words such as “intelligent,” “spiritual,” “person” – is a legitimate starting point
in the project of identifying “theology.”^14
Some substantive issues which characterize Hindu theology
I now list seven themes which help to define Hindu theology. In question are
topics of religious import which have a scriptural basis and practical import,
which are not esoteric, and which can be argued even if rooted in faith. I suggest
just seven topics which can usefully distinguish theological discourse: a) the
nature of a sufficient world cause, world maker; b) whether God is one or many;
c) divine embodiment; d) the problem of evil; e) the nature and time of libera-
tion; f) the appeal to revelation; g) “ignorance” as a theological category.
a) The nature of a sufficient world cause, world-maker In general, the debate over
the existence of God can be understood as a subdivision of a wider debate about
whether the world itself does or can have a satisfactory explanation. While the
wider topic can be termed scientific or philosophical, the narrower form, focused
on the hypothesis that there is a person who is the source of the world, is a specif-
ically theological topic. More particularly, the question is whether the world
cause can be thought of as simply a material principle, or whether a spiritual
and conscious principle is the most reasonable prospect.
A more particular form of the preceding initial question within the broader
Indian arguments regarding religious matters and the reliable means of reli-
gious knowledge is whether there can be a convincing induction of the existence
of a world-maker. Can one offer a satisfactory explanation of the world without
positing that it has a maker? This question can be raised as an issue of episte-
mology or an example of induction, but eventually it became a question about
God and a distinctively theological matter. In Vais ́es.ika empiricism, particularly
in its earlier stages, the project of a complete description of material reality led
to the question of whether that reality is explicable without reference to an exter-
nal cause and measure of intelligibility, God. Eventually the Vais ́es.ika thinkers,
and more prominently the Nya ̄ya logicians who commented on the basic Nya ̄ya
Su ̄tras(from before the beginning of the Common Era), decided that reality could
not be self-explanatory, and that accordingly some appeal to an exterior cause
was required. The facts of ordinary reality raise questions which cannot be
answered by appeals to other aspects of ordinary reality. A clay pot is relatively
simple, but one must still explain how it got its particular shape, and perhaps too
who fused its upper and lower parts into a whole. All the more, the complexity
of the world requires the postulation of an intelligent maker. Even if this maker
is not seen, “he” must be posited as the cause who synthesizes the things that
are seen. This synthesizer is God.
Once the Logicians entered upon this debate and decided to link the postula-
tion of the existence of God with the foundations of intelligibility, they pursued
452 francis clooney, sj