Brian Philip Dunn
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- December 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780198791416
- eISBN:
- 9780191833885
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198791416.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Theology
This book is a comparative study exploring the writings of an Indian Christian theologian named Ayadurai Jesudason Appasamy (1891–1975) and his comparative theological interaction with the ...
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This book is a comparative study exploring the writings of an Indian Christian theologian named Ayadurai Jesudason Appasamy (1891–1975) and his comparative theological interaction with the twelfth-century Śrivaiṣṇava reformer, Rāmānuja. The doctrinal focus is Appasamy’s four-fold Johannine application of the ‘Body of God’ analogy—the ‘Universe’, ‘Incarnation’, ‘Eucharist’, and ‘Church’ being his four divine embodiments. Critics in Appasamy’s day described his theological project as ‘bold heresies’, a ‘synthesis of Christianity and Vedānta’ that has ‘shifted the axis’ from Christianity to ‘Hindu religion’. By reading Appasamy in the context of his devotional tradition, however, this study demonstrates that his application of the embodiment analogy is rooted, rather, in the sacramental theology of early twentieth-century Anglicanism. His embodiment theology, in fact, closely reflects the theological developments that took place in Anglican scholarship between the time of Charles Gore and William Temple. Methodologically, what is being argued for is the need to understand theological discourse as being already semiotically and traditionally situated. In doing so it is further argued that, just as Appasamy’s detractors have failed to read him in his devotional context, so too has Appasamy done with Rāmānuja. Reading Rāmānuja more as a Vedāntic philosophical theologian than as a Śrivaiṣṇava sectarian practitioner, the Ācārya has been abstracted from his temple-based devotional practice. On this basis, challenging Appasamy’s use of Rāmānuja’s analogy, a better reading of John’s Gospel is proposed, a temple Christology that emerges from the narrative shape of the text itself.Less
This book is a comparative study exploring the writings of an Indian Christian theologian named Ayadurai Jesudason Appasamy (1891–1975) and his comparative theological interaction with the twelfth-century Śrivaiṣṇava reformer, Rāmānuja. The doctrinal focus is Appasamy’s four-fold Johannine application of the ‘Body of God’ analogy—the ‘Universe’, ‘Incarnation’, ‘Eucharist’, and ‘Church’ being his four divine embodiments. Critics in Appasamy’s day described his theological project as ‘bold heresies’, a ‘synthesis of Christianity and Vedānta’ that has ‘shifted the axis’ from Christianity to ‘Hindu religion’. By reading Appasamy in the context of his devotional tradition, however, this study demonstrates that his application of the embodiment analogy is rooted, rather, in the sacramental theology of early twentieth-century Anglicanism. His embodiment theology, in fact, closely reflects the theological developments that took place in Anglican scholarship between the time of Charles Gore and William Temple. Methodologically, what is being argued for is the need to understand theological discourse as being already semiotically and traditionally situated. In doing so it is further argued that, just as Appasamy’s detractors have failed to read him in his devotional context, so too has Appasamy done with Rāmānuja. Reading Rāmānuja more as a Vedāntic philosophical theologian than as a Śrivaiṣṇava sectarian practitioner, the Ācārya has been abstracted from his temple-based devotional practice. On this basis, challenging Appasamy’s use of Rāmānuja’s analogy, a better reading of John’s Gospel is proposed, a temple Christology that emerges from the narrative shape of the text itself.
Ranga Rao
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780199470754
- eISBN:
- 9780199087624
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199470754.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century and Contemporary Literature, World Literature
This chapter looks at another of Narayan’s novels, The Bachelor of Arts. The training of the mind of a Narayan hero is properly launched by Chandran in this novel. By the end the struggle yields ...
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This chapter looks at another of Narayan’s novels, The Bachelor of Arts. The training of the mind of a Narayan hero is properly launched by Chandran in this novel. By the end the struggle yields results; Chandran has gone through a self-devised schedule, of self-education. This young man could be a novitiate in a monastery cutting himself off with a will from the world. His self-training is self-launched. He has come a long way, from an assertion of ‘freedom’ to a voluntary control of freedom, even to a determined self-regulation of it. The moral dividend is a spiritual poise, though a balance achieved by youth.Less
This chapter looks at another of Narayan’s novels, The Bachelor of Arts. The training of the mind of a Narayan hero is properly launched by Chandran in this novel. By the end the struggle yields results; Chandran has gone through a self-devised schedule, of self-education. This young man could be a novitiate in a monastery cutting himself off with a will from the world. His self-training is self-launched. He has come a long way, from an assertion of ‘freedom’ to a voluntary control of freedom, even to a determined self-regulation of it. The moral dividend is a spiritual poise, though a balance achieved by youth.
