Are Sikhs Praying to the One True God?

Jesus Christ calls you home

A minor controversy occurred recently when a non-Christian Sikh woman opened a noteworthy event with a prayer. Some Christians were outraged by this action, suggesting that apparently faithful Christians were allowing communication with a demonic entity right in front of their faces. Worse even were accusations that those Christians were actually formally participating in the worship of idols at best or demons at worst, thus committing a grave sin.

It is a good instinct for any religious person to heavily scrutinize and limit their formal participation in the religious practices of other religions. This is especially true when the religion in question is explicitly non-Christian.

I think our natural and rightful hesitation in these matters begs a question: is it possible for a member of a religion that is in error to be praying to the one true God? If not, who or what is the object of their prayers? If not God, the options are the following:

  1. In vain, because the object of their prayer does not exist
  2. Evil, because the object of their prayer is an evil entity
  3. Idolatrous, because the object of their prayer is a creature

Before I really get started, let me just say I'm not trying to single out the Sikhs here. I am using their theology as an example for two reasons: one, they are a great example of a relatively mainstream non-Abrahamic monotheistic faith, and two, they were in the news.

I also want to give a massive disclaimer: I am by no means an expert on Sikh theology. In fact, I knew nothing about it until the light amount of research done for this article!

With all that said, if you're still on board, the approach I am going to take is:

  1. Examine what has been discovered about God outside of God's revelation
  2. Establish the "essential characteristics" of God
  3. Examine what the Sikh believe about God, and determine if they are referring to the same object as a Catholic
  4. Talk about what we should take away from this

Ancient Naturalistic Understanding of God Apart from Divine Revelation

Many think that since the object of any type of theology is God, the study must rely upon articles of faith. If this were the case, our common ground with another would depend on the articles of faith we both believe to be true. Since articles of faith vary from religion to religion, the study of theology between certain religions would have absolutely nothing to do with one another.

While there are naturally (pun intended) limits to our reason - and thus the understanding we can have relying on reason alone is much more limited than that which we can know using our reason aided by Divine Revelation - the Church asserts confidently that we can actually know that God does exist. In knowing He does indeed exist, we can also come to know some of the essential qualities He has.

If anyone says that the one, true God, our creator and lord, cannot be known with certainty from the things that have been made, by the natural light of human reason: let him be anathema.1

You may think just knowing God exists won't tell us much about Him. But God is quite different than creatures; in the discovery of whether He exists or not, we learn a lot about Him. This was never more true than it was with Plato and Aristotle, who are the two philosophers I am going to focus on today.

I am not going to focus on the justifications for each of their positions, but I present their accounts to show how close natural inquiry can get a thinking person to understand the God that was otherwise unknown to them.

Plato

Plato believed there was a demiurge, or craftsman/creator who looked at a preexisting blueprint of things and brought them into physical existence. Their existence, in its most pure expression, is the form (or blueprint) itself. The process of creation as we would see it is instead only a creation of material expression of the pure reality which transcends it.

Notably here in Plato's cosmology is a singular powerful being - not many - who is responsible for the material world we witness with our senses. Also notable is the created nature of our physical world. This is not a random assignment of material that just so happens to be intelligible to us, it is meticulous and manual application of the understanding of an intelligence to chaotic and unopinionated pre-existing material. The world's intelligibility has its cause in its Demiurge just like the crafted table has its intelligibility caused by a woodworker; without the woodworker, the material would just be shapeless wood with vast potential but no greater purpose.

Thus, Plato believed:

  1. God is outside the physical universe
  2. God is not made of matter
  3. God created the physical universe, by imparting pre-existing order to it within His own design

Aristotle

Aristotle had a different view of metaphysics than Plato. Where Plato believed in a preexistent world of forms that we (and the Demiurge) simply recollect and express, Aristotle believed that form and matter were more united and non-severable.

We, as humans, are our bodies (the matter) and our form (the animating principle, or soul). Classically, we believe our souls can be separated from our bodies, but Aristotle wasn't fully convinced on this subject. He contended that the only possible separation of body and soul could be the rational soul, which he believed was not contained in a physical sense or organ since its object was the immaterial.

Because of his different view of physics, he did not posit a craftsman who could shape shapeless matter into form. Instead, he posited an unmoved mover as the explanation for the universe. He said all things possess potential and actuality; to move from potential to actual there must be an efficient cause outside of the subject which operates upon it to cause the change to happen.

In Aristotle's philosophy, the only efficient cause which could be the cause of the entire universe is itself a causal agent who did not need to be moved to act. This agent would need to be pure act as it would need to be initially and perpetually in a state of action to cause actions without needing to be moved to act in this way. This unmoved mover is the creator of the physical world, and whom we would identify as God.

Thus, Aristotle believed:

  1. God is at least co-eternal with the physical universe
  2. God is the cause of the physical universe's interior motion, thus being the original cause for why all things are the way they are
  3. God is outside of the physical universe
  4. God is not made of matter
  5. God is a being of pure act.
  6. As Aristotle is a monist, this means God possesses all possible virtues in their fullness

The Essential Characteristics About God

Now that we've seen Plato and Aristotle's ideas of what God is, we can see their understandings are clearly similar with Whom we know God to be. While they do not have a full picture of the truth, they each possess gradations of it. Since we identify the God they speak of with our own, it must necessarily mean there is some essential similarity we are seeing in it.

Whenever we are doing an investigation into something, regardless of what it is, we need to make sure we are on the same page with the terms we use. This is no less true when discussing God or matters of theology.

Now, more than ever, the conceptions people have of God are quite fragmented. Some people self-identify as "spiritual" and see that "god" is the common spirit inside all creatures. Others, like theological revisionists, believe "God" exists in an abstract way; this "idea of God" is a real idea but that's about as far as it goes.

But when Christians are talking about God, we mean something very fundamental: the one and only Divine Essence Who does truly and actually exist in a manner similar, but greater, than you and me. With that comes a few essential attributes:

  1. God is one: there is only one God, not a pantheon of gods working either together or against each other
  2. God is eternal: there has never been a time where God did not exist, and God is beyond any type of temporal constraints
  3. God is the creator and cause of all things: all beings that we currently see or experience, and any being that we don't, was created by God

I have explicitly left out many properties you may have expected to see, such as God's omnipotence or omniscience. I think philosophically these end up being necessary consequences of the above attributes, but if someone's understanding of God posited that He were limited in power, I would say they are mistaken rather than that to whom they are referring is the wrong being entirely.

The reason I think it is important to understand the minimum of what God is, is because you need to know enough, at least, to be able to identify the object of your study in order to properly study it. If I were a zoologist who couldn't identify what an animal was, how would I even know what objects to go out and study? You do not, however, need to know everything about it; if you did, why would you even be investigating it?!

Let's take a look at one of the contemporary conceptions of "god" I mentioned above. If someone were to approach me and imply that "god" is the common spirit of unity between human beings, does this idea correspond with the essential qualities above? Well, the common spirit of unity certainly did not create the physical universe. Therefore, what he refers to is not God properly understood.

God is called "ipsum esse subsistens," which means "being itself subsisting." This is a fancy way of saying that God is not just one being among many, but the source of all being who Himself cannot depend on anything else for His own existence. His type of existence is categorically different than ours. We exist insofar as we participate in God's existence through causality, as He has brought us from a potential being to an actual being. God exists because He is that which exists by definition; He relies on nothing else to be. God's existence, for Him to properly be called God, is a non-negotiable part of His essence.

I think this helps highlight the most important and essential characteristic of God: He is the uncreated creator. If we are ever talking about God in a way that does not grant Him sovereign control over His creation (Lord) or acknowledge Him as the agent of creation (Creator), then we are not talking about the one true God anymore. This is why Vatican I used those specific terms, calling God "our creator and lord."1

Is the Sikh Understanding of God Congruent with Natural Theology?

To identify if the Sikhs direct their worship and praise to the one true God, we need to judge them on what is accessible outside of the use of Divine Revelation. While they do have their own articles of faith, no Christian would believe these to be the inspired Word of God. Instead, we need to treat them as we would any natural investigation into the nature of God.

Just as the ancient philosophers were truly describing aspects of God when they engaged in cosmology without any such revelation, a religion - even if they do so under the guise of faith - may be attempting to worship the one true God in their religious practices following their natural understanding of God. Even if they are mistaken about non essential qualities of He who they refer to, we need to judge the object of their prayer or worship on the same standard upon which we would judge the object of the ancient philosophers' study.

Let's examine what the Sikhs believe about God. Below are some bullet points summarized from their articles of faith:

  1. Monotheism: Sikhs believe in one God, who is both transcendent (beyond the physical universe) and immanent (present within the creation).
  2. Formless: God is without form or gender. Sikhs reject the idea of anthropomorphic representations of God.
  3. Eternal and Infinite: God is timeless and limitless, without beginning or end.
  4. Creator: God is the creator of everything and is involved in the creation, maintenance, and destruction of the universe.
  5. Immanence and Transcendence: God is present in all aspects of creation and is beyond it at the same time.
  6. Self-Manifested: God is self-existent and does not depend on anything else for existence
  7. Merciful and Just: God is compassionate, loving, and fair, rewarding good deeds and punishing wrongdoings.

From the above list, it is clear that the Sikhs believe God is one, God is eternal, and God is creator. In my estimation, this brings them even closer than Aristotle or Plato in their idea of who and what God is. If we have no problem crediting those two philosophers for approaching God to the best of their abilities and properly acknowledging true qualities of the one true God, we should have no problem saying that the Sikhs, in their theology, do acknowledge the one true God.

This is something to their credit, as not all religions in the world acknowledge our God and Creator. Vatican II says:

But often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator.2

Every pagan religion has fallen into this category, and many religions and "spiritualities" today still do. They worship other human beings, money, power, demons, their dead ancestors, and more. This type of worship is at best idolatrous and at worst actively and willfully evil. We should be happy when a person gets closer to the bullseye in their understanding and worship of God.

Takeaways

Before you get too excited or accuse me of indifferentism, there is something important I need to say…

Acknowledging the existence of God doesn't actually count for all that much

It may sound weird in a culture with so much atheism or agnosticism to say that, but it is true. In creation, God makes His existence clearly and definitively knowable to all who seek it. It takes obstinate denial of your conscience, willful silencing of your strongest intuitions, rejection of a huge amount of contemporary and historical testimony, and blindness to the splendor of creation in both its natural forms and the holy expression of its saints.

It is true that when a Sikh offers up a prayer, they intend for that prayer to go to the creator of the universe. It is true that God does hear it and knows the offerer intends it to be heard by Him. It is true that God may even decide to answer the prayer. But God revealed Himself so we could do more than acknowledge Him: He did it so we could know Him and become one with Him and His will. This is likely the greatest reason God established a visible Church and gave the great commission! Vatican II speaks of the Church as follows:

She gives them the dispositions necessary for baptism, snatches them from the slavery of error and of idols and incorporates them in Christ so that through charity they may grow up into full maturity in Christ. Through her work, whatever good is in the minds and hearts of men, whatever good lies latent in the religious practices and cultures of diverse peoples, is not only saved from destruction but is also cleansed, raised up and perfected unto the glory of God, the confusion of the devil and the happiness of man.3

We as members of the Church are not to be indifferent to a religion that is in error. We are to incorporate them into the Church so that they may be more than just intellectual acknowledgers of the Creator, but that they may become children of God through baptism. Not only do we do this for the salvation of their souls, but we do this to free them from confusion and invite them to both natural and supernatural happiness.

Imagine a situation where, in their pious zeal, a recently converted tribe offered human sacrifice to Jesus Christ. It is clear the object of their worship is indeed the one true God. The issue does not lie in the object of their offering but in the mode in which they offer their worship; they are attempting to worship Him in a way He does not will for humanity. It is clear, then, that there can be offerings offered up to the correct object, namely the one true God, that are nevertheless not good (and in this case, unequivocally evil).

When encountering modes of worship or understanding that do not correspond with everything we know God to be, such as a public prayer of a Sikh individual, we must not succumb to indifferentism or a give a false impression of the level of unity that person has with the one true religion. This includes the extreme example of human sacrifice and the much more apparently benign example of praying to the Sikh idea of who God is.

This is nothing radical or new. The Church calls us to operate with this in mind even in our interactions with Protestants. A close family member of mine is not a Catholic, and I have, from time to time, gone to Sunday service with him. There isn't anything necessarily wrong with attending a service such as this, but we need to make sure we refrain from participating in such a way that would scandalize others.4

As an important example, it is not permissible to participate in the Eucharistic celebrations of Protestant Christians. This means a Catholic cannot eat the bread or drink the wine/grape juice with the congregants. However, it is totally permissible to pray and sing with those gathered. It is also permissible to read the Bible with them and participate in Bible studies. We just need to make sure we are prepared spiritually to defend our faith in a setting that may be hostile to it.

Unity and the visible appearance thereof is the important criterion to discern the level of participation acceptable. So what would I do if I was at a public prayer event with a faithful Sikh doing the convocation of the ceremony? Practically, I would suggest creating a physical distinction to not give the impression that you are praying in union with them. This may mean leaving the event, or it may mean just stoically standing there until the end and refraining from clapping. But we certainly should not show false unity by praying alongside them.

Even though the object of their prayer is the one God, in their misunderstanding of His true nature, they pray to Him in a manner He does not will.

As representatives of the Church, it is important that we do not scandalize others by giving a false impression of the level of unity they have with us. Where true unity does exist, we may mutually participate, inasmuch as we do not compromise anything we know to be true. The way in which we are truly and fully united in the object of our worship is in our acknowledgement of the one true and Triune God Who has revealed Himself through His Son, through His word, and through His Church. In seeking out this unity, we can try our best to bring about what our Lord wills for all who earnestly seek Him:

I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.5

Footnotes

  1. Vat. I, Pascendi Dominici Gregis ↩ ↩2

  2. Vat. II, Lumen Gentium 128 ↩

  3. Vat. II, Lumen Gentium 134 ↩

  4. In order to not scandalize my readers here, I do want to impress upon you all that going to a Protestant service is not a substitute for your Sunday obligation! If you want to attend another service, you must make plans to ensure you also attend Mass. ↩

  5. John 17:20-21 ↩

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