A Constructive Survey of Upanishadic Philosophy c8.s6.3

c8.s6.3

4. Theonomy is also a sort of heteronomy, inasmuch as the “ theos ” is also a “ heteros ” from the properly moral point of view. But it is convenient to consider Theonomy as separate from Heteronomy, inasmuch as the Law of God stands in a somewhat different category from the Law of Man. Unless it were possible to be a true anti-hedonist as he is, to insist on moral conduct, unless it were possible to go so much as to note what principles in general can be regarded as constituting the wishes of God—if we were not to understand these as identical with the dictates of Conscience which is the candle of the Lord within us—it might not seem very possible to set down in detail the Laws of God as enjoining the performance of certain duties upon us, in preference to, or in cancelment of, other duties. But in communities which entertain a vague fear about God as a Being who is separate from ourselves, the laws which are after all "attributed" to God by man ever hang like the sword of Damocles on the moral agent, and theophobia instead of theopathy supplies the rules for moral life. It was thus that the sage of the Kaṭhopanishad said that "God is that great fearful Thunderbolt which is raised over our head, by knowing which alone can man become immortal. For is it not through His fear, that the fire burns, the sun shines, the god of gods, the wind, and death as the fifth, run about doing their work?" Of the same import is the passage from the Taittirīyopanishad which only reiterates the passage from the Kaṭha with slight alterations (S. 2). But when all has been said in favour of the Law of God, on a careful consideration of the intimate nature of moral action, it may become evident that the law issuing from anybody except one's own Self can never be regarded as a sufficient guarantee for the moral tone of actions.