Orthodox Christianity & Hinduism: Superficial Similarities, Important Distinctions

Exploring how cosmology informs teleology in the salvific visions of Orthodoxy & Hinduism

“God is everywhere present and fills all things.” –Orthodox Trisagion Prayer “

“Everything emanates from Him, and everything is maintained by Him.  And at the end, everything enters into Him.” –A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada

“I have said, you are gods.” –Psalm 82:6

“Tat tvam asi (You are god [Brahman])” –Sanskrit Phrase

Pantheism? Panentheism? Union with God? You are gods?

Eastern Orthodox Christianity and Hinduism appear to share a kind of mystical language¹ – a language that seeks to provide a heuristic framework for man’s relationship to God, his deontology, and his ultimate ​telos​. The similarity in terminology has compelled some to equate the two religions with one another, erroneous as this may be. The following is a comparative study of how Orthodox Christians and Hindus understand salvation (union with God),² what this means for a faithful member of that tradition, and how it informs daily religious practice. Although often expressed with similar terminology, the root distinction between these two teleologies​ is reflected in their cosmologies. We will thus begin our exploration by delving into Orthodox Christian and Hindu cosmology, respectively, as a way to demonstrate their expressly different visions of man and his salvation.

Eastern Orthodox Cosmology & Teleology:

The Eastern Orthodox Church proclaims that the uncreated God created all things ​ex nihilo.³ Hidden in this one sentence are a number of important Christian dogmas and distinctions. First, that God is uncreated. This means that He existed “before” all time – that He, indeed, was “in the  beginning;”⁴ it follows that He is absolutely free,⁵ eternal,⁶ and wholly immutable.⁷ That He created​ all things⁸ implies that creation is neither eternal nor spontaneous, as St. Basil notes, “but  drew its origin from God.”⁹ This does not mean that creation proceeds from, or exists in, the Essence of God. If this were what the writer of Genesis meant to convey, he would have used the word “begotten.”¹⁰ To say that the heavens and the earth¹¹ were created is to imply the qualifier ​ex nihilo​,  for, as St. John of Damascus notes, “all things that exist are either created or uncreated.”¹² The  fundamental distinction between God and creation, therefore, should be immediately evident: God alone is uncreated and everything else is ​created​. 

While creation ex nihilo only appears once in Scripture,¹³ the Church Fathers did  much to articulate this doctrine,¹⁴ seeing its far-reaching implications. In his defense of St. Gregory of Nazianzus,¹⁵ St. Maximus the  Confessor summarized the basic connection between cosmology and teleology: “nothing that has come into being is its own proper end…[neither is it] perfect in itself…[for] that which is perfect in itself is, in some manner, uncaused.”¹⁶  He continues: it “belongs to [created] beings…to be moved toward that end which has no beginning.”¹⁷ Here, St.  Maximus then lays out a grand vision for man who, upon receiving his ​being​ from God (at his creation), is moved, by his freedom, either toward nonbeing¹⁸ or toward well-being and, eventually, eternal being.¹⁹ Accordingly, “when God brought into being natures endowed with intelligence and intellect [e.g., man/angels]²⁰ He communicated to them, in His supreme goodness, four of the divine  attributes by which He sustains, protects and preserves created things…These attributes are being, eternal being, goodness and wisdom²¹…so that what He is in His essence the creature may become by participation.”²² St. Maximus describes this participation via the uncreated logoi –  which are God’s uncreated thoughts about creation.²³ He writes that, “from all eternity, [God]  contained within himself the preexisting logoi of created beings. When, in His goodwill, He formed out of nothing the substance of the visible and invisible worlds, He did so on the basis of these logoi.”²⁴ These uncreated logoi are both contained and recapitulated in the Eternal, Divine Logos,  the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, in whose Image man is made. This allows St. Maximus to  say that, 

the Logos is many logoi and the many are One…according to the revertive,  inductive, and providential return of the many to the One—as if to an all-powerful point of origin, or to the center of a circle precontaining the  beginnings of the radii originating from it—insofar as the One gathers everything together, the many are One. We are, then, called ‘portions  of God’ because of the logoi of our being that exist eternally in God.²⁵ 

In the words of St. Hilary of Poiters, “God the Word [Logos] became flesh, that through His  Incarnation our flesh might attain to union with God the Word.”²⁶ The ​telos​ of man, then, for the Eastern Orthodox Christian, is to become a portion of God²⁷ through participation by living in accordance with his ​logos​ that preexists in God, that, having attained to the Archetype by “paint[ing] the divine likeness over the divine image,”²⁸ man might become God by grace²⁹ – which is made possible through the Incarnation of the Logos, Who, in His Person, bridges the gap  between created and uncreated. In sum, according to Orthodox Christianity the only​ Way to salvation is Jesus Christ.³⁰ 

Hindu Cosmology & Teleology:

Hindu cosmology is not so clear-cut. Instead of a single, coherent, and dogmatic cosmology, Hinduism adheres to an ever-evolving array of cosmological myths. However, we might draw from these certain underlying core beliefs from four important Hindu holy books: the ​Vedas​ (c. 1500–900 B.C.),³¹ ​Upanishads​ (c. 800–200 B.C.),³² ​Bhagavad Gita (2500–1800 B.C.,³³ and the ​Sri Bhagavatam.³⁴ ​

For the Hindu, God³⁵ alone “existed” in the beginning;³⁶ the ​Rig-Veda, the oldest hymns in the vedas, declares that, “apart from God, there was nothing whatsoever.”³⁷ It continues to say that, “darkness prevailed  everywhere before the creation of the universe.”³⁸ Within this darkness “there subsisted one glorious Being, all intelligence, who created the universe by contemplation of what he wanted to do.”³⁹ Thus,  out of desire,⁴⁰ this “glorious Being”⁴¹ created the heavens and the earth.⁴² But for the Hindu, this creation is not just a one-event; there are, instead, multiple cycles of creation and destruction, even  multiple universes.⁴³ Furthermore, another cycle exists within the present created state: that of metempsychosis, wherein a man undergoes many births and deaths according to the justice of ​Rta.⁴⁴ Interestingly, both the liberation from reincarnation and the destruction of creation (at the end of  the cycle) share similar consequences for the human person. Both lead to the same  end: the re-merging of God and creation. A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada comments that, “Everything emanates from Him, and everything is maintained by Him.  And at the end, everything enters into Him. That is the law of nature.”⁴⁵ ​On this theme, consider the following  parable:

All these rivers flow, my son, the eastern toward the east, the western  toward the west. But they really flow from the ocean and then back to the ocean, once again. Flowing, they become the ocean itself, and becoming ocean  they do not say, ‘I am this river.’ In the same way, my son, even though all  creatures have come forth from Being, they know not that they have come  forth from Being. Whatever a creature may be here, whether tiger or lion or  wolf or boar or worm or fly or gnat or mosquito they become that Being again and again. For that Being is the finest essence of all this world and in  that Being every creature has its self. That is reality. That is Atman. ​Tat tvam asi,​ Svetaketu.⁴⁶

A.L. Sherman explains that, “the Sanskrit phrase ​tat tvam asi​ means literally ‘That You are,’ i.e., Brahman (‘tat’) and Atman (‘tvam’) are identical (‘asi’).”⁴⁷

Another creation story involves “a gigantic person or Purusa. This Purusa is  sacrificed and divided until the various parts of It become the earth, the sun, the moon, the animals,  and so on. Human beings are created from this Purusa, as well.”⁴⁸ The ​Bhagavad Gita​ gives clues to this⁴⁹ as well with the following comment from Krishna to Arjuna: “there never was a time when I or you or these kings did not exist. And never shall we cease to be, hereafter.”⁵⁰ This can be seen more clearly in another ​Upanishadic ​parable: 

‘My Son, place this salt in this water and in the morning and come to me, once again.’ Svetaketu did so. In the morning his father said to him, ‘That salt that  you placed in the water last night, please bring it to me.’ Svetaketu looked for  it but could not find it, for it was totally dissolved. Then his father said to  him, ‘please take a sip from this end. How does it taste?’ ‘Salty,’ Svetaketu  replied. ‘Please take a sip from the middle. How does it taste?’ ‘Salty,’ he  replied again. ‘Take a sip from that end. How does it taste?’ ‘Salty, as well,”  he said. Then his father told him to set it aside and then sit with him.  Svetaketu said to him then, ‘It is everywhere the same.’ The father replied,  ‘Yes, my son, you do not perceive that Being here but it is truly here,  nonetheless. For that invisible essence is the finest essence of all this world, and in that invisible essence every creature has its Self. That is Reality. That  is Atman. Tat tvam asi, Svetaketu.⁵¹

Adyatma Upanishad​ proclaims that, “consciousness is Brahman;”⁵² ​Tejo-Bindu Upanishad​ goes on: “all are of the nature of Brahman. The universe is said to be  of the nature of Brahman.”⁵³ With “absorption” (or “re-absorption) back into god being the seeming end, Hinduism offers a number of schools that claim to help man achieve this end.  

Within the broader scope of these Hindu traditions, there seem to be three main traditions  which emerged out of three periods of the religion’s development over the course of 2500 years.⁵⁴  These three traditions, in turn, point to three Ways one can achieve liberation (Bhaktism, brahminism, and Brahmansim).⁵⁵ The ​Bhagavad Gita⁵⁶ was written as an attempt to “synthesize  the three traditions.”⁵⁷ The main idea behind the synthesis: each of these traditions are valid ways to achieve salvation and, in this sense, they are true. But they are not all ​equally true​ for every person.⁵⁸ Which of these Ways⁵⁹ a man should practice in order to actually achieve liberation​ ​depends on the dominant trait, or disposition, of his soul (which is called his ​guna nature​).

According to  Hinduism there are three layers of the “soul,”⁶⁰ called ​gunas,​ that surround the self, or Atman, of every person. For the purposes of this study, these three ​gunas​ may be thought of as the three powers of the soul (e.g., the intellective, the incensive, and the appetitive) although this is not a perfect comparison. Each of these ​gunas represent specific traits. For the Hindu, the innermost circle surrounding Atman, called ​Sattva guna, is understood in positive qualities like “goodness, rightness, purity, light, illumination, knowledge,  and wisdom, in a word, brightness,”⁶¹ and can be likened to the intellectual​ ​aspect of the soul. The second circle, ​Rajas guna,​ which is described negatively as “inner lusting(s) . . . hatred . . .  ambitiousness,”⁶² can be understood as a semi-conflation of the appetitive and incensive​ ​aspects of  the soul. Finally, the third circle, ​Tamas​ ​guna,​ corresponds to the ​incensive aspect​ of the soul.⁶³