Hindu God, Christian God: How Reason Helps Break Down the Boundaries between Religions

220 Pages·2001·14.27 MB·english

by  Francis X. Clooney

HINDU GOD, CHRISTIAN GOD
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Hindu God, Christian God
How Reason Helps Break Down the
Boundaries between Religions
FRANCIS X. CLOONEY, S.J.
OXTORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
2001
OXFORD
UNIVERSITY PRESS
Oxford New York
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Copyright © 2001 by Francis X. Clooney
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Clooney, Francis Xavier, 1950-
Hindu God, Christian God : how reason helps break down the boundaries between
religions / Francis X. Clooney.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-19-513854-6
I. Christianity and other religions—Hinduism. 2. Hinduism—Relations—
Christianity. I. Title.
BR128.H5 C57 2001
261.2*45—dear 00-046528
9 8 7 6 5 4 32
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Preface
It seems that I began work on this book before I knew it. In 1993 I spent a
week in Alvar Tiru Nagar1, the home of Satakopan, a great Hindu saint from
eighth-century South India who wrote beautiful and powerful poetry in honor
of Lord Narayana. It was the time of the winter festival in honor of Satakopan,
and I joined in the daytime and nighttime events celebrated in the great temple
there. Perhaps because I had been studying his great Timvaymoli for several
years and because I had been so graciously received in Alvar Tiru NagarT by
Annaviar Srinivasan, a priest in the temple, I felt as much at home as I ever
had in India. To be in the temple, with the saint's people and before Narayana,
who he had praised, was a holy moment. But I also saw clearly that I was not
a Hindu and could not be one. It had to do with the color of my skin, my ever-
faltering Tamil, my Irish Catholic upbringing in New York City, and my longer
years of study of Christian philosophy and theology. It also had to do with
the deeper commitments of my heart, since I had always tried to be one of
those who simply "left everything and followed Him" (Luke 5). One does
not lightly trade such commitments for new ones.
I had reached a boundary, faced with a powerful, beautiful, and compelling
religious encounter with a Hindu God in the living context of a Hindu tradi-
tion, and this offered me great consolation. I did not see a way to go forward,
yet neither did I wish simply to walk away from it. In retrospect, I can see that
part of my concern was professional too. Some comparative work really gives
theologians something to think about. I knew that some of my theological col-
leagues back in America had no use for comparative study and felt comfort-
ably at home within the walls of their own Christian theology. I also wanted to
find a way to say why it is good—and compelling—for believing theologians
to persist in thinking at that edge where faiths encounter one another.
Vi PREFACE
That South Indian experience found its way more or less directly into See-
ing through Texts: Doing Theology among the Snvaisnavas of South India
(1996), where I attempted as best I could to enter the world of Tiruvaymoli,
dwell there, and then find my way back to Christian insight. But over time I
realized that I still needed to find a more convincing and arguable way to make
sense of spiritual and intellectual connections and commitments that cross
religious boundaries, convincing even for those unable to travel to Alvar Tiru
Nagarl. Improbably at first, I decided that thinking—logic, reasoning, and
argument—offers us a sturdy bridge for making our way forward in our en-
counters with faiths and religious ways other than our own. The mind may
sometimes hold us back, but quite often it travels ahead of us, where the heart
has not yet reached, where words are still worrying themselves into existence.
I could not be Hindu and could not cease to be Roman Catholic, but my mind,
and with it my inquiring faith, regularly probed the religious traditions of India,
posing questions and improvising answers. This process produced some new
and enduring connections and changed how I think through my Christian faith;
it also gave me an insight into how all of us who think and can continue to
call ourselves Christian or Hindu—or Saiva or Vaisnava, Catholic or Meth-
odist, Buddhist, Muslim, or Jew—in a world where we cannot credibly dis-
miss the beliefs of others. Hindu God, Christian God strives mightily to ar-
ticulate some of the more vexing problems confronting those who believe and
yet also think. I have deliberately convened an odd and uncomfortable con-
versation among theologians normally not read together. I have introduced
Hans Urs von Balthasar, for instance, to Vedanta Desika and Arul Nandi;
Kumarila Bhatta and Sudarsana Suri to Karl Barth—they all think and be-
lieve deeply enough that they have much in common and much about which
they disagree. My goal has been to show how even the more difficult and stub-
born points of religious and theological difference remain places where the
mind can willingly visit, think, speak, and thus infuse new vitality and in-
sight into believing lives.
One perceptive student who read through an early version of the manu-
script commented that (as had not been the case in several of my other books)
I seemed to disappear from the chapters of Hindu God, Christian God. My
hope is that the thoughts that follow may upon reflection show themselves to
be the insights of a theologian who traveled to the edge, pondered unchang-
ing commitments and new invitations, and decided, reasonably enough, that
the only way forward was to think. May this book be an occasion for think-
ing and moving forward for my readers as well.
At this point in my life I am more aware than ever of how the deeply soli-
tary work of writing thrives only in a richly communal atmosphere, and I have
many people to thank as I write these words. I am grateful to Boston College
for a sabbatical year during 1998-1999 and particularly to J. Robert Barth,
then dean of the college, for his "more than administrative" encouragement
of my scholarly ventures. I am very grateful to the Center of Theological
Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey, for a year's fellowship during that same
sabbatical, for splendid living and working facilities, gracious hospitality, and
PREFACE Vll
fine conversations which made my work speed along. The director, Wallace
Alston; the associate director and theologian in residence, Robert Jenson; the
administrator, Kathi Morley; and Maureen Montgomery, Mary Beth Lewis,
Mary Rae Rogers, and Cecilio Orantes were most generous and helpful in
every way. I am also grateful to Professor George Migliore of the seminary
faculty for reading chapter 5 of my manuscript and to the staff of the Princeton
Theological Seminary Library for their efficient assistance in procuring books
needed for my research.
My Jesuit brothers have enriched my thinking in many ways, most basi-
cally in our community life together each day in the Barat Jesuit Community
at Boston College. I am particularly grateful to the Jesuit professors with whom
I worked most closely in our long-term project, Jesuit Scholarship in a
Postmodern Age. Arthur Madigan and James Bernauer have offered stimu-
lating insights into philosophical wisdom as old as the Greeks and as new as
the most recent postmodern thinkers, and they prompted me to keep on deep-
ening and widening the framework for my project. Ronald Anderson's re-
search in the encounter of theoretical physics, philosophy of science, and
postmodern spirituality has helped me to see in a new light the crossing of
boundaries.
In various small and large ways, colleagues have aided me in clarifying
the tasks and goals of what I will repeatedly call an interreligious, compara-
tive, dialogical, and (yet again) confessional theology. In the Boston area,
Mark Heim, Kurt Richardson, Roger Johnson, and Wesley Wildman were
helpful in thinking through my ideas at various stages of their development.
At Boston College, Louis Roy, O.P., whose writings bring together the wis-
dom of Thomas Aquinas and Bernard Lonergan with that of Asia, has exem-
plified for me the virtues of the committed and faithful scholar who crosses
theological boundaries for the sake of honest theological and spiritual inquiry.
John Makransky's work in Buddhist studies and now in Buddhist theology
has been encouraging and complementary on multiple levels. My younger
colleagues Ruth Langer and Qamar-ul Huda have brought new life, new ques-
tions, and new energy to the project of comparative theology at Boston Col-
lege. I am also grateful to current and former students who have taken the
time to read and comment on portions of this book, including Joseph Molleur,
Hugh Nicholson, Reid Locklin, Dominic Longo, and Joan LaFrance Maselli.
Charlotte Hilmer meticulously proofread the galleys.
Further afield, I am grateful to other faithful comparativists as well. John
Keenan, Middlebury College, continues to instruct us in how to do compara-
tive theology well by his creative engagement of the Christian and Mahayana
Buddhist traditions. Daniel Sheridan, dean at St. Joseph's College of Maine,
and Paul Griffiths, University of Illinois, remind me of the deeper truths and
values at stake in comparative work. James Fredericks, Loyola-Marymount
University, keeps showing me just how very Catholic—and enjoyable—the
comparative project can be. Tamal Krishna Goswami, currently at Cambridge
University, and Vasudha Narayanan, University of Florida, regularly rejuve-
nate my work by so compellingly exemplifying the intelligence and integral
Vlll PREFACE
nature of Hindu theology in the modern world. Parimal Patil, a Hindu theo-
logian currently on the faculty at Emory University, has generously helped
me to actualize the dialogical nature of this project by agreeing to contribute
his "Prolegomenon to 'Christian God, Hindu God,'" which appears at the end
of this volume. In it he brilliantly reviews my project, its possibilities and
limitations, from a Hindu theological perspective. I dearly hope that his ex-
emplary response will encourage other readers to respond in similar ways.
Finally, I am particularly grateful to three more senior scholars whose
ongoing lifelong projects of theological inquiry demonstrate the power of
minds that are both faithful and open. Robert Neville, dean of the School of
Theology at Boston University, has exemplified the nearly unlimited reach
across religious boundaries of the faithful, open theological mind; he also
exercises the powers and virtues of the good administrator by creating situa-
tions where comparative study can be shared and deepened in collaboration.
I benefited very much from participation in the three-year Comparative Re-
ligious Ideas Project, which Bob initiated in the late 1990s and invited me to
join. Franz Josef van Beeck, S.J., Loyola University of Chicago, has always
managed to combine a deep love of the Christian tradition with an enthusi-
asm for what is new, including generous encouragement of my own work.
John Carman, Harvard University, has pursued scholarly interests, both Chris-
tian and Hindu, that exemplify how one can study India deeply and keep on
probing the mysteries of the Christian faith at the same time. I would like to
think that Hindu God, Christian God will enrich that ongoing conversation
across religious boundaries that they were already carrying on before I even
got started.
Contents
1. Widening the Theological Conversation in Today's
Pluralistic Context, 3
Theological Conversations across Religious Boundaries, 3
The Themes and Methods behind This Book, 12
Hindu God, Christian God in the Context of
Christian Theology, 20
2. Arguing the Existence of God: From the World to
Its Maker, 29
Richard Swinburne's Contemporary Christian Argument for
God's Existence, 30
The Traditional Indian Rational Inquiry into
the Existence of God, 35
Arguing the Existence of God as an Interreligious
Theological Project, 58
3. Debating God's Identity, 62
Jesus Christ, the Form of Revelation: An Explanation of
Christian Uniqueness According to Hans Urs
von Balthasar, 64
Hindu Apologetics: Identifying the True God in a
Constructed Monotheistic Context, 68
Naming God in an Interreligious Theological Context, 88