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Love in the Supreme Ethics

Friday 15 May 2015

A BOOK REVIEW: An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology

An Introduction  to Indian Christian Theology


Robin H. S. Boyed

ISPCK, 2004 ISBN 788172141936, Pages 361

One common and popular definition of theology is simply “faith seeking understanding.” For some theology is always a reflection of the context. When faith from its context seeks for an understanding it is called “Contextual Theology”.

Dr Boyd was a missionary of the Irish Presbyterian Church and Vice-Principal of the Gujarat United School of Theology. He has already put the Church in his debt by several outstanding books. This book is basically author's doctoral thesis presented to Edinburgh University in 1966. The revised edition accommodates new material on several theologians which not mentioned in the first edition.

Some of the main features in contents are as such; Sources of theological tradition (the Syrian tradition, Robert De Nobili tradition and the protestant tradition). The gospel and Indian Renaissance; Ram Mohan Roy, Keshab Chandra Sen. The rational refutation of Hinduism; Nehemiah Goreh. Nothing but the highest; Brahmbandhab Upadhay. Preparation for dialogue; P.D. Devanandan. Indian Theology Today; Surjit Singh, S. Kulandran, Dhanjibhai Fakirbhai, Raymond Panikkar. Types and terms of Indian theological thought; the source of authority, the logic of Indian theology, words for God, God and the world, Words for Christ, Words for Spirit, Man and Sin, The Work of Christ etc. The assessment and a prospect; the emergent of Indian theology, what is Indian theology, Christian theology and Hinduism.

He takes effort to separately analyze each theologian, which is quite helpful to readers. Boyd's laborious and explicit study of the past forgotten, almost lost writings of insignificant Indians and his considerate but well legitimate interpretations, in doing so he pioneers the study in two pivotal respects. First, he actually highlighted all those disremembered theology in the context of India. Second, he looked at these theologies as the product of an attempt of local churches of Indian to make gospel admissible to the hard grounds of India, and then he also analysis it in terms of future Indian mission. We have had studies of Indian theologians; but in these studies they were made to stand out and apart from the life and mission of the Indian Church, more or less as unexpected freaks of nature.

Author has critically analyzed and tries to adjust its counterpart in the first century church. He proves that the people like Chennchaiya, Appasamy, Brahmbanadh etc are the proper evidence for the emergent of theology in India. He also has something very pivotal to comment on the Hindu religion, author sees it as ongoing journey to arrive at something more real, personal and final curtain that is Christ Jesus. His  immense collection  of  material   as an important resource for anyone who is seeking to learn and study the Indian  Christian  theology, makes Boyed  a  pioneer  in  this  field. Introduction to Indian Christian Theology is a very persuasive presentation of the Gospel for Indian inquirers.

From a critical point of view, he should have also talked about what these theologies actually mean in their own context or whether there is any relevance today? Another important feature to be noticed is that the most of the interpretations are western in their approaches. So he proves that no matter how you deal with these theologies, one is bound to analyze it from western optics.

However, I confidently suggest this book to any reader who really finds interest in knowing the historicity and complexity of Indian Christian theology. And also it is a must read to the learners of contextual theology, especially that of the Indian.

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