A Christian Response to the Hindu Philosophical Systems

As a pioneer Christian apology written as early as 1862, this work previously titled differently such as Hindu Philosophical Systems : A Rational Refutation (1862), A Rational Refutation of the Hindu Philosophical Systems (1897) and A Mirror of the Hindu Philosophical Systems (1911), is rated as scholarly as Krishna Mohun Banerjea’s Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy of 1861. The approach of both these works to the Hindu philosophical systems was negative and it is not acceptable to Indian Christians any more. There have been many later works from Indian Christian scholars emphasising the possible contributions of one or other school of Indian philosophy to Christian thought. Whereas the merit of these two pioneering works was that they provide a Christian response to all the six systems of Hindu philosophy together comprehensively. For the later Indian Christian scholars to follow inclusivism or pluralism or pluralistic inclusivism in Theology of Religions, somebody had to start at the school of exclusivism and the two pioneers Goreh and Banerjea undertook this task. Nehemiah Goreh considered Nyaya and Vaisesika as the most reasonable of all schools because they acknowledge God. For him great is the error of Sankhya and Mimamsa in denying the existence of God. Throughout Goreh’s work, it is taken as a postulate that with the Vedantins, Brahman excepted, all is nihility. Advaita is interpreted here in terms of Post-Sankarite writings.