Christianity as Bhakti Marga

Of the Fourth Gospel, we may say that while there are other doctrines in it, such as that of the Logos, of the New Birth, of the Comforter and His mission, they are viewed in their relation to mystic experience. There is no exaggeration in saying that in the Fourth ‘Gospel fellowship with God and Christ is more frequently alluded to than any other Christian experience, that it inspites the noblest passages of the Gospel, and that where it is not explicitly described, it is the ideal towards which the thought of the Gospel tends. ‘This doctrine of a mystical union,’ says Scott, ‘in which the higher life flows uninterruptedly from Christ to the believer, contains the central and characteristic thought of the Fourth Gospel.’ *

The experience recorded in the Fourth Gospel may be regarded as Mysticism in the same sense in which that word is used in this book—communion with a personal God. But some of the ideas in Bhakti Literature which complicate this thought are absent here. The all-in-all-ness of God as described in the Gospel does not come into conflict with the idea of a personal God. Nor is there any trace of the thought of the human self becoming part of a larger Divine Self and losing its inner life, while keeping its outer activity. The Divine and the human selves maintain their separate personalities while enjoying the closest communion with each other. Mystic union in the Fourth Gospel, whether of Christ with God or of the Christian with Christ, consists in carrying out God’s or Christ’s will to its complete fulfilment. It is therefore transacted largely in the region of will, of character. This teaching is not, however, easy to understand, as. there are present in it certain other ideas as well. We commune now with Christ and now with the Father and now with both. Again, we are told with characteristic boldness that our communion with Christ is to be like His communion with the Father. This analogy is not altogether clear for we find it exceedingly difficult to understand the nature of the fellowship which exists between Him and His Father. Full of mystery as it is, the analogy extends beyond measure the possibilities inherent in our own mystic communion with Him.

It is urged that Mysticism has run riot in India often ‘ with disastrous results and that it would be extremely unwise to develop those elements in Christianity which may be called mystical or to make the Gospel of St. John the main basis for an exposition of Indian Christianity. Mysticism, so the criticism runs, tends to live in eternity, conscious of its vastness alone and neglecting or even despising time. It is easy to see how a mind eager to serve the eternal God and to live in His constant presence loses its sense of time. The Fourth Gospel, however, shows how accepting the historical Christ we may live in eternity. In it history —and metaphysics are woven together. This correlation between time and eternity ought to prove of the greatest importance to us inIndia. We in India have emphasized metaphysics at the expense of history and have lived in other worlds than this, absorbed in spiritual things. Nowareaction has setin: we are keen on the present and eager to set in motion swift currents of thought which will work their way into politics. The danger now is that, absorbed in the things which happen, we may lose sight of the profound issues in them. The visible is but a dim and partial revelation of the invisible. It is this great truth that underlies the method of interpretation adopted by the Fourth Evangelist. As a disciple the author of the Gospel hhad come into contact with Jesus. He had taken careful note of His sayings and doings and had meditated on them long, so that they began to reveal to his earnest and searching soul some of their great secrets. ‘The historic Jesus began to appear to him vividly as the eternal Logos. On the one hand, John is aware of the importance of history as he reckons with a person who has appeared in time. On the other, he fully realizes the significance of metaphysics, ‘being aware of the eternal issues in time. If it can base itself on the Fourth Gospel, Indian Christianity will, we may hope, avoid the danger of neglecting history.

Another danger of Mysticism is the identification of the human soul with the Divine. If Mysticism be pushed too far, as suggested in the letter already quoted, it must end by considering the human soul as one with God. This conclusion has been as a matter of fact reached by Sankara, one of India’s greatest philosophers. In a country where this tendency is strongly present, the influence of John would be all to the good. John was considerably exercised over this problem of the relation between the human and the Divine in deep religious experience. He seems to be quite aware of the possibility of man being metaphysically one with God but emphatically maintains the difference between God and man even in the deepest moments of religious experience. The study of the Gospel of John will, therefore, be of peculiar helpfulness to thinking people in India,

Yet another reason why Indian Christians should take full account of the Fourth Gospel is that in Mysticism all the world over there is a constant tendency to ignore the laws of morality. The man who feels that his entire being is dominated by God comes to think that he cannot possibly go wrong; for if he can go wrong, the blame would rest not upon himself but upon the Divine Self working within him: has he not annulled his own self in order to give room to the Divine Self? On this point too John has much that is of value to teach India. Wholly obedient. to God as he is, he realizes that he has constantly to be on his guard against wrong doing. For the human self is ever apt to assert itself and to do wrong; and the Divine Self is not likely to compel it, by any definite act, nor by sheer over-mastering presence, to put am end to all possibility of wrong-doing.

Why should we seek to give prominence to the mystical element in the Fourth Gospel, deriving an impetus to such an emphasis from a study of Hindu Bhakti Literature? The answer to this is that in the mystical life we have a real and vivid experience of Christ. This is, in fact, the great value of Christian Mysticism. We have historical records of Jesus as He lived and wrought on this earth centuries ago. We can study and ponder over these records and let their meaning soak into us. With skilful imagination and patient research we can seek to understand the past and to recall to our minds the Jesus of history. The mystic, however, does not depend only, or even mainly, upon an accumulation of historical data for his knowledge of Christ. He probably has assimilated, in some measure consciously and in a larger measure unconsciously, the historical data that are known to his contemporaries about Christ, though unwisely he might sometimes set up as a critic of such data. But his own pathway to the feet of Christ is different. In prayer, in hours of devotion and ecstasy, as well as in ordinary life, he experiences the living Christ. The barriers which lie between him and Christ cease to exist and they enter into close fellowship. The spirit of Christ becomes multiplied and His exalted presence keeps company with men for ever.

A remarkable example of such Christian Mysticism is Paul. As Deissmann says: ‘The formula ‘‘in

Christ”? (or ‘‘in the Lord’’ and so on) occurs one hundred and sixty-four times in Paul’s letters; it is really the characteristic expression of his Christianity, It has been, in my opinion, very often and very greatly misunderstood by the, commentators; they have rationalized it; they have ignored it; under their hands it often has become a mere scrap of parchment; they disguised its inner mystical energy, in very many cases applying to the so-called historic Jesus and to His work, regarded as finished in the past, instead of applying the formula to the present exalted Lord and to His action still going on. ‘though weakened: in effect by exegesis, the formula “in Christ’’ must be

conceived as the peculiarly Pauline expression of the Apostle’s most intimate fellowship with the living spiritual Christ.’ }

The problem of Christianity in India, then, consists jn getting a real grasp of the various trends of Hindu thought, and in interpreting Christian writings like those of John bearing these constantly in mind. When this is done Christian theology in India will become genuinely Indian. This process may also shed new light on the mind of the evangelist, light which will certainly be acceptable to the people in India and perhaps prove of much use to Christians elsewhere. An exclusively Indian meaning need not be read into a book that was written in another land in a different environment, as is done in Sri Parananda’s commentary on the Gospel* where the writer makes John out to be a Hindu following the Saiva Siddhanta doctrine. To do this is to go against the fundamental laws of historical criticism—a process of study which has proved so useful in our understanding of ancient texts. What we may accept, however, is that while the Gospel was composed ina different land and ina different environment, and while its particular doctrines were determined accordingly—it is necessary to under-

1 Adolf Deissmann, Zhe Religion of Jesus and the Faith of Paul, London, 1923; pp. 171, 172, See, however, Wilhelm Herrmann, Zhe Communion of the Christian with God, \ondon, 1913, (such pages as 27-37) for an able statement of the view that Mysticism is un-Christian. Sal 2 Sri Parananda, An Eastern Exposition of St. John, stand clearly the differences—yet its fundamental teaching is significantly related to the leading problems and experiences of Hindu seers. j In recent years much has been written about the

‘authorship of the Gospel of John, its date, its literary character, and the influence of the then current philosophy and environment onit. All these questions are important. They vitally affect our understanding of the Gospel andits purport. After a careful study of the subject, I have decided to treat the Gospel as a mystic _ document of the early Christian Church by an immedi- —ate disciple of Jesus, whom we may call John or the Fourth Evangelist. The same author seems also to have written the Epistles bearing the name of St. John. I have accepted the conclusion of modern scholars that in the Fourth Gospel we have the utterances of our Lord after they have passed through the Evangelist’s brooding mind. Browning well puts into the Evan- -gelist’s mouth these words:

‘Since much that at the first, in deed and word,

Lay simply and sufficiently exposed,

Had grown (or else my soul was grown to match,

Fed through such years, familiar with such light,

Guarded and guided still to see and speak)

Of new significance and fresh result;

Wkat first were guessed as points, I now knew

stars, And named them in the Gospel I have writ.’ 1

It is often difficult to recognize which is our Lord’s own teaching and which the teaching of the Evangelist. *

When we speak of interpreting Christianity in its. relation to the spirit of India’s religious genius, we have to remember that India’s religious genius has expressed itself in systems of philosophy, religious practices and sacred books often most diverse. The immediate task which Jies before Indian Christians anxious to make clear to themselves and to others the relation between the real spirit of Christianity and the real spirit of India’s religious life is that of choice. We have to decide what particular form of religious life in India is. best suited for this purpose. As there are many types of religious thought in India, an inevitable consequence of the attempts of Christian thinkers to adjust the

1 The commentaries or books of exposition I have found helpful are, arranging the names in alphabetic order:

St. Augustine, Lectures or Tractates on the Gospel according to St. John, translated by John Gibb, Edinburgh, 1873.

Wilhelm Heitmuller, Das Johannes Evangelium in Die Schriften des Neuen Testaments, edited by Johannes Weiss, Géttingen, 1918.

W. W. Peyton, The Memorabilia of Jesus, commonly cailed the Gospel of St. John, London and Edinburgh, 1892.

expression of their religious experience to the terms and ideas familiar to India would be the development of many types of Indian Christianity. Some of these types of Indian Christianity would be more true to the real spirit of Christianity than others. A keen Advaitin, for instance, who accepts Christianity and sincerely believes that Christianity is Advaita might offer an interpretation loudly proclaiming it to be Indian Christianity. Indian it certainly will be but not Christianity. “Chose who look forward to Christianity becoming indigenous in the country must not forget this danger which attends the process of relating Christianity to Hindu thought.

In this book I have chosen the Bhakti type of religious thought in India for the purpose of showing the intimate relation between the inner spirit of Christianity, and the inner spirit of India’s religious thought. This I have done for three reasons:

1. The type of religious experience which has expressed itself in the Bhakti writings, with its longing for union with God as well as its enjoyment of such anion, is of all the types of religious experience in India probably the nearest in affinity to Christian experience.

2. The metaphysical background lying behind Bhakti experience is also nearest in affinity to the metaphysical packground of Christianity. Both agree in maintaining the separateness of the Divine and human personalities, however much they may be eager for union.

3, Theimmense following which Bhakti has in India is another reason. Through popular hymns it has reached and influenced great numbers of people with little or no education. Historically also it probably started as popular devotion to idols, but it would be wrong to maintain that Bhakti is the religion of the masses only. It has always included among its votaries. not merely millions of the common people but hundreds of India’s able scholars and devoted saints.