Vaiṣṇava Concepts of God

Ricardo Sousa Silvestre is Associate Professor at Federal University of Campina Grande, Brazil and Professor of the Graduate Program in Philosophy at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Also, he is the leader of the project "Concepts of God and the Variety of Theisms in Indian Traditions", funded by the John Templeton Foundation. He has authored and edited several books, including Beyond Faith and Rationality: Essays on Logic, Religion and Philosophy (2020).Alan C. Herbert is Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies (OCHS), Oxford, UK. He was a director of the research project that made this volume possible: "A Philosophical Approach to the Vaishnava Concept of God", funded by the John Templeton Foundation through the Global Philosophy of Religion Project. He is the Indian Studies Lead Researcher for the John Templeton-funded project "Concepts of God and the Variety of Theisms in Indian Traditions". He is also a co-director of the OCHS research project: Hinduism in Modern Contemporary Society.Benedikt Paul Göcke is Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and the Philosophy of Science at the Faculty of Catholic Theology, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, a Research Fellow in Philosophy at Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University, UK and a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University, UK.

• 1. Introduction; 2. The concept of god in the Bhavaga-Gītā: A panentheistic account; 3. Beauty and form as a corollary of a perfect being: Kṛṣṇa in the Bhāgavata-Purāṇa; 4. The nature of God in the Pāñcarātra with specific reference to the Jayākhya-Saṃhitā; 5. Supreme Self and Supreme Lord: Cosmological monotheism in the Mahābhārata epicr; 6. The Āḻvār concept of God and Tamil Vaiṣṇavism: If we examine, there is but one God! 7. Two conceptions of the relation between self and God: The debate between Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja; 8. In defence of divine transcendence: Madhva’s critique of ‘material panentheism’; 9. Non-theism and theism in the Nimbārka Sampradāya; 10. Embodiment and abstraction: God in Puṣṭimārga; 11. On śaktis and their divine possessor: Towards a Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava concept of God; 12. Harmonising the personal God with the impersonal Brahman: Sri Ramakrishna’s Vijñāna Vedānta in dialogue with Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism; 13. The God of yoga: Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda and divine pedagogy addressing divine hiddenness; Index