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JAINA CONCEPT OF GOD IN JAINA THEISM
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To believe in God is to love Him, to be devoted to Him to enter into Him." God becomes ruling passion of the mind, he sees God in himself and himself in God. Whatever God one worships is identified with the supreme. He is all in all the creator, the protector and destroyer. Prof. S. C. Chatterjee, after a long-discussion on nature of God concludes “God which we find in it, we are to say that the Hindu conception of God is monistic, but not pantheistic. Western critics have sweeping favour of Hindu philosophy and religion as pantheism. God in Hinduism is not simply immanent but also transcendent, we favour call the Hindu theory of God favour rather than pantheism. 106
God, in Indian theism, does not become only at issue in its metaphysical aspect. Indian theism thus provides sufficient grounds to justify it having various shades, all-shaping into a way of life-an approach to reality-an acceptance of the supreme.
(c) God in Western Theism
God in western theism is more traditional and religious. Western theism deals theism with reference to belief in the existence of God, with various theories and proofs appealing the concept of God but almost all coming out of an emphasis on critical intelligence, as stress on logic and science. God in western theism is more determined by arguments through which His existence is proved.
God is the “first great cause" for those who put the cosmological argument. He is the “supreme mind” as per assumption of the teleological argument and a “moral God” according to the moral argument.
105 “Jain Theism, P-8 106 Dr. Chatterjee, S.C., “The Fundamentals Hinduism”, 1970, P- 33-34, (HS, P-8)
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