God in All Things: Rāmānuja's Divine Ontology for Christian Panentheism

ISIT 6.2 (2022) 153–171 https://doi.org/10.1558/isit.19095 Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology (print) ISSN 2397-3471 Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology (online) ISSN 2397-348X Submitted: 15 January 2021 Accepted: 1 December 2022 God in All Things: Rāmānuja’s Divine Ontology for Christian Panentheism Jon Paul Sydnor Emmanuel College, Boston sydnorjo@emmanuel.edu AbstrAct One divine ontology can account for multiple religious experiences. Specifically, the theological metaphysic of Rāmānuja integrates four distinct encounters with the holy. Due to its openness, Rāmānuja’s theology resonates with Western panentheism—the belief that God is both within and beyond the material universe. We can experience 1. a personal, transcendent God, 2. a divine humanity, 3. a sacred cosmos, and 4. an awe-inspiring rational order. If the experiencer thinks exclusively, then they may believe that their experience is the only legitimate experience. But if one divine ontology can accommodate the varieties of religious experience, as does Rāmānuja’s, then such exclusivism is unnecessary. This article proposes a panentheistic Christian ontology based on the Hindu (Viśiṣṭādvaita) theology of Rāmānuja that accounts for the four religious experiences listed above. It then provides celebratory examples of each experience in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, thereby providing biblical support for Viśiṣṭādvaita, Christian panentheism. Finally, I argue that Rāmānuja’s personalist panentheism better serves Christian faith than impersonalist Platonic Idealism. Keywords pantheism, idolatry, Rāmānuja, panentheism, Platonic Idealism, nondualism, dualism Thesis. Human beings experience the sacred in a great variety of ways. This article will address four of those ways. Humans can experience the sacred as: 1. a personal God, 2. a divine presence in humankind, 3. a divine presence within the material cosmos (sacred beauty), and 4. the rational order undergirding the universe (sacred reason). If interpreted exclusively—if we deem only one experience to be legitimate—then we have limited God’s power of expression and narrowed human religious experience. If interpreted inclusively—such that we can discern God’s activity in all aspects of © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 154 Jon Paul Sydnor human experience—then we may spiritually thrive in a God-saturated universe. Therefore, panentheism—the belief that God is both within and beyond the material universe—offers the most compelling concept of God for those who seek a thoroughgoing re-enchantment of life that also celebrates the rational intelligibility of the cosmos.1 But what model of panentheism should Christians use? The varieties of religious experience established above commend a transcendent, personal God who pervades both the cosmos and humankind, while also expressing the divine mind through natural law. Although all these qualities can be found in the Christian Bible, their synthesis into one, coherent metaphysic presents a certain challenge. For assistance, we may look outside the Christian tradition to the Hindu (Śrīvaiṣṇava, Viśiṣṭādvaita) theologian Rāmānuja, who provides an ontology that systematically accommodates the varieties of religious experience. God is active throughout history, including those religions that are historically distant from Christianity. For this reason, we can look beyond the Judeo-Christian tradition for theological resources. Rāmānuja’s divine ontology should inform that Christian tradition for four reasons. First, it is plausible, coherent, and offers considerable explanatory power. Second, Rāmānuja’s ontology preserves God’s interpersonal warmth. Even at the height of divinity, Rāmānuja’s God does not dissolve into the intellectual abstractions of (for example) Platonic Idealism. Third, Rāmānuja’s divine ontology coheres with the biblical witness, rendering it compatible with the most basic source of Christian tradition. Finally, Rāmānuja’s account synthesizes mysticism and rationalism, revealing God in all things while celebrating reason as a gift from God. Therefore, the God-saturated ontology of Rāmānuja provides a better framework for Christian panentheism than Platonic Idealism. Religious experience one: God is transcendent, relating to humankind from heaven The Hebrew scriptures, as inherited by the Christian tradition, record multiple experiences of God as a transcendent person. For the authors of the Hebrew scriptures, God is a person with whom one can meet (Exodus 19), converse (Exodus 3), and even argue—to the point of changing God’s mind (Genesis 18:16–32, Exodus 32:9–14, 2 Kings 20:11, etc.). In its most anthropomorphic, humanlike expression, this God is embodied. He walks and talks in 1. I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers of this article, whose perceptive suggestions dramatically improved it. © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 God in All Things 155 the garden (Genesis 3:8), allows Moses to see his back (Exodus 33:18–23), and wrestles with Jacob (Genesis 32:24–30). This God is compassionate (Hosea 11:8) and faithful (Psalm 51:1). In the Christian scriptures, Jesus himself advances this warm tradition by teaching his disciples to pray, “Our Father, who art in heaven ...” (Matthew 6:9). Hence, the concept of God as a person has a rich biblical grounding in both the Jewish and Christian traditions. Some experience this personal God as resident in heaven. God may come to earth, but earth is not the primary residence of God. The Hebrew prophet Isaiah records one of the most vivid revelations of this heavenly God: In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lofty; and the hem of his robe filled the temple. Seraphs were in attendance above him; each had six wings: with two they covered their faces, and with two they covered their feet, and with two they flew . . . And I said: “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips . . . yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:1–5, all Bible quotes from NRSV) Isaiah’s experience of God is more than personal; it is interpersonal. God occupies a heavenly court as a king occupies an earthly court, and Isaiah is God’s subject. Many human beings have such interpersonal experiences of God; if they interpret their experience exclusively, within an either/or framework, then God can only be transcendent (resident in heaven), not immanent (within the universe). To a certain extent, the psalmists advocate this understanding of God when they write: Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord from the heavens; praise him in the heights! Praise him, all his angels; praise him, all his host! Praise him, sun and moon; praise him, all you shining stars! Praise him, you highest heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for he commanded and they were created. He established them forever and ever; he fixed their bounds, which cannot be passed. (Psalm 148:1–6) © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 156 Jon Paul Sydnor This passage points to a Creator-creation distinction. If the sun, moon, and stars are to praise God, then they are not God. To find God, we should not look to creation but elsewhere, to heaven. The psalmist’s perspective embedded itself in Christian theology as a means to preserve the uniqueness of Christ. If God emanates the universe, if material reality is a projection of God’s own being, then all reality shares the substance of God, and all reality could be Christ. But according to the Nicene Creed, Christ is unique, being of the same substance (ὁμοούσιος: homoousios) as the Father. The universe, therefore, must be of a different substance than God. This need fit with the concept of creatio ex nihilo, or creation from nothingness, which rejects emanationism, the belief that the universe is an expression of God’s own being. St. Augustine writes: In the beginning, that is from yourself [Godself], in your wisdom which is begotten of your substance, you made something and made it out of nothing. For you made heaven and earth not out of your own self, or it would be equal to your only-begotten Son and therefore to yourself. It cannot possibly be right for anything which is not of you to be equal to you. (1991, 249) In this religious experience, God is a person who cares about us as persons, and this love is what really matters. We are not God, and God is not us. This distinction itself allows the unifying love between Creator, creature, and creation. If difference collapses, then our capacity for love collapses with it. But the difference cannot be collapsed, because nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8: 31–39). The perils of imbalance If interpreted in an either/or framework, the personal concept of God excludes the sacred from matter, self, and neighbor. At its worst, this exclusion can promote violence against both humankind and nature. That is, theism becomes destructive when unchecked by humanism and environmentalism. Fortunately, we can combine the personal religious experience of God in heaven with other religious experiences through a both/and interpretation of our sacred universe. Religious experience two: God is immanent, residing within self, neighbor, and other The one God tends to be protective of his sole right to receiving worship: “You shall not make for yourself an idol ….You shall not bow down to them © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 God in All Things 157 or worship them; for I the Lord your God am a jealous God” (Exodus 20:4–5a). For this reason, worshippers of the one God have frequently denied his residency in humans, for fear that we might commit idolatry. Or, in other words, for fear that we might worship humans instead of God. Nevertheless, even worshipers of the one God frequently experience God-in-self, God-in-neighbor, and most blessedly, God-in-other. God tends to spill out of heaven, no matter how hard dualistic theists try to keep the lid on. For an example from the Jewish tradition, the neo-Hasidic theologian Arthur Green explicitly asserts the divine presence in all reality: “My theological position is that of a mystical panentheist, one who believes that God is present throughout all of existence, that Being or Y-H-W-H [the personal name for God according to Hebrew scriptures] underlies all that is” (2020, 205). He argues that every creature is a garbing of the divine presence. In this mystical strain of thought, the Creator is no longer separate from the creation but is instead inseparable from all beings. Hasidic panentheism resonates with Paul’s concept of the church as the body of Christ, inhabited by the Holy Spirit. Paul describes the church as one community made up of many different members with many different gifts, just as a person inhabits a body with different parts (1 Corinthians 12). Sixteen centuries later, George Fox, the founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers) shared his experience of God-within-us, writing, “The Lord showed me, so that I did see clearly, that he did not dwell in these temples which men had commanded and set up, but in people’s hearts.... His people were his temple, and he dwelt in them” (1952, 8). The perils of imbalance As noted above, West Asian monotheistic religions have tended toward theistic dualism, separating the Creator from the creation. Yet, as seen above, even practitioners of these religions can experience the one God beyond the boundary of heaven. But this religious experience of God in humankind may result in idolatry—the worship of that which is unworthy of worship. Hanns Kerrl, Nazi Germany’s Reichminster of Church Affairs, exemplifies such devotion to the unholy: National Socialism is the fulfillment of the word of God which is demonstrated to us in our blood.... Christianity is not dependent upon the Apostles’ Creed. The true Christianity is represented in the Party, and the German people are now called by the Party and especially by the Fuhrer to a real Christianity... It is not the Church which has demonstrated that Faith which could move mountains. But the Fuhrer has. He is the herald of a new revelation. (Shirer 1990, 239) © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 158 Jon Paul Sydnor Kerrl provides a clear example of the dangers of idolatry that radical monotheists have always warned against. Any pure humanism risks demonism. The twentieth century alone provides numerous examples of cataclysmic human worship: Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany, Josef Stalin of the Soviet Union, Jim Jones of The People’s Temple, Shoko Asahara of Aum Shinrikyo, Marshall Applewhite of Heaven’s Gate, and David Koresh of the Branch Davidians. Humanism, unbalanced by theism, can descend into barbarism. Fortunately, history offers a religious metaphysic that reconciles humanism and theism, thus resisting barbarism. Religious experience three: God is immanent, residing within the material universe Most human beings have experienced awe at the beauty of nature. Whether it be a sunset over the ocean, a majestic mountain view, or fire dancing against the night, the magnificence of matter enchants us. This enchantment runs so deep that some people experience nature itself as holy. American naturalist John Muir writes: Long, blue, spiky-edged shadows crept out across the snow-fields .... This was the alpenglow, to me the most impressive of all the terrestrial manifestations of God. At the touch of this divine light, the mountains seemed to kindle to a rapt, religious consciousness, and stood hushed like devout worshippers waiting to be blessed. (Stetson 2013, 87–88) The beauty of nature overwhelms Muir to the point that he deems it divine. For him, natural beauty is not merely a pleasing arrangement of objects; it is an expression of God. In service to God-in-nature, Muir campaigned to protect America’s wilderness, eventually inspiring Teddy Roosevelt to establish America’s national park system. Some people experience matter as holy but have no sense of a personal God. Scholars of religion call this interpretation pantheism. According to pantheists, the material universe is sacred, but there is no transcendent creator in heaven. Prominent atheist Daniel Dennett observes: Is this Tree of Life a God one could worship? Pray to? Fear? Probably not. But it did make the ivy twine and the sky so blue, so perhaps the song I love tells a truth after all. The Tree of Life is neither perfect nor infinite in space or time, but it is actual, and if it is not Anselm’s “Being greater than which nothing can be conceived,” it is surely a being that is greater than anything any of us will ever conceive of in detail worthy of its detail. Is something © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 God in All Things 159 sacred? Yes, say I with Nietzsche. I could not pray to it, but I can stand in affirmation of its magnificence. This world is sacred. (2014, 94) Dennett’s vision appeals to atheists because it denies God but preserves awe. It avoids the constraints of legalistic religion while celebrating science as aesthetic pleasure. Unbound from God, we are fascinated by nature. And in that fascination we find new meaning and purpose. The perils of imbalance Indeed, this (non)religious, pantheistic vision is so attractive that strict monotheists feel compelled to argue against it. Fearful of nature worship, they exclude God from nature, insisting that God is utterly transcendent and in no way immanent: Within biblical theology it remains the case that the one living God created a world that is other than himself, not contained within himself. Creation was from the beginning an act of love, of affirming the goodness of the other. God saw all that he had made, and it was very good; but it was not itself divine .... Collapsing this distinction means taking a large step toward pantheism. (Wright 2008, 94) For Wright, the divine presence within matter threatens to annihilate the divine presence in heaven. This concern is legitimate, as we have seen with Dennett’s declaration that nature is sacred but impersonal. Pantheism also risks decaying into mere materialism, the firm belief in matter’s existence coupled with a denial of all religious realities. But theologically, we need not choose between transcendence and immanence, between religion and matter. We can reconcile them into one encompassing worldview: God can be both beyond and within, without contradiction. Religious experience four: God is present in the rational order and mathematical intelligibility of the universe Mathematics is not material, but it describes the material universe with godlike power. Historically, mathematicians have generated frameworks and theories that were later applied to astronomy, physics, and engineering. For example, the Greek mathematician Apollonius of Perga analyzed conic sections—the circle, ellipse, parabola, and hyperbola. His analyses later proved useful to astronomers studying the motion of celestial objects (von Baravalle 1970, 102–103). Einstein could not have developed his general © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 160 Jon Paul Sydnor theory of relativity, which predicated the curvature of space, without reference to Bernard Riemann’s preexisting elliptic geometry (Helge 2010, 123). Given the outstanding power of mathematical reason to make sense of the physical universe, many mathematicians regard its practice as more than an intellectual exercise. Pythagoras legendarily endorsed mathematical endeavor as a religious practice. For Pythagoras, to understand the universe was to understand its divine source, and this understanding brought one’s soul into closer correspondence with that divine source. Hence, scientific investigation was spiritual development, and vice versa. Learning generally, and numerology specifically, were central aspects of this spiritual endeavor. Correlating the number one to a point, the number two to a line, the number three to a plane, and the number four to a cube (the three-dimensional space in which we live), the Pythagoreans concluded that the universe is composed of numbers. When they discovered that musical intervals are based on numerical ratios, the Pythagoreans proceeded to combine mathematics with mysticism (Guthrie 2006, 182–183). The Christian tradition absorbed the Pythagoreans’ mathematical mysticism and deemed the cosmic order an expression of the mind of God. According to this interpretation, the Divine Architect expresses the orderly, divine mind within the orderly, material universe. Hence, to study the book of nature is to learn of God. The frontispiece of the Bible Moralisee (~1230 CE) expresses this sentiment in its depiction of God as Geometer, measuring out the design of the universe with a compass. Four hundred years later, planetary astronomer Johannes Kepler wrote: “Geometry, which before the order of things was coeternal with the divine mind and is God himself (for what could there be in God which would not be God himself?), supplied God with patterns for the creation of the world, and passed over to Man along with the image of God; and was not in fact taken in through the eyes” (1618, 304). The perils of imbalance To this day, many mathematicians and physicists, such as Paul Davies, Freeman Dyson, and John Polkinghorne, continue to experience elegant equations as an expression of the mind of God. But others who appreciate the profound beauty of mathematics adopt an either/or interpretation that excludes the possibility of an originating engineer. Stephen Hawking, for example, offers a nuanced argument for replacing the personal God with mathematical physics: “I don’t claim that God doesn’t exist. God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 God in All Things 161 relationship” (Hawking 2010). Several years later, Hawking clarified his position as definitely atheistic: Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe. But now science offers a more convincing explanation. What I meant by “We would know the mind of God” [if we knew the origins of the universe] is, we would know everything that God would know, if there were a God, which there isn’t. I’m an atheist. (Johnston 2018) Hawking assumes that either God can be experienced as a person or “God” can be the physical laws of the universe. Awed by the explanatory power of mathematical physics, he concludes that there is no personal God. As we shall see, however, theologically God can be both personal and mathematical. Humans can experience the sacred in many ways. Approaching these experiences with a binary either/or logic forces a choice between them that restricts the divine abundance. If we apply the law of non-contradiction to religious experience, then we end up with competing exclusivisms rather than a God-saturated universe. A better interpretation of the varieties of religious experience is possible, one that incorporates all four experiences into one coherent metaphysic. Traditionally, the Christian tradition has turned to Plato for this account. But Plato’s metaphysic ascends into impersonal abstraction, the Form of the Good (ἡ τοῦ ἀγαθοῦ ἰδέα: Republic, §508a– e. See also Parmenides 137c–d). Plato’s Form of the Good is not analogous to the loving father preached by the Hebrew prophets and their heir, Jesus Christ. For a better account that celebrates all levels of being equally and culminates in the warmth of a personal God, we will turn to the theology of Rāmānuja, an eleventh-century Hindu (Śrīvaiṣṇava) theologian. Rāmānuja’s God is a personal God in heaven, thereby explaining the experience of theism Now, let us consider how Rāmānuja’s God provokes the four religious experiences described above. First, we consider the religious experience of God in heaven. According to Rāmānuja, God is an “embodied” person with a personal name (Nārāyaṇa) who resides in the Śrīvaiṣṇava heaven (Vaikuṇṭha). He has a divine form [divyarūpa] that can be concretely described: His luster is that of a fine mountain of molten gold. He has the splendour of a hundred thousand suns. His pure eyes have the beauty of the petals of a lotus, just unfolding under the rays of the sun and crowning a rich stalk, that has sprung up in deep waters. His brows and forehead and nose are charming.… All parts of his person are proportionate and symmetrical. The divine harmony of his features beggars all description. (Rāmānuja 1956, 173–174) © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 162 Jon Paul Sydnor Nārāyaṇa’s “body” is quite different from our own. It is unlimited, unstained by karma, free from any negative psychophysical affect [prakṛti], pure, beautiful, perfectly pleasurable, and dazzlingly radiant. To distinguish it from our own bodies, Rāmānuja more often refers to it as “form” [rūpa] rather than “body” [śarīra] (a word he reserves for another aspect of Nārāyaṇa’s being, the sustained universe, which we examine below). But Rāmānuja’s term “form” should not be interpreted as mere “appearance.” Instead, “form” indicates Nārāyaṇa’s personhood. Persons are located, specific, and unique; this location, specificity, and uniqueness enrich our relations. While the divine form has an appearance, it is supersensuous and visible only to the inner, divine eye of the mind (divyacakṣus, see Śrī Bhāṣya §11.8, 359). This is a body, but it is not a constraining body. Possessing a form in a place and granting us our own forms in our own places, Nārāyaṇa is not only personal but interpersonal (Sydnor 2018, 31–32). Rāmānuja’s God resides in self and neighbor, thereby explaining the experience of religious humanism Rāmānuja accounts for the experience of religious humanism since God is the ongoing, sustaining source of all individual souls. Every person—every center of subjective experience—is an emanation of God. Individual souls are of one substance [dravya] with God, but of a different mode [prakāra]. They share God’s being but express that being in a different way (indeed, prakāra can be translated as “differentiating attribute”). Hence, the experience of God in self, neighbor, and other is legitimate (Sydnor 2011, 178–181). To describe the relationship between God and individual souls, Rāmānuja turns to the analogy of a gem and its luster, with the gem symbolizing God and the luster symbolizing the universe of souls. The luster is inseparable from the gem; without the gem, there is no luster. In this sense, they are the same. But the gem can exist without the luster because the luster is but one aspect of the gem. So, they are different. Therefore, scriptural passages that describe the human soul as identical with God and scriptural passages that describe the human soul as dependent upon God do not contradict one another. They are simply emphasizing different perspectives on a single reality. We are of God, but we are not God. And without God, we are like the luster of a gem in a darkened room. We become nothingness, waiting for God to summon us into being (Rāmānuja 1995, 298). © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 God in All Things 163 Rāmānuja’s God resides in matter, thereby explaining the experience of pantheism As noted above, Nārāyaṇa possesses a divine form [divyarūpa]. It has the appearance of a human body, but it does not receive the appellation “body” [śarīra] in Rāmānuja’s thought. Instead, Rāmānuja reserves the term “body” for two other modes of God’s being: individual souls [jīvas] and the natural universe [prakṛti]. Together, the sentient, moving realm (souls) and the insentient, unmoving realm (matter) constitute the bodies of God—those entities animated by God as their soul. These bodies are to be distinguished from the form of God, which is the spiritual appearance of God in heaven. A body depends on a soul for its vitality. Without the soul, the body remains inert [jaḍa]. Hence, when the soul leaves the body, the body becomes inanimate [acara]. Likewise, all matter depends on the soul that animates it for its vitality, just as that soul depends on God for its vitality. According to Rāmānuja, this dependence obtains for all material objects, not just living ones. Reality itself is animate. If God were to cease supporting the natural universe and all the souls within it, they would disappear. Therefore, the natural universe and its inhabitant souls are the bodies of God (Sydnor 2011, 141–144). So, individual souls and the natural universe completely depend on God, who is continuously present in both. We realize the depth of Rāmānuja’s panentheism—his belief that God is both transcendent and immanent, both beyond and within—through his philosophy of language. According to Rāmānuja, every Sanskrit word perfectly refers to a thing, while ultimately referring to God, since God is the sustaining source of all things. Different Sanskrit words legitimately refer to different sustained things because difference is real, being rooted in God. For example, the term “day” refers to day and the term “night” refers to night, but both terms refer to God who is the source of both day and night. We live in a multitiered world where everything is God who has blessed all things with their own, unique identity, name, and form (Rāmānuja 1956, 17). Rāmānuja’s God permeates reality as intelligence, thereby explaining the experience of religious rationalism There is a debate within Vedānta as to whether the Ultimate is a transcendent, personal God (held by the Viśiṣṭādvaita tradition) or a unitary, infinite Absolute (held by the Advaita tradition). Rāmānuja rejects this either/ or presupposition and instead unites transcendence and immanence into © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 164 Jon Paul Sydnor one comprehensive religious metaphysic. To do so, he turns to the bedrock Śrīvaiṣṇava image of Viṣṇu’s creating dream. Viṣṇu’s creating dream is an iconic reconciliation of divine embodiedness and omnipresence in the figure of Viṣṇu dreaming the universe into being. In that image, Viṣṇu reclines on the cosmic ocean, supported by the primordial serpent, Śeṣa. Viṣṇu is sleeping and dreaming, and his dream is our creation. To this image of Viṣṇu, Rāmānuja dedicates his Vedārthasaṅgraha: “I offer adoration to Vishnu, the all-pervading Supreme Being, who is the overlord of all sentient and non-sentient entities, who reposes on the primordial Śeṣa, who is pure and infinite and in whom abound blissful perfections” (1956). Viṣṇu’s dreaming is not like our dreaming; it is free, aware, and purposeful. It is Viṣṇu’s choice, not an accident of his subconscious. As the occupants of Viṣṇu’s dream, we occupy the mind of God, which pervades our universe even as Viṣṇu resides in heaven. Someone might argue, “A person can’t be in two places at once. God can’t be in heaven and everywhere at the same time.” Yet, our own experience of dreaming illustrates the spatial elasticity of embodiment. When we dream, our dreaming body is somewhere. But in our dream, our dreamed body is somewhere else. We are two places at once, as both the dreamer and the dreamed. All other bodies in our dream exist, alongside our dreamed body. They can be examined in spatial relation to our dreamed body, within our dreaming mind. That is, they are spatially related to one another in the dream, but not spatially related to the dreaming mind, their invisible sustainer. God, like any dreamer, can be embodied and pervade bodies. God can be both in heaven and here on earth. For this reason, the discovery of deep intelligence in the very structure of the universe accords with Rāmānuja’s theology. God’s divine form [divyarūpa], the heavenly appearance, resides in heaven. But God’s own form [svarūpa], the pervading presence, animates all reality. And the pervading presence that animates all reality is knowledge, wisdom, and intelligence [jñāna]. Mathematicians investigate jñāna, physicists discover its laws, and engineers cooperate with its regulative power. To study nature is to study the mind of God. How can God be a divine person, individual souls, the physical universe, and mathematical rationality, all at once? Analytical theologians may doubt that one God can be fully present in all aspects of human experience. But for Rāmānuja, God’s heavenly form [divyarūpa] and pervasive presence [svarūpa] suggest the overflowing abundance of the divine. This superabundance cannot be contained by any rationalist law of non-contradiction. Human reason cannot constrain the divine omnipotence [sarvaśakti]. The © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 God in All Things 165 multiple manifestations of God simply are, and they are for the salvation of humankind. Thus declares Rāmānuja when reconciling God’s role as both the material and the efficient cause of the universe, as both the substance of the universe and the sustainer of that substance. By mundane standards, material and efficient causality are mutually exclusive; marble does not carve itself into a statue, the sculptor and the sculpture are always two different things. But by divine standards, material causality (the marble) and efficient causality (the carver) are reconcilable within one entity: God. Indeed, they are united by the omnipotence of God (Rāmānuja 1956, 32). By way of analogy, we may infer that just as material and efficient causality are united by the divine omnipotence, the personal form and pervasive presence of God are united as well. Nevertheless, Rāmānuja provides analogies through which we can interpret the relationship of the heavenly God to the all-present God. For instance, he notes that the individual soul is both atomic [aṇu] and pervasive within the body [vibhu]. Thus, pervasive feeling is synthesized with located consciousness. He then compares the individual soul to a piece of sandalwood that rests on a table yet fragrances the entire room. Likewise, God is aṇu; indeed, God is smaller than an atom [aṇoraṇīyāṁsam] (Rāmānuja 1995, 276–277). And God is vibhu, pervasive as the ground of all being. As aṇu and vibhu, God is both localizable and omnipresent, a person who is somewhere (Nārāyaṇa in Vaikuṇṭha), and a substance that is everywhere (wisdom as the underlying substrate of reality). Thus, Rāmānuja has united the strengths of theism (devotional worship) and transtheism (meditative absorption) in one deity, who is both fully transcendent and fully immanent. Rāmānuja’s divine ontology is compatible with Christian scripture Theism in the Bible Rāmānuja’s concept of a personal, heavenly God is the leading theme of the Bible. This is especially true of the Hebrew scriptures, which assign God a personal name: YHWH. Above, we have quoted Isaiah’s vivid experience of God as king on the divine throne. Jesus follows in this tradition, emphasizing the Hebraic image of God as father, with a fatherly affinity for the widow, orphan, and alien. God protects the poor and gives them hope, shutting the mouths of the unjust (Job 5:15–16). God expresses a special concern, not just for the weak, but also for those who care for them (Psalm 41:1–3). Such care occurs because God is father to his child, Israel (Hosea 11:1). Celebrating this emotionally charged concept of God, Jesus chose to begin his community’s © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 166 Jon Paul Sydnor prayer with the words, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name ...” (Luke 11.2). For Jesus, God is not just personal: God is interpersonal, and warmly so. God is a mother who loves her lost child (Luke 15:8–10, following Isaiah 49:8–18); God is a father who welcomes us home (Luke 15:11– 32, following Isaiah 30). Religious humanism in the Bible Rāmānuja believes that God inhabits persons, who are both identical with and different from God (bhedābheda: different/nondifferent). This belief is also compatible with the Christian scriptures. One of the foundational experiences of the early church was invigoration by the Holy Spirit, who was closely associated with both Christ and Creator. According to Luke, Jesus’ ministry began with his baptism by the Holy Spirit: When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too. And as he was praying, heaven was opened and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” (Luke 3:21–22) The Holy Spirit then animates Jesus’ activity as teacher, prophet, and healer. Biblically, the Spirit of Christ is the Spirit of God (Romans 8:9), and this Spirit comes to inhabit the church. Jesus assures his disciples, “I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate [Paraclete, Holy Spirit] will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you” (John 16:7). At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descends upon the disciples, just as the Spirit descended upon Jesus at his baptism (Acts 2:1–4). The Holy Spirit’s animation of the church renders the church the Body of Christ (Romans 12:5) and promotes the church into divinity, even as it remains stained by human fallenness. Thankfully, the Spirit invites the church into increased divinity and decreased fallenness through the process of divinization (2 Peter 1:4), the ongoing result of our adoption by God (Galatians 4:5–6). In the end, the biblical description of the young church resembles Rāmānuja’s description of individual souls [jīvas]. Both are heavenly and worldly, perfect and imperfect, divine yet “human.” Matter as sacred in the Bible Rāmānuja believes that God sustains and inhabits the material universe, which is the body of God. We can find warrant for this belief in the Christian scriptures. Even as the Hebrews visualized a personal God on a heavenly © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 God in All Things 167 throne, they were careful not to limit God’s presence to that throne. The Chronicler proclaims: “Heaven, even highest heaven, cannot contain him” (2 Chronicles 2:6). And for the Hebrews, the omnipresence of God in heaven is their greatest assurance: Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast. (Psalm 139:7–10) For the psalmist, the heavenly God is everywhere, such that we cannot escape God’s protective warmth. Not only does God’s personality fill the universe, but God’s very being fills it as well. God is within all things, even as God exceeds all things. We find an explicit statement of this belief in the Book of Sirach: Because of [God] each of his messengers succeeds, and by his word all things hold together. We could say more but could never say enough; let the final word be: “He is the all.” (Sirach 43:26–28) And in the Christian scriptures, the apostle Paul takes up this sentiment multiple times: “For from [God] and through him and to him are all things” (Rom. 11: 36); “There is one God who is father of all, over all, through all and within all” (Eph. 4: 6). Paul describes God as—to use a later formulation—the ground of being, the sustaining origin of all existence, the ongoing source of all reality. In a groundbreaking theological move, Paul then applies this sustaining power to Jesus Christ: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created.… all things have been created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:15–17, see also John 1:2–5). Jesus of Nazareth has become the Cosmic Christ, the one who grants existence its communion. Jesus himself asserts the divine animation of matter and its responsiveness to the holy. When the authorities insist that his disciples quiet down, Jesus replies, “I tell you, if these were silent, the stones would shout out” (Luke 19:40). © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 168 Jon Paul Sydnor Religious rationalism in the Bible Rāmānuja’s Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition finds the mind of God present in the material universe, through the myth of Viṣṇu’s dreaming creation. The Hebrew and Christian scriptures also find the sustaining mind of the Creator in creation. Of course, neither tradition makes specific reference to mathematical mysticism. Yet, both traditions express awe at the divine reason expressed through the cosmic order. In the Hebrew tradition, the psalmist exclaims, “O Lord, how manifold are your works! In wisdom you have made them all” (Psalm 104:24a). Jeremiah writes, “It is he who made the earth by his power, who established the world by his wisdom, and by his understanding stretched out the heavens” (Jeremiah 10:12). And Proverbs declares, “The Lord by wisdom founded the earth; by understanding he established the heavens; by his knowledge the deeps broke open, and the clouds drop down the dew” (Proverbs 3: 19–20). In the Christian scriptures, Paul echoes: “Ever since the creation of the world, his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made” (Romans 1:20). Early Christians found this divine wisdom in Jesus of Nazareth. They identified Jesus with the logos—the sacred reason, creative principle, or divine order—through which the universe was made: In the beginning was the Word [logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being .... And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:1–3, 14) Since the material universe expresses the mind of God and science investigates the material universe, theists should celebrate scientific discovery and consecrate the awe that scientists experience through their studies. Christian panentheism should be personalist Western Christian panentheism is a minority report relative to the dominant classical theism, which insists upon a Creator/creation distinction. Classical theism, sometimes referred to as dualistic theism, asserts that the world is created from nothingness, not from God’s own being. Hence, creation differs from God in essence while depending on God for existence. When Christianity does offer panentheism, that panentheism tends to derive from either Plato or Plotinus. Problematically, the metaphysics derived from these Idealist philosophers culminate in abstraction. Plato refers to the good, the © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 God in All Things 169 true, and the beautiful, or even love—but impersonally (Symposium, §211e: the speech by Diotima). Plotinus refers to the One, a monistic purity that sheds all difference (Enneads §V.3.14, §VI.9.3). And we can find Neoplatonic influence even in those theologians traditionally deemed classical theists. For instance, the Plotinus-influenced Augustine preaches a personal God yet deems that personal God to be selfsame (idipsum), unchanging, timeless, simple, and impassible (Confessions, §III.8.16, §IX.4.11). In all cases, the apex of divinity is remote, unbefitting the caring God who numbers the hairs on our head (Luke 12:7). Rāmānuja’s panentheism provides a more personalist metaphysic than Plato or Plotinus. Hence, it is more useful to the Christian tradition. Rāmānuja’s metaphysic culminates in a person with personality who possesses a personal appearance and cherishes interpersonal relations. Like all persons, Rāmānuja’s God is composite. God is not one thing—reason, spirit, soul, or even love—God is an “ocean of auspicious attributes” perfectly harmonized into one feeling, thinking, acting being. For Rāmānuja, “personal” is not an attribute of some distant monad. Instead, God is truly a person, and all divine attributes derive from that personhood. Moreover, Rāmānuja’s divine metaphysic rejects any spirituality of ascent. Spiritualities of ascent lead us upward, away from the impure world of fickle matter to the pure world of changeless spirit or mathematical truth. In these spiritualities, we must leave god’s (or a demigod’s) creation to find God. But Rāmānuja’s God does not summon us from unreal matter to real divinity. Rāmānuja does not call us to see something else; Rāmānuja calls us to see what is correctly. Through the inner eye, we can see God (the antaryāmin, inner self, inner controller) in all things. Matter is now the divinely sustained body of God. Thanksgiving, joy, and bliss are the blessed emotions of the devout. Salvation is not elsewhere; salvation is here and now, perfected through worship, and granted to the devout by the grace of God. For many of us, our religious experience is primarily nontheistic—we may practice religious humanism, ecological pantheism, spiritual rationalism, or some combination of the three. But Rāmānuja’s personal God can transform even these religious experiences because belief in God grants them the quality of giftedness. That is, our experience of the human soul becomes a divine gift rather than a simple fact, as does our experience of the sacred in nature and reason. Through the immanent, heavenly God, reality itself becomes grace. Rāmānuja’s God is more “for us” than Plato’s “Form of the Good” or Plotinus’ “The One.” Genesis assures us that we are made in the image of God, and for millennia we have struggled to understand what that means. Perhaps God rules the universe, so we are made to rule the earth; or maybe © Equinox Publishing Ltd. 2023 170 Jon Paul Sydnor God is embodied, so we are embodied; or God is rational, so we are made for reason; or God is loving, so we are made for love. But Rāmānuja’s God, like the biblical God, does not force us to sacralize one aspect of our being to the neglect of all else. What is sacred is our personhood itself, including every aspect thereof—our souls, minds, bodies, and selves. Together, these gifts grant us dynamic subjectivity, deep relationality, and meaningful activity. God is a composite person, as are we, and in that varied personhood we will find an expanse of divine blessings. References “Apollonius of Perga (C. 245–C. 190 BC).” 2018. In The Hutchison Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Edited by Roy Porter and Evelyn Ogilvie. New York: Helicon. Augustine. Confessions. 1991. Translated by Henry Chadwick. New York: Oxford University Press. Dennett, Daniel C. 2014. 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