Trinity as Sat Cit Ananda
Brahmabandhav
Upadhyaya (1861-1907) is the first Indian Christian
theologian to enter into a positive
dialogue
with the indigenous theological and philosophical tradition of Hinduism. He
tried to express theology through the concept and categories of Advaita
Vedanta. He perceived that for the Indian context the Advaita of Sankara
will facilitate in formulating Indian theology. He followed the footprints of
K.C. Sen and explained the mystery of trinity in terms of Sat- Chit- Ananda. In
his journal Sophia Weekly he presented the Trinitarian God as Sat (Being), Cit
(Consciousness) and Ananda (Bliss).
God
the Father as Sat
For
Upadhyay, “Being is the ultimate foundation of all certitude, the foundation of
thinking”. According to him, only God can be truly called sat, i.e. existence
by itself which is eternal, immutable and infinite. All other ‘being’ has only
a borrowed or contingent existence, enduring in time, and is both mutable and
limited. any form of dualism or polytheism is self-destructive, argues
Upadhyay, because “there can be only one self-existence; there is no room for a
separate, co-eternal recipient of its influence” which is external to the
self-existent Being. “The result of its self-act is an eternal distinction
between its knowing self and known self without any division in the substance”.
Thus, the presence of sat necessarily involves a self-related cit. Upadhyay
depicted God as the highest Supreme Being, who exist in an absolute pure form,
without attributes and the attributes are part of cit. Absolute Being the Truth
is the Father in trinity.
God
the Son as Cit
The
consciousness (cit) of God must, of necessity, be distinguishable from the
Subject (sat) because, he reasons, “a being cannot stand in relation to its
identical self.” Without compromising the unity of the absolute there is,
nevertheless, a “variety of cognition and re-cognition, the subject and the
object corresponding with each other in knowledge.” Upadhyay has established
the ontological basis for the Second Person of the Trinity in a way consistent
with Advaitic thought. His Hymn of the Incarnation brings forth his
Christological position in trinity as Cit- Consciousness or intelligence.
God
the Holy Spirit as Ananda
The
third and final radical making up the doctrine of saccidananda is the term
ananda, translated as bliss or joy. The term ananda as joy or bliss sounds
strange to the Western ear until it is recognized that it seals the internal
joy of the triune Godhead apart from any external relationships, or, to use Upadhyay’s
phrase, it celebrates “the beatitude of triple colloquy or a meeting
point.” First, he seeks to
demonstrate how ananda confirms the unrelated nature of the Absolute. Second,
he seeks to make it clear that ananda is a person, and a third, eternal distinction
within the Godhead. Third, ananda protects the doctrine of God from
slipping into a rationalistic abstraction, but clarifies that the Christian God
is one, who out of joy, does enter into direct, personal relations with
humanity.
Upadhyay’s
development of God as sat, cit, and ananda is one of the most significant of
his theological contributions. It is a bold attempt in contextualized theology
which seeks to do theology ‘outside the gate’ and, in the process, help to
communicate the Trinity in language and thought forms which are familiar to
those within his own context. Ultimately, the Trinity remains a mystery which
can only be grasped via revelation. It is beyond human comprehension to
understand how “God begets in thought his infinite Self-image and reposes on it
with infinite delight,” never losing “blissful communication and colloquy
within the bosom of Godhead” without creating “any division in the divine
Substance.
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