The Salvific Role of Knowledge in a Buddhist and a Christian Context: A Comparative Study of Two Parables

Abstract

The parable is employed as a teaching device in all the major religious traditions. Because it is based upon a situation or event that occurs in real life, this story form has a way of making the incomprehensible understandable for the person who would otherwise be confused by the technical language of professional theologians and philosophers. But the parable is more than a story about a commonplace event. Its power to attract the attention of the listener is often found in the fact that it may be an interesting case of the typical or the regular. To be sure, some of the interesting parables are those in which the link with the typical or the regular is extremely tenuous. However, we usually do not fault the storyteller for taking such liberties. We realize that a certain element of the extraordinary must be allowed if the parable is to communicate a lesson that is not likely to be derived from the more predictable prosaic events of our daily experience. In this study attention will be given to two parables which, in this writer's opinion, definitely fall within the category of most interesting. One of the parables is from the Lotus Sutra, a Mahayana work that apparently received its present form in India during the second century of this era. In the fourth chapter of this widely revered Buddhist text we find the parable of a son who leaves his father's home, falls into abject poverty, and, after years of wandering, finally returns home where he is blessed with his father's wealth. The other parable is from the fifteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. Luke.2 In this well-known Christian parable we also meet a son who departs from home, becomes a pauper, and finally returns for a happy reunion with his father. Knowledge plays an important salvific role in both of these stories. It will be my purpose in this study to examine the manner in which the presuppositions underlying these parables determine the function that is assigned to knowledge in their respective Buddhist and Christian contexts. As I embark upon this venture, I am reminded that certain perils lie before those who attempt a comparative approach to religious traditions as disparate as Buddhism and Christianity.