After the End of Philosophy of Religion
N.N. TRAKAKIS
What Comes After the End?
The End of Philosophy of Religion was the title I gave to a book published a decade ago (Trakakis 2008). This was a work of metaphilosophy, which examined and compared the methods and styles, the values and goals of the two most prominent schools or traditions within contemporary philosophy: anglo-American analytic philosophy and continental or European philosophy. Primary focus, however, was given to the ways in which this metaphilosophical divide has played itself out in the field of the philosophy of religion. For example, I contrasted the styles of two of the field’s leading practitioners: the quasi-scientific style of Alvin Plantinga’s work, with its emphasis on clarity and logical and argumentative rigor; and the more literary, rhetorical, and affective language of John D. Caputo (more precisely, Caputo’s later writings). The conclusion I reached (perhaps alarming, given that I was trained in the analytic tradition) was that the tools and commitments of the analytic school are irredeemably defective as a way of practicing philosophy—and especially the philosophical study of religion, given that a proper understanding of religious ideas and experiences demands a kind of sensibility and frame of mind that is not well suited to the methods and aims of analytic philosophy. I therefore called for an end to be put to philosophy of religion (at least as it has been pursued in the analytic tradition), and advocated a fresh start that would broaden and deepen philosophers’ engagement with religion.
The book received a range of responses. Somewhat predictably, some analytic philosophers reacted with bewilderment, if not outrage, whereas some continental philosophers were largely sympathetic and complimentary. Others were not so partisan and agreed with many of the details but also expressed reservations, especially toward the main thesis regarding the intellectual and spiritual bankruptcy of analytic philosophy (of religion). I have come to accept some of the reservations of this latter group, as I have changed my mind on certain metaphilosophical matters: I now find much more value in analytic philosophy than I allowed in the book, and I now see more problems and pitfalls in continental philosophy (especially the postmodern and phenomenological variants) than I earlier recognized.
The end or death of philosophy of religion I had so fervently desired and predicted is something I would continue to construe as a deep failure and crisis, but not one that requires the complete overthrow of philosophical tradition or a radical revolution in philosophical practice (though this must always be a possibility). Rather, the opportunity I see before us is one of redirection and renewal, taking what is best and valuable from both the analytic and continental traditions while leaving the rest behind. Even if political or institutional rapprochement between the two schools remains unlikely, this need not stand in the way of a creative philosophical synthesis of the two.
But this is still quite vague and schematic. And so, we might ask: If philosophy of religion does have a future after all, in what precisely does this future consist? Philosophers are not prophets, even if they sometimes give the impression they are. Nonetheless, something can be said about where we would like philosophy to be in the future, even if we are unsure whether such a future will ever materialize. My view, which I will briefly defend here, is that the future for philosophy of religion lies, first, in a certain methodological reorientation, which I describe as a return to skeptical and imaginative modes of practicing philosophy; and second, in a certain metaphysical reorientation, one that might well include a turn to the idealist and monist metaphysics of the East (as well as the venerable parallels in the West).
The Wisdom to Question
Philosophy of religion, particularly in the analytic tradition, is currently suffering from a “dogmatic slumber,” brought on in large part by the conservative and evangelical stream of the Christian church. By this I mean that Christian (analytic) philosophers of religion approach their field of research with an unquestioning and complacent attitude toward the truth of traditional (Nicene) Christianity. Even those who subject Christian beliefs to critical scrutiny give the impression at least of already having made up their minds before their “inquiry” has begun; and it is not unusual to find a high degree of confidence (smacking of triumphalism) displayed toward the case they have constructed in support of Christian theism (or an element thereof, e.g., bare theism).1 Also, consider that one would be hard pressed to find in the published output of a contemporary philosopher of religion any fundamental changes or reversals, such as giving up belief in God or relinquishing some significant religious belief.2
This predicament brings me to Heidegger’s critique of “Christian philosophy.” Heidegger (2000, 8) famously stated: “A ‘Christian philosophy’ is a round square and a misunderstanding” (see also Heidegger 1998b, 53). In doing so, Heidegger was advocating a methodological atheism in philosophy, which (in the guise of phenomenology) seeks to provide an analysis of being that is independent of, and prior to, the analyses of beings provided by any of the ontic, positive sciences—including theology.3 Although I disagree with Heidegger on this methodological point, the rationale motivating this methodology is quite instructive for our contemporary practice. Part of the reason for Heidegger’s separation of philosophy and theology lies in his view that philosophy is more radical in nature than theology. Theology, on this picture, does not allow for radical or genuine questioning: if we start from a position of faith, then our questioning or seeking begins by already having found what it searches, namely, God. Dominique Janicaud, in his criticism of the theological turn in phenomenology, made a similar point: “The dice are loaded and choices made; faith rises majestically in the background.”4 Philosophy, by contrast, must consist in honest questioning, really following inquiry or evidence wherever it leads.
As mentioned earlier, I do not entirely agree that methodological atheism is mandatory in philosophy. Rather, I side with Plantinga (1984), who in his influential 1983 inaugural address at Notre Dame (published as “Advice to Christian Philosophers”) pointed out that there are no metaphysically neutral starting points in philosophy, and so a Christian philosopher is entirely within his rights in starting from belief in Christianity when working on some central philosophical problem (say, the nature of knowledge or free will), even if he cannot convince all or most philosophers of the truth of Christianity. This, in effect, means that the Christian philosopher can (and indeed ought to) work at his craft in a distinctly Christian manner. An entire generation of Christian philosophers has followed Plantinga’s advice and put it into practice. This has contributed to what has been called a “radical renewal” in philosophy of religion, after the field lay fallow in the wilderness of twentieth-century positivism.
I have no in-principle objection to taking Christianity as a starting point in one’s philosophical research. But problems begin when “starting points” lose their temporary, provisional, and hypothetical character, and instead take on the appearance of final and fixed doctrine. And this is what has happened, with the result that analytic philosophy of religion has now morphed into “analytic theology.”5
The lack of a fundamental questioning attitude is apparent on many levels. To begin with, philosophers of religion with Christian leanings do not dare to question the truth or reasonability of Christian beliefs and practices. Even when some central theistic or Christian beliefs are put forward for examination (e.g., the belief in the goodness of God, when discussing the problem of evil), the results are predetermined by the general parameters or framework (in this case, the Christian worldview) within which the investigation is being carried out. Allied to this, there is very little willingness to look beyond traditional Christianity, where by “traditional Christianity” I mean that version of Christianity developed in the writings of the “church fathers” and represented by the creeds of the first millennium, particularly the so-called “Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed” (now generally associated with the second ecumenical council of 381). So-called “heretical” theologies (e.g., Arianism, Nestorianism), crushed by the power of the medieval church and state, continue to be treated by philosophers as heresies rather than viewed as genuine or live possibilities.
Equally troubling, there is little desire to look beyond the Christian faith and explore non-Christian religions, particularly non-Abrahamic and Eastern religions, in a spirit of sincere openness—that is, with an openness to being corrected and enlightened by the other, and not simply seeking to prove a point or defeat one’s interlocutor (this kind of aggression being an occupational hazard of the philosopher). What is lacking is not merely an informed awareness of non-Christian religions, but also a genuine engagement and dialogue with them, where this presupposes attentive listening, an attitude of respect and humility, and above all a readiness to undergo a possibly painful and disruptive transformation in one’s worldview. But I would suspect that few Christian philosophers of religion (belonging to the analytic tradition) would view dialogue in such terms—that is, as something that holds the potential to change one’s beliefs and practices in drastic ways. This is simply not a live option for so many of today’s philosophers, who are therefore restricted to entering into dialogue with other religions (if they ever do so) predominantly one-sidedly.
By way of contrast, consider Husserl’s conception of philosophy as “the honesty of the intellect,” and his whole life as an effort to attain this. In conversation with one of his former students, he admitted:
My whole life I have fought, indeed wrestled, for this honesty, and where others had been long-since satisfied, I questioned myself ever anew and scrutinized whether there was not indeed some semblance of dishonesty [lurking] in the background. All my work, even today, is only to scrutinize and inspect again and again. … One must have the courage to admit and say that something that one still considered true yesterday, but that one sees to be an error today, is such an error. (Husserl in Jaegerschmid, 2001, 337)
In these respects, at least, Heidegger has been proven correct: Christian philosophy is (or has become) a square circle—a kind of philosophy lacking in authentic philosophical spirit, one driven by ideology rather than the pursuit of truth.6 What is surprising is that this has gone largely unnoticed in analytic circles. There are admittedly some lone voices in the wilderness, but they are few in number and tend to be swiftly dismissed.7
To wake philosophy of religion from its dogmatic slumber what is required is a renewed appreciation for the kind of thinking that has traditionally been regarded as integral to philosophy—a thinking that demands deep and searching questioning and a restless and perhaps even endless exploring, but without knowing where such wondering and meandering will lead (so as not to prejudice the outcome). It is what Heidegger envisioned as a type of thinking that is always underway, traveling “off the beaten track” onto bypaths and even dead ends, but with no predetermined end in sight. Commitment, even religious commitment, is not thereby ruled out, as long as it makes room for a questioning frame of mind, and accords value to skepticism and doubt.
The Canadian (analytic) philosopher of religion J.L. Schellenberg has recently been advocating skepticism as the most promising source of renewal for both religion and the philosophy of religion. Religious skepticism, as Schellenberg understands it, is the view that neither religious belief nor religious disbelief is justified by the relevant evidence, where “religious belief” is the belief that there exists an ultimate and salvific reality. For Schellenberg (2007, xiii), the most rational position to adopt with respect to religion is skepticism, “exercising the wisdom to doubt instead of the will to believe.” From the ashes of such skepticism, Schellenberg (2009) goes on to fashion a “skeptical religion,” an unconventional form of religious faith grounded in will and imagination, not in belief, and directed to a reality that is metaphysically and axiologically ultimate and salvific (what he dubs “generic ultimism”), but not one that has any further features such as that represented by the God of theism.
The kind of skepticism I am advocating also involves a sincerely and persistently questioning attitude, but unlike Schellenberg I do not think that such skepticism can support only a nonbelieving faith or that it will be incompatible with belief in any “elaborated” form of ultimism, such as Christianity. My focus, rather, is on method or process, not on the results or positions one finally ends up subscribing to.8
But the emphasis must not only be placed on questioning. What also needs to be retrieved and brought to the fore is creativity. If we wish to grapple with the ultimate questions of life and death in novel, more interesting and more fruitful ways, a creative spirit is required, one that allows philosophers to depart from the conventional and familiar and freely roam on roads less traveled, imaginatively constructing speculative theories, experimenting with diverse myths, models, and metaphors of, for example, God and the world, without necessarily subscribing to everything they print on paper, but performing a kind of epochē or suspension of belief that gives them license to imagine and create (where this also includes trying out new styles of writing, and not being limited to the technical and formal language of much analytic philosophy). As this suggests, it might be to philosophers’ advantage if they allow themselves, occasionally, some frivolity and play, and stop taking themselves so seriously!
My call, then, is for a style of thinking in philosophy of religion that is skeptical (in the etymological sense, of “thought-full”), open and creative, and indeed exciting and adventurous. I will turn to idealism in the next section, but it may be worth noting here that at the turn of the nineteenth century British idealists saw it as their task to rejuvenate philosophy by encouraging the very way of thinking proposed here. F.H. Bradley (1908, xii), in his Preface to Appearance and Reality, promoted “an attitude of active questioning.” He went on to say that what the English-speaking philosophy of his time was primarily in need of was a “sceptical study of first principles,” and he explained that “by scepticism is not meant doubt about or disbelief in some tenet or tenets. I understand by it an attempt to become aware of and to doubt all preconceptions. Such scepticism is the result only of labour and education.”9 Bradley envisioned free skeptical inquiry as the best antidote to intellectual prejudice and dogmatism, and one of the prejudices he fought against was the rejection of metaphysics—a prejudice that lingers still (a point to which I will return later).10 Bradley’s own work was also admired for its originality,11 and his critical and skeptical approach no doubt contributed to this originality.
One of the many ways in which philosophy of religion can be rejuvenated, so as to be brought back to a properly philosophical mode of studying religion, is by thinking God otherwise—proposing models of divinity that have been given scant attention, perhaps even wild and fanciful models by current standards, though always developed and defended with the requisite clarity and rigor. Arguably, continental philosophers of religion are way ahead of the game in this respect, compared to their analytic counterparts. But here I am concentrating on the analytic tradition. Also, in the following section I point to an equally damaging weakness that plagues continental approaches to religion.
The impetus for reimagining divinity, in my work as in that of many others, arises in part from the problem of evil. On the traditional theistic model, God permits or intends evil for the sake of some greater good. But what kind of being would create a world in which people suffer horribly? Even if (indeed, especially if) such a being permitted horrific evil for some greater good, that being would have to be unimaginably different from any personal form of goodness with which we are familiar (e.g., that embodied by kind and compassionate humans), to such an extent that it may not be legitimate to think of that being as “personal” and “good.” The problem of evil, in this respect, compels us to think God otherwise. For if this problem reveals anything, it is that the language we use in commonplace contexts may be highly unsuited and misleading when applied in any straightforward manner to God or ultimate reality. Our language about God suffers a kind of breakdown when faced with evil, thus provoking a purgation of our understanding of God, maybe even to the point of atheism—an outright rejection of God, or at least certain concepts of God.
It is not only our understanding of God but also our practice of philosophy of religion that stands to be transformed in our attempts to come to grips with the problem of evil. Such a view has recently been insightfully developed by Beverley Clack (2007), who endorses an “aporetic” approach to the problem of evil that reinforces the call I am making for a skeptical and imaginative pursuit of philosophy. Borrowing from the psychoanalytic model of therapy as a “pathless path” or aporia, Clack envisages an alternative framework for our thinking about God and evil, one that sees such thinking as a wondering journey with no predetermined goal or end point: “a journey where the road is strange and unknown” (207). Rather than treating the problem of evil as a merely logical or theoretical puzzle to be resolved, Clack’s model encourages an approach that is less abstract and more experiential, and also one that does not seek final answers but is content in continuous exploration. Further, unlike theodicies (and other conventional approaches to the problem of evil), which set out to render evil consistent with preconceived ideas about God and the world, Clack’s model begins instead with the realities of evil and allows these to “shape how we subsequently understand the nature of things” (205). Kenneth Surin (1986, 124) has similarly stated: “If anything is Christianity’s primary concern with regard to what took place at Auschwitz … it is, rather, to allow itself to be reinterpreted, to be ‘ruptured,’ by the pattern of events at Auschwitz.” Again, unlike much contemporary work on the problem of evil, Clack’s model highlights the literary and creative arts as significant sources of insight into evil and suffering, and this is because “the best art challenges, forcing the viewer/reader to consider again the way in which they habitually see the world.”12 But such challenges will fail to be appreciated unless a paradigm shift is brought about not only in what we think about God, but also in how we conceive and practice philosophy of religion. As Clack (2007, 212) puts it, “A different model for the philosophy of religion is needed, one that is fluid, that does not seek to make all things fit neatly together but allows, in Wittgenstein’s words, what is rugged to stay rugged.”
The Return to Metaphysics
If analytic philosophy of religion urgently needs to retrieve the value of a wondering and skeptical spirit, continental philosophy of religion could be provoked and challenged to move into the metaphysical terrain it had long ago closed off (or surrendered to others). Analytic philosophy can be (and indeed has been) just as critical and dismissive of metaphysics as contemporary continental philosophy. Also, both philosophical traditions, analytic and continental, have recently been making a return to metaphysics. But the metaphysical turn I am espousing is one that crosses, or transcends, this metaphilosophical divide, and looks instead to pre-twentieth-century currents of metaphysical thought, even premodern currents—particularly those found in Eastern philosophies of religion. So, I think of the East as at least one promising but neglected source of metaphysical renewal for philosophy of religion, a field that is in urgent need of “globalization” so as to overcome its restriction to Western religious thought and enter into genuine dialogue with Eastern religions.
This raises the question as to what exactly is meant by “metaphysics.” Without wishing to enter into a detailed analysis here, it may be helpful to turn again to Bradley (1908, 1), who provides the following definition of metaphysics at the beginning of Appearance and Reality:
We may agree, perhaps, to understand by metaphysics an attempt to know reality as against mere appearance, or the study of first principles or ultimate truths, or again the effort to comprehend the universe, not simply piecemeal or by fragments, but somehow as a whole.
More recently, Peter van Inwagen (1998, 11) takes a similar approach to that suggested by Bradley (without, however, explicitly citing Bradley), stating that, “The best approach to an understanding of what is meant by ‘metaphysics’ is by way of the concepts of appearance and reality.” Van Inwagen goes on to explain:
We can say this: if one is attempting to “get behind all appearances and describe things as they really are,” if one is “engaging in metaphysics,” one is attempting to determine certain things with respect to certain statements (or assertions or propositions or theses), those statements that, if true, would be descriptions of the reality that lies behind all appearances, descriptions of things as they really are.
Following van Inwagen, then, we may say that the essence of metaphysics consists in the attempt to describe (in a sufficiently general way) ultimate reality.13
Metaphysics in this sense has been an integral and indeed foundational part of much philosophy from ancient to modern times, but it has also had quite a checkered history. In introducing a collection of essays entitled The Nature of Metaphysics, Grice, Pears, and Strawson (1957, 1) rightly state: “Metaphysics has a unique power to attract or repel, to encourage an uncritical enthusiasm on the one hand, an impatient condemnation on the other.” Such condemnation has often taken the form of rejecting metaphysics as in some sense “impossible.” A strong version of this impossibility thesis contends that there is no ultimate reality to be known or described, and so all metaphysical statements are false or meaningless (a view upheld by logical positivists). On a weaker reading of the impossibility thesis, there may well be an ultimate reality but we human beings are unable to reach it, since the task of describing it is beyond our powers (see van Inwagen 1998, 14–16). This latter view is especially associated with Kant, who argued that traditional metaphysics overreached itself, seeking to use reason beyond the boundaries to which it was properly limited. Not deterred by Kant’s Critique, the German idealists sought to reinvigorate metaphysics, principally through the development of systems of “absolute idealism”—the view, briefly put, that ultimate reality is mind-like or nonphysical and consists in a unitary and all-inclusive “experience” or “idea.” The key figure here was Hegel, whose monumental metaphysical system, with the “Absolute” (a universal self-consciousness) at the center, attempted to demonstrate that reason could in fact do what Kant thought impossible. Continuing this tradition, the British idealists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (including F.H. Bradley, T.H. Green, Edward Caird, J.M.E. McTaggart, and Bernard Bosanquet) turned away from the naturalism, utilitarianism, and empiricism characteristic of British philosophy (e.g., Hume), holding instead to a form of idealism where physical objects and the subjective points of view of conscious individuals stand in a system of “internal relations” called the “Absolute.”
Soon enough, however, a hostile turn against such metaphysical thinking arose, in both English-speaking philosophy and on the Continent. After a brief dalliance with idealism, G.E. Moore and Bertrand Russell vehemently repudiated it, thus marking the beginning of analytic philosophy.14 There followed the critique of metaphysics by the logical positivists on the grounds that metaphysical statements are “cognitively meaningless” since they are not empirically verifiable, and a shift toward language and linguistic practices (especially under the influence of Wittgenstein): a turn from ideas and minds to words and language games. This linguistic turn was usually allied to a newfound respect paid to the deliverances of ordinary language (and commonsense) and the sciences (particularly the formal sciences, aided by the development of formal logics and languages).
Continental philosophy also underwent a “linguistic turn,” but in a different way from analytic philosophy: here the emphasis was placed on the ways in which language is incapable of accurately representing or mirroring extra-linguistic reality; and the impossibility of finding or circumscribing the meaning of a text, as highlighted by interpretive (or “deconstructive”) strategies that uncover a plurality of meanings that may be in conflict with each other. This, in turn, led to the postmodern critique of metaphysics, which sought to debunk a range of metaphysical ideas prominent in modern philosophy, including the notion of an autonomous, cohesive, and rational self possessed of a timeless, disembodied essence and considered the ground of meaning, knowledge, and value. Philosophy of religion practiced in the light of such postmodern critique similarly sought to “overcome metaphysics” or to develop a “nonmetaphysical” theology, understood as the attempt to release discourse about God as far as possible from questionable metaphysics or from “onto-theology.” The latter (now overworn) label was Heidegger’s way of exposing the damaging trajectory of Western philosophy (particularly due to Aristotle and Hegel) in striving to render the whole realm of beings intelligible to human understanding, which it has often done by appeal to the supreme being, God.
However, such antipathy toward metaphysics is nothing new. As Bradley (1908, 1) pointed out in his Introduction to Appearance and Reality, the bias against metaphysics is a long-standing one:
The writer on metaphysics has a great deal against him. Engaged on a subject which more than others demands peace of spirit, even before he enters on the controversies of his own field, he finds himself involved in a sort of warfare. He is confronted by prejudices hostile to his study … Any such pursuit [of metaphysics] will encounter a number of objections. It will have to hear that the knowledge which it desires to obtain is impossible altogether; or, if possible in some degree, is yet practically useless; or that, at all events, we can want nothing beyond the old philosophies.
These familiar criticisms are now being challenged by a new generation of philosophers, thus helping to bring about the astonishing contemporary renewal of metaphysics. Analytic philosophy, for example, has witnessed a revival of a range of metaphysical problems, including those to do with modality (possible worlds and possibilia), events, space and time, free will, and the relationship between the mental and the physical. Continental philosophy has taken a similar route, as witnessed, for instance, in the work of Gilles Deleuze, who considered himself a traditional philosopher and metaphysician, Alain Badiou’s set-theoretical ontology, Slavoj Žižek’s Hegelianism, and the rise of “speculative realism” and the “new materialism” in philosophy (led by Quentin Meillassoux).
But the kind of return to metaphysics I wish to advocate is one rarely taken nowadays. This involves a turn to idealism, particularly as developed in Eastern philosophies and religions. Idealism, of course, is only one of many possible metaphysical options in philosophy, including philosophy of religion (whether of the continental or the analytic sort). However, I wish to advocate this particular possibility as at least a live and serious one, in part because a genuine engagement in philosophy of religion with Eastern thought is long overdue, and in part because this (once more) helps to bring about a thinking of God otherwise. What is “otherwise,” this time, is not only methodological (as argued above), but also metaphysical, a way of thinking about God that pushes the understanding along new (or perhaps comparatively new, for contemporary Western philosophers of religion) and fascinating paths.
I will begin with a point of contrast, briefly comparing the dualist worldview of traditional Christian theology with the monist outlook of the idealist Hindu school known as Advaita Vedanta. My aim is to challenge the often-assumed metaphysical incompatibility between the Christian and Advaita views, but also to deploy the Advaita understanding in a way that may help us to arrive at a more profound conception of “ultimate reality” than is usually afforded by the standard varieties of theism discussed in contemporary philosophy of religion.
The East–West Divide
To appreciate how this divide has been given metaphysical expression, I will begin with a fairly standard account of Christian metaphysics (or some aspects thereof). The Christian worldview has traditionally been taken to be dualist in nature: all that exists is either mental (spiritual) or physical (material), or a combination of both. The nonphysical or spiritual realm properly speaking consists only of God, who is considered to be wholly incorporeal and invisible—for example, God is spoken of in the Greek patristic tradition as being a pure “spirit” (πνεῦμα) or an “ideal” (νοερός) substance (Prestige 1964, 17–20). As the ultimate reality, God is the source of all that is, where this is understood to mean that God brought the universe into existence out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo), while God is himself unoriginated, (ontologically) independent (this is his aseity), and unconditioned.
The world created by God is a physical world, populated not only by animals and humans, but also by “angels”—nonhuman intelligent beings acting as intermediaries between God and humanity, some serving God, others (the “demons”) rebelling against him. It might be surprising to find angels located in the physical world, given that they are usually considered immaterial or spiritual beings. However, theologians have qualified this to mean that angelic nature appears “immaterial” when compared to human nature, but when compared to the divine nature it is in fact “material.”15 The created world also includes what we ordinarily regard as “the physical world,” where this refers to the created world that is physical in a way that the angelic world is not—for example, “physical” in the sense that it is ordered according to fixed laws of nature (whereas angelic beings are not subject to these laws). This material, spatial-temporal world is accorded great value, given that it is the creation of a benevolent God (consider, e.g., the appeal to the value of materiality by the defenders of icons, or iconophiles, in the eighth and ninth centuries), and is seen as possessing an ontological reality and integrity, governed by its own laws and existing independently of humanity (even though not independently of the creative and sustaining activity of God). In line with this, particular historical events (such as the Incarnation, Jesus’s miracles and resurrection) are imbued with momentous salvific significance. Uniquely placed and called in history and creation is the human being (in this sense the pinnacle of God’s creation), and a dualistic account of what it is to be a human being is frequently offered: a human being is a unity of soul and body, and after death the soul is reunited with a resurrected (“spiritual” or “glorified”) body.
The picture that thus emerges is a thoroughly dualistic one. Despite the foregoing account, the dividing line is not always drawn in the same way. It is quite common, for example, to find theologians from the Eastern Christian tradition taking the fundamental divide to be not between the physical and spiritual realms, but between the created and uncreated worlds. The point behind this way of dividing up reality is to emphasize that the world created by God is an altogether new and essentially different reality: it is not identical with God (thus avoiding pantheism), nor is it a diffusion or emanation from him (in the way in which all that exists in the universe emanates from the One in Plotinus’s system). Rather, the world is the product of the divine creative word and will, but not the divine essence, thus forming an ontological gap (or diastema) between the uncreated Creator and the contingent creation, a gap that no created being can ever bridge. What is important for my purposes is that, however the dividing line is drawn, Christian theology has historically been marked by a fundamentally dualistic metaphysics.
I turn now to the very different tradition of Advaita Vedanta, and its non-dualistic metaphysics. Amongst the six “orthodox” Hindu schools (darsanas) of philosophy (“orthodox” [astika] in the sense that they recognize the authority of the Vedas), the most influential has been the Vedanta school, which has become (in the words of Gavin Flood [1996], 238) “the philosophical paradigm of Hinduism par excellence.” Vedanta encompasses three principal philosophical traditions or subschools, which differ on how to interpret the relation that exists between the “atman” (the individual self or soul) and “Brahman” (Ultimate Reality), especially as this is depicted in the philosophically oriented thought of the Upanishads. Unlike the other two Vedanta schools, which espouse a form of dualism or qualified non-dualism, the Advaita school understands the relation between the atman and Brahman in outright non-dualist terms (as indicated by the Sanskrit term “a-dvaita,” which means “non-dual”). The Advaita view, particularly as elaborated by its most prominent member, Shankara (traditionally 788–820 CE), rejects all duality and considers the sole reality to be Brahman, which in turn is identified with atman. This is a version of “substance monism”: there are no separate things, for reality is essentially one or a unified whole. On this view, all plurality, including the world of material objects, is founded on illusion and ignorance, preventing us from recognizing the underlying unity of reality. This is conjoined with a variety of absolute idealism: the most basic or ultimate reality is the “Absolute” (in this case, “Brahman”), that which has an unconditioned existence (not conditioned by, or dependent on, anything else), and is regarded as mental or spiritual in nature, so that matter or the physical world is only an appearance to or expression of mind. Brahman, on the Advaita view, is the ultimate ground of all being, and is described as an eternal and undifferentiated consciousness that transcends all qualities and distinctions (such as subject and object, personal and impersonal).16
Given the foregoing, how could the metaphysics of Christianity be reconciled with that of Advaita Vedanta, or to rephrase an age-old question, what has India to do with Jerusalem? The Christian view appears thoroughly dualistic: many of the dualisms of everyday life are accepted or presupposed here (e.g., good/evil, subject/object), although metaphysically the most fundamental duality is that between spiritual or immaterial substance and physical or material substance, or that between the uncreated (God) and the created world. By contrast, Advaita Vedanta upholds a strict monism, according to which only one kind of thing or substance is ultimately real (i.e., Brahman), with all else (including the physical world) demoted to the level of appearance. A consequence of this view is often thought to be that the existence and significance of anything material, finite, and historical is diminished, or even obliterated, as it is relativized and subsumed within the Absolute.
The Christian view, moreover, is deeply personalistic, as the ultimate reality (God) is a trinity of persons. Although this implies that God is not a person, and even though talk of “persons” in the context of the Trinity may be far removed from the ways in which we ordinarily think of a “human person” (as, e.g., an individual with an autonomous will), this does entail that the foundation of reality is in some significant sense personal. On one view, for example, God as Trinity consists in loving, interpersonal, and perichoretic communion, and this discloses the most basic character of reality to be communion in love.17 Advaita Vedanta also allows for devotion (bhakti) to a personal Lord (Isvara), but this is only a concession to popular piety. Strictly speaking, ultimate reality is brahman nirguna (without attributes), a pure, undifferentiated consciousness that cannot be named or described, even by means of such qualities as goodness and personality. As a result, Brahman, unlike the Christian God, is not something that is to be worshipped and petitioned, but is to be “realized” as identical with one’s inner being.18
The Marriage of East and West
Various proposals for reconciliation have been offered, but here I will concentrate on the work of Sara Grant (1922–2000), in particular her 1989 Teape Lectures delivered at Cambridge University (and later at the University of Bristol) and published as Toward an Alternative Theology: Confessions of a Non-Dualist Christian.19 Grant’s work stands within a venerable tradition, which dates principally from the 1960s, of seeking to challenge and enrich Christian theology and spirituality through dialogue with Hinduism, especially the Advaita Vedanta school.20
Grant, a Scotswoman who became a leading figure in the Indian Catholic Church, studied philosophy at Oxford before relocating to India. But what she encountered at Oxford was the “ordinary language” philosophy of Gilbert Ryle and J.L. Austin with its emphasis on the analysis of the language of everyday speech. As a result, Grant felt frustrated and disappointed by the lack of engagement with the great and meaningful questions of existence. Instead, there was “Professor Gilbert Ryle on Mrs. Beaton as a model of linguistic usage” (Grant 2002, 18), Beaton being the author of a popular cookbook. As Grant put it, “Metaphysics was definitely out” (18). Grant therefore left for India in 1956, and it was when she began teaching Indian philosophy there that she discovered Advaita. From here on, a constant preoccupation in her life and writings would be “the implications of the Hindu experience of non-duality for Christian theological reflection.”21 In 1972 she helped re-found the Christa Prema Seva Ashram, in Pune (it was originally established in 1927), as an ecumenical community, and from 1977 she was the co-acarya (spiritual head) of the ashram: “This is really non-dualism in action at the level of ordinary life,” she was to say (26).
Grant’s first step in reconciling Advaita and Christianity, or at least in demonstrating deep correspondences between the two, consists in disabusing Christians of some mistaken ideas they may have about Advaita. She challenges, for example, the impression some Christians might have that Shankara considers the empirical world to be “unreal” or even the product of maya (illusion, magic). Grant (2002, 34) points out that when Shankara refers to the physical world as “unreal,” what he means is that it is subject to change. “Metaphysically speaking, however, it [the empirical world] had a definite status of its own as essentially relative, absolutely dependent being.” Shankara, then, is not denying the reality of the world, but only highlighting its utterly contingent or relative nature. Confusion and ignorance, on this view, consist in absolutizing the relative—something, admittedly, inherent in human nature.22
This leads Grant to her central insight: the concept of relation as the key plank in reconciling East and West, and in particular as the point of convergence between Shankara and Aquinas. According to Grant, both Shankara and Aquinas view the relation between creation and the ultimate Source of all being as a non-reciprocal dependence relation, which Grant (2002, 40) explains as “a relation in which a subsistent effect or ‘relative absolute’ is dependent on its cause for its very existence as a subsistent entity, whereas the cause is in no way dependent on the effect for its subsistence.” Although Grant identifies a number (no less than nine, in fact) points of similarity between Shankara and Aquinas (51–53), it is their shared commitment to non-dualism more than anything else that makes possible a remarkable degree of metaphysical complementarity between these two seemingly disparate thinkers. As Grant states:
Both were non-dualists, understanding the relation of the universe, including individual selves, to uncreated Being in terms of a non-reciprocal relation of dependence which, far from diminishing the uniqueness and lawful autonomy of a created being within its own sphere, was their necessary Ground and condition, while apart from that relation of total dependence no created being would be at all.23
Although the differences between Shankara and Aquinas, and their respective religious traditions, cannot be overlooked or minimized,24 their convergence on the ontological relationship between the Absolute and the world enables Grant to speak of “the extraordinary agreement between the two men, deep calling to deep across the centuries” (54).
Grant’s discussion, then, might help us to rethink the relationship between the Christian and Advaita Vedanta worldviews, and may perhaps in the process compel us to reconceive the nature of God or ultimate reality. For example, the monism of Advaita may not be entirely incompatible with the dualism of Christianity, at least if the monistic vision of Advaita is essentially a matter of recognizing the relativity and contingency of the world, rather than rejecting the world outright as an illusion, projection, or fiction. In Christian terms, this is to see God as the ultimate reality, as the source and foundation of all that is. To see God in this way is to avoid idolatrous and anthropomorphic conceptions of God as one more item or thing in the universe, albeit “the biggest thing around” (the infinitely big). Even if we continue to think of God as an entity or being of some sort, a substantive ontological gap must be acknowledged between the (uncreated, independent) being of God and the (created, dependent) being of all else. Grant, as we have seen, describes this as the “non-reciprocal relation of dependence” between God and the world, while the notion of “diastema,” mentioned earlier, was used by Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth century to similarly draw attention to the ontological distance between Creator and creation.
While postulating such an ontological divide, the Advaita tradition also upholds the fundamental identity between Brahman and the self. However, something similar can be said in Christian terms about the relation between the human person and God. Grant (2002, 79–80), for example, borrows the Hindu understanding of the human person in terms of “kosas,” or “depths of interiority,” “to speak of a new and progressively developing capacity for awareness of Atman-Brahman, or God, as the Self of my own self, the prompter from within of every thought, word, and deed, without prejudice to the autonomy and freedom of the person.” The non-dual Advaita saying beloved by Grant—“in every ‘I’ which I attempt to utter, his ‘I’ is already glowing” (63, 95)—is therefore something that the Christian too may affirm. As Meister Eckhart recognized, it is erroneous to think of God and the human soul as two entirely separate things, the one standing over against the other: “One should not apprehend God nor consider Him outside oneself, but as our own and as what is in ourselves.”25
Likewise, the Christian view of “ultimate reality” as personal may not be fundamentally at odds with the Advaita view of Brahman as “nonpersonal,” at least if the latter is seen as underscoring the limitations of human personhood as a model for understanding Brahman. Further, the apophatic dimension in the Advaita notion of brahman nirguna, where all names and forms (including those of personality and impersonality) are transcended, is reminiscent of the via negativa of Christian mysticism, where God is considered to be ineffable, unnameable, and unknowable, and where this divine mystery is due not so much to any human weakness as to the intrinsic nature of God himself. The encounter with Advaita therefore enables a reclamation of the (often overlooked) apophatic stream in Christianity, but in line with an earlier segment of this paper, such a retrieval must be set within the context of a genuinely creative and imaginative approach to theology and philosophy of religion that values doubt and questioning. Thus, simple and “conversation-stopping” appeals to mystery are to be replaced by an understanding of mystery as that which motivates and provokes further, indeed endless, searching—never resting content with having secured certainty or finality.
The question of worship may also require reconsideration. If the divine being is ultimately beyond the categories of personality and impersonality, worship and devotion (directed toward Brahman) seem to be ruled out. However, just as the Advaita distinguish between brahman nirguna (Brahman as unthinkable, unknowable, and inexpressible) and brahman saguna (Brahman as manifested to humankind, as Vishnu, Shiva, etc.), so too a distinction may need to be drawn in Christian theology between God as he is in himself and God as he appears to us. This very distinction is commonplace in Eastern Orthodox Christianity, which speaks of two distinct aspects or dimensions of the divine: (1) the “divine essence” (ousia), God as he is known to himself, or God in his essential nature; and (2) the “divine energies” (energiai), the operations and actions of God in the world, or those acts of divine self-manifestation that disclose God’s power and presence in creation. On this view, the divine essence is totally inaccessible to human nature. But even though God is unknowable and unapproachable in essence, we can come to know and experience God insofar as we can participate in his “energies.” Perhaps, then, we could say that it makes sense to pray to and worship God once this devotion is thought of as directed to God as he manifests himself to us (by means of his energies). But the ideal, as in Advaita thought, would be to divest oneself of distinctions such as those between subject and object, and personal and impersonal, and to “realize” oneness with the Absolute.
What this suggests is that a more radical departure from traditional Christian theology may be effected by the encounter with Advaita thought than is usually appreciated or permitted by Christians entering into dialogue with Hindu philosophies. This is not necessarily to do away with Christian theology, though it does involve a re-evaluation of its underlying metaphysics. In particular, the idealist and monist metaphysics of Advaita Vedanta point to a radically relational view of reality, where to be is to be in relation with others, and above all with the Other (Brahman, God).26 On this view, the world does not consist of persistent entities or “substances,” in the (Aristotelian and Cartesian) sense of things that are ontologically distinct and independent, having an essence or identity that persists through time unchanged. Rather, the world is conceived as a complex web of interconnections or relations, so that the deepest level of reality consists in a holistic connectivity. But this is not entirely foreign to Christian thought, particularly in Trinitarian theologies that take “communion” as central, and in process theologies where what ultimately exists is a structured nexus of interacting and constantly changing processes or events. We are now even further removed from classical Christian theism, given that the process perspective brings all being, including the divine being, within the purview of becoming, so that (unlike classical theism) God is in some respects temporal, mutable, and passible, while remaining in other respects eternal, immutable, and impassible.27
I will conclude with what I take be at least one promising consequence of the metaphysical reorientation suggested by the encounter with Advaita Vedanta. In Christian theology, evil is thought to pose an intractable problem, given that the presence of evil in the created world seriously challenges the perfect goodness (or perfect power and knowledge) of that world’s Creator. But what happens to the problem of evil when ultimate reality is conceived in the idealist, monist, and relational terms sketched above? In Shankara’s system, as in that of Western philosophical idealists such as Bradley, the Absolute as the supreme reality transcends all conceptual delimitation and thus cannot be categorized as either good or evil. This is not to deny the reality of evil, but only to deny that the Absolute can be distinguished by such qualities as goodness and personality. Even if the Absolute, as an integrated and unified whole, could be considered harmonious and thus “good” in some metaphysical or aesthetic sense, what seems to be ruled out is one of the key presuppositions motivating the problem of evil—that God shares a “moral community” with us, so that there are moral principles and categories that are applicable to both God and human beings. But if that is the case, then from the Advaita perspective the problem of evil (as standardly conceived) cannot even arise. The journey to the “Far East” may therefore inspire philosophers of religion to not only think God otherwise, but to also rethink the relationship between God and evil in ways that free them from traditional theodical stalemates.28
NOTES
1. Many examples of this could be offered. Two clear and prominent cases are the apologetical work of William Lane Craig and the natural theology of Richard Swinburne. Much work that now takes place under the banner of “Christian philosophy” also exhibits these features.
2. I am, of course, here engaging in generalities, and exceptions do (thankfully) exist. Also, although my target is Christian philosophy, similar comments could be made about the work of contemporary nontheist analytic philosophers of religion.
3. Heidegger’s prioritization of philosophy as fundamental ontology over theology as one of the ontic sciences is evident in many places, including the following famous passage from “Letter on ‘Humanism’ ”: “Only from the truth of being can the essence of the holy be thought. Only from the essence of the holy is the essence of divinity to be thought. Only in the light of the essence of divinity can it be thought or said what the word ‘God’ is to signify” (Heidegger 1998a, 267).
4. Janicaud (2000, 27). Janicaud is referring here to Levinas.
5. The stated goal of “analytic theology” is to apply the concepts, rhetorics, and methods of analytic philosophy to topics that have usually been the preserve of systematic theology (e.g., the Trinity, the Incarnation, the divine inspiration of Scripture, etc.). See Crisp and Rea (2009).
6. Christianity turns into an “ideology” when it demands an inviolable faith that cannot in principle be overturned (or perhaps even challenged) by rational considerations. This, in turn, raises the suspicion that such faith was not motivated by or grounded in rational considerations in the first place, but was motivated by nonrational factors to do with, for example, politics or psychology. (It is the work of a “hermeneutics of suspicion” to unearth such motivations.)
7. One such lone voice has been Michael Levine, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Australia. See in particular Levine’s (2000) trenchant critique of current practice in (analytic) philosophy of religion. Levine criticizes the work of contemporary Christian analytic philosophers as lacking vitality, relevance, and seriousness. He identifies these shortcomings in recent work in the areas of biblical interpretation, theodicy, and religious experience.
8. It is also worth noting that Schellenberg, in line with the ahistorical practice of analytic philosophy, reaches his skepticism about religion without having engaged with the rich historical panoply of religious conceptions of ultimate reality. For example, no consideration is given in his works to (Christian and non-Christian) Neoplatonism, or to idealist conceptions of the divine in Hindu and Buddhist thought. And this despite his advocacy of widening philosophy of religion so that it “more fully takes account of nonorthodox Christian and non-Christian religious ideas” (Schellenber 2005, 185n19). To be sure, the specific argument Schellenberg develops in defense of religious skepticism is such as to not require a detailed evaluation of each of the concrete religions. But the reliance on such an abstract argumentative strategy is problematic when it encourages one to overlook concepts and insights from the past that tend to be neglected in contemporary discussions—this being precisely the fate of idealism, whether it be in its Neoplatonist or Eastern variety.
A further, but related, weakness that attends to this neglect of the history of religious thought is that what Schellenberg calls “ultimism” may not in fact encompass all historical religions, contra Schellenberg’s view that ultimism is entailed by every religion. Again, this seems to be the case with some forms of Hinduism, such as the Advaita Vedanta conception of Brahman, which takes Brahman to be quality-less and transcategorical in a way not permitted by Schellenberg’s notion of the “ultimate.” In short, philosophers of religion remain without excuse for ignoring history and theology.
9. Bradley (1908, xii). He goes on to state one of the preconditions of such education: “The present generation is learning that to gain education a man must study in more than one school” (xiii). This is something that our generation of philosophers, deeply entrenched in either the analytic or the continental school, needs to relearn.
10. Other such prejudices named by Bradley (1908, 5) are “orthodox theology” and “common-place materialism.”
11. J.H. Muirhead (1925, 175), for example, states that Bradley was “perhaps the most original thinker of his time in philosophy.”
12. Clack (2007, 207–208). Clack considers two examples: Frida Kahlo’s painting, “Henry Ford Hospital or the Flying Bed” (1932), which illustrates Kahlo’s response to her experience of miscarriage; and Chuck Palahniuk’s fairy tale–like novel Lullaby (2002), which addresses the suffering of a grieving husband and father who holds himself responsible for the death of his wife and children.
13. Van Inwagen (1998, 11–14). An alternative characterization of metaphysics, derived from Aristotle, considers it in terms of the question, “What is existence (being)?” Here metaphysics is the most general or abstract investigation possible into the nature of reality, what Aristotle called “first philosophy,” “the science of being,” and the study of “being qua being.” A distinct kind of metaphysical inquiry (usually labelled “ontology”) is concerned with the problem: “What types of things exist?” In this case, the aim is to uncover what there is or what exists, and the natures and categories of the different entities there are.
14. Russell describes his defection from idealism as providing him with a new lease of life, enabling him finally to see the world aright, in realistic and commonsense terms:
He [i.e., G.E. Moore] took the lead in rebellion, and I followed, with a sense of emancipation. Bradley argued that everything common sense believes in is mere appearance; we reverted to the opposite extreme, and thought that everything is real that common sense, uninfluenced by philosophy or theology, supposes real. With a sense of escaping from prison, we allowed ourselves to think that grass is green, that the sun and stars would exist even if no one was aware of them, and also that there is a pluralistic timeless world of Platonic ideas. The world, which had been thin and logical, suddenly became rich and varied and solid. (Russell 1989, 12; emphasis in original)
Similarly, elsewhere Russell (1987, 135) states: “It was an intense excitement, after having supposed the sensible world unreal, to be able to believe again that there really were such things as tables and chairs.”
15. John of Damascus (1958, 205), for example, held that angels are bodiless and immaterial, but only in a comparative sense. He describes angels as having “a bodiless nature, some sort of spirit, as it were, and immaterial fire.” He goes on to say: “an angel is an intellectual substance, ever in motion, free, incorporeal, ministering to God, with the gift of immortality in its nature.” But he then qualifies the ascription of immateriality as follows: “Now, compared with us, the angel is said to be incorporeal and immaterial, although in comparison with God, who alone is incomparable, everything proves to be gross and material—for only the Divinity is truly immaterial and incorporeal.” John also states that angels “have no need of tongue and hearing; rather, they communicate their individual thoughts and designs to one another without having recourse to the spoken word” (206). This indicates that angels have a level of immateriality not possessed by humans. See also Andrew Louth (2002, 120–125); Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia.50,1 and 1a.51,1.
16. Many interesting parallels could be drawn between the Advaita view and Bradley’s form of idealism. Like the monist view of Advaita, Bradley considered reality to be ultimately “one,” a single and all-embracing “experience,” where experience is broadly understood so as to encompass feeling, thought, and volition. And like Brahman, the Absolute in Bradley’s philosophy is the ultimate, unconditioned reality as it is in itself, not distorted by conceptual thought or abstraction. Reality, for Bradley as for the Advaitins, outstrips and transcends discursive thought—hence, the strong mystical and apophatic strain in both. This aspect of Bradley’s thought has not gone unnoticed by commentators. A.E. Taylor (1925, 9), a friend of Bradley’s, described him as “an intensely religious man, in the sense of a man whose whole life and thought was permeated by a conviction of the reality of the unseen things and a supreme devotion to them. Taylor also remarks:
Bradley’s own personal religion was of a strongly marked mystical type, in fact of the specific type common to the Christian mystics. Religion meant to him, as to Plotinus or to Newman, direct personal contact with the Supreme and Ineffable, unmediated through any forms of ceremonial prayer, or ritual, and, like all mystics in whom this passion for direct access to God is not moderated by the habit of organized communal worship, he was inclined to set little store on the historical and institutional element in the great religions. (10; emphasis in original)
Similarly, the authors of the entry on Bradley in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy note that Bradley was led to his conception of the Absolute in part by “a kind of personal experience of a higher unity which in another context might have made him one of the world’s revered religious mystics” (Candlish and Basile 2013, §6).
17. This is the influential “being as communion” thesis developed by John Zizioulas (1985).
18. Bradley Malkovsky (1999, 405–406) summarizes well the traditional Christian attitude to Advaita:
Because Advaita denies the reality of the created world and of history and, therefore, of the incarnation, because it teaches that the Absolute is impersonal rather than personal, and because its spirituality is oriented to knowledge and identity rather than to love and to a communion of persons, it is not surprising that a widespread Christian response is to deny all possibility of harmonizing Advaitic doctrine and Christian faith, that is, that Christians have nothing to learn from Advaita because Advaita is basically false teaching. In this view there is a complete doctrinal incompatibility between Christian and Advaitic teaching.
19. This was first published in 1991 and was later republished in 2002 by the University of Notre Dame Press.
20. Other prominent figures in this dialogue have included Klaus Klostermaier, Swami Abhishiktananda, Dom Bede Griffiths, Richard De Smet (who greatly influenced Grant’s work on Shankara), and more recently Francis X. Clooney. Not all of the foregoing respond to the encounter with Advaita in the same way, and some depart more radically from Christian theology than did Grant. One of those who made such a radical departure was Grant’s close friend, Swami Abhishiktananda (1910–1973), who was born in France as Henri Le Saux, and later took the Sanskrit compound Abhishiktananda (the bliss of Christ) as his Indian monastic name (see Malkovsky 1999, 415–420).
21. Grant (2002, 1). Grant states that “[t]he sense of the inner unity of all things and the desire to discover how they were related to each other in their ultimate cause became practically an obsession” (8).
22. An alternative way to put this (though Grant does not express the point in this way) is to say that the world is “less real” than Brahman, not that it is “unreal.” This parallels the notions of degrees of being and degrees of truth, common in idealistic systems of thought, from Plato and Plotinus to Bradley. Like Grant, Richard Brooks (1969) has pointed out that the real in Advaita is closely connected to the eternal, the unchanging, the independent, and the unlimited: “in order for Advaitins to apply the word ‘real’ to something, that thing must be (1) experienceable, (2) nonillusory or nonimaginary, and (3) stable, lasting, or permanent” (388; see also the expanded definition of reality given on pp. 391–392) Brooks goes on to say that “Advaita will also be able to use the word ‘real’ in a less strict sense and to allow for degrees of reality insofar as some things are experienced but are illusory and other things are nonillusory but are impermanent” (389). The levels of reality are termed “ultimately real” (paramarthika), “pragmatically real” (vyavaharika), “merely illusory” (pratibhdsika), and “utterly unreal” (tucchika) (393). The empirical world is classed as “pragmatically real,” given that it has a practical effect on us—for example, another human being may respond to our shouts. (Incidentally, on p. 394, Brooks provides a very useful table, comparing Advaita Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhism on levels of reality.)
23. Grant (2002, 52; emphasis in original). As this talk of “created being” makes clear, Grant (like De Smet before her) controversially interpreted the theology of Shankara as allowing for the idea of Brahman as cause or creator.
24. Grant (2002, 53), for example, points to differences in eschatology.
25. Meister Eckhart (in Clark 1957, 189). Similarly, Augustine (1961, 62 [Confessions III.6] recalls his futile search for God in the outer world, when he failed to see that (as it is sometimes put) God is closer to us than we are to ourselves: “Yet you were deeper than my inmost understanding and higher than the topmost height that I could reach.” And later on, from a well-known passage: “I have learnt to love you late! You were within me, and I was in the world outside myself. I searched for you outside myself and, disfigured as I was, I fell upon the lovely things of your creation. You were with me, but I was not with you” (231 [Confessions X.27]).
26. To be sure, in systems of absolute idealism (such as those of Advaita and Bradley), ultimate reality is characterized in terms of the absolute, not the relative or relational. Nonetheless, the Absolute is thought of as a comprehensive and harmonious whole or unity that consists in (or just is) a set of relations. Bradley, for example, held that everything is related (e.g., temporally or spatially) to everything else, and he further added that all relations must be “internal,” which implies that the nature and identity of each thing depends upon its relation to everything else. In this respect, at least, one could call Bradley’s idealism a relational view of reality, even though relations in Bradley’s system are “appearances” or “unreal” (since they are not independent existents, but exist only in and through the whole).
27. Process theism therefore jettisons the classical theistic view that there is nothing contingent or relative in God, and it does so partly on the basis of the view that divine love presupposes empathetic sensitivity to the joys and sorrows of the beloved. It is now Christian (process) philosophy that poses a challenge to Advaita thought, according to which change and temporality are unreal or not ultimate features of reality. However, see Grant (2002, 96–97n12, 97–98n22), where Advaita is interpreted as possibly allowing for desire and affectivity within Brahman.
28. For an exposition and defense of this position, which I call “anti-theodicy,” see Trakakis (2013, forthcoming).
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