What is an avatar in Hinduism? Was Jesus an avatar?

Regarding God and Jesus Christ: Hindus do not believe in a personal, loving God, but in Brahma, a formless, abstract, eternal being without attributes, who was the beginning of all things."' They believe that Jesus is not God but just one of many incarnations, or avatars, of V'shnu. Christians believe that God is an eternal, personal, spiritual Being in three persons ‑ Father, Son and Holy Spirit (see Matt. 3:13‑17; 28:19; 2 Cor. 13:14). Jesus Christ is God as well as sinless man and He died for our redemption (see John 1: 13,14; 1 Pet. 2:24). Regarding sin and salvation: Hindus call sin "utter illusion" because they believe all material reality is illusory. They seek deliverance from samsara, the endless cycle of death and rebirth, through union with Brahma, which is achieved through devotion, meditation, good works and self‑control. Christians believe that sin is prideful rebellion that leads to eternal separation from God after living only one life, not many (see Rom. 3:23; Heb. 9:27) and that salvation is gained only through believing in the sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (see Rom. 3:24; 1 Cor. 15:3).

Teachers of Vedanta, such as Swami Prabhavananda, say that a Hindu "would find it easy to accept Christ as a divine incarnation and to worship Him unreservedly, exactly as he worships Krishna or another avatar (savior) of his choice. But he cannot accept Christ as the only son of God."

The great Indian leader Mohandas K. Gandhi made a similar statement: "It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God. And that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life." Gandhi also said that he could not believe there was any "mysterious or miraculous virtue" in Christ's death on the cross."

HINDUISM VERSUS JESUS CHRIST

Along with their rejection of God as sovereign creator of the world, Hindus also part company with Christianity on the critical issue of Jesus Christ as God's incarnate Son. Hindu worshipers of Vishnu, for example, believe that God has become incarnate many times in the past." The Bible teaches that God became incarnate only once in human history (see John 1: 14). Jesus came not to teach humanity various "ways" to salvation, but to be "the way and the truth and the life" (John 14:6) and "to take away the sins of many" (Heb. 9:28).

According to the way of bhakti, a devotee may choose any of the 330 million gods, goddesses or demigods in the Hindu pantheon and passionately worship that particular god. In actual practice, almost all Hindus following the way of bhakti worship Vishnu or Shiva.

Most popular is the god Vishnu, who has many names and has appeared as avatars (saviors‑the incarnation of deity) in the form of a giant turtle, as Gautama Buddha (see chapter 7) and as Rama and Krishna, the two important heroes of Ramayana and Mahabbarata. Vishnu also has many sexual consorts (wives), as does Shiva, who is worshiped by other millions of Hindus. Shiva can be linked to the ancient pre‑Aryan fertility god of the Dravidians. Rituals performed by Shiva worshipers are not unlike the worship of the Canaanites, whom God commanded the Israelites to destroy (see the book of Joshua).

"The same was in the beginning with God" (verse 2); not at a subsequent date, but "in the beginning," when no creature had commenced its existence. For this truth we are entirely indebted to God. Who could speak of such things but God? It is He Who uses John to write, and all He says is worthy of implicit faith. The Word "was in the beginning with God." His personality was eternal, no less than His nature or being. He was no mere emanation, as the Indo-Aryans dreamed in the earliest form of their thoughts known to us. For God thus was not really supreme and free, but subject to restraint necessarily incompatible with sovereignty, and ever tending to that pantheism which, making the universe to be God, denies the only true God. Thus, He was merely Tad (That), an abstract energy, yet not in self-sufficiency, but in longing for others to emanate-Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, the Creator, the Preserver, and the Destroyer. In the Hindu system developed later, as the Divinity was thus imaginatively resolved into emanations, so is the universe itself pantheistically to be an emanation rather than a creation formed by Divine will, power, and design. All is flux and illusion. What a contrast is its Triad with the Trinity, the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God! And its Avataras, even that of Krishna, late as the legend rose, how remote from the Incarnation! Thereby God and man stand for ever united in one Person, by His death the Reconciler of all creation, heavenly and earthly, and of those who by grace are to reign with Him over all things to the glory of God the Father. "I cannot but regard John 1:2 as a striking and complete setting aside of the Alexandrian and Patristic distinction of λόγος ἐνδίαθετος and λόγος προφορικός. Some of the earlier Greek fathers, who were infected with Platonism, held that the λόγος was conceived in God's mind from eternity, and only uttered, as it were, in time. This has given a handle to Arians, who, like other unbelievers, greedily seek the traditions of men. The apostle here asserts, in the Holy Ghost, the eternal personality of the Word with God" ("Lectures on the Gospels," p. 409, note).

Yet a third writes from the East: “You may know that the Hindu believes that nine Incarnations have already appeared on the earth. There is a widespread belief all over the country that a tenth is about to appear. He is called the KALKI or NISHALANK AWATAR, i.e., the Sinless Incarnation. He is to be born of a virgin and will ride upon a white horse, slaying all the wicked, and establishing righteousness all over the earth.”

If Jupiter be suckled by a goat in Crete, the idea of supremacy remains. If Krishna lives with the milkmaids, in time he is an incarnation of Vishnu, and Vishnu is Brahm, the rest Maia or Illusion. The gods are mortal; God is not. It may be Bathos, or Silence, or as unknown as you please, when the feeble mind of man tries to have a formed idea; but before it acts, behind the gods of imagination or lusts or fears, there is not only godhead, but one God. The Manitou of the Indian, the eternal being before Ahurmazdha, was active for good, or Ahriman, to spoil his work.

The Hindu inquirer wished that God might not be impersonal. What did he mean by the word, “impersonal”? Did he mean what is so commonly believed in heathen lands that the only expression of God is seen in creation, in nature, in material things; that God is in everything—mountains, rivers, animals, birds, men—in another word, pantheism? If so there could be no appeal. Nature in such a case must take its course, and the yearning of the human soul left unsatisfied.

The followers of the modem Vedanta movement believe that the most recent incarnation of Vishnu is that of Sri Ramakrishna (after whom the Ramakrishna Order was named). Ramakrishna lived in Bengal toward the end of the nineteenth century. His followers say that he practiced all the spiritual disciplines of Hinduism, Christianity and Islam and that he attained a vision of God in each one. Ramakrishna would often say, "Many faiths are but different paths leading to the one reality, God."

Hinduism is not really one religion, but many religions that interact and blend with one another. There is no known founder of Hinduism, no creedal statements of faith to sign and no agreed‑upon authority. In fact, one can be a good Hindu and believe in one god, many gods or no god at all! This is because, for Hindus, contradictory ideas are not a problem. All reality, contradictory or not, is seen as "one." There are, however, two foundational assumptions that almost all Hindus believe without question: reincarnation and karma.

Reincarnation is the belief that the atman, a person's uncreated and eternal soul, must repeatedly be recycled into the world in different bodies. In some forms of Hinduism, souls may be reincarnated as animals, plants or even inanimate objects. Reincarnation is the process that takes the Hindu through the great wheel of samsara, the thousands or millions of lives (all full of suffering) that each atman must endure before reaching moksba ‑ liberation from suffering and union with the infinite.