Buddhists talk about Jesus

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Review Essay: Buddhists Talk about Jesus, Christians Talk about

the Buddha

Rita Gross

Terry Muck

Paul O. Ingram

Buddhist-Christian Studies, Volume 21, 2001, pp. 75-93 (Article)

Published by University of Hawai'i Press

DOI: 10.1353/bcs.2001.0015

For additional information about this article

Access provided by Universitaetsbibliothek Heidelberg (15 May 2013 11:59 GMT)

http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/bcs/summary/v021/21.1ingram02.html





ESSAYS

Review Essay: Buddhists Talk about Jesus,

Christians Talk about the Buddha Edited by Rita Gross and Terry Muck.

New York: Continuum, 2000.

Paul O. IngramPacific Lutheran University

Buddhists have been talking about Jesus and Christians have been talking about theBuddha from the earliest times of Buddhist-Christian encounter in the first century. 1

My educated guess is that until 1980, most of the talk was monological rather thandialogical for cultural and historical reasons peculiar to both traditions. But after thefirst “East-West Religions in Encounter” meeting, organized by David Chappell inthe summer of 1980 at the University of Hawai‘i, the nature of Buddhist-Christianconversation changed from a monologue to a systematic twenty-year dialogue. Theinitial “East-West Religions in Encounter” conference has now evolved into the Soci-ety for Buddhist-Christian Studies. The publication in the society’s journal, Buddhist- Christian Studies, of a series of essays and responses edited by the journal’s coeditors,Rita M. Gross and Terry C. Muck, entitled “Jesus Christ Through Buddhist Eyes andGautama the Buddha Through Christian Eyes” is evidence of just how far Buddhist-Christian dialogue has evolved since 1980.2 These same essays were republished by Continuum Publications under the title, Buddhists Talk About Jesus, Christians Talk About the Buddha. 3

The selection of the contributors was guided by a common editorial conviction.In Gross’s words:

We are convinced that, just as meaningful inter-religious dialogue cannot bea covert missionary enterprise, in which each partner in the pseudo-dialoguetries to convince the other of the superiority of her or his own religion, so alsomeaningful inter-religious dialogue must be more than a polite mutual admi-ration society. . . . Therefore, there must be something about the other tradi-tion that troubles us or that we do not find personally convincing. We believethat Buddhist-Christian dialogue has reached a level of trust and respect that

warrants discussing these troubling dimensions of the other tradition openly.4

Buddhist-Christian Studies 21 (2001). © by University of Hawai‘i Press. All rights reserved.



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The editors’ assumption is shared by the essayists: four practicing Buddhists ( JoséIgnacio Cabezón, Rita M. Gross, Bokin Kim, and Soho Michida) writing about Jesus, and four Christian “scholar-practitioners” (Elizabeth J. Harris, Terry C. Muck,Donald K. Swearer, and Bonnie Thurston) writing about the Buddha. Two promi-nent veterans of the Jesus Seminar (Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan) wereasked to respond to the four Buddhist essays about Jesus, while two Buddhist schol-ars (Grace G. Burford and Taitetsu Unno) were asked to respond to the four Chris-tian essays about the Buddha. In the Continuum publication, Muck concludes thedialogue with a critical discussion of three recent books written about Jesus by threeBuddhists (the Dalai Lama, Thich Nhat Hahn, and Kenneth S. Leong).

Three themes emerged from the Buddhist talk about Jesus and the Christian talk about the Buddha, tweaked differently, of course, by each author. First, all of the

Buddhist writers had great difficulty with Christian theological claims about Jesus,even as they expressed admiration for the historical Jesus based on their varied read-ings of the four New Testament gospels. Not unexpectedly, the most often expresseddifficulty focused on Christian claims of Jesus’ divinity and uniqueness and the Chris-tian assertion of the necessity of Jesus for the salvation for all human beings.

Second, while the Christians who wrote about the Buddha do not even raise theissue of Jesus’ uniqueness and universal relevance, they do have a deep and abiding admiration for the Buddha. For each of them, faith in Jesus as the Christ—not, beit noted, simply the historical Jesus—does not originate as an abstract a priori asser-

tion that the historical Jesus is indispensable for the salvation of all persons, but fromtheir own individual experiences as practicing Christians. Their claim is that the his-torical Jesus as the Christ is necessary for them, not that the historical Jesus is nec-essary for the salvation of everyone. Accordingly, for the Christian writers, Christianfaith does not imply exclusivist attitudes toward non-Christian understandings of reality, meaning “the way things really are.”

Finally, the Christian writers are much more affirmative about how their encoun-ter with the Buddha has positively influenced their Christian faith and practice thanare the Buddhists writing about the influence of Jesus in their faith and practice. Bud-

dhist talk about Jesus seems to have played little, if any, positive role in the practiceand experience of the Buddhist contributors to this dialogue. That is, the Buddhist writers are much more critical about Jesus and the claims Christians make about Jesusthan the Christians are in their comments about the Buddha and Buddhist claimsabout the Buddha. I suspect this is the case because (1) Buddhist doctrines and prac-tices are more worldview dependent than Christian doctrines and practices, and (2)the Buddhist essayists tend not to be as critical of Buddhist exclusivist attitudes asthe Christian essayists are of Christian exclusivist attitudes.

As a historian of religions who happens to be a Lutheran Christian, I should confessthat much Christian talk about Jesus and the Buddha and much Buddhist talk aboutthe Buddha and Jesus gives me the willies. I often feel intellectually and emotionally



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blindsided, because I am not always certain to whom or about what Buddhists andChristians are referring when they talk about the Buddha and Jesus. The experiencecan be as disconcerting as listening to rap music in a Buick. Accordingly, it is impor-tant to be absolutely clear about the terms employed in a dialogue concerning Jesusor the Buddha. Which “Jesus” are Buddhists and Christians talking about? Which“Buddha?”

For the sake of clarity, I shall use the term “historical Jesus” to mean “Jesus” asreconstructed by historical scholarship. In this regard, my own predilections aremostly informed by the Jesus Seminar, as well as the work of other historians, Chris-tian or non-Christian, trying to reconstruct the historical Jesus from canonical andnoncanonical texts like the Gospel of Thomas. Briefly stated, by “historical Jesus” Imean: a Galilean Jewish peasant born in or near the village of Nazareth between 4–6..

who around the age of thirty or thirty-one was baptized by John the Baptist;after his baptism he spent approximately a year traveling in Galilee as an itinerantteacher leading a small band of disciples that included more than the twelve male dis-ciples mentioned in the Gospels; he spent the last few weeks of his life in Jerusalempreaching in and around the temple before Passover; as in Galilee, Jesus found eagerlisteners; this angered the both the temple priests and many of the leaders of localsynagogues, because Jesus’ popularity could be construed by the Romans as rebel-lion against their authority; he was arrested by the temple leaders, charged for blas-phemy, and handed over to the Roman military governor of Judah, Pontius Pilate,

who executed Jesus by crucifixion around the year ..

30. Before his death, he wasbaptized by John the Baptist, but went beyond John’s apocalyptic preaching of theimminent Reign of God. Jesus’ own view was immanent. That is, when Jesus foundhis own voice, it was squarely within the Hebraic prophetic tradition’s call for socialand economic justice, which he connected with his own vision of the Reign of God;unlike John the Baptist, Jesus thought the Reign of God was immediately present inthe struggle for justice on behalf of the poor and marginalized. For Jesus, justice andlove were two sides of the same interdependent coin; God, whom he probably addressed as Abba, or “Dad,” is experienced in loving relationships that engender jus-

tice. For Jesus, God’s Reign was decidedly for the poor. Finally, Jesus did not call him-self “Messiah.”5

I shall reserve the term “Jesus as the Christ” to mean the “Christ of faith” as por-trayed in the four canonical gospels, the writings of St. Paul and the rest of the New Testament, the creeds, Christian mysticism, doctrine, and theological argument andChristian experience in general. The Christ of faith is a theological interpretation of the historical Jesus. The historical Jesus and the Christ of faith are, of course, inter-dependent, but they are not identical and both are historical constructions. In thehistorical Jesus as the Christ of faith, Christians apprehend God active in history

since the beginning of creation of the universe, as exemplified by the prologue to theGospel of John.Likewise, I shall use the term “historical Buddha” to mean “Siddhartha Gautama”

as reconstructed by historical scholarship that focuses mostly on the Pali Canon.Briefly stated, Siddhartha Gautama was born seventy-five years either side of 550



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.., probably near the town of Bodhgaya in northern India; his caste was Ksha-triya, although he later renounced the institution of caste; since his father was a localraja he lived in relative wealth, which in his late twenties he found unsatisfactory; hemarried and had a son, both of whom he abandoned, and entered what Hindu tra-dition calls the “forest hermit” stage of life to engage in a six-year quest for satisfying “answers” to troubling questions engendered by his encounter with “old age, disease,and death”; toward the end of this period he tried ascetic practice, which almost killedhim; he then engaged in a protracted period of meditation and experienced a break-through of consciousness, after which he began an approximately forty-year-long career as an itinerant teacher; he gathered together a community of disciples and diedof food poisoning at the age of eighty or eighty-one from a meal gathered by begging from supportive laypeople. Gautama also taught something like the Four Noble

Truths, the doctrine of non-self, and impermanence as descriptions of his own reli-gious experience. His stress on meditation meant that his primary intention was theinstruction of monks living apart from engagement with the world of laypersons, whose major religious role was support of the monastic community and living a lifeof merit acquisition by means of following the five precepts. Gautama’s movementevolved into the first monastic movement in the world’s religions.

I shall use the term “the Buddha of faith and practice” (in the sense of what theNoble Eightfold Path calls “right viewpoint” and “right aspiration”) to refer to imagesof the Buddha portrayed in the teachings and practices of the various schools and

traditions of Buddhism, Buddhist meditative and devotional experience, and theschools of Buddhist philosophy. The Buddha of faith and practice is an interpreta-tion of the historical Buddha encountered in the “buddhaologies” of the variousschools of Buddhist cumulative tradition. As such, the “historical Buddha” and “theBuddha of faith and practice” are interdependent, but they are not identical and bothare historical constructions.

As do all the writers in this volume, Cabezón contextualizes his essay, “A God, butNot a Savior,” with a preliminary reflection on his evolving “theological location”: a Cuban who gave up Roman Catholicism at an early age mostly on philosophical

grounds, who is now an academic “Buddhist theologian” informed by the years hespent as a monk in the Byes College of the exiled Tibetan Buddhist Monastic Uni-versity of Sera in southern India, who currently teaches at a Christian theologicalseminary, and who “continues to this day to cherish many aspects of Latino-Catholicculture,” especially its ability to accommodate passion, magic, and mysticism. 6

Within this context, Cabezón reflects on the historical Jesus as magician and teacherand on Jesus the Christ as God and Messiah.

An interesting facet of Cabezón’s essay is that he harbors no doubt about the his-toricity of the miracles the gospel traditions attribute to the historical Jesus, includ-

ing his resurrection. In this, he is in agreement with Christian fundamentalism andevangelical Christian movements as well as much Roman Catholicism. Of course,Christians accept the idea of resurrection, but many “liberal” Christians find mira-cle and magic traditions problematic. Regarding these events, Cabezón argues thatthere are two possible responses for both Buddhists and Christians: to challenge the



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historicity of these events, or to take these events as historically factual. Unlike many contemporary biblical scholars, he takes these Jesus traditions as historically factual:“That Jesus had these powers . . . most certainly points to the fact that he was anextraordinary individual. . . . None of these events are for Buddhists outside the realmof possibility.”7 Such events are not unique in the history of religions, nor are personspossessing such powers unique, nor do they prove that such a person possessing suchpowers is “God or enlightened or a worthy object of worship.”Yet Cabezón explainsthat part of his attraction to Tibetan Buddhism is largely due to the fact that it is an“unabashedly magical religion,” which he finds to be an “antidote to the sterile skep-ticism of post modernity.” “Magic,” he writes, “might do the same thing for Chris-tians.”8 Yet attributing magic to Jesus’ divinity seems to Cabezón to have “relegatedmagic to the transcendent sphere, making it inaccessible to those who need it most:

us.”9

From my location within Lutheran Christian tradition, Cabezón’s focus on magicand miracles rings a bit odd. First, the sources of these stories in the earliest textualaccounts of the historical Jesus and the historical Buddha originated in cultural con-texts whose worldviews assumed the reality of extraordinary events that are loosely called “miracles and magic” in our time. For us, such events seem to run counter tothe way physical reality “works” as described by contemporary science. But in the worldviews of second-century .. Palestine or sixth-century ... India, eventsthat we call “miracles” would be called “signs and wonders,” at least in the Pauline

Epistles and the Gospels. They would have been understood as extraordinary events,but not as miraculous exceptions to what we call “the laws of nature.” In the oraland literary traditions surrounding the historical Jesus and the historical Buddha,extraordinary events function primarily as signs that Jesus and the Buddha are notlike ordinary human beings. As such, extraordinary events serve as a means of trans-forming the historical Jesus and the historical Buddha into the Christ of faith andthe Buddha of faith and practice. However, in the New Testament and the PaliCanon, extraordinary events are not “miracles,” since they are not contrary to the“laws of nature” assumed by the worldviews of Jesus’ and Gautama’s cultures.

Furthermore, there are several texts in the New Testament and the Pali Canonthat, while acknowledging the reality of magic and healing events, seem rather crit-ical of using such signs as a means of “proving” Jesus’ divinity or that the Buddha isbeyond all beings in his awakening. In Mark 8:11, for example, Jesus rejects thePharisees’ request for a “sign from heaven” as proof of his messianic claims, as hedoes as well in Matthew 16:1–4, Matthew 12:38–39, and Luke 11:29, 11:16, and12:54–56. And while magical powers are said to have been acquired by the Buddha as one of the “signs” of his awakening, the Buddha is also said to have counseled hisfollowers not to make too much of magical power lest they cling to it, which is

merely another form of clinging that results in suffering (duhkha).10

Second, stories about extraordinary events that are attached to both the historical Jesus and the historical Buddha might have made sense in the worldviews of first-cen-tury Hellenistic culture or sixth-century ... Indian culture. But it seems to methey neither make sense in our own century nor do they strike me as an “antidote to



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the sterile skepticism of post modernity.” Among other things, belief in miracles andmagic places contemporary people of faith at odds with scientific understandings of how physical realities interrelate and evolve. Do not contemporary Christians andBuddhists need to practice their faith within the context of the contemporary sci-entific worldviews that seem culturally to dominate East and West? Dialogue withthe natural sciences would be a wonderful addition to Buddhist-Christian dialoguefor this reason alone.

Furthermore, it seems to me that a healthy dose of postmodern skepticism is a good thing to include in one’s faith and practice. Human beings are as thirsty formeaning as a drunk is for cheap Ripple. There’s a lot of religious snake oil out there.People will sell it and people will buy it, especially if they are promised miracles that will magically lift them above the humdrum and suffering of their lives. Too often,

the result is pathological, deadly, and tragic (Waco, Jim Jones’s colony in Guiana,Heaven’s Gate), or just plain weird (Trinity Broadcasting Network, Bob Jones Uni-versity, Benny Hinn, Jonathan Bell), even when it is politically powerful (the Chris-tian Coalition and other right-wing Christian movements). It seems to me that post-modern skepticism is a healthy antidote to the theological nonsense associated withmiracles and magic and that in fact, Pascal was dead right: there is more faith in hon-est doubt than in all the creeds.

Third, not withstanding the Christian Right, miracles and magic are theologically problematic because of their implications for theodicy. Why does God miraculously

intervene in the lives of some people and not others? On what basis does God inter-vene in the laws of nature, and for whom? Is God really so capricious that his gracefalls only on some and not others? Does God capriciously tweak the laws of naturehe created to teach some human beings lessons, to rescue some persons from tragedy and not others, to reveal wisdom to a few and not all? Besides having dire conse-quences for confronting the problem of evil and unmerited suffering, such notionsare contradictory to images of the historical Jesus in the New Testament, where it isnoted in Matthew 5:45 that God’s sunlight (a metaphor for grace), like rain, non-personally falls on the just and unjust, so don’t take it personally.

Fourth, even if miracles “do happen,” the mystical theologies of Christian con-templatives like Marguerite Porete, Meister Eckhart, Saint John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila,11 or the most widely read contemplatives today in Catholic and Protestantcircles, Thomas Merton and Thomas Keating,12 as well as the theological reflectionof Protestant theologians like Paul Tillich and Wolfhart Pannenberg,13 warn us thatmiracles have little, if any, value for Christian faith and practice. In fact, clinging tothe miraculous seems to me an act of unfaith. I remain deeply skeptical of their valuefor Buddhist faith and practice as well. Nor do I think such traditions add much todialogical conversation about the historical Jesus and the historical Buddha. While

I do not deny that miracles are part of the histories of Christian and Buddhist tra-ditions, and while I have no doubt that many Christians and Buddhists see miraclesas essential for their faith and practice, such notions do very little to help Buddhistsunderstand the historical Jesus. Nor do they seem particularly relevant for helping Christians understand the historical Buddha.



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Finally, miracle and healing traditions have been used as proof of the superiority of the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith, and the superiority of the historicalBuddha and the Buddha of faith and practice, over all other human beings and reli-gious traditions. Granted, Christian exclusivism has been more virulent than Bud-dhist exclusivism. Nevertheless, exclusivist attitudes are part of both Christian andBuddhist history and turn up even in contemporary Buddhist-Christian dialogue.The Buddhist and Christian essayists in this volume rightly reject exclusivist atti-tudes. Yet since the heart of the Buddhist talk about Jesus seems to focus on Chris-tian exclusivist claims regarding the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith, I willdevote the remainder of this section to that issue.

The Buddhists essayists are unanimous in their rejection of Christian exclusivism, which they correctly attribute to traditional Christian claims about the indispens-

ability of the historical Jesus for the salvation of all human beings. Gross states thisobjection most forcefully. She writes:

I am aware that currently most liberal theologians are as appalled by this tra-dition of exclusivism as I am. I am also aware that the World Council of Churches and the Roman Catholic Church, in Vatican II, have come to a position on religious pluralism that is often called the “inclusivist position.”The inclusivist position “affirm[s] the value and dignity of all religious paths.”Nevertheless, this position, like the exclusivist position, “attributes to Christand Christianity . . . an ultimacy and normativity meant to embrace and ful-

fill all other religions.” Additionally . . . inclusivist Christians also assert “theuniqueness of Jesus in terms of finality and unsurpassability.” 14 As a Buddhist,I find these claims offensive, and I think most non-Christians probably sharemy reaction. Nor would I feel comfortable, as a Buddhist, in making the sameclaim about Buddhism vis-à-vis Christianity.15

As a Christian, I am as offended as Gross by most Christian claims concerning the necessity of the historical Jesus for the salvation of all. But matters here are very complex. It is true that Christians can’t be Christians without assenting to the incar-

nation: in the life, death, and resurrection of the historical Jesus, one apprehendsChrist at work in the universe since the beginning of the universe itself, bringing allthings and events in creation—past, present, and future—to that fullest interdepen-dent relation to God that Christians name the Kingdom of God. This apprehensionis, after all, what makes Christians “Christian,” and it is the heart of Christian uni-versalism.

But there has always been more than one way to skin theological universalism inthe history of Christianity. Nor is a universal claim necessarily exclusivistic or abso-lutistic. Christian history is primarily a history of trying to figure out what the incar-

nation means, how to best live in accordance with it, and how to understand andlive with non-Christian persons. Yet the Buddhist essayists are dead right: too muchof Christian history is dominated by exclusivism, both in regard to non-Christiansand in regard to how many Christian communities have interacted between them-selves. One need only study historical events like the Spanish Inquisition, the role



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Christian missions played in the cultural genocide of native American culture, Chris-tian participation in Western imperialism and colonialism during the eighteenth,nineteenth, and twentieth centuries, Christian anti-Semitism, or the nonsense of theChristian right in the United States and elsewhere to see this history at work.

Yet as I read Gross’s, Cabezón’s, Kim’s, and Machida’s criticisms of traditionalChristian exclusivism, I wonder with whom they are in dialogue. While the centerof Christian faith and practice for the Christian essayists of this volume is centeredon the historical Jesus as the Christ, and while each confesses that the historical Jesusas the Christ is necessary for the “salvation” of all, none are exclusivists. Nor doestheir understanding of Christian inclusivism engender the sort of Christian imperi-alism that the Buddhist essayists reject. They fully understand that one cannot entera dialogue with a Buddhist or a Christian holding an exclusive truth claim. Each of

the Christian essayists knows the full relativity of all truth claims, meaning that every truth claim is facilitated at the same time that it is limited by the historical, cultural,and linguistic context in which it is made. Part of this context is their ongoing dia-logue with Buddhism. What this implies is that what we know may be a piece of thetruth, but that piece can be linked to and enhanced by other pieces. But to make thislink possible, everyone involved in the conversation must not only be aware of thelimitations of their own perspectives, but also truly open to the limited perspectivesof others.

Let me state this in another way. The Christian essayists understand that if being

a Christian means unqualified affirmation of any specific form that the Christiantradition has taken, they cannot be Christian. Clinging to past or present forms of Christianity absolutizes something relative by refusing to attend to the whole pointof faith in the Christ whom Christians apprehend in the historical Jesus: openness tobeing transformed by new possibilities given by God at every moment of existence.Part of this openness is being transformed through dialogue with Buddhists. Being Christian means being open to the future, not clinging to the past or the present.Clinging to past or present forms of Christian tradition constitutes the “fundamen-talist” error that the Buddhist essayists rightly challenge and reject. Being faithful to

Jesus as the Christ means being open to others and to the future, which means thatChristian absolutism in any form is idolatrous and is the opposite of faith. Accordingly, while the Christian contributors to this volume assume an inclusive

theological position in their views of non-Christian traditions, they do not deny thevalidity and truth of non-Christian traditions. Their Christian universalism is not a theological a priori; it is confessionally inclusive and reflects their particular experi-ences. It glues their lives together. But it neither entails denying the validity of Bud-dhism’s universal truth claims, nor Buddhist forms of inclusive thought and prac-tice. In fact, it is their faith in Jesus as the Christ that has opened them to Buddhist

teaching and practice. In other words, they have grasped the fact that Christian faithopens them to truth no matter what religious or cultural dress it wears. Buddhistscan be in dialogue with Christians like Borg, Harris, Muck, Swearer, and Thurston.But neither Buddhists nor Christians like Borg, Harris, Muck, Swearer, and Thurs-ton can be in dialogue with the monologues of Christian absolutism. They have as



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much difficulty with Christian imperialism and exclusivism as the Buddhist essayists. With these Christians, Buddhists can enter dialogue.

Gross further notes that “. . . exclusivism and inclusivism are entailed by thecentral claims made about Jesus, as interpreted by large segments of Christianity throughout most of Christian history. And, in spite of the presence of inclusivist andpluralist Christian thought, many of the Christians I encounter are still taught theexclusivist position by their churches and are completely unaware of other Christianpositions on religious pluralism.”

I think this statement is a stereotype. It is not evident to me, at least, that Chris-tian claims about Jesus necessarily entail exclusivism, although I agree that many of the Christians encountered by Gross and the other Buddhists and Christians writing in this volume are still taught Christian exclusivism. I suspect such encounters with

Christian exclusivism is a major reason that many Western persons have taken refugein the Buddha’s Dharma. Still, historical patterns need not always be models for whatmust be the case in the present. In a processive, interdependent universe, thingschange, and change is not merely a repetition of the past. In my experience there isevidence that this is so. I spend a good deal of my professional time meeting withadult classes in mostly mainline churches—Lutheran, Methodist, Presbyterian, Dis-ciples of Christ, Roman Catholic, Congregational, Episcopalian, and occasionally a reformed synagogue—teaching courses in Islam, Buddhism, Chinese traditions,religious pluralism, Buddhist-Christian dialogue. These adult courses are always full

of intelligent laypeople who are fully aware that their faith must be lived and prac-ticed in relation to their Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, and native American neigh-bors. They neither experience nor understand their faith in Jesus as the Christ inexclusivist terms. For them, Christian faith opens them to the truth of other religioustraditions, and they are eager to learn and be transformed. They are as impatient withChristians who make exclusivist claims as any writer in this volume. They love inter-religious dialogue and are often light-years ahead of their pastors and denomina-tional leaders. One can have a dialogue with such Christians; one can only have a monologue with the Christians who worry Gross and the other Buddhist writers

talking about Jesus.

Several assumptions underlie Christian talk about the Buddha in this volume. Aspreviously noted, none of the Christian essayists are exclusivist in their understand-ing of the historical Jesus or the Christ of faith. Their claim is that in the historical Jesus they apprehend what God is truly like and what being human truly is. Butnone claims that the God they apprehend in the historical Jesus exhausts what God

is. So the historical Jesus and the Christ of faith are definitive for their understand-ing of God and their understanding of humanity’s relation to God, as well as how Christians should understand and dialogically interact with religious persons whodo not share their experience and convictions. But “definitive” need not mean “only.”Their affirmation of the historical Jesus as the Christ is constitutive of their Chris-



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tian identity, not that the historical Jesus is the only disclosure of truth or the mostsuperior disclosure for everyone. So the Christians writing about the Buddha in thisvolume are people who apprehend decisive truth about the Sacred in Jesus, just asMuslims apprehend it in the Qur’an, Jews apprehend it in the Torah, and Buddhistsapprehend it in the Dharma. Their affirmation is the answer to Grace Burford’s ques-tion, “If the Buddha is So Great, Why are These People Christians?”16 Affirming that Jesus is the decisive revelation of God does not require asserting that the historical Jesus is the only revelation of the Sacred or that Christianity is the only true religion.The opposite seems to the be case: it is because “these people” are Christian that they can apprehend why “the Buddha is so great.”

Second, each of the Christian essayists are clearer about the distinction between“faith” and “belief ” than their Buddhist dialogical partners seem to be; whereas, with

the exception of Taitetsu Unno, the Buddhist essayists seem to assume that faith andbelief are identical in Christian experience and teaching. For example, Bokin Kim’sessay “Christ as the Truth, the Light, the Life, but a Way?” assumes her teacher’s,Sot‘aesan’s, understanding of faith as “the integration of faith as ‘other-power’ andfaith as ‘self-reliance.’” 17 Certainly one hears much of self-reliance in Christian evan-gelical and fundamentalist talk. Self-reliance results from being “born again” by “let-ting Jesus into one’s heart,” the test of which is belief guided by literal interpretationof biblical texts ripped from their contexts coupled with experiences of “self-power”as “proofs” of faith ranging from economic success to the cure of illnesses and emo-

tional ills. But this understanding of faith is quite foreign to Roman Catholic, main-line Protestant, Episcopalian, or Orthodox traditions. Consequently, while Kim writes from a context of dialogue with conservative Korean Christians for whom faithand belief in doctrines such as biblical inerrancy are identical, her interpretation of faith bears little resemblance to the meaning of faith for the Christian essayists.

A similar misconception of the meaning of faith operates in Soho Machida’s essay “Jesus, Man of Sin: Toward a New Christology in the Global Era,” where he writes:

I propose that Christians reexamine the implications of what being a Christianmeans. To be a Christian should not merely depend on whether one has been

baptized. Going to Church, listening to sermons, and reading the Bible donot guarantee that one is a devout Christian. I believe that the path of Chris-tian faith should be defined by a much more stringent set of criteria. Christiansshould not be exempted from self-reflection simply by believing that Jesusatoned for their sins through the Passion. To believe that Jesus takes all the bur-dens from one’s shoulders is to evade one’s responsibility as a human being.18

Of course, “Christians should not be exempted from self-reflection.” Certainly,“believing in Jesus,” by which I suppose Machida means “faith in Jesus,” does not

“take all the burdens” from Christian shoulders. Nor is faith in Jesus an evasion of “one’s responsibility as a human being.” But in Christian experience, self-reflection,believing in Jesus, and taking responsibility for one’s life do not engender faith. They are among the results of faith, which “happen” in a person’s life apart from anything that person does, believes, or takes responsibility for. In other words, faith in Chris-



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tian experience “happens” because of grace. One does not believe oneself into a stateof faith in Jesus as the Christ; one finds oneself in a state of faith and then onebelieves what one believes and tries to act accordingly. Thus different Christians canand do have different beliefs about the significance of Jesus and yet have the samefaith. They bet their lives on the historical Jesus as the Christ of faith even as they often have different theological interpretations about what their bet implies for thelife of faith. Standard Christian teaching, in other words, is that faith in Jesus as theChrist is engendered by grace, and in this sense faith and grace are two interdepen-dent sides of the same nondual coin.

I wish Buddhists in dialogue with Christians would understand the distinctionbetween faith and belief as clearly as Taitetsu Unno. In his epilogue “Contrasting Images of the Buddha,” Unno points out that Christians who write about the Bud-

dha focus mainly on Theravada images, while paying scant attention to the “numi-nous” dimensions of the Buddha in the faith of significant numbers of Mahayana Buddhists.19 Unno’s Buddhist lineage is Jodo Shinshu, whose central understanding of the Dharma is grounded in the foundational teachings of Shinran Shonin andRennyo Shonin. This teaching can be summarized as “awakening by faith (jinshin) through absolute ‘other-power’ (tariki) alone” that results in a rejection of all “self-powered” (jiriki) efforts to achieve awakening. In Jodo Shinshu, as in Christian tra-dition, one’s beliefs and practices do not engender faith; they are the result of faith. And as I have argued elsewhere, in Jodo Shinshu experience, “faith” and “other-

power” are, while not identical, clearly parallel to what Paul, Augustine, Luther, andCalvin meant by “faith” and “grace.”20 Here is a significant entry point for Buddhistsinto Christian experience and Christian entrance into Buddhist experience that hasyet to be carefully explored in contemporary Buddhist-Christian dialogue.

Furthermore, as Wilfred Cantwell Smith has forcefully pointed out, “faith” in allof the world religions means “trust,” “taking refuge in,” “betting one’s life on” an“ultimate concern,” as Paul Tillich would have phrased it.21 Faith is a response tosomething experienced as ultimate that involves the whole person—his or her intel-lect, emotions, and body. One does not “believe” or argue oneself into a state of faith,

one finds oneself in a state of faith for any number of existential reasons, which inturn engender beliefs and practices relative to the faith in which one finds oneself.So beliefs about what faith implies about Jesus or the Buddha, life in community, orreligious practice may be elegant, beautiful, and intelligent; beliefs may be clumsy,inept, stupid, or incoherent. They may be exclusive, inclusive, or pluralistic. They may be true or false. But beliefs are never identical with faith, because in currentEnglish usage, beliefs are opinions people hold without sufficient warrant to call whatthey believe “knowledge.” So when the soprano in Handel’s Messiah sings “I know that my Redeemer liveth,” she is affirming something epistemologically different

from the phrase “I believe my Redeemer liveth.” While the Christian essayists are certainly informed by Christian faith in the his-torical Jesus as the Christ, and while they take Christian doctrines seriously as a formof “faith seeking understanding,” none cling to Christian doctrinal formulationsabout the historical Jesus or the Christ of faith—again, the fundamentalist error of



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confusing faith with belief, which transforms theology into ideology and confusesideology for thought. The Christian essayists in this volume understand that faith istrust in the reality to which beliefs and doctrines symbolically point but can nevercapture—a grasp that goes beyond doctrinal propositions, is not caused by assert-ing propositions of any kind, yet cannot be experienced nonpropositionally, sinceeven the proposition that “God, or Awakening is beyond the grasp of propositions”is still a proposition. They also understand that faith and grace are interdependent.

Consequently, hearing the music behind the doctrinal lyrics of their faith in thehistorical Jesus as the Christ allows the Christian essayists to apprehend the reality to which the music of Buddhist traditions and practices point. I suspect it is a bit likebeing in love. As our own experiences of the reality of love often allow us to appre-hend the experience of love in others, so Christians are often enabled by their faith

in Jesus as the Christ to apprehend the beauty and truth of a friend’s faith, in thiscase, friends who place their faith (sradha) in the Buddha. In dialogue with Buddhistfriends, Christians might even cross over into the truth and beauty of a Buddhistfriend’s faith and “return” to their own circle of faith creatively transformed by whathe or she has discovered in the process of dialogue. My guess is that Buddhists oftenhave similar experiences in dialogue with Christians.

“Crossing over” and “returning” has certainly been a creatively transforming expe-rience for the Christian essayists. Elizabeth J. Harris, in “Unfinished Business withthe Dharma,” describes how the Buddha has become part of her even though she

remains a Christian. For her, the Buddha of Theravada tradition connects with herinterest in the contemplative traditions of Christianity and her commitment to socialaction.22 In “Images of the Buddha,” the Buddha that Terry C. Muck loves along with Jesus is also Gautama the Buddha of Theravada tradition, which Muck first encoun-tered as a graduate student at Northwestern University in courses taught by Walpola Rahula. As he describes his experience:

I learned about the Buddha by relating the facts and impact of his life—a greatreligious leader—to the concept in my mind and experience closest to that:my understanding of Jesus. The Buddha was both like Jesus and different from

Jesus. Both my mind and my instincts told me they were in the same category.But both my mind and my instincts told me they were different. . . . OfficialChristian dogma teaches that Jesus was divine, a part of the Trinity, three godsin one: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Buddhist teachings dogmatize a differ-ent understanding of the Buddha—that he was human through and through.The Buddha, as a fellow human, teaches us the way to life that bears witnessto the fact that Jesus, as God, has saved us from our sins. The Buddha showsus the way, Jesus is the Way. 23

For Muck there is irony here.When Buddhist and Christian teachings are workedout in the lives of everyday Buddhists and Christians, something like a “role rever-sal” occurs. Popular Buddhist reverence for the Buddha tends to produce a “god-likeBuddha in a religious tradition that insists on his humanity, and the popularChristian approach to Jesus tends to produce a very human Jesus in a religious tra-



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dition that insists on Jesus’ divinity.” 24 Yet as a shower of the Way, Muck likes thehuman Buddha’s commitment to exploring the religious path with all his energy, theBuddha’s commonsense approach to communal life and institutional realities, andthe Buddha’s personal approach to spirituality. 25 Accordingly, for Muck the histori-cal Buddha as a shower of the Way and Jesus the Christ as the Way are complemen-tary and interdependent.

Donald K. Swearer’s essay, “Buddha Loves Me! This I Know, for the Dharma TellsMe So,” also focuses on Theravada images of the historical Buddha in the contextof his research of the Thai Buddhist tradition. This research has revealed to him a ten-sion between the “universal and particular dimensions of the figure of the Buddha”:the Buddha as a “rational renouncer,” an interpretation favored by many Westernscholars of Buddhism who portray the Buddha as an empiricist and pragmatist, and

popular understanding of the Buddha as universal hero whose direct apprehensionof the universal law of cause and effect transformed him into a model to be imitatedand a superhuman hero to be venerated.26

Swearer notes other tensions in Buddhist teaching and practice: between knowl-edge and compassion and between wisdom and contemplation, tensions, Swearerthinks, also occur within the context of Christian teaching, e.g., the Christ of wis-dom and the Jesus of love, the life of contemplation and the life of action. AlthoughSwearer does not explain how, he tells us that the ways Buddhists have resolved thesetensions have provided insights into his understanding of similar tensions within

traditional Christian experience. For example, the Buddhist doctrine of non-self enlarged Swearer’s comprehension of Paul’s claim, “It is no longer I who live butChrist who lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). Similarly, Buddhism helped him “come to terms with the various ways Buddhists have viewed the Buddha through history and cur-rently experience the Buddha in rituals,” and this “enlarged” Swearer’s understand-ing of “the paradox of the Incarnation, of God becoming Jesus the Christ, of theuniversal Logos becoming flesh, of the infinite becoming finite.” 27 Again, Swearerdoes not go into detail about how Buddhism has enlarged these Christian paradoxes.

In “The Buddha Offered Me a Raft,” Bonnie Thurston is quite explicit in describ-

ing what she has appropriated from Buddhist teaching and practice: (1) an appreci-ation of the Buddha’s devotion to Truth, his uncompromising search for it, and thelife he lived in accordance with it after he discovered it; (2) an appreciation of theBuddha’s “amazing powers of analysis,” by which he cut through self-deception andthereby taught us to apprehend the structures of impermanence; (3) an appreciationof the Buddha’s pragmatism, which helps us confront suffering and our role in engen-dering it for ourselves and others; and (4) an appreciation of the Buddha’s emphasison the practice of meditation as a means of “self-forgetfulness,” which engenders a “wonderful liberation that allows us to be fully present to others and to life itself.” 28

Yet as much as she appreciates the Buddha, Thurston confesses that she has notbeen able to achieve the radical “be-lamps-unto-yourselves” self-sufficiency upon which the Buddha apparently insisted. Neither have the other Christian essayists. And of course the experience of not being able to achieve complete self-sufficiency is something St. Paul, the Church Fathers and Mothers, Augustine, Luther, and



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Calvin also encountered: in their struggle to be lamps unto themselves, they werebrought to the necessity of trust in a reality superior to their own self-efforts thatChristian tradition names Jesus as the Christ. Or as Thurston puts it, “The Christinvites me to himself. In the Four Reliances, the Buddha teaches, ‘Rely on the teach-ing, not the teacher.’ In Christianity, the teaching is the Teacher.” 29 But Christiansare not the only persons to experience the insufficiency of self-effort, self-reliance,and the need for grace. To paraphrase the experience of millions of Jodo ShinshuBuddhists, “Amida invites me to himself. In the Four Reliances, Gautama the Bud-dha teaches, ‘Rely on the teaching, not the teacher.’ In Jodo Shinshu, the teaching is the Teacher, Amida Buddha.”

The point of departure for Buddhist talk about Jesus in this volume is their explicitrejection of those elements of Christian teaching about the historical Jesus and theChrist of faith that contradict their individual life experiences as these are contextu-alized by Buddhism’s worldview. This worldview is nontheistic: it stresses the inter-dependent causation of all things and events at every moment of space-time, past,present, and future; impermanence; and the doctrine of “non-self ” (anatta, anat- man). Apart from these defining elements of the Buddhist worldview there is noBuddhism. Since all the Buddhist essayists ground their talk about Jesus in Buddhist

nontheism, I shall focus the remainder of this discussion on this aspect of theirreflection.Buddhist nontheism does not entail denying the existence of God or gods, as

does Western atheism. But Buddhist nontheism does entail nonreliance on God orgods in our search for liberation from “suffering” (duhkha), since reliance on sacredrealities independent of ourselves is a form of “clinging” (tanha) that engenders thesuffering from which one seeks liberation. No one attains liberation from suffering through reliance on God. Accordingly, from this perspective, Christian claims about Jesus appear delusional at best and as utter nonsense at worst. Christian assertions

simply do not correspond to the worldview presupposed by Buddhist doctrine andpractice, which is the reason Buddhists in general are not as open to Christian claimsabout the historical Jesus as the Christian essayists are to Buddhist claims about thehistorical Buddha. That is, at this point of their dialogue, the Buddhist essayists donot seem to have experienced the process of creative transformation to the samedegree as their Christian dialogue partners.

I do not mean by this conclusion that Christian tradition is superior to Buddhisttradition, or that the Christian essayists are closer to the truth of things than theBuddhist essayists. Nor do I mean to imply that the Buddhist essayists are religious

imperialists, or that Christians are more skillful at the practice of interreligious dia-logue than Buddhists. My intention is descriptive; I am suggesting that a differenceexists between the “structure” of Buddhist experience and the “structure” of Christianexperience, to borrow a turn of phrase from John Cobb. 30 The clearest example of this is Cabezón’s summary of five differences between the Buddhist doctrine of lib-



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eration and the Christian doctrine of salvation, which is also affirmed by the otherBuddhist essayists in their own distinctive ways:

(1) Each of us is responsible for our own lot in life. We cause our own suffer-ing, and each of us is ultimately responsible for our own liberation. (2) Oursalvation is not dependent on any one historical event. Specifically, our salva-tion is not dependent upon the appearance of any one person in history. . . .(3) Soteriologically, there is no end to time, no time after which sentientbeings will suffer, and thus long will there be the possibility of their liberation.(4) No being has the capacity to decide whether or not we will be saved. Sal-vation is not granted to us by some external force. It is self-earned. (5) No sin-gle action on our part can instantaneously cause our liberation. What bringsabout salvation is not mere belief or faith,31 even a faith that is sustained

throughout an entire life.32

From this perspective, the historical Jesus that Christians in varying ways trust asthe Christ who brings salvation to all beings is an ontological impossibility. Similarly,from the perspective of Christian experience, absolute self-reliance in the quest for Awakening may be ontologically possible, but Awakening is not what Christians usu-ally mean by “salvation.”

This dividing line between Buddhist and Christian experience and teaching implies that Buddhists’ images of Jesus stress his role as teacher of an ethical way that

encourages social engagement (Kim and Machida), as a magician and healer (Cab-ezón), or as a “divine being” like a Tibetan yidam (Gross), but never as an incarna-tion through whom one encounters God as creator, sustainer, and redeemer of theuniverse. Consequently, in their dialogue with Christian tradition, Buddhists do notnormally appropriate Jesus into their experience in a transformative way similar tothe way the Christian essayists have been transformed by their appropriation of theBuddha.

This seems to be the pattern of Buddhist-Christian dialogue in general: whileChristians can experience the Buddha as an Awakened One, Buddhists are not able

to experience Jesus as the Christ because of the specifics of the Buddhist structure of existence and the way this fleshes out in the experience of most practicing Buddhists.Consequently, Buddhist dialogue with Christians usually stresses areas of socialengagement, which pose little challenge to the specifics of Buddhism’s worldview.

But noting that the structure of Buddhist existence and experience is more world-view specific than the structure of Christian existence and experience does not meanthat Christian tradition is superior to Buddhist tradition or that Buddhist traditionis superior to Christian tradition. What is clear, at least to me, is that Buddhist teach-ing is as exclusivist and inclusivist as is Christian teaching and practice, even though

historically Buddhist inclusivism and exclusivism has not engendered the sort of vio-lence much Christian tradition has historically generated. By means of the doctrineof “skillful means” (upaya), Buddhist inclusivism has assimilated much into its Way from non-Buddhist traditions as the Dharma has spread throughout the world.33

But the application of skillful teaching never meant that all things can be assimilated



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into Buddhist doctrine and practice. Historically, Buddhist inclusivism has consis-tently excluded that which seemed contradictory to Buddhist doctrines of imperma-nence, interdependent causation, and non-self. Nor have Buddhist traditions beenentirely free from violent forms of intolerant exclusivism, as exemplified by the atti-tudes of Nichiren toward other forms of Buddhism in fourteenth-century Japan orthe application of shakubuku (“to break and subdue”) by members of Nichiren Sho-shu Soka Gakkai under the leadership of President Toda Josei.34

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The publication of Buddhists Talk About Jesus, Christians Talk About the Buddha may well initiate a new direction in contemporary Buddhist-Christian dialogue if only

because of the way in which these essays clarify important differences between Bud-dhist and Christian teachings and practice. Dialogue between Buddhists and Chris-tians is easy when it focuses on areas of shared concerns and perceived similarities.But is dialogue between Buddhists and Christians possible when the focus of the con-versation is the nonnegotiable core teachings of both traditions? If the answer to thisquestion is “yes,” and I think it is, then contemporary Buddhist-Christian dialogueis about to enter new territory. In light of this, I shall conclude with four suggestionsthat I hope will contribute to the discussion initiated by editors and essayists of Bud- dhists Talk About Jesus, Christians Talk About the Buddha.

First, Buddhist nonnegotiable teachings (nontheism, impermanence, non-self,interdependence) and Christian nonnegotiable teachings (trinitarian monotheism,creation, incarnation, resurrection) seem to be incommensurable ways of structuring existence. But is this really so? Are the differences between Buddhist and Christian ways of structuring existence necessarily contradictory? I find it hard to believe thatthe core teachings of Buddhist tradition are a twenty-five-hundred-year-old collectiveillusion. Nor do I have an easier time thinking that the core teachings of Christiantradition are a two-thousand-year-old collective illusion. I cannot prove it, but itseems to me that collective illusions probably do not survive this long. Human beings

are often collectively stupid, but not that stupid. In some sense, in other words, Bud-dhist and Christian teachings and practices correspond to reality, meaning the way things really are in this universe as opposed to the way we wish things to be because we are Buddhists or Christians.

Second, if the core teachings of Buddhist and Christian traditions can be viewedas complementary rather than as incommensurable dualities from which one mustchoose, then Buddhist-Christian dialogue should shift its focus to the question of interdependence. Interdependence is of course a key Buddhist teaching. Althoughinterdependence does not play a significant role in conservative Christian discourse,

it is at the heart of the Christian doctrines of creation and incarnation, which is notto say that Buddhists and Christians have understood or experienced it in an identi-cal way. That the physical universe works through a universal system of interdepen-dent relationships is also affirmed by contemporary scientific theory. Like the relationbetween the wavelike properties and the particle-like properties of a photon of light,



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the relation between the core teachings of Buddhist teaching and Christian teaching may be complementary rather than contradictory. The full truth probably liesbetween the differences separating Buddhist and Christian talk about their respec-tive nonnegotiable doctrines, so that the nonnegotiable teachings of both Buddhistand Christian tradition might point to an ultimate reality that embraces them both.

I am not arguing here for a “common essence” that underlies all religious diversity because process philosophy, Buddhist teaching, Christian process theology, and con-temporary scientific understanding of physical reality have made me suspicious aboutthe existence of unchanging essences. I simply want to suggest that Buddhist expe-rience refracted through the lenses of Buddhist teaching and practice, and Christianexperience refracted through the lenses of Christian teaching and practice haveontological correspondence to whatever ultimate reality unifies the pluralism of this

universe. So if Buddhist-Christian dialogue is evolving to the place where honestconversation is directed to the hard doctrinal issues that distinguish Buddhist andChristian persons, some means must be found to ensure that Buddhist-Christian dia-logue does not degenerate to a monologue and, in the process, engender new formsof Buddhist and Christian exclusivism.

Third, Buddhist-Christian dialogue needs to be in dialogue with the natural sci-ences. What the natural sciences are now revealing about the physical processes of nature should be included in Buddhist-Christian conversations, especially conversa-tions regarding the distinctive core teachings of both traditions. In this particular

cosmic epoch, the natural sciences are the context within which all persons of faithmust reflect on ultimate questions. In fact, I will go so far as to affirm that the twomost important theological-philosophical tasks for Buddhists and Christians are dia-logue with the world’s religious traditions and dialogue with the natural sciences.Both Buddhist and Christian self-identity need creative self-transformation throughinterreligious dialogue with the natural sciences.

Finally, dialogue on the nonnegotiable teachings of Buddhist and Christian tradi-tion would do well to govern itself by two methodological principles that have beenelegantly argued by Wilfred Cantwell Smith: (1) there is no such thing as “religion;”

there are only persons who live and die and seek meaning in between within moreor less identifiable “cumulative traditions;” and (2) we should not be satisfied witha description of a teaching or practice of a person whose cumulative tradition is dif-ferent from ours until that person can say “yes, you’ve understood.”35 The first prin-ciple means that our dialogue is not with a “religion” called “Buddhism” or “Chris-tianity”—abstractions that have little, if anything, to do with the actual practice andbeliefs of living Buddhists or Christians. What Whitehead called “the fallacy of mis-placed concreteness” must be avoided at all costs in dialogical encounter. Otherwise, we engender abstract stereotypes that bear little resemblance to what living Buddhists

or Christians actually believe and practice.The second principle means that our descriptions of the teachings and practicesof others must correspond to their experience and self-understanding. Dialogue needsto be grounded in actual Buddhist and Christian faith and practice as this shakes outin the rough and tumble of history. This will help us avoid generalizations like



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“Christianity is structurally exclusive even in its inclusive and pluralist forms andtherefore intolerant of other non-Christian traditions,” or the view of some Chris-tians that “Buddhist teaching and practice focus on an individualized experience of Awakening that dilutes historical consciousness and thereby hinders Buddhists fromdeveloping a notion of justice relevant for critiquing systemic forms of economicand social injustice.” It’s time to set these sorts of fallacies aside.

1. See Roy C. Amore, Two Masters, One Message: The Lives and Teachings of Gautama and Jesus (Nashville: Abingdon, 1978).

2. Buddhist-Christian Studies 19 (1999): 51–136.3. Rita M. Gross and Terry C. Muck (eds.), Buddhists Talk About Jesus, Christians Talk

About the Buddha (New York: Continuum, 2000).4. Gross, “Introduction,” Ibid., pp. 7–8.5. See John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish

Peasant (Harper-San Francisco, 1991), and K. C. Hanson and Douglas E. Oakman, Palestine in the Time of Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998).

6. Cabezón, “A God, But Not A Savior,” Ibid., pp. 17–18.7. Ibid., p. 21.8. Ibid.9. Ibid., pp. 21–22.10. For example, see Anguttara-nikaya II, 39, in Edward Conze, (trans.), Buddhist Texts

Through the Ages (Boston: Shambala, 1954), pp. 104–105.

11. See Marguerite Porete, The Mirror of Simple Souls, trans. Ellen Babinsky (Mahwah,New York: Paulist Press, 1993); Bernard McGinn, Meister Eckhart, Teacher and Preacher (Mah-

wah, New York: Paulist Press, 1986), sermon 14, pp. 271–279; E. Allison Peers (trans.), The Dark Night of the Soul (New York: Image Books, 1990); and E. Allison Peers (trans.), The Life of Teresa of Jesus: The Autobiography of Teresa of Avila (New York: Image Books, 1991), pp.168–189.

12. Thomas Merton, Contemplative Prayer (New York: Image Books, 1990), pp. 79–88,and Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart: The Contemplative Dimension of the Gospel (New York: Continuum, 1997), chapter 1.

13. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, I (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963),pp. 115–117, 126–127, and Wolfhart Pannenberg, Theology and the Philosophy of Science

(Philadelphia: Westminster) pp. 54–71.14. Paul F. Knitter, “Key Questions for a Theology of Religions,” Horizons 17, no. 1

(1990): 92–97, cited by Gross, “Meditating on Jesus,” Buddhists Talk About Jesus, Christians Talk About the Buddha,” p. 35.

15. Ibid.16. Ibid., pp. 131–137.17. Ibid., p. 55.18. Ibid., pp. 70–73.19. Ibid., pp. 138–142.20. Paul O. Ingram, “Faith as Knowledge in the Teachings of Shinran Shonin and Martin

Luther,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 8 (1988): 23–35, and “Shinran Shonin and MartinLuther: A Soteriological Comparison,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 39 (1971):430–447.

21. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Faith and Belief (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Uni-versity Press), 1979, and Belief and History (Charlottesville, Virginia: University of Virginia Press), 1977. Also see Paul Tillich, Dynamics of Faith (New York: Harper Tourchbooks, 1957).



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22. Elizabeth J. Harris, “My Unfinished Business with the Buddha,” in Buddhists Talk About Jesus, Christians Talk About the Buddha, pp. 89–94.

23. Ibid., p. 97.24. Ibid., p. 98.

25. Ibid., pp. 102–103.26. Ibid., pp. 107–108.27. Ibid., p. 111.28. Ibid., pp. 119–123.29. Ibid., p. 124.30. John Cobb Jr., The Structure of Christian Existence (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,

1967), and Traugott Koch, “Some Critical Remarks About Cobb’s The Structure of Christian Existence,” in David Ray Griffin and Thomas J. J. Altizer (ed.), John Cobb’s Theology inProcess (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1977), pp. 39–53. See Cobb’s “Response to Koch,”Ibid., pp. 155–157.

31. Emphasis supplied. Note Cabezón’s identification of “faith” with “belief in a set of the-

ological propositions.”32. Cabezón, “A God, but Not a Savior,” Ibid., pp. 27–28.33. See Alicia Matsunaga, The Buddhist Philosophy of Assimilation (Rutland, Vermont:

Charles E. Tuttle, 1969).34. Joseph M. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History (New York: Columbia University

Press, 1966), pp. 328–329.35. Wilfred Cantwell Smith, The Meaning and End of Religion (Minneapolis: 1991), chap-

ter 6.

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