f) The appeal to revelation Our sixth example of a kind of discussion that is
most properly termed “theological” has to do with the appeal to revelation,
authoritative verbal testimony. We can begin by noting that Indian intellectuals
were concerned to determine the proper modes of knowing which produce
proper and reliable knowledge, and likewise uncover and dispel ignorance. The
concern to understand properly the criteria for right knowledge is of course not
a disposition unique to theology; but the disposition of some Hindu systems not
only to defend the need for reliable verbal communication but also to highlight
specific privileged (oral and written) texts does characterize theological
discourse.
In arguments among themselves and also with Buddhist and Jaina inter-
locutors, Hindu thinkers analyzed the knowing process in a sophisticated
fashion, arguing the viability of truth claims and proposing subtle distinctions
and relations among the means of right knowing (prama ̄n.a), objects of right
knowing (prameya), and right knowledge (prama ̄).^21 Ideally, perception is the
sufficient reliable means of knowledge.
But since the argument that everything knowable can be known by simple
perception is never persuasively argued, supplementary means of right knowing
multiply. Intellectuals who are theologians are concerned with the truth of their
faith positions, and are compelled to articulate and defend verbal authority, and
ultimately a idea of a privileged verbal knowledge, revelation. It is properly
and distinctively theological to ask whether there is something that can be called
“revelation,” a privileged body of verbal testimony which informs humans about
aspects of reality which are not otherwise knowable.
It is within a theological context that one can argue about this. Indian intel-
lectuals may be divided into those who accept this privileged verbal information
and those who do not. In turn, those accepting revelation are further differenti-
ated when one attempts to discern which words and texts, in which language(s),
are revelatory. We see revelation defended in the Mı ̄ma ̄m.sa ̄ and Veda ̄nta, for
instance, particularly in argument with Buddhists and others skeptical about
the authority of the Veda. Here one can distinguish thinkers inside and outside
the Vedic tradition, and those adhering strictly to Sanskrit-language revelation
from those willing to admit vernacular revelations.
g) “Ignorance” as a theological category If right knowledge becomes a theologi-
cally distinctive category, it follows too that ignorance too becomes an episte-
mological issue with theological and soteriological import. In the nondualist
Veda ̄nta tradition avidya ̄is treated as a problem but also afforded an explanatory
role, since this Veda ̄nta tradition has a vested interest in seeing ignorance as the
cause of suffering and its removal as the appropriate response to suffering. The
issue is both whether the incongruities between scriptural promises and reali-
ties on the one hand and the evident realities of ordinary life on the other have
to be explained in terms of objective differences and contradictions, or rather by
appeal to a concept of ignorance which reduces differences to temporary defects
456 francis clooney, sj