George Soares-Prabhu’s Christology

Abstract

This article studies the Christology of Indian biblical theologian George Soares-Prabhu. It argues that Canadian theologians can learn from Soares-Prabhu on four points: (1) the way he negotiated the tension between the contextuality of a liberating theology and the universality of its truth claims; (2) the dialectical relationship between Indian culture and the biblical traditions in his approach to Christology; (3) his notion of the Jesus of faith as a way of surmounting the tension between the Jesus of history and the Christ of faith; and (4) his emphasis on understanding Jesus through his public ministry as narrated in the Synoptic Gospels, read in light of the suffering of the poor and oppressed in India. Although Soares-Prabhu died in 1995, western theologians can still learn from him on all these points. However, a fifth aspect – his repudiation of the Christological affirmations of the Councils of Nicaea and Chalcedon – seems one-sided.