ATTITUDE OF CHRISTIAN MISSIONARIES AND SCHOLARS ON PREACHING THE GOSPEL IN INDIA

Name	Anecdotes/Quotes	References
Krishna Mohan Banerjea   1813-1885 Indian missionary Freedom fighter	"the fundamental principles of Christian doctrine in relation to the salvation of the world find a remarkable counterpart in the Vedic principles of primitive Hinduism in relation to the destruction of sin, and the redemption of the sinner by the efficacy of Sacrifice, itself a figure of Prajapati ... Christ is the true Prajapati..."   No one can be a true Hindu without being a true Christian   "The minds of our ancestors were universally imbued with notions of a Revelation or supernatural communication to man, but they could not explain what that Revelation was, or how it was given.”	· The Arian Witness · Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy · The Relation Between Christianity and Hinduism
Thomas Ebenezer Slater   1840-1912 English missionary	All other religions wait for their fulfilment in Christianity.   These old religions have endured according to the amount of truth they have contained, according to the fitness of their doctrines for the special circumstances of country, race, and culture that prevailed, and according as they testified, however unknowingly, to Him who is the “Heir of all the ages," and who, “" in the fullness of times,” should come to fulfil, not only the prophecies of Judaism, but also, as “the Desire of all nations, "' " the unconscious prophecies of heathendom.”	· The Higher Hinduism in Relation to Christianity · The Philosophy of Missions
	The star which guided the Eastern sages to the Babe of Bethlehem, must guide again from error and superstition the wise and foolish of the East, who wait the rising of the Sun of Righteousness.
John Nicol Farquhar   1861-1929 Scottish missionary and professor	Christ is the crown of Hinduism.   " ... every important Christian truth is foreshadowed in Hinduism, though buried in heaps of rubbish;”   The method I refer to consists in setting forth Christianity as the fulfilment of all that is aimed at in Hinduism, as the satisfaction of the spiritual yearnings of her people, as the crown and climax of the crudest forms of her worship ... [this method] sets forth every part of Hinduism as springing from some real religious instinct and having a value of its own, and thus gives the religion the full credit for every fragment of moral and religious help it contains; yet it sets Christ supreme over all, and proclaims Him to be the consummator of religion.   that Hinduism is a rudimentary faith, Christianity its culmination. The Hindu who becomes a Christian loses nothing. All that his old faith offered him he enjoys again in Christianity, only at a more advanced stage of evolution... [Christianity is thus]...the evolutionary crown of Hinduism   Now, if Christ has given us the final religion ... clearly all our religious instincts will find satisfaction in Christianity ... .If Christ is able to satisfy all the religious needs of the human heart, then all the elements of pagan religions, since they spring from these needs, will be found reproduced in perfect form, completely fulfilled, consummated in Christ   “Hinduism must die into Christianity, in order that all that her philosophers, saints and ascetics toiled for may live.”   ... this early [Rigvedic] faith stands much nearer to Christianity than it does to Hinduism. A transition from the religion of the Rik to Christianity would be much simpler and more natural than a transition to Hinduism .... Those who have leaned on animal sacrifice turn with deep religious joy to the perfect moral sacrifice of the death of Christ...   We have already seen how Christ provides the fulfilment of each of the highest aspirations and aims of Hinduism... every line of light which is visible in the grossest parts of the religion reappears in Him set in healthy institutions and spiritual worship ...In Him is focused every ray of light that shines in Hinduism. He is the Crown of the faith of India	The Crown of Hinduism
John Richard Turner Eaton	Jewish prophecy and heathen philosophy had in many ways prepared for the reception of Christianity.	The Permanence of Christianity
Augustus Neander   1789-1850 German Theologian	Thus, there dwells an element of prophecy, not merely in revealed religion, unfolding itself beneath the fostering care of the Divine Vintager as it struggles onward from Judaism to its complete disclosure in Christianity, but also in religion, as it grows wild on the soil of Paganism, which by nature must strive unconsciously to the same end.	General History of the Church
Brahmabandhab (Theophilus) Upadhyay   1861-1907	By birth we are Hindu and shall remain Hindu till death ... In customs and manners, in observing caste or social distinctions, in eating and drinking ... Our thought and thinking is emphatically Hindu ... In short, we are Hindus so far as our physical and mental constitution is concerned, but in regard to our immortal souls we are Catholic. We are Hindu Catholic.   Our object is to present to our countrymen the right and full Christianity - a Christianity which fulfils all the accumulated goodness of our ancient country	Brahmabandhab Upadhyay:The Life and Thought of a Revolutionary
Narayan Vaman Tilak   1862-1919	There is truth in Hinduism and we must not accuse and hurt Hindus, but find common points and then present the gospel... Always study their side. Do not say all is false, idol worship is sin, there is no life in it, and so on ... Look for similarities to build a bridge ...   " ...if Christ could be presented to India in His naked beauty, free from the disguises of Western organisation, Western doctrines and Western forms of worship, India would acknowledge Him as the supreme Guru, and lay her richest homage at His feet.”   "We esteem all the world's saints as prophets of God, and the sayings of the Hindu saints form our first old testament.”   The traditional way of union with the Supreme through bhakti, which Hindu mystics have conceived and Hindu devotees experienced, may be summed up in the four words, samipata (nearness), salokata (Association), Sarupata (likeness), and sayujyta ('yokedness' or union); this has helped me to enter into the meaning of that series of Christ's sayings - 'Come after Me', 'Take My yoke upon you', 'Become like unto Me', 'Abide in Me,.   Christ came not to destroy, but to fulfil and his learned disciples have ever interpreted the literature of the world in a discerning and constructive way. Our task is not to condemn indiscriminately, but rather to appreciate the best that there is in persons, to hold up to them their own acknowledged best, and then to try lovingly to make that best of theirs still better	Christ-Bhakti: Narayan Vaman Tilak and Christian Work Among Hindus
Nehemiah Goreh   1825-1895	Providence has certainly prepared us, the Hindus, to receive Christianity, in a way in which, it seems to me, no other nation -excepting the Jews, of course -has been prepared. Most erroneous as is the teaching of such books as the Bhagavadgita, the Bhagvata, etc., yet they have taught us something of ananyabhakti (undivided devotedness to God), of vairagya (giving up the world), of namrata (humility), of ksama (forbearance), etc., which enables us to appreciate the precepts of Christianity.	An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology
Kali Charan Banerjee   1847-1907   Founding member of INC	In having become Christians, we have not ceased to be Hindus. We are Hindu Christians, as thoroughly Hindu as Christian. We have embraced Christianity, but we have not discarded our nationality. We are as intensely national as any of our brethren of the native press can be.
Sadhu Sundar Singh   1889-?	" There used to be, and there still are, in India men who live in God without knowing Christ; that is, they do not know His Name. To a certain extent God has allowed countless sincere souls in India to find Him."     The Vedas reveal to us the necessity of redemption from sin, but where is the Redeemer? Prajapati, of whom the Vedas speak, is Christ, who gave His life as a ransom for sinners .. .! have greater faith in the Vedas than you have because I believe in Him whom the Vedas reveal, even in Jesus Christ.
Jacques Dupuis (1923-2004)
George Praseed
Raimon Panikkar
Bishop Caldwell
Saldanha		Divine Pedagogy: A Patristic View of Non-Christian Religions 1984
Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg	I do not reject everything they teach, rather rejoice that for the heathen long ago a small light of the Gospel began to shine ... Of course, one will find many 'unreasonable stories' but one will find here and there such teachings and passages in their writings which are not only according to human reason but also according to God's Word.	South Indian Gods
Richard Trench   1807-1886
Frederick D. Maurice   1805-1872
Max Muller
B.F. Westcott
Keshub Chandra Sen   Brahmo Samaj	Will he [Christ] not fulfil the Indian scripture? I am reminded of the passage in the Gospel in which he says, - ‘I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.’ The Mosaic dispensation only? Perhaps the Hindu dispensation also. In India he will fulfil the Hindu dispensation
Protap Chandra Mazumdar   Brahmo Samaj	Christ is a tremendous reality. The density of India hangs upon the solution of His nature and our relation with Him.
Gulliford	God has not left Himself without witness among Hindus; everywhere there are broken and scattered fragments of pure desire and earnest seeking. Of these Christ is the fulfiller …. but in what we regard as the essentials of Hinduism – pure pantheism, karma and transmigration, caste, and idolatry – Jesus Christ has neither part nor lot.
J Robson
Clement of Alexandria   (150-215 AD)	“thus philosophy acted as a schoolmaster to the Greek, preparing them for Christ, as the laws of the Jews prepared them for Christ”	Stromata
TV Philip
Aleaz
Lipner