Daniel Soars’s The World and God Are Not-Two is a compelling and carefully rendered comparative theological study of distinction, and of distinctions between creator and creation in Christian and Hindu worldviews. Subtitled “A Hindu-Christian Conversation,” the book engages perspectives on panentheism and nondualism in Catholic theology and the Hindu philosophical tradition of Advaita Vedānta. A byproduct of Soars’s 2019 doctoral dissertation at University of Cambridge entitled “Beyond the Dualism of Creature and Creator: A Hindu-Christian Theological Inquiry into the Distinctive Relation between the World and God,” the monograph is part of the series “Comparative Theology: Thinking Across Traditions,” edited by Loye Ashton and John Thatamanil.
Soars frames his project as an example of comparative theology, a practice envisioned and modeled by Francis X. Clooney, SJ, as “deep learning across religious borders.” Soars, writing as a Roman Catholic, proposes that the sui generis relation between God and God’s creation (or “the world”) is best understood non-dualistically. Through close consideration of Advaita Vedānta, a Hindu philosophical school that emphasizes the non (a-) duality (-dvaita) between the Supreme Being (Brahman) and creation, Soars proposes that Christians might do well to develop a fuller understanding of their own tradition’s highly analogous perspective.
Soars advances two interrelated arguments. The first argument is that “God cannot be identified with any ‘thing’ in (or out of) the world (because ‘God’ does not refer to any kind of ‘thing’ but to the originating source and sustaining ground of all that exists) and that there is nothing in (or out of) the world that is ontologically separate from God either” (4). While this statement is likely amenable to many Christian theologians, within the same page-span Soars also introduces a second “particular argument,” which is that “the language of ‘non-duality’ can help [Christians] to articulate this unique relation in which the world and God are neither separate nor the same” (4). This second argument invites anyone who accepts the first to think comparatively about a cornerstone of Christian doctrine, the doctrine of creation.
Following an introductory overview of the project, chapter 1 turns to the work of David Burrell, a comparative theologian whose work traces consequential Jewish and Muslim influences in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. After highlighting the deeply embedded interreligious foundations of Christian theology exemplified by Aquinas’s own comparative theological engagements, Soars embraces Burrell’s suggestion to consider creation ex nihilo through religious registers beyond the so-called Abrahamic faiths. Burrell prompts Soars to explore the work of Sara Grant, RSCJ, a “little known twentieth-century Roman Catholic who spent most of her life in India” (paraphrase) and who wrote extensively about the world-God dialectic in Aquinas and the Hindu philosopher Śaṁkara (3). Chapter 2 of the book reviews the Thomist-Vedāntic encounters that predated Grant, especially the contributions of the twentieth-century “Calcutta School” of Indology, composed predominantly of Belgian theologians living in India, including Grant’s own close mentor, Richard de Smet. Chapter 3 recenters Grant’s comparative study of the concept of relation in Śaṁkara and Aquinas. Grant illuminates deep resonances between Catholic tradition and Vedāntic Hinduism by embracing an understanding of God “as the transcendent and yet immanent Self of our own self … already present in creation by the very fact of the world ‘being there’ at all” (95). Chapters 4 and 5 build upon Soars’s treatment of Grant and constitute his most constructive insights. Chapter 4 points to underexplored resonances between Thomas and Śaṁkara’s conceptions of divine causation. Chapter 5 acknowledges noteworthy limitations at play in the comparison and indicates, “There is greater emphasis in Aquinas and in Christian theology generally, than there is in Śaṁkara and Advaita, on the relative reality of the created order in all its fine-grained discrete particularities” (15).
By focusing on theological questions of particular importance to systematic theology, one of the greatest merits of Soars’s book is his insistence on the relevance of comparative theology to fundamental doctrinal concerns. Another significant merit of Soars’s account is the spotlight he shines on Sara Grant, whom he rightly acknowledges as an undervalued voice in the history of Hindu-Christian thought. While the technical theological debates and inclusion of an array of Sanskrit terminology may prove challenging for some readers, Soars does an admirable job of presenting his points in a clear and accessible manner. Selections of the text are sure to enrich the comparative theology classroom, especially at the graduate level. This erudite and captivating study is required reading for scholars of Hindu-Christian studies and comparative theologians more generally. Systematic theologians are also sure to benefit from Soars’s invitation to think comparatively.
