To Fulfil, Not to Destroy

Ivan M. Satyavrata

• Publisher: Regnum
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781912343836
• eBook ISBN: 9781913363178
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

In today's globalized world as we struggle desperately for social harmony amidst growing religious fundamentalism and militancy, Christians convinced of Christ's universal relevance are often hard-pressed to find a way to communicate that relevance faithfully and respectfully. The term 'fulfilment' broadly characterizes a framework of engagement rooted in the New Testament, which emerges at various moments in the Church's encounter with other faiths. This approach seeks to affirm Christ's absolute and universal lordship while demonstrating sensitivity and respect for the religious experience of people of other faiths. This study presents a case for the revitalization of this fulfilment tradition based on a recovery and assessment of the fulfilment approaches of Hindu converts to Christ in pre-independence India.

Fulfilment in Sundar Singh’s Bhakti Spirituality

Sundar Singh was born in 1889 in the village of Rampur in the Punjab, in north west India, into a wealthy landowner’s family. They belonged to the high-caste Jat Sikh community, but both the Hindu and Sikh traditions had a formative influence on his life. He was the youngest son in the family and closely attached to his mother, a refined and deeply pious lady, who exercised a significant influence upon his early life by her own example and religious teaching in the Hindu and Sikh scriptures.

He came into contact with Christianity through Bible lessons at the American Presbyterian Mission primary school which he attended, and although he was outwardly resistant to Christianity, the teaching on the love of God had a great attraction for him. His deep spiritual thirst led him to search the Sikh Scriptures, or Granth, as well as the Qur’an and the sacred books of the Hindus. But all of them failed to satisfy his spiritual hunger. After the death of his mother and older brother, his spiritual crisis intensified, and initially manifested itself in violent opposition to the Christian faith, leading him to burn part of the New Testament. During this time he was getting up at three in the morning and praying for God to reveal himself and show him the way of salvation, and if that did not happen, he said he would commit suicide. One day he waited until 4:30 am expecting to see Buddha or Krishna, but instead he became conscious of a bright radiance which entered the room, filling it, and he describes what subsequently happened as follows:

“I opened the door to see where it came from, but all was dark outside. I returned inside, and the light increased in intensity and took the form of a globe of light above the ground, and in the light there appeared, not the form I expected, but the living Christ I had counted as dead. To all eternity I shall never forget his glorious and loving face, nor the few words which he spoke: ‘Why do you persecute me? See, I have died on the cross for you and for the whole world.’ These words were burned into my heart as if by lightning, and I fell on the ground before him. My heart was filled with inexpressible joy and peace, and my whole life was entirely changed. Then the old Sundar Singh died and a new Sundar Singh, to serve the living Christ, was born.”

He faced serious opposition from his immediate family and the wider community. After more gentle persuasion failed to change his views, the family and community resorted to severe persecution and even attempted abduction and murder. He came under the protection of Presbyterian missionaries and went to the Church Missionary Society station in Simla. He was baptised on 3 September 1905.

In 1909 he entered St John’s Divinity School at Lahore but left without completing the course. He wanted the freedom to speak in churches of different denominations, and continued his ministry as a wandering preacher, but remained a member of the Anglican church all his life. Within a few weeks of his baptism he decided to express his Christian discipleship by adopting the distinctive lifestyle of a Sadhu, a holy person who has renounced the worldly life. He adopted the saffron robe and Sadhu way of life in fulfilment of the vow made in his early days, that if God would satisfy his quest for inner peace, he would sacrifice all that this world could offer him.

The Sadhu ideal is not limited to any one tradition within Hinduism, and many, independent of any allegiance, have chosen to wear the saffron robe and adopt a lifestyle which fits broadly within the Hindu religious way of life. Sundar Singh’s appropriation of the Sadhu way of life was independent of any existing Hindu religious order, and was an attempt to pursue Christian discipleship in a manner consistent with the Sadhu ideal in the Hindu tradition. He was the first Protestant known to have embraced this way of life. It aroused misunderstanding and opposition from two quarters. On the one hand, the Christian community wondered whether the Hindu ideal of renunciation was compatible with a Christian worldview that affirmed the material world. On the other hand, the Hindu community was suspicious that this was a fraudulent attempt to camouflage the Christian message by the adoption of Hindu forms.

Sundar Singh pursued the ministry of an itinerant preacher, travelling across north and south India, Tibet and Nepal. He endured much humiliation and suffered many hardships. His later travels took him to the Far East, England, the United States, Australia and the Middle East. To his deep distress, his integrity was assaulted and his failing health caused him to withdraw to his retreat in Subathu in Himachal Pradesh. Here he gave himself to meditation and writing his devotional books. In April 1929 he set out on his last missionary journey to Tibet, during which he disappeared in mysterious circumstances and was never seen again.

Sundar Singh’s sermons and writings are of great value to us, both for their distinctive theological content as well as their widespread and prolonged influence. They are marked by direct simplicity of insights and vividness of expression. His distinctive interpretation of the Christian faith, as embodied in his lifestyle and reflected in his sermons and writings, raised questions on his mystical orientation with little attention paid to a theological evaluation of his teaching. This was mainly related to the Sadhu controversy and his adoption of the Sadhu way of life. His contribution to the development of Indian Christianity has thus been largely neglected and his approach to other religions almost totally ignored. His fulfilment approach was as an Indian convert to the Christian faith whose access to the innermost chambers of Indian spirituality resulted in the emergence of an original framework for relating the Christian faith to the bhakti tradition.

The outstanding characteristic of Sundar Singh’s theology is that it is grounded in personal experience. He felt that people do not believe because they are strangers to the experience, but that faith and experience must come first, and understanding will follow. He believed that understanding follows spiritual experience, and that comes through prayer.

Sundar Singh’s emphasis on spiritual experience is widely acknowledged. An early analysis of his life and thought identified him as a mystic rather than a philosopher, theologian or scholar. Most commentators locate the roots for his mystical experience in his pre-Christian bhakti roots. He clearly affirms the presence of some measure of light from God in Hinduism despite his rejection of Hinduism as a religious system. His mother’s religious devotion within the bhakti tradition of Hinduism and Sikhism was a huge influence on his spiritual formation. The only other individual who exercised any significant influence on him was Mrs Rebecca Parker, a member of the London Missionary Society. He regarded her as his spiritual mother and closest advisor. She in turn had been influenced by a Protestant missionary theology which had been shaped predominantly by the beliefs of the evangelical awakening in Britain in the eighteenth century.

Sundar Singh had little exposure to any other sustained human influence. He regarded human learning of no avail in enhancing one’s knowledge of God, and when asked if he ever read books, replied: “I am reading two books, which I can never, never finish… one is the Holy Bible, and the second is Nature.”

This negative attitude to learning, along with his limited knowledge of English and his itinerant lifestyle, ensured that he had very little exposure to western Christian influences. Later in life he seems to have given some attention to reading philosophy, science, mediaeval western spirituality and mysticism. By contrast, the New Testament became a constant source of inspiration and companionship in his travels, and he spent many hours in private Bible reading and meditation.

The two principal influences on Sundar Singh’s mystical formation were his pre-conversion Hindu and Sikh bhakti formation and his biblical reflection.

Among the various Hindu scriptures he was exposed to in his early years was the Bhagavad Gita, which he had memorised by the age of seven and which had pride of place in his heart. He felt that there was evidence that it had been influenced by the teaching of John’s Gospel. His view recognised that it represented an assorted collection of material, but it also reflected an acquaintance with a prevailing school of thought which detected Christian influence in it, and this in some way influenced his mystical orientation.

A further strand of bhakti thought which influenced Sundar Singh was the Sikh religion which is essentially a religion of experience. The ultimate purpose of all life and religion is an inward union with God resulting in eternal bliss. Guru Nanak was the founder of Sikhism and the first of the ten Sikh Gurus whose mystical vision was grounded in his understanding of the nature of God as the one eternal, formless creator and sustainer. However humankind is separated from God by an impure heart (man) and corrupted by sin (haumai) due to the temptations of this world (maya) and remains a prisoner to the cycle of transmigration. The gracious initiative (nadar) of God (Guru) is humankind’s only hope for salvation. Nature reveals God’s nature to the person who is sensitive to the voice of God mystically uttered within the inner recesses of the human soul. The enlightened one thus comprehends the Word (Sabad) of God in the world and in his inner experience. He responds in loving adoration, meditates on the revealed nature and qualities of God, and thus draws nearer to God, finally reaching the supreme bliss of consummate union.

Although some have found little trace of Sikh influence on Sundar Singh’s spiritual formation, it may be due to the fact that he emphasised the importance given to Hindu teaching in his home. However, the mediaeval Hindu bhakti impulses nourished the Sikh tradition and most commentators regard Sikh and Hindu bhakti as having an equal role in his pre-Christian formation. His bhakti background functioned as an underlying framework for the development of the fulfilment concept in his understanding.

Sundar Singh echoes a facet of Sikh mystical theology when he speaks of God as ineffable and ultimately incomprehensible in essence, transcending all human categories and powers of expression. The emphasis on God as Truth, the All-True One, resonates deeply with the Sikh view.

The conception of God as love is at the heart of the bhakti framework and, for Sund...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Glossary
• Content
• Introduction to This Edition
• Introduction
• The Background and Development of the Protestant Fulfilment Tradition in the Nineteenth Century
• The Emergence of the Protestant Missionary Fulfilment Approach
• The Fulfilment Model in John Farquhar’s ‘The Crown of Hinduism’
• A Critical Analysis of Farquhar’s Fulfilment Approach
• Fulfilment in Krishna Mohan Banerjea’s Vedic Theology
• Fulfilment in Sundar Singh’s Bhakti Spirituality
• A Summary of the Contributions of Farquhar, Banerjea and Sundar Singh to Fulfilment Thought
• Conclusion
• Further Reading
• BCover