A SEMINAR ON KESHUB CHUNDER SEN

1. Introduction

Indian Christian Theology is an outcome of a major awakening in socio-political and religious systems
in India. The 19th century was a crucial period in India’s cultural history with the emergence of Neo-
Hindu movements in dialogue with western culture and Christianity. Thus, renascent Hinduism and
Hindu leaders of the Indian renaissance began grappling with Christ, Christianity and western culture.
All of which have been sources of the self-awakening of Hinduism as well as of the Indian people.
Keshub Chunder Sen is one among them. His contributions to Indian Christian Theology are quite
substantial. They not only challenged Christian thinking both western and Indian, to make Christian
Theology indigenous; but they also produced some of the seminal Indian categories in which such
theologisation could be pursued. This seminar is attempt to bring about his biographical sketch, his
thought on Christology, the doctrine of Trinity, the church and concludes with evaluation.

2. A Brief biographical sketch of Keshub

Keshub was born on 19 November 1838 at Colutolah in Calcutta. His liberal English education
shattered his belief in idolatry and raised many challenges to his religious beliefs. He turned to
Christianity and began to read philosophy and theology with missionaries. He felt that he had the
‘adesa’ or inspiration. The impulse that came in the dawn of the spiritual life as a voice of his heart
saying, ‘pray, thou shalt be saved; thy character shalt improve; thou shalt receive whatever all thou
lackest’. He came under the strong influence of the Unitarians. He used to discuss theology and
philosophy with the missionaries. He was very ascetic even in his childhood. He had the view that to
keep spirituality, family, wife and children, are hindrances. He was developing a puritanical life style.
He gave up eating fish, playing cards and was discarding violin. For him, world became like a
poiSonous chalice. In 1856 he started a school for poor and working class boys, and in 1859 he formed
British India Society. In this same year, he formed ‘goodwill fraternity’. Again in same year he joined
the Brahma Samaj and always changed his views. His main concern was ‘true brotherhood’ that is
bringing every religion together.1
3. His thought
Keshub wrote and lectured on a wide range of subjects. But here an attempt is made only to point out
his understanding of Christology, Trinity and the Church in the Indian context.
3.1. Christology
The main expression of his Christology is the series of lectures he delivered in Calcutta. In his lecture
on ‘Jesus Christ: Europe and Asia’ he dealt with the moral excellence of Jesus. According to Keshub,
the two fundamental doctrines of gospels ethics were the doctrines of forgiveness and self-sacrifice. He
thought that it was in those doctrines that one could find the moral greatness of Christ.2
In his lecture, “India asks, who is Christ?” delivered in 1879 Keshub dealt with the stumbling blocks to
the Hindus. He pointed out that if Indians refused to accept Christ was not because of his ethics, nor of
his humanity, but because of his divinity. He had no doubt that Jesus considered himself and his father
as one. He understood Christ as the gradual manifestation of his father. He developed the concept of
divine humanity. He affirmed the pre-existent Christ as Son and his incarnation in Jesus.
In his lecture on God-Vision in the 19 th century, Keshub dealt with his idea of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ and his ascension to the right hand of God. In this lecture, he affirmed the resurrection of the
spirit of Jesus. Christ dead and decayed is a deception. Christ risen is Christ indeed. The spirit of Christ
has risen and returned to the Father. As M.M. Thomas had pointed out, in a later lecture he saw
meaning in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.3

3.1.1. The Hidden Christ

While Sen was highly critical of many aspects of Hinduism, and especially of polytheism, he had a
deep affection for the faith in which he had grown up and constantly sought to relate Christianity and
1
M. Stephen, A Christian Theology in the Indian Context (Delhi: ISPCK, 2001), 17.
2
M.M. Thomas and P.T. Thomas, Towards an Indian Christian Theology (Thiruvalla: The New Day Publications of India,
1992), 39.
3
Ibid.
 Hinduism. He was not unaware of the lofty ethical monotheism of Judaism and the activist tradition of
Islam. Christ, he was sure, had come to fulfil all that was best in all of these faiths, to fulfil the Hindu
dispensation as well as the Mosaic. Sen writes: Behold Christ cometh to us as an Asiatic in race, as a
Hindu in faith, as a kinsman and a brother, and he demands your heart’s affection… and so he asks his
Hindu friends to turn to the Christ who is already with them, the Christ who is hidden in their Hindu
faith. He sees Christ in all that is good in every philosophy and religion. Christ is present in all hearts
of men of all religion.
Sen’s idea of a world religion is not merely a syncretistic one like Radhakrishnan’s. Certainly, he
wishes to draw on the riches of all traditions and longs for the unity of all men. But always at the centre
of his visions of evolution and union there stands the figure of Christ. A unification of all men in Christ
was Sen’s aim in all his writings.4
3.1.2. Incarnation
The doctrine of incarnation is common to Hindus and Christians. yet their ideas and conceptions of
incarnation differ materially. The Hindu, however, recognises many incarnation of God. In Hinduism
God himself appears on earth as man. The Avatar is identical creator of universe. In Christianity it is
the Son of God we see in history. The Christian distinguished the one from the other as the Father from
the Son. In Hindu theology the Krishna is the very God of the universe. According to Keshub, Krishna
is nothing if not the Almighty God. Christ is nothing if not the Son of God. It is heresy to talk of
Krishna as the Son. It is heresy to accept or preach Christ as father. Keshub says, Jesus never said that
he is God. He was simply the Logos, an emanation from the Creator; he was born and begotten. But
there is divinity in Christ. Christ is an incarnation in Christian sense, but not in Hindu sense. Christ
may be regarded as a filial incarnation of the father. We are quite familiar with the idea of the father
being born again as the Son. The Son is the father reproduced. The Son is really made in the image of
the father. In the Son is the father incarnate. The father lives in himself; he lives again in the Son.
Being his Son, Jesus partakes of the Father’s nature. And all who are in Christ are also Sons and co-
heirs of the Father’s kingdom.5
3.2. Trinity
Sen’s understanding is different from the Christian tradition. However, the Unitarians influenced him. 6
His final position is expressed with great power in a lecture, which he gave in 1882 entitled That
Marvellous Mystery- the Trinity Sen seems to have been the first thinker to expound the meaning of the
Trinity in relation to the famous definition of Brahman as Saccidanada (Sat, Cit, Ananda), and in so
doing he began a tradition. He expounds his understanding of the conception under the figure of an
equilateral triangle. He writes, the apex is the very God Jehovah, the supreme Brahma of the Vedas.
From him comes down the Son in a direct line, an emanation from Divinity. Thus God descends and
touches one end of the base of humanity, then running all along the base permeates the world, and by
the power of the Holy Spirit drags up regenerated humanity to himself. Divinity coming down to
humanity is the Son.7 He gives a sort of table of equivalents, beginning with the Christian Trinity and
ending with the Saccidanada:
Father Son Holy Spirit
The creator The exemplar The sanctifier
The still God The journeying God The returning God
I am I love I save
Force Wisdom Holiness
True Good Beautiful
Sat (Truth) Cit( Intelligence) Ananda (Joy)
He says the Trinity of Christian theology corresponds strikingly with the sachidanada of Hinduism.
You have three conditions, three manifestations of divinity. 8 He talks about the three dispensations of
father, Son and spirit. He does not ascribe equal status in the trinity. It is the threefold nature of God;
trinity understood as a treasury of wealth, that is found in all philosophies and theology. He was always

4
Robin Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology (Delhi: ISPCK, 1989), 34.
5
David C. Scott ed. Keshub Chunder Sen (Bangalore: The Christian Literature Society, 1979), 312-313.
6
M. Stephen, Op. Cit., 18.
7
Robin Boyd, Op.Cit., 38.
8
Ibid.,35.
 critical of trinity. He talks about a triangular figure of the trinity. The above is the God, Jehova, who is
the Brahman himself (father), Son is the emanation of the divinity, the power is the influence of the
Holy Spirit. In his lecture “That Marvellous mystery- Trinity (1882) he said Judaism taught us about
the Father (first dispensation), NT taught us about the Son (2 nd dispensation) and the third dispensation
(navabidhan) teaches about Holy Spirit. Trinity is not three perSons but three functions of the same
perSon, says Sen.9
We can detect a tendency towards modalism here, in the words ‘conditions’ and ‘manifestations’,
as well as a reluctance to accept the Chalcedonian conception of three perSons in one God. But Sen had
all the Brahma Samaj’s antipathy to polytheism and the Christian formula must have appeared to him
as verging on tritheism. And it may be that the road here marked out by him will prove more effective
for the Christian mission in India than the concepts derived from Greek philosophy, the Roman theatre
or even from modern western perSonalism.

3.3. The Church

Keshub made distinction between Christ and Christianity. He adored Christ but rejected the popular
idea of the church. Christ for him was universal in whom Europe and Asia should find harmony. As
M.M. Thomas had pointed out, there were at least three strands in his thought about the church. First, a
belief in the supremacy of Christ as the God-man centred in whom he saw the harmony of all the
established religions. Second, Keshub thought that all established religions were true. Third, he
considered himself as the divinely appointed leader of the New Dispensation and his doctrine of ades
should be seen in his context. He always looked for a harmony of all established religions with Christ
as the centre. But he thought that he was living in a new dispensation of the Holy Spirit and he himself
as the God-appointed leader of this New Dispensation.10
3.3.1. New Dispensation
One of the most important elements of Keshub's later thought was his idea, first developed in 1875, of
the navavidhäna or New Dispensation. Many liberal Christians are troubled by this idea. Keshub
focused the idea of the New Dispensation in two areas. The first is tied to his concept of inspiration.
As he wrestled with the question of why people who are apparently Christians do not live as Christ
commanded, he was not quite content with an answer from the audience recorded in his first lecture
that they are "nominal Christians."He developed, rather, a contrast between outer fact and inner
experience. In the religious communities of the world Keshub saw stagnation and lack of vitality. He
looked for a revitalization of these old dispensations in the inner experience of the New Dispensation.
The second focus of the idea of the New Dispensation is related to his concern about divisions and
polemics, quarrels and chaos that so often have characterized the religious life of humankind. He set
forth the New Dispensation as a place of harmonization of the old dispensations, the unity concealed in
the multiplicity. He saw the New Dispensation as enlivened by the Holy Spirit, continually growing
under the inspiration of God, and, as we shall see, there is certainly no final word on the relation of
various prophets to each other in his synthesis. And he saw the New Dispensation uniting Christ and
Moses and Socrates in God. There is another perspective on this relationship, however.

In a list of objectives of the New Dispensation the following were included-To preach Christ as the son
of God, as the Logos in all prophets before and after him. To honour Socrates as the teacher of self-
knowledge, Moses as the teacher of Old Testament ethics, Buddha as the teacher of Nirvana, Mahomet
as the teacher of the Unity of God, Chaitanya as the teacher of loving devotion.
Here the other major prophets were portrayed essentially as teachers, while Jesus was shown as that
Logos of God who indwells other prophets. Another motif which Keshub used in order to express the
relationship between Christ and the other prophets was the image of light. He also saw Christ as the
light in which all lights (of other prophets) were harmonized.11

3.4. The Jaya Doctrine

9
M. Stephen, Op. Cit., 19.
10
M.M. Thomas, Op. Cit., 40.
11
David C. Scott, op. Cit., 110.
 The Sanskrit word Jaya means wife, and is derived from jan- the perSon in whom the father is born as
the Son. The scriptural text in which this idea is clearly set forth is to be found in Manu, and runs thus:
Patirbharyyam samprabisya garhho bhutveha jayate
Jayayastaddhi jayatvam yadasyam jayate punah
The husband entering into the wife becomes an embryo and is born in this world. The jaya is jaya for
this reaSon that in her man is born again. This idea of the father being born in the child may be easily
elaborated into the popular theory of Christian incarnation. The Son is not a different being altogether,
not a mere creation of the father’s will; but is the very substance of the father. The Son may be a
different perSon, but he is identical with father in substance. He is the father begotten again. The Son
of God is the heavenly father born on earth. He is the father manifest in the Son, the father dwelling in
the Son.12
Evaluation and Conclusion
Ram Mohan Roy and Keshub were the first two Hindu reformers to meet and face the challenge of
Christianity. Certain parts of that challenge, in particular the teachings of Jesus, they accepted with
enthusiasm. But the interpretation provided by them was fundamentally different from the Christian
faith as handed down in the Bible, and received by the church. A modern Indian theologian has
written: these movements did not have their beginning in faith, but in unbelief. From the point of view
of the church in India, it is the story of a great rejection. 13 He had contacts with Swami Dayanand
Saraswathi, founder of the Arya Samaj and Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Keshub respected
Dayanand, but could not maintain a warm relationship with him. But he was very much attached to
Ramakrishna and it was generally acknowledged that it was Keshub who introduced Ramakrishna to
Bengal. We should remember that Sen is not writing Indian Christian Theology. He is speaking before
a great concourse of people, most of whom are Hindus.

Bibliography
Boyd, Robin. An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology. Delhi: ISPCK, 1989.
Scott, David C. Keshub Chunder Sen. Bangalore: The Christian Literature Society, 1979.
Stephen. M. A Christian Theology in the Indian Context .Delhi: ISPCK, 2001.
Thomas M.M and P.T. Thomas. Towards an Indian Christian Theology. Thiruvalla:
The New Day Publications of India, 1992.

12
Ibid., 322.
13
R.H.S. Boyd, Op. Cit., 39.