
God at Play
Lila in Hindu and Christian Traditions
Daniel Soars(Editor)
Fordham University Press
Published on 1. July 2025
Book
Hardback
320 pages
978-1-5315-1008-4 (ISBN)
Description
The first comparative treatment of the topic of lila in Hindu and Christian traditions, this volume explores what it means to consider divine and human action under the categories of play, wit, drama, grace, and compassion
God at Play presents a theological exploration of the multifaceted motif of lila across diverse Hindu and Christian landscapes and its wide-ranging connections to divine and human creativity. Given its ubiquity in Hindu theologies and life-forms, lila offers a rich comparative framework for exploring certain ways of understanding divine and human action as expressed in Hindu and Christian sacred texts, philosophical theology, and ritual practices.
Though lila is often interpreted simply as "play," the essays in this volume reflect a far richer semantic and conceptual field, ranging from spontaneity and gratuitousness, through joy and humor, to mercy and compassion. By focusing on the different contexts in which lila is found in Hindu traditions and resisting any uniform translation of the term, the contributors to this volume avoid the risk of using predominantly western or Christian categories to understand the Hindu other. The volume thus explores how lila functions in a variety of distinctive philosophical, theological, and devotional ways across Hindu traditions, and listens for echoes in Christian understandings of the gratuitousness of the created order in relation to God.
God at Play is a genuine experiment in deep learning across traditions. Each chapter reflects on what is learned by taking lila as the category of comparison and invites the reader to think about what these conversations add, confirm, or change in relation to earlier twentieth-century scholarship on play-not least, in terms of what difference it might make to understand human life as an imitation and a participation in the divine life of a playful deity.
God at Play presents a theological exploration of the multifaceted motif of lila across diverse Hindu and Christian landscapes and its wide-ranging connections to divine and human creativity. Given its ubiquity in Hindu theologies and life-forms, lila offers a rich comparative framework for exploring certain ways of understanding divine and human action as expressed in Hindu and Christian sacred texts, philosophical theology, and ritual practices.
Though lila is often interpreted simply as "play," the essays in this volume reflect a far richer semantic and conceptual field, ranging from spontaneity and gratuitousness, through joy and humor, to mercy and compassion. By focusing on the different contexts in which lila is found in Hindu traditions and resisting any uniform translation of the term, the contributors to this volume avoid the risk of using predominantly western or Christian categories to understand the Hindu other. The volume thus explores how lila functions in a variety of distinctive philosophical, theological, and devotional ways across Hindu traditions, and listens for echoes in Christian understandings of the gratuitousness of the created order in relation to God.
God at Play is a genuine experiment in deep learning across traditions. Each chapter reflects on what is learned by taking lila as the category of comparison and invites the reader to think about what these conversations add, confirm, or change in relation to earlier twentieth-century scholarship on play-not least, in terms of what difference it might make to understand human life as an imitation and a participation in the divine life of a playful deity.
More details
Series
Edition
New edition
Language
English
Place of publication
New York
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
567 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5315-1008-4 (9781531510084)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Michelle Voss (Afterword By)
Michelle Voss is Professor of Theology at Emmanuel College in the Toronto School of Theology. She is a scholar of comparative theology, with a particular focus on Christian and Hindu contexts, and has also written widely about aesthetics, gender, and embodiment. Recent works include Body Parts: A Theological Anthropology (Fortress, 2017) and The Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations, which she edited with Chad Bauman (Routledge, 2020).
Daniel Soars (Edited By)
Daniel Soars teaches in the Divinity Department at Eton College and is book reviews editor for the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies. Recent publications include a co-edited volume titled Hindu-Christian Dual Belonging (Routledge, 2022) and a monograph titled The World and God Are Not-Two: A Hindu Christian Conversation (Fordham, 2023).
Michelle Voss is Professor of Theology at Emmanuel College in the Toronto School of Theology. She is a scholar of comparative theology, with a particular focus on Christian and Hindu contexts, and has also written widely about aesthetics, gender, and embodiment. Recent works include Body Parts: A Theological Anthropology (Fortress, 2017) and The Handbook of Hindu-Christian Relations, which she edited with Chad Bauman (Routledge, 2020).
Daniel Soars (Edited By)
Daniel Soars teaches in the Divinity Department at Eton College and is book reviews editor for the Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies. Recent publications include a co-edited volume titled Hindu-Christian Dual Belonging (Routledge, 2022) and a monograph titled The World and God Are Not-Two: A Hindu Christian Conversation (Fordham, 2023).
Editor
Afterword
Contributions
Content
Introduction: God at Play: Lila in Hindu and Christian Traditions 1
Daniel Soars
Part I: Lila as Divine Will and Divine Creativity
1 Play in East and West 21
Douglas Hedley
2 Creating without a "Why": Divine Play as Metaphor
for Creation in John Scottus Eriugena, Thomas Aquinas, and Meister Eckhart 43
Bernard McGinn
3 God's Willand the Creative Act:
Origen on Divine Volition and the Intelligibility of the Cosmos 63
Daniel J. Tolan
Part II: Grace, Compassion, and Suffering: Some Pastoral Connotations of Lila
4 Creation, Vision, Bliss: Lila as Grace according to Ramanuja, with
Reference Also to Thomas Aquinas and Gregory Palamas 89
Francis X. Clooney, SJ
5 Lila and Divine Mercy in the Hundred Verses to Compassion of Vedanta Desika 109
Sucharita Adluri
6 What Does It Mean for the Goddess to Play?
Lila (or Its Absence) in the Sakta Traditions 135
Rachel Fell McDermott
Part III: Some Aesthetic and Dramatic Dimensions of Lila
7 "You have made me endless, such is thy pleasure":
The Lila of Love in the Metaphysical Poetry of Rabindranath Tagore 153
Ankur Barua
8 The Metaphysics of Emotion: Divine Play in Caitanya Vai??ava Philosophy 178
Jessica Frazier
9 The Making of the Sacred City: Lila as God's Violence in a Tamil Saiva Talapura?am 197
Srilata Raman
Part IV: Human Playfulness as Imitation of Divine Lila
10 Looking to the Leader: The Divine Dance in Neoplatonism 221
Stephen R.L. Clark
11 Serio Ludere! Divine Lessons from Tricksters and Holy Fools 244
Peter Tyler
12 The Serious Subject of Play: Play in Dance and Music 264
Dominic White, OP
Afterword: Divine Lila and Human Play 289
Michelle Voss
Contributors 299
Index 303
Daniel Soars
Part I: Lila as Divine Will and Divine Creativity
1 Play in East and West 21
Douglas Hedley
2 Creating without a "Why": Divine Play as Metaphor
for Creation in John Scottus Eriugena, Thomas Aquinas, and Meister Eckhart 43
Bernard McGinn
3 God's Willand the Creative Act:
Origen on Divine Volition and the Intelligibility of the Cosmos 63
Daniel J. Tolan
Part II: Grace, Compassion, and Suffering: Some Pastoral Connotations of Lila
4 Creation, Vision, Bliss: Lila as Grace according to Ramanuja, with
Reference Also to Thomas Aquinas and Gregory Palamas 89
Francis X. Clooney, SJ
5 Lila and Divine Mercy in the Hundred Verses to Compassion of Vedanta Desika 109
Sucharita Adluri
6 What Does It Mean for the Goddess to Play?
Lila (or Its Absence) in the Sakta Traditions 135
Rachel Fell McDermott
Part III: Some Aesthetic and Dramatic Dimensions of Lila
7 "You have made me endless, such is thy pleasure":
The Lila of Love in the Metaphysical Poetry of Rabindranath Tagore 153
Ankur Barua
8 The Metaphysics of Emotion: Divine Play in Caitanya Vai??ava Philosophy 178
Jessica Frazier
9 The Making of the Sacred City: Lila as God's Violence in a Tamil Saiva Talapura?am 197
Srilata Raman
Part IV: Human Playfulness as Imitation of Divine Lila
10 Looking to the Leader: The Divine Dance in Neoplatonism 221
Stephen R.L. Clark
11 Serio Ludere! Divine Lessons from Tricksters and Holy Fools 244
Peter Tyler
12 The Serious Subject of Play: Play in Dance and Music 264
Dominic White, OP
Afterword: Divine Lila and Human Play 289
Michelle Voss
Contributors 299
Index 303