The Future of Hindu–Christian Studies

A Theological Inquiry

Francis Clooney

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315525235
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Hinduism

The field of Hindu-Christian studies revives theology as a particularly useful interreligious discipline. Though a sub-division of the broader Hindu-Christian dialogue, it is also a distinct field of study, proper to a smaller group of religious intellectuals. At its best it envisions a two-sided, mutual conversation, grounded in scholars' knowledge of their own tradition and of the other.

Based on the Westcott-Teape Lectures given in India and at the University of Cambridge, this book explores the possibilities and problems attendant upon the field of Hindu-Christian Studies, the reasons for occasional flourishing and decline in such studies, and the fragile conditions under which the field can flourish in the 21st century. The chapters examine key instances of Christian–Hindu learning, highlighting the Jesuit engagement with Hinduism, the modern Hindu reception of Western thought, and certain advances in the study of religion that enhance intellectual cooperation.

This book is a significant contribution to a sophisticated understanding of Christianity and Hinduism in relation. It presents a robust defense of comparative theology and of Hindu-Christian Studies as a necessarily theological discipline. It will be of wide interest in the fields of Religious Studies, Theology, Christianity and Hindu Studies.

Lecture Two

How (and why) some Hindus have studied Christianity

In this second lecture, I turn toward the Hindu reception of Western and Christian traditions, in order to see the possibilities and limitations of Hindu–Christian studies in light of Hindu intellectual work. Today we must pay closer attention to the considerable Hindu efforts to engage the Christian West without confining such efforts within conceptual frames arising in the West.

This subject is not precisely symmetrical with that of the first lecture, since Hindus and Christians have never faced exactly the same problems in the study of each other’s intellectual and spiritual traditions. Christians have largely been in a position to decide whether and when such learning is worthwhile, and Hindus have often been compelled, socially and intellectually, to acknowledge and respond to questions and challenges posed by the West. Tinu Ruparell has aptly noted that many Hindus he spoke with “are not interested in discussing with Christians their respective views of God and the transcendent.” While we “might expect Hindus, of all people, to be most keen to debate the finer points of theology with any and all people of faith,” in fact that learning is too often a tainted gift, burdened with a difficult history and carrying “unfortunate connotations.” It can seem a residual tool of empire, or an instrument of evangelization, best responded to by indifference and silence rather than trusting participation. Engaging in interreligious dialogue with Christians may reopen the door “to an imperial history many Hindus wish to leave behind. Just how much this explains Hindu reticence to partake in dialogue with Christians may be debated.” Efforts to reset Hindu–Christian studies as a more fruitful discipline must from the start respect differences, repent for histories of violence, respect the considerable learning from and about the West that Hindus have already undertaken, and take into account how Hindu religious intellectuals have chosen to engage the West.¹

Hindus have never studied Christianity in the way Christians have studied Hinduism, nor would we want to expect them to; and so we must be on the lookout for other forms of substantive learning, perhaps under other names. The intellectual background and resources of Indian traditions diverge greatly and interestingly from those of the premodern and modern West; motives and methods have varied, and Christian and Western expectations have often been disappointed when the study does not proceed as expected. Nonetheless, the presupposition of this lecture is that Hindu intellectuals have indeed engaged in serious study of Western and Western Christian ideas. There is a great abundance of evidence, if we know where to look and do not restrict ourselves to dialogues or theological exchanges. Some Hindu intellectuals have gone to extraordinary lengths in order to study Western philosophy, appropriate it from a Hindu perspective, and fashion parallels to texts of the Hindu and other Indian traditions. Sometimes this study has not fit into the expected academic categories of Western scholarship, and thus been ignored. But even then it often and impressively holds together the intellectual and spiritual realms – in a way that Christian scholarship has not always done – and created a common ground for some Hindus and Christians to engage in substantive mutual learning. In the following pages, I highlight just a few instances where learning was substantive and constructive, and not merely in reaction to or defense against Christian initiatives.

Two pioneering figures in scholarly exchange

Algondavilli Govindacharya

The first author I wish to introduce in this very selective survey is Algondavilli Govindacharya (c. 1860–1940).² If remembered today, it is generally for his still useful writings on the Srivaisnava tradition, The Divine Wisdom of the Dravida Saints (1902a) and The Holy Lives of the Alvars (1902b). His later Mazdaism in the Light of Vishnuism (1913) is an explicitly comparative study that shows the curiosity and inquisitiveness of this Srivaisnava scholar. What distinguishes such works is their impressively specific and insightful knowledge of Western thought – biblical, Christian spiritual, and philosophical – and consistency in identifying specific points of similarity or difference. Well versed on both sides of the matters at hand, Govindacharya was the rare scholar who could engage in a learning that in the end was indebted to both of the traditions involved, but reduced to neither.

Throughout his career, his larger agenda was to think through basic truths and methods of inquiry in Hinduism and Christianity, with an eye toward finding common ground for the conversation between the traditions. Of particular interest are his Three Lectures on Inspiration, Intuition, and Ecstasy (1897).³ These lectures are among his earlier works and thus predictive of key themes in his later writing. The first deals with the philosophical and religious traditions of the West, the second with those of India, and the third largely with theosophy as a wisdom arising in both the East and the West, and thus, he hopes, serving as a bridge between the two worlds.⁴ His aim is a universally available, albeit hidden, wisdom that comes “not from one, but from many, sources.” He hopes to show that “inspired or revealed knowledge is the source which partly, if not wholly, unveils the underlying power behind phenomena.”⁵ For the sake of a rational exposition of this project, he soberly notes and weighs various means of access to divine insights, and estimates the success or failure of religious thinkers, philosophers and theologians, in holding together rational and intuitive modes of learning.

In his introduction to the lectures, Govindacharya introduces the major concepts that together undergird a way of knowing that goes beyond ordinary objective and subjective learning:

In an inquiry on inspiration thus, we have necessarily to consider what is known as revelations, and what is known as intuitional knowledge; and the experiences known as ecstasies and visions, etc., and knowledge which is called divine illumination, all forming subjects of collateral importance. We shall also be led to an inquiry as to what intuition is meant by the eclectic philosophers of the day, the Brahma-Samajists, etc., and how it is connected with inspiration.⁶

In the first lecture Govindacharya explores some Greek sources, particularly Plato and Plotinus, and then Christian sources, from the Bible to Teresa of Ávila, Emanuel Swedenborg, and more recent figures, in order to present evidence for an ancient and long-term Western and Christian appreciation of what is at stake: a balance between revelation mediated through scripture, studied in terms of reason, and alternate means of inspiration and ecstasy. Govindacharya is generous in his descriptions, but does not hesitate to be critical of what he considers Christianity’s over-institutionalization. For example, near the end of the first lecture, he encourages the search for a common ground outside the dogmatic tradition and in a retrieval of the ancient wisdom traditions:

When the Bible is full of such experiences [of visions and ecstasies], that Faith alone should be insisted on, as the final criterium, divorcing Philosophy on one side, and spurning Intuition on the other, is decided unreason. Unless Christianity can be reconstructed both on Faith and on Philosophy somewhat after the old Alexandrian model,⁷ it will never adapt itself to the complete nature of man.

He offers a specific criticism of the Christian synthesis that overly promotes and protects faith: it

can never cope with the philosophical or metaphysical methods to which Vedantism has accustomed the Indian intellect. Put the Bible before the Vedantin, and he at once asks for a proper explanation of the nature of body, of soul and of God, and the relation in which they stand to each other, etc.; but such explanation as his philosophical bias demands does not exist in the Bible.⁸

Some other ground, more capacious and inclusive of the experiential, yet not reductive, must be found. Govindacharya then concludes specifically to the value of combining this return to the experiential and metaphysical with new interreligious learning, to bring out the best in the Christian: “Not only then, that Christianity has to reconstruct on the Alexandrian basis, but it has to enrich itself from the spiritual treasures abundantly to be found in the Revelations of the East.”⁹ After some further comments on the ecstatic experience of St. Augustine, and on modern psychology and the recognition of sudden, unexpected moments of insight, at the end he offers this expansive vision: “there is in man potencies and possibilities beyond the bounds limited by his present knowledge.”¹⁰

Govindacharya’s second lecture deals with the same questions arising in the religions of India. He inquires into the interplay of knowledge, experience, and intuition as seen in the Upanisads, the sutra texts of Yoga, Vedanta and the other philosophical systems (darsanas), and in the writings of Keshab Chunder Sen, Vivekananda, and others who, like himself, sought theosophical wisdom. He is seeking after signs of growth in God-consciousness, though distinguishing more developed and introspective models. Key once again is intuitional knowledge that grows toward that higher realization¹¹ that is the essence of true religion. Govindacharya cites Vivekananda on the yoga: “According to [the teachers of yoga], the only proof of the Scriptures is that they were the testimony of competent persons, yet they say, the Scriptures cannot take us to realization.”¹² He then reemphasizes the main point:

realization is real religion, and all the rest is only preparation – hearing lectures, or reading books, or reasoning, is merely preparing the ground; it is not religion. Intellectual assent, and intellectual dissent, are not religion. The central idea of the yogis is that just as we come in direct contact with objects of the senses, so religion even can be directly perceived in a far more intense sense.¹³

At stake for Govindacharya is a manner of intuition that is irreducible to any religion’s sacred books or authorized revelations, but nevertheless available in those religions and, if the religions are read properly, is available to all advancing along the spiritual path. He admits the danger of subjectivism – a privatization apart from the religions – but insists that the capacious wisdom of God can include all the religious paths and every individual.¹⁴ He then offers testimonies from various scriptures and from contemporary European theorists of psychology, in order to highlight the fact and importance of ecstatic, intuitional consciousness. Much space is given over to testimonies from the Hindu scriptures on this higher consciousness. Later he argues with Brahmo Samaj, including Keshab Chunder Sen, on the hope for rational criteria for discovering the truth in religions. If there is no underlying intuitive power, he says, we will end up with no scriptures and no authorities, but only merely subjective guesses as to what is true and enduring.¹⁵ Intuition is not opposed to revelation, but is its source and the best route to identifying it.¹⁶

The goal of the first two lectures was to consider in some depth issues related to the intersection of the divine and human, the mind and spirit, in order to establish by comparison that there dispositions and instincts, in each tradition, that would facilitate a rapprochement of the traditions. Near the end of the second lecture, Govindacharya traces the themes running through both:

I have shown how Indian philosophers discovered one truth or another, stated in some form or other, out of their intuitional depths, and how intuitions become inspirations when men utter them who are known to be saints or God-sent men. I have shown what Revelations are – and how they are connected with inspiration and ecstasy. I have shown the relative importance of the senses, the understanding, and the innate intuitive faculty of man, as sources of knowledge. I have shown the importance of Inspiration and Revelation as giving us a knowledge of God and spiritual truths beyond the capacity of our ordinary senses to ken, and the utmost importance of the Vedas, the Aryan Scriptures. I have shown the controversial differences on these several questions.¹⁷

At the start of the third lecture, Govindacharya quotes Vivekananda in support of his vision of the complementarity of East and West: “India has to learn from Europe, the conquest of external nature, i.e., of substance, and Europe has to learn from India the conquest of internal nature.” He thinks that this mutual learning will open up new possibilities, for what amounts to an ideal third space:

Then there will be neither Hindus nor Europeans – there will be the ideal humanity which has conquered bo...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue: Framing the questions
• Lecture One
• Lecture Two
• Lecture Three
• Epilogue
• Bibliography
• Index