God As Jesus I

On Christian Bhakti

David Bentley Hart has written on the need for a Vedantic Christianity—that is, a Christian philosophy that is informed by the tradition of Vedanta, the philosophical tradition that looks to the Upanishads, the Bhagavadgita, the Brahmasutra, and the philosophical writings of Adi Sankara (for the school of Advaita), Ramanuja (for Vishishtadvaita), and Madhva (for Dvaita). I have tried, as best as I can in this dispatch, to sketch out aspects of what I think that kind of Christianity would entail: nondualism, panentheism, idealism, panpsychism, a philosophically respectable account of Trinitarianism and Christology, a pneumatology that can handle many kinds of rational beings beyond the human and that can account for resurrection in an intelligible way, a pluralistic, fluid approach to religious identity, a cosmopolitan political ethos, an epistemology that takes spirit and the imagination seriously, a theological method that seriously engages with history and historical criticism (especially of biblical texts), and an openness to what the future might hold that we cannot currently imagine.

But I would add one more point here, inspired in part by these various inquiries: just as Hindus in general, including Vedants, are also bhaktins of some kind or another—Vaishnavs, Shaivas, Shaktis, Smrtis—whose practiced religion includes devotional worship of one particular deity (and that deity’s manifestations, avataras, attendants, regalia, and so forth), Christian Vedanta (or Vedantic Christianity; however you prefer) is going to require also a thorough definition of Christian bhakti, by which I mean, a fresh Christian theorization of worshiping God as Jesus which I will, eventually, distinguish from the idea of using history to try and prove that Jesus is God (which is an impossible task). This might be the clarificatory power of Hinduism generally for Christianity.