Why Do Humans Die When They See Gods?

In a recent blog, I posted about the comparison between Jesus and Krishna (in the Mahabharata) with regard to the divine power to procure their own deaths. I want to talk a little bit more about some theological/divine parallels that one can find when reading the gospels and the Ramayana.

Towards the end of the Aranya-kanda, a sadhu (ascetic) by the name of Shabari encounters Rama and his brother Lakshmana. It is revealed that Rama is an avatar to Narayana, and Shabari graciously gives him only the best fruit and nuts. After seeing him, she casts off her body and is spirited to a higher spiritual plane of existence.

Likewise, during Jesus’ presentation at the Temple as a young infant, a holy man named Simeon sees the child and proclaims:

Master, now you are dismissing your servant in peace,
according to your word; for my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the presence of all peoples,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.    – Luke 2:29-31

Or consider the words of John the Baptist when he first sees Jesus at the river Jordan.

He must increase, and I must decrease. – John 3:30

These words set the wheels in motion to a narrative that culminates in the Baptist’s death.

So far as there is a common theme of dying upon seeing the deity, there is no doubt that the New Testament removes much of the fear and trembling one experience upon seeing YHWH, which also resulted in death. The kinder, more gentler, Jesus does not scare people to death (literally) and while this feature has been diminished in the New Testament, I believe the tension is still there because the writer wants us to know that the implication of Jesus’ divine nature is just as important as that of YHWH who no man or woman can look upon. Certainly during the transfiguration nothing happens, but we should not be so quick to set about finding one-for-one correspondence parallels, especially since we do not demand that level of scrutiny even where the internal narrations of the gospels disagree on the details.

These divine appearance narratives are often termed darshana.

Darshan is a Sanskrit word used to convey a heavenly vision, one granted to those who see the true nature of the divinity in the avatar who often is not revealed except to those who are in his counsel.

We see this in the post-Resurrection appearances of Christ where Jesus tells Peter:

When you were younger, you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you  and lead you where you do not want to go. Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him “Follow me.” (John 21:18,19)

When one says that there is nothing like the Resurrection in ancient Jewish history, or that the belief of bodily resurrection is firmly established as an original Christian thought, people forget that Christianity and its development could hardly be called a faithful conveyor of true-to-detail Jewish theological awareness. Rather, its reinterpretation, as well as a combination of elements from other cultures, for example, the concepts of logos and krasis in Stoicism, fit very nicely into the Jesus as Word-of-God concept and the hypostatic union of the God-man.

Certainly, at the close of the Ramayana, the khishkanda of the monkey god Hanuman and all his warriors are raised from the dead and brought with Rama to a heavenly abode.

So why do people die when they see the deity? One possibly answer is that such instances are suppose to reveal the transcendent difference between human virtue and divine virtue. Christians call it sin. Hindus call it dharma. Skeptics perhaps call it convenient.

 

Does the "Gap Defense" Matter in Assessing the Virtue or Truthfulness of a Religious Document

This blog follows up on a post I made a few days ago. Here, I only want to look at one way to address what I call the "Gap Defense" used by Fundamentalist Christians to defend the superiority of their scriptural heritage. One may pose the question as such:

Does the claim that the gospels were written close to Jesus’ life make them more reliable than sacred writing in traditions that were not close to the life of their central figures?

Of course, one will immediately want to know what the question suggests by "close" or "reliable," for example, but let's pretend we know what they mean as much as Fundamentalists pretend to understand. One apologetic strategy used by Fundamentalists is to point to the fact that the gospels were written very close to the actual time of Jesus, not hundreds of years later. This is supposed to work in proving that time lapse or time gap contributes considerably to the veracity and integrity of the transaction that occurs between an oral tradition and its composition.

I remember reading Evidence that Matters, Josh McDowell’s magnum opus on defending the integrity of Christianity. In making this claim, he added that unlike versions of Homer’s Illiad that appear hundreds of years later, the gospels maintain their integrity. How do we know this? One reason is because we have four versions of Jesus’ life that all agree. What Fundamentalists fail to do next is to tell us what the four gospels should look like, they simply believe that what they look like in relation to one another is reasonable criteria.

For stories occurring 50 to 150 years after the death of their subject, should we expect to see a large margin of factual error, confusion over chronology, and inconsistency or omission of detail?  Never mind the fact, that in a court of law first-person witness testimony often varies (I think about the details concerning the Ferguson shooting of Michael Brown most recently), the criteria of acceptance for the gospels is largely based on an assumption that because there is so much agreement in the stories that the details of those stories don’t matter as much. This is a point that Bart Ehrman constantly makes when debating evangelical scholars. His questions often look something like this:

The gospels are nothing BUT the details they contain. So how do we know what matters? And if the details don’t matter, why does? Folks like Craig Evans, in debating Bart Ehrman, will usually go to a place that looks something like this:

There is a core unit to the story that each gospel faithfully recalls. So while  the details may differ, where they count, there is consistency.

What this means, however, is unclear. The identifiable core (the passion narrative, or to use a more technical term approximate to this idea, the  kerygma) is supposedly NOT simply a mass of details as well. It is something more…something that we can continue to latch onto without too much concern that what we are doing is creating categories of meaning. But what that more is, no one quite knows from where the authority comes to create such a valuation of meaning. All of this makes more sense when we do some comparative thinking.

In Hindu culture, the Ramayana has multiple versions. Among the two most important are Valmiki’s 4-5 BCE and the other Goswami Tulsidas’ 16^th century Ramacharitmanas version. They both agree in many places, i.e., they get the basic structure of the story, plotline, and characters correct. All have Rama chasing after Ravana in search of Sita. All have Hanuman intervening of Rama’s behalf and leaping across the ocean to reach Lanka where he confronts Ravana. Oddly enough, just like the accusations made against Mark, the earliest of the gospels where the original copy has no resurrection account, we see some of the same problem occur in the Ramayana in which the versions do not agree on the first and final chapters and so in some versions Sita is put out and exiled after her rescue and in others Rama takes her back. Hinduism is not interested in soteriological history, but dharma. And so this is about as important to Hindus as the resurrection or lack thereof is important to Christians. Three of the four gospels believe that the resurrection of Jesus is important.

Unlike the gospels which share a range of a few centuries, Ramayana versions occur between two millennia.

The point is it does not seem a particularly unique or strong argument in favor of the truth claims about Christianity’s story that because a shorter amount of time passed between Jesus’ death and the first composition to appear that Christianity’s truth is more secure.  Both the millennia separating  the versions of the Ramayana and the 50 to 150 years separating the gospels show the same compositional deficiencies and editorial flourishes.

Interestingly enough, in terms of dissimilarities between the documents it is recognized by both Christian scholars and Indologists who look at the gospels and Ramayana/Ramacharitmanas that the development gap between their documents lies in the deification of the central figure becoming more important with the latter documents.  From the standpoint of compositional queues we simply do not see much difference between the development of the gospels and certain Hindu scriptures.

Christian Gospels, the Hindu Ramayana, and the Similar Problems Faced in Validating Textual Theologies

The development of John against the backdrop of the Synoptics is a fascinating topic. We don’t know for sure if the author of John had a copy of the Synoptics, but given that so much detail is left out, we can safely assume that much of John’s material is derived from oral tradition. Nevertheless, John’s gospel answers the questions that are many times assumed in Synoptic scholarship; namely, that the working out of Jesus’ god-man nature is inchoate and incomplete, and that the tension existing in the narrative tantalizes the reader towards making his/her own assumptions.

John unequivocally provides answers, and there is no doubt that if John were an answer to the Synoptics, the author settles the issue on the question of Jesus’s nature. He is fully God in the flesh, the incarnate one.  On the popular level, Christians do not make such distinguishing discernments. We tend in our liturgy and in our regular practice to mash the documents together. The last words of Christ on the cross, though different in all four gospels, are often read as if they were all said in unison and that it was left to the writers to determine which parts were important to add to their gospels. But nevertheless, they were all seen as faithful witnesses. So be it.

In Hindu scholarship, something of the same problem occurs. When reading the Ramayana, the most popular epic in bhakti Hinduism (next to the Mahabharata), the two versions that come out of the tradition are Valmiki’s Sanskrit version and Tulsida’s Hindi version, both of which create very similar problems between scholarship and community that is reflective of the Christian experience with their own gospels. Here Valmiki’s version adds all the stuff we don’t want to see in our god. He is not entirely righteous nor lovely (think about the tradition of the angry Jesus in the Gospel of Mark). Devout Hindus, like devout Christians, do not like the versions that show chinks in the armor, and so in our worship experiences, we avoid them. The magical circle that surrounds Sati (most likely to protect her virtue) by Lakshmana in Tulsida’s version is not part of the story in Valmiki’s version. There are many examples of this, but one thing remains true. The older sacred documents usually need to be cleaned up by having questions resolved, and validated by the communities in which they are important. Most Hindu’s recognize Tulsida’s Rama (which is also the later version) like most devotional Christians mash together their gospels. As Nick Sutton reminds “one of the principal problems we face in studying the Ramayana lies in defining exactly what we mean by the Ramayana.”  All of this comes down to the lost contribution of the community, something that can only be inferred obliquely in the margins. Because the communities in which our Christian and Hindu writings have been lost, given them sacerdotal qualities is a much easier tasks then admitting ignorance, if the books are to remain a part of what we would like our religious experience to be.

Parallels in the Events Leading up to the Deaths of Jesus and Krishna

Christian missionaries claim to have a long history in India. How successful those missions are depend upon criteria that is not always obvious or agreed upon. Some Christians trace their first origins in India to a legend associated with Thomas the Apostle who arrived in the country in 52 CE. Others look to the 6th Century and more modern periods beginning in the 14th Century. There is no doubt however that the most prolific period of proselytization was during the British colonialism of the 18th and 19th centuries. Christian missionaries came to India and attempted to share Christianity with Hindus, and many Hindus remained unimpressed. More than a few commented on the similarities between their sacred texts and the Christian Bible. Even Gandhi, whose admiration for Christ is well-known, never abandoned his own traditions. In his opinion, there was nothing ground-breaking that his tradition had overlooked that needed to be recuperated in Christianity. Today, only 2.34% of the population in India claims Christianity, according to a 2001 census. This is why when Christians shared something in their Bible, such as Moses requesting to see God, a Vaishnava could reply, “Well, yes, this is similar to the story of the sadhu Uttanka who asks Krishna, the avatar of Vishnu to show him his true form (vishva-rupa), which he allows him to glimpse."

Reading the Gita in the Mahabarata this week on the death of Krishna, I was struck by some parallels between the Passion of Christ and the Vaishnava avatar. There’s a lot out there on the parallels of Jesus and Krishna, so there is nothing I'm noting here that probably hasn't been  posited somewhere else, but here are two I found interesting:

Matthew 26:36–39:

Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”

Mahabharata, Mausala-parvan, Chapter 5 

“On entering the forest, he saw Balarama sitting in a solitary place engaged in yoga practice. A white serpent with red eyes then emerged from Balarama’s mouth. Leaving the human body behind, it left that place and entered the ocean nearby where it was welcomed by the host of celestial Nagas (serpents). After his brother had departed in this way, Krishna wandered for some time in the lonely forest deeply absorbed in thought and then sat down on the bare earth. He recalled Gandhari’s curse upon him and the prophecy uttered by Durvasa when he was a guest in his house. Sitting there he withdrew his senses and absorbed his mind in yoga practice.”

Of course the garden was more likely a grove of olive trees at Gethsemane. Mel Gibson’s the Passion of the Christ has a seen in the Garden that depicts a serpent tempting Christ. I found it interesting that the serpent’s appearance in Mel’s Hollywood movie is closer to Vaishnavism than Christianity. Could Mel have been looking to Hinduism? Or maybe the way we think about things inevitably creates coincidences. Note too nahas (Hebrew for serpent) and naga (Sanskrit for serpent) are separated by one letter.

Here’s another parallel I like that combines both Luke and John.

Mausala-parvan, Chapter 5 -  The women of the palace wept as he departed, but he told them, ‘Arjuna will come here soon and he will relieve your suffering.’”

Luke 23:28  -  Jesus turned and said to them, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and your children.”

John 14:16 – And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever.

We certainly don’t want to make too big of deal about every similarity. But this does not mean that they don’t provide for the ever-increasing sense that Christianity does not even always stand apart from other religions in the details and that the only point of comparison remains in broad rather undefined glances at one another from afar. As religious peoples, time and again, we think similarly, and sometimes we approximate one another in ways that should make us take a second glance.

Which Gospel Reflects the Way you Receive Eucharist? Looking into the Practical Theology of Receiving the Body and Blood of Christ and What it Says About Your Understanding of Community

It is well known that there are three distinctive narratives on the Last Supper, and the details of each change depending on the gospel writer. The establishment of the sacrament of Eucharist with which everyone in the Christian faith is familiar with belongs to the influence of Matthew because it is Matthew who provides us with the order of taking the bread first followed by the cup of wine. Of course there are variations.

In Evangelical churches, like the handful I used to attend, the tradition was to pass out pieces of bread and shot-glass-sized plastic cups of grape juice to the congregants. The order still remained because as we stood in front of our seats (there was no procession to the front), the gospel of Matthew was read so that all individuals at the same time digested and imbibed. On the one hand, someone might argue (or I suppose the argument has been made) that in this way, the importance of the communal supper was honored because everyone ingests simultaneously based upon the queues being read from the gospel of Matthew. On the other hand, a mainstream Catholic, Episcopalian, or Protestant may suggest that this practice does NOT follow the gospel of Matthew since it is clear that the sharing taking place is not simultaneous; rather, it is the passing off one to another of the bread and wine that I might add also takes on important theological undertones. One might argue that when I pass to another, I am serving that individual, pledging myself to his sanctity and salvation just as another does to me. In this way, we are not simply a group of individuals congregating together to share in a common ritual, we are actively engaging one another as well. I’m sure there are a number of ways to color this event, but let’s leave it at that for now.

Let’s switch gears for the moment and let’s admit for the moment that the procedure of sharing one communal cup is biblical. Sometime in the 1980s when the fear of AIDS was rife in the mainline church, my own Catholic Church, like so many others, began allowing for variations on theme, especially where it concerned receiving the cup of wine. My father, who was an uber-guilty Catholic, often would not partake in the Eucharist on Sunday because he was stricken by a sense of his own unrighteousness during the week (usually as a result of not attending Confession the day before). I only realized later, and perhaps he had no idea, that his actions too were biblically based. Paul writes:

For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily, eateth and drinketh damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. (1 Corinthians 11:29)

Of course this was the King James Version, and the word unworthily was not perhaps the best translation, but nevertheless, a primarily Protestant translation found its way into my dad’s subconscious and training, helping to form his own impression of where he stood alongside his faith community at that critical moment.

The primary transformation in my Catholic congregation was that people began taking the piece of bread and instead of ingesting first, they were dipping it into the cup. My mother explained to us that this was so anyone who was sick would not pass on germs of any kind, and she mentioned AIDS as well. Nobody ever thought to remind us that the miraculous event of the Eucharist, not just in the transformation of bread and wine to the body and blood of Christ, but in its ability to grant one salvation was apparently not miraculous enough to defend us against the transmission of the common cold. I guess I understood this injunction as something a mother defending her child’s immune system would find rational. And we never thought much of it as young children.

But now, what practice was closer to the biblical narrative in Matthew was being rewritten on the grassroots level of my congregation, and in many others as well. People were dipping their bread in the wine. I guess only now I could imagine all the various theological implications of this act: lack of trust in the salvific and healing power of God (of course the Greek word sozo means the same thing), a lack of community sharing. No longer were we drinking from the same chalice to express the importance of coming together in community. We were saying “yes, we are here, but the world is also here, and so we must be cognizant of its reality as well.” Community became conditional.

Enter the Gospel of John. Most people don’t read the Last Supper account of John as one that shows us the procedural method for receiving Eucharist, and that’s primarily because most of the focus is on ferreting out Judas, the betrayer of Jesus. In one of the passing narrations in this story, Jesus announces that the person who dips the sop of his bread at the same time into the cup of wine with me is the one who will betray me. I certainly don’t think anyone intends to see themselves as Judas on Sunday morning, betraying Jesus. Yet it is the very practice of dipping our bread particle into the cup of wine in a sacrament that theologically attests to the presence of Christ with us so that we dramatically recast this event of Judas’ betrayal without knowing it.

But in fact, maybe we do know it. Maybe in changing the parameters of the sacrament because of fear of catching cold expresses a theologically quality that is closer the very thing the Eucharist is meant to dispel: A fear of commitment to Christ, a double-mindedness about Christ that keeps us firmly in the world. I guess these are all ways we can theologically express our actions. Or we may have simply lost all theologically importance and understanding in receiving the sacrament and now we do so without the slightest thought of what we are doing.

God forbid a priest or pastor demand that everyone receive the bread and wine in the same manner! Imagine the possible lawsuit had someone contracted the flu with a weakened immune system, died as a result, and could somehow prove it was his or her receiving the cup of Christ that was to blame! It’s a scary position for the church to be put in, especially since not everyone at the table will always be committed to the community in which he finds himself.  But one might simply add that if community should ideally be going all in, it is up the church to demand it as well, since the church is the gathering force. Yet, how many times do you recall in your Christian faith seeing someone publically rebuked in front of the church for his sin? I’ve seen apologies, but the rebuke which is meant to make others fear is simply a passage from Pauline Christianity ignored in practical situations, though I’m sure there’s a lot of sinning that still goes on in the segment of the human race that identifies with Christianity.

And let’s not forget that while we call it “receiving communion,” the communion people think of most is how they are receiving Christ in the isolation of their own moment. I’m sure for many, their minds go to Christ alone, which is a sad commentary.

When I pledged for a fraternity, the ritualistic language spoken and the congratulations received were just as, if not, more memorable than the receiving of Communion (which always seemed a misnomer). I often romanticized how the blood oaths taken in gangs or the mafia code of Omerta stressed the importance of community and showed how important community is to the survival of the group. It’s not just about showing up, it’s about looking around at the people around you, and doing something different with the way you conceive of what’s going on in the moment. Too much of the focus on the gospel last supper narratives is on Jesus and not enough on those gathered around him. One can minimize the theological impact of the possible historical account and say that not one of them, including Jesus, had any idea of what was coming. But the gospels are not historical documents (though they certainly are sprinkled with historical awareness). Their primary theological fusion means that when we read them we need to take account of where the author sees us in the action. Are we simply observers, or are we participants? And if participants, what role do we have in the last supper? Are we Jesus? Are we Judas? Are we the other ones clamoring for details? Or are we something different entirely, those who see the Passion in the Last Supper and given our omniscience as readers, understand the idea of community all the more differently when we do?

I certainly think dipping the bread in the wine can be a spiritual act. As a Catholic, the overwhelming focus was on the sins of the week that were leading me up through that line to the priest at the other end who would dispense to me the bread and wine. I was blending in with the community of sinners while my father whose moment was built upon the reading of another verse, was bowing out, both of us honoring interpretations of community. It was always the most embarrassing action I remember as a child, yet perhaps the bravest as well when my father did this.

And what of my actions? Today I dip my bread in the wine. Perhaps it is the ingrained fear of AIDS now long gone and transformed to sublimations of other diseases that are always threatening on the periphery of imagination. I would certainly prefer to theologize the moment, to believe that we are all Judas at that moment, for we all have and do betray Christ, and so we should all be dipping our bread into the cup of his blood. But when I see others confidently sip from the cup, I know that even in community we all stand in relation to Christ (and in relation to each other differently) – some who drink, perhaps drink with the eschatological reminder that one day they will drink and eat in heaven, as Christ reminded his disciples in the gospel of John. Others, still in the pre-Easter fog of their own stories, dip their bread into the confusion of the blood, and perhaps remain closer to the attitude of what the disciples could have been feeling. And finally there are those like my father, who saw both the Post-Easter Jesus in all his glory, and kept himself at bay.

 

Do All Dogs Go to Heaven?

When I was younger, an animated movie teased the question: Do All Dogs Go to Heaven? It was a sweet story, but hard to rectify with the hard religious truth of my upbringing. If not even all humans go to heaven, those who are the crown of God’s creation, who cares much for the salvation of a filthy dog?

The Mahabharata seems to resemble those sentiments. In one of the more poignant stories, Yudhishthira refuses to take flight to heaven unless he is accompanied by a dog which has latched onto him. Just as it was an insult to be called a dog in Jewish culture (Jesus warns his followers not to give what is holy to dogs), so it appears Indra, king of the Hindu gods, feels much the same way.

In the Mahaprasthanika-parvan, he scolds Yudhishthira: “Give up this dog, a filthy impure creature!” But the protagonist resists, and his stubbornness to honor the dharma comes with reward at the end. The dog vanishes and where it was appears Dharma as a god, who commends Yudhishthira on his great compassion and calls him greatest in the kingdom of heaven. In reading this, I heard Job’s echoing words:

“Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him; I will surely defend my ways to his face.” Job 13:15

Of course, Job proved right. When God rebukes Job, he does so not by appealing to a covenant (Deuteronomic theology - people get what they deserve), but rather to creation, because it is precisely within creation where that wisdom is accessible (the book of Job being a form of Jewish wisdom literature).  God never reveals the meaning of his suffering  (because suffering at the hands of a deity is unjust), but appeals to nature—the very place where Job finds the origin of wisdom.

The dog, however, is not redeemed in any manner. One wonders if it had been taken up, whether it would have been redeemed without any formal doctrinal acceptance of God or creedal confession because such matters are beyond animals. But it reminds us how the gods throughout all religions have taken special care and interest in that which is beneath them. It takes Yudhishthira to remind Indra, just as it took Abram to remind YHWH in Sodom and Gomorrah that some filth is worth saving.

Thomas Aquinas liked to think that animals had souls, and recently the Roman Catholic pope has come out and proclaimed that we will find our beloved pets in heaven. But the compassion towards animals begins most directly in the Vedic Eastern tradition thousands of years ago, the importance of which can even be seen in the Buddha’s life, where in one anecdotal story, he offers himself to a starving lioness and her cubs as food before returning to Tusita.

Seven Observations in Debating Fundamentalists on Pluralism

I had the opportunity yesterday to engage an evangelical-fundamentalist Christian on the topic of the blog I posted on Yudhishthira and Jesus. I was immediately reminded of a number of things that I thought I’d share.

First and most importantly, I acknowledge that debating is a part of academia. I do it when I’m answering questions in class or on papers at conferences. But in an uncontrolled forum like Facebook, every argument has an opportunity to become derailed rather quickly. There are usually no moderators. And it almost always turns into a 2 on 1 or even 4 on 1 match. This is why I don’t like Facebook debating, and all of this has happened to me as well. I’ve learned from experience, usually the hard way, that on a public forum where others are watching, the debaters are aware of the public scrutiny they are under and the act of saving face can become more important than the debate.

Debating a seminary-trained evangelical-fundamentalist on the reality of pluralism presents rare opportunities but potential problems as well. Here is a list of seven observations from yesterday’s exchange.

1.       Most evangelical-fundamentalists, despite their training in logic or philosophy, do not understand pluralism, much less other world religions, which I contend in the former, is a much more rigorous discipline than its fundamentalist caricature portrays. Pluralism is largely an inchoate academic discipline (not even recognized by most universities or seminaries to engender the title "discipline") and often characterized therefore as a threat by conservatives. Because it is continually developing, it remains a moving target. Folks like Francis Clooney, S. Mark Helm, and Paul Knitter have continued to process its meaning. This became real to me when, after being shown a one-sentence definition of pluralism, I was asked to affirm or deny this definition, to which I replied, it’s a broad topic. In response, I asked this individual to define Christianity the same way. No response.

What I can say is that someone interested in pluralism or in refuting pluralism should not only understand his tradition, but the traditions of other religions. After all, pluralism is the study of religions. To avoid talking into the vacuum, those evangelical-fundamentalists who are unfamiliar with alien religions will almost always deflect to Christianity. So long as the subject of Christianity is in some way in the discussion, there is an open-door opportunity for them to say something.

2.       Evangelical-fundamentalist thinkers will attempt to focus their salvo on rhetoric. One may think this level of sophistication an oddity for academically trained fundamentalists, but oftentimes it’s a brilliant strategy. If he can identify a rhetorical structure in your argument his focus becomes on how you are saying something, not what you are saying. No doubt this is important sometimes, for example, in identifying “logical fallacies,” but other times, it is nothing more than a distraction, meant to stall any real opportunity for engagement. So when an evangelical-fundamentalist tells you that you’ve committed a nonsequiter, for example, what could have been done instead would have been to have asked for more clarification. I ran into this rhetorical game yesterday where I was accused of using abductive reasoning because I used the phrase “and so on.” My point was simply not to belabor my point, that there was much more I could list but for fear of the conversation getting away from us (as it eventually did) I tried to reign it in.

 

3.       Evangelicals of the Fundamentalist stripe know the negative connotations that come with that title and so they avoid it by suggesting that Fundamentalist does not mean today what it meant in yesteryear, and they like to identify themselves as classical Fundamentalists. It reminds me of those identified as Existentialists in the last century, most of whom denied the title.  In fact, Fundamentalism is not that old. George Marsden, an expert in religious movements in American, identifies Fundamentalism as a movement that came into being at the Niagara Conference at the turn of the last century where biblical inerrancy became an issue. My opponent, despite creating the perception that there were two Fundamentalisms, admitted later that he followed the Chicago Conference, another turn of the century venture to defend inerrancy. Not much has changed in Fundamentalism between then and now, especially if one simply looks at the platforms and ideologies.

4.       This was a first for me:  This particular Fundamentalist who claimed that all apparent biblical inconsistencies can be resolved claimed that the biblical narratives are not subject to the same kind of comparative scrutiny that a pluralist would make when attempting to demonstrate similarities in cross-religious comparisons because the former rise to a different level. My blog posting and project in particular, depends largely, on looking for continuities both on a microcosmic (within Christianity and its various documents) and macrocosmic (at different religions) level.  If by this he meant there is a different standard applied to microcosmic, or what biblical scholars call intertextuality, then I am unaware of this standard and he continued to avoid answering the question. As far as I’m concerned, this was the most crucial part of my blog, and the thing he wanted to talk least about.

5.       Fundamentalists know they are under attack for their rigid appeals to biblical inerrancy. If this foundation is eroded, the natural conclusion is that the God who spoke to them did not provide for any special call to salvation. Their appeal to biblical inerrancy is indefensible because they appeal to an imaginary set of pure and unadulterated New Testament books that provided the foundation for all the copies we have today, though each one is corrupted. But one might consider the supernaturalistic explanation of this wild appeal by asking a supernatural question: If God had the power to inspire the books of the Bible, why did he not have the power to preserve them? Was it not important to Him? To echo Bart Erhmann, in the years I’ve been doing this, I’ve never heard a good response to this question, and as anticipated, my opponent also ignored the question.

Because Evangelical-Fundamentalists believe Christianity is the lens through which one sees the religious world, challenging them on the efficiency of their scriptures must be tantamount to any conversation. Do not let them off the hook, though they will likely ignore this challenge and instead want to focus on rhetorical arguments, even while the internal consistency of the scriptures upon which their religion is based crumbles. Not once in the debate yesterday did my opponent wish to address the problems of a divine revelation called Christianity that is riddled with problems in its own texts.

6.       Fundamentalists will often reject the idea that community is the source of interpretation. It’s a rather silly argument, because on the one hand fundamentalists congregate with people of their own caliber and background. This is not necessarily true for a pluralist who spends his time with people of various religious backgrounds and is no doubt influenced by those interactions. A fundamentalist MUST reject community and claim he is not a product of his environment, otherwise, he runs the risk of diminishing the importance of divine revelation, that there is a way of truth given to him specifically and individually and that he’s not simply inheriting some doctrines or codes of conduct passed down by his congregations. Most often the emphasis on individuality rather than community also shows where his soteriological allegiances are. In this case, I could tell my debate partner came out of a Protestant understanding (though again, he would never admit being shaped by his community). So when he brings out interpretations of the bible to you, it is a tacit acknowledgement that all of this comes from divine inspiration. Again, the problems here are legion, but the logical inconsistent of debating points in the same way the group of people you keep company with, down to particular emphases, while claiming it all comes from God, means that where there is dissent on a particular doctrine or biblical interpretation, one can only assume that 1) somebody fell out of step and is in disobedience to the spirit of God or 2) God does not use divine inspiration to inspire people to read the scriptures. But how does anyone prove that a person is in disobedience to God? Well, doing what every social group does, taking up sides, bolstering the majority against a minority, and then claiming their interpretation is from God! While every political and social group in the world does this, for fundamentalists, the act is always superintended by God. It’s an argument that is indefensible, unquantifiable, and immeasurable. But yet, they’ll refuse to acknowledge their own part in any interpretation and lay that burden on God. Thus, by default, they should be laying the blame on God for dissent as well, but then this would violate another of their doctrines, the goodness of God. So doctrine runs into doctrine runs into doctrine…and so on!

7.       Most importantly, do not engage in silly Facebook debates with fundamentalists. They never resolve anything, there’s always too much to say, and too little space to do it in. If you get pulled into something like it, you can usually tell in the first couple of exchanges if the person is interested in listening or debating to make his point. And if you suspect you've come to a place where you are not listening, then “know thyself” and gracefully bow out.

Is Jesus a Type of Yudhishthira? A Reflection on Dying Heroes, Messiahs, and the Overcoming of Sin

In the last parva (section 18) of the Mahabharata, the hero-king Yudhishthira,  whose actions trend towards the accomplishment of pure virtue, becomes the likely “hero” of the story as he is the only one who is worthy of deathlessness.

According to Dr. Nick Sutton:

Let us remember that at the end he is the only character who is carried up to the gods without first tasting death and that this is due entirely to his undeviating adherence to virtue. Moreover, at the end of the Mahabharata we are told that the only wicked deed Yudhishthira ever performed in his life was telling the lie that led to the death of Drona—and even there he was following the advice of Krishna, who is God!

Of course, it is this connection with deathlessness that is the result of overcoming sin. Jesus dies not because of his own sin but in substitution for ours!

 

Subsequently, it is Yudhishthira’s absolute adherence to sanatana dharma (the highest form of dharma virtue) that makes virtue more important than “duty”, i.e., loyalty to family. And, here too, we think of Jesus’ words:

Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. (Matthew 10:37)

That said, Jesus and Yudhishthira share a form of virtue that trumps loyalty.

But one might object that this saying of Jesus is qualitatively different than the sanatana dharma followed by Yudhishthira. In doing so, however, I think we rob Peter to pay Paul. Lay theologians revel in the continuity of scripture. And I might drive home the problem with this understanding  in the following way:

 

In Matthew 10:37, are we assuming  that Jesus was talking about his physical being or his teaching? It's an important question, because loving the historical Jesus is much different than loving what he comes to stand for, and its a question I believe more thoughtful Christians would identify as love for "his teaching or way" because he immediately follows the verse with a verse about carrying one's cross, emphasizing "teaching" not "person." Suffering (dukkha) is a continual theme in the disciple's orientation to God in Christianity. BUT, when confronted with similar logic on the question of Jesus being "the way, truth, and life, so that no man comes to the father but by him" (John 14:6),  Christians  assume we're now talking about his divinity." Why? Because in the more developed theology of the gospel of John, the writer had time to develop a theology of the incarnation, years after Matthew's gospel was written. Jesus becomes the Word, thus when he says I am the way, he really does mean himself! Think about it!

 

Of course, there is not a direct parallel to the heroism of the cross (call it martyrdom or sacrifice, if you will). While it is true that the Yudhishthira story, where ascension allows him to avoid death, does not replicate the chronology in the biblical story of Jesus’ passion precisely, because Jesus’ ascension comes in the post-Resurrection context, we are nevertheless struck by a deep compatibility that rises past the details.

Christian apologists work overtime to demand that parallels are only approximations, and because they lack in some detail, they cannot be squared up with the Jesus story. One of the better known attempts that apologists love to skewer comes in the story of the Egyptian Horus. Yet, should we grant that the two stories, certainly developed in isolation, do not possess a shared undercurrent of theological intrigue? Why is it that sin is related to death, so that by implication, deathless features into some form of virtue? From a socio-religious point-of-view, parallels seem important, except when it comes to theology, where they are often trammeled by those often personally invested in their own system of doctrines.

The work of a Paul Knitter, John Hick, or even a Marcus Borg (whose work in Biblical theology was much more influential to scholar’s than his work in comparative theology) shows that despite the lip service these men received, resolving the divine oracles  of one's own intimate faith to the influence of other religions is a hard edge, not easily traversed. On the other hand, because there is little in the way of scientific criteria dealing with cross-religious influence, the mission remains an open one. A person may say that the details don’t all fit neatly, but that would be an unfair standard, especially for one who believes that the gospels all stand in the same tradition of Christianity despite their legitimate differences (e.g., take the narratives on the tomb of Jesus). Often then, the criteria are much more unforgiving when in comes to East-West religious relationships. Lest we forget, the sharing done by Matthew and Luke is based on the existence of a hypothetical document (known as the Quelle "Q" Source), the fact that absence of evidence is deduced by what is there, remains a significant way of doing scholarship.

Ancient Ascension Narratives and their Chariots of Fire

As I was reading a summary of the Mahabharata today, I was struck by a story from the Maha-parasthanika-parvan, which tells of Yudhishthira, a king of the Pandavas, whose last days are very similar to the prophet Elijah. As he sets out for the Himalayas, he is greeted by a charioteer of God. He is given the opportunity to enter the chariot and leave for the celestial sphere; however, because he has drawn companionship with a dog who has followed him, he refuses. This is supposed to demonstrate his unfathomable virtue.

The use of chariots was interesting, because  like Apollo who draws the sun across the sky in his chariot, as the sun god, chariots seem to be the preferred method of motion by the gods of old. Elijah as we know from the Bible is taken up in a chariot as his understudy Elisha watches.

“And as they still went on and talked, behold, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them. And Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And Elisha saw it and he cried, “My father, my father! the chariots of Israel and its horsemen!” And he saw him no more.” (2 Kings 2:11-12.)

Elisha had a thing for chariots. So too, in 2 Kings 6:17 he has a vision in which the chariots of the Lord appears in flames of fire to defeat the enemies of YHWH.

So here's a few questions:

Can we blame Constantine for mistaken Christ and his YHWH for the sun god?

Can we blame ancient astronaut theorists for assuming the chariots to be UFOs?

Can we blame social anthropologists for assuming the chariots imagery for the gods because of their familiarity and use within those societies?

Perhaps the only thing we can blame is our ignorance when we fail to see these connections that span Hebrew, Greek, Roman, Persian, and Indian cultures to name a few.