The Sadhu Who Silenced the Theologians

When Sundar Singh arrived at Cambridge University in 1920, the faculty expected little. Here was an Indian sadhu in a saffron robe and bare feet — no degrees, no published works, no institutional backing. He had converted from Sikhism at sixteen after a vision so vivid he never wavered from it again. His English was halting. His theology was uncredentialed.

Yet when he spoke, something happened that no one in the lecture hall could quite explain.

Canon B.H. Streeter, one of Oxford's most accomplished New Testament scholars, sat listening and later admitted that Sundar Singh understood things about Christ that Streeter's years of academic study had never unlocked. The sadhu spoke no Greek. He had never parsed a verb in Hebrew. But he described the living presence of Jesus with a specificity and authority that left trained theologians reaching for their notebooks.

One professor asked him how he arrived at his insights. Sundar Singh looked puzzled. "I did not arrive at them," he said. "They were given to me."