John Nicol Farquhar

John Nicol Farquhar (6 April 1861 – 17 July 1929) was a Scottish educational missionary to Calcutta, and an Orientalist. He is one of the pioneers who popularised the Fulfilment theology in India that Christ is the crown of Hinduism, though, Fulfilment thesis in Bengal was built on foundation originally laid in Madras by William Miller.

He authored several books on Hinduism, notably, The Crown of Hindustan, A Primer of Hinduism, Gita and Gospel, and many alike.

Biography Farquhar was born at Aberdeen in 1861. He was educated at Aberdeen Grammar School and Aberdeen University and served an apprenticeship as a draper, but he returned to school at an age of 21, and finished his studies at Oxford University. With no prior ordination, he was recruited by London Missionary Society as a lay educational missionary and sent to India in 1891.

Due to ill-health, he left India in 1923. He spent last six years of his life working as a professor of comparative religion in the University of Manchester. He died in Manchester in 1929. The Fighting Ascetics of India (1925)

Eric Sharpe has remarked that Farquhar was "more than any other individual responsible for bringing about a decisive change in the thinking of Christians over against the phenomena of other faiths."

Criticism A.G. Hogg, professor at Madras Christian College and author of Karma and Redemption in 1904, criticised Farquhar's "Fulfilment thesis" that says "Christianity fulfils all the noblest aspirations of the Hindus," as Hogg perceived that "in Hinduism there was searching and finding, and that a Christian was not offering what a Hindu was searching. Under certain circumstances, a Christian however could make the Hindu feel the need for what is available only in Christianity."

Farquhar's Fulfillment School has also been discussed, with praise and / or censor, by many writers on philosophy or theology of religion, including Gavin D'Costa, Jacques Dupuis, John Hick, David Marshall, Ivan Satyavrata, James Sharpe, and James Thrower: Satyavrata and Sharpe provide extended analyses. Farquhar is often taken as a leading representative of the Inclusivist School, though this would be more plausible if the focus were on ontology and ethics, which are Farquhar's foci, rather than on salvation.