Buddhist-Christian Dialogue Research Articles

The Philosophy of Religion in Nishida Kitarō : 1901-1914

The Study of Religion (Shūkyō-gaku) is an early text from a one-year course, 1913-1914, which Nishida Kitarō imparted only once in his academic career. In this text, apart from references to mystics and to early and medieval Christian thinkers, Nishida tries to point out the basic elements of Eastern and Western religions through the writings of xviii-xxth century authors, among them participants in the Gifford Lectures, the Bampton Lectures and Hibbert Lectures. On the other hand, Nishida tries to find the corresponding characteristics of religion in Zen and True Pure Land Buddhism. In short, Nishida’s approach to a philosophy of religion gives us an overview of the problems concerning a Buddhist-Christian dialogue.

Mahāyāna Emptiness or « Absolute Nothingness » ?

Abe Masao’s contribution to late twentieth-century Buddhist-Christian dialogue was important in opening new avenues of interfaith understanding. However, some clarity in this dialogue was sacrificed when Christian participants were given to believe that they encountered « the Buddhist view » in Abe’s presentations. The present article contends that in significant ways Abe represented only the Kyōto School philosophy that drew on earlier Japanese philosophers of Absolute Nothingness and their appropriation of Zen enlightenment as the locus for all religious understanding, a place where all negation and affirmation are simultaneously affirmed and denied. The present article contends that Abe’s Kyōto School philosophy does not represent the broad classical traditions of Mahāyāna Buddhism, wherein emptiness does not mean absolute nothingness, but the dependent arising of all places and all philosophies.

The Process of Buddhist–Christian Dialogue

The Process of Buddhist–Christian Dialogue

The Ethics of Wealth in a World of Economic Inequality: A Christian Perspective in a Buddhist-Christian Dialogue

The Ethics of Wealth in a World of Economic Inequality: A Christian Perspective in a Buddhist-Christian Dialogue

The Annual Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies

The Annual Meeting of the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies Sandra Costen Kunz and Jonathan A. Seitz The Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies (SBCS) is one of more than two dozen scholarly societies that have been formally recognized by the American Academy of Religion as Related Scholarly Organizations. The pattern for many years has been for the SBCS to hold its annual meeting in conjunction with the annual meeting of the AAR. On the Friday before the AAR’s Annual Meeting begins, the Society’s board meets in the morning and early afternoon, followed by an AAR-advertised session late that afternoon. On Saturday, another paper session or panel is followed by the Society’s annual members’ meeting. A highlight of the 2012 SBCS annual meeting was the unanimous approval, first by the governing board and later by the membership in attendance, of a major revision of the society’s bylaws. This revision focused largely on updates necessitated by changes in the ways scholars communicate day-to-day and in scholarly publications, and in international banking practices, because of the expanding use of electronic media. This revision was well over a year in the making, with particularly generous input of time and thought by former board member Grace Burford and Treasurer Guy McCloskey, and with efficient guidance by President Terry Muck. Another highlight of this 2012 gathering was the announcement at the board meeting that the SBCS’s reapplication for formal status as a Related Scholarly Organization of the AAR was accepted for another five years. Among other privileges, this status makes it possible for us to communicate our calls for papers, session plans, and annual meeting schedule through AAR’s website and print publications. At the governing board meeting, Treasurer McCloskey noted an increase of more than 7 percent in paying members, but it was agreed that the society could carry [End Page 193] out its purposes more effectively if we were to welcome more new members. One especially notable new member is C. Denise Yarbrough (University of Rochester), who was unanimously approved at the members meeting as the Christian co-editor of this journal, along with Buddhist co-editor Wakoh Shannon Hickey (Notre Dame of Maryland University), who signed on in 2011. Rita Gross, who formerly co-edited the journal and was president of the Society, was elected to the board, replacing Amos Yong, whose term ended in 2012. We are extremely grateful for his leadership in many areas, including the Streng Book Award Committee. Abraham Vélez de Cea was unanimously approved to chair the Streng Book Award Committee, with Mary Jeanne Larabee continuing on the committee and David Gardiner being approved as the third member. Alice Keefe, in her vice presidential role as program chair, took note of the lively discussion about possible topics for next year’s panel sessions. The Friday afternoon seminar was titled “Contemplative Pedagogy: Pitfalls and Potentials.” Panelists included John D. Copenhaver (Shenandoah University), Kristine T. Utterback (University of Wyoming), Andrew O. Fort (Texas Christian University), and Judith Simmer-Brown (Naropa University). The respondent was William H. Green (Tougaloo College), and Wakoh Shannon Hickey (Notre Dame of Maryland University) presided. Versions of the four panelists’ papers are included in this volume of the journal, as well as additional papers on the topic by other authors. In lieu of its customary field trip, this year the SBCS encouraged participants to attend the new film Jesus & Buddha: Practicing across Traditions (Old Dog Documentaries, 2012), screened on Friday night before the AAR Annual Meeting. In the film, three leading figures in Buddhist-Christian dialogue were interviewed: Paul F. Knitter (Union Theological Seminary), Robert Kennedy, SJ (St. Peter’s College), and Chung Hyun Kyung (Union Theological Seminary). A discussion, over which Knitter presided, followed the film. The Saturday panel was “The Ethics of Wealth in a World of Economic Inequality: Buddhist and Christian Perspectives.” Panelists included Joerg Rieger (Southern Methodist University), Alan Jay Richard (Realistic Living, Inc.), and Carol S. Anderson (Kalamazoo College). The respondent was Mark Wood (Virginia Commonwealth University), and Alice A. Keefe (University of Wisconsin) presided. At the end of this session, before the member’s meeting, we enjoyed P. J. Johnston’s...

A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration by Rita M. Gross (review)

Reviewed by: A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration by Rita M. Gross Jan Willis A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration. By Rita M. Gross. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. 352 pp. Rita M. Gross is well known for her innovative and challenging work on Buddhism and gender. She is the author of the influential book Buddhism after Patriarchy: A Feminist History, Analysis, and Reconstruction of Buddhism as well as many other books and articles on Buddhism, comparative religions, Buddhist-Christian dialogue, religious diversity, and gender studies. A student and teacher in the Shambhala tradition of Tibetan Buddhism, she holds a PhD from the University of Chicago, studied and practiced with Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, and was recently appointed as a lopön (senior teacher) by the renowned Venerable Khandro Rinpoche. Gross’s own renown [End Page 222] is well deserved; she has been working at the intersections of several disciplines and subdisciplines within religious studies for four decades and working very hard. And she just happened to begin her scholarly career at the beginning of the so-called second wave of feminism. Taking a personal measure of her life and career, Gross has now given us A Garland of Feminist Reflections: Forty Years of Religious Exploration. It is at once an overview of the kinds of academic work she has engaged in and an intimate reflection on the source, and costs, of those endeavors. In addition to an introduction and a marvelous short autobiography, there are nineteen articles and essays gathered here that span the length and breadth of Gross’s academic and practice interests. One will find essays here on methodology and on Hindu and Tibetan goddesses, on Australian aboriginal women (the subject of her PhD dissertation at Chicago), on Judaism, and on Buddhism’s failure to put into practice what its core values suggest it ought. A much longer space would be needed to address each of these topics in turn, though each is informative of a subject and a means of studying it at a given time and with a feminist lens. Here, I focus only on the book’s introduction and its lovely autobiography. The introduction tells us that it is her feminist vision, or the “transformation of consciousness effected by the feminist paradigm shift,” that is the “thread” upon which her seemingly disparate academic interests, the beads of the garland, are all strung. Regardless of specific foci, Gross has always been concerned with the difference it makes (and, we might add, the freedom it affords) if one can free oneself from “the prison of gender roles.” In her introduction, as in other essays throughout the work, Gross repeats what she calls her two most basic definitions of the term “feminism.” She writes, “When one really gets the fact that women truly are human beings, to put the essence of feminism one way [Gross once had T-shirts emblazoned with this motto!], or when one really gets the fact that any set of gender roles whatsoever is still a prison, no matter how ‘reformed’ and ‘fair’ it might be, to put the essence of feminism another way, conventional perspectives on virtually everything seem limited” (6, italics mine). Thus, regardless of the specific topic investigated, Gross’s work has always been concerned to show that “virtually all subject matters, including some of the most abstract, will involve gendered data, and one will ‘see’ different things, or ‘see’ the same things differently, if one has internalized the subtle transformation of consciousness involved in the feminist paradigm shift” (5). One could say that this has been Gross’s lifelong pursuit: to move academic discourses and disciplines—whether those of religious studies, history, or theology—away from androcentrism and then beyond gender prisons altogether. Gross’s autobiography seeks to tell us how she came to the conclusions articulated in her introduction. As anyone who has read my memoir, Dreaming Me: Black, Baptist and Buddhist, will know, I am drawn to personal narrative, and I think this brief (twenty-one page) memoir is a gem of a reflective piece and a model for the well-examined life story. (There is also, of...

Only One Way? Three Christian Responses to the Uniqueness of Christ in a Pluralistic World by Gavin D’Costa, Paul Knitter, and Daniel Strange (review)

Reviewed by: Only One Way? Three Christian Responses to the Uniqueness of Christ in a Pluralistic World by Gavin D’Costa, Paul Knitter, and Daniel Strange John D’Arcy May Only One Way? Three Christian Responses to the Uniqueness of Christ in a Pluralistic World. By Gavin D’Costa, Paul Knitter, and Daniel Strange. London: SCM Press, 2011. 240 pp. It may be necessary to justify the inclusion of this debate among Christian theologians in a journal dedicated to Buddhist-Christian dialogue, as Buddhism receives only passing mention, mainly by Knitter. The answer is that their debate is paradigmatic for what is or will be occurring in virtually all religious traditions as they rise to the challenge of forging acceptable relationships with their respective religious Others. In the case of Christianity, with its emphasis on correct doctrine, the differences are disconcertingly sharp; as Strange remarks toward the end, echoing a comment by D’Costa (147), “Whither ecumenism indeed?” (213–214). D’Costa sets out his stall as a Roman Catholic theologian, taking this to mean “that my theological job, shaped by the Church’s teachings about the role of the theologian, is to convey the teachings of the Catholic Church on the matter at hand,” for, as he remarks with reference to Alasdair MacIntyre and postmodern philosophy, “everyone doing theology comes from ‘somewhere’” (3). Knitter, also a Catholic theologian, defines theology as “a mutually clarifying and a mutually criticizing conversation between Christian experience and beliefs on the one side and ongoing human experience and understanding of self and the world on the other side” (47–48). By the time he comes to respond to D’Costa’s contribution, Knitter’s opening sally is: “He is not Catholic enough!” (153). D’Costa, in fact, finds he has more in common with the Calvinist theology of Strange than he does with his coreligionist Knitter, who decides to address his final comments to “Davin,” a composite of Dan and Gavin (199). Both Christian and Buddhist readers may well be bewildered by these alignments, but the value of the book lies in the intellectually uncompromising though always friendly search for an authentically Christian stance toward other religions. It invites a similar debate among Buddhists, who tend to have a different take on diversity, as Rita Gross often points out, but are nevertheless not dispensed from clarifying either their own internal relations or their position vis-à-vis Christians and others. The book under review, in any case, leaves no doubt that the divergences among these very committed Christians are serious and deep. D’Costa gives a comprehensive [End Page 201] documented account of recent papal and earlier Church teaching on other religions, well aware that not all of it is palatable and that it always requires interpretation, just as the Bible does in the light of it: sola scriptura is insufficient (4–5). At the core of this teaching is that Christ and the Church are necessary for the salvation of all (18 n. 20), which entails that the salvation of non-Christians is not yet actualized, as they are not part of the Church, though they have the potential to be so and thus be saved, for “salvation is a deeply corporate and social event” (19; he notes that this was the point on which Jacques Dupuis was interrogated by the Vatican). D’Costa endorses the teaching of John Paul II on the work of the Holy Spirit in the hearts of non-Christians, stressing that this presupposes rather than bypasses the salvific efficacy of Christ. He persists in his interpretation of the Vatican Council documents as never conceding that other religions are salvific in their own right. The religions represent preparation for, not participation in Christian salvation; there is no de jure pluralism (33–34, citing Dominus Iesus). He thus adheres strictly to his position that “it is better to argue from within a tradition to a goal that one seeks” (45). Moving to Knitter’s contribution, we breathe different though no less Catholic air. Inspired by liberation theologians like Aloysius Pieris of Sri Lanka, his dual focus is on the religions and the poor; he aims at a theology that is both...

Christianity and the Notion of Nothingness: Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue from the Kyoto School by Mutō Kazuo (review)

Christianity and the Notion of Nothingness: Contributions to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue from the Kyoto School by Mutō Kazuo (review)

Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies Frederick J. Streng Book Award 2012

Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies Frederick J. Streng Book Award 2012 Jonathan A. Seitz Click for larger view View full resolution The winner of the 2012 Frederick J. Streng Book Award is Paul Knitter’s work Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian (Oneworld, 2009). Knitter is the Paul Tillich Professor of Theology, Religions, and Culture at Union Theological Seminary in New York. Earlier works include No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes toward World Religions; The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions (co-edited with John Hick); and Buddhist Emptiness and Christian Trinity: Essays and Explorations (co-edited with Roger Corless). One of the endorsements for the book came from SBCS member John Makransky: “A ground-breaking work of inter-religious dialogue, comparative theology, and social ethics. The rarest combination of theological acumen, humility, and humor. [End Page 197] Like a thrilling mystery, the insights of each section build to the final chapter, a tour de force, in which Knitter rediscovers the very meaning of serving others. A must-read for anyone who wants to renew their faith and rediscover their humanity in intimate dialogue with the faiths of others.” In a 2010 review of the book in this journal, Peter Huff writes, “More confession than apology, it is an original and valuable addition to the growing literature on the still uncharted territory of hyphenated religious identity.” The Frederick J. Streng Award for Excellence in Buddhist-Christian Studies is selected annually by a panel of three. Books may be nominated up to five years after publication and must meet several criteria. They should be inspired by and relevant to Buddhist-Christian relations and must make an original contribution to Buddhist-Christian dialogue. Nominations through November are welcome for the following year’s award, so nominations received by the end of November 2013 will be considered for the 2014 award. [End Page 198] Copyright © 2013 University of Hawai‘i Press

Interpreting Proverbs 11:18‐31, Psalm 73 and Ecclesiastes 9:1‐12 in Light of and as a Response to Thai Buddhist Interpretations: A Contribution to Christian‐Buddhist Dialogue. By Kari StorsteinHaug. Studies in Systematic Theology 10. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. ix + 345. $182.00.

Interpreting Proverbs 11:18‐31, Psalm 73 and Ecclesiastes 9:1‐12 in Light of and as a Response to Thai Buddhist Interpretations: A Contribution to Christian‐Buddhist Dialogue. By Kari StorsteinHaug. Studies in Systematic Theology 10. Leiden: Brill, 2012. Pp. ix + 345. $182.00.

Buddha-Nature and Personality as the Ground of Ethics: A Metaethical Dialogue Between Dōgen and Berdyaev

This paper seeks to contribute to the ongoing Buddhist-Christian dialogue bybringing together the teachings of Zen Master Dōgen and the Russian Christianphilosopher Nikolai Berdyaev. This dialogue discusses a metaethical question:What is the foundation of ethical practice? I aim to show that Dōgen’s idea of“buddha-nature” and Berdyaev’s idea of “personality” can be understood as thefoundations of ethical practice in ways that are similar and mutually clarifyingin their total affirmation of human temporal existence. We begin by discussingthe general contours of Dōgen’s practice-realization and Berdyaev’s creativeethics, and then proceed to a comparative examination of the foundationof ethics found in Dōgen’s notion of Buddha-nature and Berdyaev’s notionof personality. The comparison considers four facets of Buddha-nature andpersonality: being, time, nothingness, and impermanence. First, we show howboth thinkers consider the ground of ethics to be something inseparable fromthe entire being of an individual and the being of all existence as a whole. Thisrefutes the tendency to see the foundation of goodness as a mere fragment ofhuman existence or as restricted to particular existents. Second, we show howboth thinkers consider this foundation to be manifest not merely in the futureor the past, but in every moment seen as a whole in itself. Third, we examinethe collision between this immanent foundation and individuality, and showhow the non-substantiality of Buddha-nature and God make room for creative and individual expressions of authenticity. Finally, we consider the problem ofimpermanence, and show how the ground of ethics is not an escape fromimpermanence but an acceptance and embracing of this impermanence as theground of the efficacy and dynamism of ethical practice.

A Mounting East-West Tension: Buddhist-Christian Dialogue on Human Rights, Social Justice, and a Global Ethic (review)

Reviewed by: A Mounting East-West Tension: Buddhist-Christian Dialogue on Human Rights, Social Justice, and a Global Ethic John D'Arcy May A Mounting East-West Tension: Buddhist-Christian Dialogue on Human Rights, Social Justice, and a Global Ethic. By Keith Soko. Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 2009. 253 pp. That there is tension between Western notions of universally valid rights and so-called "Asian values" is undeniable, but this problem is usually discussed in political contexts. It is relatively rare to find a detailed study of religious approaches to justice in traditions as radically diverse as Buddhism (here treated generically) and Christianity (focusing on the evolution of Roman Catholic social teaching). That the study foregrounds the human relationship to the natural environment and the emergence of an ecological ethic makes it all the more valuable. The author makes clear from the beginning that he intends to examine recent developments and current thinking in both traditions, "not a historical or scriptural analysis per se" (p. 14). While he is aware that neither tradition uses the terminology of human rights in its traditional literature, [End Page 167] he wishes to discern the intentionality of traditional language to see whether it converges with what is now subsumed under the modern term "human rights." While looking for ways to include ecological justice in this perspective, he also assures us: "I will not be arguing for the rights of other living beings" (p. 15). Within these parameters, Soko sets out to discuss the concept of human rights itself, its possible equivalents in Buddhist thought, its emergence in the relatively recent development of Catholic social teaching, and the prospects for its expansion to embrace ecological justice. He concludes by endorsing recent attempts to formulate a global ethic. In setting out the evolution of human rights as a development of liberal modernity, culminating in the UN Declaration and Covenants, Soko rightly points out that such documents are deliberately couched in the religiously neutral language of secular humanism (though it is known that the committee that drafted the declaration was religiously diverse and discussed the contributions of different religions intensively). In presenting human rights as rational, the UN made use of a secularized version of the natural law tradition, which in previous ages was regarded as deriving from divine law. The commonly accepted understanding of human rights thus achieved the appearance of universality at the price of seeming to favor the individualism of Western liberal thought. In discussing Roman Catholic resistance to human rights, Soko points out how the modern tendency to derive rights from the consent of individuals in a social contract, rather than from nature, had the effect of pitting the individual against society (or, perhaps more properly, the state; see pp. 119-123). The more fundamental issue, however, is the ultimate grounding of human rights in a viewpoint that, even if not theistic, is in some sense "religious" or "transcendent." Giving priority to rights in the abstract disturbs the complementarity of rights and duties and needs to be corrected by concepts such as human dignity and respect, even reverence, for the person. Though he tends to assign duties predominantly to "Eastern" and rights to "Western" thinking, Soko modifies this oversimplification by warning that "the disparity between rights and duties is not such a clear-cut contrast as is often assumed, but is rather a more fluid symbiotic relationship that is severed artificially by a Western, modern, secular approach" (p. 48). He also observes that the Hebrew prophetic idea of justice for the poor (sedaqah) comes from a source that is markedly different from Greco-Roman culture (p. 56). A brief excursus into the Hindu concept of dharma with its connotations of not-harming (ahi&1E43ā) and being true to reality (satya, hence Gandhi's svadharma, "the dharma which is inherent in every being," Raimon Panikkar, p. 63) confirms his conviction, which is also the central thesis of the book, that "the language of human rights can express the intent of many religions" (p. 66). The real interest of this line of argument becomes apparent when Soko turns his attention to Buddhism, noting that, while it is anything but one monolithic tradition and has never...

Interreligious Dialogue: Conversations That Enable Christian Witness

October 2011 F over thirty years now I have participated in a dialogue group in the United States called the Society for BuddhistChristian Studies (SBCS). The society, now with about 400 members, meets for two days prior to the annual American Academy of Religion meetings in late November. Meetings consist of two three-hour sessions where Buddhists and Christians present papers or lead discussions on topics of common interest.1 I have been an active participant. In addition to attending every year, I have presented papers, I served for a number of years as the chair of the nominating committee, I rewrote, revised, and edited the society’s by-laws, and for ten years I was the editor of Buddhist-Christian Studies, the society’s annual journal, published by the University of Hawai‘i Press. I have just begun a four-year term that will include serving successively as program chair, vice president, and president. I have participated as an evangelical Christian, a position shared by only a handful of the Christians in SBCS. Most of my fellow Christians are convinced that one must be a liberal Christian in order to properly dialogue. And although the Buddhists use different nomenclature, it is safe to say that Buddhist participants also come from a certain approach to Buddhism drawn from educated, globalized groups. Many of the Buddhist participants are Western converts from Christianity. My experience in this group has taught me many things about interreligious dialogue and Christian mission, in particular: (1) how interreligious dialogue is defined and the place it has visa-vis other modes of Christian interaction with Buddhists; (2) a realistic definition of dialogue; and (3) an outline of what I will call a missional theology of dialogue. Throughout this article I use Buddhist-Christian dialogue as my primary case, but I think the lessons I relate can be generalized to relationships with Hindus and Muslims as well.

Book reviews

Four book reviews are included in this issue of Approaching Religion:The Process of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (2009) by Paul O. Ingram is reviewed by Dr Teuvo Laitila. The book deals with contemporary dialogues between Buddhists and Christians, mainly in the West, by applying a three-part perspective denoted conceptual, engaged and internal.Producing Islamic Knowledge. Transmission and Dissemination in Western Europe (2010) by Martin van Bruinessen and Stefano Allievi is reviewed by Dr Jeanette Jouili. The book investigates into Islamic knowledge production taking place in the contemporary European context, from a theoretical as well as from a richly varied empirical perspective.Grounding Religion. A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology (2011) by Whitney A. Bauman, Richard R. Bohannon II and Kevin J. O’Brien is reviewed by MA Laura Wickström. The book provides an introduction to the field of religion and ecology with special emphasis on interreligious co-operation.Mirakel, mysterier och moraliteter. Från puritanism till New Age – en religionshistorisk studie av Helen Shucman och A Course in Miracles (2010) is reviewed by Dr Tore Ahlbäck. The book is a doctoral thesis analysing the history of creation behind the highly influential spiritual guide A Course in Miracles (1965–72) and its originator Helen Shucman.

Rita Gross: Buddhist-Christian Dialogue about Dialogue

Rita Gross:Buddhist-Christian Dialogue about Dialogue Paul F. Knitter The following brief—all too brief—assessment of Rita Gross's contribution to our understanding and practice of interreligious dialogue is both professional and personal. It is professional in that ever since I first heard her speak at a meeting of our Society in Hawai'i in 1983, I have tried to read everything she is written that has to do with religious pluralism and interreligious dialogue (especially with Buddhist-Christian dialogue). That is an impossible task; I cannot keep up with her; she is always coming up with something new—most recently her partially completed book manuscript Others, Identity, and Integrity: Surviving Religious Diversity (on which I am basing many of the following remarks). It is personal in that, as is the case with so many of us in the SBCS, Rita and I have been both colleagues and friends. And we've "done dialogue" together, a lot of it—in projects such as the Myth of Religious Superiority conference and book,1 the religious pluralism seminars for seminary professors that we taught at Auburn Seminary in New York City for two summers, and, most recently, in inviting her to Union Theological Seminary for our Religions in the City course. So, from what I have read and especially from what I have heard and felt as we engaged in conversations in the classroom or across a restaurant table, I, as a Christian theologian, have come to regard Rita as an invaluable partner in our Buddhist-Christian dialogue about dialogue. She keeps raising questions that, for a Christian theologian like myself, probe, stimulate, and sometimes sting, but keep me moving. Let me first describe where she has challenged Christian theologians, and then how we Christians can both engage and learn from her. The Danger and Impossibility of Exclusive (or Final) Truth Claims Rita asks Christians (and Muslims) whether they are being self-contradictory—or maybe hypocritical, even imperialistic—when out of one side of their mouths they call for interreligious dialogue and out of the other insist that they have the God-given exclusive or final word on truth and human well-being. In this regard, she [End Page 79] makes three very clear and sobering claims that all religious persons committed to dialogue have to face. First, claims of superiority, whether in their exclusivist or inclusivist or particularist forms, end up strangling diversity. In the opening chapter of her book manuscript, she states with her usual crispness and clarity: "Exclusive truth claims and religious diversity are mutually exclusive . . . To say it again, religious diversity and exclusive truth claims are incompatible and do not mutually survive or thrive."2 In making such announcements, she is very clear that she is not questioning truth claims in themselves; only claims that hold themselves up as superior or final over all others: "I am criticizing only the exclusive truth claims attributed to a religious belief, not the belief itself. . . . I don't even find it problematic when someone says, 'Jesus is my only savior.' Only when their belief somehow mutates into the claim 'only Jesus saves you and you must believe that' do I raise objections and become frightened."3 In this regard, she points out the discomforting contradiction between what religious people say about multiculturalism as citizens and what they say about multi-religionism as believers: "In our society now, there is at least a polite and superficial consensus that cultural diversity is here to stay and may enrich life. Minimally, people realize that cultural, ethnic, and class chauvinism create problems and are inappropriate, though they may be difficult to overcome. Regarding religious diversity, quite a different evaluation is often employed. Many people value the feeling that their religion is indeed superior to others and regard such religious chauvinism as a necessary component of religious commitment, or even a virtue to be cultivated among the faithful."4 Second, the monotheistic religions seem to be the biggest sinners. Among the religions that squelch diversity and dialogue under the weight of exclusive or final truth claims, Rita argues, the monotheistic faiths are the biggest offenders. "Historically, such claims [to absolute truth] are much more...

Reply to Sandra Costen Kunz's "Respecting the Boundaries of Knowledge"

Reply to Sandra Costen Kunz's "Respecting the Boundaries of Knowledge" Paul O. Ingram I am gratified by Sandra Costen Kunz's application of my thoughts on boundary constraints and my call for a Buddhist-Christian-science "trilogue" to her work in spiritual formation within the context of Protestant theological education. Over the past fifteen years I have witnessed numerous examples of what process theologians call "creative transformation" in contemporary science-religion dialogue. To this date, creative transformation has occurred mainly among Christian theologians involved in this particular dialogue. But Buddhists are now beginning to engage the natural sciences in serious conversation. Most of this conversation is with the neurosciences because of Buddhism's strong emphasis on meditation and the fact that the physical realities described in scientific theory imply that nature—from the level of quantum events to the larger-scale structures of the universe—is interdependent and "empty" of permanency. I have argued, as has Kunz, that the New Testament reflects this same view of existence. But it is also true that classical Christian theological tradition, which presupposes Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic substance categories, is in conflict with biblical anthropology and portrayals of God. Process theology, science-theology dialogue, and Buddhist-Christian dialogue have clarified the biblical foundations of Christian faith apart from classical theism, at least among Christian liberal theologians. In my view, it is now time to deepen the process of creative transformation occurring in Buddhist-Christian dialogue by including the natural sciences as a third dialogical partner. Kunz's essay is an example of possibilities of creative transformation and dialogical engagement with the sciences; in her case, the cognitive sciences and Buddhism. She notes that in similarity with most theologians, most scientists are caught up in a Cartesian mind-body dualism. The result is that scientific accounts of mental processes tend to reduce subjective experience to the physical processes occurring in regions of the brain coupled with ignoring what meditators actually say they are experiencing, which scientists sometimes hold to be epiphenomenal. Kunz does not accept this dualism because it not only misrepresents reality, it undercuts the disciplines of spiritual discernment. She argues that combining third-person cognitive [End Page 187] scientific accounts of subjective experiences with Buddhist or Christian first-person descriptions of what is experienced in the disciplines of meditation or contemplative prayer offers a more comprehensive, more accurate account of meditative and contemplative experience. B. Alan Wallace draws a similar conclusion in regard to Buddhist meditation.1 Although acknowledging that Christians have much to learn from Buddhist "discernment practices," distinctively Christian forms of meditation are rooted in the conviction that God's nature as love proclaimed by the historical Jesus is active in any situation. Kunz notes that Christian processes of spiritual discernment engendered by centering and contemplative prayer can be described as "making decisions" that correspond to the sorts of decisions the historical Jesus is portrayed as making in the New Testament: unselfish decisions for the common good. This means that authentic Christian faith is experienced and lived at the boundaries of ordinary conventional concerns. Or, to paraphrase Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), when God as Jesus experienced God calling a person, God calls that person to his or her death. Sometimes an actual death, but always to life lived at the boundaries beyond mere conventionality. As a Lutheran, I can only agree. Paul O. Ingram Pacific Lutheran University (Emeritus) note 1. B. Alan Wallace, Hidden Dimensions: The Unification of Physics and Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). [End Page 188] Copyright © 2011 University of Hawai'i Press

Duality and Non-Duality in Christian Practice: Reflections on the Benefits of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue for Constructive Theology

Duality and Non-Duality in Christian Practice: Reflections on the Benefits of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue for Constructive Theology

Philosophie du néant et théologie du processus

I. The Development of Nishida’s Philosophy of Nothingness reviewed from the Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in Japanese Spirituality(1) Psychology of Nothingness. Pure Experience and Religion (2) Self-Awareness of Nothingness. Intuition and Reflection in the Self-Awareness (3) Nothingness as the Ultimate Universal. Phenomenology of the Self-Awakening in the Field of Nothingness (4) Inter-Subjectivity of Nothingness. The I-Thou Relation and the “Absolute Other” in the Field of Nothingness (5) Creativity of Nothingness. The Historical World as the Dialectical Universal (6) The Self-Emptying of the Absolute. The Structure of Pan-en-theism and the Unity of Opposites in Nishida’s PhilosophyII. Haya-Theology as a Theology of Creativity (1) The Criticism of Onto-Theology from the Biblical Perspective (2) Haya-Theology as a Biblical Theology contained in God’s Self-Revelation to Moses as Promise of Freedom (3) Haya-Theology as a Theology of Creativity characterized as follows: (i) Pan-en-theism (ii) Sur-relativism (self-transcendent relativism / self-trans-descending absolutism) (iii) Sur-naturalism (self-transcendent naturalism/self-trans-descending supernaturalism)

Philosophy of Nothingness and Process Theology

AbstractThis paper discusses the two representative philosophers of the Kyoto School, Kitaro Nishida and Hajime Tanabe from the perspective of process theology and the Buddhist-Christian dialogue in Japan.The first chapter explicates Nishida’s concept of “pure experience” in comparison with William James’ radical empiricism and with Kant’s dualism of sense and reason. Pure experience in Nishida’s sense is neither a passive reception of objective sense-data given before subjective mental operations, nor the raw material of experience which must be given “form” by experiencing subject. It is nothing but metaphysically ultimate activity from which both the experiencing subject and the whole range of the experienced objects from sense-perception to intellectual intuition emerge as its self-unfolding.The second and third chapters discuss the two key concepts of process theology, “concrescence” and “the extensive continuum” with a special reference to the Mahayana Buddhist concept of “emptiness (sunyata)” and “dependent arising (pratityasamutpada)”. Nishida’s tripartite concept of topos, i.e. a topos of relative being, a topos of relative nothingness, and the topos of absolute nothingness will be applied to process theology in order to explicate the relation of two ultimates in Whitehead’s metaphysics, i.e. the relation of God as the religious ultimate to creativity as the metaphysical ultimate.The fourth and fifth chapters discuss Hajime Tanabe as a critical successor of Nishida’s philosophy of Nothingness. Tanabe is more akin to Whitehead than to Nishida in that Tanabe reformulates Nishida’s concept of Nothingness from the temporal perspective of a finite human existence related essentially to “species” or “society” in the historical world. Tanabe transforms the unity of contradictories in the logic of topos into the contrasted opposites in the historical process of becoming, which involves novelty and discontinuous leaps at points of historical crisis. For him history has become “the overall Koan” in which the metaphysical topology of static being is to be superseded by the innovative principle of nothingness in the historical world.

Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science (review)

Reviewed by: Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science Nancy R. Howell Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science. By Paul O. Ingram. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008. 155 pp. To my knowledge, Paul Ingram’s Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science undertakes a new project: Systematic and methodological analysis of how Buddhist-Christian dialogue can be shaped by focus on the natural sciences, or, alternatively, how science-religion dialogue can be enhanced through interreligious dialogue. Either description is appropriate and remarkable in light of the accomplishments of a modestly brief book. While I have participated in multireligious dialogue on science, never have I seen a cogent guide for undertaking the conversation until Ingram’s book appeared. The thesis of Ingram’s argument is that bringing the natural sciences into Buddhist-Christian dialogue promises mutual creative transformation of Buddhism, Christianity, and the natural sciences (p. 2). In such a compact sentence is much to be explained, and Ingram unfolds the meaning of the thesis particularly in chapters 2 and 6. Ingram describes both Christian and Buddhist understandings of the relationship of science and religion, as well as approaches to dialogue between the religions. Ingram’s book is focused on conceptual interreligious dialogue, which engages theological and philosophical worldviews and self-perceptions and how the religions can learn from each other (p. 10). (Not surprisingly, the Whiteheadian Ingram names John B. Cobb Jr. as an exemplar for conceptual dialogue.) Ingram proposes that Buddhism and Christianity enter conceptual dialogue with the natural sciences, with the goal of mutual creative transformation (p. 15). Creative transformation is a Whiteheadian concept defined as “a process of growth and novelty,” “the essence of life itself,” and “a process that alters the nature of...elements without suppressing or destroying them” (p. 120). Creative transformation is possible when all participants in the dialogue Ingram proposes have some particularity to contribute, so the challenge in Ingram’s book is to describe how Buddhism and Christianity have particular contributions to make to dialogue about the natural sciences, as well as whether the sciences can be creatively transformed by encounter with world religions (p. 121). The structure of the book, which includes chapters on Buddhist and Christian encounter with cosmology, evolutionary biology, and cognitive sciences, provides specific awareness of the literature about how the religions have individually engaged the natural sciences. Ingram presupposes and names the awe, wonder, and reverence generated by the natural sciences, whose insights shape our worldviews and inform understanding of ourselves. Scientific insights, according to Ingram, generate “an urgent cultural need to reflect thoughtfully and critically on these changes and challenges in a constructive dialogue involving the world’s religious traditions” (p. 130). Ultimately the dialogue must overcome compartmentalized, disciplinary knowledge and engage in integrative, inclusive, multireligious dialogue (p. 130). Ingram envisions that the “purpose of interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogue is mutual creative transformation” (p. 130), which can occur only when the complex details of the sciences and Buddhist and Christian traditions are honored. [End Page 209] Following Ian Barbour, Ingram recommends a critical realist stance, which he adopts as his approach. He understands critical realism to mean that scientific, Christian, and Buddhist conclusions, practices, and worldviews intend to correspond with reality. However, correspondence to reality, “the way things really are,” (p. 37) must be understood provisionally, so that conclusions and worldviews must always be subjected to correction and reformulation. In Ingram’s view, the need for reformulation is the justification for Buddhist–Christian–natural science dialogue because no single view “possesses the final truth about the natural order or ultimate reality” (p. 37). Buddhism, Christianity, and the natural sciences offer distinctive expressions of the search for truth, which (Ingram avers) “requires...some form of mutual critical integration” in the process of dialogue (p. 37). Concentrating more on the constructive methodology of the book (rather than the three chapters with examples of engagement of the natural sciences with Buddhism and Christianity), I want to address one feature of the argument. Chapter 1, “A Common Cosmology,” proposes appropriately that “[while] scientific cosmology cannot simply replace the basic content of religious creation myths, current scientific cosmology can clarify and transform religious creation myths” (p...