Arjuna’s Vision of Krishna: On the Edge of Transcendence

In reading the Bhagavad-Gita from chapter four on, it may be tempting to collapse all of Hinduism into a monotheism in which Lord Krishna is God. Even in the context of bhukti being directed exclusively to Krishna, other deities are alluded to in the text. To claim that those other deities came out of Krishna, and even that Krishna surpasses even Brahman, which is infinite being that is imperishable awareness, thought (but not mind), power, and bliss, in terms of ultimacy does not mean that the Gita is a monotheist scriptural faith-narrative. Not even Krishna’s unmanifest form by which the deity’s creative energy gives rise to the cosmos transcends form itself, and thus reaches the unmanifest and formless Brahman. To be sure, that Krishna, as the Supreme Person metaphysically and ontologically, is ultimately Self renders the deity identical to brahman, but this does not mean that Krishna transcends brahman. Regardless of where the Krishna-Brahman debate lands, and there are admittedly shlokas in the Gita that support the ultimacy of Krishna and shlokas that favor the ultimacy of Brahman, Krishna need not be more ultimate than Brahman for a devotee of the deity to be able to experience a lot of transcendence from ordinary experience. In fact, because either referent that is the Absolute lies beyond the limits of human cognition, perception, and sensibility (emotion), according to the Christian theologian Pseudo-Dionysius, the human experience of distinctly religious transcendence is where our attention can fruitfully be directed. This is not to say that a referent (i.e., a divine, transcendent object) is thereby relegated or even discarded in favor of the quality of experience as its own referent. Rather, it is to say that we can know a lot more than we do about distinctly religious, and thus transcending, experience, and that such knowledge is part of the human condition—part of being human as homo religios as distinct from being a political, economic, and social species. First I investigate the question of whether the Gita is monotheist, after which I argue that Arjuna’s vision of Krishna in chapter 11 of the Gita is can be viewed as the “event horizon” of sorts in terms of how much we can transcend as we approach the limits of our faculties.

The full essay is at "Arjuna's Vision of Krishna."

Interpreting Scriptures: On Referential Realities beyond the Text

In Christianity, Paul wrote that if the resurrection of Christ Jesus didn’t really take place, then faith is for naught, but he also wrote that faith without love is for naught. The assumption that if Jesus was killed and raised historically speaking, why be a Christian, has had much greater currency than the assumption that if a person is not kind and compassion in heart and deed to people who have been insulting or have damaged the person, that person is not really a Christian. In short, the value of the religious meaning in the New Testament has typically been assumed to depend on the extratextual (i.e., beyond the text of the Bible) existence of Jesus. Using Vedanta hermeneutics (i.e., method of interpreting a text) in Hinduism, I argue that the assumption is incorrect. This is not to make a historical claim one way or the other regarding Jesus or Krishna; rather, I want to claim that the religious meaning in a scriptural text does not depend on making the assumption that the reality described therein exists beyond the text. Although hermeneutically based, this argument may sway attention back to religious meaning itself as primary, including in regard to engaging in pious actions.

The full essay is at "Interpreting Scriptures."

The Resurrected Body of Jesus: A Viable Launching Pad for Mysticism

Gertrud of Helfta (1256-1301) was a Christian nun whose sensitivity to mystical experience can be characterized as a bridal mysticism within a Christ mysticism. Think of Christ; turn yourself over to Christ. She brings in the related theme of light, which is salient in the Gospel of John, with Christ saying, I am the light of the word. Yet her mystical sensitivity was such that she could transcend even Christ’s resurrected body, which can be said to have been her favorite mask of eternity through which love, which, as Paul and Augustine had claimed, is God. This does not mean that the mask is finally tossed aside as somehow erroneous; rather, it is to say more generally that people who have an enhanced sensitivity to the mystical in a religious, or transcendent, sense, are oriented to going beyond God in our likeness to experience God as wholly other—as radically transcendent—and thus leave oneself behind.

The full essay is at "The Resurrected Body of Jesus: Mysticism."

Living Ritual

I contend that for a religious ritual to be “alive” is for it to be responsive to spiritual truths as they are played out by or among the people who have gathered even just as spectators rather than participants. In liturgy, the readings and the ritual itself can stimulate a spiritual state of mind (un état de l’esprit—this last word alone signifying the connection), which in turn can even unconsciously prompt conduct that can be observed to be religious (or spiritual) in nature. For a ritual to be alive is for it to incorporate such conduct in order to draw attention to the underlying religious truth manifesting in one or more persons. The antagonist in this drama is the strict literalist who goes inflexibly by the letter of the ritual’s laws rather than the spirit thereof, ignoring that only the spirit rises and thus is capable of lifting humans in general and in a liturgical context in particular.

The full essay is at "Living Ritual."

The Case for Christ: On the Problem of Extracting History from Faith Narratives

A film narrative oriented to an investigation of Christianity is tailor-made to illustrate the potential of film as a medium to convey abstract ideas and theories. In The Case for Christ (2017), a skeptical journalist—Lee Strobel—takes on the contention that Jesus’ resurrection in the Gospels was also a historical event (i.e., happened historically). Lee states the proposition that he will investigate as follows: “The entire Christian faith hinges on the resurrection of Jesus. If it didn’t happen, it’s a house of cards. He’s reduced to a misunderstood rabbi at best; at worst, he was a lunatic who was martyred.” The journalist’s initial position is that the resurrection didn’t happen historically; it is just part of a faith narrative (i.e., the Gospels). Lee wants to test the proposition by interviewing experts. The dialogues between the journalist unschooled in theology and the scholars of religion provide a way in which complex ideas and arguments can be broken down for the viewer and digested. The journalist stands as a translator of sorts similar to a teacher’s function in breaking down knowledge new to students so they can grasp and digest it.

The full essay is at "Case for Christ."

Christianity as Distinctly Religious: A New Species?

The human mind naturally tends to make (and remake) religion into familiar terms, while resisting the wholly other as such. As David Hume explains, the human mind is naturally drawn to what is familiar to itself; considerably more effort is required to hold onto the notion of pure divine simplicity without adding ornaments. Sociological phenomena such as father-son relationships and the role of a son are more familiar than the Son as Logos and agape.[1] The resurrection is typically thought of in supernatural physiological and historical terms, rather than as whose meaning is distinctly religious and, furthermore, is part of a religious narrative. The Trinity as existing in reality metaphysically is easier to understand than the Trinity as transcending reality, as it’s source rather than its substance. God as the first cause of the Big Bang is easier to grasp than God as the source or condition of Creation. These all-too-easy category mistakes are particularly problematic in that they obscure religion as distinctly religious.

The full essay is at "Christianity as Distinctly Religious."

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1. For more on this point and that of David Hume, see ch. 12 of God’s Gold: Beneath the Shifting Sands of Christian Thought on Profit-Seeking and Wealth.