Jainism in a Global Perspective - Collection of Jain papers of 1993 Parliament of World Religions, Chicago

SR No.: 014010
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: Sagarmal Jain, Shreeprakash Pandey
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith
Publication Year: 1998
Total Pages: 402
Language: English
Classification: Seminar & Articles
File Size: 23 MB

Page 247

Concept of God in Jainism
DR. JITENDRA B. SHAH
Jainism is one of the oldest religions (C. 600 B.C.) of India. It was the period in the history of world civilization, marked by intelectual stir and spiritual urge. Socrates is Greece, Confucius in China, Mahāvira (active 519-477 B.C.) and Buddha (c. 563-483 B.C.) in India sparked a revolution in th thoughts of their respective countries. At that time Indian society was undergoing fundamental transformation. It was the time when Lord Mahāvira preached Jainism against the sanctity of Vedic lore. Though it was propagated by his predecessor Pārsvanātha (c. 7th-6th century B.C.), it flourished under Lord Mahāvira. It was not a collection of putried dogams but a dynamic movement. It flourished because it represented the outraged conscience of humanity against the oppressive priest craft. It challenged the divine authority of Vedās, an infallibility of the priests who were the custodians of the divine words. Vedic sacerdotalism was succeded to creat an impression in the popular minds that a suitable combination rights, priest and object of sacrifice has the magical power to please the God and to get the boons desired. That Vedic God, conceived as sole ground and prime cause of the phenomenal universe- the non-dual, self determining. self-existent, free creator, sustainer and regulator of the countless plurality of living beings and nonliving beings - is infinite, absolute, omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. Jainism challenged this concept of God. In Jainism, in sense of extra cosmic personal creator, God has no place at all. If flatly and distinctly denies such a creator as illogical and irrelevant in the scheme of the universe. On the contrary it asserts that an ordinary man can progress to such an extent that he can become an object of worship or veneration for not only human beings but for gods too. Jainism does not hold that there is eternal God but it believes in the eternity of existence of the very substance and universality of life.
Not only in Vedic religions buteven in Islam and Christianity, God has been defined as creator of the world. Western theologians like Thomes Aqunias, Augustine, Paul Tillich, Spinoza, Luther, Zwingli, Calvin and