets:
a) Keshub Chunder Sen’s
Lectures in India Vols. I&II
b) The New Dispensation, Vols.
I&II
Besides these several scores of authors have written about
him and his theology: Cf. Andrews, M.C. Parekh, V.S Azariah, S.N. Banerjea,
H.C. Banarjee, G.C. Banerji, Meredith Borthwick, Motilas Das, K.S. Ghose, B.
Mozoomdar, P.C. Mozoomdar, F. Fax Muller, B.V. Ray, G.G. Roy, P.K. Sen, T.E.
Slater, Marquess Zetland and many others.
The main writings of Sen include (in English): The
book of pilgrimages, Brahmagitopanishat, The Brahmo Samaj, Divine worship,
Jeevan Veda (autobiography); he has also written scores of articles in English
and books in Bengali.
Thought
Keshub wrote and lectured on a
wide range of subjects. But here an attempt is made only to point out his
understanding of Christology, Trinity, and the Church in the Indian context.
Christology
The main expression of his Christology is the series of
lectures he delivered in Calcutta. In his lecture on ‘Jesus Christ: Europe and
Asia’, he dealt with the moral excellence of Jesus. According to Keshub, the
two fundamental doctrines of gospel ethics, which stand out prominently above
all others and give it its peculiar grandeur and its preeminent excellence,
were the doctrines of forgiveness and self-sacrifice. Keshub thought that it was
in those doctrines that one could find the moral greatness of Christ. He was
sure that nothing short of self-sacrifice, of which Christ had furnished so
high an example, would regenerate India.
In his lecture, “India asks, who is Christ?”
delivered in 1879 Keshub dealt with the stumbling blocks of the Hindus. He
pointed out that if Indians refused to accept Christ it was not because of his
ethics, nor because of his humanity, butt because of his divinity. Keshub had
no doubt that Jesus considered himself and his father as one. He understood
Christ as the gradual manifestation of his father. It was in this context that
he developed his concept of Divine Humanity. He affirmed the pre-existent
Christ as Son and his incarnation in Jesus.
In his
lecture on ‘God -Vision in the Nineteenth Century’ Keshub dealt with his idea
of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his ascension to the right hand of God.
In this lecture he affirmed the resurrection of the spirit of Jesus. He said:
“Do I speak with that authority of an eye-witness? Yes, I do. If you think
Christ is in the grave, you are certainly dreaming. For where is he to be found
on earth? Nowhere. Christ dead and decayed is a deception. Christ risen is
Christ indeed. The spirit of Christ has risen and returned to the Father.”*
Trinity
As Manilal C. Parekh and
other have pointed out, there might be inconsistencies in his treatment of the
concept of Trinity. Keshub was not a systematic theologian, and such
inconsistencies are only to be expected.
In his lecture on “That Marvelous Mystery- the
Trinity’ which he delivered on 21
January 1882 he dealt with this concept in detail. Keshub stood between the
rationalistic Unitarians on the one side and the Orthodox Trinitarians on the
other side. He said: “ I set my face completely against the popular doctrine of
Christianity. Yet I recognize “divinity” in some form in Christ in the sense in
which the Son partakes of the Father’s divine nature.”* In his lecture on the Trinity he dealt with
Christ as Divine Humanity, emerging as the end of the process of creation.
According to Keshub the problem of creation was not how to produce on Christ
but how to make every man Christ. Keshub used the Hindu term Sat-Chit-
Ananda for Trinity. This idea was further developed by people like
Brahmbandahav Upadhayaya and Swami Abhishiktananda.
The Church
Keshub made a distinction between Christ and Christianity. He adored Christ but rejected the popular idea of the church. Christ for him was universal in whom Europe and Asia should find harmony. As M.M. Thomas had pointed out, there were at least three strands in his thought about the church. One, a belief in the supremacy of Christ as the God-man centered in whom he saw the harmony of all the established religions. Two, Keshub’s thought that all established religions were true. Three, Keshub considered himself as the divinely appointed leader of the New Dispensation and his doctrine of Aades should be seen in this context. He always looked for a harmony of all established religions with Christ as the center. But he thought that he was living in a new Dispensation of the Hoy Spirit and he himself as the God-appointed leader of this New Dispensation.
He had contacts with Swami Dayanand Saraswati, founder of the Arya Samaj and Sri Ramakrishna Paramhanmsa. Keshub respected Dayanand, but could not maintain a warm relationship with him. But he was very much attached to Ramakrishna and it was generally acknowledged that it was Keshub who introduced Ramakrishna to Bengal.
1.3 His Theology
The main elements of Sen’s theology could be summarized under the heads God, Christ and the Church.
1.3.1 The Doctrine of God
Being a Brahmo, Sen was naturally concerned with the doctrines of the Trinity to start with. It is to Sen that Indian Christians owe their use of the term, Saccidananda. (Sat +cit+ ananda = truth + intelligence + bliss) for the Trinity. It is suggested that this term is more adequate than the Nicene Formula of one substance and three persons, which is still in Greek philosophical categories. It is to be noticed that more than Roy, Sen accepted this doctrine. In one of his annual lectures he writes:
In this plane figure of three lines
you have the solution to vast problem; the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost; the
Creator, the Exemplar, the Sanctifier; I am, I love, I save; the still God, the
journeying God, the returning God; Force, Wisdom, Holiness; the Truth,
Intelligence, Joy. *
Obviously, here Sen is reconciling the Christian
Trinity with Hindu Saccidananda and Greek philosophical virtues. In this
attempt, there is a streak of modalism (of God revealing himself in three modes
or times) and thus diluting the distinction of the three persons in the
Godhead. In another lecture, he describes the three persons in as the above,
the Below, and the Within. No doubt these descriptions are helpful –perhaps
more helpful than the ontological language of the Greeks. The crux of the
matter in Christian dogma is the precise meaning of the terms “person” and
“substance” or “essence”- lacking this, any adequate clarification to the
Nicene formula of one substance in three persons is fruitless.
1.3.2 The Doctrine of Christ
Like most of the Indian
thinkers Sen, too, is attracted towards Christ and Christology more than
anything else. Sen was the first to discover that the Christ of the Bible is an
Asiatic Christ, and thus as being nearer to Indian thought than is
acknowledged. For Sen, Christ and his religion are “altogether an oriental
affair.” He writes in a moving Passage:
Behold, he cometh to us in his loose flowing
garment, his dress and features altogether oriental, a perfect Asiatic in
everything. Watch his movements and you will find genuine orientalism in all
his habits and manners, in his uprising and down sitting, his going forth and
his coming in, his preaching and ministry, his very language, style and tone.
Indeed while reading the Gospel, we cannot but feel that we are quite at home
when we are with Jesus, and that he is altogether one of us. Surely Jesus is
our Jesus.
It is this understanding of
Christ that helped Sen to replace the Greek Logos concept of the gospel
of John with the Hindu / Indian concept of Cit, the word of creation.
The eternally asleep logos or cit is not just at the beginning of
creation but also at its consummation at the end. Thus Cit is the
culmination of humanity, of the process of history- the whole creative
evolution.
In all this Christology, Sen understands Chris’s
unity with the Father neither as metaphysical nor as ontological but as
mystical communion.
Unlike many Indians, Sen dwells more upon the
humanity of Jesus than his deity. Sen was not tired of describing Christ as the
son of a humble carpenter, who grew like any other normal man; yet he was more
than a man, because he was “a divine man”, a term which has been repeatedly
used in India and elsewhere for Christ since then. In fact this term is Sen’s
favorite description of Jesus Christ. This divineness of Christ consists in the
fact that he was so filled with God that he destroyed self. Bonhoeffer’s phrase
for Christ, “the man for others” would have aptly suited Sen’s concept of
Christ’s divinity. In one of his lectures he clarifies his “kenosis” theory
as follows:
When I come to analyze this doctrine I find it
nothing but the philosophical principle underlying the popular doctrine of
self-abnegation… Christ ignored and denied his self altogether … he destroyed
self. And as self ebbed away, heaven came pouring into his soul. For… nature
abhors a vacuum, and hence as soon as the soul is emptied of self, Divinity
fills the void.*
Sen finds this kenosis of Jesus in his
utterances such as “I and my Gather are One”, “I can of my own self do
nothing”, and “I am in my Father and my father is in me”. The first of these
quotations has become the most quoted saying of Jesus in India concerning his
own person. Jesus manifested his divinity in his utter self-surrender and
dependence upon the Father. Thus for Sen, “Jesus is identical with
self-sacrifice” – it is on this basis that Sen makes forgiveness and
self-sacrifice the two foundations of Christian living.
But what does Sen think of Christ’s atoning work? Of
the Cross and Resurrection? He regards the cross as nothing more than an
example of the self-sacrifice. He writes: “I have always regarded the Cross as
a beautiful symbol of self –sacrifice unto the glory of God.” It is through the
moral influence of his death on the cross as the supreme example of self-denial
that Christ turns men from sin to God. Each one can be saved by imitating this
example of self-giving. Thus, “Go thou, and do likewise” is the way of
appropriating Christ’s “as through a brother’s example, fallen humanity rises
sanctified and regenerated. “ as journeying god, he becomes human, in order
that we may become divine.”* As such Sen’s concept of Salvation is more of
divinisaton than humanization. But in all this, Sen is not thinking so much of
individual salvation but rather of the cosmic salvation of all humankind. Hence
there is little emphasis on repentance and faith as means of appropriating the
salvation-in fact, he seems to have conceived of this salvation as an automatic
process or result of Christ’s coming, which process he calls christification.
There is a danger here, of the possibility that this Christification could
mean, in Sen’s thinking, the Hindu realization of Ahambrahmasmi (I am
Brahman).
Before leaving Sen’s Christology, one more element
should be noted. He sees Christ wherever he sees something good and noble- be
it religion, philosophy or ideology. As such, for him Christ is present in all
systems – the concept of hidden Christ, which the later thinkers so
gluttonously accepted. Sen writes: “Christ is already present in you … He is in
you, even when you are unconscious of his presence.”*
Like those who advocate a cosmic Christ, Sen also
resorts to passages like John 1:9 “He is the light that lightenth every man
coming into the world”, Acts, 17:27-28: He is not far from any of us. In him we
live and move and have our being,” and 14:17: “God has not left any of us
without a testimony concerning himself.” This kind of Christology led Sen to a
syncretistic religion very near to that of M.M. Thomas’s Christ-centered
syncretism, but which he called Church of the New Dispensation.
1.4 The Doctrine of the Church
Sen saw
himself as divinely appointed and commissioned to be “the leader of the New
Dispensation” in which all religions are harmonized and which all people are
summoned to enter into as their spiritual home. He claimed special divine
inspiration (Ades), equal to that of Moses and Jesus.
This New Church was more intimately to the Holy
Spirit than was previously the case. But in claiming his inspiration as final
and superseding all others, Sen is in fact monopolizing the inspiration of the
Holy Spirit – and not the Holy Spirit controlling Sen. You see, between heresy
and orthodoxy there is but a thin line of demarcation, which any of us can
cross. Look at what Sen could say about himself under such a misunderstanding
of God’s revelation:
Keshub Chunder Sen, a servant of
God, called to be an apostle of the Church of the New dispensation, which is in
the Holy city of Calcutta, the metropolis of Aryavarta, to all the great
nations in the world and to the followers of Moses, of Jesus, of Buddha, of
Confucius, of Zoroaster, of Mahmet, of Nanak and t the various branches of the
Hindu Church, to the saints and sages, the bishops and the elders, the
ministers and the missionaries of all these religious bodies: Grace be unto you
and peace everlasting…*
And later on the message claims an exclusive revelation to
Keshub Sen, and ends with the plea:
Let Asia, Europe, Africa and
America with divine instruments praise the New Dispensation, and sing the
Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.*
Inspire of the opposition from the contemporary bishops –
Anglican and Roman Catholic – Sen continued to stand by his claims, and towards
the end of his life there is an element even of irrationality in his thought.
Needless to say, this New dispensation Church died shortly after its founder’s
death – the story of all human enterprises. But God’s work will continue, not
only in spite of man’s obedience, but because of his disobedience!
1.5 Evaluation
In evaluating Sen’s seminal thoughts, we could say many
things both in favour and disfavour of him.
1.5.1 On the Positive Side
Undoubtedly the
credit of using indigenous thought forms, categories and terms for Christian
message goes to Sen. Saccidananda, Christian mahavakya, Asiatic Christ are the
obvious examples. More than this, he also gave seeds for posterity to Indianise
the Christian faith: the concept of divine- human, hidden Christ, Christ
–centered integration, kenosis as self-emptying, the emphasis on the Holy
Spirit, Christification, are some of the seeds which have yielded harvest with
the later Indian interpreters of Christ.
Secondly, while Roy refused to go beyond looking at
Christ other than the principle he presents (namely, that of self-giving love),
Sen goes one step further and accepts the significance of Christ’s person, not
just his teaching. In fact it was the power of Christ’s person and not his
wisdom which most fascinated Sen.
Thirdly, it was a great stroke of genius to see the
place of church in the Christian scheme of things, and Sen makes it essential
to his own theology. At the same time, he tried to keep his New Dispensation
church away from the western institutionalism and dogmaticism, hence his loose
organization. It was a mixture of both Jesus’ apostles and the Indian gurukul
system. Compared to the Brahmos, it was surely a step nearer to the Christian
church.
Fourthly, Sen was again the first to emphasize the
role of the Holy Spirit in Christian doctrines. No doubt there is a tendency to
lean heavily upon personal, mystical aspects, but as a creative thinker he was
not free from faults.
And finally, he was also the first to lay emphasis
upon the experience of spiritual realities, unlike Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Not just
ethical life, but more than that religious experiences made his teachings
appealing. For the same reason, against the Brahmo philosophy Sen accepted
history as a mode of God’s revelation.
1.5.2 On the Negative Side
The first thing to notice is of course his doctrine of Adesh,
as a unique God’s revelation, higher even than Jesus Christ. The disregard for
tradition is a major sign of heresy. Even we, every time we attempt to start
some Christian ministry from the scratch, without building upon the insights of
our forerunners, fall into a similar trap!
Before God, a recognition not of self-righteousness but of
self-unrighteousness counts.
Secondly, though Sen accepted the significance of
Christ, he did not commit himself to Christ- the basic trouble with all
self-confident prophets. For a long time he seemed to be in double – mind as to
this demand of Christ, but the later developments of syncretistic Church and
personal Adesha betray the fact that finally Sen was no Christian
disciple. This also leads him to an eclectic (selective) handling of the Word
of God to suit his convenience- another modern danger! Sen’s calling his
approach “Christian eclecticism” does not alter the judgment.
Thirdly, Sen could not penetrate beyond his idea of
Christ as the supreme example of self-giving love to the biblical idea of
Christ’s death as God’s provision for the sins of all humankind. The dilution of the substitutionary
understanding of the Cross is the beginning of all liberalism and can be a
disastrous by–product of attempts of a positive approach to other religions.
Fourthly, the idea of a hidden Christ suggested by
Sen is vigorously taken up by many recent thinkers in India such as M.M.
Thomas, Raymond Panikkar, and Stanley Samantha and also by Westerners like Karl
Rahner and Paul Tillich. It must be admitted that to concentrate the whole
human-divine enterprise on one man Jesus is an offense to man as man, but the
biblical fact cannot be meddled with. “No one comes to the Father but by me” is
the only bedrock on which any relationship of the Christian faith with other
religions and philosophies and ideologies can be built. We dare not speak more
than – or less than – the Jesus of Nazareth, crucified and risen, confessed as
Lord and Saviour. Any vague principles Christhood or self –giving love will
inevitably lead to anti-Christian messages.
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