All is of God

Joy, Suffering, and the Interplay of Contrasts

Authors

  • Jon Paul Sydnor Emmanuel College

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/32682

Keywords:

theodicy, comparative theology, Vaiṣṇava nondualism, mythology, suffering

Abstract

This essay elaborates a constructive, comparative, nondual theodicy for the Christian tradition based on the Hindu Vaisnava tradition. According to the Indologist Henrich Zimmer, in Vaisnavism everything is an emanation of Visnu, therefore everything is of Visnu. All apparent opposites are inherently divine and implicitly complementary. Good and bad, joy and suffering, pain and pleasure are not conflicting dualities; they are interdependent qualities that increase one another's being. The Hindu myth of Samudra Manthan, or the Churning of the Ocean, exemplifies Vaisnava nondualism. In that story, gods and demons--seeming opposites--cooperate in order to extract the nectar of immortality from an ocean of milk. If "opposites" are interdependent, hence complementary, then they are not "opposites" but mutually amplifying contrasts. Given this phenomenology, and applying it to the Christian tradition, a benevolent God who desires full vitality for her creatures would have to create pain, suffering, darkness, and death in order to intensify their correlates. Love would demand their creation, because love would want abundant life for all. In this aesthetic theodicy, the interplay of all contrasts results from the love of a life-giving God.

Author Biography

  • Jon Paul Sydnor, Emmanuel College

    Jon Paul Sydnor teaches at Emmanuel College. He is also theologian-in-residence at Grace Community Boston.

References

Annan, Kent. 2011. After Shock: Searching for Honest Faith when Your World is Shaken. Downers Grove, IL: IVP.

Bultmann, Rudolf. 1961. “New Testament and Mythology.” In Kerygma and Myth: A Theological Debate, edited by Hans Werner Bartsch, 1–45. New York: Harper and Row.

Clooney, Francis X. (Francis Xavier). 1989. “Evil, Divine Omnipotence, and Human Freedom: Ved?nta’s Theology of Karma.” Journal of Religion 69(4): 530–548. https://doi.org/10.1086/488203

Crossan, John Dominic. 1994. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco.

Edelmann, Jonathan. 2013. “Hindu Theology as Churning the Latent.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 81(2): 427–466. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfs132

Hall, Douglas John. 1986. God and Human Suffering: An Exercise in the Theology of the Cross. Minneapolis: Augsburg.

Hick, John. 1966. Evil and the God of Love. New York: Harper & Row.

Hodgson, Peter Crafts and Robert Harlen King. 1985. Christian Theology: An Introduction to its Traditions and Tasks. Minneapolis: Fortress.

Jaspers, Karl, and Rudolf Bultmann. 1958. Myth and Christianity: An Inquiry into the Possibility of Religion without Myth. New York: Noonday.

Johnson, W. J. 1954. The Bhagavad G?t?. New York: Oxford University Press.

Doniger, Wendy. 1991. The Laws of Manu. Translated by Wendy Doniger with Brian K. Smith. New York: Penguin.

Moltmann, Jürgen. 1989. Creating a Just Future: The Politics of Peace and the Ethics of Creation in a Threatened World. Translated by John Bowden. Philadelphia: Trinity.

———. 1993a. The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. Translated by R. A. Wilson and John Bowden. Minneapolis: Fortress.

———. 1993b. The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God. Minneapolis: Fortress.

O’Flaherty, Wendy Doniger. 1976. The Origins of Evil in Hindu Mythology. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Olivelle, Patrick (trans). 2009. The Law Code of Manu. New York: Oxford University Press.

Schleiermacher, Friedrich. 2016 (1830). Christian Faith: A New Translation and Critical Edition. Translated by Terrence N. Tice, Catherine L. Kelsey, and Edwina G. Lawler. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.

Sydnor, Jon Paul. 2016. “The Dance of Emptiness: A Constructive Comparative Theology of the Social Trinity.” In Comparing Faithfully: Insights for Systematic Theological Reflection, edited by Michelle Voss Roberts, 23–45. New York: Fordham University Press.

———. 2011. Ramanuja and Schleiermacher: Toward a Constructive Comparative Theology. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock.

Wilson, Horace Hayman 1840. “Visnu Purana.” Sacred Books of the East, edited by Max Mueller. http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/vp/index.htm

Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1987. Lament for a Son. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.

Zimmer, Heinrich. 1946. Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization. Edited by Joseph Campbell. Bollingen Series VI. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400866847

Zizioulas, John. 1985. Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press.

Published

2018-03-26

Issue

Section

Articles

How to Cite

Sydnor, J. P. (2018). All is of God: Joy, Suffering, and the Interplay of Contrasts. Interreligious Studies and Intercultural Theology, 2(1), 83-104. https://doi.org/10.1558/32682