[from Part One “The Authority of the Bible” in Biblical Authority For Today, edited by Alan Richardson and W. Schweitzer, 1951 (pp. 59ff.)]
[entitled “A Baptist Contribution” as the book’s Chapter 4]
Vinjamuri E. Devadutt
Dean of Theology, Professor of Philosophy and History, Serampore College, Serampore, India
I The basic difference between Hinduism and Christianity
This chapter has a limited scope. It attempts to discuss the question of Biblical authority in relation to a situation where the Christian faith is confronted by an ancient religion which claims the allegiance of millions of people, viz. Hinduism. The chapter will displease the Hindu and some Christians. But an honest attempt has been made to see things clearly, and to get behind superficial agreements to the basic problems that make these two faiths two and not one. Our motive, however, has not been a negative one. We have attempted to show how the two can understand each other and in this understanding there may be the possibility of ‘conversation’.
In the great religious systems of the Hindus, the question of ‘authority’ occupies an important place. Many of these systems are frankly authoritarian, though reason and experience are given quite an honourable place. This has produced in the course of the evolution of the Hindu religious systems very interesting results. By ‘authority’ is meant usually the canonical scriptures, i.e. the Vedas. Systems of religion or philosophical thought, however much they may differ from one another in their fundamental beliefs and practices, may still claim inclusion in the general system of Hinduism, provided they accept the authority of canonical scriptures. Hinduism, as its students know, is neither one religious system nor one type of philosophical thought. A wide variety of ‘Sampradayas’, i.e. traditions, often at great variance with one another in essentials and fundamentals, compose the complex called Hinduism. There is very little in common between Vaishnava Sampradayas and the Advaita
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System. The former are essentially theistic and the latter, while accommodating religion for the benefit of the weak-minded, looks upon Religious Reality, i.e. a personal God, as a subordinate Reality, even phenomenal in character. The highest Truth according to the Advaita is the impersonal and non-qualitative Brahman. And yet both are included in Hinduism and are treated as orthodox! Though Buddhism and Jainism have had their origin in India, they are treated as heterodox, not primarily on the ground of the doctrinal peculiarities of those two systems, but because they disowned the authority of the Vedas. This position of the Hindu makes him take a certain attitude to the claims of the Christian faith in India. Many modern Hindus are prepared to grant the uniqueness of the Person of Christ, but they profess that they do not understand why the Indian Christian should not be considered free to treat the Vedas or the portions of them called the Upanishads as his Scriptures. The modern Hindu contends that while the history of the Jews and the deposit of sacred wisdom of this race, as embodied in the Old Testament, may undoubtedly be inspiring, he cannot see what relevance all this has to non-Jewish races, especially to races which have an equally long religious history and scriptures of even greater antiquity. And furthermore, and this is the real contention, all that is worth while and really valuable and inspiring from a purely religious point of view in the Jewish Scriptures is found in the Hindu scriptures and tradition, and while the Christian need not surrender any of the doctrines he considers essential and material to his faith, he can find all the ‘authority’ he needs for his theology in the latter. He may feel reasonably that he needs the New Testament, and he may retain it as additional to the Vedas, and the modern Hindu is himself prepared to recognise an intrinsic worth in at least certain portions of the New Testament.
This readiness of the modern Hindu to accommodate the Christian faith to the Hindu systems is a constant challenge to the Indian Christian theologian. One need not suspect any unworthy motive on the part of the modern Hindu in this attitude. The nationalist sentiment, with the pride that it involves in all that is a national possession, may be there. Psychologically an element of romantic nostalgia for the heritage from the past of one’s own country may also be there; but both these elements are by no means peculiar to the Hindu mind. Even certain types
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of Christian tradition unhappily manifest them. The attitude is essentially traceable to the modern Hindu’s basic religious philosophy, a philosophy that has its roots in the Upanishads, the most important part of the Vedas. It is not necessary to examine this basic philosophy in detail. But the idea of syncretism must be considered at the deepest level, since some Indian Christians, and also some Western students of Indian religions, are attracted by what seems an essentially reasonable and generous attitude on the part of the Hindu, his readiness to accommodate the Christian faith in the Hindu systems. The real danger of such syncretism is the fact that the Hindu expects the Christian to make equal concessions, by recognising the Vedas as a source of inspiration and authority side by side with the New Testament. This point we must take up.
The substance of this basic religious philosophy is the following:
A. Reality is One. If Reality is One, then the Many cannot be also at the same time real. The Many at best are only provisionally real. To gain a vision of the One, we must discipline ourselves to turn that vision away from the Many.1
B. If Reality were really One and if it really transcended the Many and is thus a Unity, then our apprehension of it is never through intellectual categories. Intellectual categories emerge from and operate only in the context of an epistemological dualism, i.e. in the context of an antithesis between the subject and the object. But if Reality were One and a Unity the dualism implied by the subject-object relationship is excluded from its unitary integrity, and with it any possibility of intellectual apprehension. All intellectual apprehensions and all affirmations arising from the experience that is rooted in the subject-object antithesis pertain only to the realm of the Many, i.e. to the realm that is only provisionally and pragmatically true.2
1‘There is on earth no diversity.
He gets death after death,
Who perceives here seeming diversity.
As a unity only is it to be looked upon,
This indemonstrable, enduring Being.’
Brihadarnyaka Upanishad 4.4:19-20. Hume’s Translation.
2‘There the eye goes not;
Speech goes not, nor the mind,
We know not, we understand not
How one would teach It.’
Kena Upanishad 3. Hume’s Translation.
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C. All deliverances of our experience, intellectual and otherwise, even the profoundest of them, having this strictly limited reference to the realm of the provisionally or pragmatically true, never carry with them the stamp of ultimate truthfulness. They may not be untrue, for the Many being provisionally true does express partially the nature of Reality. In other words they are both true and false. They are true in the sense that they partially express the nature of Reality; they axe false in the sense that no intellectual truth or truths apprehended in experience ever express the nature of Reality in any adequate sense.
D. Since what is said above applies equally to religious experience, all religious affirmations are both true and false. They are all true, however divergent they may be from one another; they all emerge from an experience that operates in the realm of the provisionally true and share its character. Furthermore, never having access to Reality in our normal experience, we dare not say that any affirmation is untrue. They are false also, for they can never express the total or true nature of Reality.l
From the above summary it can be seen wherein lie the roots of the toleration and the accommodating spirit of the modern Hindu. All religions are equally true and equally false.2 If this is the nature of religion qua religion, to assess the relative merits of various religions is stupid. Let them live in amity. As for the Christian faith, it has great merits, but its claim to sole apprehension of truth is insufferable and its propagation among the Indians disrupts the Indian society. Let it, however, accept the Vedas as its scriptures and thus reorientate itself to the great stream of Indian tradition., and within this tradition it can enjoy whatever freedom it desires.
1‘Into blind darkness enter they
That worship ignorance:
Into darkness greater than that as it were
That delight in knowledge.’
Isa Upanishad 9. Hume’s Translation.2‘Even as a tree has a single trunk, but many branches and leaves, so is there one true and perfect religion, but it becomes many as it passes through the human medium. The one Religion is beyond all speech. Imperfect men put it into such language as they can command, and their words are interpreted by other men equally imperfect. Whose interpretation is to be held to be the right one? Everybody is right from his own standpoint, but it is not impossible that everybody is wrong.’ Mahatma Gandhi in an article on ‘Tolerance, i.e. Equality of Religions’, printed in a collection of his speeches and writings entitled Christian Missions, Navajivan Press, Ahamadabad, India.
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In the light of what is said above, it ought to be clear to such Indian Christians as see a real opportunity in the invitation by Hinduism to the Christian faith to a free alliance, that the invitation is not so simple as it seems. The invitation arises in a deep and fundamental religious conviction of the Hindus; this conviction is the strongest of all convictions entertained by the modern educated Hindu.1 But the conviction is at fundamental variance with the major convictions of the Christian faith. In other words, the theologies of both differ fundamentally. One believes in a supra-rational, supra-personal unitary Reality, which according to some not only transcends in its own nature everything known in experience or apprehended in thought, but which even annuls all such in its unitary integrity. The other believes in a personal God, ‘Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth’. The realm of the Many is his creation and the sphere of his purposive action.
II History and revelation
The Christian faith is based on a revelation. Hinduism also professes to be based on revelation. But when we examine their respective views of revelation they diverge. According to the Christian view, revelation is the self-disclosing activity of God. Revelation is something that takes place. It is in and through an event. Revelation is not intuitive insights of men into the nature of Reality, though to be sure these insights have a supreme value. Revelation is a movement from God’s side. The Christian believes in the revelation of God in the history of the Hebrews and in Jesus Christ.
The Christian view of revelation as the activity of God presupposes two things. In the first place, it presupposes that God is a personal Being. Activity, directed deliberately and consciously toward fulfilment of purposes, belongs only to personal beings. Where reality is viewed as impersonal and devoid of conscious purposes, where it is looked upon as transcending good and evil, there you cannot expect the type of activity implied by revelation in the Christian sense. Reality which is just Being, and a static identity with no history, cannot reveal itself and show a purpose. If the word ‘revelation’ is used with reference to such a reality, as it is sometimes in the Advaita, the word stands for
1Ramakrishna Mission, a body that is a typical representative of the best in modern Hinduism, insists that its adherents express no criticism of a Faith or Way which they themselves do not agree with.
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mystic intuition in which the distinction hitherto falsely thought to exist between Reality and the individual is abolished, and the undivided Reality stands self-shining with nothing to look at and nobody to look at it. It would not be true, of course, to say that all systems of Hindu thought believe that Reality is impersonal and is a Unity. The one system that is uncompromisingly monistic or non-dualistic is the Advaita. There are Hindu systems which have no sympathy with the Advaitic point of view. Nevertheless, it would be true to say that the Hindu mind is generally more inclined toward the Advaita than toward the systems that are nearer the theistic point of view. Even where the theistic point of view is entertained, in many cases it is only provisional, for it is believed that beyond the theistic point of view there is a higher point of view, where man’s mind ceases to use personal categories and learns in an intuitive vision and mystic contemplation that Reality is beyond personality, beyond change, beyond speech and understandings. The theistic point of view, it is contended, is a helpful discipline but does not ‘deliver the goods’. The Bhagavadgita, the bible of the modern Hindu, sets both the theistic point of view and the point of view of philosophical monism side by side. Though we believe that it is possible for a discriminating mind to see that the characteristic point of view of the author of the Gita himself is what might be termed the ‘Purusha Gati’, i.e. the theistic point of view, he is too shy to declare it clearly and plainly, and accommodates alongside his theism ‘AksharaGati’, i.e. the point of view of philosophical monism. Modern commentators on the Gita accordingly believe that the theism of the Gita is only one side of its teaching and that the Gita believes that Reality essentially transcends personal existence. Thus Radhakrishnan writes: ‘Of course the Gita does not tell us of the way in which the absolute, as impersonal non-active spirit, becomes the active personal Lord creating and sustaining the universe. The problem is considered to be insoluble. The mystery clears up only when we rise to the level of intuition. The transformation of the absolute into God is maya or a mystery. It is also maya in the sense that the transformed world is not so real as the absolute itself.’1
In the second place, the Christian view of revelation assumes that history is real, though not ultimate, for the activity of God is
1S. Radhakrishnan, Indian Philosophy, Vol. I, 2nd Ed., p. 539.
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in history. History is the sphere of God’s purposive action. But if someone’s view of Reality is that it is impersonal, with no conscious activity of its own, history cannot be real to him. History is a scene of activity; it is a realm of change. And as an order representing activity and change, it is antithetical to Reality, which is changeless and immutable. At the highest, history has only a pragmatic reality and one who has gained the mystic intuition does not retain any traces of association with the historical order, for the order is completely annulled to him. Revelation in the Christian sense is completely meaningless on this reading of history. Of course, the theistic systems in Hinduism should not find it difficult to accept the reality of history. But while they repudiate the Advaita interpretation of history, even they find it difficult to treat history seriously. Creation is due to the Lila of God, a sportive impulse in him. While Lila does not imply meaningless playfulness, it expresses the Hindu shyness in ascribing to God purposiveness in creation. Purposiveness implies a working toward ends, and working toward ends implies that there is something that is yet unrealized - something that is in the ‘end’ only. But to God and in God there is nothing that is unrealised. There is no lack in him and so it is contended that we cannot ascribe purposes to God. Accordingly there is nothing even in the theistic Hinduism comparable to the Christian conception of the Church, or the Kingdom of God, both these taken to represent the Christian belief in the partially realized will of God in the temporal order, though both having a futuristic and eschatological reference. Furthermore, the law of moral economy in the world is the Law of Karma. No doubt the Law of
Karma in a sense expresses divine purpose, but once having been ordained by God for man’s good, it operates with as absolute an autonomy as the causal law in the physical realm. So in the end no active and present Divine purpose need be resorted to to interpret history. And on the whole man’s duty is to turn away from history, to escape from the cycle of births and deaths and gain Mukti-release. On this view also revelation, interpreted as the self-disclosing activity of God in great historical events, is impossible. In all the Hindu scriptures there is no event parallel to the deliverance of Israel from the Egyptian bondage, to the Exile and to the return from it.
One of the persistent teachings of the Puranic literature, it
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might be contended as against what we have said above, concerns the intervention of God in the affairs of men when these affairs go wrong. This thought is also the thought, in a measure, of the Epics. The Gita, which forms a part of the Mahabharata, teaches that whenever there is a decline in morality, and evil triumphs, God comes into the world to restore order. The Puranic stories of Avataras are an illustration of this teaching of the Gita. Here we confront a crucial issue. On the subject of Incarnation, Christianity and Hinduism come very near each other in theory and yet they divide vitally on this subject. The Christian believes that the revelatory activity of God culminated in Incarnation - in the incarnate Jesus. And the author of the Fourth Gospel avers, perhaps against the Gnostics, that ‘the Word became flesh and made its tabernacle among men’.1 Incarnation is an intractable event in history according to the Christian faith, and there would be no Christian faith but for this event. And the words ‘the Word became flesh’ have to be taken seriously. Though the idea of Avatar is quite a familiar idea in Hinduism, the Hindu mind seems to shy away from attaching any reality to Avatar as an event. Thus, for instance, Professor D. S. Sarma writes: ‘The Hindu Scriptures deal with ideal truth and not with historical truth. Their validity does not depend on any historical fact. This is very well illustrated in the accounts we have in the Puranas of the various Avataras. For these are intended only to give an imaginative representation of God’s help rendered to man at different stages of his evolution’.2 Thus, the intuitive insight of the common man that his Creator is vitally concerned with his and his fellow-beings’ affairs and that he, thus conceived, does deign to come into the world, is explained away.
In the Christian faith, revelation and redemption are inseparably linked. According to the Old Testament, revelation is to be seen primarily in the great acts of God’s judgment and redemption. The revelation of God in Jesus Christ is both a judgment of man and a means of his salvation. Nothing in all human knowing is a more severe condemnation of man’s sin and a more poignant revelation of the forgiving heart of God than the Cross - an event in the history of Incarnation. The Cross condemns and reconciles at once. The Law of Karma and redemption through vicarious suffering are irreconcilable. The
1John 1.14. 2D. S. Sarma, Primer of Hinduism, p. 15.
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Law of Karma is the causal law in the moral sphere; nothing and nobody can interfere with its autonomous operation, not even God who is its author. Even Ramanuja can only concede that God helps man to live a good life that his debt to the Law of Karma may eventually be wiped out. The Law of Karma, let it be admitted, expresses the Hindu faith in the integrity of the moral universe. The assumptions behind it, however, are very different from the Christian assumptions centring round the Cross. The Cross is not a condemnation primarily of man’s moral failure, though to be sure eventually it is. Moral failure is only an effect of something else and it will not be cured unless its cause is removed. This cause is man’s alienation from God, a wilful straying away from his presence and rule. The Cross is a condemnation of this alienation and enmity and that is why it can reconcile, removing the enmity. The enmity is the sin, and moral failure is the result of the enmity. The Christian emphasis is on a personal relationship, the breach in which is man’s trouble. The emphasis of the Law of Karma is on an autonomous moral universe. The universe may express the will of God; nevertheless, it is autonomous, sovereign and impersonal. Moral failure is the violation of the laws of the moral universe and its immutable laws take care of all violations. Because sin in the Christian faith is conceived as arising in a breach of a personal relationship, its cure is conceived as consisting in the restoration of that personal relationship, and revelation as a means of redemption is utterly intelligible in such a context. But where sin is identical with moral failure only, and where the moral person is related only to an impersonal moral universe, there revelation as connected with redemption, has no meaning. The Cross indeed is foolishness, for how can the death of one man wipe out the sins of many, even when the very will of God which has ordained the moral universe cannot interfere with the operation of its immutable laws?
We have seen in sharp outline some of the differences between Christianity and Hinduism. But while these differences on the theoretical level are stubborn and irreconcilable, there is an overwhelming portion of the Hindu community to whom these theoretical considerations are of no consequence. Their religion is a warm-hearted one; their devotion is to a personal God and it glows with a fervour that would put many a Christian to shame. The God they worship is not only personal, but is supremely a
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moral Person. The attitude that philosophic Hinduism takes to the religious insights of these people is one of benevolent tolerance, but it would if it could, if only in a friendly way, explain away most of these insights. One of these insights is that God is supremely concerned with the affairs of men and that therefore he deigns to come into their midst taking a mortal form. Recall how Professor D. S. Sarma seeks simultaneously both to retain and dismiss this insight. According to him, the Hindu Scriptures deal only with ideal truth and not with historical truth, and while there is truth in the Puranic accounts of the Avataras, that truth is only ideal truth. But the common man who believes that God by his nature is such that he does reveal himself to men, to answer their longings for him, by actually coming into their midst, does not subscribe to the theory of Professor Sarma and people of his way of thinking. Is Professor Sarma seeking an escape from the historical improbability of the reported Avataras? But if there is any truth-value in the insight, it does not behove one to explain it away in the way that Professor Sarma does. It is an insight that millions of people share in India. At one time in Indian history people who shared this insight rebelled and turned against the abstractions of philosophic Hinduism - a rebellion which resulted in the Bhakti movement. The weakness of the belief of these Bhaktas and the particular insight of the movement that we are considering, is that there is nothing in Hinduism on the level of fact to answer to the implication of this insight. The historical improbability of the Avataras should not turn one to idealisation. Should Hinduism content itself with ideal truth only? Of what value is the conception of Avatara if it only represents an ideal possibility in the Being of God? Why does not the Hindu thinker, as a searcher after truth, examine impartially and without prejudice the claims of the Christian faith? He may find in the Christian belief in Jesus Christ the answer on the level of fact to the implications of the insights of the Bhakti movement.
III Record and Revelation
Revelation in Hinduism is really equivalent to the Scriptures. The official Hindu doctrine of revelation is the doctrine of sabda. The meaning of sabda is ‘sound’; but it is not mere sound, but significant sound, i.e. sound embodied in meaningful words. Words are the medium by which men exchange their thoughts and
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make their purposes known to each other. Words reveal one mind to another mind. The mind of God is revealed by words communicated by him to seers and sages. Revelation thus is by means of words. And the words, communicated by God to Rishis and embodied in the Scriptures, i.e. the Vedas, constitute revelation. We believe that, except to a few, to those in the Christian faith the Scriptures and revelation are not identical. Revelation is not through words, not through propositions and not through communication of knowledge. Revelation is through action. Words can say something about an action, but they can never contain it. Accordingly, our view is that the Christian Scriptures are the record of revelation and not the revelation itself. Anyone with even a superficial acquaintance with the religious literature of the world knows one characteristic feature of the Bible - its concern with history. The Old Testament attempts to present history, the history of a small nation. No other religious literature in the world concerns itself so largely with historical events or what were thought to be historical events. This preoccupation with history in the Old Testament has offended many people and even many good Christians. What significance can the history of a small nation have for others and what message has it of universal application? History by its very nature is local both in regard to (time) and space, and the experiences of any given people in any given period of time therefore cannot have a universal message. This last contention is true in a sense, but there is here a complete misunderstanding of the motive and the method of the historian of the Old Testament. The point is that the Old Testament writers are interested in history because to them it is made up of God’s acts - the great acts of judgment and redemption. Understood in this sense the Old Testament as a historical narrative is not the history of a nation as such, but largely a record of the acts of God in relation to a nation. If revelation is through action, then there is much to be found in the Old Testament concerning revelation. As we have stated above, the Book itself is not revelation. Much that is human interposes in the actual recording, but the central theme is more often than not the activity of God. Those who say that they are repelled by the Old Testament confess often to a feeling of being more at home in the New Testament. The reason given is that the alleged cramping limitations of a narrowly historical point of view are absent in the New Testament
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and that in it we deal with ideas. No doubt there is history of the personality of Jesus, but such history is said to be incidental. We are primarily concerned, it is contended, with the ideas of this unique personality and the ideas of his followers about him. There is a profound misunderstanding here also. In a good part of the New Testament, also, we are primarily dealing with historical narrative and the rest of it revolves round a historical event - the act of God in coming into history. The New Testament narrative begins with a mighty event in history; if that event did not occur, there would be no New Testament. The New Testament writers do not play around ideas for their own sake, but they deal with ideas in so far as they are related to this historical event. The feeling that in the New Testament we are not moving in the alleged atmosphere of a narrowly historical point of view, is due to the fact that whereas in the Old Testament every act of God was understood as having a primary significance for the Hebrew nation alone, in the New Testament the acts of God for the first time in the whole range of Biblical writing, are unreservedly and totally conceived as having significance for the whole human race and not because it deals with ideas. The New Testament also is a record primarily of the acts of God-a record of the mightiest act of God, viz. his coming into history in Jesus Christ. Thus the Old and New Testaments are records of revelation.
The Bible is the only report and record of revelation of God in the history of the Hebrew race and in Jesus Christ and its value is determined by its character as such a record. As a record of revelation it is authoritative in relation to this revelation and all that this revelation means by implication. Revelation itself has an authority that is absolute, otherwise it would cease to be revelation. If we accept that God has revealed his will, we are bound to accept that revelation. The Bible as the record of revelation possesses the same authority as revelation in so far as that revelation is concerned. What we mean is this: while the authority of the Bible is absolute in matters that are made manifest to us in the revelatory activity of God, and also in matters that are strictly deducible from this activity, it would be illegitimate to extend its authority beyond them directly. It would have an indirect authority in regard to these other matters in that the ultimate point of view for the Christian in anything is a religious point of view, and that is based on the Bible.
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In speaking about the value of the Bible as determined by its character as the record of revelation, we seem to involve ourselves in a difficulty. We know of the revelation of God only because the Bible witnesses to it; it is the only source of our information concerning the self-disclosing activity of God, and it seems illogical to determine its value by that to which it witnesses. Without the Bible we should have no information concerning revelation and it is the latter that determines the value of the Bible. This seems to be arguing in a circle. Formally perhaps it is. But we often judge the worth of a reporter by that which he reports. The Bible itself is not revelation, but it is authoritative by virtue of the inherent worth of that which it reports and records. And if we take revelation seriously we have to accept its authority; and if we accept its authority we have to accept the authority of that which witnesses to it and makes a record of it. This authority is binding, subject to the delimitation indicated earlier.
The Bible is an inspired record of revelation. When we say it is inspired we mean that the people who had a share in its writing were under the guidance of the Spirit of God. Inspiration is riot verbal communication, making of the writer merely a pen for the Divine Spirit. Inspiration is that which moves and guides. It is such an inspiration of the Divine Spirit which enabled the writers of the Bible to see God’s activity. Being an inspired record of revelation, the Bible has the power, when reverently read, to make that revelation vital to our experience. The word of the Bible when read in faith becomes the living Word of God and as the living Word of God a power unto our salvation.
The question is often asked whether, granting that the Bible is a record of revelation, it would be true to say that all the portions of it are such a record and equally authoritative. We have maintained that the revelation of God is through his judging and redeeming activity. It is clear, however, that the recognition of the redemptive movement of God in particular historical events is not always easy. Historical process is determined both by the activity of God and man’s response to that activity. The Hebrew recognised this. Though he believed that there would be no history without God’s activity, he did not believe that history was solely and automatically determined by such activity. The Hebrew never attributed every historical phenomenon to God
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solely. Such a thing would reduce man’s status to that of an automaton. Man’s resistance to God’s purposes brought forth moral and spiritual degradation in society, and man alone was responsible for such conditions and therefore merited God’s judgment. But he could co-operate with God by turning away from his evil ways and by walking humbly with him and thus allow God to hasten the bright day of hope. History is thus determined by God’s activity and man’s response to it. Now, the writers of the Old Testament were not always able, despite this recognition of the nature of the historical process, to disentangle man’s share in any given historical event. But we have a principle by which we can do this, at least with a better measure of success. The judging and redeeming activity of God culminates in the incarnate Jesus. It is the testimony of the Bible itself. God who has always been acting, now acts in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is God in the fulness of his judging and redeeming activity. In order therefore to see the human and the divine factors involved in the historical process, we must continually refer to Christ as the true criterion and standard. The historical Jesus is the temporal manifestation of the eternal Christ, who in the indivisible being of God constitutes his purposes for mankind, both creative and redemptive. And Jesus Christ, being the highest possible embodiment for men of the revelation of God, becomes the key to understanding other revelatory acts of God. Christ is the value judgment on the record of revelation. Now, to the question if all the portions of the Bible are equally authoritative, we reply in the affirmative in so far as they stand the test explained above. This test is not something imported from outside the Bible. It is derived from the Bible itself, from the purpose of its narrative.
IV Authority in the realm of ethics
The main interest of this chapter is to show the relevance of the Bible to the Church’s social and political message - indeed, not merely its relevance, but its authority concerning this message. We are to discuss the question, not, however, in a general way, but with particular reference to problems in the Indian situation. Social and political problems in the end are ethical problems. Social and political objectives are conceived in relation to the ‘good’ that is to be obtained for the individual and society
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through social and political organisation. The determination of the ‘good’ is based essentially on an ethical outlook, whatever that ethical outlook might be. An ethical outlook or an ethical point of view needs to be undergirded by a more inclusive and wider outlook. An autonomous ethic is a myth. In determining what constitutes the ethical good, you need at least to take into consideration human nature and human needs. To the extent that such a consideration is needed, to that extent at least an ethical outlook is dependent on something other than itself. The question really is, what should this other be? Secularism and humanism have really failed to give us firm foundations on which to base our ethics. And yet to many educated Hindus, humanism and secularism seem the only alternative to the religion of their fathers and, being dissatisfied with the latter, they are being driven to the former. Why does this dissatisfaction arise? We may guess at one or two reasons.
In the first place, for a long time and till recently, the Hindu ethical system for the common man was mainly that implied by the concept of the Varna Dharma, i.e. caste duty. Of course, he had also the ideal of Sadharana Dharma, i.e. common or universal virtues, such as truth-speaking, abstaining from causing injury, the practice of charity, friendliness to all creatures, purity, continence, etc. But what was plain to everyone was the Varna Dharma, and the connection between religion and ethics was more clearly seen here than in the case of Sadharana Dharmas, for the latter could be conceived even by ‘natural conscience’ without establishing any connection between them and religion. But in modern times, for a variety of reasons, people began to rebel against Varna Dharma. But rebellion against an ethical system which has its roots in a religious outlook involves inevitably at least a sceptical attitude toward that religion. To quite a few enlightened Hindus, humanism was the alternative. But perhaps there is another reason too why to many educated Hindus secularism and humanism are more attractive than any religion. Some forms of renascent Hinduism, in their desire to purify Hinduism of popular and indefensible beliefs, shifted the emphasis greatly from religion to philosophy, which task, of course, was not difficult, in view of the Indian tradition, where both have always walked hand in hand. We see actually a revival of the Upanishadic tradition in this, and the emphasis is on an idealistic monism. We have
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examined earlier a few of the assumptions of this philosophy. In regard to ethic, the attitude of idealistic monism is that ethical value as such really belongs to the realm of evaluation, and not to the realm of value at all. Reality which is a unitary integrity is by virtue of that character above good and evil. When you relegate the ethical value to the realm of evaluations, to the realm which is real only provisionally and pragmatically, you necessarily weaken its claims. If ethical value belongs only to that which is real only pragmatically, the sanctions of morality are reduced to expediency and prudence. The ‘ought’ of the moral law is replaced at best by ‘the must’. Many advocates of modern Hinduism are sensitive to this criticism. They of course, have no intention that the sanctions of morality should be those of prudence and expediency. They believe the ethical outlook of the Hindu is well taken care of by some very inspiring teaching coming down from ancient days. But what is not realised is that you cannot expect people not to draw the plain conclusions from a given point of view. You cannot expect people to have one view of reality and another view in regard to morals. They are connected or linked together. To those with a social idealism and passion the philosophical point of view, which consigns ethical value to the realm of evaluations, is unsatisfactory. But if, to be religious, one ought to accept this particular position, it is better to abandon all religion. On purely secular grounds one can at least determine scientifically man’s needs and understand the ‘good’ in relation to those needs.
At the moment, when caste is definitely breaking down and its sociological and religious assumptions practically repudiated, and renascent Hinduism with its dominantly philosophical outlook is unable to supply the incentive and motive for a satisfactory and enduring ethic, there is absolute confusion and chaos in the ethical outlook of the people in India. It is admitted by all honest people in contemporary India that ethically our national life has perhaps touched bottom. Corruption in public life is increasing at an alarming speed; public spirit is conspicuous by its absence. If this were all due to deliberate perversity in the people, the situation would not be serious, for the wicked can always be reformed, at least one hopes so. The tragedy of the situation is that many do not show any evidence of possessing any sense of moral discrimination and do evil in good faith. The man who
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travels on a railway without a ticket and believes that there is nothing inherently wrong in it, has lost or has no sense of moral discrimination. The situation is so alarming that it is time for the leaders of Hindu thought to give up their defensive role and attempt to face facts squarely. This is a pathetic situation in a country which till the other day was under the leadership of a unique moral personality - Mahatma Gandhi. Why has Gandhian leadership, a leadership that cast an absolute spell during the lifetime of the leader, failed? The reason is not far to seek. Mahatma Gandhi claimed that he was a Hindu. It is stupid to contest this claim. Nevertheless, with the greatest amount of goodwill, it is difficult to substantiate his claim that his ethical teaching, at any rate, was derived from the Gita. This is not to say that Mahatmaji was dishonest. No Indian, no matter to what faith he belongs, can charge the Mahatma with this failing. But whatever the reason, his claim was not true. We do not imply by this that his ethical teaching was derived from the Christian sources. It was derived from many sources, the Christian being not the least among them. But the tragedy lies in the fact that though he claimed to base his ethical teachings on the Gita mainly, he could never relate them integrally to the religion he professed, viz. Hinduism. Of course the doctrine of Ahimsa is quite an ancient Hindu doctrine, but certainly not taught in the Gita in the way that Mahatmaji taught. After the death of Mahatmaji, people turned more readily to the Christian Gospels, especially to the Sermon on the Mount, than to the Gita to understand the meaning of this great man’s teachings. Even orthodox Hindus found it difficult to refer to his death and explain it in terms of the doctrine of Karma. As a matter of fact, one never heard the word ‘Karma’ during all those days when the whole nation was mourning his death; rather, one often heard the word ‘Cross’ in the many speeches during this period. The Hindu found some meaning in the death of Mahatma Gandhi when he attempted to understand that death in the light of the Cross. Whatever the value of such a thing may be, the one thing that remains as clear as daylight is that the Hindu could not recognise either in the ethical teachings or in the death of Gandhiji anything that he was accustomed to as a Hindu; therefore while he mourned the death genuinely and sincerely for some time, he soon forgot him. Gandhian leadership failed because in its ethical qualities there was something that was said to be
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typically Hindu, but which the Hindu could not recognise as being Hindu. If India is to be saved from the disastrous effects of the present confusion in ethical and moral standards, she and her leaders must give serious and urgent attention to the need for an ethical and moral education of the people of the land.
The Hindu may repudiate the religious faith of the Christian. He may show active antagonism to the effort of the Christian to spread his faith. He has actually done both with a certain amount of vigour often enough. But we have not yet come across one single instance of the Hindu opposition to Christian ethical teaching. The criticism of the Hindu rather is that the Christian is not Christian enough in his ethical practices. He is furious at the suggestion that is sometimes naively made that Western culture is Christian culture. If Western culture is Christian culture, then there must be more in it than is seen.
Would the Hindu accept the Christian ethic? Perhaps he would, provided it is commended to him without the religious assumptions behind it. And yet the Christian ethic has no legs to stand on without the religious assumptions of the Christian faith. When Jesus commended to his disciples the virtue of benevolence to their enemies, the reason he gave was that God himself always acted benevolently toward all, and that this is shown in his impartial administration of his providence - ‘for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and understand rain on the just and the unjust’. In other words, God’s nature is to be the ground of man’s moral action or, to put it in the language of the philosophers, the moral law arises in something inherent in the nature of reality. Christian religion and Christian ethics are integrally connected and related. If the Christian ethic has no legs to stand on without the religious assumptions of the Christian faith, the latter’s authoritative source being the Christian Scriptures, the former’s authoritative source is also the Christian Scriptures. The failure of Gandhian leadership - a leadership of unprecedented stature in modern times - must be a warning both to the Christian and the Hindu that confusion in regard to the sources and basis of one’s teaching, and the lack of an authority behind it, except that of a human individual, however great he may be, achieves no enduring results, though the teaching itself be of high quality.
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V The Authority of the Old and the New Testaments in ethical matters
One of the obvious difficulties to the Hindu and to many Indian Christians is the place and authority of the Old Testament, both in regard to religion and ethics. Is the Old Testament necessary for deriving the content of the Christian ethic? Now, when we accept the Bible as the ultimate visible authority for the Christian faith, we accept it as a whole, subject to the remarks on this point earlier in the chapter. The Bible is a unity and the Testaments are organically related to each other. The principle of the unity of the Bible is the purpose of it as the record of revelation. The Bible is a report and record of the revelatory acts of God, and its unity is in this report or the purpose of it. The unity of the Bible is not a unity of conception. There is hardly any developing philosophy of theism in the Book. The unity is not a unity of conception, but of divine action. We do not approach the Bible from the angle of man’s vision of God - if we do this the Bible will fall apart into incoherent bits - but from the angle of what God has been doing for man. The Bible is a record of this and its unity is in this. Those who accept the authority of the New Testament must recognise that the New Testament itself accepts the authority of the Old Testament. We have admitted that, as a record, much that is human interposes in it. But we have also stated the principle with the aid of which we can disentangle, with some measure of success, the human from the divine element in the Biblical record. But, having stated that the Bible is a unity, we proceed to recognise within its larger unity both continuity and discontinuity simultaneously. This may seem paradoxical, but only apparently. While the whole movement of God’s activity in the history of Israel culminates in one event, viz. the coming of God in Jesus Christ, there is something novel in Jesus Christ himself. God’s revelation in Jesus Christ is unique. We need not enter into any elaborate argument to prove this. This novelty in God’s revelation in Jesus Christ, and its uniqueness, make the revelation different from that recognised in the Old Testament. But at the same time it is the continuation of the Old Testament revelation, for it is the culmination of one movement, a movement of redemption.
The discontinuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament in so far as their respective ethical points of view are
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concerned may be broadly defined in this way: while the matrix of the ethical code of the former consists in the conception of justice, that of the latter consists in the conception of love. But while there is this discontinuity there is also a continuity. Jesus Christ himself seems to affirm a continuity when he says simultaneously that his mission is not to abrogate the law, and yet that in the new dispensation the conduct expected of its members should go beyond the minimum requirements laid down in the law. The point is, love does not exclude justice. It includes it, but it goes beyond it. This is so at least in so far as the positive aspects of justice are concerned. Roughly, if justice were rendering unto each man his due, and love rendering more than what is due, the rendering of more would include also the rendering of what is due. My love for my neighbour may induce me to do all sorts of things for him, but it would certainly include the rendering of what is due to him as a person, and this is justice. The opposition between justice and love arises when justice is viewed as expressing something merely legal and is identified with a narrow conception of retributive justice. Retributive justice, however, is only one aspect of the total nature of justice, the other aspects being those that concern themselves with the securing and maintenance of those conditions necessary for the welfare of the human individual and society, such as the four freedoms of the late President Roosevelt. In this larger understanding of justice there is no essential opposition or antithesis between it and love.
Though there is no essential antithesis, there is more in love than in justice. But this ‘more’ creates certain practical difficulties. Justice is based on the recognition of the claims and rights and duties and obligations of people, and it operates to see that these are fulfilled. It does not hesitate to use justifiable coercion to see itself fulfilled. On the contrary, a world of claims and counterclaims, of rights and duties, is a totally alien world to ‘love’. Love is giving without any consideration of the merits of those on whom it is conferred.
In this context let us recall to our minds the source of the Christian conception of love. The early Church uses a word of its own for ‘love’, viz. agape, in contrast or in preference, it would seem, to the words of more common usage at that time, viz. philia and eros. While it is said that philia and eros stood for love that in some measure looks for response, agape characterizes an
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attitude of spirit that spends itself regardless of the merits of those on whom it spends itself.1 In other words, the early Christians felt that the ‘love’ they felt constrained to exercise in their mutual relations was one of a quality totally different from that known in normal intimate relationships among men. This conviction regarding its new quality arose in the new experience they had at Pentecost - the experience of a saving grace flowing freely into their hearts. Having experienced this, the redeemed community felt it could exercise nothing less in the mutual relations of its members than that which had been exercised toward its members by God. In other words, the constraint to exercise love of this quality arose in a deeper constraint - the constraint of God’s love active in their souls. This constraint of God’s love alone was the sanction for the exercise of agape toward one another. In point of fact ‘love’ can never have any other sanction but that of love. And for this reason, the world of claims, rights, duties and obligations and of sanction for them is utterly alien to it.
But the early Church realised also that there was a world outside it - a world ignorant of the constraint of God’s love in Christ, a world yet unreconciled to God. We can picture the problem that the early Church had to face. In the world outside the Church, life is generally institutionalised. Human society is not a fellowship where everyone is anxious to serve his neighbour. Often discordant purposes dominate human affairs, bringing in their train chaos and conflict. Institutional organisation emerges to bring order into society, and with a view to securing the general welfare of people, both material and moral. But the ethics of an institution are very different from the ethos of a fellowship, and this cannot be helped. There is a ‘natural recognition’ that men have certain claims and rights and duties and obligations, individually and corporately. But in this recognition the individual as such disappears. He becomes a common denominator. Each individual is an x and is a member of a society of x’s. As an x along with other x’s, he has these claims and rights and duties and obligations. That they may be duly fulfilled is the primary concern of human institutions. In other words, life in institutions is entirely impersonal (with exceptions like the family); their ethos is based on a natural conception of justice and for the due
1Cf. Nygren, Agape and Eros.
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fulfilment of justice they arm themselves with sanctions which are largely legal and penal. Some of the institutions are voluntarily formed and some are of historical antiquity, native to the emergence of mankind into a society. The entry of man into the latter type of institutions is involuntary and inescapable.
The ethos of a fellowship like the Church is, on the other hand, based on personal relationship of a more or less intimate character and to the early Church at any rate it was an ethos of agape.
What was the early Church to do, faced with two orders-the order of grace and the order of nature? They did not run away from the latter. They recognised, for instance, the necessity of the State. And, further, they were born into it and they could not escape it.1 While it was clear to them from the very beginning that the ethos of the Church could not be abandoned under any circumstances by the believers in their mutual relationship,2 they felt that as members of the second order they were subject also to its ethos. They paid taxes and usually paid the State such obedience as did not interfere with their religious freedom. No doubt they keenly felt the tension arising out of the dual membership, but they hoped for its eventual resolution in an eschatological consummation.
The experience of the early Church offers guidance for us. The two orders are there for us today. While as members of the order of grace we can have only one ethic and none other, viz. the ethic of agape, as members also of the natural order and having a spiritual and moral responsibility for it, we must also work for an ethic for this order, an ethic which, while falling short of the ideal of love, nevertheless shows the greatest approximation to it. Here then is the need to take the whole Bible, the Old and the New Testaments as the basis for an ethical code. When Jesus Christ was confronted with the question of divorce, and when his questioners referred to the sanction of the Mosaic Law for divorce, he replied that Moses gave the sanction because of the hardness of the heart of the people with whom he had to deal. In dealing with a world yet unreconciled to God, while ever holding before it in the practice of our own life in the fellowship of the Church, the peculiar ethos of the order of grace, may we not
1As a matter of fact, St. Paul took pride in his Roman citizenship.
2Recall how St. Paul upbraids the appeal to a court of law by two brethren in the church at Corinth.
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be obliged to work out an ethical code that would come as near it as possible? Jesus Christ said that he did not come to abrogate the law but to fulfil it. The law and the prophets are still indispensable to us today, although, through our unremitting efforts to reconcile men with God, we should always look forward to their transcendence in an ever-expanding order of grace.