Cristãos de São Tomé, um "outro cristianismo" na Índia: a teologia cristã-indiana e a liturgia vivencial da Igreja Católica Siro-Malabar

Abstract

This thesis aims to characterize the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church from its specific elements, both through its Christological particularities and through the study of its theological path and its dialogic interactions with Roman Catholicism and Hinduism, contrasting this Indian Church with the Roman Church, with which it is in communion, especially addressing the notion of advaita (non-duality) found in this “other Christianity” of India, with a special focus on his Syriac-Indian Christology. As a basis of interpretative balance, the thought of Raimundo Panikkar was used as a reference regarding inter-religious dialogue and, especially, in the approach of the advaita, non-dual dynamics of Christianity. The aim is to better understand the religious pillars of the Syro-Malabar Church and contrast this understanding with the understanding of Roman Catholic elements, comparing doctrinal elements and outlining the Syro-Malabar religious context in its tradition, its contemporaneity and its idea of catholicity. In the daily life of the Syro-Malabar’s, liturgical, religious and philosophical elements are present that go beyond the temples. His Christian experience and cultural manifestations demonstrate that there is “another Christianity” in India, whose members perceive their lives as being enlightened by Christ, but within a cosmological integrality and taking St. Thomas as a model of life, faith and moral, from where they draw inspiration to live their “Mar Thoma Margam”. As a substrate for this understanding, a comparison was made between the Indian Tomesian path, which in this thesis is called the “thomasine way”, with the path taken more effectively by Roman Christianity, called here the “pauline way”. The structure of this thesis lists the "paths" traveled by the Syro-Malabar Church in the historical, philosophical, Christological and theological fields, at the same time Syro-Malabar Christology was approached in its prosoponic relationship with reality, that is, involving plurality and alterity contained in the idea of prosopon, together with the perspective of Christ as an avatāra and the idea of advaita (non-duality), in an interlacing between the human and the divine.