Mahavatar Babaji Cave, Dunagiri, Kumaon.A miracle in its truest sense is that which cannot be empirically proven now, nor can it be proven in the future by any advances within the empirical sciences. One can measure the effects of these miracles, but never the causes of those miracles. By this logic, the existence of God cannot be proven since God is in a different category of objects being the summum bonum of all miracles and mysteries.
The very nature of the Supreme Godhead, being unknowable, that is, impassible, we cannot know God the way we can know any other embodied being. To illustrate, the Historical Jesus Seminars’ scholars could prove that there existed Christ, but they could not prove that (according to Christians) Jesus was raised body and soul on the third day after the Crucifixion. That is a mystery of the Christian Faith.
The purpose of this article is to share insights and contradictions in Christianity as they are in Hinduism. Intent is not to provoke. Errors, if any, are intended and without malafide intent. In case of hurt sentiments apologies in advance.
According to St. Paul, before his conversion called Saul, if anyone disbelieves in the death and the Resurrection of Christ, then that person is not a Christian. For Roman Catholics, it is an article of their Faith that the Mother of Jesus is a Virgin and she (and Jesus Christ who is fully man and God at the same time) alone among all humanity in the past and in the future, was raised body and soul to heaven. If a Christian does not believe in this, s/he is not a Roman Catholic but is a Protestant Christian. These are two of the Mysteries of Christianity.
Another mystery of the Christian faith is the concept of Original Sin. Other than Jesus for all Christians, and Jesus and the Holy Virgin Mary for Roman Catholics, all humanity before and after the birth of Jesus, are Fallen. This unique concept of Original Sin is also beyond human understanding.
Why God allowed the Fall, to begin with, is unknown to this day and cannot be known in this life since according to the Bible, we see but darkly through a glass while alive. Roman Catholics hold fast to their mystery of the Immaculate Conception of Jesus Christ’s Mother. Christian philosophers, theologians and scholars agree that Christianity in its essence is mysterious, and it is a mistake to apply empirical methods to interrogate these fundamental tenets of their faith.
For instance, Christians including the Mormons and the Amish, all believe in the existence of absolute evil not in a metaphorical sense but as very real --- in the persons of Satan and Satan’s minions. There are no scientific explanations possible today or in the far-off future for the existence of Satan and other demons. This too is a mystery of the Christian faith --- why does an all merciful, all loving God, allow evil to exist and persist?
No answers are sought by the Christian faithful because as philosophical categories these are beyond ratiocination. Before we move on to our Sanatana Dharma, we need to look at another mystery of the Christian Faith.
According to Roman Catholics, their Pope is infallible in matters of dogma. The Pope, we must also mention, can never be a woman. For Roman Catholics, the Pope is always right in doctrinal matters when he speaks as the Supreme Pontiff of his Church.
Anyone who disagrees with the Pope is immediately a Protestant. This is another patrimony of Roman Catholicism which further holds true that homonormativity is an aberration and is against all natural laws. So, every Roman Catholic educational institution holds as part of its faith tradition that no woman can ever be a Pope and no person who is attracted to the same gender and acts on that attraction is morally correct. And every single human being is tainted with Original Sin. These mysteries are also dogmas of the Roman Church.
Those Catholics who are deemed to be Saints, must prove their sanctity from heaven through two medically validated miracles on earth. If there are no miracles, then there can be no Catholic Saints. These miracles as had been pointed out at the beginning of this blog-entry, can never in the future be explained by science.
Evangelical Christians hold that outside of Christianity there can be no salvation. This too is a mystery as also are the existence of heaven and hell. Christians also believe in Purgatory where the sins of the faithful are cleansed. These are not merely mysteries. They are dogmas in the strictest sense of the term dogma. If anyone disagrees with these mysteries, then that person ceases to be a Christian of that sect.
When a Roman Catholic priest celebrates the Holy Mass, then it is a mystery of faith as also a dogma of Roman Catholicism that the wafer and the wine change to the flesh and blood of Christ, respectively. If any disagree, then s/he is not a Roman Catholic.
Only males in the Roman Catholic Church can forgive sins in the confessional. This is both a mystery and a Petrine sacrament of that Church. Calvinists believe in the mystery of predestination. Some wo/men are born already saved. Others howsoever holy in this life are born eternally damned to rot in hell.
Heaven, hell, purgatory, and limbo are mysteries of Christianity which are studied within the academic discipline of eschatology. Pneumatology studies the Triune nature of the Christian God. The existence of the Holy Spirit who is coexistent with God and His Son, Jesus, is also a mystery accepted by all Christians.
Sanatana Dharma
The followers of the Sanatana Dharma often confuse and conflate various philosophical categories. We want scientific proof that Mahavatar Babaji exists when the existence of this sage cannot be proven like the existence of other beings or, qualia. Neither should one claim to be a follower of our sacred Dharma if we harp on logical positivism and the demands it makes for everything to be reduced to comprehensible materialist dialectics.
Mahavatar Babaji Cave, Dunagiri, Kumaon.
The Yoga Sutras speak of supernatural powers or siddhis. Now if someone has a problem with the nature of these siddhis then that person is not a follower of the Sanatana Dharma. It is wondrous that those who say they follow the Sanatana Dharma do not hesitate to call schoolmasters and priests of other faiths, Fathers and Brothers, while these same people have problems with calling their own religious leaders Baba.
These normative Hindus accept the sacerdotal and mysterious nature of the Christian vocation to the priesthood but balk at the sacerdotal and mysterious nature of those called by the Supreme Godhead within Sanatana Dharma.
The concept of the vocation is a mystery within both our Dharma and Christianity. A vocation is very different from a profession and is an anthropomorphic call which no amount of reasoning can explain; this author will write on vocations within our Dharma in another post later.
Instead of learning shraddha from the Abrahamic faiths which teach their followers to trust in their holy books, most followers of Sanatana Dharma do not even know which are their holy books; forget reading them. The greatest threat to our Dharma comes from those who do not study our Faith with shraddha and open minds. These same people do not hesitate to quote the Codes of Manu but are silent about polygamy among certain sects of Mormons and about an absolute ban on abortions among Roman Catholics.
Roman Catholicism does not permit abortions even when a woman might die if the foetus is allowed to survive. If during regular prepartum checks, a foetus is found to have birth-defects, Roman Catholicism forbids aborting the foetus.
Seventh Day Adventists have an absolutist stance against blood transfusion even for hemophilia-patients. The Amish do not use electricity and modern automobiles even today in the United States since it is an Article of the Amish faith. Anyone who happens to not agree with these Mysteries and Articles of these branches of Christianity are automatically excommunicated.
What are some of the Mysteries of our Faith? Here we must be clear that ours is not a way of life. This ‘way of life’ discourse is a very nuanced and yet, wrong narrative.
To explain how this narrative came into being and how it is sustained is beyond the scope of this article. Returning to the Mysteries of our Faith, we list a few here:
1. There are many lives each jiva had to live, and many lives are to come till one has mukti. Mukti is different from salvation or redemption.
2. The law of Karma is at work, mitigated by the grace of the Supreme Godhead.
3. The Supreme Godhead is both without and with attributes.
4. The Supreme Godhead propels human history as various Incarnations as and when needed.
5. Our multiverses are in a constant state of flux.
6. We have souls and our souls are eternal. They were not created ex-nihilo, nor do we cease existing after we die. (One of the other Mysteries of the Christian Faith is that we are created ex-nihilo.) We are not stardust but as it were, God-dust. This is a Mystery of our Faith.
There are other Mysteries of our Faith like our knowledge of Yugas or aeons. To list them all here is impossible. Suffice it to say that the Sanatana Dharma is a living religion with its own set of Mysteries.
Author Subhasis Chattopadhyay has a Ph.D. in American Literature from the University of Calcutta. His reviews from 2010 to 2021 in Prabuddha Bharata have been showcased by Ivy League Presses. He has qualifications in Christian Theology and Hindu Studies and currently teaches English Literature in the PG and UG Department of a College affiliated to the University of Calcutta. He also has qualifications in Behavioural Sciences.
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