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Knowledge and Love of God in Ramanuja and Aquinas Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies Volume 20 Article 6 January 2007 Knowledge and Love of God in Ramanuja and Aquinas Martin Ganeri Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs Part of the Religion Commons Recommended Citation Ganeri, Martin (2007) "Knowledge and Love of God in Ramanuja and Aquinas," Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies: Vol. 20, Article 6. Available at: https://doi.org/10.7825/2164-6279.1381 The Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies is a publication of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies. The digital version is made available by Digital Commons @ Butler University. For questions about the Journal or the Society, please contact [email protected]. For more information about Digital Commons @ Butler University, please contact [email protected]. r?, Ganeri: Knowledge and Love of God in Ramanuja and Aquinas Knowledge and Love of God in Ramanuja and Aquinas Martin Ganeri O.P. Blackfriars, Cambridge Introduction There were a number of historical and conceptual reasons that inclined Catholic A major characteristic of Catholic Christian Indologists and the leaders of the Christian intellectual encounter with Hinduism in the 20th ashrams to favour Advaita rather than century is the meeting of Thomism and the Ramanuja. During this .period Advaita was Vedanta. Thomism is the tradition .of Christian routinely depicted as the high point of Hindu thought which is based on the work of the thought, while theistic Vedantic traditions were scholastic and Dominican friar, Thomas Aquinas held to be inferior, both by European indologists (1225-74 CE) and which was the norm for and neo-Hindus, such as Swami Vivekananda Catholic theological formation for most of the (1863-1902) and Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan 20th century. A central concern in this encounter (1888-1975). Moreover, Ramanuja's theistic was to explore ways in which Vedanta could be cosmology, in which the world is depicted as the used to express the Thomist Christian account in body or mode of Brahman, was interpreted by Hindu terms. Catholic Indologists as pantheistic and therefore For the most part a preference is shown for as fundamentally incompatible with Thomism. Sankara (c.788-820 CE) and Advaita Vedanta Both of these judgements would now be rather than the theistic Vedanta of Ramanuja challenged, yet they exerted considerable (c.10 17 -1137 CE), the great teacher of Sri influence on Catholic perspectives well into the th Vaisnavism, and for Visistadvaita. This is second half of the 20 century. 2 reflected in the work of Brahmabandhab This tendency is unfortunate, for Upadhyay (1861-1907) and the 'Calcutta Ramanuja's theistic Vedimta and Thomist School' of Jesuit indologists, which included Christianity would seem immediately to have Pierre Johanns (1885-1955) and Richard de much in common, however different their Smet (1916-1998). This inclination towards traditions may often be. Not least they share a Advaita is also manifest in the spiritual and common orientation when it comes to the monastic encounter in the Catholic Christian supreme goals of human life. For Ramanuja and ashrams, perhaps best known through the for Aquinas the supreme' goal of human life, is popular and influential works of Swami the full and blissful knowledge and love of God. Abhishiktananda (Henri Ie Saux) (1910-1973), It is this goal that informs how they understand the head of Saccidananda Ashram. Both these the spiritual path that human beings should intellectual and spiritual engagements with pursue in the here and now. Advaita are also reflected in the life and work of Some recognition of this is to be found in de Smet's student and joint head of the Christa the early work of Pierre Johanns, in the Prema Seva Ashram, Sara Grant (1922-2000), collection of articles on Vedanta he produced in whose Teape lectures brought this encounter to the 1920s and 30s. 3 Johanns is quite the attention of contemporary Thomists outside appreciative of Ramanuja's account of bhakti, of India. 1 which he calls the "crown of his system," MARTIN R. GANERI O.P. is a member of the Dominican Order. He is a lecturer at Heythrop College, University of London, where he teaches Hinduism and Hindu-Christian encounter. He is currently preparing for publication his doctoral thesis, The Vedantic Cosmology of Ramanuja and its Western Parallels. Journal ofHindu-Christian Studies 20 (2007):3-9 -Published by Digital Commons @ Butler University, 2007 1 Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies, Vol. 20 [2007], Art. 6 4 Martin Ganeri Tt teaching that "the love of God is both the end undertaking this study. 8 F or Clooney reading and the means of our self-realisation.,,4 Hindu and Christian accounts side by side Moreover, Johanns does recognise common creates a "new, larger narrative that I I ground with Aquinas in that "Ramanuja, like St encompasses both traditions," as the context in I Thomas, emphasises the intellectual or rather the which theology is done, characterised as a I spiritual character of divine love," and "asserts "reading religiously across boundaries.,,9 ;1 \1 that right knowledge entails happiness and that There is then a shift here from the search Ii the knowledge of God constitutes the highest for correspondences towards an openness to LI II possible bliss.,,5 complementarily and for dialogical learning. li Johanns, however, emphases that Clooney's work provides a model for the Ramanuja's system differs from that of Aquinas following comparison of how Ramanuja and 11 in that the finite self is the body and mode of Aquinas present knowledge and love of God. I God and the final human goal is the rediscovery Apart from exploring common ground between of the nature the finite self always had, whereas the accounts it will also consider how a Thomist for Aquinas it is the elevation of the human might engage constructively with Ramanuja's l intellect and will to a supernatural dignity distinctive account of the world as the body of through divine grace. For Johanns, this God. For it is his cosmology that grounds what I undermines the value of Ramanuja's account Ramanuja has to say about the pursuit of [ and represents "the wrong metaphysical knowledge and love of God and it is reflection conception that overcasts like a shadow this on that which might creatively stimulate the I sunshiny path ofbhakti.,,6 theological imagination of a Thomist Christian. While open to Ramanuja's account, Johanns' approach is limited both by the 1. Ramanuja. evaluations he makes and by the presuppositions at work in his approach. Even apart from the For Ramanuja the blissful goal of human inaccuracy of his charge that Ramanuja's life i~ the knowledge or realisation of the true cosmology is pantheistic, his concern is purely reality of the finite self and of God, Supreme to draw on the Vedanta for materials to express Self. 10 Fundamental to this reality is that the the Thomist account. What is valued is where self is the body of God and God the Self of the the account corresponds to that of Aquinas, body, . the central cosmological paradigm of while differences are deemed problematic rather Ramanuja's thought. Ramanuja defines this than interesting. There is no sense that self-body relationship in terms of three Ramanuja's thought in its integrity might prove constitutive sub-relationships: that of the a subject of interest and creative reflection for controller and controlled (niyantr-niyamya); that Christian theologians studying it. of the supporter and supported (adhara-adheya); . Seventy years later a somewhat different and that of the principal and accessory (sesin­ approach is manifest in the work of the. Jesuit sesa).l1 It is in his account of the third Francis X. Clooney. Clooney is a major constitutive relationship of principal and representative of those who have promoted the accessory that Ramanuja articulates how discipline of comparative theology, in which knowledge and love of God are manifested and practitioners from religious traditions seek to interrelated. engage creatively with other traditions as a means to enrich their own theological reflection 1.1. All things as the accessory (sesa) of and spirituality. In his study of the Tiruvaymoli God. of the Alvar, Satakopan, Clooney describes his approach as "Indological, comparative and 7 Ramanuja defines the concept of the theological". His method is to read the Hindu accessory (sesa) more precisely in a number of account in its integrity and context, then both passages when in discussion with the ritualist explore its relation to the Christian theologian'S Mimamsaka opponent. 12 It is in fact within the own tradition and ask what difference it makes, ritual context that the notion of the accessory has what it demands of the Christian theologian after https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/jhcs/vol20/iss1/6 DOI: 10.7825/2164-6279.1381 2 r Ganeri: Knowledge and Love of God in Ramanuja and Aquinas Knowledge and Love of God 5 its earlier meaning, where certain elements are the finite self comes to know through the purely accessory or subordinate to more revealed texts and under the guidance of a important elements of ritual actions or to the teacher about its own true nature and its proper purpose for which the ritual is undertaken. 13 relationship with God. It engages in the Ramanuja compares this with the relation performance of the duties proper to it, but between a born slave and its master. In the Sri without attachment to the results they bring, and Bhasya the discussion of the relation of slave offers them in devotion to God, to please God and master to each other leads into the idea of and win his favour. For Ramanuja this level of the mutuality of the relationship, with the master bhakti should be practised throughout life, but is as well as the slave acting for the good of the nonetheless a preparation for the second level 'of other.
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