Argument

Hinduism vs the Christian God

Intro

Hinduism is not one belief about God. It is a family of traditions, and they answer the biggest question in very different ways:

• Advaita Vedanta (the non-dual school of Shankara) says ultimate reality, Brahman, is beyond all personal qualities, and your true self is identical with it. The sense of being a separate person is part of an illusion.
• The theistic schools (Ramanuja, Madhva, and the devotional or bhakti movements devoted to Vishnu, Krishna or Shiva) say God is a real person, souls are really distinct from Him, and liberation comes through loving devotion and God's grace.

Christians should be honest about the second group. It comes surprisingly close to the Christian picture: a personal Lord, a soul that stays itself, love, surrender and grace.

So the question is not only "personal God or impersonal Brahman?" It is also "if God is personal and gracious, how has His grace actually reached us?" Here the Christian God offers what no Hindu school claims:

• A real incarnation in history. God became a man once and for all, in a known place and time.
• An atonement. Grace that does not ignore justice but pays it.
• One life, not many. Followed by judgment and a bodily resurrection, not another round of rebirth.

Jesus put it plainly: "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6, ASV).

Quick reply for a live conversation: "If the self is an illusion, there is no one to be saved and no one to love. If God is a person who gives grace, then the question is how that grace was won. Christianity says God came once, in history, died for our sins and rose bodily. Karma can't forgive you. A person can, and He did."

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Cheatsheet

The 30-second reply:

Hinduism is many traditions. Its non-dual school says your self is secretly Brahman and the world is a kind of illusion. Its devotional schools say God is a loving person who saves by grace. Christianity agrees with the devotional schools that God is personal and gracious, and goes further: the personal God is love within Himself as Father, Son and Spirit, He made a real world out of nothing, and He became man once in history, died for sins and rose bodily. That is grace with a date, a place and a payment.

The fast facts:

1. Two Hinduisms on God. Advaita (Shankara, 8th century): Brahman alone is real, without qualities; the individual self is Brahman, "thou art that" (tat tvam asi, Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7). Vishishtadvaita (Ramanuja, 11th century) and Dvaita (Madhva, 13th century): God is personal, souls are real and remain distinct. See Hinduism.
2. The internal Hindu critique. Ramanuja attacked Advaita's doctrine of ignorance (avidya) with a list of objections, including this one: if only Brahman is real, whose ignorance is it? Brahman cannot be ignorant, and there is no one else.
3. Karma. An impersonal law of cause and effect across lifetimes. It records; it cannot forgive. See Karma.
4. Grace in bhakti. The theistic schools teach real grace. The Bhagavad Gita (18.66) has Krishna promise release from all sins to the one who takes refuge in him alone, a verse central to Sri Vaishnava teaching on surrender (prapatti).
5. Avatar vs Incarnation. In the Gita (4.7-8) the Lord appears "age after age" whenever righteousness declines. Christ came "once at the end of the ages... to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26, ASV) and remains God and man forever. See Incarnation and Hypostatic Union.
6. Reincarnation vs resurrection. The Gita (2.22) compares the self taking new bodies to a person changing worn-out clothes. Christianity: "it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment" (Hebrews 9:27, ASV), then the raising of the body. See Reincarnation.
7. The ending. Advaita: realizing identity with Brahman. Theistic schools: eternal loving service of God, the soul still itself. Christianity: resurrection, the face of God, and the self kept. See World Religions Compared by Their Ultimate Ending.

The 4 strongest counter-moves:

• "All paths lead to the same summit." The schools of Hinduism do not agree with each other about the summit. Shankara says the goal is identity with Brahman; Madhva says the soul is eternally distinct from God. Both cannot be the same summit. See Religious Pluralism Objection Defeater.
• "Jesus was an avatar, like Krishna." An avatar descends repeatedly and departs. Christ is a permanent union of God and man in one person, who died once for sins and rose in the same body (Luke 24:39). The categories differ. See Christ vs Other Religion-Founders.
• "Karma is just justice; Christianity lets sinners off." Christianity takes justice more seriously than karma does: sin is not waived but borne, so that God is "just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26, ASV). See Penal Substitutionary Atonement.
• "Rebirth is fairer; one life is too short to decide eternity." Many lives do not help if the self that pays is not the self that sinned and remembers nothing. And grace does not depend on how long you have; the thief on the cross had hours (Luke 23:42-43).

Reciprocal concessions (grant the small point, then collect a bigger one):

• Grant: the moral order is real and actions have consequences. Now collect: a moral order needs a moral source. A law of consequences with no lawgiver explains the bookkeeping, not why goodness is binding. See Moral Argument.
• Grant: the devotional schools teach a personal God and real grace. Now collect: then the personal is higher than the impersonal, which is the theist's whole case against Advaita, and the question becomes where grace was secured in history.
• Grant: the self longs to escape death and suffering. Now collect: the Christian hope escapes death without escaping the self. "We shall be like him" (1 John 3:2, ASV) keeps the "we."

The closing line:

Karma keeps the books. Brahman, on the non-dual reading, has no one to love. The Christian God came in person, paid the debt, and calls you by name.

In full

Hinduism (Sanatana Dharma, "the eternal way") is a family of traditions sharing a scriptural library (Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Puranas, epics) and shared concepts (karma, samsara or the round of rebirth, dharma, and moksha or liberation), but disagreeing sharply on the nature of ultimate reality. For this comparison the decisive line runs through Vedanta, the most influential philosophical tradition:

• Advaita Vedanta (Shankara). Brahman is the one reality, ultimately without attributes (nirguna). The personal Lord (Ishvara) and the world of many things are real at the level of everyday experience but not at the highest level. Liberation is knowledge that the self (atman) is Brahman: "I am Brahman" (aham brahmasmi, Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 1.4.10).
• Vishishtadvaita (Ramanuja). Brahman is a personal God with infinite good qualities, identified with Vishnu or Narayana. Souls and matter are real and form God's "body," eternally dependent on Him. Liberation is the soul's eternal, joyful communion with God, through devotion and surrender, by His grace.
• Dvaita (Madhva). God, souls and matter are eternally distinct, and Madhva lists five irreducible differences (God and soul, God and matter, soul and soul, soul and matter, matter and matter). Liberation is by Vishnu's grace and leaves the soul distinct, serving God.
• Wider bhakti. Devotional movements to Krishna (Chaitanya's Gaudiya Vaishnavism, known in the West through ISKCON), to Rama, and to Shiva (Shaiva Siddhanta, which also teaches divine grace).

The Christian doctrine of God holds that God is one being in three persons, personal, wholly good, eternal, who freely created everything else from nothing (see Creatio ex Nihilo and Trinity). He became man in Jesus of Nazareth, died for sins, rose bodily, and will raise the dead.

This page compares the Christian God with Advaita on the question of whether God is personal at all, and with the theistic schools on the question of how a personal God's grace reaches sinners. It argues that the Christian God explains more and offers more than either.

Side by side

Argument structure

Master objections to the whole argument

MO1: "Hinduism is too diverse to compare with anything."

• That is why the page compares by school. Diversity does not exempt a view from evaluation; it means each view must be evaluated on its own claims. Advaita and Dvaita make opposite claims about God and the soul, and at most one is true.

MO2: "You are reading Hinduism through Christian categories."

• The key criticisms of Advaita used here are Hindu ones. Ramanuja and Madhva argued at length that ultimate reality is personal and that the soul remains distinct from God. The Christian adds an answer to the question those schools raised: how did the Lord's grace enter history?

MO3: "Truth is beyond all concepts, so comparing doctrines misses the point."

• The claim that truth is beyond all concepts is itself a concept, offered as true. If it is beyond all concepts, it cannot be stated; if it can be stated, it is not beyond all concepts. See Self-refutation.

MO4: "Christianity is a Western religion imposing itself on India."

• Christianity began in Asia, and tradition holds that the Thomas Christians of Kerala trace their church to the apostle Thomas. Whatever the origin of that tradition, Indian Christianity is ancient. The question is not which culture a claim comes from, but whether it is true.

Premise 1, Ultimate reality is personal

Affirmative case

1. The universe contains persons who know, will and love. An impersonal ultimate makes these the highest things in reality and yet derived from something lower than themselves.
2. Advaita treats the personal Lord (Ishvara) as real at the level of ordinary experience but not at the highest level. On that view, personality, and therefore love, is not ultimate.
3. The theistic schools rejected this. Ramanuja held that Brahman is a person with infinite auspicious qualities, and Madhva that God is eternally distinct from souls. Both held that the highest reality is personal.
4. Christianity agrees and grounds it: God is personal because He is three persons in one being, and He made persons in His image: "God created man in his own image" (Genesis 1:27, ASV). See Imago Dei and Argument from Consciousness.

Anticipated objections

1. "Personality is a limitation. Brahman is beyond such limits."
2. "Ishvara is real enough for worship; Advaita does not deny devotion."

Rebuttals

1. Knowing, willing and loving are perfections, not limitations. To deny them of the ultimate is to make the ultimate less than the worshipper. The Christian God is personal without being limited: three persons in one infinite being.
2. Advaita does allow devotion as a stage on the way. But on its own terms the devotee and the Lord both dissolve at the highest level. Devotion is a ladder, not the destination. The theistic schools, and Christianity, say the relationship is the destination.

Premise 2, The self and the world are real and good

Affirmative case

1. Advaita says the experience of being a separate self is due to ignorance (avidya).
2. Ramanuja pressed the obvious question in the Sri Bhashya: where does this ignorance reside? Not in Brahman, which is pure knowledge. Not in the individual self, which on Advaita's account is itself produced by the ignorance. There is no one left to be ignorant.
3. Christianity says the world and the self are real because God made them, freely and from nothing: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Genesis 1:1, ASV), and "God saw everything that he had made, and, behold, it was very good" (Genesis 1:31, ASV). See Creatio ex Nihilo.
4. This also differs from the theistic schools, which generally hold souls and primal matter to be eternal. In Christianity nothing but God is eternal, so the existence of every soul is a gift, and the world depends on God completely.

Anticipated objections

1. "Maya does not mean the world is unreal, only that it is not ultimately real."

Rebuttals

1. Granted, and fairly stated: Advaita distinguishes levels of reality, and many Advaitins insist the world is not mere nothing. But the person you love still belongs to the lower level, and the final state has no room for that person as a distinct other. Christianity places persons at the highest level: God Himself is persons in relation.

Premise 3, Karma cannot forgive

Affirmative case

1. Karma is an impersonal law. It cannot know you, show mercy or forgive, any more than gravity can. See Karma.
2. Read as an account of suffering, karma attributes the suffering of a child born blind to deeds in a previous life. Jesus explicitly refused that reading: "Neither did this man sin, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him" (John 9:3, ASV).
3. The bhakti traditions saw the need for grace and taught it. The Gita (18.66) promises release from all sins to the one who takes refuge in the Lord alone. Later Sri Vaishnavas even debated whether the soul must cling to God like a baby monkey to its mother, or is simply carried like a kitten in its mother's mouth.
4. Christianity agrees that salvation is grace: "by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works" (Ephesians 2:8-9, ASV). See Grace vs Law and charis.
5. But Christian grace is grace that also satisfies justice. Sin is not ignored; it is borne: "he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities" (Isaiah 53:5, ASV), so that God is "just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus" (Romans 3:26, ASV). See Atonement.

Anticipated objections

1. "Bhakti grace is real grace. Why does it need a cross?"

Rebuttals

1. If the Lord simply waives sin, then sin did not matter, and the victims of it are not vindicated. If He requires it to be worked off through lifetimes, grace is reduced. The cross is the only answer offered among these traditions in which forgiveness is free to the sinner and costly to God, so that mercy and justice both stand. Rudolf Otto's 1930 study of Indian bhakti, India's Religion of Grace and Christianity Compared and Contrasted, took the parallels seriously and still argued that the two differ at their center, especially in how each understands sin and guilt.

Premise 4, Grace needs a historical act

Affirmative case

1. In the Gita (4.7-8) the Lord says he comes into being age after age, whenever righteousness declines, to protect the good and restore dharma. Avatars are repeated descents.
2. The Christian Incarnation is one event, not a recurring pattern: "now once at the end of the ages hath he been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself" (Hebrews 9:26, ASV). The Son did not appear in a human form and leave; He became man, "the Word became flesh" (John 1:14, ASV), and rose in that same body.
3. That event sits in datable history, under a named Roman governor, and is reported within living memory by multiple sources. The narratives about Krishna are found in texts commonly dated centuries later than any setting they describe. See Christ vs Other Religion-Founders.
4. Christianity stakes itself on that history: "if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins" (1 Corinthians 15:17, ASV). See Resurrection of Jesus and Minimal Facts Argument.

Anticipated objections

1. "Myth carries truth whether or not it happened."

Rebuttals

1. Myth can teach truth. But forgiveness is not a teaching; it is a transaction, and a transaction needs to have happened. A story of a payment pays nothing. The Christian claim is that the payment was made, once, on a day that can be named.

Premise 5, One life and a bodily resurrection are better than many lives

Affirmative case

1. On rebirth, the self that suffers in the next life does not remember the deeds that brought the suffering. The link between deed and person is broken at the point where justice needs it most. See Reincarnation.
2. The long road also has a hard edge: suffering in this life is read as earned, including the suffering of the poor and the disabled.
3. Christianity offers one life and one judgment: "it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment" (Hebrews 9:27, ASV), followed by the raising of the same person: "It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption" (1 Corinthians 15:42, ASV).
4. Jesus' resurrection is the pattern: "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself" (Luke 24:39, ASV).

Anticipated objections

1. "Many lives give everyone a fair chance."

Rebuttals

1. Fairness is not served by repetition if each round is earned by the last. Grace is fairer: it is offered to everyone on the same terms, now, regardless of the debt carried. "To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:43, ASV) was said to a dying thief with no time left to earn anything.

Premise 6, Love is eternal only if God is love within Himself

Affirmative case

1. Love needs a lover and a beloved. In Advaita, at the highest level there is no second. See Argument from Love.
2. In the theistic schools God does love souls, and souls love Him. But because souls are held to be eternal alongside God, God's love has always had creaturely objects, and it is less clear what love God is apart from them.
3. The Christian God is love in Himself before any creature existed: "thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world" (John 17:24, ASV). Creation adds no need; it is pure gift. See Trinity.
4. And that love was shown in action: "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (1 John 4:10, ASV).

Anticipated objections

1. "Krishna's love for his devotees is as intimate as anything in Christianity."

Rebuttals

1. The intimacy of bhakti poetry is real and should be honored. The difference is not warmth but grounding and cost. The Christian God's love is eternal within Him and was given to the point of death, in history, for enemies: "while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8, ASV).

Scripture on the God who comes once

The Bible's answer to the longing behind bhakti is a God who came in person, once:

• God became man, not a passing form. "The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us... full of grace and truth" (John 1:14, ASV); "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily" (Colossians 2:9, ASV).
• The sacrifice was once for all. "Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God" (1 Peter 3:18, ASV).
• One life, one judgment. "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this cometh judgment" (Hebrews 9:27, ASV).
• The guilt is removed, not cycled. "As far as the east is from the west, So far hath he removed our transgressions from us" (Psalm 103:12, ASV).
• The person is raised. "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live" (John 11:25, ASV).
• No caste in the new humanity. "There can be neither Jew nor Greek, there can be neither bond nor free... for ye all are one man in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28, ASV).

Live-cite kit

Scripture:

• John 1:14, "the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us" (ASV).
• Hebrews 9:26-27, once at the end of the ages; once to die, then judgment (ASV).
• John 9:3, "Neither did this man sin, nor his parents" (ASV).
• Romans 3:26, "just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus" (ASV).
• Ephesians 2:8-9, "by grace have ye been saved through faith" (ASV).
• Luke 24:39, "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself" (ASV).

Primary and scholarly:

• Chandogya Upanishad 6.8.7: tat tvam asi, "thou art that," read by Shankara as the identity of self and Brahman.
• Bhagavad Gita 2.22: the self takes new bodies as a person changes worn-out clothes.
• Bhagavad Gita 4.7-8: the Lord comes age after age to restore dharma.
• Bhagavad Gita 18.66: take refuge in the Lord alone and be released from all sins.
• Ramanuja, Sri Bhashya: the objections to Advaita's ignorance, including "whose ignorance is it?"
• Madhva: the five eternal differences between God, souls and matter.
• Rudolf Otto, India's Religion of Grace and Christianity Compared and Contrasted (1930).

Aphorisms:

• "Karma keeps the books. Only a person can forgive."
• "An avatar visits. The Word became flesh and stayed."
• "If the self is an illusion, who is being deceived?"
• "A story of a payment pays nothing."
• "Many lives, no memory. One life, one Savior."

Tactical notes

• Ask which Hinduism. A Vedanta-reading seeker, a Krishna devotee and a family that keeps festivals without much doctrine need different conversations. Ask: "Is God, for you, a person who loves you, or a reality you are part of?"
• Honor the devotional tradition. A Krishna devotee already believes in a personal God, grace and surrender. Start there; the question is not whether God is gracious but where His grace was won.
• Press "who is ignorant?" gently with Advaita. It is a Hindu objection, not a foreign one.
• Use John 9. Jesus' refusal to blame a blind man's past is one of the most pastorally powerful answers to karma.
• Distinguish avatar from Incarnation. Many hear "God became man" as one avatar among many. Explain once-for-all, permanent, and risen.
• Avoid caricature. Do not call Hinduism simple polytheism or idol worship; many Hindus will rightly reject that description of their faith.

See also

• Hinduism, the traditions, schools and doctrines in full
• Karma, the impersonal law of consequences compared with grace
• Reincarnation, rebirth compared with resurrection
• Pantheism vs the Christian God, the comparison with God-is-everything views, including Advaita
• Pantheism, the wider family of views Advaita belongs to
• World Religions Compared by Their Ultimate Ending, every worldview's ending side by side
• Christ vs Other Religion-Founders, Jesus compared with Krishna, the Buddha and others
• Incarnation, God the Son made man
• Trinity, love eternal within God
• Atonement, how the cross deals with sin
• Religious Pluralism Objection Defeater, why all paths do not lead to the same summit
• Argument from Love, why love points to a personal God