My Bhakti Theology–part Three

Part Three

My Bhakti Theology Part Three

Uniqueness of the Good News:

One needs to accept or reject the uniqueness of the Good News  for its own face value.  There is no point of watering it down in order to accommodate the religious, theological views of another scripture.   By doing it, we not only compromise the Good News but also show disrespect to the other religious traditions and their scriptures.  For me at least, the painful reality is that Muktinath came from the Jewish religious tradition, though he was universalized by the understanding and interpretation of His life and Mission by His immediate disciples.  But this universality of the Good News does not mean that Muktiveda alone is the only Word of God and the rest of the religious scriptures are not.  As Paul Sudhakar well said:  To say that the Bible is the Word of God is Biblical, but it is unbiblical to say that the  Bible only is the Word of God.  And he further adds:

 …The Good News to the people of the Old Testament who were brought up in a distinct cultural milieu of Messianic expectation and a particular view on human history and prophetic proclamation will not be the Good News to the Hindus who are not Messianic in expectation, who hold a different view of history, and who have held mysticism and spirituality as sacred.  It is becoming more and more difficult to hold the view that the Biblical truth is the truth by which all other claims to truth are to be judged and evaluated….—( Wilhelmina Sudhakar, op. Cit. p. 267)¹

Bhakti theology

The Good News is a revelation initiated by God.  It was witnessed and recorded through inspiration.  It was communicated through proper interpretation for us to implement its core values through the grace of God.  However, this short formula is not that simple for me to understand and communicate.  First, is the language.  All the main words (revelation, initiation, inspiration, interpretation, implementation and even grace) which I used in this short formula in English are beyond my comprehension.  Without having proper knowledge of English and having Tamil as my mother tongue in which I think and understand, all my attempts to understand and communicate have several limitations.

 For example, the (Christian) Tamil word ‘velippaduthdhal’  (வெளிப்படுத்துதல்)  actually, according to my understanding, means that now something is exposed which has remained hidden.  Similarly, I don’t know what Tamil word I can use for ‘initiation’ though I can translate it as ‘mun thuvakkam’ (முன் துவக்கம்). Another word with which I often struggle is ‘inspiration’.   In Tamil, it could be ‘ul unarvu undudal’ (உள் உணர்வு உந்துதல், my literal translation).  But it could mean that the inspiration is done by my own effort and not from an outside source alone.  Like this, each word has its own complication in Tamil.

I hope this is not limited only to Tamil. Various other languages face a similar problem, beginning from the original languages in which gospel events were recorded and communicated.  If language alone faces such a serious problem, how much more the various categories which were used to communicate it from the origin to other cultures and traditions?

 My understanding of the Good News is that it is a unique one which has no parallel in other religious traditions.  At the same time, every religious tradition has its own ‘uniqueness’ which we need to accept and respect.  That is why I never believe in a hidden, cosmic and universal Muktinath which we can dig out from other faiths. Muktinath is neither fulfilment² nor the crown of Hinduism nor came to annihilate other faiths.  Each religious tradition should be approached on its own terms.  And a Hindu bhakta has to live with this tension to understand the uniqueness of the Good News  and the inheritance of her heritage.  And my bhakti tradition helps me to resolve it to some extent to keep a balance not going to one extreme.   In this Muktiveda helps me give clear guidance, though not limiting God to address my need through other means as Paul Sudhakar well said, ‘…Men are unaware that no one religion can claim the monopoly of all truth.  (Sudhakar, op. Cit. p. 198)

In my efforts to understand the life and teaching of the Lord, there are so many unresolved and unresolvable questions for which so far I didn’t receive a convincing answer from anywhere—even from God.  I am thankful for it.  At the same time, those questions never limit my walk along with the Lord as he is ready to teach and reveal according to my need and obedience to his initiation.  It is an ongoing journey which will end only in my death.  And bhakti, which is primarily a relationship, helps me to stand firm in that relationship with the Lord which is a gift because of his grace.

When I found my guru in the Lord, did I understand the Good News clearly or was it presented to me in a way to understand it as it is supposed to be understood by the orthodox theology?   A BIG NO is the answer.  Of course,  I was searching for a guru to find the answer to the question: why I cannot live a perfect life -even for a single day?  And the people whom I met first, though sharing as per their tradition (which I don’t remember exactly now), never gave the answer which I was searching for. But the way they served the poor and needy in a remote hill area impressed and challenged me.  There I took the decision that so far I tried various gurus and let me give this guru (Muktinath) also a chance, and if he proves that he is the kind of guru I need, then I will gain. Otherwise, I am not going to lose anything.

But the initial steps that I took to follow the Lord may not be correct for many. Anyhow after I made a commitment by receiving the deeksha only after several months, I began to gradually understand the Good News in the true sense!  In fact, when I was reading the commentary by Rev. John Stott (Men Made New) on Romans (5 to 8, I think), particularly based on the verses in Romans 7: 15 to 24, I understood the reason for my failure to live a perfect life up to my own expectation.  However, what excited me is not the solution that it prescribed—that the atonement of the Lord for our sin in principle, but the clear diagnosis of my problem viz., my sinful nature which prevented me from living a life of my own creed.  It is not my (past) karma, or Kala (Time., viz. Kali Yuga) or even god.

As I began to read to understand Muktiveda (with the help of commentaries), slowly I began to understand the life and mission of the Lord.   And it is not any systematic way in which I now try to present my journey.  It was a gradual and step by step process. The more I read, understood and obeyed, the more I was convinced about Muktinath as my guru.

Still it is not the atonement theory which appealed to me but the Personality of the Lord, his teachings, his actions, his life which was recorded in the gospels. This convinced me to my satisfaction that he is the kind of guru I need to overcome my sinful nature.  Does this mean that I never accepted other doctrinal aspects related to his atonement?  No.  I accepted them because that is the way his life and mission was understood and interpreted by his immediate disciples upon which the early mandali was established.  Suppose let me imagine that such doctrinal points were not recorded in Uttaraveda, what would happen to my bhakti in him?  Still I would have followed him as my guru.  As I said in another place, even if he were a mere mythological character that wouldn’t have affected my bhakti in him, as we have such a rich tradition in our Hindu worldview.  Because , ‘Hinduism did not use history for the investigation of truth, instead, for communicating religious realities freely, used mythology, legend, allegory and history without bothering to differentiate one from another….’(Sudhakar, op. Cit  p. 199.)  This Hindu tradition helped me to cling to the Lord till this day, which Sudhakar, again articulates very clearly:

The institutionalized church does not easily fit into the Hindu mould. Discipleship to Jesus Christ appeals to the Hindu. In the modern context of cultural change and upheaval in the West, it is necessary to re-examine the New Testament meaning of the church and the Lord’s command to make disciples of all nations. The demands of discipleship that Jesus enumerated are similar to those in Hinduism and Jesus fulfils all the requirements of the one and only guru shown in the Gita.—Sudhakar, p. 270

Notes

1…Dass knows that in a religious context where there are numerous Scriptures that claim divine origin and authority, to say that the Christian Bible is the only writing from God would not really persuade anyone who does not already believe so. In other words, while for the Christian community it is not necessary to argue the case for the divine authority of the Bible, for other religious communities, it is futile to do so. For Dass, the case for Christianity must be made by reasoning based on generally shared Indian assumptions about religion and the Christian lifestyle. It is these factors that persuade. The Bible is used to add force to these arguments, not to ground them. In nineteenth-century Hindu North India, it was the logic and experience of Christianity that led people to the truth of the Bible, and not the other way around, as in American Reformed theology.{ Dass, Ishwari. Lectures on Theology, Adapted to the Natives of India.  Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press, 1860}— Arun W. Jone, Missionary Christianity and Local Religion, Waco, Texas, Baylor University Press, 2017, p. 213

2  ‘….The movement placed great emphasis upon the words of Christ: “I come not to destroy but to fulfill.’  Hinduism was not to be destroyed by the efforts of the Christians in India, but was to be fulfilled—transformed, sublimated—in union with Christ. {The movement is chronicled by Eric J. Sharpe, Not to destroy But to Fulfil: the contribution of J. N. Farquhar to Protestant missionary thought in India before 1914, Uppsala, 1965}.—Hugh Tinker, The Ordeal of Love C. F. Andrews and India, Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1998, p.34