reconstructing advaita in john thatamanil's the immanent divine: some questions

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Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies

Volume 22 Article 7

2009

Reconstructing Advaita in John Tatamanil's "TeImmanent Divine": Some Questions

Michael McLaughlin

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Recommended CitationMcLaughlin, Michael (2009) "Reconstructing Advaita in John Tatamanil's "Te Immanent Divine": Some Questions,"Journal ofHindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 22, Article 7.

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Reconstructing Advaita in John Thatamanil's TheImmanent Divine: Some Questions

Michael McLaughlinSaint Leo UniversityTHE publication of John Thatamanil's TheImmanent Divine allows us to ask manyquestions about projects in comparative theologyand where they could lead us. I hope that myresponse to this interesting work will have thevalue of probing a little more into the tasks ofcomparative theology. There is no doubt thatThe Immanent Divine is a remarkable effort. It isalso a book which taxes the academic readerwho is probably not a specialist in Tillich and.Advaita and the various versions of processtheology, especially the distinctive version ofRobert Neville. I will break down my responseto this wide-ranging effort into several topics.Starting from Immanence, Not Scriptures

The philosophical project of thinking withinimmanence is not for the faint-hearted, and yet itseems to be a leading theme of our era, as thework ofDeleuze and Guattari on one level, workon systems theory, and all of the work onglobalization, demonstrate. We become open tothe idea that in some way we are part of anetwork, of a series of nodal points forming avirtuality of some kind. Weare not sure whetherwe live in the system or whether the system livesin us or whether anyone knows the differenceanymore.In a more theological key, are we part ofBrahman or merely products of a pollutedNatura naturans? Living on the boundaries, thepostmodem theologian feels the need to

construct and reconstruct identities to find amore satisfYing "position" in the flux. We seeourselves as caught up in planes of immanence.Weare not so much the inheritors of Descartesas of Whitehead and Bergson and, perhaps,ultimately of the underground current that tracesback to the "heretic" Spinoza. The Whitehead ofthe twenties could not have envisioned. all ofthis.

In confronting recent thinking, do we simplycut ourselves loose from the scriptural traditions,which have grounded faith traditions, in favor ofa more universalist philosophical tradition? It isworth mentioning that the approach taken byThatamanil works from cosmology and not fromtexts. 1 What are the costs of this move? If thereare any mahavakyas here, they would seem tocome mpre from the insights of Neville ratherthan, say, from the Upanishads.Leaving Tillich Behind

One's fIrst impression in opening TheImmanent Divine is a fairly obvious one. The. choice of Tillich as a point of comparison putsus into the context of liberal Protestant theology,which is characterized by a desire to correlatesome existential description of humanexperience with certain. general theologicalconcepts. The description that Thatamanil names"the human predicament" he later tries tocapture by the bridge term "self-enclosedfmitude", a fmitude which, as we move toward

Michael McLaughlin is Assistant Professor at Saint Leo University, U.S.A. and teaches theology in theundergraduate and Master's program. He has published in the area of comparative theology, and hisprimary interests are in the way religions are constructed and maintained as well as traditional theologicalquestions. Secondary interests are in postmodem thought and semiotics. He is the author of Knowledge,Consciousness and Religious Conversion in Lonergan and Aurobindo (Rome: Gregorian University Press,2003).

Journal o/Hindu-Christian Studies 22 (2009):14-18

McLaughlin: Reconstructing Advaita in John Thatamanil's "The Immanent Divine": Some Questions

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Reconstructing Advaita in John Thatamanil's The Immanent Divine 15the end of the book, he hopes to overcome by anappeal to themes of divine creativity using aversion ofprocess theology as a resource.I suppose that much of my unease with thedirection of the book stems from my reactions toThatamanil's attempts at a theology which offersa way out of the predicament of Tillich's worldof restless finitude and into a more restful andpeaceful, even Confucian, view of humannature.Many of the things that one may like aboutTillich (themes of guilt, angst and humanbewilderment) seem to be overridden here. Itmight seem, in fact, that Tillich as a theologianis stronger on existential/psychologicaldescription than he is on other tasks of theology,such as working from exegetical results oraddressing traditional theological topics such asTrinity, the grace-nature question, therelationship of intellect to will, faith versusworks, predestination, orthodoxy versus heresy,and so on. Tillich has a very strong immanentstarting point which placeshim closer to Advaitafrom the very start.One might well say that if we look at thepolarities which govern Tillich's theology whatwe have is a kind of meeting between German 'Idealism (in the person of Tillich) and Advaita.It seems that ,a great deal of Tillich's early workon Schelling is still functioning in the structureofhis systematics.Christology

Thatamanil's choice to omit a treatment ofChristo logy, while completely understandable,leaves a large gap on the Christian side of theequation. I suspect he may tackle this soon. Thetraditional understanding of following Jesus isalso tied to many of the themes that areuncomfortable for Thatamanil, such as guilt,betrayal, fear and so on. The Biblical disciplesdid not lead a life of unbroken absorption in theDivine. Perhaps even Jesus had moments offeeling God-forsaken.In a traditional theology of revelation, JesusChrist is seen as not only the high point of whatGod wishes to reveal but also as the focus ofreligious faith and devotion. Such faith is oftenfocused not just on the teaching of Jesus but onhis role as redeemer and even martyr. In the

formula of one of the early Church Fathers,"One of the Trinity suffered."Of course, Christian action in the world, totransform the oppression, is often understood asa witness unto death: a theme not prominent in

The Immanent Divine. The author presumablywants his theology to allow for a praxisdimension; believers resist and try to overcomeevil, even if one must, like Arjuna, be detachedfrom the fruits of one's actions. The question iswhether Neville'S, and consequentlyThatamanil's, version of human agency reallymotivates praxis and even self-sacrifice in theface of suffering?Agency and Immanence

The book also raises a complex question ofwhat "immanence" really means or what"supernatural" means for agency. Let me note inpassing that for Catholic theologians likeRahner, there is no pure nature seeking puregrace, or pure natural seeking a supernatural.Pure nature is a kind of hypothesis, a remainderconcept, as. Rahner says. At the same time,"original sin" points to a reality of the will,divided against itself as well as the need for apoetics of the will of the kind Paul Ricoeurpointed to, not least in his small masterpiece"Fatherhood from Phantasm to Symbol", and inhis Freud book. So my questions would be, whathappens to the question of agency in thisreconstructed Advaita? How do our moralchoices shape meanings and create legacies inthe world? We think of Bonhoeffer writing fromprison or King writing from the Birmingham jail

\.-J asking "How long should we wait?" What is theDivine Creativity asking us to do? And how canwe be sure that doing it would really matter? Isit really that satisfying to abandon the idea ofpersonal immortality and move to a position onemight paraphrase as "I am a moment of thedivine creativity and I tried to be a good momentin this endless flux"?Creation, Fall and Salvation

As another technical point, I would noteThatamanil's critiques of Tillich, who, he says,nearly identifies Creation and the Fall (118). Iam not sure that Thatamanil has completely

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Reconstructing Advaita in John Thatamanil's The Immanent Divine 17self-chosen refusal of God. In such a theology,there is reason for the evil-doer to fear the divinejudgment precisely because the evil-doer'sactions are so deeply damaging to the creaturesGod has created. Hinduism, from its traditionalbeliefs, is not afraid to speak of almost endlesscycles of rebirth.Sanctification, Heroic Death, and Providence

Thatamanillooks for a theology in which "adeeper level of sanctification" is possible. He isunhappy with the fact that even Christian saintsare sometimes tormented by demons. There is asuggestion that the psyche of a Tillich, or of aLuther, or even of a Mother Teresa of Calcutta,is not one which he, or many others, would wantto inhabit. Too much anxiety, doubt, guilt,despair ..Ultimately, we reach a fork in the roadwherein we either incorporate a psychology ofsome kind, and try to blend it into a theology ofgrace, or we move from a focus on the soul to afocus on cosmology. The thought of a DivineBeing who is endless creativity is meant to pullus both out of despair and out of the jaws ofhistory, with its wars, mass graves, killing fields,Mayanmar monks facing machine guns, andother horrors.s But does it? This depends onwhether we are willing to give up the idea of apersonal immortality in favor of the idea that weare part of the cosmic process.9 The problem Ihave with moving from "immanence as enacted"to "immanence as ontologically given"10, is thatit affects the way in' which we would have toreframe other doctrines. IThere is also a question about whether thiscosmic process should rightly be called God orjust Nature. This depends, I suppose, on theextent that one can believe that this process isbenevolent, if still fairly impersonal. In otherwords, one has to articulate a theology ofprovidence as distinguished from fate, destiny,or luck.Whither ethics?

Should we evaluate a comparative theologybased on its ability to ground an ethics of somesort? Does The Immanent Divine ground astrong ethics or a still more stoic world-denying

ethics despite its attempts to move in more of apraxis direction? These are a few questions thatarise from reading Thatamanil'sinterestingwork. I hope that at least one or two of them willprove fruitful for the author's ongoing andimpressive project. 12Notes1 The use of texts' in theology can be fairly open, asshown by the work of Peter Ochs, in TextualReasoning, whose approach was influenced by C. S.Pierce and who tries to read in new ways what mightseem like the self-referential world like that of theTalmud.2 For a quite critical reading of Neville's Christologyfrom a more conservative Christian perspective seeStanley Grenz (2004).3 Thatamanil (194) seems to be the key locus here.Neville's version of sin (not inevitable) ispronounced far superior to Tillich's. This is aninteresting discussion, which, regrettably, the authormoves through rapidly.A Catholic theologian would add a discussion ofthe life of the virtues which, when cultivated, allowcertain fairly stable powers of the soul (habitshabitus) that make one become less prone totemptations: the familiar virtues of prudence, justice,temperance, fortitude, and so on. The moral virtues'are transformed by the theological virtues of faith,hope, and love. This traditional theology has aversion of "deeper sanctification" which Tillich mayin. fact lack. It uses terms like "divinization" butalways in the more r ~ s t r i c t e d sense that creature andcreature never become one. This is the classictheological point of Aquinas that between God andcreatures there is no "real relation. Instead Aquinasused the language of participation. His concept ofparticipation comes close to Sankara's notion of nonduality. Still, a change in the creature does not implya change in God." These are subtle points which areoften missed. For a compressed discussion of this,referencing the worW'of Sara Grant, see the article ofDavid Burrell, "Analogy, Creation and TheologicalLanguage" (87) in Nieuwenhove and Wawrykow. Ido not try to analyze Neville's two-author theorywhich tries to explain how. divine and human actionconcur. (Thatamanil, 192).4 This seems to be occurring in a recent"Whiteheadean" theology such as that of HaroldOliver (172).5 This is becal.).se God is " .. .never only now. Forourselves who truly are temporal and who areexisting now with a future still future , the future andGod's special presence as redemptive or

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18 Michael McLaughlin

condemnatory, helpful or negligent, merciful orpunitive remains other" (Neville, 211-12).6 I have been influenced most recently by readingRobert Corrington's ecstatiC naturalism wherein theworld is a moving system of signs in which Naturanaturans becomes Natura naturata, which thenbecomes Natura naturans. Corrington identifieshimself as a Unitarian Universalist.7 I am not sure what to make of the central thesis ofNeville, namely, "God is eternal because within theunity of the creative acts all times are together; theeternality of those connections is what makes thetemporal flow of time possible (181)." Or, "Time'sflow is fully real only as the internal character of theeternal act in which all times are together in aninfmite singular series of continuous transformations(172)."8 When questioned about the lack of a sense of thetragic in his work, Neville replied, "We have ouridentity in God and in this light participate in thedivine creative glory such that our own specificcharacteristics are trivial by comparison." (Chapmanand Frankenberry, 318.)9 F or an interesting attempt to work this out within aprocess theology see the articles by Joseph A.Bracken and William Hasker.10 Thatamanil, 206.11 In Neville's version (234) even i.f our lives are inmany respects deficient, are in the end swept upin the infinite mercy that is God's glory." It wouldseem that everyone is saved (see also 230).12 I have not tried to incorporate elements of Prof.Thatamanil's extensive response to this paper or ofthe lively discussion which followed. His response isincluded elsewhere in this volume. I am grateful tothe anonymous reviewers for their comments on thisessay.Works citedBracken, Joseph A. "Bodily Resurrection and theDialectic of Spirit and Matter." TheologicalStudies 66 (2005):770-782.Chapman, J. Harley arid Nancy K. F r ~ e n b e r r y .Interpreting Neville (Albany: SUNY Press,1999).Corrington, Robert S., A Semiotic Theory ofTheology

and Philosophy (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 2000).Grenz, Stanley. "Jesus as Symbol: Robert Neville'sChristology and the Neo-liberal TheologicalProject." Modern Theology 20 (2004):467-473.Hasker, William. " 'The End of Human Life':Buddhist, Process and Open Theist Perspectives." Journal ofChinese Philosophy 32 (2005):183-195.

Ford, Lewis S. The Emergence of Whitehead'sMetaphysics 1925-1929 (Albany: SUNY Press,1984).Marsoobian, Armen; Kathleen Wallace, and RobertS. Corrington. Nature's Perspectives: Prospectsfor an Ordinal Metaphysics (Albany: SUNYPress, 1991).McLaughlin, Michael T., Knowledge, Consciousnessand ReligiOUS Conversion in Lonergan andAurobindo (Rome: Gregorian University Press,2003). -

Neville, Robert C. Eternity and Time's Flow(Albany: SUNY Press, 1993).Nieuwenhove, Rik Van and Joseph Wawrykow eds.The Theology ofThomas Aquinas (Notre Dame:University ofNotre Dame Press, 2005)Oliver, Harold H., A Relational Metaphysics(Dordrecht: Martins Nijhoff, 1981).Rambachan, Anantanand .The Advaita Worldview:God, World, and Humanity (Albany: SUNYPress, 2006)Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1967).Thatamanil, John J., The Immanent Divine: God,Creation and the Human Predicament:An East -West Conversation (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,2006).

McLaughlin: Reconstructing Advaita in John Thatamanil's "The Immanent Divine": Some Questions

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reconstructing advaita in john thatamanil's the immanent divine: some questions

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