Is the Hindu Bhagavadgita Monotheist?

Even though the Bhagavadgita is just a small part of the Mahabharata Hindu epic, the popularity of the former book in Hindu households has led to it being referred to as the Hindu Bible. This likeness should be taken at face value, for the contents in the Gita are very different than the theological context of the Bible, whether just the Torah, the Talmud, or the New Testament. Even though the virtue of kindness or love issuing out in compassion to other people is a shared descriptor of the Hindu Lord Krishna, which is the highest god in the Gita, and the Christian Lord Jesus, the ideational dissimilarities between the Gita and the Bible should not be glossed over. Put another way, not even the symbol of the mandala, which Joseph Campbell includes as the religious archetype of wholeness in The Power of Myth, should dispel the notion that religions contain unique and thus different philosophical and theological ideas and even just stances.

In the Bhagavadgita, for example, “(y)oga practices and knowledge of salvation are equated with ritual performances in which all defilements and desires are offered up in the ‘sacrificial fire’ (agni) of knowledge.”[1] In ritual, basic elements on Earth, such as fire, water, and food, which, astonishingly, are labeled as deities in the Chandogya Upanishad, are related to, and perhaps even vicariously connect, the cosmos and the human person. Knowledge of liberation from rebirths (samsara) involves or even necessitates the sacrifice of desires. The word salvation is extremely salient in Christianity, and yet is hardly innate to Hinduism; the connotation that being saved by the vicarious sacrifice (as per Anselm’s theology) of a god-man once and for all so that any believer is made right thereby with God (i.e., justified by faith, as per Luther’s theology) is foreign to Hinduism. To be sure, the inclusion the element of food in both the Hindu sacrificial ritual and in the Christian Eucharistic ritual (i.e., Communion) and even that the food is consecrated in the latter with the real presence of the divine (agape) and food is labeled at a deity in a Upanishad should not blind a non-Hindu reader of the Gita into supposing that the book’s paradigm like the one upon which the Judeo-Christian Bible rests.

Even taking into account Gnostic Christianity, the emphasis which the Gita places on knowledge, especially that which Krishna imparts to Arjuna, distinguishes Hinduism from Christianity, where at least Paul distinguishes theology from philosophy—only the knowledge of the wise being vain.[2] This demarcation, and prejudice against philosophy, does not exist in Hinduism. Malinar, for instance, refers explicitly to “the various religious and philosophical doctrines presented in the [Gita]” without driving an artificial wedge between them.[3]

Furthermore, even though Krishna is portrayed as the high deity and even the portal through which Brahman itself can be glimpsed in full—as if that were possible for a human being—it is a mistake to label the Gita as monotheist. Even though Krishna is portrayed in the Gita as “the mighty ruler and creator of the world and its dharmic order, as well as the ever-liberated and transcendent ‘highest self’” and thus as “the most powerful Lord and yogin,” with “power over nature (prakrti)” and being “the cosmic cause of activity” yet “detached from the created world, being forever ‘unborn’ and transcendent,”[4] it is a mistake to conclude that Krishna’s supreme qualities renders the Gita as monotheist.

As if the Gita were akin to Hobbes’ Leviathan, Malinar states that the “monotheistic theology in [the Gita] also offers an interpretation of kingship and royal power” simply because Krishna is revealed “as the highest god.”[5] Even in the Hebrew Bible where other gods are referred to, they are not credited with being real gods, so it is not as though Yahweh is the highest god; rather, Yahweh is the only god, and thus God.[6] Also, the accolades that Malinar attributes to Krishna do not make Krishna merely a manifestation of Yahweh, for the latter did not create a dharmic order and is not liberated as the highest-self. Although “detached from the created world, being forever ‘unborn’ and transcendent” also characterizes Yahweh, or God, I wonder whether Malinar was knowingly or unknowingly drawing on Christian theology in describing Krishna in such “Western” terms.

Furthermore, I submit that not even Brahman considered as the highest or supreme god in Hinduism renders the religion monotheist. One twentieth-century American philosopher, Keith Yandel, erroneously interpreted the Hindu philosopher and theologian, Shankara (8^th century, CE), as characterizing Hinduism as monotheist simply because, according to non-dualism, the Hindu deities are merely appearances, or manifestations, of Brahman. As the ground-being of the world’s multiplicity, Brahman cannot be said have what we think of as intelligence as it differs from the awareness or consciousness of being itself qua being.  Neither can Brahman be thought of as a discrete entity, for Brahman is the being of everything—of all existence, or, perhaps more accurately, of existence itself. It is surely difficult, if not impossible, to view raw being as an entity; rather, being is the existential basis (rather than an attribute) of entities. So, I’m not convinced that Brahman can even be said to be a deity. It is possible that English translators of the Gita (and the Upanishads) have used a familiar word whose meaning differs from what the writers of the text(s) had in mind. In any case, when the warrior Arjuna gets a glimpse of Brahman itself by Krishna revealing himself as he really is, it is not the Abrahamic deity, or God, that Arjuna sees in his epiphany.

As yet another example of a leitmotif of the Gita that is not easily convertible into any of the Abrahamic faiths, Krishna urges Arjuna to engage on the external battlefield with “detached action” as a way to avoid “karmic bondage” even as Arjuna is active and performs his social duties.[7] To be sure, to be detached from sinful desires in Christianity bears a rough similarity to the “detached action,” but here even the desire not to harm relatives is a problem. Also, the very notion of “karmic bondage” is utterly foreign to the Abrahamic religions. In Christianity, for example, the bondage is to sin, whose basis lies within rather than as actions (even less in the residue of past actions).

Although religions can be said to bear Wittgenstein’s “family resemblances” to each other, the urge to minimize or overlook the differences between religions, as in depicting one in terms of another (or that another uses), should be checked and corrected for, lest scholars of religion unintentionally remake particular religions into more familiar terms. One of the main benefits of studying more than one religion, especially religions other than one’s own, is the access to different ideas and theologies/philosophies. A person’s own religious/philosophical paradigm can be made transparent to oneself even to be seen as an alternative rather than as the unquestioned and unrecognized default. Unconsciously distorting other religions into more familiar terms diminishes this realization.

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1. Angelika Malinar, The Bhagavadgita: Doctrines and Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 4.
2. 1. Cor. In contrast, the Hebrew Bible contains the verse, “God knows the thoughts of men.” Paul adapts this to: “God knows the thoughts of the wise; they are vain.” Jerusalem is fine; Athens is not. Such a dichotomy does not exist in Hinduism.  
3. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 5.
4. Ibid., p. 6.
5. Ibid., p. 4.
6. Also, whereas Hobbes’ notion of a sovereign power, whether a king or an assembly, has absolute political and religious (i.e., interpreting divine law) power within a territory, Hindu kings have traditionally been at least ritually dependent on the Brahmin priests in the main temple not only for another year of legitimacy, but also as a means of gaining power by giving land away through the auspices of the temple.
7. Malinar, The Bhagavadgita, p. 4.

On Believing in Jesus Christ as the Preeminent Focus of Christianity

Jesus’ identity as the Son of God is salient in the four canonical gospels, as well as in Paul’s letters. Hence, christology has been an important field of theology. While the benefits to the Christian have been touted so much in historical and contemporary theological writings, the costs and vulnerabilities of the nearly monopolistic focus have largely gone unnoticed. The realization of them would allow Christians (including extant theologians) to gain a fuller (i.e., holistic) perception and understanding of the religion, and even a better practice thereof.  I will begin with the theology then provide a practical example of the problems involved in having a willowed-down focus at the expense of the drawbacks.

In approximately 170 CE, Irenaeus, a bishop in Lyon in the Roman Empire’s province of Gual (in modern-day France), selected Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John as the four canonical gospels. He wrote, “The heretics boast that they have many more gospels than there really are. But really they don’t have any gospels that aren’t full of blasphemy. There actually are only four authentic gospels. And this is obviously true because there are four corners of the universe and there are four principal winds, and therefore there can be only four gospels that are authentic.”[1] To the extent that such a rationale held any sway in his day and beyond, we can surmise just how flimsy what we literally take as gospel can be. Irenaeus assumed that the four gospels were authentically written by the four disciples, but slapping a prominent name on a piece of religious writing was commonly done in ancient times. The Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Peter could also have been said to be written by two disciples.

Irenaeus viewed the negative stance on the material realm in the Gnostic texts as heretical (even though Augustine would write in his later texts very negatively of the earthly realm—seven the physicality of sex is not to be enjoyed even when done to reproduce). I contend that Irenaeus was even in this respect motivated especially to highlight the divinity of Christ.  

Irenaeus didn’t like there being “many gospels circulating with different accounts about Jesus, particularly a number of these accounts [that] rather down-play the materiality and physicality of Jesus’ body.”[2] Ironically, dismissing the physicality of Jesus’ body goes against the christological doctrine that Jesus is the Son of God because as such, God is made flesh (i.e., corporeal). Hence the resurrected Jesus not only walks through a door of the Upper Room, but also asks his disciples for fish, as he is hungry. By implication, that the god-man is fully human and fully divine, which the Council of Nicaea would make official dogma in 325 CE, must have been important to Irenaeus when he was selecting gospels to include in the canon. That is, the identity of Jesus Christ as a god-man must have played an important role in Irenaeus’ selection of the four canonical gospels, within which Jesus’ christological identity is not only the central theme, but also the basis of the salvation of souls in transformed, resurrected bodies, which is the ultimate goal in the faith narratives. God sent his only son to reunite the human species from its sordid earthly condition due to original sin. Jesus’ identity is absolutely crucial to Christ being the second Adam, vicariously undoing Adam’s mistake in having sought divine knowledge of good and evil. I submit that the prideful presumption of seeking divinity is the original sin.

The problem is that presumptuous pride can flourish even though a Christian’s religious focus is on his or her belief that Jesus is divine and that accepting Christ as such means that the he or she is saved and will thus be reunited with God; hence Luther’s doctrine, solo fides, or only by faith. I submit that good works are also necessary. By good works, I don’t mean the liturgical Eucharistic process of sanctification, which is salient in Catholicism and Eastern Orthodox doctrine. I don’t even mean good works generally, such as volunteering at a charity. Rather, I mean the putting Jesus’ teachings of neighbor love into practice, and especially of not violating them. Such teachings include turning the other cheek, and even going on to help people who are, in modern parlance, being jerks or assholes. The application of self-emptying love goes well beyond people who are persecuting.

On Easter one year, when I lived in an apartment complex, a resident below one of the units just next to mine played loud, high-bass music with his front door open for hours. Passing by with my garbage at one point, I saw the man in his doorway and asked him to turn his music down. He stared at me for a second, then turned his back. He did not lower his music’s volume or even close his front door. I surmised that the man’s attitude was the underlying problem. Indeed, he even went outside to laugh about my request with another resident who had blasted racist lyrics containing much profanity out in the courtyard (even though kids were in the courtyard). That other resident, who just a week earlier had told police that playing  loud racist, swearing music was part of his culture and thus to be respected, then went to another resident and pointed to my apartment. I knew I was being targeted (with racial overtones), which is at two degrees of separation from being considerate. A bit later, I called the police, who asked the man to turn down his volume. I could hear the man shouting at the police. This is really bad, I thought in reference to the man’s attitude.  

The irony is that the very inconsiderate man was playing the loud music in anticipation of relatives coming over for Easter! He was like the person who goes to hell thinking all the while that he is going to heaven. Aggressively violating Jesus’ teachings on how to enter the Kingdom of God while having an Easter party suggests the presence of gaping cognitive dissidence. The same sort of cognitive dissidence applies when a person celebrates Gandhi’s birthday by being violent. The mind should be able to be conscious of such contradictions, and yet this is not the case, at least in the realm of religious ideas. It is precisely this disconnect that has provoked so much of my analytical thinking on religion. Perhaps the human brain contains a weakness or vulnerability in reasoning and being conscious of discordances between religious ideas and practice. Even in terms of religious ideas, such as inflame self-idolatry, the human mind may be handicapped organically. Such a handicap could warp the use of logic. For instance, a person might think, I’m going to annoy my neighbors intentionally as I celebrate Easter. That such an approach not only undoes any religious merit in celebrating Jesus’ resurrection, but also adds sin is something obviously worth realizing, and yet it is not, and has not, been acted on, let alone realized.

The narrow focus on Jesus’ religious identity and even his role in the history of salvation can mean that his instructions for how to get into the Kingdom of God are eclipsed such that they are violated even, it is presumed, in the service of Christ. Crusaders, for example, killed their enemies in Jerusalem and Constantinople for Christ. It never dawned on the four Medieval popes and their soldiers appropriated by Christian kings that killing Muslims in Jerusalem and eastern Christians in Constantinople (present-day Istanbul) violates Jesus’ important injunction against harming enemies (as they are to be loved). In going on offence to take back one or the other city, the Crusaders could not even resort to Christian just-war justifications. That the leaders of the Christian Church in Western Europe were leading the charge demonstrates just how great the cognitive dissidence can be even in proclaimed vicars—earthly representatives of Christ. To represent Jesus by killing enemies is such an oxymoron that the human faculties of mind are themselves implicated as they apply themselves to religion.

I recommend, therefore, that Christians shift their focus from the christological and soteriological beliefs to Jesus’ teachings on how to enter the Kingdom of God. That is, rather than focusing on a belief about Jesus’ divine, salvific identity, focus on following and not violating Jesus’ example and teachings in the gospels. Even in self-questioning whether an attitude or conduct violates Jesus’ admonition to turn the other cheek and even proactively care for neighbors even if they are a pain in the ass or an outright enemy, a Christian can rest assured that beliefs about Jesus’s identity and role in salvation will take care of themselves, like lilies in the field. Perhaps the human mind is not good at holding very abstract beliefs and very concrete conduct together such that they can be compared and contrasted. Beliefs concerning conduct may be easier to hold, and thus a stronger focus for the believing Christian.

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[1] Elaine Pagels, “The Emergence of the Canon,” in “Emergence of the Four Gospels,” Frontline: From Jesus to Christ, PBS.org , April, 1998 (accessed April 12, 2020).

[2] Elizabeth Clark, “Irenaeus and the Heretics,” in “Emergence of the Four Gospels,” Frontline: From Jesus to Christ, PBS.org , April, 1998 (accessed April 12, 2020).

Church Scandals in a Secularizing World

A religious institution can least afford scandal involving highly unethical and illegal activity when the world is secularizing; the headwind alone requires a lot of energy just to stay in place, let alone move forward. The trail of child-rape scandals and cover-ups had by 2018 made a dent in the number of Roman Catholics in Latin America, yet other factors also accounted for the declines in church membership, and thus obfuscated estimates of the fallout in particular.  I contend that the gravity of the sexual abuse and related cover-ups by clergy warrants more than just being reckoned as one of several factors, even though the actual exodus was muted relative to the severity of the crimes.

“The number of Chileans who described themselves as Catholic dropped from 74 percent in 1995 to 45 percent [in2017], according to a poll by Latinobarómetro. The decline of Catholicism in Argentina, from 87 percent in 1995 to 65 percent [in2017] has also been significant.”[1] These are significant drops, and they exist in other countries in the region too. What factors lie behind this downward trend?  The New York Times pointed at the time to increasing secularity in “prosperous nations, including Chile and Uruguay. . . . In countries in the region troubled by violence, stark inequality and entrenched poverty like Brazil, evangelical denominations have cut deeply into the historical base of the Catholic Church.”[2] Fallout from sexual-abuse scandals by priests and covering bishops was also doubtless in the mix. Such abuse by religious men in a religious organization is unlike these other factors, for neither secularity nor economic inequality is so closely associated with, and thus pertaining to, the Roman Catholic Church. The downward effect of the personal failures and indeed hypocrisy of religious functionaries, especially in a denomination in which liturgy is so important in the process of sanctification, should arguably have been more pronounced that it actually was.

To be sure, during his visit early in 2018, Pope Francis “angered Chilean Catholics by defending a bishop who critics [said] protected a pedophile priest.”[3] Victims of Fernando Karadima, “Chile’s most notorious priest,” accused Bishop Juan Madrid of complicity in the crimes. The pope stated that “there is not one single piece of evidence. It is all slander. Is that clear?”[4] Ouch! Juan Cruz, one of the victims, had written, “As  if I could have taken a selfie or picture  while Karadima abused me orothers and Juan Barros stood there watching it all [before being elevated as a bishop by Pope Francis}.” Dismissing such an account was a good way for the pope to throw gas on a fire. “The pope’s comments set off a storm in Chile, raising questions about his commitment to repairing the damage from sexual abuse scandals and improving the decline in the church’s image and adherents” in Chile.[5] From the  standpoint of Jesus’s message, hypocrisy by the vicor of Christ is not a good thing. It is telling that a spokesperson of the Chilean government was closer to Jesus’s  message in stating, “Respecting,  believing  and supporting victims of sexual abuse is  an ethical imperative. No  institutional defense can override this basic principle for a fair society, one that is empathetic with those who most need it.”[6]  Empathy with the most vulnerable is one of the pillars of Jesus’s depicted life and teachings, whereas denial in defense of  the powerful sounds more Roman than Christian.

So I ask: why, even at the time of the pope’s visit to Chile and Peru, hadn’t more Catholics walked away from the Church? Why not a major exodus worldwide after the press reports of the reason for the pope’s chilly reception in Chile?  Imperfect information is doubtless part of the explanation. The short lifespan of moral outrage even at hypocrisy combined with the sheer force of routine in the human psyche is another. Even so, I submit that the importance of taking part in the Church’s sacraments—believed by the faithful to be important to salvation—kept even disgusted Catholics in the pews.  

Most important to a Catholic’s process of sanctification—the gradual transformation into being Christlike and thus fit for full reconciliation with God—is taking Communion at the Mass, which is presided over by clergy. They are a necessary part of a layperson’s return to God, according to Catholic belief. Historically, the Church decided the Donatist controversy by declaring that the moral lapses of a priest does not invalidate his concentration of bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. Moral and presumably even criminal faults may give rise to hypocrisy, but saying the liturgy is nonetheless sufficient in the consecration. Think of the liturgy of the Eucharist as a recipe of sorts; if said correctly, the consecration is, hocus pocus, accomplished. Whether the presiding priest was rude to someone before Mass is of no consequence. In a secularizing world, such a rationale is difficult to accept, yet Catholics socialized into the importance of attending Mass for their very salvation have a very different framework of belief. Even though that belief may be sorely tested when clergy misconduct arises, the way to salvation is held to be more important to the individual believer. In this perspective, the pursuit of salvation may appear selfish relative to taking a stand against a rapist priest or corrupt bishop by no longer going to Mass in empathy with the victims. By which of these two alternative courses does a believer become more Christlike—literally taking in the deity via Communion, or following Jesus’s example and teachings on how to live so as to enter the kingdom of God? A tough theological problem to be sure!

The sex scandals have been just one of several factors that together have doubtlessly been perceived by the Vatican as just another headwind that the long-lived institution will doubtless survive as it has survived other set-backs and challenges. Relativizing a current scandal by assuming a two-thousand-year perspective wrongly presumes an infallible coat of armour built up by centuries of existence. That the Catholic Church—any religious institution in fact—has responded so imperfectly (or not at all) is a testament to the human nature involved. Yet this is no excuse. The instinct for greater accountability within the Church is of course valid, for the ongoing need of a clergy so consecration can continue to be done does not justify retaining child-rapists and corrupt bishops who cover up the heinous crimes. For example, the Vatican could remove the rotted clerics and seek replacements. Lest it be objected that bending on the issue of clerical marriage would be inconvenient, the close tie between the Church and the crimes and cover-ups suggests that an inconvenient course-change is called for—that suffering costs due to external actors rather than one’s own volition is insufficient as payment by the institution. Such internal accountability is difficult, given the conflict of interest in an organization being tasked with voluntarily taking a hit (rather than merely taking a hit due to the actions of external actors, such as laity giving less financially). The laity and even the societies within which the Roman Catholic Church exists need not accept such institutional self-serving inertia.  Taking the road less convenient is something clerics ostensibly for agape (i.e., self-emptying) love should not have to be pressured into taking. Perhaps more Christians are needed in the Vatican, and fewer comfortable hypocrites in sheep’s clothing.

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1. Daniel Politi, “As Pope Heads to Chile and Peru, Argentines Feel Snubbed Again,” The New York Times, January 14, 2018.

2. Ibid.

3. Marcelo Rochabrún and Pascale Bonnefoy, “Pope Leaves a Furor in Chile, and Later Defends the Indigenous in Peru,” The New York Times, January 20, 2018.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid.

On how Church leaders might lead, see Spiritual Leadership and Christianized Ethical Leadership. On the secularization of the Church historically in terms of how wealth has been viewed in relation to greed, see God’s Gold.