Hindus too believe that God has revealed Himself to us, and still continues to do so. Hindus believe that God came down as Krishna and Rama among others. The Bhagavad-Gita is the revelation of Lord Krishna to Arunja. In it He shows that He is the God to whom all pray and devote themselves.
well there doesn’t HAVE to be a true religion
This raises an interesting point. Is it OK for Catholics to entertain the possibility that, even though only Jesus is fully God and fully Man, that Krishna might have been partially inspired by God, or Rama might have been 40% inspired by God, but only Jesus is 100% God and 100% Man?
843 The Catholic Church recognizes in other religions that search, among shadows and images, for the God who is unknown yet near since he gives life and breath and all things and wants all men to be saved. Thus, the Church considers all goodness and truth found in these religions as "a preparation for the Gospel and given by him who enlightens all men that they may at length have life."[332]This view destroys the meaning of Revelation. Here is a quote from John Paul II’s Fides et Ratio:
You see, it is the righteous claim of the Christian that God’s Revelation is, in the Word He has given us, simple and absolute Truth, and not merely human interpretation.
There is substantial evidence to show that these later Incarnation myths in Hinduism were adopted from early contacts with Christianity. You can read an interesting and brief history of Hinduism in the (old) Catholic Encyclopaedia. It has changed considerably since its origins.
I, too have pondered this question Ahimsa. I have not ruled out the possibility that the Holy Spirit blessed Siddharta Gautama as he sat under the fig tree. But the Buddha did not properly grasp the Truth, as the time of Christ had not yet come upon the world. Likewise, perhaps Man may have come into some kind of contact with God in other Faiths; however, it is firmly held in the Tradition of the Church that only in Judeo-Christianity has God Himself actively sought contact with Man, rather than the other way around. Only in Christianity is Revelation fully present, and the Truth plainly realized in the God-Man Jesus Christ.
What myths? And what substantial evidence? Divine incarnation is not a myth, but a reality.
Well, that doesn’t make much sense. I don’t read a book by a Hindu or a Moslem if I want to know more about the history of Christianity. And that’s not the only reason I can’t take this Encyclopaedia seriously.
What do you mean by Resurrection?
The Krishna legends which bear striking resemblances to the Gospels date from about the seventh century Christian Era, and this is generally seen as influence from Christianity. The Bhagavad-gita itself dates from about the second century CE. There have been Demigod myths since the earliest written legends in nearly every culture (evidence of Man’s natural search for mediation with the Divine) and Krishna is no exception. Since Hinduism has polytheistic roots, Krishna is seen as an incarnation of Vishnu the Preserver, one of their gods.
Considering this is a Catholic forum, I thought it prudent to offer you a Catholic perspective on the history of Hinduism. Despite the unconscious bias (and all history is biased, regardless of the source), it is a praiseworthy scholarly effort.
Bodily Resurrection. The return of one’s soul to their body on the Last Day. The rising of the dead. The “opening of graves.” On Judgement Day, God will re-animate the bodies of all souls, and everyone will return to physical existence, into the one body in which each lived, sinner or saint.
Whether resurrection and reincarnation are compatible might depend on one’s perspective. One could imagine that after a series of reincarnations, one is resurrected into a new body entirely. Or perhaps one is given a choice concerning which one of one’s previous physical bodies one wants to resurrect into. Or maybe “resurrection” refers to the spiritual event of being born fully into the life of God, a type of “rebirth,” if you will.
I don’t think so. You showed me no evidence.
Vishnu is not “one of their gods”. Just like the Holy Ghost is not one of the gods of Christianity. Vishnu is the one God, just like Krishna and Rama, Kali, Shiva and so on.
Krishna is also fully God and fully Man.
They all look the same to me.
Well, you can quote it all day, but I just thought you should know that I don’t respect it.
Is the Last Day the same as Judgement Day? And is Judgement Day happening at the end of time?
So your body now is the same you had when you were a kid? If someone loses his legs its the same body as before? What about a sex change? Is it still the same body?
Not completely true, but true enough. I think that Christianity and Hinduism are true enough.Both will get you to heaven, and with both you will be able to see God face to face.
There is one true religion - it is Christianity and the fullness of that truth is found in the Catholic church. As a previous poster said, you can logically trace it back to the rationality of the existence of God (even science essentially confirms a transcendent Creator via the Big Bang theory) and then to monotheism from the Jews to the new covenant of Christianity and to the Catholic church which was the only Christian church for a thousand years. A careful study of Jesus’s words and writings from the early church fathers will confirm that the Catholic church and it’s Tradition and Magisterium is what the Lord intended when he commanded the apostles to go forth and teach all nations. An objective study following the above chronology will lead one to an inescapable conclusion: Christianity is the only fully true religion (others have some elements of truth to them) and the Catholic church is the fullness of that truth.
Your creativity is intriguing, but Resurrection and Reincarnation are incompatible by definition. Both of them deal with a return to physical existence, but if we are imagining that perhaps we may have more than one body attached to our soul, that is basically Reincarnation; whether in the proper sense of rebirth, or even stretching the definition with a return to one among several previously dead bodies (which doesn’t really make any sense to me… why not just receive a new body) Resurrection, in Christian doctrine, espouses one body for each soul only.
If no religion is simply true, than the Truth is hidden from us, and God has not revealed Himself fully to Man. One cannot be a Christian and a pluralist, since the latter view accepts all religions as touching on the same Truth, where none have it fully. Part of the liberation in the Christian Faith is that one can accept that Jesus Christ is the full Revelation of God; the Way, the Truth, and the Life. All that we need to know for salvation is present in the Christian faith, and to subtract any part of it is to lose that fullness with which it is blessed.
It is my understanding that Vishnu’s character has developed and changed (from the ancient Vedic origins) much like the entirety of the Hindu religion. Originally polytheistic, Vishnu was seen as a manifestation of the sun-god. The Monotheistic tendency seen in modern Hinduism (all is “Brahma”) asserted itself over time.
We have a problem here! Who is the Incarnation; Krishna, or Christ? Or are they both Incarnations? If you answer the latter, then this is indicative of a belief in Reincarnation (many bodies per soul), rather than Resurrection (one body per soul). Yet, Christ clearly taught Resurrection (He even demonstrated it for us
), and if one believes Him to be one of many Incarnations, this makes Christ a liar. God, who unites one soul to one body, in like manner has Incarnated Himself into one body, and one body only. Christ still lives and reigns in Heaven; He is the Son of the Living God. How can Krishna also be God? You are thrusting two fundamentally opposed religious views against one another. They cannnot both be true!Given that it is out of date in some areas, it still stands as a masterful achievement. One must judge such works on their loyalty to facts, regardless of bias. Why don’t you respect it? Could you be more specific?
Yep, at least as we are to understand time. It will take place at the end of the world as we know it, when God has created every soul in his Divine Plan.
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Your body can, and does, change, naturally or not. It is still your body as long as it is attached to your soul, it is still “you”. Your identity and person is intimately bound to both your spiritual and corporeal existences. We don’t know exactly how different our bodies will be after Resurrection, but we know that the saints will return their bodies in which their spirit is dominant over their flesh, rather than the other way around as it is now. The damned might return to their bodies in a state shortly before their death (like Lazarus–John 11:1-44). Who knows, and Scripture is not too specific on this Mystery, but we can be confident that we will rise in bodies with which our identity is evident.
If this statement is true, then Christianity is totally false! If I may say, you seem to have a very Hindu-oriented frame of thinking. Why not embrace the Hindu faith fully and dismiss Christianity as narrow-minded nonsense? This is more credible than trying to mash the two fundamentally different religions into a fanciful pluralistic mess.
Your understanding is wrong. And its called BrahmaN not Brahma. Brahma is the Creater-God.
So the Christian God is limited to one body?
Hey, I would never say that I know better than God. Everything indicates to me that Krishna is God. Quite alot indicates to me that Jesus is God too. So I don’t know how God did it, but it’s impossible for me to deny what is quite obviously the truth.
Well, its full of polemics. It has an entry called “Mohammed and Mohammedism” where Mohammed is referred to as the founder of something called “Mohammedism”. I mean, seriously, what would you think of an encyclopedia that calls Roman Catholics “Papists”? Would you call it a masterful achievement?
Why do you say that? I think that Christianity is quite flawed and limited in its understanding, but not totally false, no.
I don’t mash anything. I observe and recognize. Like I said, to me it seems like both Jesus and Krishna are God. Do I know how that is supposed to work? No. But I can’t deny what I see.
Why? I think the claim is wrong, but not the religion.
I guess we disagree. I suppose it’s more pantheistic, or panentheistic, than monotheistic though, which makes it all the more incompatible with Christianity. That Hinduism’s origins are polytheistic is quite a widely held point.
Exactly. God has Incarnated himself into Jesus Christ. This IS his human Incarnation. In the Triune God, the Second Person is Incarnate in Jesus Christ. He died, but was Resurrected, and ascended into heaven, where He lives and reigns today. It destroys the doctrine of the Incarnation, and the Trinity, to believe that God has more than one Incarnation, or more than one physical body. In fact the entirety of Christianity falls to pieces when a multiple-incarnated god is accepted.
What about Jesus indicates to you that He is God? If one accepts Krishna as another Incarnation, then Jesus lied, and his whole existence is a fallacy. That is hardly befitting of the perfect God. It is impossible to accept as truth that both Jesus and Krishna are God. This runs contrary to what Christ taught, and therefore He could not be God if it were true.
I agree that it uses prejudiced labels which are indicative of the time in which it was written (early 20th century). I wouldn’t dismiss a scholarly book or article because it is biased, because everything is biased. If I read a Hindu Encyclopaedia on the origins and development of “Papism” (Catholicism), which is universally recognized by Hindu scholars as factual, I would certainly respect it as a valid Indian perspective on the Church. No doubt, if it is honestly written, it would be true, and depending on the depth I might even call it a masterful achievement. One need only realize that there is a bias, and read it from that perspective. Dismissing it outright as lies is callous and unnecessary. In research, one cannot be too sensitive to biases and prejudices, as this would limit one’s available sources considerably, even totally if you are aiming for absolute objectivity (practically impossible).
See, Christianity is a cohesive, indissoluble unity of doctrine built on the foundation of Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection. Denying these two cornerstones of the Faith–which is what happens when one accepts more than one Incarnation of God–pulls down the entire superstructure of doctrine which is built upon it. To pick and choose pieces of it and combining this with other faiths in a pluralistic self-assessment of Divinity is an outright rejection of the Christian religion, as the foundation of it is the *full, absolute *Revelation of God to Man in the Person of Jesus Christ. Christianity’s primal assertions are its purity and completeness.
No, I’m trying to be a Manichaean.
No, its neither pantheistic nor panentheistic. It’s monotheistic.
Not by me.
That doesn’t make much sense. More than one incarnation destroys the doctrine of the incarnation? And why should it destroy the Trinity?
That he makes it possible to get to God through him.
Did he say that he is the only incarnation?
I don’t dismiss it because it’s biased, but because it’s wrong, polemic and highly misleading.
Oh, I can accept this encyclopedia as a christian perspective on other religions. But I can’t accept it as a valid work.
I never said it was lies. I guess I could say that it has a warped understanding of truth, but that is different from lies.
Well, actually I do reject the Christian religion, so where is the problem?
Christians think that Jews are wrong at least on some points, right? I think that Christians are wrong on some points. I think they have a flawed and limited understanding of God. But that doesn’t destroy the foundation of Christianity anymore than the christian rejection of Judaism destroys their own foundation.
That is not true.Krishna said that a personal relationship with him is the best way to get to God. He said that in the Bhagavad-Gita. Maybe you should read more than the Catholic Encyclopedia if you want to know something about Hinduism.
Because God thought that this was the right thing to do at that time. Why should I disagree with him?
I thought that Jesus died too?
Did I say that it is incomplete? I already said that is true enough. In my view that means that it is complete for what it wants to achieve.
So just imagine that I added some parts. Is Christianity now destroyed?
Fair enough, no problem! That takes care of that.
Naturally you would say this, as you are Christian. Just because Christianity teaches something does not make it so. Deity has been revealed to many different people in many different ways. Christianity’s interpretation is no more valid than any others. I could just as easily say that Christianity is a vain, misguided search for god. As for magic (why do people insist using a ‘k’?) I use it as prayers, to help improve parts of my life, but certainly not for power. That’s ridiculous.
Nicely finished, Neithan. I’m glad you had the wisdom to pull out of a debate with someone who clearly just wanted to pick a fight.
Well, yes it is possible but it’s very rare.