Together Towards Tomorrow: Pluralism in India

April 10, 2012 By Benjamin Chicka 1 Comment

On January 21, 2011 the De Smet – de Marneffe Memorial Annual Lecture was held in the new post graduate block of the Jnana-Deepa Vidyapeeth (JDV) campus. The speaker for that year’s event was Dr. Ramachandra Pradhan of the University of Hyderabad. I was asked by the faculty of JDV to take part in this event as a panelist along with Dr. Pradhan fielding questions after the lecture from those in attendance. The title of his lecture was “The Contributions of Western Philosophy to the World Cultures and the Future of Philosophy.” However, I noted that most students in attendance were concerned about the exact opposite. Is there something about religiously pluralistic India that can contribute to the world’s future in ways “Western philosophy” that is often presented monolithically cannot? That is the question we were left with last week and now examine more closely.

During this conference the solidarity sought with one’s religious neighbors was often expressed in terms of practical and political concerns. A brief summary of a lengthy discussion during the panel session will serve as a good example of what this means. There is genuine worry that if religions are not up-to-date with modern knowledge, they will not be capable of meeting the needs of modern people. Technology has become very integrated into daily life and many people let their smart phones do all their thinking. Deep thought is being lost. Technology has also not yet alleviated the massive poverty found in India. When people are no longer satisfied with technology as the solution to life’s problems, will religion have made the creative advance needed to be relevant? The potential solution focused on during this conversation was not that becoming up-to-date meant comparing religious claims with those in biological science, for example, but that it meant becoming pluralistic.

Augustine Pamplany has argued that the epistemology of Indian science gives it ontological proximity to religion and gives warrant to such spiritual holism. The dialogue between science and religion is part of the broader context of the manifestation of truth. The universe is the macrocosm in which humans are microcosms. And taken one step further from a spiritual perspective, both are part of the larger divine macrocosm. Before explaining this further, it should be contrasted with two opposing ways of relating God and world.

The mindset that penetrates through the seen to the unseen merges what is cosmological and divine into the monism of pantheism. Conversely, overly rational emphasis on analysis over synthesis has led, especially in the Western philosophical tradition, to dualism and the separation of God and world. The former approach appreciates a depth to reality but remains largely ignorant about the physical details of that reality. The latter tends to view reality as inert and passive, creating profoundly confused creatures who don’t know how to live in the world.

Pamplany’s approach is dialectical. God’s mystery can be explored by probing the mystery of the physical world and vice versa. Advaitic epistemology has advanced a way of knowing that is methodologically pluralistic by beginning and ending in experience. Disciplines like science, art, poetry, and religion are not to be separated because they are all means of gaining knowledge from experience. All disciplines have the same goal and method, to know truth.

So in India, experience dictates epistemology rather than epistemology dictating what can possibly be experienced. The conceptual clarity and theoretical sophistication of Western science are not enough for science and religion to effectively dialogue. Western science is viewed as being overly rationalistic, thereby fracturing a unified approach to truth. Hermeneutically appropriating the spiritual vision behind Indian science brings praxis back into the picture. As Pamplany says, “on the one hand, the logic of integration dominant in the Hindu approach towards reality necessarily entails an ontologically complimentary vision of science and religion, and on the other hand, the emerging epistemological context generated by the compelling scientific knowledge and its methodic and linguistic commonalities with the religious epistemological structures render their intersection inseparable” (Together Towards Tomorrow, 392).

Besides being spiritually evocative of religious harmonization, this makes some biological sense. Larger cooperative groups have advantages over smaller isolated tribes. Pluralistic responses to technological problems made possible by our advanced biology are actually more thorough according to the logic of evolution than responses anchored in one religious tradition and ignorant of other possibilities.

As we improve our information processing ability with our technology, it takes a more concerted effort to remain responsible for long term goals. Atoms form molecules that form cells which allow for organized molecules that make organisms with specialized tasks possible which, in turn, allows for social systems with divisions of labor. Rather than just continuing this movement with reckless abandon, religions have the tendency to look ahead with visions. The sometimes accidental advances in technology can be directed toward goals in which humans are more in balance with one another and the earth. There was a sense among my students and at this conference that cooperating with other religions will help engender those goals while religious competition will be disastrous. Just as evolution has led to people with the ability to use tools and modify their environments, now in drastic ways due to modern science and technology, religions will also modify their environments. And it is hard to argue with the notion that a pluralistic position advocating cooperation will modify the world for the better when compared with religious exclusivism. We are at a point where we will get nowhere unless we can shed some old religious trappings and work together.

A stereotype concerning this holistic spirituality needs to be avoided, however. Indians are not aloof mystics without any concern for the world. Sophisticated work has been done on the Indian contributions to modern science and technology, especially astronomy and communication technology. Consider this statement from the Vedang Jyotish (1000 B.C.): “Just as the feathers on the peacock and the jewel-stone of a snake are placed at the highest point of the body (at the forehead), similarly, the position of Ganit (mathematics) is the highest among all branches of the Vedas and the Sastras.” Furthermore, the development of science in India was also pluralistic. Belief among Jains and Buddhists in limitless space and time helped develop work on infinite numbers as well as set theory. Another stereotype accompanies this one, that Asia is traditional and the West progressive. India has been very progressive, especially in the technological realm. But, I would argue, it has been even more progressive that the West in its pluralistic religious response to science and technology. After working through these issues in India, it looks downright ridiculous to read books on science and religion in which Christianity is treated as the only possible dialogue partner with science. But there does seem to be a paradox in India’s pluralism.

This pluralistic acceptance of difference is grounded something like a holistic monism. They are all means of experiencing what cannot be experienced and touching what cannot be touched by normal means. Differences are complimentary when in a larger totality. I simply wonder if a kind of philosophical and religious reductionism is present in this reaction to scientific reductionism. Scientists reduce complex organisms to their simpler parts when offering explanations. But isn’t reducing physical experience to a spiritual manifestation a similar move? If there is a problem with scientific reductionism, there should also be a problem with spiritual reductionism. I remain unconvinced that everything is so obviously a manifestation of the divine. What of all our mistakes and errors, including our biological knowledge of why people might come up with superstitious religious ideas? Pamplany’s dialectic needs to be pushed further into a possible critique of its resulting holism.

Consciousness has become a central issue in this discussion. It is not the creeds of religion that matter as much as the experiences engendered by adhering to a set of creeds. But can consciousness be reduced to matter? If not, can divine consciousness support the world and its many religions? Is it the point of contact with this spiritual holism? Behind the many different religions, is one’s spirit the point of contact with the divine consciousness? What if our mental ideas are mistaken? Next week we dig deeper into the theological tradition in India that has wrestled with such issues and the new problems it has created.

P.S. The photos in this month’s series are from my trip to India.

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Maundy Thursday: Forgiving God

April 21, 2011 By David Henson 3 Comments

David HensonMaundy Thursday: Forgiving God

I never clean out the car. And at no time was this unfortunate habit more perilous than when I was a full-time stay-at-home dad. On any given day, depending on the amount of sunshine, our van would have a half-dozen apple cores in various shades of brown, a three-week-old diaper full of pee, and all but two of our sippy cups and to-go coffee cups, each with its own little science experiment growing inside.

It drives my wife up the wall. And I know it drives her up the wall. But I still do it.

Now, it’s not wrong to fill a van full of trash, technically speaking. When I was a college student, I had 20-page papers from the previous semester decomposing into compost in my trunk and a two-year-old splatter of chocolate pudding on the ceiling. But in the context of my marriage, leaving the van full of trash was very, very wrong.

So, I never fail to ask for forgiveness for my sins against wife and van.

It’s how relationships go. You need forgiveness even when no real sin was committed. You ask forgiveness because of the hurt the other person experiences, regardless of whether it is your own fault or the obsessive-compulsive need for cleanliness of the other. You ask for forgiveness to continue the relationship, to restore it humbly.

In our relationships with God, most of us, I’d wager, have no problem asking God for forgiveness, for the things we have done, the things we have left undone, and the things we’re planning on doing even though we know we shouldn’t, like not cleaning out a van. Generally, I suppose we are content with this setup, and it works for the most part. But, when I look at the world, the suffering of consciousness, the evil that infects, the despair of life, the hunger that distends bellies, the enslavement of the poor to the rich, and the rich to riches . . . when I look myself, the way I am made, my own experiences of despair and hopelessness . . . I see the kind of brokenness that begs for forgiveness, but of a wholly different kind than the prayers we say while pounding our chests.

At some point, we have to learn to forgive God. My guess is that most of us don’t want anything to do with forgiving God, either because we rather like the grudges we hold against the Almighty or because we cringe at the idea of God needing forgiveness. But to truly live in relationship to God we have to be capable of forgiving God, of looking at the world God created and ourselves within it, and say to God, “I will love you in spite of this mess, and I forgive you even if it turns out you meant it to be this way all along.”

When I look at my life, what keeps me from joy, from hope, from God is my inability to forgive God. Regardless of its theological correctness, I’ve experienced it as true. I’ve tried to create the right theological formula to avoid the inevitable, but eventually, all my theodicies have failed to register deep within my soul, in the places of pain. That question—why a good, all-loving, all-powerful God allows such profound evil and suffering in the world—plagues many religions and has inspired a variety of explanations. Perhaps God is limited. Perhaps our free will limits God. Perhaps suffering really is an ages-old punishment for humanity’s sinfulness in some imaginary garden. Perhaps it all the evil of the world is payback for our sins. Perhaps evil has only to do with humanity and nothing to do with God, that it’s a problem we created and so it’s a problem that is also ours to repair.

But there’s another option, a more difficult option: to forgive God.

Now, comparatively, it’s easy to forgive humans. We’re so deeply flawed that the only response is compassion. If I’m wronged, all I have to do is take a small, brief trip in my memory to find a moment when I wrought the same sin, or at least, wanted to. Unconditional forgiveness is the most basic form of humanity because it is the attitude most foundationally based on our human experiences.

But God is supposed to be perfect. God isn’t supposed to be forgiven. That’s what our religious institutions have told us for eons.

We often think of God as sacrificing God’s own son for the forgiveness of the sins of humanity. But there’s equal power in seeing God as coming down to live among us and dying for the forgiveness of God as well. My God, my God, why have you forsaken us? How many times have we uttered that phrase in our pain and suffering? When Jesus utters these words, there is no answer. We are left to imagine it. But what would you say if your lover cried out to you, regardless of its factual accuracy, My Beloved, my Beloved, why have you forsaken me? I do not know why, the lover replies. I am so sorry. Forgive me. Do not forsake me as well.

Can we imagine God, the Beloved, replying in such compassion to our experience of suffering? Or do we imagine God, coming out the whirlwind, to berate us like God did to Job?

All relationships need forgiveness. And in a relationship, all need to forgive, whether the wrongs are real or whether the wrongs are imagined, and all need to be forgiven for the same reasons. Perhaps there is some explanation too great for mortals to understand as we are told in Job, but God’s answer to Job’s pained question of My God, my God, why have you forsaken me always struck me as less than convincing. Perhaps our finity cannot match an understanding of infinity, but regardless, such an understanding doesn’t change much when deep suffering strikes.

Sometimes I imagine that when we all finally get to heaven, we’ll find God weeping into a bowl of dirty water, washing the feet of humanity, asking for forgiveness for all God has done and left undone in creation, and giving thanks that we decided to come home anyway.

O God, we forgive you for the suffering in the world, for the horror that masquerades as life, for the hunger, the thirst, the loneliness, the absolute silence of your voice. We forgive you of your trespasses against humanity as you forgive ours against you. And in doing so, may we understand that when our hands reach out in evil, your hands do too, that when our hearts reach out in compassion, your heart follows. Amen.

David Henson is a writer who lives in Augusta, Georgia, and is currently working on a novel. His meditations on scripture have appeared in Ready the Way: A Walk through Advent (2009), the Christian Century web site, and numerous other blogs. He authors the blog Unorthodoxology.  Read the rest of his Holy Week Meditations here.

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Living in a Post-Theological World: Beyond Theories of God

November 12, 2010 By George Elerick 7 Comments

Underneath Paris

In philosophy, theory (from ancient Greek theoria, θεωρία, meaning “a looking at, viewing, beholding”) refers to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action.[1] Theory is especially often contrasted to “practice” (Greek praxis, πρᾶξις) a concept that in its original Aristotelian context referred to actions done for their own sake, but can also refer to “technical” actions instrumental to some other aim, such as the making of tools or houses. “Theoria” is also a word still used in theological contexts.

“Hollie Baylor: I was still waiting for everything to start, and now it’s over” (Elizabethtown, Movie)

In terms of developing theories, why do we do it? Most likely because we want to know. In a very simple form, this is a type of gnosis. We look to information to inform us of something that lies outside of ideology. I think it also comes down to how we view God. Sometimes it does seem we use theology to prove to God who she should be. In this light, theology as a theory then becomes a tool of coercion and/or measurement. And not only towards the divine, but towards one another.

In this moment, our theories on the Divine are to prohibit people from believing or living certain ways. Yet, the hope of any religion is to make humanity better, right? Some might agree that to be better at being human is to be better at being free. So if religion has come to a place where it denies the very element it inherently claims it holds, then it has become something other than religion.

We’ve entered into an interesting era in history where people are beginning to ask if history is all we get. Not just in Christianity, but within the framework of the world. We are beginning to see things differently, and I think this is a great time for transformation. I think a good place to start is to realize that now doesn’t have the last word for what is to come.

There is more to God, more to Jesus, more to Christianity than what has previously been offered. But, I have to be honest, I don’t think this exciting new change includes theology. Let me explain. When I used the word theology I am speaking of the theory of theology. Theology as Ideology. Theology as a static entity that exists before the liminal threshold of ideological transformation.

The nation of Israel in Ezekiel 37 are represented as a metaphorical pile of bones. These bones are awaiting resurrection. Awaiting new life. These bones are lying in a deep valley. Darkness surrounds this nation of people. It is a dark time. They have systematically lived their lives to the letter of the law, and God enters the scene and promises to give them a new heart. This is the thing that sustains life, the heart. Israel has lost her heart.

To the point of no longer being human.

She is the object that still persists beyond existence. Although there is no flesh in sight, God responds to Israel as if she is embodied. In this moment, there is a realization that occurs, that God’s Gaze* is actually Israel’s Gaze*. The only way God can respond to Israel as if she is embodied in this metaphor is because God is full embodiment of the disembodied divine. God’s ability to interact creates the illusion of embodiment. The reality in the parable is that Israel is de-fleshed.

Theology has become the pile of bones. It has become embodied by history, assumptions, subjective truths and alienated concepts that have been kept in tow by those before us.

If we simply believe something that has either been socially or historically accepted as truth without ever questioning the intentions of the writer or the point that is being made, than we are not believing, we are simply believing under the guise of belief. In this sense the system itself is mediating our belief. Theology has become the mediator of our belief.

It believes for us.

In a post-theological world God exists not because theology says so, but because God is pure in the Hegelian sense. He exists as Being, but also exists as non-being. This much like the character of the Cheshire Cat who’s mouth exists without his body. It is the disembodied reality that is also the embodiment of reality. Rather than one being different from the other, they are one in the same. Or like how the Matrix is something that is always spoken of but never fully realized. In a post-theological world, there is no system in place to describe God because every system does not have ability to account for a God is consistently becoming.

This is why Heresy as the New Theology must be taken seriously and not simply because it is inflammatory. When I speak of heresy, I do not just mean what is deemed as theoretically unsound by the mass majority, but as a positive deconstruction that grows through the systems we create round the Divine. It is positive in that it opens up endles possibilities for discovery. It leaves holy space for unholy moments. It invites us to see that this Being beyond being lies outside of our system of thought. This is why the mystics are so important to the general religious landscape, they remind us the inherent inadequacy of our words. We must exchange awe for literal expression.

It’s that moment where we experience the Divine to the point where we just can’t seem to fit God in our rhetoric. This is a post-theological moment. This is a moment of heresy. Heresy leads those with theories to action. God illicits darkness because that is where she belongs. God had to create light, because she exists there. This isn’t the darkness that is easily compared to evil acts, but rather the darkness that brings distinction, paradox, inconsistency.

We need this stark inconsistency to understand that we don’t understand God and that is a good thing. So what do we do with God being near, and the God who is far? They are one in the same. His immanence is her transcendance. In a Post-Theological world God resides in inconsistency because that’s where the Divine makes sense.

So, what does this world look like without ‘Theology’? What it means is that competition and apologetics are near non-existent in their current forms. That we don’t have to be right. That beyond our theories lies humanity at its best. This may sound like one idea replacing another, but it is more than that, it is the ability to see that multi-culturalism doesn’t just lie in the culture itself but is understood as something comprised of many things. So, a heretical multiculturalism seeks to open space where there was no space to be open prior to the post-theological world.

This heretical multi-culturalism asserts that truth much like Hegel’s pur God is just as becoming as the Divine itself. What does this mean then for all of us? It means we have to lace up our boots, pull out our camping gear, bring some rations because we have no idea where this might end, but we know we are moving forward…

* Lacan’s Gaze is simply defined as : “The ‘Gaze’ is a psychoanalytical term brought into popular usage by Jacques Lacan to describe a condition where the mature autonomous subject observes “the observation of himself” in a mirror.

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