Engaging Hinduism on its strongest version

Hinduism is not one position but a family. The streams most relevant to this engagement: Advaita Vedanta (Shankara, ~800 AD) holds nondualism, that the self is identical with ultimate reality (Brahman) and that distinction is maya. Vishishtadvaita (Ramanuja, ~1100 AD) holds qualified nondualism. Dvaita (Madhva, ~1250 AD) holds dualism. Bhakti traditions look more theistic.

The substantive disagreements with Christianity are four. First, personal versus impersonal Ultimate. In strict Advaita, Brahman is nirguna (without attributes), beyond personality. The Christian conception is that ultimate reality is personal: a Trinity of Persons. The data each must explain is the personal phenomena: love, will, particular relationship. On Advaita these are real at the conventional level but not the ultimate level; on Christianity they are real all the way down.

Second, the reality of evil. On strict Advaita, suffering is real conventionally but not ultimately. The cure is realisation that the suffering self was illusion. The Christian objection: this answer underrates evil. Genuine evil is not made better by being told it was illusion.

Third, the role of history. Hinduism's incarnations (Krishna, Rama) are largely mythological; the bhakti traditions are devotional rather than historical and evidential. Christianity stakes its case on a historical event in a known time and place, investigable by the standard tools of historical inquiry.

Vinoth Ramachandra, a Sri Lankan Anglican theologian, has written specifically for the South Asian context. He presses the moral case as well: Christianity's commitment to the equal worth of every individual, regardless of caste, has played a documented role in Indian social reform (Dalit Christian theology; the abolition of sati under figures including William Carey). This is not anti Hindu polemic; it is a comparative case for which framework better grounds human dignity.

Reading

• Vinoth Ramachandra, Faiths in Conflict?, 1999.
• Vinoth Ramachandra, Subverting Global Myths, 2008.
• Mark Heim, Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion, 1995.
• Keith Yandell, Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction, 2nd ed., 2016.