Transtheism

Nathan Katz in Buddhist and Western Philosophy (1981, p. 446) points out that the term "transpolytheistic" would be more accurate, since it entails that the polytheistic gods are not denied or rejected even after the development of a notion of the Absolute that transcends them, but criticizes the classification as characterizing the mainstream by the periphery: "like categorizing Roman Catholicism as a good example of non-Nestorianism". The term is indeed informed by the fact that the corresponding development in the West, the development of monotheism, did not attempt to "transcend" polytheism, but to abolish it, while in the mainstream of the Indian religions, the notion of "gods" (deva) was never elevated to the status of "God" or Ishvara, or the impersonal Absolute Brahman, but adopted roles comparable to Western angels. "Transtheism", according to the criticism of Katz, is then an artifact of comparative religion.

Paul Tillich uses transtheistic in The Courage to Be (1952), as an aspect of Stoicism. Tillich stated that Stoicism and Neo-Stoicism

are the way in which some of the noblest figures in later antiquity and their followers in modern times have answered the problem of existence and conquered the anxieties of fate and death. Stoicism in this sense is a basic religious attitude, whether it appears in theistic, atheistic, or transtheistic forms.[5]

Like Zimmer, Tillich is trying to express a religious notion that is neither theistic nor atheistic. However, the theism that is being transcended in Stoicism according to Tillich is not polytheism as in Jainism, but monotheism, pursuing an ideal of human courage which has emancipated itself from God.

The courage to take meaninglessness into itself presupposes a relation to the ground of being which we have called "absolute faith." It is without a special content, yet it is not without content. The content of absolute faith is the "god above God." Absolute faith and its consequence, the courage that takes the radical doubt, the doubt about God, into itself, transcends the theistic idea of God.[6]

Martin Buber criticized Tillich's "transtheistic position" as a reduction of God to the impersonal "necessary being" of Thomas Aquinas.[7]

Following the term coined by Tillich and Zimmer, Buddhism can be regarded as a transtheistic religion.[1] This can be evident by the transcendence of the state of Nibbana (Nirvana) that surpasses all the realms of existence, including the planes of devas and brahmas who are considered gods in Buddhist cosmology. The historical Buddha made it clear that the path to enlightenment does not depend on a god or gods. Although there is acknowledgment of a multitude of gods in the oldest Buddhist scriptures, there is also reference to Maha Brahma, who considered himself to be the all-powerful all-creator god, only to be critiqued by the Buddha as having wrongly perceived his plane of existence as the highest.[8]

Nevertheless, these deities remain an inseparable aspect of the Buddhist worldview. The Buddha recommended meditation on the virtues of the devas as one of several means of achieving enlightenment. In the Paṭhamamahānāma Sutta (AN 11.11) and the Samgyutta Agama (T. ii 237c9), the Buddha recommends that a disciple recollect each category of deity and their qualities of faith (saddha), ethics (sīla), learning (suta), renunciation (cāga), and wisdom (pañña). This fivefold enumeration of virtues is known in Chinese Buddhism as the "five virtues of a householder" (在家五法 or listed 信戒施聞慧). It is notable that the Chinese text also lists six virtues (六法), drawing a distinction between giving (dāna; 施) and renunciation (tyāga; 捨).

The Pure Abodes are also a significant aspect of Buddhist soteriology because the deities born there are anāgāmins. As with the function of the pure lands in Mahayana Buddhism, this explicitly presents certain deities with the ability to access nirvana, which confirms that their status is an indication of advancement on the path of liberation.

• Antitheism
• Apatheism
• Ietsism
• Jain cosmology
• Nonduality
• Nontheism
• Nontheistic religions
• Pantheism
• Post-monotheism
• Post-theism
• Prakirnaka Sutra
• Syntheism
• Transcendence (religious)

• Ruth Reyna, Dictionary of Oriental Philosophy, Munshiram Manoharlal (1984).
• Heinrich Robert Zimmer, Philosophies of India, ed. Joseph Campbell (1953).

• The dictionary definition of transtheistic at Wiktionary
• Media related to Transtheism at Wikimedia Commons