Keshub Chunder Sen took the Logos doctrine as the theological basis for Christ‟s partial revelation in all religions, as he states:
Jesus welcomes all the chiefs of all sects, for they dwelt in him, the eternal Logos, and with him they again fraternize. Verily in Socrates was Christ, as the early Fathers held; and in Confucius too was Christ, and in Buddha, and in Nanak and in Chaitanya, and in Paul, and in Luther was he. In him they are all reconciled, and their broken lights unite to form the perfect Logos, the Word of God.786
There are several aspects to this understanding of revelation. Firstly, for Sen, a real, if incomplete and “broken” revelation of Christ has occurred within many religions and philosophical systems, from Greece to China: Sen rejects the idea of God‟s revelation in Christ being limited to one particular time and place, but suggests that this revelation has occurred in many places and times. From 1879, in a series of
785 K. C. Sen, „That Marvellous Mystery – The Trinity,‟ 25. 786 K. C. Sen, „Asia‟s Message to Europe,‟ in Lectures in India, 96.
193
lectures,787 Sen points to what he saw as a more expansive Christology, than that being proclaimed by the missionaries, with Christ connected to the histories of all peoples, as he stated: “the true Christ whom I can see everywhere, in all lands and in all times, in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in America, in ancient and modern times.”788 He describes this Christ as the “all inclusive, the all comprehending Christ,”789
to be distinguished from the “little Christ of little Christian sects.” Newbigin‟s assertion of the complete revelation of Christ occurring only in the events of his life and then mediated to the world through the church would certainly be interpreted by Sen as the “little Christ of little Christian sects.” As implied in the quotation above and the reference to Paul, Sen suggests that there is no one privileged place of revelation but this revelation has been spread across many sites. It is as though the light of Christ‟s revelation has been refracted and the different parts of the spectrum shone into different religions. This, for Sen is the basis of a form of the fulfillment model in his understanding of the relationship of the person of Christ to the religion.790
Sen‟s understanding of the revelation of Christ being located in diverse sites was made particularly clear during the last decade of his life when he was heavily
influenced by Ramakrishna.791 Sen brought his christology, to what could perhaps be seen as its logical conclusion, in his initiation of a new movement that he called „The Church of the New Dispensation.‟792 A new symbol was unveiled that incorporated the cross, the Hindu trident, and the Muslim crescent, and the Scriptures of
787 „India Asks Who is Christ?‟ (1879); „God Vision in the Nineteenth Century‟ (1880); „That
Marvellous Mystery - The Trinity‟ (1881); „Asia‟s Message to Europe‟ (1883).
788 K. C. Sen, „That Marvellous Mystery – The Trinity,‟ 32. 789 K. C. Sen, „That Marvellous Mystery – The Trinity‟, 31.
790 K. C. Sen, „Asia‟s Message to Europe,‟ 103. Sen saw, for example, the coming together in Christ of
Advaita Vedanta and the bhakti tradition of Vaishnavism, which emphasizes devotion to a personal god, as he states: “The future of India's regeneration must lie through Christ, for he combines in his teachings the spirit of the Rishi which lay in communion, and the spirit of Chaitanya, which lay in the service, loving and devout of the Lord” (K. C. Sen, in Indian Mirror (Easter Week, 1879) quoted in M. C. Parekh, Brahmarshi Keshub Chunder Sen (Rajkot: Oriental Christ House, 1926), 92). He thus interprets in Christ a bringing together of oneness with God and a conscious love of God, the ideals of both the philosophical tradition of Advaita and the devotional tradition of Bhaktism. Sen‟s
interpretation of Christ was sometimes criticized. In commenting on the lecture, „India Asks, Who is Christ?,‟ Parekh recognizes it as “great,” but makes several criticisms of it: of Sen‟s attempt to present a Christ in terms of relevance only to the Hindu; of a failure to adequately demonstrate the deity of Christ, presenting an image of Christ as “little more than an inspired prophet or rather philosopher;” and that Sen fell between both the Christian and the Hindu community in that for the former he went too far towards mysticism, whereas for the latter this “high view of Christ was . . . itself unwelcome to Hindus” (M. Parekh, Brahmarishi Keshub Chunder Sen, 106. . . . 109).
791 J. N. Farquhar, Modern Religious Movements in India (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1915),
57.
792
This was a new group formed under Sen‟s leadership after a further split in the Brahmo Samaj in the late 1870‟s due to Sen‟s marrying his under age daughter to a prince from Bihar, in a ceremony conducted using idolatrous rites.
194
Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Buddhism were laid out together on a table.793 Within this movement all of the religions would have their place. While Sen
emphasized the figure of Jesus Christ, his understanding of God‟s revelation in Christ taking place in a diverse range of places led to a form of religious fellowship quite distinct from the church.
Sen brings into very clear relief the interconnection of ecclesiology and the doctrine of revelation. If God‟s revelation is not uniquely located in the historic life of Jesus Christ, then the concept of the church is to be broadened to include all religious fellowships. The issue here is, arguably, not one of Christology, in that Sen had what we might describe as a high Christology. Rather, it was his reluctance to identify the historic life of Christ as the unique event of revelation that ultimately led him to a very distinct form of religious fellowship.
Several more recent Indian theologians have taken Sen‟s understanding of revelation a step further, to see the Advaita Vedanta of Hinduism as providing an appropriate framework from within which to understand Christ. In this
interpretation Christ‟s identity in terms of the Trinity is replaced by understanding his identity in relation to Brahman.