Christianity and Hinduism: On Manifestations of Divinity

Hinduism is a polytheist religion whereas Christianity is monotheist. Many gods versus one seems like a clear distinction, and I submit that it basically holds. Yet nuances exist that make the distinction murky both in Hinduism and Christianity. The key to clearing up the ambiguity lies in deciding whether being a manifestation of something else is enough to count as existing as an entity. In simpler terms, is a manifestation real, or is it merely an appearance?

The foremost Hindu philosopher thus far is without doubt Shankara, who lived during the eighth century, C.E. in southern India and whose school, Advaita Vedanta, is essentially non-dualism—monism being the competing school of thought.  Shankara held that the deities in the Hindu pantheon are manifestations of brahman, which can be thought of as the substratum that pervades the universe. Only brahman really exists. The essence, content or substance of the individual soul, or atman, is brahman. To be a manifestation is to exist in the realm of appearance, rather than being something (i.e., an entity) that is real (or in the domain of the real). Shankara’s metaphysical framework also includes the realm of illusion, and it is important to keep in mind that the deities, such as Vishnu, Shiva, Krishna, and Ram, are not illusionary. Rather, they are manifestations of something that is real, namely brahman.

One of my professors, Keith Yandel, argued that Hinduism is thus monotheistic because its deities do not exist as entities, but are merely manifestations of one thing (brahman). But brahman is not a deity, but can be thought of as ether that is everywhere.  This cannot be said to be monotheism, even though brahman is one rather than being composed of distinct entities. Yandel’s basis was in Western philosophy and Christianity, and I believe he interpreted Hinduism through those prisms to expand the domain of monotheism in religion.

The problem is that the word “manifestation” is also in Christian theology in reference to the divine—in particular, to the Trinity, which is composed of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Although the Latin word personae used to denote these three “persons” of the Trinity strongly implies that they exist metaphysically as entities, unlike Shankara’s Hindu deities, the corresponding word used in Eastern (Orthodox) Christianity translates as “manifestation.” That puts us in the soup. For if the three manifestations of the divine in the Trinity do not absolve Christianity of being monotheist, then neither do the Hindu deities as manifestations keep Hinduism from counting as monotheist.

Ironically, praying to Jesus, if He is taken to be a distinct entity that really exists as such metaphysically, corresponds to the dualist camp in Hinduism, which holds that the deities, such as Vishnu and Shiva as well as their respective successive incarnations, are metaphysically real as entities. In short, if Jesus really exists as a distinct deity even though it is of the same substance as the Father and the Helper, and the latter two are real entities too, then from the standpoint of Hindu theological philosophy, Christianity is not monotheistic. But Christianity descends from Judaism, whose basic plank is that God is one. Preliminarily, it seems like Orthodox theology has a better understanding of the nature of the Trinity than does Roman Christianity and its descendants (i.e., Protestantism). To be a monotheist, it would seem that a Christian oriented to Jesus Christ would pray to a manifestation of the divine rather than to a particular deity. Jesus appears to be a deity, and thus an entity, yet in terms of metaphysical reality is an appearance of something that really exists: God. But then Hinduism would also be monotheistic because its deities are manifestations too.

Even if Western Christians come to think that they are praying to a specific manifestation of God (i.e., Jesus), such an understanding of the Trinity would imply that Hinduism is monotheist. Furthermore, to claim that Jesus is divine seems, at least to my Western mind, to mean that the Son of God is itself an entity that is real (i.e., exists as an entity, rather than as a manifestation of something even though that something is of the same substance). This way of understanding Jesus is consistent with dualism in Hinduism, in which its deities are real entities and so Hinduism is polytheist.  But then wouldn’t Christianity be as well? Must Jesus be a manifestation of the divine for Christianity to be monotheist? But then does it even make sense to pray to a manifestation that is in the realm of appearance rather than the real? Is there any way to finally square this circle?

If divine reality goes (or is sourced) beyond the limits of human conception, perception, and emotion as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite suggested in the late 5^th or early 6^th century, C.E., then all we have access to is manifestation (and illusion). Faith is oriented beyond this, hence to what only can be belief that Jesus exists as a real entity, but the content of this belief can only be a manifestation to us. But then why can’t Shakara’s Hinduism be monotheist? Furthermore, if revelation holds that the persons of the Trinity exist metaphysically as entities even within the limits of our cognitive reach, then how can we stop the inference from the Hindu school of dualism that Christianity is actually polytheist—assuming that the Father and the Son really exist as distinct entities even though they are consubstantial (i.e., of the same substance). Put another way, can divine manifestation be applied in one religion with it being monotheist and yet be applied in another religion that is polytheist, or are both Christianity and Hinduism monotheist faiths? Can Christianity be thought of as being monotheist with three distinct really-existing entities of the Trinity while Hindu dualism is needed to keep Hinduism polytheist?

To say that the whole thing is a mystery is true, but this is also a cop-out (i.e., a way to side-step or escape the problem without solving it). In Hinduism, Krishna is associated with love, and in Christianity, Jesus is too. Can we say that a Hindu prays to the Lord Krishna while a Christian prays to the Lord Jesus? This makes both religions seem polytheist. But Augustine and Paul both wrote that God is love, and it can be said that Jesus is a particular manifestation of love both personified (manifesting as such, rather than really existing as an entity) and preached in the Gospels. But then would not Lord Krishna as such make Hinduism monotheist?

The solution might lie in distinguishing Christian theological love (i.e., God is love) from Hindu brahman (i.e., the ether that pervades existence). Christian agape (i.e., self-emptying, or selfless) love may manifest metaphysically as the Trinity in a way that maintains oneness to a degree that Krishna as a manifestation of brahman does not. The key may lie in the distinction between theological love and metaphysical ether. If so, do we even know how theological love is distinct from the varieties we encounter and experience in our world? Can we say that brahman as ether counts as divinity as distinct from metaphysical substance, or else how it is that manifestations that are divine (i.e., deities as appearances) can be of something that is not itself divine in its very nature? Lord Jesus and Lord Krishna may be pointing to two very different things, the difference of which affecting what it means to manifest something.

The Pope on AI: On the Ethical (Rather than Religious) Dimension

In June, 2024 at the international political meeting of the G7, a group of seven industrial nations, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis, spoke on the ethical dimension of artificial intelligence, or machine-learning. Regarding what the Pope called the “techno-human condition,” machines capable of AI are yet another manifestation of human propensity, which our species has had since its inception, to use tools to mediate with the environment. Although tools can be thought of as an extension of our arms ad legs, it is important to distinguish the human from the machine, even as we posit human characteristics onto some advanced machines, such as computers. In the film, 2001, the computer Hal sounds human, and may even seem to have human motivations, but any such attributions come to an abrupt end when Hal is shut down. To say that Hal dies is to commit a basic category mistake. It would be absurd, for example, to claim that Hal has an after-life. So too, I submit, is there a category mistake in taking the Pope’s talk on the ethics of AI as being religious in nature. Just as it is easy to imprint the human mind on a machine-learning computer, it can be tempting to superimpose the religious domain onto another. The Pope overreached in arbitrarily bringing in religious garb on what is actually an ethical matter in the “techno-human” world.

At its core, the human-machine distinction regarding decision-making comes down to AI making only “algorithmic choices,” that is, “technical choices ‘among several possibilities based either on well-defined criteria or on statistical inferences,” whereas the human heart is capable of influencing the choices that we make and so only we can have wisdom.[1] The Pope’s definition of wisdom differs from that which describes wisdom as the combination of experience with knowledge. Even if experience comes into the equation as intuition, that is distinct from the proverbial heart. If statistical inferences don’t reach human intuition, then either conception of human wisdom suffices to distinguish human from (machine-learning) machine. In the philosophy of mind field, the difference between man and “thinking” machine can be put into the following question: Is understanding merely the manipulation of symbols according to rules? Do I, whose languages do not include Chinese, understand the answers I write to questions if I use a chart that indicates which Chinese characters to write if I’m presented with other Chinese characters? If understanding is more than merely the manipulation of symbols according to (linguistic) rules, then how much more different is human experience from statistical inference (and even learning itself), and how much even greater is the difference between human emotion, such as empathy or compassion, and AI. To the extent that ethical judgment is, as David Hume claimed, a sentiment of disapprobation (i.e., a visceral emotional reaction of disapproval), ethics can only be on the human side, where the heart resides.

The ethical dimension is salient in the advantages and (especially) the disadvantages of AI. On the one hand, the Pope said, AI has potential in regard to the “democratization of access to knowledge,” the “exponential advancement of scientific research,” and a reduction in “demanding and arduous work.”[2] Given the absolute value of reason (which assigns value to things), according to Kant, rational beings should be treated not just as means, but also as ends in ourselves. For all the advantages of specialization of labor as discussed in Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, at some point rote repetition of the same small action conflicts with Kant’s ethical imperative. In contrast, opening up knowledge and advancing it are fully in line both with rational nature and us being regarded as ends in ourselves and not merely means to other ends.

Even so, as the Pope pointed out, AI could also contribute towards a “greater injustice between advanced and developing nations or between dominant and oppressed social classes.”[3] Such a consequence would certainly violate Rawls’ ethical theory of justice in which societal systems, whether political, economic, or social, should be designed in such a way to disproportionately benefit the people at the bottom rather than disproportionately harm them.

Public policy enters the picture because we want to protect and perhaps even encourage the advantages and minimize or obviate the downsides by government policy. From Rawls theory, for instance, legislators might propose a law making college free for poor students in a society in which AI has a significant presence. Another law could mandate that the state provide computers to poor people free of charge. Rather than being technical policy prescriptions having the semblance of objectivity, these examples stem from the ethical dimension of AI.

Being that the Pope is the head of a religious institution, it is only natural that he would attempt to tack on the religious dimension. I submit that in doing so, he over-stepped. In discussing wisdom, for example, his addition of “listening to Sacred Scripture” in regard to the ancient Greek notion of phronesis (a type of intelligence concerned with practical action) doesn’t really fit, or is not pertinent.[4] It does not make phronesis religious in nature. Furthermore, he describes algorithms in terms of only being able to “examine realities formalized in numerical terms.”[5] The metaphysical term, realities, is out of place here. The Pope’s choice of the term was no accident. He sourced the mediating role of tools between us and our environment from us being “inclined to what lies outside of us,” which, and here is the stretch, in turn is in term so us being beings “radically open to the beyond.”[6] Such a beyond, as suggested by the use of the word radically, is transcendent, and thus in reference to God being wholly other rather than just immanent in Creation. In making this leap from humans needing to relate to the environment in which we live (e.g., for food) to humans having an aptitude for transcendence in a religious sense, the Pope jumped to another domain that is not relevant. For we do not use tools to grow or get food, for example, because we have an aptitude to transcend the limits of conception, perception, and emotion to posit or yearn for another world. AI pertains to what the Pope himself called the “techno-human condition.”[7] In contrast, the religious domain is sourced in, and thus relates to—as its reference point—that which transcends that condition. Even though AI represents “a true cognitive-industrial revolution” that will lead to “complex epochal transformations,” that revolution and the reverberating transformations emanating from it are firmly in this world. Even the ethical dimension of AI is likewise in the human condition; we need not be creatures radically open to beyondness to be able to address the ethical implications of AI.

I conclude, moreover, that only the religious domain includes the radically transcendent and in fact can be defined or characterized in terms of it. This is not to say that the domain cannot influence or be influenced by other domains; rather, that which makes domains distinct should not be skipped over lest category mistakes and faulty overreaches occur. Historically, the Church has overreached in superimposing the religious domain on that of natural science (e.g., astronomy). Likewise, the domain of history has been allowed to overreach in serving as a litmus test for religious truth or meaning, as if the latter were only valid pending credible historical evidence of an event or a person. Several neighborhood children at play who run onto the front yard of an elderly couple’s house and make noise—something I remember from my own childhood—is one thing; should they start moving the lawn furniture around and demand that the couple keep the chairs in their new positions—would be much worse. Imposing from one’s own domain implies a basic lack of recognition (or respect) of boundaries and thus of domains as distinct territories. The ethics house may be next door to the religious house, but the two are distinct. Similarly, AI might be next to human understanding, but the two are distinct. That algorithms are “neither objective nor neutral” does not men that they share in human subjectivity.[8] In fact, the Pope claimed that AI is not even really generative; it does not “develop new analyses or concepts.”[9] Instead, it “repeats those that it finds, giving them an appealing form.”[10] Whether this is so or not is beyond my fields of study, but my point is merely that a fundamental qualitative distinction between us and machines exists, and that the ethical dimension, as distinct from the religious, pertains to AI from our side.

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1, Joseph Tulloch, “Pope to G7: AI Is ‘Neither Objective nor Neutral,” Vatican News, June 14, 2024.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid.