God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism

Ankur Barua

In recent decades philosophers of religion espousing traditional Christian

viewpoints of divine action as well as those who have offered substantial
revisions of these doctrinal positions have grappled with the question of
whether, and in what sense, God can be said to be “embodied” in the
world. Thinkers with or without specific Christian commitments from
different standpoints, such conceptualized as the grand monarch time-
lessly exercising unilateral power over creation, but that a more imma-
nental understanding of divine action can be developed by viewing the
world as in fact the body of a temporal God. Setting themselves against
the “perfect being” theology of Augustine, Aquinas and Anselm, with its
specific formulations of maximal power, aseity, simplicity, necessity and
timelessness, they have instead developed various patterns of “panen-
theism” which they argue can highlight the real communication and
interrelationships between God and the world. Along with emphasizing
God’s intimate presence in all finite entities, they believe that this notion
of the embodied divine can help to dissolve various paradoxes and
perplexities that have beset Christian orthodoxy, such as the compati-
bility or otherwise of human free will with divine omniscience, petition-
ary prayer with divine eternity, the Biblical account of Jesus’ suffering
with divine impassibility, and so on. Mainstream Christian thinkers, who
are otherwise sensitive to the charge that God’s relation to the world has
sometimes been viewed in extrinsic terms as the distant deity or the
cosmic clockmaker, have nevertheless rejected this notion of God’s
embodiment in the world, their primary charge often being that it dilutes

International Journal of Hindu Studies 14, 1–3: 1–30

1: 1–30
© 2010 Springer
DOI 10.1007/s11407-010-9086-z
2 / Ankur Barua

the divine sovereignty and transcendence. Therefore, the proper concep-

tualization of God’s transcendence, which in turn is ultimately rooted in
an attempt to answer the question, “What makes God God?,” remains
one of the focal points of contention between philosophers and theolo-
gians who would place themselves at varying distances from main-
line orthodoxy such as Merold Westphal (1996), Paul Helm (1994),
Keith Ward (2001), Arthur Peacocke (1979), Philip Clayton (1997), and
others. Many of these discussions revolve around the question of God’s
embodiment in the world, as can be seen from a survey of the ongoing
exchanges between defenders of traditional positions such as William
Alston (who maintains the doctrines of creation ex nihilo and omnis-
cience with respect to future contingents) and Charles Hartshorne (who is
associated with a neoclassical dipolar theism according to which the
world is the body of God) or between feminist theologians such as
Sallie McFague and Grace M. Janzten (who offer non-hierarchical
conceptions of the world as the inspirited body which God indwells
without becoming exhausted by it) and opponents of these conceptualiza-
tions of divine embodiment such as John Polkinghorne (who argue that
the panentheistic God would be subject to cosmological transformations
and not maintain causal independence from the world) (Alston 1984;
McFague 1993; Jantzen 1984; Polkinghorne 1989).

Theism and Panentheism on the “Body”

One of the reasons why the Christian tradition has historically been
averse to the notion that the world itself is the body of God is that the
crucial term in this context—namely “body”—has usually been under-
stood, almost analytically, in terms of spatial extension. A physical body
is contingent, moveable, and has a specific spatio-temporal location, but
since God is conceived of (at least in classical theism) as impassible,
atemporal, and outside the spatio-temporal matrix God cannot have or be
a body. This understanding of a body emerges early in St Augustine who
understands by the term “body” (corpus) any entity that is characterized
by spatial extendedness, measurability, and divisibility and who, during
his Manichaean phase, thought of God as something corporeal that
was either infused into the world or diffused beyond it through infinite
space (Augustine, Confessions 7.1.1, 3.7.12, 5.10.19; Holscher 1986).
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 3

Significantly, he even refers, in his mature City of God, to the notion that
God is the soul of the world (mundi animus Deus est) and that the world
is the body (corpus) of that soul, so that the whole is one living being
consisting of body and soul (Augustine, De Civitate Dei 4.12). This, St
Augustine claims, leads to the impious consequences that when we
trample on anything we trample on a part (pars) of God and that when
we kill an animal we slaughter a part of God. Such a corporeal under-
standing of the divine nature, with the constituents of the world as
physical segments broken off from it, would seem to be one version of
“pantheism” in which all finite realities are ultimately in all respects
inseparable from, and self-expressions of, an all-inclusive totality or
unity. While it is difficult to reduce to a shorthand formula the different
types of thought that have been regarded as “pantheistic” down the ages,
what is common to “pantheists” such as Plotinus, Lao Tsu, Benedict de
Spinoza, F.W.J. Schelling, G.W.F. Hegel, and others is their denial of a
personal God who is ontologically distinct from the world, influences the
course of its history, and produces but remains independent of it in all
respects (Quiles 1975; Levine 1994). This rejection sets pantheists not
only against classical theists but also panentheists who hold that finite
individuals, who are autonomous agents with libertarian freedom of
choice, are “included” in God who empowers these individuals without
any externality or mediation. That is, God, who is usually conceived as
temporal, is not ultimately reducible to the world or exhausted by it, as
in pantheism, but surpasses it by remaining independent of it in some
respects and not being as utterly distinct from it as the timeless, impas-
sible creator of the classical theists (Nikkel 1995: 1–5). Panentheism,
therefore, affirms that the relationships between God and the world are
characterized by inclusion and distinction, such that, in the words of
J.A.T. Robinson, there is a “co-inherence between God and the universe
which overcomes the duality without denying the diversity” (1967: 84).
Some of the concerns that have been raised in current discussions over
whether the God who is connected to the world as the divine body is too
mired in empirical finitude to be able to exercise directive agential power
over it have resonances in the Vedåntic context of Råmånuja for whom
the phenomenal world literally is the body of Brahman. As we shall note
in greater detail, contemporary philosophers who have formulated con-
ceptions of the embodied God have often built on an analogy between
4 / Ankur Barua

human and divine action, and, by utilizing the specific resources of his
own Upani‚adic commentarial tradition, Råmånuja developed a some-
what parallel homology between the relation of the finite self to its
physical body and the relation of Brahman to the self-body complex.
Råmånuja was able, in part through his distinctive use of the term “body”
(çarra), to elaborate a theology according to which Brahman is inti-
mately present in the world not by being spatially extended through it but
by sustaining every finite object over which Brahman retains a causal
asymmetry and independence in certain crucial respects. In the process
of investigating these parallels, we shall also discuss certain criticisms
of panentheism as a conception of God’s relation to the world that is
distinct from both classical theism and pantheism and seek to respond to
these from within the contours of Råmånuja’s understanding of Brahman
as the immanent sustainer of the world. More specifically, our discussion
of Råmånuja’s theology of divine embodiment will revolve around his
distinctive understanding of the world as the “body” of Brahman and
his simultaneous affirmation that Brahman remains untouched by the
empirical negativities of the finite world and that Brahman sustains at
every moment of its existence the substantivally real world as the divine
“body.” As we shall note, Råmånuja develops a distinctive type of
panentheism in which the world depends for its existence on Brahman
and, in a manner we shall investigate, is a “part” of Brahman, but it is
nevertheless ontologically distinct from Brahman who remains sovereign
over it.

Contemporary Forms of Panentheism

Before we sketch the outlines of Råmånuja’s conception of the Lord who

is intimately related to the world in some respects and yet retains His
essential sovereignty over it at all times, let us examine some recent
formulations of the notion that the world is the divine “body.” In this
section, we shall discuss certain panentheistic conceptions of the deity
which have been elaborated by feminist theologians who have charged
that Christian orthodoxy has generally failed to take bodily experiences
seriously and philosophers who have developed an understanding of
divine agency in the world through the analogy of human agency. We
shall then review some of the criticisms that have been leveled against
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 5

the conception of the supreme reality as embodied in the world and

investigate what sort of responses are available to them from Råmånuja’s
theological standpoint.
An important theme that recurs in feminist thinking about the world as
God’s body is the need to overcome the various sorts of dualism that are
allegedly associated with Platonist motifs and instead to emphasize the
emergence of embodied beings through a series of complex dynamic
processes into a multileveled reality whose dimensions are closely inter-
related and interdependent. Sallie McFague believes that though the
model of the world as the inspirited body of God is pantheistic, when it is
combined with an agential model, which depicts God as realizing the
divine purposes in human history in somewhat the same way that the
human self seeks to fulfill its purposes and intentions through bodily
actions, it results in a panentheistic view of God’s relation to the world.
This joint model highlights both the asymmetry and the interrelationships
between God and the world, the body of God: all embodied beings are
dependent on God, the indwelling spirit, for their very existence, but God
is not drawn into such a relation of dependency (McFague 1993: 149).
The whole of reality is seen through the perspective of the body, first the
human body, which is not a dispensable appendage to a spiritual essence,
but which not only gives us our distinctive individualities but is also
“erotic in the most profound sense, for it is what attracts or repels” (16).
Second, extending this primary sense to all matter in the universe, God
herself will be conceptualized not as standing over and against it as a
King or a Lord, nor through the negative abstractions of the via negativa,
but as indwelling it in a most intimate manner. Therefore, the entire
world is God’s body, the divine milieu in whom we live and move and
have our being, the place where God is available to us without however
becoming exhausted by it (156).
Grace M. Jantzen proposes a similar theological model of divine embodi-
ment in which God “transcends” the universe not as an incorporeal
substance that hovers above it but by producing it as God’s self-expres-
sion and maintaining it at every moment in its continued existence. She
writes that one of the reasons for the aversion within (most) Christian
traditions to the notion that God could be embodied is the predominance
of various Christianized forms of Platonism based on the ontological
hierarchy of the immaterial and unchanging Forms, corruptible physical
6 / Ankur Barua

bodies as formed matter, and matter itself as unformed and unintelligible

(Jantzen 1984: 33–34). However, a proper understanding of the non-
dualistic relationship between human personhood and embodiment may
help us to grasp the conception of the world as the body which God
indwells without being exhausted into it. Human persons can be said
to “transcend” their bodies in that all their experiences and emotions,
though embodied, cannot be completely described in reductionist terms
merely as an aggregate or epiphenomenon of physiological structures or
biochemical processes. In a similar manner, while God does not stand
over the universe as a great Monarch but is intimately related to it in the
processes of knowing and controlling it, God does transcend the world in
the sense that the ultimate reality of God cannot be encapsulated in any
mechanistic terms (122–30). At the same time, while seeking to establish
that transcendence and embodiment are not incompatible, Jantzen high-
lights the perfections of divine embodiment in the world. Whereas the
control that human being can exercise over the physical aspects of their
embodied existence is limited (they may lose a pound in weight but
cannot grow an extra hand), God is more perfectly embodied in that God
can choose the manner in which God wishes to be embodied in the
precise configurations of the universe. The structural patterns of the
universe are maintained by the operation of the laws of nature which in
turn are sustained by God’s will, and though God is not restricted by
these uniformities God freely chooses to (ordinarily) uphold them.
Second, because the whole world is God’s body, all divine activity is
properly understood in terms of “basic actions,” that is, direct and imme-
diate actions that God performs without having to take recourse to any
intervening mechanisms or media (88).
Jantzen’s argument that neither human nor divine personhood can
be exhaustibly reduced to physical terms rejects theories of the mind-
body relationship which hold that conscious states are properties of an
incorporeal substance or that they are ultimately identical with brain
processes. A similar attempt to steer a middle course between Cartesian
dualist and reductive materialist accounts of human personhood has
been made by Philip Clayton in trying to develop an understanding of
divine agency in the world on the analogy of human agency. Clayton
first rejects dualist theories of personhood according to which mental
and physical substances belong to two distinct realms, and in favor of
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 7

theories which emphasize the close interpenetration of our mental and

physical activities, he points out that exegetical researches have shown
that the Old and the New Testaments too view the human person in
holistic terms. Second, he refers to the highly contentious issue of
whether consciousness can be exhaustively described in the language of
neurophysiology and affirms that Christian theologians must here part
company with the “eliminative materialists” who claim that mental
predicates can be reduced by explanation to the material substratum
of the brain. He accepts the theory of “emergentist supervenience”
according to which higher-order mental properties, which arise out of
the physiological structures of the brain and possess genuine causal
powers on the latter, cannot be fully described in terms of neurological
events on which they supervene. However, this understanding of mental
phenomena as emerging from its neurobiological base points in fact to an
important disanalogy between human and divine agency, for the divine
life is not merely a set of properties that have emerged out of the world.
Clayton writes that the crucial issue in this context is whether God
essentially depends on the universe or whether God is relatively inde-
pendent of it, and this is a theological question that cannot be conclu-
sively settled on the basis of scientific results alone which underdeter-
mine one’s metaphysical view. Theologians will here supplement these
empirical debates by postulating that God exists as an agent ontologically
prior to the created world and that the divine attributes such as eternality
and moral perfection cannot be inferred from physical reality. In short,
then, we have a panentheistic account of divine agency in the world on
the analogy of human agency: just as minds and mental properties can
exercise causal influence over physical reality, so too the transcendent
God is causally related to the entire world, the divine body (Clayton
1997: 258–60).

Criticisms of Panentheism

These recent developments of the conception of God as related to, and

intimately present in, the world as the divine body have been sharply
criticized on a number of grounds as not adequately emphasizing the
divine transcendence. Given Råmånuja’s doctrine of the world as the
Body that the Lord gives being to and sustains at every moment of its
8 / Ankur Barua

existence, which we shall explore shortly, the criticisms that have been
raised against contemporary forms of panentheism would seem applica-
ble to Råmånuja’s theology as well. Therefore, examining them will help
us to highlight better in subsequent sections how Råmånuja’s conception
of divine embodiment can be a pointer to an understanding of divine
agential power over the world that is inspirited by the divine reality.
(a) Regarding the view that God has some particular body, we may
start with the objections that the experience of human embodiment is
associated with manifold epistemic and moral defects and that to be
embodied is to be subject to the ravages of death, decay, and disease.
However, as William J. Wainwright (1987: 72–87) points out, such
earthly ills are not necessarily connected with embodiment: some late
Platonists believed in celestial or astral bodies, and as for Augustine
himself, the tribulations of our mortal life are a consequence of the Fall.
(b) Second, on the Augustinian-Cartesian understanding of “body” as a
spatially extended entity, the claim that the world is the body of God
would imply that the universe as a whole is some sort of a physical
object (Wainwright 1987: 81). In response to the criticism by philoso-
phers such as Kai Nielsen (1971) and Antony Flew (1966) that the notion
of incorporeal agency is not intelligible, for if God does not have a
physical body God cannot be said to act in the world, it has sometimes
been proposed that the collection of spatio-temporally identifiable events
be regarded as the divine body (Hudson 1974: 166–76). However, the
aggregate of physical realities such as planets, solar systems, and
galaxies is not usually regarded as constituting one body, and it would
therefore seem that the analogy between the human mind or will govern-
ing the parts of its (physiological) body and the divine Mind controlling
the constituents of the universe as its “body” breaks down because the
universe is not one and does not exist as a totality (Farrer 1967: 148).
Also, Marcel Sarot writes that in the strict biological sense according to
which the term “organism” applies to human beings and other types of
living things the world cannot be called an organism for it is not a
massive animal or plant. Nevertheless, one can take it in an abstract
sense to mean an entity that appears to be a unified whole while being
internally complex, and he believes that the question of whether the
universe is an organism in this sense remains an open one (Sarot 1992:
235–37).
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 9

(c) Third, another point at which the analogy between human and
divine personhood is alleged to break down concerns the issue of
whether or not the human self is to be conceived in substantialist terms
such that it can transcend the body ontologically in the way that God
transcends the world (Peacocke 1995). As we noted in our discussion of
Clayton, the God-world relationship is only somewhat analogous to the
self-body relationship because while consciousness is an emergent
product contingent on evolutionary processes, God is not a contingent
entity in this sense. Philosophers of mind such as Jaegwon Kim (1993)
who have developed the notion of “supervenience,” according to which
emergent mental processes cannot be “reduced” to brain states, do not
nevertheless believe that these processes are properties of a substantial
“soul”; more specifically, rejecting the notion that the mind is an onto-
logically distinct entity that exercises top-down causal powers over the
body, they often hold that the “mind” is a set of higher level macro-
processes which are grounded in basic physio-chemical processes.
Further, several Christian theologians themselves have claimed that
not only a host of Biblical passages but also the crucial doctrines of
the incarnation and the resurrection emphasize a holistic view of the
embodied person and militate against Cartesian-dualist conceptions of a
substantial soul. For instance, Warren S. Brown (1998) argues that the
term “soul” stands not for an ontological entity distinct from the body but
for our emergent cognitive properties, such as language, memory and
future orientation, which make possible personal relatedness with other
human beings and with God. Nevertheless, sophisticated defenses have
been advanced in recent times for substance dualism, and J.P. Moreland
(2002) outlines five broad patterns of such arguments, including ones
based on introspection, indexicality of thought, and libertarian freedom.
For our purposes, what is especially interesting is Richard Swinburne’s
conception of the soul as the substantival carrier of personal identity
which needs a body, though not necessarily this mortal body, and which
God may sustain in being through a special divine act. Swinburne argues
that the soul, which constitutes the core of the person, is metaphysically
distinct from its body, but he rejects two senses of the term “substance
dualism,” namely, that the soul is intrinsically immortal and that the
body is an entirely adventitious entity which is not necessary for full
personhood (Swinburne’s response to Adrian Thatcher, see 1987: 180–
10 / Ankur Barua

96; for Swinburne’s reply, see pages 191–92).

(d) Fourth, it has been argued that in pantheistic conceptions God is too
closely tied to the world because God would be fundamentally dependent
on the world in the way human beings are on their physiological bodies
and God will therefore be overwhelmed by the modifications and fluc-
tuations in the divine body. John Polkinghorne (1989: 19–22) writes that
the attempt to develop models of God-world interaction on the analogy
of human embodiment will ultimately fail because just as the human
person can undergo various disorders and disruptions brought about by
physiological changes, the cosmological transformations in the universe
(starting from the singularity of a big bang to a possible big crunch) will
have significant impact on the embodied God.
(e) Contemporary proponents of panentheism such as Jantzen (1984:
144) and Charles Hartshorne (1941: 230–32) have rejected the classical
doctrine of creation ex nihilo and therefore have to deal with the charge
that they have not highlighted the divine supremacy over the world. The
rejection of this doctrine has, in fact, been associated with pantheists,
who have usually accepted some form of “emanationism” which holds
that the world “flows forth” from the unity which is its ontological base;
consequently, given this close connection between the effect and its
origin, John Macquarrie notes that “emanationism does not necessarily
lead to pantheism, but it does imply that in some sense God [the ‘origin’]
is in the world and the world is in God” (1984: 34–35). It is such a type
of emanationism which has been developed by Macquarrie who holds, in
opposition to pantheism, that the world is “outside” of God in the sense
that it has a limited independence and, to distinguish his position from
deism, that God and the world participate in one another (35–37). In
opposition to the production model which views God as the Maker or the
Architect creating the world out of nothing, McFague proposes a similar
model where God is viewed as the Mother who “encloses reality in her
womb, bodying it forth, generating all life from her being” (1993: 152).
Though the world is formed from God as its physical matrix so that God
sustains whatever is in God, McFague seeks to distinguish her position
from pantheism by affirming that the agential God is distinct from the
universe which God enlivens and empowers. This metaphor of the mater-
nal divine also appears in Arthur Peacocke (1979: 142) who writes that a
biological model that will highlight the panentheistic emphasis on the
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 11

immanence of God whose reality is not subsumed by the world is that of

a (mammalian) mother who nurtures the growing embryo within her womb.
(f) A final criticism of panentheistic conceptions of the deity, particu-
larly ones framed from within process perspectives, that we shall discuss
here is that the embodied God is too finite to be able to overcome the
evils of the world, exercise providential guidance over the shape of
human history, and decisively bring about the “triumph of good over
evil.” Unlike in classical theism where God non-successively and all at
once (tota simul) knows the course of the world, the God of process
thinkers takes in every successive phase of the cosmos into the divine life
and presents subjective aims for the next phase, and the notion that God
can guarantee or uniquely determine its specific shape of actualization is
therefore rejected as incoherent (Hartshorne 1967a). In the “naturalistic
theism” of David Ray Griffin, which is opposed to the premise of super-
naturalistic theism that the omnipotent God can interrupt the causal
principles of the world from without, God is not an enduring substance
nor an impassible subject but is integrally connected with the world
through a series of relationships that belong to the very nature of things.
Consequently, God does not exercise “interventionist” coercive power
over the world but acts in it through persuasion: “God is more the soul of
the universe. What exists necessarily is not God alone, but God-and-a-
world” (Griffin 1989: 48–49; Hasker 1989). Given this close connection
between God and the world, it can be argued that the various evils, ills,
and imperfections that are all too manifest in the world show that it
cannot be the body of a God who is perfect. However, the “problem of
evil” is at least as acute for the classical theist as it is for the proponent of
the notion of the universe as the divine body, for the former has to grapple
with the objection that, given God’s perfection, the world created ex
nihilo cannot harbor any imperfections as God’s handiwork (Wainwright
1987). Further, both groups can make use of similar conceptual tools in
grappling with the reality of evil such as the uniform operation of the
laws of nature, the emergence of order through evolutionary processes,
and the notion of human free-will as a divine gift (Jantzen 1984: 91).

Råmånuja’s Understanding of Divine Embodiment

Having discussed some influential contemporary presentations of “panen-

12 / Ankur Barua

theism” as well as the criticisms leveled against them, we now move on

to discuss Råmånuja’s doctrine that the world is the Body of the divine
and how these criticisms do not quite apply to his conception of divine
embodiment. Råmånuja (traditional dates: 1017 CE–1137 CE) was both
a critic of his theological adversaries belonging to schools such as the
Advaita of ÇaEkara, the Bhedåbheda of Bhåskara, P¨rva MJmåEså,
SåEkhya, and Nyåya-Vaiçe‚ika and an innovator forming his own
synthesis out of earlier texts and commentaries in the tradition of the
ÇrJ Vai‚~ava religious community based at Srirangam in South India
(for a brief introduction to some of the viewpoints of these schools, see
Brockington 1981: 92–112). One of the central questions in Vedåntic
exegesis and philosophical reflection was that of whether or not Brahman,
the ultimate reality, has a “bodily” form and what the ontological reality
of this form is (Eck 1981). As a member of the theistic ÇrJ Vai‚~ava
community (sampradåya), Råmånuja vigorously argued against the non-
dualism of Advaita which states that Brahman (the supreme infinite
illimitable Being) is pure consciousness. Rather, Brahman is Vi‚~u-
Nåråya~a, the Supreme Person (puru‚ottama) who has a body of matchless
perfections. One of the early texts where we come across the symbolism
of the body in the Vedic corpus is the famous hymn to the cosmic Man
(puru‚a) in the ¸g Veda (10.90). It describes how the world was formed
from the body of this primordial Man, a body so extensive that it covers
the earth, the sky, and the four directions. The Upani‚ads carry forward
speculations about the ultimate principle pervading and underlying the
world and the structure of the human body, and key terms such as Brahman,
puru‚a, and åtman (“the principle of consciousness”) are often used
interchangeably. In the B®hadåra~yaka Upani‚ad (3.3–23), Yåjñavalkya
teaches that the Self (åtman), the inner controller, is that which has as
its Body (çar ra) the earth, the water, the fire, the sky, the air, the sun,
the moon, the breath, and all beings. A similar alternation between
these terms is also found in the Bhagavad G tå (ca. 500 BCE) where
K®‚~a is called the Supreme Person (puru‚ottama, 10.15), the Great Self
(mahåtman, 11.12), and the Great Lord (maheçvara, 9.11). Moreover,
the human body is called the “field” (k‚etra) and he who knows it the
“knower of the field” (k‚etrajña), and it is K®‚~a who has the true
knowledge of both (18.1–4). These are central themes which appear in
Råmånuja’s theology of human and divine embodiment. During the
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 13

period of pre-Råmånujite Hindu thought, the nature of personhood and

the configuration of the human psycho-physical organism too were
actively discussed. The classical Så=khya school viewed the human
person as composed of two distinct principles, puru‚a (“pure spirit” or
“consciousness”) and prak®ti (“mutable primordial matter”), and it is the
interplay of these two principles that has led to the evolution of the
manifest universe, including the human body.
In developing his theology of embodiment, Råmånuja had to counter
two main opposing groups: first the Advaitins and second, certain propo-
nents of the doctrine of bhedåbheda, according to which the relation
between Brahman and the phenomenal world is that of difference and
non-difference, such as Bhåskara and Yådava Prakåça. His basic theo-
logical positions on divine/human embodiment are worked out quite
consistently in the Vedårthasa$graha (“the summary of the meaning of
the Vedas”), the Çr& Bhå‚ya (his commentary on the Brahma S¨tras),
and the Bhagavad G&tå Bhå‚ya (his commentary on the Bhagavad G&tå).
In the beginning sections of the Vedårthasa$graha (para. 10–53), he
outlines his main criticisms of Advaitavåda as contrary to the evidence of
scripture and reason and affirms that the true meaning of the statement
tat tvam asi is that Brahman, the abode of illimitable auspicious qualities,
is the self of which the world is the body. Further, he criticizes the views
that Brahman is qualified by adjuncts in the way that space is divided
into space-units of containers such as jugs and that Brahman is essen-
tially identical with phenomenal entities: both these views, Råmånuja
argues, fail to preserve the transcendence of Brahman over the world of
empirical defects (Vedårthasa$graha para. 54–57, 58–64). Underlying
his discussions on both human embodiment and Brahman’s embodiment
in the world is a hierarchical or quasi-spatial symbolism of reality as
consisting of the three “levels” of Brahman who is the supreme Lord
Vi‚~u Nåråya~a, the conscious self (cit) and the mutable objects consti-
tuted of pråk®tic matter (acit), the latter two together constituting the
world of finite beings (Çr& Bhå‚ya 2.3.18). The latter two are differenti-
ated from each other by the fact that whereas pråk®tic objects—such as
the human body—are subject to mutability and decay, the finite selves
are imperishable and have always existed since beginningless times
(anådi). The Lord Himself is ontologically distinct from both non-
conscious and conscious beings since He is free from all sa$såric
14 / Ankur Barua

afflictions and has attributes such as omniscience which finite beings do

not possess (tasyaitasya parabrahma~aª sarvavastuvijåt"yatayå sarva-
svabhåvatva sarvaçaktiyogaç ca; Vedårthasa graha para. 82). The
human body, therefore, occupies the “lowest” level in this “ladder of
being,” the transcendent Lord the “highest” rank, and the finite self is at
an “intermediate” position between its body and the Lord. Now consider-
ing, first, the case of human embodiment, the superiority of the finite self
(j"våtman) to its body lies in this: the body is subject to intrinsic transfor-
mations while the self’s essential nature, that of knowledge and bliss
(ånanda), does not undergo any essential change. In Råmånuja’s hierar-
chical symbolism of human embodiment, the finite self is “above” its
body not in the physical sense of being located over it but in the symbolic
sense that by enlivening and supporting it, the finite self draws it upward
into its own conscious life (G"tå Bhå‚ya 7.5–7.6). However, in its
embodied state, the finite self too suffers from contraction or expansion
of its knowledge (jñåna) through its ignorance in the form of its karma,
that is, the accumulated “residue” of its meritorious or non-meritorious
actions. It is the Lord alone who is utterly beyond transmutations of any
kind, and He is “above” the world, which is His Body (çar"ra), in the
sense that all finite beings are dependent on Him for their proper nature
(svar¨pa), subsistence (sthiti), and activity (prav®tti) (G"tå Bhå‚ya 7.19).
Consequently, on the basis of this hierarchical symbolism of the Lord’s
embodiment in the world, Råmånuja affirms that the transcendentally
perfect Lord, the abode of illimitable qualities (aparimitagu~åçraya), is
at the same time the immanent Ruler (antaryåm") of every conscious and
non-conscious reality (Vedårthasa graha para. 87; Lott 1980: 26). The
Lord, therefore, is the paramåtman or the Highest Self in the evaluational
sense that the He is the very source of the existence of the j"våtman and
material entities which are subservient to Him (çe‚a) and He remains
superior (paratara) to them (G"tå Bhå‚ya 7.7).
At the basis of this quasi-spatial symbolism of human and divine embodi-
ment in Råmånuja’s texts is therefore the notion, common to other
metaphysical traditions such as Platonism, that what is less subject to
mutability occupies a higher “rank” in the hierarchy of being. However,
Råmånuja’s view that the entire world, including the spiritual non-
extended selves, is the Body (çar"ra) of the Lord, would sound somewhat
jarring to a figure such as St Augustine or Descartes who understand the
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 15

body (corpus) as an entity which has various shapes and sizes and is a
composition of divisible parts. In his commentary on the Brahma S¨tras,
the Çr' Bhå‚ya, Råmånuja considers several definitions of the term çar'ra,
and after rejecting definitions given by various doctrinal opponents
finally comes to his own definition of “body”: any substance which a
conscious being is capable of completely controlling and supporting for
its own purposes (sarvåtmanå svårthe niyantu% dhårayitu% ca çakyam)
and whose essential form (svar¨pa) is to be the accessory of that being is
its “body” (çar'ra) (Çr' Bhå‚ya 2.1.9).1 In other words, for Råmånuja, the
term “body” (çar'ra) refers not simply to the material structure of a
human being (or an animal or an insentient object) but more extensively
to any substantial entity, whether it is physical (such as the human body)
or spiritual (such as the finite self), that is subject to a conscious being
(such as the transcendent Lord). Consequently, the relationships that hold
at the microcosmic level between the finite j'våtman and its pråk®tic
body are homologous (with some significant asymmetries that we shall
shortly discuss) to the ones that hold at the macrocosmic level between
the supreme Self, the Lord, and His Body, the world of conscious and
non-conscious beings.2
Two of these relationships are, first, the relationship that exists between
a thing that is supported and its supporter (ådhårådheyabhåva); and
second, the relationship between a thing that is controlled and its control-
ler (niyant®niyåmyabhåva) (Vedårthasa%graha para. 76). Råmånuja says
that the human body is ontologically dependent on its j'våtman for its
very existence and temporal continuity since it cannot be “realised apart
from it” (p®thak-siddhyånarha) in a way similar to that in which a mode
(prakåra) cannot exist independently of its mode-possessor (prakårin)
(Vedårthasa%graha para. 62). Moreover, to develop the analogy between
human and divine embodiment, not only the human body which cannot
perdure without being supported by the j'våtman but the world itself can
be regarded as the mode of its mode-possessor, the Lord; for in the same
manner that the substantially real human body cannot be realized apart
from its finite self (p®thak-siddhyånarha), the world itself is ontologically
dependent on the Lord and also derives its intelligibility from it (Lipner
1986: 126). Therefore, what the prakåra-prakårin relationship empha-
sizes is that one entity which has an ontological reality of its own remains
in a state of continuing existential dependence on another, and this is
16 / Ankur Barua

precisely the nature of the relationship—at the microcosmic level—

between the pråk®tic body and its j"våtman and—at the macrocosmic
level—between the world and the Lord.
Focusing specifically on the latter, we note that the causal dependence
of the substantially real world on the Lord is highlighted by Råmånuja in
his understanding of the Lord’s activity of producing the world as His
Body and sustaining it as its immanent ruler. Råmånuja writes that the
Lord remains forever free from all insufficiencies and remains the non-
transmutable abode of glorious qualities throughout the production and
cessation of various world-orders (Vedårthasa!graha para. 20). The
Lord, moreover, is at once the substantial cause (upådåna kåra~a) and
the efficient cause (nimitta kåra~a) of the world, and in the production of
the world the Lord, Brahman who is qualified by distinctions, is non-dual
with it (viçi‚†ådvaita). For Råmånuja, the crucial scriptural text in this
context is, “In the beginning, my dear, this was Being [sat] alone, one
only without a second [ekam evådv"tiyam]” (Chåndogya Upani‚ad 6.2.1–
3; Radhakrishnan’s translation [1953: 447–49]). He points out that the
first statement which states that Brahman is the substrate out of which
the world is produced might seem to imply that it is some other cause
which produced the effect, that is, the world. This is why the second
statement is added so as to emphasize that it is Brahman who is also the
efficient cause in the production of the world (Çr" Bhå‚ya 1.1.1). Though
the Lord always has conscious (cit) and non-conscious (acit) beings as
modes which constitute His Body, these beings do not always exist in
specific forms that are designatable by names. In the state of a great
dissolution, these beings exist in an extremely subtle condition such that
they cannot be designated as different from the Lord Himself, and in this
state He is said to be in the causal condition (tat kåra~åvastha! brahma).
At the end of this dissolution, the Lord with the intention, “May I be
many!” (bahu syåm), produces various beings which have definite name
and form and which constitute His Body, and this state is called the
Lord’s effected condition (tac ca kåryåvastham) (Çr" Bhå‚ya 2.3.18).
In other words, as the world unfolds in time, we find genuine changes
taking place in it, and it is the immutable Lord alone, untouched in any
way by karma, who possesses this capacity of producing new things in
the temporal world while retaining His pre-eminent Lordship (aiçvarya)
over the world in both its subtle and manifest forms (Çr" Bhå‚ya 1.2.2).3
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 17

Now the notion that the Lord is the world’s substantial cause (upådåna
kåra~a) would seem to mire Him in its finitude and all the imperfections
that beings within it suffer from. Such a possibility is however clearly
rejected through the use of an important relationship which underlies
Råmånuja’s symbolism of human and divine embodiment, that between a
“part,” which is ontologically dependent on its “part-possessor” (aøça-
aøçin) (Çr& Bhå‚ya 2.3.45). The world is not a part of the Lord in the
physical sense of being a spatially extended piece (kha~da) of His
substance (which cannot be divided into segments unlike an object
constituted of pråk®tic stuff) for this would not only absorb its reality
into the Lord but would also entangle the Lord in the defects of the
world. Rather, the whole world is a part of the Lord who is its part-
possessor (aøçin) in the sense that the world, the aøça, cannot exist
without being a part of Him.5 In short, Råmånuja too would reject, in his
own theological context, the view that St Augustine does in his own,
which is that the world is a material fragment broken off as a constituent
piece of the divine substance. Råmånuja’s commentary on some verses
of the ninth chapter of the Bhagavad G&tå further rejects any “pantheistic”
identification of the transcendent Lord with the world which He rules
over as the inner Self. He says that the Lord supports finite beings not in
the way in which a jug supports the water that it contains but entirely
through His will (sa#kalpena) which sustains all the modes (prakåra)
which constitute His body (G&tå Bhå‚ya 9.4). Therefore, although the
relationships between the immutably perfect Lord and the phenomenal
world that He is embodied in are analogous to the ones that hold at the
level of every human person between the finite self and its pråk®tic body,
this parallelism must not obscure the fact of crucial importance that the
control that the Lord, the Principal (çe‚&), wields over the world, His
accessory (çe‚a), is of a different order from the self’s control over its
own body. The j&våtman does not have the causal power to originate its
physical body, and, moreover, its association with its pråk®tic body often
leads it to experience suffering because of the unexpended karma that it
has accumulated over past aeons. Especially, its control over its body is
obstructed in those cases when the body suffers from injury, paralysis,
and such debilities (Çr& Bhå‚ya 2.1.9). On the other hand, since the Lord
is not subject to any karma His connection with the entities of which He
is the Support (ådhåra) is consequently a source of delight to Him and
18 / Ankur Barua

He has direct control over all of them (Çr Bhå‚ya 2.1.14).

Råmånuja’s Response to Criticisms of Panentheism

We are now in a better position to see how Råmånuja would respond to

the six types of criticisms leveled against panentheism that we discussed
in section “Criticisms of Panentheism” above.
(a) In response to the first view that embodiment is always associated
with defects, Råmånuja would reply that the reason why human embodi-
ment is often a miserable experience is not because the association of the
jvåtman with any body whatsoever results in its affliction but because
its present state of embodiment is an imperfect one. Enveloped by its
ignorance (avidyå) in the form of its previous karma, the jvåtman fails
to subordinate its pråk®tic body completely to itself; consequently, the
jvåtman’s relationship to its body is one both of unity and opposition,
and this produces an uneasy tension at the heart of the human person.
That is, the embodied self’s misery arises primarily not from the (pråk®tic)
“materiality” of its body, which is not an independent evil reality, but
because it has not turned to the Lord with unalloyed devotion and hence
undergoes successive births into this world and experiences all the
tribulations that are associated with such finite existence (Çr Bhå‚ya
3.2.11–12). Therefore, the “material” world to which the human body
belongs must not be regarded as a self-determining hostile domain with
the causal power to inflict suffering on the finite self for such suffering is
the result of the self’s previous karma piled up over countless numbers of
past aeons.5 Now turning to the case of divine embodiment, Råmånuja
says that in “ordinary life” too we see that human beings undergo pleasure
or pain depending on whether they have followed or transgressed the
laws of their rulers, but their rulers, though they too have pråk®tic bodies,
do not themselves undergo the same experiences. This is even more so in
the case of the Lord who, because He is not connected with karma, is not
associated with any evil of any kind though He has the whole world for
His Body (Çr Bhå‚ya 2.1.14). Therefore, just as a prince, though living
in a place infested with mosquitoes, remains untouched by all its discom-
forts, his body continuously refreshed by a fan, so too the Lord of the
world is not touched by its evils (do‚a) but rules over it while enjoying
all possible delights.
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 19

(b) Regarding the objection that the world is not usually viewed as an
“object,” Råmånuja’s understanding of the term “body” in terms of an
entity governed by a conscious reality is not associated with the notion
that it is some sort of a system, closed or open, constituted by interlock-
ing parts. Therefore, the “world” is simply a shorthand term for the finite
conscious and non-conscious entities, and Råmånuja can refer to both
these entities as well to the “world” as the body of Brahman (Lipner
1986: 123). Further, there are parallels in Råmånuja’s theology of divine
action to the view that God’s activity in the world can be regarded as
basic, unmediated action, so that we may meaningfully speak of God’s
intentions, purposes, and love in terms of God’s movements through the
world (Hudson 1991). A basic action, in the terminology introduced by
A. Danto (1965), is one that an agent performs directly and not through
some other action, and Råmånuja often refers to the immediate way in
which the Lord acts in the world, His Body. Giving the example of milk
which can turn sour on itself, Råmånuja says that in a similar manner the
Lord, who possesses powers that cannot be fathomed by human thought,
does not stand in need of instruments external to Himself when He
produces the world (Çr" Bhå‚ya 2.1.24, 2.1.34). Unlike embodied selves
who are able to form new things only through their connection with
pråk®tic objects, the Lord produces the entire universe simply through
His wish and sends it forth while remaining essentially disjoint from all
pråk®tic materiality (Çr" Bhå‚ya 1.1.19).
(c) In connection with the objection that if the “soul” is not a substan-
tially real entity, the body-soul analogy breaks down when it is applied
to the God-world relationship, we can see that Swinburne’s version of
“substance dualism” resonates somewhat with Råmånuja’s understanding
of the substantial self (j"våtman) which is ontologically distinct from its
pråk®tic body, and, which though everlasting, possesses its essential
nature not though some form of “natural immortality” but only because it
is dependent (åyatta) on the Lord who is beyond any change (Çr" Bhå‚ya
4.4.20). For Råmånuja, as we have seen, the embodied self is a conscious
subject categorically distinct from its non-conscious pråk®tic body and as
an enduring reality it “holds together” its mutable pråk®tic body and
prevents it from disintegration. Briefly, three arguments that Råmånuja
offers for the substantial reality of the finite self are as follows: first, the
self has characteristics such as those of inwardness (pratyaktvam) and
20 / Ankur Barua

subjectiveness which pråk®tic objects do not possess (Çr Bhå‚ya 1.1.1);

second, the permanence of the self underlying all its conscious acts is
established by the fact that a certain object could not have been re-
cognized as the same object over a stretch of time unless the subject of
knowledge had continued to exist for that duration (Çr Bhå‚ya 1.1.1);
and, third, an object of knowledge (such as a jar) must be different from
the knowing self, and the body is indeed shown to be such an “object” in
the experience of a person who declares, “I know this body of mine”
(Gtå Bhå‚ya 13.1). Therefore, given the clearly marked ontological
distinctions between the finite self, the human body and the Lord,
Råmånuja’s analogy between human and divine embodiment is based on
the transcendence of the jvåtman to its body and the Lord to the world.
(d) We can see how Råmånuja would respond to the charge that panen-
theistic conceptions tie the deity too closely to the world of imperfections.
His hierarchical “self”-“body” symbolism clearly brings out the Lord’s
utter distinction from all finite reality which is completely dependent on
Him. Råmånuja says that just as the spatio-temporal attributes of the
pråk®tic body such as “infancy” and “youth” do not touch the finite self
in its essential nature, the imperfect attributes of the embodied self do not
touch the supreme Self, the Lord, whose Body it is (Çr Bhå‚ya 1.1.13).
Appealing for support to scriptural texts such as, “He who dwells in the
earth…whom the earth does not know” (B®hadåra~yaka Upani‚ad
3.7.3), Råmånuja writes that whereas the very existence of finite entities
is dependent on Him the Lord is not dependent on or subject to them in
any manner (sarve‚å bh¨tånå bhartå aha na ca taiª kaçcid api
mama upakåraª) (Gtå Bhå‚ya 9.5; Carman 1974: 135). As if to dispel
any lingering doubts that his view that the Lord is the world’s inner
Controller might imply that the Lord is in thrall to it in some way,
Råmånuja says that though in the case of human beings, the embodied
self derives certain benefits from its association with its pråk®tic body,
there is no assistance of any kind that the Lord obtains (or seeks to
obtain) from the world by having it as His Body (Gtå Bhå‚ya 7.12).
(e) Recent attempts to formulate emanationist models of divine crea-
tivity without pantheistic associations have a clear parallel in the case
of Råmånuja’s theology in which there can be no ontological “gap”
between the Lord and the world, because the latter, as the “effect” of the
former who is its “substantial cause,” depends on the Lord for its very
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 21

existence and rests on an ontological continuum with Him. This under-

standing of the Lord’s “originative causality” is based on the Såøkhya
theory of satkåryavåda according to which the effect (kårya) lies latent
in a potential form in its cause (Çr! Bhå‚ya 1.4.23). In other words, in
Råmånuja’s theology, the world is not created out of nothing but is
always existent as the Lord’s Body, but at the same time, Råmånuja
emphasizes the Lord’s transcendence over it by insisting that He does
not have to depend on it when He produces it in the manifest form
(Çr! Bhå‚ya 1.1.19). The Lord alone is without any beginning (anådi)
because He exists without being born and as the supreme cause who is
absolutely unoriginated in every manner (G!tå Bhå‚ya 10.3; Çr! Bhå‚ya
2.3.10, 1.1.12). Though the world has always (nitya-) existed along with
the Lord who is everlasting, this is possible not because it is a self-
sufficient entity confronting Him but only because it derives its existence
from Him who has always sustained it as His Body from beginningless
times (Vedårthasagraha para. 81).
Even within Christian theological circles, the view has often been articu-
lated that the central concept associated with the doctrine of creation is
not so much that it is produced out of utter nothingness at a definite point
in time in the past but that it is a caused reality which needs the divine
sustenance at every moment of its dependent existence (Taylor 1974:
107; May 1994). For instance, in explicating the conception of creation
that we find in Aquinas, F.C. Coppleston says: “Every finite thing
depends existentially on God at every moment of its existence, and if the
divine conserving activity were withdrawn, it would at once cease to
exist” (1955: 142). A similar emphasis on the notion of divine preserva-
tion as the core of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo has been placed by
Keith Ward: “It is irrelevant to a doctrine of creation ex nihilo whether
the universe began or not: that the universe began was usually accepted
because of a particular reading of Genesis 1….God is not nearer to the
beginning of time than to any other time” (1993: 248–49). Further, it has
been pointed out that the doctrine of creation ex nihilo was affirmed by
Fathers such as Irenaeus and Augustine in opposition to the notion that
God was the Demiurge working on pre-existent matter and fashioning it,
which seemed to threaten the sovereignty of God by limiting God’s
power and creativity to the recalcitrance of the material God had to work
with. However, we can circumvent such apprehensions by emphasizing
22 / Ankur Barua

that the world emerges from the Lord’s productive will and is ontologi-
cally dependent on the Lord at every moment of its existence. Råmånuja
would therefore reject the emanationist-pantheist view that the Lord is
substantially reduced in producing the world, as well as the deistic notion
that the world is an autonomous entity in itself to which its supervising
monarch is only externally related.
In this context, one may note certain parallels between Råmånuja’s
conception of divine creativity, based on a quasi-spatial symbolism of
divine embodiment, and the panentheism of Hartshorne who distin-
guishes between God’s “abstract essence” consisting of God’s essential
characteristics such as existence, independence, and omniscience and
God’s “concrete states” in which the temporal, relative, and passible God
processually accumulates value from the world through interactions with
it (Hartshorne 1948; Hartshorne and Reese 1953: 15–25). He regards
God as the soul of the world to indicate that God has immediate knowl-
edge and control over the actual things encompassed by the divine body
that is “internal” to God, but God is more than and distinguishable from
all of them (Hartshorne 1941: 174–87). In response to the charge that
his God, who is not actus purus but has unrealized potentialities, is too
contingent and dependent to be transcendent to the world, Hartshorne
holds that God is in fact doubly transcendent with regard to two kinds of
perfections: God is absolutely perfect in some respects (for instance, God
can know everything knowable) and relatively perfect in some other
respects (God cannot foreknow future contingents and God’s knowledge
of the world continues to grow). Now Råmånuja’s theology revolves
around the ontological distinctions between the Lord, the finite self and
material reality conceived of in substantialist terms, and he would be
opposed to process thought’s prioritization of interrelated events over
perduring substances with classificatory fixities, in which “becoming is
reality itself” and human beings are co-creators, with God, of Godself
(Hartshorne 1967b: 113; Rescher 1996). However, there are some
analogues to these Hartshornean distinctions between the divine essence
and the divine actuality in Råmånuja’s theology, for though in one sense
the Lord does not undergo any “essential” change, when he produces the
world He may be said to have changed “contingently” in that He now has
a Body qualified by finite beings (Çr Bhå‚ya 2.3.18; Gupta 1967: 67).
Therefore, while the Lord is eternally perfect as the unchanging ground
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 23

of empirical phenomena that He knows, governs and includes as the

inner Ruler, the Lord is also temporal to the extent that He increases in
value in every successive world-order as the embodied selves move
towards liberation (Çr Bhå‚ya 1.4.27). Further, while the Lord remains
completely untouched by all defects associated with human embodiment
such as ignorance and moral imperfection, the Lord is processual and
possesses a temporal strand to the extent that He manifests the subse-
quent world-orders in response to the karma of the individual selves
which He does not predetermine or timelessly foreknow. Now in trying
to explain how an eternal God with no temporal extension can relate to a
world characterized by change, proponents of classical theism such as St
Augustine and St Anselm hold that God “has” eternally willed whatever
happens in the world so that when a certain event takes place in time, this
is the temporal effect of a timeless will (Pike 1970). Consequently, the
divine activity of sustaining the world must be understood as the succes-
sive unfolding of the will of God quoad nos, not in se, a conception of
divine action which fits the stasis view of time according to which all
events exist tenselessly at their particular locations and are sustained by
the durationless God to whom they are co-present (Helm 1988). While
the notion of a timeless God is sometimes written off as incoherent or
as a Greek “intrusion” into the Hebraic gospel, whether or not God
conceived as eternal can be personal, related to a temporal world and
contingent in some ways are intensely disputed matters. Without trying
to settle these debates, we can note that Råmånuja would seem to be
closer to process theologians in their acceptance of the process theory of
time according to which future episodes are not yet real or determinate,
so that while, on the one hand, the Lord is not subject to the vicissitudes
of “our time,” the Lord is, on the other hand, not absolutely timeless in
the activity of producing and sustaining the world (Zeis 1984; Craig
1998; Padgett 1990). That is, the Lord is eternal not in the sense of being
atemporal but that of being everlasting, and the various puzzles that
surround the conception of the timeless deity such as the compatibility of
divine knowledge and human choices do not appear in Råmånuja.
(f) Regarding the final objection that the panentheistic deity is too finite
to deal with the reality of evil, while Råmånuja does not quite develop a
“free-will” defense of theism, his theology too seeks to affirm both that it
is the Lord who is the ultimate cause behind every action and that never-
24 / Ankur Barua

theless the finite self remains an autonomous moral agent capable of

receiving either praise or blame for its actions. He argues that the Lord
has equipped human beings with the instruments necessary for perform-
ing action and remains within them as their Support and inner Controller
while with the help of these capacities they either perform or desist from
action (Çr Bhå‚ya 2.3.41). When the finite self chooses to perform a
certain act, the Lord aids it by consenting to its fulfillment, and without
such permission (anumati) no action is possible. Therefore, though the
distinction between divine causality and natural causality does not quite
appear in Råmånuja, he affirms a parallel distinction between divine
power and human activity, with the former not competing with the
latter but sustaining it (Drees 1996: 105). That is, though the world is
“external” to the Lord in the sense that He does not predetermine the
conscious choices made by the finite selves, it is at the same time fully
encompassed by Him for He empowers their actions. Consequently, the
empirical inequalities that exist between embodied selves are a conse-
quence of the fruition of their respective past karma in the present world-
cycle, and the Lord is not the producer of suffering, and more generally
of any evil.

Conclusion

In short, Råmånuja’s understanding of the world as the divine body and

of the supreme reality as “transcendentally immanent” in it contains
resources to respond to some of the common charges that are leveled
against panentheism. Råmånuja’s formulation of panentheism can be
further highlighted by referring to a notion that has been central in much
of Christian theologizing about the God-world relationship, namely,
divine transcendence. Råmånuja’s emphasis on the immanence of the
supreme reality in the finite world is reflected in the Christian traditions
which have had to tackle the question of how a transcendent God can
take an earthly human nature akin to ours in every way except sin. We
note that when transcendence is understood in terms of a direct opposi-
tion with the non-divine world, the deity is reduced to a (finite) object by
this very opposition; hence an emphasis on God’s transcendence must go
simultaneously with a parallel accent on the divine involvement with the
world and immanent presence in it. Kathryn Tanner therefore argues that
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 25

“If Christians presume that God is somehow beyond this world and is
therefore not be identified with it in part or in whole, the theologian in
the interest of Christian coherence adds that this non-identity must not
amount to a simple contrast” (1988: 47). Thus a Christian thinker such as
St Augustine says that God is both more interior to him than his most
inward part and also higher than the highest (tu autem eras interior intimo
meo et superior summo meo), and in this claim we can hear echoes of
Råmånuja’s view that the supreme personal reality which includes and
encompasses all finite entities is yet “above” the world (Augustine,
Confessions 3.6.11).
Therefore, even Christian theologians of a more orthodox inclination
who do not specifically propose panentheistic notions of the divine but
seek to develop theologies in which human persons, God, and the world
are linked together in various types of interrelationships can fruitfully
engage in a dialogue with Råmånuja. For instance, Charles Taliaferro
(1994: 233) writes that an increasing number of Christian theologians
have charged that anthropological “dualism” leads to the denigration of
the physical reality of the body which becomes an external shell where
the spiritual essence is encased as a solitary monad. He argues that though
many forms of dualism associated with Gnosticism and Manicheanism
have indeed been associated with depreciating attitudes towards the
body, environmental degradation and patriarchal hierarchalisms that have
equated masculinity with cognitive processes and feminity with bodily
experiences, one needs to carefully distinguish between various types of
dualism and not lump all of them together. His “integrative dualism,”
which holds that the human person and the body constitute an embodied
unity, seeks to affirm that our manifold experiences in aesthetic, emo-
tional, ethical, and social contexts are firmly rooted in our corporeal
substratum which is therefore not a mere appendage. Taliaferro’s point
that there is no necessary connection between the acceptance of some
form of anthropological dualism and an attitude of hatred or loathing
towards the physical body finds further support from our discussion of
Råmånuja’s conception of the human person as an embodied unity in
which the “health” of the spiritual principle and that of the physical body
are closely interrelated.
In short, Råmånuja’s views on human and divine embodiment are not
simply of specialized Indological interest and can speak to a variety of
26 / Ankur Barua

contemporary concerns about the conceptions of human embodiment and

the nature of divine and human interaction. In this way, retrievals of the
views of other theologians from the Vedåntic tradition, by carefully
contextualizing them in the current conversations, can help to illuminate
ongoing debates in philosophical theology. Through the hierarchical
symbolism of human embodiment and that of the Lord’s embodiment in
the world, Råmånuja is able to affirm that the “body,” whether the body
of the finite self or the Body of the Lord, is not be defined exhaustively
in terms of material constitution, nor is it an entity that can exist without
the support of its self, whether the jvåtman or the Lord Vi‚~u–Nåråya~a.
The jvåtman and its pråk®tic body are indeed metaphysically distinct,
but they together form one embodied unit which comes to know the
world, engage in (moral) activity in it, and through such knowledge and
activity also enter into a loving communion with its self-existent Lord
who is both “timeless” (in that He is not limited in space-time and His
bliss and other perfections are never tinged with empirical negativity)
and “temporal” (in the limited sense that He responds to specificities of
the changing worlds to which He is co-present) in different respects
(Carman 1974: 130).

Notes

1. Lipner (1984) has pointed out that for Råmånuja this is the literal
meaning of the term “body”; consequently, the world is the “body” of the
Lord in this sense.
2. Overzee has noted that “the body-self doctrine provides a theological
structure to hold together a vision in which the divine and the world are
fully integrated, one with the other. It also provides a model for spiritual
practice leading to knowledge of Brahman (brahmajñåna) through
coming to know the true nature of one’s self and the world” (1992: 83).
3. Bhatt says that in Råmånuja’s theology “the reality of the world is
recognised, the supremacy of Brahman is taught, and yet both are brought
together into a unity” (1975: 86).
4. In connection with Råmånuja’s understanding of the ontological
status of the world, Vidyarthi says that “it is not self-sufficient but is,
in all its stages, under the constant care, control and guidance of the
Supreme Person” (1978a: 130).
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 27

5. Vidyarthi writes that when discussing the Lord’s embodiment in the

physical world “as its very self Råmånuja urges in quite unequivocal and
emphatic terms that not even matter is essentially or intrinsically bad”
(1978b: 158–59).

References Cited

Alston, William. 1984. “Hartshorne and Aquinas: A Via Media.” In John

Cobb and Franklin Gamwell, eds., Existence and Actuality, 77–101.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bhatt, S.R. 1975. Studies in Råmånuja Vedånta. New Delhi: Heritage
Publishers.
Brockington, J.L. 1981. The Sacred Thread: Hinduism in Its Continuity
and Diversity. Edinburgh: University Press.
Brown, Warren S. 1998. “Cognitive Contributions to Soul.” In Warren S.
Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony, eds., Whatever
Happened to the Soul?: Scientific and Theological Portraits of Human
Nature, 99–125. Minneapolis: Fortress Press.
Carman, J.B. 1974. The Theology of Råmånuja. New Haven: Yale
University Press.
Clayton, Philip D. 1997. God and Contemporary Science. Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press.
Coppleston, F.C. 1955. Aquinas. London: Penguin.
Craig, William Lane. 1998. “Divine Timelessness and Personhood.”
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43, 2: 109–24.
Danto, A. 1965. “Basic Actions.” American Philosophical Quarterly 2,
2: 141–48.
Drees, Willem B. 1996. Religion, Science and Naturalism. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Eck, Diana L. 1981. Darçan: Seeing the Divine Image in India.
Chambersburg: Anima.
Farrer, Austin. 1967. Faith and Speculation: An Essay in Philosophical
Theology. London: Adam & Charles Black.
Flew, Antony. 1966. God and Philosophy. New York: Dell.
GFta Bhå‚ya. 1985. The G4tabhå‚ya of Råmånuja (trans. M.R. Sampat-
kumaran). Bombay: Ananthacharya Indological Research Institute.
Griffin, David Ray. 1989. “Postmodern Theology and A/Theology: A
28 / Ankur Barua

Response to Mark C. Taylor.” In David Ray Griffin, William A.

Beardslee, and Joe Holland, eds., Varieties of Postmodern Theology,
29–61. Albany: SUNY.
Gupta, Anima Sen. A Critical Study of the Philosophy of Råmånuja.
Varanasi: Chowkhamba Sanskrit Series Office.
Hartshorne, Charles. 1941. Man’s Vision of God and the Logic of Theism.
New York: Harper & Row.
Hartshorne, Charles. 1948. The Divine Relativity: A Social Conception of
God. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hartshorne, Charles. 1967a. “The Dipolar Conception of Deity.” The
Review of Metaphysics 21, 2: 273–89.
Hartshorne, Charles. 1967b. A Natural Theology for Our Time. LaSalle:
The Open Court Publishing.
Hartshorne, Charles and William L. Reese. 1953. Philosophers Speak of
God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Hasker, William. 1989. God, Time, and Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Helm, Paul. 1988. Eternal God. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988.
Helm, Paul. 1994. The Providence of God. Downers Grove: InterVarsity
Press.
Holscher, Ludger. 1986. The Reality of the Mind: Augustine’s
Philosophical Arguments for the Human Soul as a Spiritual Substance.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Hudson, W. Donald. 1974. A Philosophical Approach to Religion.
London: Macmillan.
Hudson, W. Donald. 1991. “Could the World Embody God?” In Indira
Mahalingam and Brian Carr, eds., Logical Foundations: Essays in
Honour of D.J. O’Connor, 167–74. London: Macmillan.
Jantzen, Grace M. 1984. God’s World, God’s Body. London: Darton,
Longman and Todd.
Kim, Jaegwon. 1993. Supervenience and Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Levine, Michael P. 1994. Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of Deity.
London: Routledge.
Lipner, Julius J. 1984. “The World as God’s ‘Body’: In Pursuit of
Dialogue with Råmånuja.” Religious Studies 20, 1: 145–61.
Lipner, Julius J. 1986. The Face of Truth: A Study of Meaning and
 God’s Body at Work: Råmånuja and Panentheism / 29

Metaphysics in the Vedåntic Theology of Råmånuja. London:

Macmillan.
Lott, Eric. 1980. Vedåntic Approaches to God. London: Macmillan.
Macquarrie, John. 1984. In Search of Deity. London: SCM.
May, Gerhard. 1994 [1978]. Creation ex Nihilo: The Doctrine of
“Creation out of Nothing” in Early Christian Thought (trans. A.S.
Worrall). Edinburgh: T & T Clark.
McFague, Sallie. 1993. The Body of God: An Ecological Theology.
London: SCM.
Moreland, J.P. 2002. “The Soul and Life Everlasting.” In W.L. Craig,
ed., Philosophy of Religion: A Reader and Guide, 429–46 . New
Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Nielsen, Kai. 1971. Contemporary Critiques of Religion. London:
Macmillan.
Nikkel, David H. 1995. Panentheism in Hartshorne and Tillich: A
Creative Synthesis. New York: Peter Lang.
Overzee, Anne Hunt. 1992. The Body Divine: The Symbol of the Body in
the Works of Teilhard de Chardin and Råmånuja. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Padgett, Alan. 1990. God, Eternity and the Nature of Time. New York:
St. Martin’s Press.
Peacocke, Arthur. 1979. Creation and the World of Science. Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Peacocke, Arthur. 1995. “God’s Interaction with the World.” In R.J.
Russell, Nancey Murphy, and A.R. Peacocke, eds., Chaos and
Complexity: Scientific Perspectives on Divine Action, 263–87. Vatican
City State: Vatican Observatory Publications.
Pike, Nelson. 1970. God and Timelessness. London: Routlege & Kegan
Paul.
Polkinghorne, John. 1989. Science and Providence. London: SPCK.
Quiles, Ismail. 1975. “Pantheism.” In Karl Rahner, ed., Encyclopedia of
Theology: A Concise Sacramentum Mundi, 1156. London: Burnes and
Oates.
Radhakrishnan, S. 1953. The Principal Upani‚ads. London: George
Allen and Unwin.
Rescher, Nicholas. 1996. Process Metaphysics: An Introduction to
Process Philosophy. New York: SUNY.
30 / Ankur Barua

Robinson, J.A.T. 1967. Exploration into God. London: Mowbrays.

Sarot, Marcel. 1992. God, Passibility and Corporeality. Kampen: Pharos.
ÇrJ Bhå‚ya. 1971. The Vedånta-S¨tras: With the Commentary by
Råmånuja (trans. George Thibaut). Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas.
Swinburne, R. 1987. “Christian Theism and the Concept of a Person.” In
Arthur Peacocke and Grant Gillett, eds., Persons and Personality: A
Contemporary Inquiry, 180–96. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Taliaferro, Charles. 1994. Consciousness and the Mind of God.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Tanner, Kathryn. 1988. God and Creation in Christian Theology:
Tyranny or Empowerment? Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Taylor, Richard. 1974. Metaphysics. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
VedårthasaEgraha. 1956. Råmånuja’s Vedårthasa4graha: Introduction,
Critical Edition, and Annotated Translation (ed. J.A.B. van Buitenen).
Poona: Deccan College, Post Graduate and Research Institute.
Vidyarthi, P.B. 1978a. Divine Personality and Human Life in Råmånuja.
New Delhi: Oriental Publishers.
Vidyarthi, P.B. 1978b. Knowledge, Self and God in Råmånuja. New
Delhi: Oriental Publishers.
Wainwright, William J. 1987. “God’s Body.” In Thomas V. Morris, ed.,
The Concept of God, 72–87. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ward, Keith. 1993. “God as a Principle of Cosmological Explanation.”
In R.J. Russell, Nancey Murphy, and C.J. Isham, eds., Quantum
Cosmology and the Laws of Nature: Scientific Perspectives on Divine
Nature, 247–62. Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications.
Ward, Keith. 2001. “The Temporality of God.” International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion 50, 1: 153–69.
Westphal, Merold. 1996. “Temporality and Finitism in Hartshorne’s
Theism.” The Review of Metaphysics 19, 3: 550–64.
Zeis, John. 1984. “The Concept of Eternity.” International Journal for
Philosophy of Religion 16, 1: 61–71.

ANKUR BARUA is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at St Stephens

College, University of Delhi. <trinbarua@gmail.com>