ARTICLE REVIEW: Impossibility, God, and The Religious Experience By: Madhuri M. Yadlapati

Gatchalian, Exequiel Baet November 22, 2018
III- AB Philosophy
Adamson University- St. Vincent School of Theology
Phenomenology and Existentialism
Rev. Fr. Kenneth Masong
ARTICLE REVIEW: Impossibility, God, and the Religious Experience

By: Madhuri M. Yadlapati
I have chosen to make an article review on Mr. Madhuri Yadlapati for the reason that the
article talks about the phenomenology of the religious experience. I have found the article by the
means of internet. Now this article review of mine is going to tackle the summary of Yadlapati’s,
and also I am going to provide a system distinguishing the question that the article begs to answer,
and the claim or answer of Yadlapati with his arguments, and lastly, my reaction to his article.
On the first part of the article, Yadlapati already provided the abstract of what he is going
to tackle about. This article is his response to John Caputo’s argument that the experience of the
impossible bridges the experience of God. His essay argues that “such an axiom of impossibility
can indeed operate outside a narrow ‘loving father’ theism, and second, that a form of faith that
rejects the notion of God simply turns impossibility to possibility better maintains religious faith
at a threshold of human manipulation and respects the freedom of Reality.” (Madhuri M.
Yadlapati, Impossibility, God, and Religious Experience, Ars Disputandi 6, abstract)
In this article, Yadlapati provides small chapters concerning different topics concerning
the main question. First, he made a recap of John Caputo’s article ‘The Experience of God and the
Axiology of the Impossible’. He tells us that Caputo, in his article, addresses the phenomenological
experience of God using the terms of our experience of impossibility. That is somehow true
because whenever we, human beings, encounters something very unlikely to happen, say that is it
is impossible, we always link it to the Divine. The problem of Caputo’s article is that God is
portrayed outside of our ordinary human experience. If this is so, that God surpasses human
understanding and experience, then how can we determine that is it God who we are experiencing
in times of impossibility. Then he “hypothesized” that our experience of the impossibility is the
bridge that links God and human experience. Yadlapati finds this hypothesis very powerful to
endeavor God from the realm of human experience. For Caputo states that the experience of the
impossible tends to have a phenomenological experience of God.
After making this claim, Caputo also claims that the experience of the impossible as the
most authentic human experience, or the only experience worth experiencing. And he, Caputo
believes that the Christian faith is the belief of the possibility of the impossible because of the
axiom attributed to the Christian faith, “all things are possible with God.” It is in Caputo’s question
of whether the impossible still be made possible if we exclude the Judeo-Christian God, that
Yadlapati gets his motivation to write his article response.
Yadlapati wants to answer this question by contrasting two forms of faith and by
discovering a Hindu notion of God and faith to discover what can he add to Caputo’s axiology of
the impossible in the experience of God. What he did here is that he went outside the Judeo-
Christian God and went to Hinduism’s notion of God.
The Judeo-Christian God, as we know according to tradition, is a ‘loving father’. It is

essential to think of God as a ‘loving father’ in western theism. He, God, is also called the God of
Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Calling God, the God of Abraham, we give
characteristic not of what he is, but who he is. He is a Supreme Person. This type of theism portrays
God as a Person, but it is not likely so in Hinduism as Yadlapati tells us.
It is in this article that I learned a new way of portraying “God” and faith in the Hindu
perspective. So, in Hinduism, there is a supreme reality that is absolute, and they call it Brahman.
Brahman, says Yadlapati, is not God, rather it is the whole of reality itself. Hindu religion seeks to
return to this reality. As we all know, Hindus worship gods and goddesses, but they refer to them
as deities. I have learned that they do not consider anyone of these deities as the Supreme God, but
rather they recognize these as various expressions of the God. Hinduism isn’t really polytheism at
all is it? It is rather a monotheistic sense that recognizes that there is only one Reality, with many
faces and characteristics that us humans have understood. And all these deities, somehow point
toward the one truth, which is the Absolute Brahman.
Yadlapati provides us a description of Hindu worship. This act of worship is called the
puja. The puja happens after the worshipper purifies himself and has already prepared to encounter
the deity. He then calls the god or goddess to become present in the image or idol being used. He
treats the image, with the presence of the god inside, with fitting respect. He offers all the good
things he has at his disposal as well as his expression of his adoration, praises and devotion to the
god. After this ritual, the worshipper then releases the god from the image or the idol and bids
farewell as one would his visitor. This attitude of welcoming God in the ritual of puja portrays
that God is perfectly transcendent and also perfectly immanent. Yadlapati tells us that it is because
God transcends in everything, that God is immanent and is present in everything.

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Gatchalian, Exequiel Baet November 22, 2018

ARTICLE REVIEW: Impossibility, God, and the Religious Experience

The Judeo-Christian God, as we know according to tradition, is a ‘loving father’. It is

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