#presuppositional

With this radical transcendence in mind, it is easy then for the Hindu thinker to look to all of the various world religions and claim that all of them are in some way describing the same transcendent divine reality. Hinduism does not classify notions of God as true or false. In a sense, the Hindu views all notions of God as equally true in that they are all grasping after the same transcendent God. Sarvepalli explains that every human conception of deity is to be classified, not by truth or falsity, but by significance. God is represented at different stages by different attributes. “The same God expresses itself at one stage as power, at another as personality, at a third as all-comprehensive spirit”(pg. 113) So the Polytheism of the Hindu masses and the personal God of Christianity are both expressions of the same transcendent divine reality as expressed at different stages. The Hindu can from there arrive at the rather popular conclusion that “all paths lead to God”. 

Alas, this seems to be a beautiful truth, one that appeals to all people at all times,  but there is “trouble in paradise” as it were. The astute thinker will recognize that many of the world’s conceptions of the divine are inherently contradictory with one another. This should lead anyone to question how it is that the Christian conception of God as being strictly personal can be equally as true as the Buddhist understanding of the divine as being an inherently impersonal force. The Christian, in asserting the personality of God, is just as much asserting that God is absolutely not impersonal, just as the Buddhist is, in asserting the impersonal nature of the divine, equally asserting that the divine is inherently not personal. Essentially, what is happening here is that these points of view are contradictory and are asserting the falsity of the other. So how then could they be parallel paths to the same ultimate reality? It seems that if both are asserting the falsity of the other, then either one or neither is true, but certainly not both. And this is merely one point of contention amongst the throng of world religions. Time, and page limit, would not allow for an exhaustive list of the contradictions of popular religions in doctrine and practice. 

When faced with this contention Sarvepalli posits that these contradictions are due to the fact that all of our views of God are wrong or deficient in some way. He says “It is sometimes urged that the descriptions of God conflict with one another. It only shows that our notions of God are not true.”(pg. 112) It cannot be stressed enough how important this line is. Up until this point, and even after this point, Sarvepalli has been contending that Hinduism has a universal acceptance of all faiths and religious ideals, that every notion of God is true and that Hindu thinkers readily accept and admit points of view other than their own. However, despite the claims of universal acceptance, Sarvepalli is actually forced to universally deny all religious claims. This is quite a problem for the Hindu because it demonstrates that, from it’s own perspective, it cannot be consistent. It seeks to universally affirm all religions, but due the contradictory claims of the multitude of religions in the world, it is forced to universally deny all religions. Out of one side of it’s mouth it says that all are right, but out of the other side of it’s mouth it says all are wrong. And since all religious perspectives are at the very least in part wrong, then there is nothing to stop the astute thinker from assuming that the Hindu’s conception of the universal truth of all religious worldviews as itself being a false religious perspective since according to Sarvepalli’s perspective, Hinduism itself is not safe from this universal denial of religious claims. The inherent inconsistency doesn’t stop there even.

Throughout his article, Sarvepalli more or less critiques the Christian perspective in favor of the more eastern Hindu perspective. He suggests that in most religions fixed intellectual beliefs are what distinguish one religion from the other. He then distinguishes Hinduism as being wholly different from those religions in that it does not use intellectual distinctions to differentiate religions, or itself from those religions. The problem with this is that the concept of Hinduism being different from other religions in that it does not use intellectual distinctions is itself an intellectual distinction. However, Sarvepalli was trying to accentuate the fact that in Hinduism experience is valued over logical, intellectual faculties. He further elaborates that the basis for Hinduism is not even any particular experience but that it starts from an experiential basis that includes experiential data from every conceivable point of view. It’s starting point is more or less found in the very nature of humanity as being experiential. The problem is that without intellectual, rational input these experiences are utterly meaningless. Every experience is a rationally interpreted experience. You cannot have meaningful experience without intellect. 

Now, Sarvepalli is doing this in order to set up the experiential basis of Hinduism in opposition to the Christian perspective. He says that “Christian theology becomes relevant only for those who share or accept a particular kind of spiritual experience, and these are tempted to dismiss other experiences as illusory and other scriptures as imperfect.” (pg 111) This critique of Christianity, though it may be fair in an of itself, is simply not consistent with the radical acceptance that Sarvepalli has been attributing to Hinduism. What Sarvepalli says “The Hindu thinker readily admits other points of view than his own and considers them to be just as worthy of attention.” he is really saying that the Hindu thinker admits other points of view and considers them to be just as worthy, so long as they don’t view his experiences as illusory. He is left with no choice but very subtly pick and choose which aspects of the religion are true and which are false. Of course the aspects of the religion that don’t align easily with Hinduism are the ones that must left behind and are seen as illusory in that they are the aspect of that religious system that fail to view the transcendent divine reality properly. In short, Hinduism is just as guilty of dismissing other religious experiences, doctrines, and practices as illusory as Christianity is. In fact, Hinduism goes a step further than Christianity does in that it dismisses it’s own concept of God as in some way false and illusory. This leads us into even more problems. 

We have previously addressed the conception of God that Sarvepalli presents as  being “that of which nothing can be said”, that we know not and is beyond the machinery of speech and symbol. The very serious problem arises when you combine that conception of transcendent divine reality that we call “god” with the universal falsity of all religious doctrines of God. We are left absolutely blind and without hope of every being able to find our way to God. What experience could we possibly have with a God who cannot be seen, felt, heard, conceived of, known, or taught?

Our only recourse would be to then either arbitrarily decide which experiences are genuine experiences of the transcendent divine reality, or to intellectually decide which experiences are genuine experiences of the transcendent divine reality. To settle upon the former would remove the power of the transcendent divine reality and place it upon sheer chance. To settle upon the latter would introduce the intellectual distinction that Sarvepalli was so eager to avoid into the determination of authentic divine experiences. Of course, there is a third option, which is to simply conceive of every human experience as an experience of transcendent divine reality. This however is possibly the most destructive option for Hinduism because it effectually betrays the radical transcendence of the divine reality for a radical immanence. The radical immanence of the divine reality would pose quite a serious problem because the transcendent divine reality would no longer be transcendent nor would it be divine. The only tenable position left for us is that any truthful knowledge or experience of God is impossible to obtain, or at the very least, to distinguish from any other experience. We either must admit that we are left without hope or that Hinduism as presented on it’s own terms is lacking consistency.

The reason for this inconsistency is that Hindu’s as created beings that bear the image of God rightly view him as being wholly other from them. Their supposition of God as being transcendent is not a false supposition at all, it just needs to be supplemented with other doctrines, doctrines that Hinduism is incapable of supplying. In order to escape the unyielding skepticism that is the logical consequent of the transcendent, wholly otherness of God one must have an authoritative source of information about the transcendent God. Unfortunately, the Hindu scriptures cannot provide that. While the Vedas are considered authoritative by Hindus, they cannot be seen as providing authoritative information about the transcendent divine reality. They are only authoritative in that they are the life experiences of people who were experts in religion. This conception of authority is insufficient in that it does not bridge the gap from the man and the wholly other, transcendent God. Cornelius Van Til addresses the concept of authority being derived from the expert in his book “Christian Apologetics”. He basically lays out the fact that this kind of authority, as derived from an expert, is contingent upon both the authority of reason and the autonomy of man from the transcendent God,(Christian Apologetics pg. 142) neither of which are tenable positions for the Hindu. So the Vedas fails to deliver the authoritative divine revelation that we so desperately need to escape the skepticism caused by radical transcendence in that it is merely a testimony to the experiences of religious experts. The presupposition here is that the experiences that these experts had were in fact experiences of the transcendent divine reality. But we know from our previous investigations that the personal experience of another person is no more reliable than the experiences of any individual. Sarvepalli must argue that the expert’s conception of God is equally as false as anyones conception of God. It must be admitted that the Vedas gives us no direct information about God at all, let alone divine revelation from that God. 

Rather than pawing about in the darkness of spiritual blindness caused by radical  transcendence looking for a God that we cannot know, I would invite the Hindu to consider the idea that this transcendent God has in fact revealed himself to humanity both truthfully and authoritatively. I would posit that the only way that we can know anything truthfully about such a God that is entirely and wholly other from us is if he so chose to disclose information about himself to us. It is the Christian doctrine of divine revelation through God’s condescension that allows us to maintain the transcendence of God without falling into the pit of functional skepticism as a result of our inability to know or experience him of our own ability. 

This divine revelation from God comes, not only in the form of the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, though that is certainly a vitally important aspect that we will look at further on, but also in the very world around us and even in us ourselves as created beings crafted in the image of God. Sarvepalli comments on the created nature of humanity when he says “If the whole race of man, in every land, of every color, and every stage of culture is the offspring of God, then we must admit that, in the vast compass of his providence, all are being trained by his wisdom and supported by his love to reach within the limits of their powers a knowledge of the Supreme.”(pg 111-12) The Christian perspective largely agrees with this point of view with a few contentions of course. We certainly agree that all of humanity is created by God and that we all have a knowledge of Him as our creator, the contention that we must make explicit is that we do not believe that the knowledge of God that we have as creatures of the creator God is acquired over time, but rather, is inherent to us. In the first chapter of Romans, the Apostle Paul makes it clear that every individual human being does not simply know about God, or have a conception of God, or is being trained in wisdom to reach whatever knowledge of the supreme is within their limits, but that every individual human being actually knows God. This however is not the universal affirmation of all religious ideals that Sarvepalli attempts to promote in his article. There are still more hurdles that we must deal with. 

So far we have seen that God reveals himself truthfully in his creation and that all men are both created in his image and, in some way, know him truthfully. There was a bit of hiccup though, in fact it was much more than a hiccup it was a complete fracturing of the created order. This fracture is documented in the third chapter of Genesis when sin entered into the world through the rebellion of man against the command of God. This entrance of sin corrupted the entire created order, including our minds, thus blinding us to the reality of God. In this regard, the Christian can sympathize with Sarvepalli’s need to universally deny the various doctrines of God from present in the world. However, the Christian does not need to blame this spiritual blindness on any attribute of God, namely his radical transcendence, as the Hindu must. The cause of this spiritual blindness is the noetic effects of sin. The revelation of God remains clear, it is the mind of man that is blurred. 

Luckily enough, or better yet providentially, the story does not end there. Christianity shows us the escape from the hopeless spiritual blindness that Hinduism is forced to remain in. God provides us this escape by further clarifying his revelation in that he became human and dwelt with us. In Jesus Christ, God revealed himself fully and clearly to men that we would not be forced to live in darkness. While dwelling among us he lived perfectly in accordance with the commands of God and then was sacrificed on our behalf taking upon himself the full penalty of our sins that we would be reconciled to God. Through this we are now capable to see and understand God’s revelation and enter into a covenant personal relationship with him. We can have assurance that our knowledge of him is true in that he has revealed himself both truthfully and authoritatively.