Robert Magliola’s review-article in the “Reflections/Réflexions”
section of Dilatato Corde, Vol. VI, No. 2 (July-December, 2016) at the
international multi-language website of the Dialogue Interreligieux
Monastique/Monastic Interreligous Dialogue, the global dialogue
organization comprised of hundreds of Catholic, Buddhist, and other
monastics and contemplatives around the world.
[In this version, textual Notes immediately follow the body of the
review]
WHAT DO JESUS AND BUDDHA
MEAN? Questioning Jesus & Buddha: Friends in
Conversation by Paul Knitter and Roger Haight
ORBIS BOOKS (2015)
Paul Knitter, the well-known theologian whose works in theology
of religions and interreligious dialogue have influenced these
fields for decades, joins with Roger Haight, the equally wellknown Jesuit theologian who writes in Christology and—more
recently--“spirituality,” to co-author this book from Orbis press.[1]
Entitled Jesus and Buddha: Friends in Conversation (henceforth,
J&B), it seeks to dialogue on a level “beyond mutual cognitive
understanding and disagreement” (ix). Of course, both of these
authors—because they are widely read by the general
population—or at least those segments of it interested in religious
belief and practice—have an effect far beyond those whose lives
are professionally associated with the fields in question. My most
recent book (Angelico Press, 2014), Facing Up to Real Doctrinal
Difference: How Some Thought-Motifs from Derrida Can Fertilize
the Catholic-Buddhist Encounter (henceforth FRDD), is designed
to counter Knitter’s approach while nourishing authentic dialogue
and other forms of encounter with Buddhists—especially through
joint-meditation and the sharing of religious experience.[2]
Though Paul/Roger address their text to all Christians, my review
analyzes their Christian interpretations in terms of Catholic
Christianity simply because Catholic Christianity constitutes their
own past personal history, and because “Christianity-in-general”
is too heterogeneous for me to represent with any coherence.
Given that in this book Roger Haight, as a follower of the more
extreme versions of what goes by the name of the “HistoricoCritical method,” denies the physical Resurrection of Jesus (57,
58, et passim),[3] and Paul Knitter rejects the ideas of a primal
creation and a climactic eschaton (103-105 et passim), the gap
yawning between the more “liberal” theologians of the Catholic
Theological Society of America’s type and the Vatican’s
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) lies open for all
to see.
Our two interlocutors—hereinafter called “Paul” and “Roger”
respectively, their preference in the text itself—produce a very
carefully designed construct treating the subject of “spirituality,” all
the more carefully worded, perhaps, because the CDF in a
“Notification”[4] and more recently, a more severe measure still,[5]
has limited Roger’s theological subject-matter to “spirituality” as
such. Topics range, for example, from “What Is Spirituality?” (ch.
1) and “What Did Buddha and Jesus Teach?” (ch. 3) through to
“The Problem in Human Nature” (ch. 7) and “Is Religious Double
Belonging Possible?” (ch. 12).[6] Because the entire book is
“dense-with-meaning” (I intend the phrase as a compliment), this
review singles out those of its arguments (and they are
arguments) that I consider most problematic. Because Paul/Roger
declare that their book “is intended for Christians rather than
Buddhists,” measuring “the influence that Buddhism might have
on Christian spirituality” (xii), my review analyzes their
presentations of both Christianity and Buddhism in considerable
detail. To supply readers with a more thorough account of the
book, I have prepared a detailed “objective” résumé or “précis,
chapter by chapter (3790+ words!) that readers can find in the
appendix entitled “Résumé” immediately below the “Notes”
section following the body of this review. What I have to say
further on in this review assumes that readers have already read
this chapter by chapter summary. It will become obvious to
anyone reading it, or better yet, reading J&B itself—which I urge
the members of DIMMID to do—that Paul/Roger’s denial that they
are dealing in doctrinal matters but rather in “spirituality” is a mere
pretense, masquerading compliance with the CDF’s stipulation.
The Historico-Critical method addresses the Bible insofar as it is a
natural and not “inspired” text (there is nothing wrong as such with
so doing, since science belongs to the human project and thus
can be serviceable to religion too). As is well known, the quest for
the “Historical Jesus” enters the modern era with David Strauss
(1808-1874), Ferdinand Christian Baur (1792-1860), Ludwig
Feuerbach (1804-1874), and Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965),
among others, then passes through and around the
“demythologizing” phase associated with Rudolf Bultmann (18841976) and his disciples, and peaks in the 1980s and 1990s with
the work of the highly publicized “Jesus Seminar” (John Dominic
Crossan, Robert Funk, Marcus Borg, et al.).
From its beginnings in Strauss and Baur, who argued,
respectively, that the Gospels’ miracles were mythological and
that the earliest Church judged St. Paul an apostate, through
Schweitzer, identifying Jesus as an End-times fanatic, and
Bultmann, labeling the post-Resurrection episodes “mythic
retrojections,” to the later 20th century Biblical theorists naming
Jesus variously as “a Galilean holy man, eschatological prophet,
innovative rabbi, trance-inducing psychotherapist, political
revolutionary, Essene teacher, proto-liberation theologian, and
Hellenized Cynic sage,”[7] Biblical “progressivism” (it’s a code
word) gained extravagant academic (and much popular) public
attention. The controversial methods and conclusions--very
disparate indeed--of the Jesus Seminar are surely familiar to the
readership of Dilatato Corde, and for those who want to research
the pertaining material more closely, bibliographies and electronic
resources abound.[8] In my Résumé, I have cited pages and
quoted verbatim several passages which clearly demonstrate
Paul/Roger’s dependence on the most revisionist of the HistoricoCritical thinkers, and especially on the Seminar’s Crossan and
Borg. John Dominic Crossan (b. 1934)—and I single him out as
paradigmatic for so-called “progressive” Biblical scholars exerting
influence on Catholics—left the Catholic priesthood when he was
in his mid-thirties, accepted a teaching appointment at DePaul
University (a Catholic university in Chicago, Illinois), and taught
undergraduates Comparative Religion there until his retirement in
1995. His impact on biblical scholarship, including Catholic biblical
scholarship, was extensive throughout this period because of his
many publications and his prominent lecturing and conferencing.
Meanwhile, the earlier influence of the Dominican, Edward
Schillebeeckx (1914-2009) at the Catholic University in Nijmingen,
coupled with that of several European and American Jesuits
(such as the Spanish-born Jon Sobrino [1938], associated with
the admirable social struggle of the Jesuits in El Salvador, but
also with a very “progressivist” Christology), began to make great
inroads into Catholic faculties in the United States and northern
Europe. This has been especially the case in Jesuit institutions in
the United States, where the Society of Jesus operates 28
universities and colleges and two prestigious Theology Schools.
While what can be called this latter-day wave of revisionist
Historico-Critical exegesis is now quite definitely on the wane
(note the birth dates of its leading figures), its influence is now
trickling down into Catholic parish life itself. At the Capuchin
church (not my parish church) where I had occasion to attend
Mass in New York City several weeks ago (12th Sunday in
Ordinary Time), the Parish Bulletin distributed to all attendees
comments on the question Jesus put to His disciples, “But who do
you say I am?” (Lk. 9:20), by saying: “Is the human nature of
Jesus seeking an understanding of who he is, uncovering the
mystery of his divine nature during his time of prayer?
[Implication: Jesus means the question for himself] Or is the story
written by the disciples many years later in their own quest to
understand who Jesus was even as he walked among them?”
[Implication: Jesus never even asked the question; the question is
retrojected into the Gospel narrative via a fabricated story].
Another example of this infiltration occurred some time ago at my
own parish church, a Franciscan (O.F.M.) parish. After the Gospel
reading wherein Jesus rhetorically asks, “Who is my mother, and
who are my brothers?.... and then, answering the question by
pointing to the disciples, says “For whosever does the will of the
Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mt.
12:48-50), the priest in his sermon balked and uttered, “We find
lines like this in the Gospels sometimes, in regard to Mary. It is
hard to know what to do with them.” In fact, Church exegetes for
centuries have seized on this passage to make the point that
Mary’s preeminent doing of God’s will is the most important
lesson she can teach us. The priest seemed to be unaware (or to
privately reject?) this straightforward interpretation. As a
Carmelite Tertiary, I find this failure particularly sad, and indeed,
heartbreaking.
But lo and behold, there is now a new wave in Biblical exegesis,
seismic in proportion because it is founded on recently discovered
Biblical papyri and brand new archeological finds, and shrewder
textual-analysis exploiting to the full the latest computertechnology. Largely driven by younger scholars, the wave is
turning the tide against the old-school versions of the HistoricoCritical, yet Paul and Roger make no reference to it whatsoever.
(How strange! Or maybe not.) In the English-speaking world, this
new wave has gained impetus from the work of Luke Timothy
Johnson (Emory University), the distinguished Catholic HistoricoCritical scholar (and former Benedictine monk) whose book The
Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the
Truth of the Traditional Gospels (1996), deconstructed what
James D. G. Dunn, in his commendation of the book, calls the
“cheap scholarship, the Jesus-as-I-personally-like-to-imaginehim”[9] of the Jesus Seminar. Johnson continues, of course, his
remarkable productivity: see for example, The Writings of the New
Testament, updated [3rd] edition (2010), and Prophetic Jesus,
Prophetic Church: The Challenge of Luke-Acts to Contemporary
Christians (2011). To him can be joined the distinguished Jerome
Murphy O’Connor, O.P. (École biblique, Jerusalem), eight years
his senior, author of St. Paul’s Ephesus: Texts and Archeology
(2008), and so on (a long list).
In the last two decades, a large formation of younger Biblical
scholars, either in parallel or jointly, are building what can be
called the new Historico-Critical movement (though some of them
disown the term “Historico-Critical” completely because of its
associations, among other reasons). Quite a few of these are
Catholic[10] and loyal to the Catholic tradition and the Church
authority that represents that tradition. To name a few: the wellknown Scott Hahn (Distinguished Visiting Prof. in Biblical
Theology, Mundelein Seminary, Chicago; founder of the St. Paul
Center for Biblical Theology, Steubenville, Ohio), prolific author,
and inspiration for what is becoming a new, younger generation of
Catholic scholars; Brant Pitre (Ph.D., Notre Dame; Prof. of Sacred
Scripture, Notre Dame Seminary, New Orleans), whose The Case
for Jesus—Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ (2016) is
becoming an academic best-seller, and who with his colleagues is
working much in New Testament studies and first-century
Judaism; Leroy Huizenga (Ph.D., Duke U.), author of The New
Isaac: Tradition and Intertextuality in the Gospel of Matthew
(2012) and co-editor, with R. Hays and S. Alkier, of Reading the
Bible Intertextually (2009); Michael Licona, who with the older
Biblical specialist, Gary B. Habermas, has written the acclaimed
The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (2004); and a host of
others.
Examples of the recent discovery of ancient New Testament
manuscripts are those reported by Daniel B. Wallace, executive
director of the Center for the Study of New Testament
Manuscripts, who reports the number of New Testament papyri
fragments from the first and second century is now up to
eighteen, and that 43 percent of all New Testament verses are
present in them. Comparison of their content with the content in
the currently accepted Greek New Testament reveals that the
latter is surprisingly close to their original Greek. Such a finding
debunks the old Historico-Critical claim that the Greek in the
manuscripts we have is massively corrupt, an invention of
imaginative later writers.[11] There are many recent discoveries
along similar lines, involving the non-Greek texts too.
Conversely, several of the Gnostic texts that have been so
sensationalized (Elaine Pagels, et al.) have either been pushed
forward, now, to later chronological dates, or shown to be so outré
(anti-feminine rather than “feminist,” etc.) that their roles in
understanding Jesus are diminished rather than vindicated. Most
of what are called the “apocryphal Gospels” were not in fact
suppressed by the Church, but “simply relegated” to the
“secondary position of private reading rather than public
proclamation.”[12] They played a vital role in medieval Catholic
piety. Only after the Reformation and because of it, were the
apocryphal gospels suppressed, first by Protestants and then by
Catholics.[13]
Specialists in textual criticism like Dr. Georg Gäbel at the Institut
für Neutestamentliche Textforschung (Münster), use the elaborate
computer system, the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method
(CBGM), that compares every word and line in the New
Testament against 5800 separate Biblical manuscripts spanning a
thousand-year period, and tracks all changes and differences. His
Institüt is able to print up a version of the Greek New Testament,
accompanied by detailed notation of variants, etc., that
approximates that of the original texts. The conclusion so far is
that the present-day New Testament version is remarkably close
to the earliest. The New Testament we have is not a later
concoction.[14]
Regarding recent archeological finds, often made by Israelis—
either at archeological digs or by chance (driving piles for the
construction of a new high rise building, for example)—many
accounts of the New Testament are being confirmed. For
decades the old Historico-Critical theorists claimed there was no
place called Nazareth in Jesus’s time: now the remains of the
village of Nazareth have been found, dating from well before
Jesus’s day and continuing for centuries.[15] Old-wave HistoricalCritical theorists claimed that the Romans tied their victims to
poles with ropes, that using nails could not support body weight,
but the discovery of the skeleton of a crucified Roman prisoner
proves otherwise.[16] And so on. There are many many
examples.
What can be called literary/stylistic criticism and other forms of
semiotic criticism, often joined with a comprehensive (and not
“selective”) comparison of chronologically-proximate sources, are
being used by the new scholars to demonstrate the implausibility
and often the downright logical absurdity of their older school
predecessors. Brant Pitre has been particularly convincing in this,
pointing out, for example, in the face of the “autonomous authors”
thesis of the older Biblical analysts, that among all the ancient
sources referencing the Gospel of St. Matthew—though they
dispute who wrote the Greek translation (from the Aramaic)—not
one attributes it to other than the Apostle Matthew.[17]
Brant Pitre, in his deconstruction of Bart Ehrman--perhaps the
best-known of the contemporary “hold-outs” for the older
Historico-Criticism)—focuses at one point on the fallacy of petitio
principi (“begging the question” or showing a “vicious circle”
between premise to be proven and conclusion) that he finds in
Ehrman’s rejection of Jesus’ Divinity.[18] This observation on
Pitre’s part reminds me of the repeated times in J&B that I find
Roger Haight guilty of the same fallacy. Here there is space for
only one glaring example, to be found on p. 58, where Roger
denies there was a Resurrection involving Jesus’s physical body,
saying that “There were no recorded witnesses to the resurrection
of Jesus.” He then continues, “Rather, the New Testament
explains the conviction that God raised Jesus by encounters with
Jesus’s being alive and interacting with his disciples in vivid
visitations that emphasize the realism of Jesus’s victory over
death.” The vicious circle: There was no physical Resurrection.
And how do we know that? Because there were no witnesses to
His physical Resurrection; there were only witnesses to His
physically resurrected body after His Resurrection, and these
were fabricated long afterwards. And how do we know that they
were fabricated? Because we know that there was no physical
Resurrection (Haight’s initial premise—that which was to be
proved). Also, let me add an additional observation. Does it not
occur to Roger that if the Gospel writers were fabricating the postResurrection literal or real “visitations,” they could just as well
have lied about the “moment” of Resurrection as such (instead of
providing no witnesses to the actual “moment” of Resurrection)
but did not? Why so?
Thus far I have addressed Historico-Critical thought, old and new,
but as one who has had as one of his key specialties the French
movement that can be called “Derridean deconstruction,” having
published so much in it since the early 1980s, I recognize that
even the new wave in Biblical Studies remains modernist in the
Derridean sense (which both overlaps and diverges from what the
Church called “modernism” in the late 19 th and early 20th
centuries[19]). Derrida understands “modernism” to be an
affirmation—either purposeful or “subtextual” (= operative at
levels below consciousness) or both—that holistic formations (=
“holism” in the broadest sense,--“that which is whole”) constitutes
an accurate model on which thought pure-and-simple can be
founded.[20]
J&B’s model of “pluralism” is that of a whole with many parts (a
modernist formulation) and some of its conclusions are based on
either “common ground” (a modernist formulation) or the parity of
religions (a modernist formulation). Derrida deconstructs “wholes,”
that is, he finds the camouflaged flaws in an apparently holistic
surface, and pursues the trail that leads from the flaw to the real
cause of the structure in question. This process reveals that the
apparently “whole” structure is really broken, off/center, “nonperfect” according to the norms of holism, so that the off/center is
what really makes it function. This is how I even interpret how the
Church functions: its own “foundation” (“ground” belongs to the
modernist code) has cracks in its foundation (Petrine authority as
the “rock”), just as Jesus (the Church’s ultimate foundation) has
gashes in His own Glorified Body.
When one understands the Derridean thought-modality I am
invoking, it should be clear that these are not unorthodox
assertions for a Catholic. The true in deconstructive thought is the
holism-as-deconstructed. In a talk I gave at Vangelo & Zen in
February, 2013,[21] I explained how, according to this Derridean
mode, it can be said that the Church functions by way of a sacred
but off/center charism deep below its surface. The truths the
magisterium expresses sometimes manifest themselves longterm via a circuitous route, just as Jesus, the ultimate charism,
uttered scriptural words whose fuller meanings burst up to the
surface only later in history, and in unexpected ways. Such a
“deconstructive” but orthodox interpretation of Church authority
helped me keep the Catholic faith in a time, around three decades
ago, when disruptions were simultaneously threatening my
personal life and also shaking the Western Church “to its core.”
What is required is “holy perseverance.”
In the CDF’s Notification pertaining to Roger Haight, the results of
Roger’s dialogue with “postmodernity” are declared to be contrary
to the Faith; and elsewhere the CDF negatively criticizes
“postmodern culture” itself. Derrida is often described as a
“postmodernist,” so some distinctions become necessary for us
here. Jacques Derrida routinely denied he was a postmodernist—he sought to distance himself from the right-wing
politics of many post-modern philosophers and sociologists. Also,
he disagreed with the “hodgepodge” methodology and results of
much postmodernism. Derridean deconstruction can only be
classified as postmodern in the widest sense: that is, as a mode
of thought which arrives historically after modernism, and as an
act that in one way or another disassembles modern “wholes,”
that is, latently centered-and-framed structures.
Derrida also deconstructs the much older and more
encompassing “holisms” identified with outright entitative thinking,
i.e., thinking based on being. This dominant Western thoughtcurrent starts with the Greeks, and transforms into Greco-Latin,
Medieval, Renaissance, and 18th-century Enlightenment phases.
Historically, the Catholic Church’s theology is of course expressed
in adapted Greek form (a topic addressed near the end of this
review). Paul/Roger label such expression outdated and
“dogmatic.” (Modernism, for its part, is a displaced, extremist, but
well-camouflaged version of entitative thought.)
Derrida’s thought-motifs relate in fascinating ways to the postEinsteinian age that scientists tell us is dawning. The application I
make here in this review is twofold. The sterile “18 th century
Enlightenment” rationalism combined with proto-materialist 19th
and 20th century positivism characterizing the old Historico-Critical
scholars (with which Paul and Roger identify)—movements so
modernist in their latent holistic assumptions—have come to a
close. Even the “new” wave of Biblical study, Johnson and Pitre
and the others—though very helpful and indeed, necessary in
terms of historical (and scriptural) truth—is soon to be
overshadowed by a sudden advance, a “breakthrough” at present
literally inconceivable (“unthinkable,” i.e., un-thinkable”). How
ironical that Paul and Roger would consider my belief in traditional
Church teaching “old fashioned” while I regard their naïve
modernism (almost the “contextual equivalent” to the old
Newtonian physics in science!) very old-fashioned indeed.
My preceding discussion of the old school Historico-Critical
movement applies in analogous ways to the Historico-Critical
revisionism now impacting Buddhist Studies in the West. That this
is the case pertains here, because Paul’s cafeteria-style
assimilation of Buddhism draws in part from the (heterogeneous)
conclusions of Buddhist revisionism, and at several points he
alludes approvingly to such “demythologizing.” As I shall lay-out in
more detail momentarily, Buddhist demythologization was begun
by Western scholars, and remains largely in Occidental hands. A
telling example, in my opinion, of the latent Western hauteur and
ethnocentrism showing its true colors is John D’Arcy May’s recent
review, in Buddhist-Christian Studies, of my book FRDD, where
he says “Western contexts” are “more at home with historical
awareness and democratic institutions . . . ,”[22] so the role of
authority in Buddhism is changing. Of course he means by
“historical awareness” the arid secularism of “old school”
Historico-Critical research, and by “democratic institutions” he
means the secular democratization of the Buddhist Vinaya
(regulations of the Sangha) and the Śīla (the moral precepts).
The Historical-Critical scholars researching the “earliest Buddhist
teachings” seem to be falling into the same trap as their
counterparts did while looking for the “historical Jesus’—the
projection of contemporary Western values and individual
interests. In my own work, I have instead made the Derridean
“move” called reversal, which enhances the “other” instead of
denigrating it, showing as I do that what is called “French”
deconstruction long ago already was functioning in Buddhist
thought (and practice). When Pope Francis urges the Church “to
go to the peripheries,” he is urging a “reversal” so the Church’s
center serve the peripheries rather than vice-versa. His favorite
contemporary philosopher and cultural historian is the Uruguayan
Methol Ferré, who maintains that “only the Church is truly
postmodern” because only it can break “hedonistic atheism,” a
“modernism” of so-called First World culture.[23] Pope Francis,
like several Popes before him and Vatican Council II itself, insists
that the Christian mission to non-Christian “peripheries” be one of
witness to the Faith and “learning from others,” not
“proselytization” (subtle or not-too-subtle “inducing” of the “other”
to convert[24]).
The “quest for the historical Gautama” and “for pre-canonical
Buddhism” via scientific research into written materials,
archeological finds, textual comparison, etc., can be traced back
to a cluster of Occidental Buddhologists beginning in the 19 th
century, but the quest(s) take on full stature much later, becoming
a “cottage industry” among academics in the 1990s and
thereafter. The overwhelming majority are Westerners (though
there are some contemporary Indians, Japanese, Singhalese,
among them, most of them academics). Thus, for example,
Johannes Bronkhurst tries to show that the classical methodology
of “the four Buddhist jñāna-s” (jñāna = “deep meditation”) has its
beginnings in the teachings of Gautama Buddha himself,[25]
whereas Alexander Wynne aims to show that the four jñāna-s and
their variants are assembled over a long period of time and from
many non-Buddhist sources, including Brahmanical ones.[26]
Richard Gombrich argues that the main structure of basic
Buddhism is the work of the historical Gautama Buddha[27] and
Ronald Davidson argues in contradistinction that very little of its
early basic structure is traceable to him.[28] And so on and on.
As I stipulated already in my references to Christianity above, the
Historico-Critical mode as such can be useful, and surely this is
the case in reference to Buddhism too. However, many
Buddhologists and other “scientific” scholars in Buddhist Studies,
especially the Western ones, are bent upon disproving longestablished teachings involving karma, rebirth, and the roles of
“authority” in Buddhism. A large part of their agenda is to “find” a
Buddhism more hospitable to “modern” secularism, though much
of their impetus, it seems to me, derives from a more egotistical
motivation: much as their Christian counterparts,[29] they are
expert at the “game” of winning professional, and oft times even
“popular” status. Historico-Critical “reduction” to isolated
(potential) components (ancient inscribed tablets, archeological
fragments, etc.) provides an ideal tool for this “game,” namely, it
allows a skillful game-player to assemble them into a new
configuration that is acceptable among peers but attracts
attention. Such a shrewd gamester has a keen eye for the linear
horizon (of theories): s/he knows how to spot a gap and how to
contrive a new theory, filling the gap with “the next thing that has
to be said,” a formulation that is acceptable (or no prestige is
gained) but innovative (there’s a kind of mechanistic momentum
to this game; whether a theory is true or not does not seem to
figure in). In contradistinction, rather than “gaming the system,”
my adaptation of French deconstruction to Catholic theology and
interreligious dialogue has rendered my work “unacceptable”—to
Derrideans because of their secularism, and to religionists,
because of their prejudice against deconstruction.
Paul Knitter’s version of Buddhism is at such a variance from
what I know and have experienced to be Buddhism, that I am—
how to put it?—quite astounded. I do not at all mean this in a
patronizing or ill-spirited or sanctimonious way. It is just that my
experience with Asian Buddhism since at least 1983, when I first
went to Taiwan, and then through my years in Thailand, and my
fourteen years of affiliation with the Lin Jiu Shan (Taiwanese)
Buddhist Center in New York, in short, my experience of
Buddhism as a “lived religion” in countries and cultures where it
constitutes the majority, strikes such a contrast with what Paul
describes (invents?). In the Far East, I think of the circa 10,000+
Buddhist monastics in Taiwan alone—the Pure Land chant, the
strict Chan monasteries, the esoteric practices of Mìzōng
(Chinese Vajrayana), the elaborate rituals for the dead lasting for
all of Ghost Month and participated in by millions. In Thailand I
think of the hundreds of thousands of monastics (life-long and
shorter term), and the intense devotion of the Thai people, and
how a very non-secular and “super-natural” Buddhism saturates
their everyday life.
Even in the U.S.A. at the Lower Manhattan Meditation center
(Theravada), where the Sangha (saṃgha, Skt.) is “Western” and
largely Caucasian—in the year and a half I meditated there I
found only strict adherence to “canonical” Theravada, and that
strict loyalty to the “Tradition” that characterizes converts (and
most were converts). The same can be true of what I found
among the Westerners at the Lam Rim Buddhist Centre (Wales,
U.K.), supervised by Ven. Geshe Damcho Yonten (Tibetan,
Gelukpa), though one or two more “secular” Buddhists,
Westerners, visited when I made a short retreat there (in 1994).
The visitors spoke of Stephen Batchelor, who since that time has
produced a whole stream of books advocating a “modern”
Buddhism much like Paul Knitter’s. In Buddhism Without Beliefs:
A Contemporary Guide to Awakening (1998), and in a cascade of
books up to the present, he rejects traditional Buddhist teachings
such as karma and rebirth, and—in his most recent—he extends
his interpretation of Gautama Buddha as a “pragmatic ethicist.”
(Please see the highly respected Bhikkhu Punnadhammo’s
critique of Buddhism Without Beliefs at
www.arrowriver.ca/dhamma/woBeliefs.html).
The Sangharaja (Supreme Patriarch of the Sangha) in Thailand,
when interviewed by my colleague Dr. Kirti Bunchua,[30]
emphasized his conviction that the doctrine of kamma (karma),
more than anything else, renders the social behavior of a
Buddhist different from that of a Christian. I have personally found
the same is the case with Chinese Buddhists, laity as well as
monastics—that their interpretation of past karma heavily
influences their behavior and judgments. Buddhism denies, of
course, the existence of an intact “soul” that passes over and is
reborn; rather, when one dies, that which is re-born is “neither the
same nor another.”[31] Enough of the “same” is understood to reconstitute itself so that many Thai males, when they are in their
short-term monkhood, offer their merit in part for their deceased
relatives. I was told by several young Thai monks in my classes in
Thailand, “I am offering my merit for my deceased mother.”
In Mahayana Buddhism, which in general emphasizes the rebirth
of the “same” much more than in Theravada, I find among
Chinese that they attribute their circumstances—even why they
are poor or suffer from an ill-tempered spouse—to their previous
lives. The Majjhima Nikaya (M. 1350), a very early sutta (written
down between 3rd cent. BCE and 1st cent. C.E.) appearing in both
the Theravada and Mahayana canon, and attributed to Gautama
Buddha, specifically says: “…. a certain woman or man is one
who takes life— . . . merciless to living beings [sentient beings,
not just humans] . . . . This is the way leading to a short life, . . . “;
and “a certain woman or man has an angry and irritable nature . .
. This is the way leading to being ugly . . . ”; and “a certain woman
or man does not give food, drink, clothing [etc.] . . . to priests or
contemplatives. . . . This is the way leading to being poor”[32];
and so on. These discourses attributed to the Buddha also very
precisely correlate good deeds with future good rebirths, and are
used by Buddhists to guide their present actions. Such “karmaic”
thinking can be misused, of course, as an excuse for social nonintervention, but likewise, Christian doctrine has been misused to
justify slavery, and so on. Actually the Buddhist scriptures
uniformly recommend kindness and compassion, and good
Buddhist authority-figures (respected monastics, revered
teachers) preach precisely that.
In his earlier book Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian,
Paul writes: “The focus of Buddhist energies and concerns is not
on what comes after death. . . . Rather, it’s on this moment, now,
right here”; and six lines later “Buddhists are fully convinced that if
they can be fully present and responsive to what is going on now,
then what will happen next will take care of itself.”[33] In his
current book under review, he says: “I will live on as that which
Buddha taught was my real nature . . . I will live on as an anatta, a
not-self. After death there will be consciousness. But it won’t be
individuated consciousness.. . . . Perhaps we can say that it will
be ‘we-consciousness’ . . . .” (J&B, 140).
Paul borrows his term “Interbeing,” the “interconnecting mystery,”
from Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh.[34] “Interbeing” is a neologism that
the influential Vietnamese monk, the founder of Plum Village in
France, invented to represent his version of pratītyasamutpāda
(“dependent rising” or “dependent arising”[35]). Paul borrows from
Thich Nhat Hanh’s “engaged Buddhism” too, of course, relative to
social justice/peace; and from Mahayana in general the notion of
the co-inherence of Form and Emptiness (Emptiness is called
“Great Space” in some Tibetan traditions). The Ven. Thich Nhat
Hanh has brought Buddhism to many many Westerners, and his
version of smṛti (“mindfulness”) is well-known and conducive to
good practice. There is no doubt, however, that his is a “new age”
style, and that he invents new rituals and possibly obfuscates his
supposed lineage, making him suspect in the eyes of some
respected Buddhist scholars.[36] Thus, though Ven. Thich Nhat
Hanh intends to deconstruct individualism, he—much like Paul
Knitter himself—actually very much goes his own way and thus
abets individualism.
Paul goes on to transform Interbeing into a formulation very
congenial to the world that popular science continually preaches.
Actually, he is ignoring much more fast-breaking news that is
storming down upon us from post-Einsteinian
physics/astrophysics, but more of this later. What I think I can say
here with a good degree of confidence is that the Buddhism Paul
describes is not the living religion of Buddhism that is practiced
around the world, by 99.999+ percent of Buddhists, be they rankand-file laity or trained intellectuals. The question of “How religion
works” (or how—to use words Paul would prefer—Mystery which
is Love and Truth works) necessarily interjects itself at this point. I
will address it too, ahead.
Having said the above, let me make clear that I recognize that
Paul’s Buddhism is very meaningful for him, and that it reflects his
spiritual experience. I am not saying that his motivations are selfserving: he is not casually chasing after relevancy. He sees that
Catholics, and especially “professionals” and university students
in what Italians call “the tier of northern Atlantic countries” feel
spiritually “starved,” and he wants to offer them a path, a
“solution.” Nonetheless, I think he, and Roger too, are
unintentional Pied Pipers. I think that they are right in saying that
the solution involves a re-discovery of “mysticism” and “mystery,”
but wrong in that they close off the deep presence of these in the
Mystery of the Church and its Mystical Life. They do not meet
Christ in the womb of His Spouse, the Church. In the aftermath of
Vatican Council II, too many misguided clergy and Religious,
especially in the “northern tier,” made decisions that starved the
Catholic laity. Only now are there some signs that this Catholic
community is returning to what Pope Francis calls “a mystical
adherence to the Faith.”[37]
For Catholics, the “real Jesus Christ,” the Living Jesus, lives in the
Church His Spouse, and in our individual hearts in the Heart of
the Church (these all “co-inhere”). The older Historico-Critical
school, extrapolating from “fragmentary bits of what was
observed, recorded, saved, and transmitted from the past,”[38]
constructs variable and sundry images of Jesus Christ. Paul and
Roger both seem to settle on “Jesus the prophetic teacher.” Then,
by loosening the bonds between religious community and
individual “spirituality,” Paul (insofar as he is a Christian) and
Roger, each in his own way, enable an interaction between the
individual subject and the ultimate Reality/Mystery, while retaining
Jesus as the ideal Jewish teacher whose example (of this
interaction) lives in the subject’s heart and inspires her/him (215220, 228-233, et passim). Paul, as a double-belonger—
represents a more finessed position: the individual subject is
discovering the ultimate Mystery, which is the co-inherence
characterizing Interbeing, and this ongoing discovery is
exemplified by the ideal images of Jesus and Buddha that live in
the subject’s heart (221-227, 229-233, et passim).
From my point of view, Paul and Roger are obliged to reduce
Jesus to an inspiring example because their modernist
scientism/rationalism permits the “historical Jesus” only to be long
dead. The only presence their scientism/rationalism permits them
is an imagined Jesus, or—as in Roger’s case—a Jesus whose
memory is kept alive through “faith.” Thus, Jeremy Kirk, Haight’s
student at Union Theological Seminary, completed “under his
direction” an “in-depth analysis of Haight’s two Christological
works . . . .” Interviewed by Jason Vonwachenfeldt for Religion
Dispatches, Kirk explains:
Following from this [understanding Jesus’s resurrection “on the
basis of hope”], Haight would affirm that the resurrection was
not an historical event that happened physically and
empirically in the space-time continuum. When Christians bury
a loved one, they put the body in the ground with the
faith/hope that the person is resurrected in a way that does not
deny the historicity of the physical burial. Haight would state
that Jesus’ body did not go anywhere; it is not the resuscitation
of a corpse. There was no zombie Jesus.[39]
For Paul and Roger, there are only two options: either the body of
Jesus was resuscitated as a living corpse, which is absurd, so
they reject this option; or Jesus "lives" in the memory and image
cultivated in the imaginations of people of "faith." Paul and Roger
do not allow for a third status of presence, namely, that which was
manifested at the Resurrection of Jesus—a super-natural
presence that is preeminently real and can be in space-time and
transcend space-time.
The Resurrected Jesus is present to us—and Christians should
not shrink from the word—as super-natural. Scripture makes clear
that the Resurrected Jesus had a real physical body (“reach your
hand here, and put it into my side”; and “Have you any food here?
And he ate it,” etc.) but this one-and-the-same body has supernal
qualities: the Resurrected Jesus passed through solid walls (John
20:19), and could trans-form (Mary Magdalene seeing a gardener,
then suddenly recognizing it is the risen Lord; the disciples at
Emmaus knowing Him in the breaking of the bread). Well more
than a billion Catholics and many hundreds of millions of other
Christians in the world continue to affirm the truth of this
Resurrected Jesus, and hundreds upon hundreds of millions of
them, I am sure, experience this Resurrected Jesus as true—we
sense His real presence, and for us, this presence need not be an
object of “blind faith” (not that “blind faith” isn’t meritorious, of
course . . . more of this issue later).
Paul and Roger think that humanity has outgrown the above
theology, and they consider its literal account fictional (or rather,
“symbolic” rather than literal). Regarding this problematic, I have a
question for them. Both of them continue to accept the validity of
“faith” and attempt to describe the “person of faith” (111),
numbering themselves among persons “of faith.” When Paul
Knitter affirms the “Spirit” (158) which courses through
“interconnectivity,” or, as he otherwise puts it, is the
“interconnectivity,” doesn’t such affirmation of Spirit (rather than
just empirically accessible interconnectivity, say) require as much
faith as belief in the literal truth of Jesus’s Glorified Body? When
Roger affirms the immanence and transcendence of God (165)
(rather than just scientifically accessible psychology, say), doesn’t
this require as much faith as belief in Jesus’s Real Presence in
the Eucharist, say? Aren’t Paul and Roger “just kicking the can
down the road,” that is, deferring the same issue by tricking it out
in more fashionable attire?
The epistle to the Ephesians speaks of “having the eyes of the
heart (ophthalmous tēs kardias)”[40] enlightened, and the
consistent tradition of the Church has been to understand the
“heart” here not as a metaphor for the emotional life, but as the
seat of the soul. While guarding against an equation of such faith
with “speaking in tongues” and personal ecstasy (as in
Pentecostalism), the Church understands “faith” as enabled by
the “interior succour of the Holy Spirit who moves the heart and
turns it to God,”[41] and I have never met a Catholic who has lost
his Catholic faith yet retained this heartful experience. The Greek
scriptural word pistis, usually translated as “faith” in English, also
means “trust,” “assurance”[42] and like words that imply the
experience of a presence. The Catholic mystical traditions
(Eastern and Western Church both) have frequently understood
that there is even a special human faculty that can experience the
supernatural, and sometimes the faculty itself is understood to
transform into the supernatural presence of God or be the
supernatural presence of God. More broadly speaking, the
Western Church regards the theological virtue of faith to be an
infused [43] power enabling belief: “faith” can be put to the test, of
course, when such “assurance” seems missing in relation to some
particular or in general, and thus especially meritorious.
Roger and Paul punctuate their book with remarks referring to
spiritual “starvation” among Christians, Catholics very much
included, and with explanations exemplified by Paul’s statement
that the “standard diet of doctrinal instruction and spiritualsacramental practice is not meeting the nutritional needs of many
American and European Christians” (222). To this point, my
responses insofar as Catholicism is concerned are several. First,
as I have discussed already, a combination of post-Vatican
Council II reckless liberalism among the clerical elites of the socalled First World (especially those that are English-speaking)
plus the rampant materialism/secularism in such societies has
impeded the access of the Holy Spirit to many hearts. Second,
those factions that have lost their “hearts” should be humble
enough to learn from the vast majority of the global Catholic
population, the 68 percent[44] who live in Central and South
America, Africa, and Asia, where Catholicism as a Living Religion
is thriving. Indeed, this is a point that Pope Francis drives home
again and again: “Go out to peripheries”[45] where the Real Jesus
is best known. The “many American and European Christians”
who Paul says are “starved,” rather than going off on their own
way(s), should be humble enough to learn from the Universal
Church.
As an aside, but very pertinent one, let me add that the
patronizing references of Paul/Roger towards the religious
thought and practice of the Middle Ages and of all the historical
periods preceding the 18th century’s “Age of Reason,” and their
disdainful remarks directed against the “Church language of
dogma and doctrine,”[46] show a like isolation from the “other,”
and this—ironically—from those who claim to be most “open” to
the “other.” Those who fancy themselves the most intellectual and
professional must face the homely fact that—in the U.S.A., for
example—the so-called ethnics who have not gone to college,
and the so-called minorities new and old, have the true wisdom
that enlightens “the eyes of the heart.” Catholic intellectuals and
professionals can teach these “others” much, no doubt, but these
“others” through their witness and practice have much to teach
too.
Sometimes the Church in the U.S.A. proceeds in a way so
isolated from the rest of the world, even the rest of the Catholic
world, that I am truly baffled.[47] Two Asian Jesuits, Fr. Petrus
Puspobinatmo, S.J. (who is training seminary students in
Myanmar) and Fr. Kang In-gun, S.J. (a missionary in Cambodia),
sent me emails last year, telling me they will find my recent book
very helpful in the Buddhist cultures where they are located. A
Jesuit seminarian, Jaime M. Rivera, S.J., a Filipino but belonging
to the Thai Jesuit jurisdiction, finished in spring 2016 a thesis in
theology devoted to my work in dialogue, and its relevance to the
Buddhist-Christian encounter in Thailand.[48] He makes,
throughout, the point that any theory of “common ground” would
be rejected apriori by Thai Buddhists, and that, contrariwise, my
model of samenesses erected by pure difference, is very
workable in dialogue with them. My question is this: how can
J&B’s version of interreligious dialogue serve Roger Haight’s
Jesuit confreres who are witnessing for Catholicism in Buddhist
countries? The premises and proposals in the “It Seems To Us”
closings at the end of each chapter of J&B would in effect
dismantle the whole Sacramental System; the liturgical
significance of the Mass; devotion to Jesus’s mother, Mary (whom
Paul/Roger exclude from any mention); and the charisms of our
Religious orders and congregations. Paul/Roger may intend their
book for the disaffected among the college-educated of the rich
industrially-developed countries, but I know for a fact that their
book is distributed world-wide. How can it serve in either the
mission fields, or in Asian dialogue?
Paul and Roger talk of the sensus fidelium several times,[49] and
how it often reflects their views, but even assuming that the
preponderance of Catholics in the U.S.A. accepts their version(s)
of Christianity (which is hardly the case), the Catholic population
of the United States constitutes no more than 7% of the global
Catholic population (8% with Canada included).[50] To which
“faithful” are Paul/Roger referring? Let us hope their assertion is
not received by the so-called “Third World” as yet another
egregious example of Caucasian intellectual elites telling the rest
of the world what to do. [The same applies, mutatis mutandis, for
the infinitesimally small ratio of Caucasian Buddhists to the global
Buddhist populations.]
As adumbrated above, the Catholic center of gravity is shifting to
Africa, Latin America, and Asia, all regions where the sensus
fidelium is moving in directions directly counter to J&B’s vision of
the religion/spirituality-to-come.[51] Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin
America, and the Asia-Pacific region as of 2010 accounted for
67% of the global Catholic population[52] (up to 68 % in
2012[53]). Throughout Latin America, the Catholic charismatic
movement is checking the advance of Evangelical Christian sects,
and devotion to Mary is as fervent as ever. In Africa, conversions
are the most rapid, with vocations to the traditional religious
orders and congregations booming: Africans are conservative in
theology and affective in their popular devotion (rosary-recitation,
and much singing). In Korea, the Church is multiplying
exponentially in numbers and vocations; in Vietnam it is doing
very well and marked by loyalty and fervor; and in The
Philippines, devout laity go out to serve the world’s parishes and
missionaries go out to evangelize Asia (the Church in all three
countries is remarkably Latinate in preference, and Marian
devotion is extremely potent). When one adds to these examples
from the global South and East, the growth of the “new
evangelical movements” and new religious congregations of
European provenance, like the Neo-Catechumenate (Spain), the
Fraternités monastiques de Jérusalem (France), Focolare (Italy),
etc.; plus the continuing vitality of a traditional Catholicism in
Poland, Portugal, and Italy, and the revival of Catholic intellectual
life that few English-speakers know about, in France,[54]--then
the true character of the contemporary sensus fidelium becomes
apparent indeed.
Jesus & Buddha understands itself to be a “conversation”
between a Christian (Roger) who declares himself to be singlebelonger much enriched by Buddhism, and a “Buddhist Christian”
(Paul) who at this point has moved to the “blended doublebelonging” stage wherein the two religions, while retaining their
differences, “become one in the person of the double-belonging
practitioner” (211). As someone who—for long periods of time-has not only lived with Buddhist believers but also practiced in
Buddhist monasteries, and who received several months ago an
invitation to live in Master Hsin Tao’s Buddhist monastery,
Wushengsi (Fulian Village, Gung Liao, Taiwan) for the remainder
of his--that is, my--life (I am now almost 76 years of age),
needless to say I too engage in “comparative theology” (though I
personally am troubled by the term),[55] intensely sharing
religious experience with Buddhists. Because of both my bonds to
my family and my ongoing affiliation with Vangelo & Zen in Italy, I
do not think I will be able to accept his offer, but the fact that
Master Hsin Tao, whom I have known since 2001, invites me to
practice with his religious community en permanence, and with
the understanding that I would attend Mass on Sundays at the
nearby Discalced Carmelite monastery of Sisters, witnesses to
the conviviality of close association between a Catholic Christian
single-belonger and Buddhist monastic single-belongers.
The Buddhist-Christian dialogue, its “encounter and exchange,”
has never put me ill at ease:[56] rather, it has always been a great
source of joy for me. All along, I have not had trouble adapting
Buddhist doctrine and practice to my Catholic life, and my life is
an “orthodox” Catholic life. In FRDD, my presentation of “Catholic
gong’an [koans]” exemplifies this, as is my use of Buddhist
somatic form in meditation, and my frequent use of Buddhist
thought-structures (more of this latter, in a moment). Precisely for
this reason I am so nonplused by the internal conflicts which have
led Paul in particular to abandon some core Christian doctrines
and to either adopt Buddhist doctrines even when they contradict
Christian ones, or—as he does in many cases-- formulate new
(and heretical) syntheses of the two religions. I here use the word
“synthesis” advisedly because to synthesize dialectically is to
modify contradictory elements and to subsume the modifications
into a new unity. Likewise, I use the words “doctrine” and “heresy”
very advisedly, because they are, when properly understood, as
serviceable as ever and apply in Paul’s case (and in Roger’s too,
but in a somewhat different way). That Paul and Roger disown
such terminology stems, quite obviously, from our differing
interpretations of how authentic religious life “goes on.”
Where I do think Paul and Roger do their best work is in their
deployment of “functional analogy” (the definition of which is given
in the Résumé), and much of my work of adaptation has involved
formal analogies of this kind. In FRDD, examples of it can be
found in the section on “obverse overlap” (in Part II) and
throughout FRDD’s Second Annex. In a forthcoming text,[57] the
analogy I make is between Master Hsin Tao’s teaching that
illusory lights (the conditioned), when properly understood, signal
the invisible Reality of the Void (the unconditioned) and John of
the Cross’ teaching that “specks of dust” (the conditioned), when
lit up by the invisible light (and seeming darkness) of the heavens,
signal the Eternal Light (God the unconditioned).
Regarding interreligious relationship (and in particular, for the
book under review, Buddhist-Christian relationship), Roger—while
remaining a “single-belonger”—gravitates towards consensus (as
a general model), or at least towards a common ground enabling
a pluralism of “different but equal” religions; and Paul in particular
prefers “eclectic spirituality” and personally affirms a “hypostasis”
whereby his Buddhist and Christian natures remain distinct but
“one.” My question at this point is: Why the extreme predilection,
in both Paul and Roger, for unity (consensus, common ground,
coincidence of opposites,[58] individual eclecticism, co-inherence,
etc.)? Why does contradiction between religions, and why does
“resting in irreducible difference” among religions, make Paul and
Roger uncomfortable and dissatisfied? I so much like Fr. William
Skudlarek’s observation, and he is referring to the inter-monastic
“dialogue of experience” among Buddhist monastics, Catholic
monastics, and Muslim Sufis: “It is not that we are on different
paths all going up the mountain and going toward the same goal.
We are on the same path [contemplation] going in different
directions . . . we’re ending up in different places.”[59] He of
course intently continues his religious ascent—to use his
metaphor-- into the infinitely retreating horizon of the Divine
Mystery, but clearly he is not disturbed by the declared different
goals of the various religions. He is clearly not driven by the need
to somehow find a “ground,” a formula to “frame” them either
affectively or cognitively. According to my adapted “Derridean” or
“differential” mode of thought (to be explained ahead), the
aforesaid “contemplation” is the “sameness” erected or
“appointed” by the ultimately irreducible differences between the
core doctrines of—in this case—the three religions; thus, the
fecundity of the shared experiences of contemplation is
celebrated while the established teachings of the three religions
are respected and retained.
From the Catholic point of view, since we affirm that God chooses
to give the grace of belief only to some, and that the Divine will in
this regard is mysterious (and not determined by individual
worthiness or lack thereof), and that, among those not sent the
grace of belief, all good people--all those following the “natural
law” of good deeds—are taken up into the heavenly Beatitude
alongside good Christian believers, why the restlessness? Why
the unwillingness to wait?[60] To borrow an East Asian metaphor,
in comparison to all there is and all that is coming, we humans—
despite our most recent “mind-boggling” astro-physical
breakthroughs (alluded to, ahead)—remain mere fish in a fish
bowl, not capable of understanding outside-the-bowl what is and
what is oncoming, possibly aeons of time/space and unknown
universes of time/space and that which transcends time/space.
We Catholics simply can affirm the Revelation given us, witness
our faith to others, share with and learn from others, and, as
Mother Teresa often said, “watch” and “wait trustfully on the Lord.”
Paul and Roger think that the Church’s claim to unique Divine
Revelation is “arrogant.” It seems to me, instead, that to finagle
with established Teaching and rush headlong into private human
solutions is “arrogant.”
In FRDD, in the long First Annex, “On God and Dissymmetry,” the
reasons why “oneness” and “common ground” are “modernist”
formulations (in the French deconstructive sense) are explained.
Among the French deconstructionists there have been several
prominent French feminist thinkers, and here it is to the point to
reference one of them, the brilliant Luce Irigaray. Though I draw
mainly upon (the early and middle-phase-) Jacques Derrida in my
own work, Irigaray the feminist is relevant in terms of J&B
because she demonstrates how the modernist obsession with
“oneness” and “common ground” is a masculine or “phallocentric”
trait (not in terms of physical gender, but in terms of existential
engagement with the world).[61] The male drive is motivated by
an unconscious need for individuated “control”—not in the sense
necessarily of bodily control but in the sense of “command of
possibilities,” “command of the outcome,” etc. Thereby, the
individual male can “capture” or “frame” the domain-of-interest in
a unitary formation. The feminine, instead, can better welcome
the unknown, entertain the uncertain, and live with difference.
Paul/Roger rush to package a new religious “rationale” that they
call both “disciplined and structured.” They recommend it to an
“audience . . . broad and general” and to “undergraduates” (xii,
xiii). By so doing, to borrow Irigaray’s language, they manifest the
preeminently “phallocentric” drive, discarding too much of the past
and foreclosing (= ‘resolving beforehand’) the future that God will
open up for us. Paul and Roger accuse the Church of being
close-minded, but they foreclose on the yet-unknown that is God’s
providentially designed future for us.
That which deconstruction exposes is that modernist formulations
(and the habitual human proclivity for them) block future advances
in human apprehension. That which is “off balance” serves as a
better “conductal clue,” and for quite a long time already I have
been demonstrating that such is the case for many kinds of
inquiry. Here it suffices, I think, to direct the reader to the
immediately pertaining theological and philosophical discussion,
in FRDD, pp. 137-144, 146-156, 158-169. Regarding Catholic
inclusivism, my recent book proclaims the following with no
discomfort whatsoever: “Wonder of wonders, . . . authentic
Catholic teaching . . . sets forth a model that is much more askew
and lopsided, . . . God sends one Savior into the world, saves
only through Him, and yet enables the disciples of other religions
to follow their own religions and still be saved! . . . Christ’s LifeBlood vitalizes not only His own rose, but the Buddhist water-lily
too, beautiful in its own color and configuration. And wonder of
wonders, sometimes that water-lily can strengthen (edify,” from
Latin aedificare, “to build up”) the Savior’s own Rose. (There are
other vitalized and edifying flowers too, as Vatican Council II
points out).”[62]
Regarding the accusation of triumphalism, let me quote here from
FRDD at greater length:
The accusation that such Catholic inclusivism is unfair and
fundamentally unworthy of God disregards . . . that there is no
mundane ‘comparison’ in the heavenly state and persons shall
shine to the extent that they fulfilled the celestial proddings
sent uniquely to them. The Jew will celebrate what was her/his
unique Jewish role in life, the Muslim will celebrate what was
her/his unique Muslim role, the Buddhist her/his unique
Buddhist role, the Hindu her/his, the ‘secularist’ her/his unique
role in life, and so on. Nor should vain comparison taint how a
Catholic should approach other religionists or non-religionists
in this present world. The Jews or Muslims or Buddhists or
Hindus or secularist, and so on, may be holier than the
unloving Catholic if they are doing what the celestial design is
beckoning them to do. In this scenario, the non-Catholics are
the faithful servants, and the condescending Catholics are the
runaway sons. (142).
Paul and Roger make, in relation to interreligious dialogue, what
are modernist proposals, that is, proposals resting on holistic
models. I present in my own published work, in relation to
interreligious dialogue, an alternative proposal. My proposal
deploys a Derridean approach counter to modernist holism,
namely—the erection of “samenesses” via irreducible
differences. Thus I think a brief example of how to think about
“samenesses and irreducible difference” in a Derridean way is in
order here. Derrida demonstrates that holisms are really
“samenesses” jacent upon and erected by underlying
differences.[63] Adapting this format to Buddhist-Catholic
relations, I argue that the many fecund “samenesses” between
Buddhism and Catholicism are founded on (or better phrased,
“appointed by”[64]) more radical differences between them, and
that their core-teachings are irreducibly different. Thus the
samenesses between Buddhist nian fo chant, for example, and
Catholic Gregorian chant, reduce to an ultimately different intent,
and are ultimately founded by this difference.[65] This does not
mean that these two forms of very beautiful chant (I personally
love them!) cannot fertilize each other on their own level, nor does
it mean that Buddhist and Catholic monastics cannot “share” their
experiences and learn much from each other pertaining to chant.
In J&B’s closing chapter, Roger presents what is a very finessed
analysis of how an apathetic or somehow dissatisfied ‘subject’
(usually taken to be a “Christian” in this context) can initiate and
follow through with a transition to “dual belonging” (215-220).
Roger’s treatment is very impressive and obviously the fruit of
much earnest thought. For our purposes here, let us examine the
‘path’ he proposes in terms of modernism, and counter-pose an
alternative path using my “differential” format. The path Roger
proposes can unfold according to more than one scenario. When
one sorts out his description over its six pages, the dominant
scenario is that the dissatisfied ‘subject’ seeking a “bridge” to a
second religion, so s/he can become a dual-belonger, pursues the
following scenario: s/he builds that bridge by proceeding from
“spirituality” (defined as one’s individuated “tenor” in the face of
“transcendent reality”) to religious “community” (meaningful
identification with a religious tradition) to “curiosity” (so one
experiments with the ‘other’ religion) to identification with the
second religion too, so thus one becomes a “dual-belonger.”
Another scenario within Roger’s six pages, usually in reference to
the Christian subject, seems to proceed from community to
eclectic spirituality to discovery of real transcendence (“absolute
Mystery”) to more direct experience of two or more religions,
since Transcendence founds all religions. Probably Roger
sometimes means that some of these causes are co-causal,
though he intends, surely, to ground them all in Transcendence.
I note here that Roger’s path and its variant scenarios are all
‘grounded’ in terms of holistic formulae, entitative formulae (think
of ‘substance’ in the vernacular sense of something there, be it
substantive foundation or substantive ‘flow’). Thus Roger’s
Transcendence is a ‘ground’—it is conceived as a substantive, a
foundation which is there and “grounds”[66] “communities,”
“religions,” and subjects (individual “persons”) no matter what
causal tracks among them apply. Roger’s “spirituality” or
“individuated tenor” is apparently a synthesis of two substantives,
individuated ‘subject’ and “transcendent reality” (the
Transcendent). “Curiosity” is apparently grounded in the ‘subject’
and the ‘subject’ in Transcendence. “Dual Belonging” is grounded
in one subject (“person”) via either a juxtaposition of two religions
or a synthesis (a “blend,” as in Paul’s case) of two religions.
Juxtaposition places two substantives, two “religions” alongside
each other in combination. Synthesis or “blend” produces a new
substantive.
My way to think about interreligious encounter/exchange
proposes a Derridean mode that is particularly foreign to
theologians or scholars trained in the Catholic academic tradition,
because their formation almost always excludes the postphenomenological movements, and especially “deconstruction”
(which Christian ecclesiastics have almost universally
misunderstood because of extrinsic reasons having a politicocultural provenance).[67] Thus I ask my readers, especially
Christian readers, to give some close attention to the very short
demonstration that follows. Please also understand I shall be
necessarily simplifying and abbreviating, condensing into a few
lines an example of a new way of thinking. The most I can hope is
to attract enough interest so that readers shall go on to delve into
the content in more detail.
Let us start off where Roger does (p. 215), namely, the
dissatisfied subject—let us say for our purposes the dissatisfied
Catholic Christian—who wants to transition to a “dual belonging”
of Mahayana Buddhism and Catholicism. The “differential” (=
Derridean) procedure could very well inspect “dual belonging”
first, as a cluster of “samenesses” appointed by differences. Let
us say the Catholic Christian likes and needs the belief that
matter embodies “spirit” or the “spiritual” (s/he definitively rejects
outright “materialism”). Let us say also that s/he has become
increasingly offended by what s/he considers the “rigamarole” of
the Church’s sacramental system. Both Mahayana Buddhism and
Catholicism are the “same” in that they affirm that matter
embodies spirit. The subject should then examine the differences
between the two religions, the underlying differences that appoint
this “sameness.” Mahayana Buddhism (across all of its
mainstream traditions) affirms “the two truths”: mundane truth and
Ultimate truth are mystically identical, that is, form is emptiness
and emptiness is form. Catholic Christianity, for its part, has
teachings such as the Indwelling of grace in the soul, and the
presence of God in all things via “essence, presence, and power,”
and several other degrees of the presence of the Ultimate in
creation, but matter and the Ultimate are never regarded as
absolutely identical. Thus, in reference to the Ultimate,
Mahayanist affirmation of the absolute identity (via the
dharmakāya [68]) and Catholic rejection of the absolute identity
(at any “level” or “degree”) are two tenets that irreducibly
contradict each other. In regard to the matter/spirit relationship,
this is the “irreducible difference” between Mahayana and
Catholicism appointing the pertaining “sameness,” “matter
embodying spirit,” that the two religions share.
The next step would be for the dissatisfied Catholic subject to
choose between the pertaining Catholic teachings on matter/spirit
and the Mahayanist teaching that contradicts them. The choice is
decisive, because the Church’s pertaining teachings are
authoritatively defined. If the subject rejects the Catholic teaching,
thereby conscientiously leaving the Church, s/he can go on to
become a “dual belonger”: s/he can construct whatever
combination of teachings s/he wants, drawing from Catholicism
and Buddhism both.[69]
Catholic differentialist thought can proceed deeper and deeper
down into this inverse “chain of being” (it is a “chain of nonbeing,”[70] if you will), and eventually it would approach the
difference between the created and the non-created (God). God is
Mystery, but via Revelation we know God is represented-for-us
conceptually[71] as Unity/Trinity. In my last three books and
elsewhere I have pointed out that the doctrinal provision of
relationis oppositio declares that each Trinitarian “Person” qua
“Person” (in the technical sense, of course) is defined by purely
negative reference to the other Two Persons. This authoritative
truth reveals absolute difference to be how (conceptually
speaking, of course) the Trinity functions. Given it so happens
that absolute (“pure”) difference is, in Derridean deconstruction,
how “samenesses” arise, the connection I draw to differentialism
should be obvious. In my work I have probed this question in
considerable detail.[72] I always take care to attach all the
theological cautions, of course. God is a Mystery—the Unity is
one-and-the-same with each of the three Persons, so that there is
“one God in three,” and so on. All these terms and concepts are
not God, but just “pointers.” Nonetheless, I add as a private aside
here that my discovery, many years ago, of the pertinence of the
relationis oppositio clause, was a real Anschauung for me, an
epiphanic insight that came to be inscribed even into my interior
spiritual life. It is crucial for those like Paul and Roger who seem
so impatient with “doctrinal complexity” to recognize that for
personality types like me, the heart of flesh and blood and
abstract ideas “co-inhere.” What repels them excites people like
me, and even plays a vital role in our prayer lives. “Christ plays in
ten thousand places,” in ten thousand kinds of personality—all
different.
Thus I find exhilarating that Jesus’s prayer to the Father in John
17:20-23 can be read in a differential manner. Jesus prays “that
they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee,
that they also may be in us, . . . . that they may be one even as
we are one, I in them and thou in me, that they may become
perfectly one, . . . .” Because the relationis oppositio clause says
that the Persons qua Persons are defined only by their pure
negative differences from each other, what is the “same” in the
Persons belongs to the Unity instead. The Father and the Son are
“one” by way of the pure negative reference between them.
Likewise, the disciples, because their oneness reflects how the
Father and the Son are “one,” are “one” by their negative
references to each other. In terms of relationis oppositio, nonbeing rather than being is at the core of God.[73] That is, in terms
of relationis oppositio, the “I AM” who is God involves intraTrinitarian negative references. Of course, all of these
approaches to the theology of God—Augustinian, Rahnerian,
post-Rahnerian, “entitative,” “differential,” et al.—they all must be
“crossed-out” in the end, having served their purpose for some
people according to their time and circumstances, before the
Divine Mystery. My proposal is that a Derridean or “differential”
mode seems most apposite for our contemporary times, and even
more so for that which is oncoming.
In Catholicism, Divine Revelation is understood to come from the
Mysterium that is God: thus, as super-natural, it is beyond
philosophical or scientific breakthroughs. However, the Church’s
theology—its authoritative teaching—develops: its tradition
advances, gaining more and more insight into the infinite God,
and into the unchanging Divine Revelation that reflects the infinite
God. The Church’s theology, historically, has advanced by
examining, adjudicating, and judiciously assimilating the thinking
tools of the ambient culture. Thus Hebraic thought-forms yielded
to Greek thought-forms, and the Church’s official theology came
to be expressed in the Greek thought-forms of being, substance,
etc.[74] Since the Divine truths expressed in Greek form are trueas-expressed, these “true expressions” cannot be changed.
However, the Church can go on to develop these “true
expressions” further. For example, the very early Church
expresses the “Breath of God” in terms of Jewish thought-form,
which is anthropologically-based, and later the Church, while
retaining this thought-form, develops it further by expressing it in
pneumatological terms based on Greek thought-form. My sense
is—and it is almost a “presentiment” (“to feel beforehand”)—that
human kind is on the verge of a “catastrophic leap” (or
“evolutionary saltation,” in Chomsky’s technical sense[75]). With
such a “leap,” a “saltation” in thought-forms, too, is inevitable.
In astrophysics and quantum physics alone, consider just the
following recent discoveries—most of them within the last twenty
years (I list them here in a string without transitions, just to convey
a sense of the breathless pace of it all). As late as the early 1990s
it was still thought that the expansion of the universe was slowing
down: now astrophysicists know that the expansion is
accelerating.[76] Now astrophysicists know that they don’t
understand at all what “dark energy” is, but just that it is
approximately 68 percent of the universe. They likewise do not
know what “dark matter” is, but it accounts for about 27% of the
universe. The matter that they affirm they do at least basically
understand, the matter making up all stars and galaxies, only
accounts for 5% of the universe![77] Our galaxy alone, the Milky
Way, has some 100 billion stars and 100 million black holes.[78]
In the “observable” universe there are at least 100 billion galaxies.
[79] This year, NASA reported the discovery of one black hole 17
billion times the size of our sun. [80] The number of black holes in
the universe is impossible to estimate. About a hundred years
ago, Einsteinian “general relativity” superseded the Newtonian
universe. Albert Einstein’s “spacetime” combined the dimension of
space with the conventional three spatial dimensions, showing
that the observed rate at which time passes depends on velocity
relative to the observer and on the strength of gravitational fields.
Nowadays substantial challenges are being lodged against the
classical Einsteinian model itself.[81]
Likewise, in quantum physics and the study of sub-atomic
domains, the “truism” that matter cannot be colder than absolute
zero has recently been disproven: scientists have created a subabsolute zero quantum gas, thereby “changing the laws of
physics.” [82] “Atoms behave like waves and each atom loses its
self-identity and seems to be in all the others.”[83] What is more,
molecular biology’s study of the human genome and
neuroscience’s study of the brain are making equivalent
breakthroughs that can impinge on the sciences humaines.[84]
To conclude this review, I call the reader’s attention to the two
discussions in J&B that are, for me, the most edifying and
positively instructive. One is Paul’s discussion of compassion and
justice in Chapter 11, and the other is Roger’s interpretation of
“creation theory” in Chapters 5 and 6. In Chapter 11, Paul argues
for the priority of compassion over justice, a message genuinely
thoughtful and helpful for me, as a political Leftist who all of his
life has supported Liberation Theology. The option for the poor—
in Paul’s words—“cannot be an option against the oppressors”
(199), though he grants that sometimes what Tibetan Buddhists
call “wrathful compassion” may be necessary. According to
Catholic teaching too, society should punish when absolutely
necessary, but must still work for the spiritual (and physical, when
possible) rehabilitation of the guilty. Alas, during the
“Intercessions” at Catholic Mass, prayers seem to be offered
regularly for the victims of ISIS and the Taliban, but not for the
Taliban and ISIS militants themselves. Paul’s call for compassion
over justice even rings true in terms of Pope Francis’s recent
document, “Amoris Laetitia,” which, very controversially for some,
calls for pastoral discernment that takes “subjective conscience”
more into account.
Roger’s treatment of creatio ex nihilo demonstrates how Catholic
theology can share in what I would call a deeply significant
“sameness” with Buddhist teaching. “Big Vehicle” Buddhism
shares with Catholicism the notion that all that exists depends on
the Unconditioned. In a perfectly orthodox but innovative way
(because it appropriates Buddhist language), here Roger teases
out, from the Thomistic definition of God as “Pure Act,” the
following conclusion: “God as pure energy with no definition is nothing; God is a pure emptiness that is not negative but
unimaginably creative dynamism and vitality” (83; see also 93,
100). Of course—let me point out—this “sameness” between the
two religions is appointed by deeper differences: in Big Vehicle
Buddhism, the Unconditioned (dharmakāya) is not a Creator-God;
also, and as a consequence, “all that exists” (the conditioned or
determinate) and the Unconditioned co-inhere or are
“reciprocal”—existents are not in a one-way dependence on the
dharmakāya; rather, each“manifests” the other because they are
“identical.”
Roger’s appropriation of the Buddhist term “pure emptiness”
demonstrates an engagement in an Asian thought-form (one finds
variants of “pure emptiness” in several Asian Indian religions),
and the Church—in my firm opinion—needs to undertake much
more of such engagement now. [85] Such thought-forms, besides
developing an “Asian” theology for Asia, can be instructive for the
theology of the universal Church, and for its meditative practice.
At Pentecost the Holy Spirit’s tongues of flame are depicted as
descending onto the heads of the Apostles because the fontanel
or crown chakra is there; at Emmaus, the hearts of the disciples
“burn within them” because the heart chakra is there; and in
Colossians, Paul urges upon the brethren “the bowels [splankna]
of compassion” (Col. 3:12) because Chan Buddhism’s dantian is
there: these sites are bodily openings to the supernal. I close with
a famous passage from a Mahayana sutra allowing Paul, Roger,
me, and I hope the readers of this review to meet in a
vitalizing/convivial? “sameness”:
Manjusri asked: “What is the root of inverted thinking?”
Vimalakirti replied: “Baselessness [un-groundedness] is the root
of inverted thinking.”
Manjusri asked: “What is the root of baselessness [ungroundedness]?”
Vimalakirti replied: “Manjusri, when something is baseless
[ungrounded], how can it have any root?
Therefore, from this baseless [ungrounded] root, everything
arises.
—The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A Mahayana Sutra [86]
NOTES
[1] The book’s promotion declares it “2016 Catholic Press Award
Winner,” which seems to misrepresent the award it did win, which
is an “Honorable Mention” in the section representing
“Spirituality.” I have little doubt that the tricky language of the
promotion is due not to our authors, but rather the over-zealous
marketing intentions of the publisher.
[2] The book is based on an adaptation of a Derridean thoughtmotif, viz., that samenesses are superjacent to irreducible
differences that erect them, in order to celebrate samenesses
(and learn from differences) between Buddhism and Catholic
Christianity, while preserving the deeper doctrinal differences
between the two religions. The body of the book, pp. 5-24, 35135, is for “Sangha Buddhists” and “pew Catholics” who need
reliable guidance when engaging the Buddhist-Catholic
encounter, participating in joint meditation-sessions, etc. The
Foreword explicating my Derridean “differentialism” (pp. 25-33),
and the Two Annexes, “On God and Dissymmetry” (pp. 137-156)
and “’Hellenized’ Catholic Theology and Its Encounter with
Buddhism—Some Future Possibilities” (proposing new kinds of
properly Asian theology/practice, pp. 157-184), are intended for
specialists.
[3] Paul concurs, defining Jesus as a Jewish prophet and teacher.
[4] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Dec. 13, 2004,
Notification on the book “Jesus Symbol of
God” by Father Roger Haight, S.J.:
http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/document
s/rc_con_cfaith_doc_20041213_notification-fr-haight_en.html
[5] See the report from Jan. 22, 2009, in chiesa.espressonlineitaly: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/213869?eng=y
[6] Most of the themes reflect the proposals Paul presented in his
book, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian (2009,) which I
reviewed in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion,
Vol. 78, No. 4 (Dec. 2010), pp. 1215-1218; my review was
reprinted, with permission, in Dilatato Corde, Vol. II, No.1 (Jan.June 2012)-http://www.dimmid.org/index.asp?Type=B_BASIC&SEC={6F500F
52-36F0-4805-B08E-0D16BCEFD8AF}
[7] Precise documentation of the authors identified with each of
these theories can be found at Paul Rhodes Eddy, “Jesus as
Diogenes? Reflections on the Cynic Jesus Thesis,” Journal of
Biblical Literature, Vol. 115, No. 3 (1996), pp. 449, 450.
[8] For a sound representation of opinions regarding the Jesus
Seminar, see the text of a famous debate featuring John Dominic
Crossan himself, and his academic adversary Luke Timothy
Johnson, and Werner Kelber, who disagrees with both of them, in
Crossan, Johnson, and Kelber, The Jesus Controversy:
Perspectives in Conflict (1999).
[9] From the squibs for Johnson’s book, front inner pages. Dunn is
a highly regarded Biblical scholar who writes in the Protestant
tradition.
[10] Several of the prominent ones are former Protestants or
Evangelicals. Several teach at Catholic seminaries, either
because orthodox seminaries need them (a good reason) or
because the “old guard” throws up walls against them in the
universities (a sad reason—factional ruthlessness, “nature red in
tooth and claw”).
[11] Cited in Robert J. Hutchinson, Searching for Jesus (2015),
pp. 70-71. Though Hutchinson is not a Biblical scholar, I highly
recommend his book because he has done a labor-intensive job
of researching the latest in Biblical research, assembling its
findings, and reporting on them.
[12] Quoted by Luke Timothy Johnson in his review of Philip
Jenkins’ The Thousand Year Story of the Survival and Influence
of the Lost Gospels (2016) in Commonweal, Jan., 2016. Philip
Jenkins is the respected historian (Baylor U.) who also authored
The Hidden Gospels: How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way
(2001).
[13] Ibid.
[14] For pertaining academic references, see Hutchinson, pp. 71,
88-90.
[15] See Ken Dark, “Has Jesus’s Nazareth House Been Found?”
Biblical Archeological Review 41:02 (March/April 2015), quoted in
Hutchinson.
[16] See Hershel Shanks, “New Analysis of the Crucified Man,”
Biblical Archeology Review, 11:6 (Nov./Dec. 1985), also quoted in
Hutchinson.
[17] Pitre, The Case for Jesus- , p. 43.
[18] See Brant Pitre, “’The Case for Jesus’ Course Introduction:
Bart Ehrman and the Transfiguration of Jesus on the Mountain
(Part 3 of 5), p. 2, at http://blog.catholicproductions.com/casejesus-course-introduction-transfiguration-jesus-mountain-part-3-5,
accessed June 23, 2016.
[19] “Modernism” as Pope Pius X meant it in his encyclical
Pascendi dominici gregis (1907), comprises (1) a “rationalism”
giving priority to reason over what is known via Divine Revelation,
(2) a “scientism” giving the empirical method priority over what is
known via authoritatively declared truth; and (3) a “secularism”
separating Divine Law from the social construct. Derrida is a
rationalist (but with openings to religious experience sometimes)
who deconstructs reason, turning reason against itself.
Modernism for Derrida is the post-Romantic rise—mid-19th
century through to postmodernism—of an extreme though
disguised rationalism (including reason’s dialectical opposites and
syntheses, which belong latently to the same “code”). Derrida
disavows “scientism,” but for reasons differing from the Church’s.
Derrida regards “scientism” as an insidious example of
modernism (in his sense) gone amuck: scientism is a selfenclosed mode, a “boxed-in” mode (which Derrida found very
ironical indeed).
[20] See my FRDD, First Annex, “On God and Dissymmetry,” pp.
139-141. Derrida regards “modernism” as a post-Romantic
displacement and recuperation of holistic structure and values (I
list examples from many disciplines). He regarded 19 th and 20th
century modernism to be a more dogmatic though more latent
version of holistic structure/value than that in the openly
“entitative” holisms of the Enlightenment, Renaissance, Medieval,
and Ancient periods. For detailed and scholarly treatment of
Derrida’s deconstruction of holistic structure, see my Derrida on
the Mend (1984; 2nd ed. 1986), Part One, pp. 1-54. I draw from
what is the early and middle phase Derrida. For a discussion of
how the late phase Derrida remains the same and differs, see my
On Deconstructing Life-Worlds: Buddhism, Christianity, Culture
(1997, still in print), Part Two, pp. 157-165 (this book has been
praised by Jacques Derrida himself, who wrote “Your profundity,
your boldness, and your independence amaze and impress me”—
see photographed copy of his letter, FRDD, p. 189). The wellknown post-Catholic philosopher John Caputo draws, in his own
work, from the late-phase Derrida and not the earlier phases.
[21] “Introduzione: la mia testimonianza,” Istituto Vangelo & Zen,
Desio, Italy, Feb. 22, 2013.
[22] In Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 35 (2015), p. 241. I
assume because D’Arcy May knows the power-structure among
Anglophonic dialogists is such that I cannot easily find a forum to
answer his review, his review frequently misrepresents me. Thus
he says on p. 239 of his review that I assert the “intentionalities”
of “Buddhist doctrines such as no-self and rebirth are ‘ultimately
contradictory’” (and he directs the reader to FRDD, pp. 117, 119),
whereas I nowhere make any such assertion on those pages or
anywhere else. Rather, I assert that Buddhist no-self and rebirth
ultimately contradict Catholic teachings about individual identity
and ‘only one birth’. In fact, I do not think the Buddhist doctrines of
no-self and rebirth contradict each other: Gautama Buddha
himself addressed this question very directly, and the Buddhist
traditions long ago already explicated very satisfactorily-- in terms
of the Buddhist doctrinal structure—that the two teachings do not
contradict each other. Besides, nowhere in my book do I presume
to interfere with the doctrinal structure of Buddhism. I respectfully
report the Buddhist traditions—FRDD is in no way a polemic
against Buddhism. Readers will read D’Arcy May’s review and
come away from it with a deceitful portrait of what my book says.
Another instance is his assertion on his review’s p. 239 that
Magliola is aware “that Church teaching has erred in the past”
(directing the reader to FRDD, p. 142, n. 12). In his self-fabricated
context, D’Arcy May’s misrepresentation conflates what I call
“ecclesial sins” (maltreatment of Jews, etc.) and magisterial
teachings. Moreover, in the case of the magisterium, I am very
careful to distinguish the few non-reformable teachings from the
many reformable ones (see FRDD, pp. 56-62). Any reader
of D’Arcy May’s review will, all told, come away from it with a
highly inaccurate portrait of my book, and of my personhood as a
scholar.
[23] See report of March 31, 2014, in chiesa.espressonlineItaly: http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1350753 [Italian
original].
[24] A worse scenario, of course, was the manipulation of the
foreign missions, centuries ago, by the Spanish and Portuguese
Monarchs (the Spanish Patronato and the Portuguese
Padronado) as “cover” for what was really politico-economic
colonization of native peoples.
[25] Johannes Bronkhurst, The Two Traditions of Meditation in
Ancient India (1993).
[26] Alexander Wynne, The Origin of Buddhist Meditation (2007).
[27] Richard Gombrich, How Buddhism Began (1997).
[28] Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism (2003).
[29] For an excellent treatment of how such hunger for national
“status” on an institutional level misdirects Catholic universities,
see Anne Hendershott, Status Envy: The Politics of Catholic
Higher Education (2009).
[30] See FRDD, p. 46.
[31] Questions of King Milinda (Milindapañhā), II.2.1. (FRDD p.46)
[32] The Wings to Awakening: An Anthology from the Pali Canon,
Translated and explained by Thanissaro Bhikkhu (1996), pp. 49,
50.
[33] Without Buddha-, p. 78.
[34] Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh adapts a formulation of Chinese
Huayan Buddhism, changing it significantly in the process.
[35]Pratītyasamutpāda (Skt.)/paṭiccasamuppāda(Pali), one of the
key and most distinctive Buddhist teachings from very early on,
has been the subject of enormous (and in my opinion fascinating)
scholastic activity over the centuries, during which even its
grammatical components have been in intense academic dispute.
Since clearly Vajrayana and Mahayana Buddhism constitute the
sources, in the broad sense, out of which Paul Knitter constitutes
his notion of “Interbeing,” I recommend in particular Jeffrey
Hopkins’ Meditation on Emptiness (1983; rev. ed., 1996), pp. 163168, 664-674; and for Pratītyasamutpāda’s twelve links (nidanas
= “contributory causes” constituting the chain of “becoming” ),
viz., ignorance->action->consciousness->name and form->six
sources->contact->feeling->attachment->grasping->existence>birth->aging and death, p. 203 et passim; for Asanga’s version,
pp. 707-711. Nagarjuna’s Mūlamadhyamakakārikā argues that
the “chain” is “empty” (though by virtue of the “two truths,” also
“full”).
[36] See Charles Prebish and Kenneth Tanaka, The Faces of
Buddhism in America (1998)—Cuong Tu Nguyen and A. W.
Barber’s chapter, “Vietnamese Buddhism in North America:
Tradition and Acculturation,” and Prebish’s endnote 9, p. 309.
[37] Evangelii Gaudium, #70.
[38] Luke Timothy Johnson, “The Jesus Controversy,” in America,
Aug. 2, 2010.
[39] See Religious Dispatches, June 22, 2009:
http://religiondispatches.org/no-zombie-jesus-the-vatican-androger-haight/ , p. 2.
[40] Ephesians 1:18.
[41] The Second Vatican Council, citing the First Vatican Council,
citing the Second Council of Orange (529 A.D.), quoted in The
Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church,
eds. J. Neuner, S.J. and J. Dupuis, S.J. (7 th rev. & enlarged ed.,
2001), pp. 59, #152; 45, #120; p. 802, #1919.
[42] See The New World Dictionary-Concordance to the New
American Bible (Collins pbk, 1970), pp. 183-185; F. W. Gingrich,
Shorter Lexicon of the Greek New Testament (1965), p. 173.
[43] Catechism of the Catholic Faith, #1813. The eastern
Church’s theology puts the matter somewhat differently, but with
like effect.
[44] See, from the highly respected PEW Research Center, its
latest report (statistics for the year 2010, released in 2013) on
global Catholicism: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/02/13/theglobal-catholic-population/ The BBC News, deriving its latest
statistics (based on the year 2012) from the World Church
Database (also released 2013), supplies figures that show the
geographical shifts reflected in the PEW report to be further
increasing:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-21443313 The shifts are due
both to higher birth rates in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, and to
high conversion-rates.
[45] Indeed, this is a point that Pope Francis drives home again
and again: “Go out to peripheries” where the Real Jesus is best
known. An image out of my own experience leaps to mind: that of
the cadre of professors—among them clergy—at a prominent
Catholic university in the U.S.A., discussing Buddhist-Catholic
dialogue at a hosted soirée (at which my attendance, alas, was
academically de rigueur at the time): how they treated the
Mexican “bus boy” [sic, the attendant who clears away glasses,
etc.) like so much human waste.
[46] The negative remarks that Paul/Roger make in this regard
make no sense to me, since I have always found the thoughtmode and associated terminology of Magisterial teaching
eminently instructive. Indeed I have found them often rich in
insights that, when teased out further, point towards exciting but
orthodox developments in teaching. The new turn in Asian
theology that constitutes the long Second Annex in my FRDD
develops precisely in this way (while appropriating Asian
philosophical motifs so Asian theology becomes what I am calling
nowadays a “Water Theology”).
[47] A telling example: When I mention to a Franciscan at my
home parish in New York City that a Franciscan priest, an Iraqi,
had been abducted in Syria during the past week, and his
abduction had been promptly announced by his Order’s Custody
of the Holy Land (and, needless to say, the Vatican itself), he told
me that he and his confreres had “not heard about it.”
[48] Jaime M. Rivera, S.J., “From Peripheries to Center to
Peripheries: An Exposition and Evaluation of Robert Magliola on
Buddhist-Christian Dialogue,” Theological Studies, Ateneo de
Manila, 427 pp.
[49] Paul Knitter points to the large-scale use of contraception by
Catholics in the rich, industrialized nations, and uses it as an
example of the Vatican rejecting the sensus fidelium. Here Paul
deploys the fallacy of ignoratio elenchi (“ignoring the issue” via
misdirection, irrelevancy). Most of the clergy among the
monastics reading this review surely know that the official Church,
quite soon after the promulgating of Paul VI’s Humanae vitae
(1968), sent directives enabling confessors to understand
contraception in particular as squarely located in the
subjectivity/objectivity ethical space. That is, the penitent, while
acknowledging that contraception is objectively wrong, is free to
judge that in her/his subjective situation, the objective norm is
bracketed-out or does not apply. Then the penitent’s decision is
left for “God to decide” in the most internal forum, the forum
constituted by God and the penitent. Sadly, for several years,
many confessors, especially older or more conservative ones,
failed to attend to this meliorating directive, a failing more in
implementation than in Vatican policy. Actually, the Church in its
wisdom had been enabling the subjective/objective ethical space
for centuries already, when dealing with many moral issues. A
contemporary case would be common among Catholics in
Mainland China (PRC). Catholics may live in a district where the
“underground Church” is accessible though attendance is legally
forbidden so attendees may be blocked from necessary
employment and their children blocked from adequate education.
Confessors are enabled to grant penitents the subjective/objective
space. Some penitents choose the underground Church anyway
and some do not.
[50] Statistics are from the Pew Research Center’s report on
global Catholicism, referenced in full, above.
[51] Geographically, power shifts are occurring on a massive
scale in many regards. Note the boldness of two African Cardinals
reflected in the following headline, “In chastising the U.S., African
Cardinals are voice of the future,” Crux website, July 10, 2016:
https://cruxnow.com/commentary/2016/07/10/williams-piece/
[52] The cited Pew Research Center report.
[53] See BBC News, “How Many Roman Catholics Are There in
the World,” referenced earlier. Its statistics for Africa and Asia are
from the World Church Database, year 2012.
[54] “In Francia rinascita della fede cattolica, in particolare tra gli
intellettuali” [“The rebirth of the Catholic faith in France, especially
among the intellectuals”], on website of the Unione Cristiani
Cattolici Razionali (UCCR), August 29, 2012: see
http://www.uccronline.it/2012/08/29/in-francia-rinascita-della-fedecattolica-in-particolare-tra-gli-intellettuali .
[55] I mean “comparative theology” in the sense associated most
recently with Fr. Francis X. Clooney, S.J. (whose work, by the
way, I very much like) and briefly explained in the second
paragraph of my Résumé of Jesus & Buddha. Actually, there is
no “theology” as such in Buddhism: I have always been
uncomfortable on its face with the term “comparative theology” for
this reason and also because “theology” as such is a uniquely
cognitive operation. However, the term is already established in
interreligious dialogue.
[56] I did suffer, many years ago, a dark period in my life caused
by personal tragedies, but the dark period turned out to be a “dark
night,” and—thank God—for a long time I have been happy and
peaceful. The long first part of my On Deconstructing Life-Worlds
recounts the dark period and my emergence from it.
[57] Foreword to Maria Tu’s English translation, forthcoming from
Cambridge Scholars Press, autumn 2016, of Master Hsin Tao’s
Chinese book on a “deathless spirituality,” or “how to live Nirvana
now.”
[58] Paul/Roger invoke Nicholas of Cusa’s famous “coincidentia
oppositorum” twice (pp. 54, 228): this formulation obviously closes
opposites into a mystical “oneness,” and that it is mystical does
not render it less unitary. An analogous deconstruction of mystical
oneness is common among many Buddhist Masters, for example,
the well-known Chan Master Sheng-Yen (recently deceased),
who asserted that “to dissolve the unified state” was a crucial last
stage towards enlightenment. See his Getting the Buddha Mind
(1982), p. 28. Also, in my article entitled “Afterword” in Jin Y. Park,
ed, Buddhisms and Deconstructions (2006), I cite several
Buddhist traditions that insist on the deconstruction of mystical
“oneness”—see pp. 246-250.
[59] See “Benedictine finds dialogue with Buddhists, Muslims
helps his prayer life,” in online Catholic News Service (CNS),
Sept. 25, 2012.
[60] The experience of “waiting” is treated in FRDD, pp. 19, 130135, 184.
[61] See Ce sexe qui n’en est pas un (1977), Engl. trans.—This
Sex which is not one (1985). Irigaray is very prolific. I much
recommend her latest, published in Italian, Il Mistero di Maria
(2010). Interreligious dialogists would benefit much from her
thought. Alas, dialogists are very cliquish, so she doesn’t make it
into their “canon” (apropos, see FRDD, p. 3).
[62] FRDD, p. 142.
[63] See FRDD, pp. 25-33.
[64] For the significance of the verb to appoint, see FRDD, p. 29.
[65] See explanation in FRDD, pp. 37, 38.
[66] Roger’s very word, when referring to “common spiritual
belonging,” for example: “it grounds the context of meaning” (p.
216).
[67] John V. Apczynski understands deconstruction and correctly
interprets the Rahnerian cast of my work: See his review of FRDD
in Catholic Books Review, April
2015: http://www.catholicbooksreview.org/2015/magliola.html
[68] The dharmakāya is the formless or “Truth-Body” that is
identical with absolute undifferentiated Reality or emptiness. The
Buddhist trikaya doctrine comprises two other “bodies,” the
sambhogakāya (“Enjoyment-Body”) and the nirmaṇakāya
(“Emanation-Body”), but the formlessness of the
dharmakāya pervades both of them too.
[69] The Church does say that such a person is responsible
before God, and will be called to account for what and how s/he
understands the Church’s teachings; as Pope Francis reminds us
often, if that person has proceeded in good conscience and in
love, only God knows and can judge, and that person can very
well enter into heavenly bliss.
[70] The chain of being is not Church doctrine, of course, but its
use of being and substance is analogous to the Greek mode in
which the Church has historically defined official teachings. I align
myself with those who insist these Church doctrines must be
retained in the Greek mode historically expressing them.
Differentialism as I practice it does retain them, but with a nonentitative uptake. In this paragraph, I give an example of what I
mean.
[71] And with infinite inadequacy, of course (like “a finger pointing
at the moon,” to cite the Buddhist metaphor Paul likes to quote).
[72] See Magliola, Two Models of Trinity—French PostStructuralist versus the Historical-Critical: Argued in the Form of a
Dialogue,” in O. Blanchette, T. Imamich, and G. F. McLean, eds.,
Philosophical Challenges and Opportunities of Globalization,
Cultural Heritage and Contemporary Change: Series 1, ‘Culture
and Values’, Vol. 19.2 (Washington, D.C.: The Council for
Research in Values and Philosophy [CRVP], pp. 401-425 (online
access, with permission, is available at the English-language
Wikipedia treatment of my work, in ‘Anthology-articles’ section-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Magliola ). See also,
Magliola, Derrida on the Mend (1984, 2nd ed., 1986), pp. 144-147;
On Deconstructing Life-Worlds (2097), pp. 175-191; and FRDD
(which makes some necessary revisions to my preceding
formulations of Trinitarian “unity” and “trinity”), pp. 157-161.
[73] I write “in terms of relationis oppositio, very advisedly,
because in terms of the Divine Unity, the Divine Presence is not
well represented by pure negative reference.
[74] Thus they are “entitative” in Derrida’s sense. As entitative
expressions bearing the truth, they must be retained, but what I
call “water theology” (drawing upon the Chinese philosophical
metaphor of water) shows how negative reference and other nonentitative formulations can rise in between these “solid” or
entitative expressions. That is what the “pure negative reference”
defining the Trinitarian Persons does when it is properly
recognized, and the result is that Revelation is further expressed.
[75] To read more about Chomsky’s definition of evolutionary
“saltation” or “catastrophic leap” (as opposed to “gradualism”),
see Douglas A. Kibbee, ed., Chomskyan (R)evolutions (2010), p.
343.
[76] See
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2011/
[77] See https://home.cern/about/physics/dark-matter
[78] See
http://hubblesite.org/explore_astronomy/black_holes/encyc_mod3
_q7.html
[79] See
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2016/04/07/hubble_im
age_of_galaxies_in_sculptor_implies_100_billion_galaxies_in_the
.html
[80] See http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/behemothblack-hole-found-in-an-unlikely-place
[81] See https://www.newscientist.com/round-up/challengingeinstein/
[82] See http://phys.org/news/2013-01-gas-temperatureabsolute.html
[83] PBS-Nova, “Fabric of the Cosmos,” Dec. 9, 2010.
[84] See Centre for Molecular Biology, University of Oslohttp://www.cmbn.no/about.html; and the Centre for Molecular
Microbiology Hamburg- https://www.zmnh.uni-hamburg.de
[85] FRDD’s Second Annex, pp. 157-184, proposes possibilities
for such a more intensive engagement.
[86] Robert Thurman, trans., The Holy Teaching of Vimalakirti: A
Mahayana Scripture (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 1976), 58.
See APPENDIX
APPENDIX
Robert Magliola: Résumé, chapter by chapter, of Jesus & Buddha:
Friends in Conversation (2015), by Paul Knitter and Roger Haight
I trodu tio : The joi t autho s he ei afte Paul a d ‘oge
e plai that the o igi of thei olla o atio is Paul s ou se—offered at
the Union Theological Seminary (N.Y.C.) in spring, 2012--e titled Jesus
a d Buddha i Dialogue. ‘oge Haight as a ke esou e pe so fo
that course. The procedure was to sketch the lives and teachings of the
histo i al Jesus a d Buddha, a d the to look alte ati el at ho
the story of Jesus might be presented in an objective way to Buddhists,
and reciprocally, how various authors have presented Buddha to
outside s, i ludi g Ch istia s. The e t step as to o side autho s
who represented ways in which Jesus was received by Buddhists and
Buddha app op iated Ch istia s. These ultiple iss-crossing but
complementa ie s of the t o figu es foste ed a elati el deep
app e iatio of diffe e es, a d a oss these, of a alogous a s of
seei g thi gs i . “u h a app oa h is g ou ded i spi itualit athe
tha a o pa iso of do t i es, Paul/‘oge tell us. “pi itualit is
te tati el defi ed as esse tiall a fo of p a ti e that has ultiple
layers that include sets of beliefs and teachings but is still
disti guisha le f o the . “pi itualit possesses a e tai e iste tial
p io it to do t i es, a d the spiritual life practiced in the two
spiritual traditions [Buddhism and Christianity] is more readily
a essi le tha the elief st u tu es a o pa i g a d shapi g the
(x).
It is from out of the above-described collaboration that the
o e satio s comprising the present book arise. Paul and Roger next
supply several directives essential for understanding the project upon
hi h the a e a out to e a k. The ook is i te ded fo Ch istia s
rather than Buddhists because it measures most pointedly the
i flue e that Buddhis
ight ha e o Ch istia spi itualit . The ook
consists of conversations between Roger, a Christian, and Paul, a
Buddhist Ch istia
ho speaks i pa ti ula out of his stud a d
p a ti e of Ti eta Buddhis . Paul/‘oge affi the mode of
o pa ati e theolog , hi h e tails that eligio ists i ea h eligio
e te as est as possi le i to the e pe ie e of the othe eligio ,
and then return to their own tradition, bringing back with them that
which enriches their own religion (xii). Each of the twelve chapters
addresses a key topic, and is formatted so that the two interlocutors
each make an opening statement, followed by a response, each to the
othe . Ea h hapte e ds ith a It “ee s to Us state e t
articulating where Paul and Roger agree and where there are
diffe e es that eithe ha e to e fu the e plo ed o si pl
a epted
i.
Chapter O e, What Is “piritualit : Paul affi s that spi itualit ,
oadl speaki g, is hat o e does to sta o e ted, si e a
satisf i g hu a life eeds ea i g a d e e g . The ea i g a d
e e g a ise f o
hat o te po a Buddhists all
interconnectedness, or Interbeing,” a d hat Jesus a d his follo e s
all the lo i g o i te o e ti g Spirit. “pi itualit t iggers a
pa adig shift f o self-centeredness to other-centeredness, a d
this shift can only be brought about via spiritual practice entailing
Wisdom and Compassion. (2, 3) In fact, Compassion is Wisdom, since
Reality is non-dual thus the Buddhist di tu , E pti ess is Fo /Fo
is Emptiness). Christians, says Paul, seem to lack such a deep sense of
the unity of all Reality. The mystery of non-duality, of the co-inherence
of the Big Pi tu e a d little pi tu es, a o l e k own by nonthinking. Not that Buddhists do not also function conventionally, using
thoughts, images, and feelings, but spiritual praxis should also get
e o d the . He e Paul is efe e i g, though i less te h i al
te s, hat is alled i Buddhist Big Vehi le s hools the T o T uthsi).
‘oge , fo his pa t, i t odu es the e se i ea le otio of fu tio al
a alog , he e tea hi gs a d p a ti es that a k diffe e es
between Buddhism and Christianity can be demonstrated to play
structurally similar roles within their respective frames-of-meaning.
Thus, fo e a ple, eatio s adi al o ti ge
i Ch istia it is
a alogous to Buddhis s eje tio of self-i he e e, that is, i
Buddhis , appa e t e tities do ot fou d the sel es, o do e tities
as such even (really) exist. Another example would be God s eatio
out of othi g a d the o goi g e olutio of eatio —sustained
continuously by God—is analogous to what Paul calls Buddhist
i te o e ted ess
. A d so o , ith othe do t i al parallels
Paul/‘oge sh i k f o the o d do t i e, ut I use it as the
adje ti e of the ou tea hi g, a o d the like. Fo ‘oge ,
spi itualit
o sists i the a pe so s o g oups li e thei li es i the
face of what they consider ultimately i po ta t o eal. “pi itualit is
p io to eligio e ause of the f eedo of ea h pe so . ‘eligio is
ulti atel o stituted the spi itualities of the e e s
. Paul s
espo se is to a gue that Buddhist spi itualit has a diffe e t sta ti g
poi t, a el , the suspi io that hu a s do ot eall k o
hat
ulti ate ealit is. Ignorance is the fundamental human problem, and
religious practice—meditation, acts of compassion, the teachings—is
e essa . Ch istia s follo Jesus, ut Buddhists ome to the
realization that everything is Buddha.
Chapter T o, Ho Does I terreligious Dialogue Work : Paul/Roger
affi , ithout a i g the as su h, the fou fo s of dialogue
outlined by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue in its
document Dialogue and Proclamation, but start in a different place
from all of them, and then push radically beyond.ii Here I list seriatim
so e of this Chapte s assu ptio s a d asse tio s. Dialogists ust
recognize at the outset that religious pluralism is the atu al o ditio
of hu a it
. No si gle eligio a ha ess the i fi ite
a d
to absolutize religious teachings—as Christianity traditionally does-constitutes an obstacle, and indeed, foments dangerous situations.
Religions accrete interpretations historically. Fruitful dialogue between
Buddhists and Christians should use the Historical-Critical method to
app o i ate the p i iti e a d o igi al o e tea hi gs of Buddha a d
Jesus respectively (23). Paul, in contradistinction to Roger, affirms that
the sta ti g poi t fo dialogue is not to e fou d i a o
o
e iste tial uestio of ei g , ut ith the o e e iste tial uestio ,
a el suffe i g
. I these e t e e ti es, the eligio s ust
all to o f o t the unjust ways and structures hi h th eate
hu a it a d the hole o ld ith dest u tio . Dialogists t ust that
the i o igi le diversity of religions and their latent commonality and
their potential interconnectedness a e g ou ded i hat a e alled
a ulti ate ‘ealit o Hol M ste
.
Chapter Three, What Did Buddha a d Jesus Tea h? : Buddha, Paul
explains, taught that human suffering (dukkha, Pali; duḥkha, Skt.) is
caused by craving (taṇhā, Pali). Buddha taught a pragmatic spirituality:
to attai pea e, e ust ealize that e e thi g, e e God, is
i pe a e t
. The p o le is ot ithi us, as i Ch istia it s
o igi al si , ut a ou d us, i the da k ess aused pe asi e
ignorance. To attain true peace, we must become enlightened. To
e o e e lighte ed is to fi d ou t ue atu e, ou Buddha- atu e.
Ou eal self is ot ou i di idual self. Ou i di idual s all i ds a e
eall pa t of a ig Mi d
. Jesus, ‘oge sa s, tea hes that God is
the lo i g eato of e e thi g, a d that God s pe so al ha a te
i plies a o al u i e se. At the hea t of this u de l i g o alit is
justice: Jesus, a o di g to his [Je ish] t aditio , i agi es thi gs
a ati el i ti e
. Humanity must move ahead, striving to
esta lish the ule of God, hat the Je ish t aditio alled the
Ki gdo of God. The ealizatio of God s ule lies up ahead . . .
a e i f ag e ts he e a d o , ut [a i i g] a solutel i the e d
(45). We know e little a out the histo i al Jesus. The sto ies
surrounding his infancy are generally considered theologically
oti ated lege ds
. We a dis e that he pe fo ed the known
roles of a Jewish tea he , heale , a d p ophet. Afte he as put to
death, his follo e s e a e o i ed that God had aised hi f o
death . . . . This faith o i tio e po e ed the fo atio of a Jesus
o e e t that g aduall e ol ed i to a Ch istia hu h . . . .
.
Jesus did ot p ea h hi self ut the ule of God. . . . Jesus emptied
hi self Philippia s : -11). Paul responds by pointing out the stark
contrast between the respective emphases of Buddha and Jesus:
Buddha ai s to ha ge hea ts a d i ds
; Jesus ai s to i g
a out the eig of justi e. Granting that the core-teachings of Buddha
a d Jesus a e i edu i l diffe e t
, Paul a d ‘oge joi i the
o i tio that togethe these tea hi gs o stitute a oi ide e of
opposites that a help to heal the o ld.
Chapter Four, Who Were Buddha a d Jesus? : I as reviewer
foreshorten my synopsis of this chapter because much of my critique,
later in this review, addresses the issues that Paul/Roger raise here.
‘oge , a d Paul o his Ch istia side , efle t the o je tu es a d
tentative conclusions about Jesus that are associated with the Jesus
Seminar (and its fellow-travelers), the most recent (and last?) wave of
the historico-critical movement in exegesis that first gained strength
through the work of German Protestants such as Semler, Baur,
Schleiermacher, and Feuerbach (late 18th century/early 19th century
and onwards) and peaked in the 1970 and 80s. The resurrection is a
faith e pe ie e ; a d the eed to pe ei e the i isi le God
p odu es dog as that de la e God is like Jesus Councils of Nicaea,
Chalcedon, etc). Paul as Buddhist rejects the Christian imaginaire that
hopes i a esu e ted Jesus o the othe side of fi itude a d ti e.
Ni a a, sa s Paul, is fou d on this side or within finitude” (he means
hat he alls I te ei g, his e sio of Ve . Thi h Nhat Hah s
version of pratītyasamutpāda). (64) Paul and Roger conclude with four
principles that are meant to guide their ongoing dialogue: (1) Dialogists
should be non-competitive; (2) they should remain faithful to their own
tradition but try to accommodate the spirituality of the other tradition;
the should e og ize the autho it of the tea he [eithe Buddha
o Jesus] ho is ot [thei ] o
;a d
the should e efit f o the
ode of fu tio al a alog
-73).
Chapter Fi e, Ulti ate Realit : Given that Buddhism affirms
Śūnyatā and Christianity affirms a personal Creator-God, Paul and
‘oge he e p opose so e fu tio al a alogies that help the t o
eligio s u de sta d ea h othe ette , a d e og ize sa e esses iii
that at first blush seem not to be the case. From my point of view, this
hapte is o e of the est i the ook: a magisterial o Chu htheologia
a ag ee ith u h of hat it sa s. Paul alls the ‘eall
‘eal — devoid of individual identity, or substantial being, or specific
lo atio
. These a e good e ough as e pla atio s, I suppose, ut it
see s to e that s holasti la guage su h as the u o ditio ed, o
the ph ase la ki g dete i atio s, a tuall o veys much better
what Buddhists mean by Śūnyatā. The Buddhist monk-scholars whom
I have known find the scholastic language very congenial here. Strange
that Paul/Roger seem so averse, on principle, to philosophical and
theological terminology. Thus it comes as quite a surprise that, when
seeki g a fu tio al a alog
et ee Ch istia it s God a d
Buddhis s Śūnyatā, ‘oge deplo s, a d e effe ti el , A ui as s
u de sta di g of God as pu e, u i hi ited, utte l f ee, a d i fi ite
power of being without a li iti g fo
, o as Pu e A t
.
Paul describes service of neighbor via Compassion as a Bodhisattvic
a ti it
, a d the su
o s ‘oge to a ou t fo Ch istia it s
elief i a pe so al God. ‘oge eplies: The ele e ta desi e fo
justice . . . reflects a built-in longing for a moral universe. And this basic
longing, in turn, finds grounding, in a subjective, intentional, and
pe so al God
.
Chapter “i , Where Did the World Co e Fro —And Where Is It
Goi g? : Roger aims to re-interpret the Christian teachings of creation
a d the es hatologi al futu e, so the e o e o e a essi le to the
o te po a s ie tifi
i dset. Thus he o es e phasis to God-asground, a d u de sta ds eatio p i a il as the o ti uall a ti g
grou d of hate e e ists
. The eschaton or climax of history he
e plai s this a : The o e ho o ti uall eates ill i g ealit to
its ightful e d
. Paul sees o se se i the ideas of a p i al
creation and a climactic eschaton. Interbeing ea s that e e thing
has an end, but there is no end to everything, for the ever-changing,
interconnecting energy carries on. There, every end is a beginning. No
e d is o l a e d
. He goes o to u ge upo Ch istia it his
e sio of p o ess theolog : just as there cannot be, in Buddhism,
E pti ess ithout fo , so the e should ot e, i Ch istia it , a God
ho does t eed hat is eated.
Chapter “e e , The Pro le i Hu a Nature : Christianity has
o siste tl sought sal atio f o th ee a ks of e iste e, sa s
‘oge , a el death, ego e t is , a d ea i gless ess
,a d
these arise from some negativity rooted in our being (120). Paul
att i utes hu a it s plight to the lassi al Buddhist th ee poiso s,
delusio , g eed, a d hat ed
, ut e phasizes that thei ause is
episte ologi al a el , hu a s thi k the a e i di iduals a d ot
ontological (namely, intrinsic to their human being). Roger and Paul
revise their respective traditions by shifting ethical awareness to the
social collective— oth o igi al si a d ka a a e est u de stood
as collective selfishness.
Chapter Eight, The Pote tial i Hu a Nature : Paul emphasizes
that Buddhist enlightenment is a mystical experience, and urges
Christians to take the next step after theosis (becoming God-like,
sharing in the Divine Nature), and actually realize they not only
pa take of the Di i e atu e ut are the Unconditioned, they are
God. Paul also u ges Ch istia s to ealize that afte death the ill
go o diffe e tl , ot as o e tio al ide tities, ut as eo s ious ess I te ei g . ‘oge egi s de u ki g the otio that
Buddhis is a ela o ate s ste of self-help, a d as su h, st i tl
di hoto ous ith Ch istia it s outside help 42). I hope that he
does not attribute so simplistic a dichotomy to my very detailed
t eat e t of hat I all self-help, sa e-help, a d othe -help i
my recent book. In fact, my book makes several of the main points that
Roger does here, namely, that the presence of God in us is more
intimate than a subject-object relationship (so God, strictly speaking, is
ot outside us ,iv and conversely, as Paul explains in several places,
Bodhisatt as help othe s v so a st i t Buddhist self-help does ot
see to appl . I all Ch istia it a othe help eligio o l i the
sense that—according to established Catholic teaching—the individual
remains somehow distinct from God: the individual is not God.vi In the
Mahayana tradition to which Paul belongs, enlightenment is precisely
to recognize that one is the Unconditioned, Emptiness, Spaciousness
a d ot outside … i deed, the e is no ‘eal outside : thus I a gue
that Mahayanist enlightenment involves the gradual recognition of
same-help, vii so that--at the moment of enlightenment--individuality
is recognized as a fabrication, and the fabrication slips away into the
sa e ess of the ‘eal, of E pti ess. The Maha a ist path towards
enlightenment involves the gradual recognition of the true Buddhanature, which works upon individual fabrications that in fact are Really
itself (the Buddha-nature): in short, the pure Buddha-nature is helping
what is Really itself but concealed under the fabrication of individuality.
Thus I ega d sa e help as the Maha a ist fo of self help
The a ada s self-help o ks i a e diffe e t a , e ause
Theravadic Nibbana is not Buddha-Nature, and there is no Interbeing in
Paul K itte s se se . M ook ites ell-known Buddhist monk-
scholars and Buddhologists who have approved the accuracy of my
s he a of self-help a d sa e-help i Buddhis .
Chapter Ni e, Words Versus “ile e i “piritual Pra ti e : Buddhism
privileges silence over words, Paul says, and he warns Christians not to
absolutize words: words are mischievous, a d do ot tell us hat is
eall goi g o
. Paul ites koans as a a that Buddhists use
la guage to e ti guish la guage. U fo tu atel , he eso ts to D.T.
“uzuki s dis edited popula izatio of ho koans work, regarding them
as insoluble puzzles contrived to blast away discursive thinking, and
catapult us into non-rational awareness. Actually, Buddhologists such
as Steven Heine and many others have, over the last few decades,
demonstrated that there are many ranks of koans, and that usually
koans a e solu le, ut i a s that a e situatio all fluid a d ad hoc:
they are elaborately designed to teach specific enlightened skills and
perceptions, such as—for example-- all is i fi ite spa e, o all is
i fi ite o s ious ess. The tea h spi itual k a ks that a e
off/ atio al athe tha i atio al. viii Roger, granting the importance
of Christian silence and apophaticism, also vindicates the crucial roles
of words in prayer. Human beings have intellect and will, and these
correlate to God who is ot a pe so ut ho is pe so al. Thus
sometimes words of prayer, petition, etc., are necessary. Paul and
‘oge togethe ag ee that Wo ds ithout sile t e ou te a e e pt ;
sile t e ou te ithout o ds has o o je t a d fails the o
u it .
Chapter Te , To Attai Pea e, Work for Justi e : Roger explains that
the Ch istia li es i a dou le elatio ship to God a d to the o ld of
othe pe so s a d ou o
o ha itat. He e phasizes the prophetic
vocation of all Christians to work for justice (178). Paul asserts that
Buddha s u de sta di g of hu a atu e is e e
o e so ial tha
Ch istia u e t otio s. Weste Ch istia it , he e plai s, defi es
the human being as an individual who has to have social relations.
Buddhism views the human being as a network of relationships that
bring about an ever- ha gi g i di idual
. Paul e e ses the
a ti ist sloga , If ou a t pea e, o k fo justi e
uoti g Ve .
Thi h Nhat Ha h, To ake pea e ou fi st ha e to e pea e. Ch istia
activists often both suffer burnout and indulge self-righteousness
e ause the
li g to ego-thoughts a d a solutize ideologies. ‘oge
and Paul agree that classical Buddhism can help contemporary Western
culture be less individualistic; and that Christianity can help Western
Buddhists i No th A e i a a d Eu ope f o falli g p e to the
se ula p i atizatio of spi itualit .
Chapter Ele e , To Attai Justi e, Work of Pea e : Paul opens by
sa i g that e ause Buddhists hold to a p io it of o te platio o e
a tio , the do t eall ha e a lea o ept of justi e. ix Paul
a k o ledges that e ause justi e de a ds so ethi g o e tha
ha it , a el , st u tu al ha ge su h as the Ci il ‘ights A t i the
U.“.A. , Buddhists ha e u h to lea
f o Ch istia s a out justi e.
Buddhists, however, can teach Christians much about non-violence:
violence leads to more violence, and seldom works in the long run.
Furthermore, continues Roger, again quoting Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh, the
p efe e tial optio fo the poo . . . a e da ge ous. A dualit
et ee opp esso a d opp essed ust e o e o e, si e oth a e
e p essio s of a d a e held i a d I te ei g. The a tio s of
opp esso a d opp essed a e lea l diffe e t, ut thei ide tities a e
the sa e
. Fo ‘oge , o passio a d pea e a e ot oppositio al
but complementary. He proceeds, saying that interreligious dialogue
experiences an analogous problematic. Thus e should p ofess that o
eligio is supe io to a othe
. C eatio out of othi g i plies
the u i e sal p ese e of God as Spirit.”x Thus, all eligio s e ist
ithi the sphe e of o ki g of God s g a e, ut he e e Jesus
Christ is introduced into a dialogue with other religions, he appears as
pote tial alte ati e, if ot a tual i al, to the othe
ediatio s of
ulti ate ealit that a e i pla e
. Ho a Jesus ot e di isi e
if he is proposed by Christians as the true revelation and mediation of
God? ‘oge asks, a d he atta hes a telli g foot ote he e: If Ch istia s
hold that Jesus was not the only and the absolute mediator of God, but
rather one among others, the theoretical problem would be resolved. .
. . But for Christians the question of how this is a legitimate
i te p etatio of the t aditio has to e e gaged. ‘oge a d Paul lose
ith so e suggestio s. Bi li al iti is [ ea i g he e the Histo i oC iti al ethod ] gi es us the a ilit i so e easu e to disti guish
Jesus of Nazareth from later interpretations of him even in the New
Testa e t. E te i g i to Jesus s po t a al of the God of all ea s
that the Spirit of the God he preached is actually present in . . . all
eligio s, oadl o ei ed. Jesus, the Je ish p ophet a d tea he ,
ep ese ts authe ti hu a e iste e o atu e i the fa e of
transcendence. . . . When Jesus is recognized as representative of all, it
is right to think of him as awakened or enlightened. Therefore, Jesus,
like Moses, Buddha, and Muhammad, does not stand above or
et ee people ut a o g us all
.
Chapter T el e, Is Religious Dou le Belo gi g Possi le? Da gerous?
Ne essar ? : ‘oge egi s disti guishi g et ee
ei g spi itual,
meaning the way persons directs thei li es i fa e of so e
t a s e de t ealit , a d ei g eligious, ea i g the a so e
people add thei spi itualit to a o
u it a d t aditio
.
Dual elo gi g happe s he pe so s a e d a to li e ithi
oe
than one religion. Dual belonging becomes more plausible as an
authe ti pla e to e he app oa hed ia spi itualit . ‘oge
de ies that dual elo gi g i o je ti e te s o st u ts a thi d
eligio ; i stead, he lai s its p ese e is i the su je ti it of those
professing it. Paul emphasizes that dual belonging can happen because
o e s eligio a e o e a p iso
. Dual elo gi g e a les
dou le ou ish e t, a d he goes o to affi the ode of ossi g
o e a d ossi g a k des i ed
Joh Du e o e forty years
ago a d asso iated o ada s ith the o pa ati e theolog
odeled F . F. X. Cloo e a d his s hool . Paul eje ts the
a usatio of s
etis
e ause fo a dual elo ge the t o
pe tai i g eligio s e ai disti t hile ou ishi g each other (225).
He points to the example of Raimon Panikkar, who lived the religions as
o ple e ta . ‘oge p oposes th ee easo s h authe ti dual
belonging is possible: (1) Transcendence is infinite, so no religion can
e lusi el oopt it;
“pi itual e ou te d a s o e i to a sphe e
t a s e di g fi ite ep ese tatio s fi ite ep ese tatio s elo g to
eligio ; a d
Plu alis pushes us to eak-through doctrinal
i passes: it is a ea s fo the de elop e t of t uth. Ne t, Paul a d
Roge i oke the o ept of o de , a d talk a out it i th ee a s.
“t o g o de s efe s to the dut o e has to plu
o e s own
eligio , a d app e iate it i sofa as possi le. Fle i le o de s efe s
to the e le ti is that pe its the ossi g o e a d etu i g of
interreligious dialogue: historically Christianity at its best has always
app op iated f o othe eligio s. Ble ded o de s
o de s that
see to le d efe e es hat a e alled a h postati u io of
two religions, so one lives—as Paul says is his case—a co-inherence of
two religions: for him (and he does not propose this mode for
e e o e , it is ot that dou le-belongers have two religious homes. . .
. Rather, they have only one home, but it has both Christian and
Buddhist fu itu e a d de o atio s. Paul a d ‘oge lose thei ook
with a statement meant to open towards the future: Whether double
elo gi g ill e o e a e
a of dialogue is o e of the ope
uestio s a d ad e tu es of this dialogi al hu h.
Maha a a a d Vaj a a a t aditio s o side the sel es Big Vehi le s hools e ause the
lai to ake li e atio easie a d o e all-encompassing than does the Theravada
tradition. In Buddhism, what are called the T o T uths a e the u da e a d the
Ulti ate, a d The a ada also uses this te i olog . Ho e e , The a ada eje ts o -duality
as the Big Vehicle schools understand it. The Theravada tradition understands the mundane to
be the world of impermanence and the Ultimate to be Nibbana (not, for Theravadins, to be
non-dually identified in any way with the mundane).
i
B the a , adi all fo e is not a ad o d: o e of
ai a ade i spe ialties is
F e h De idea de o st u tio , afte all.
iii This word reflects my own treatment of the same question: it is explained in my review.
iv See my Facing Up to Real Doctrinal Difference: How Some Thought-Motifs from Derrida Can
Fertilize the Catholic-Buddhist Encounter (2014), hereafter FRDD, pp. 70 et seq., 169.
v FRDD, pp. 40, 41.
vi Also, the i di idual is not not-God : F‘DD, p.
.
vii
FRDD, pp. 64-69.
viii “ee, fo e a ple, Hei e s Visio s, Di isio s, ‘e isio s i “te e Hei e a d Dale “. W ight,
eds., The Koan: Texts and Contexts in Zen Buddhism (2000). Also excellent on this question, in
the sa e a tholog , is G. Vi to “oge Ho i, Koa a d Ke sho i the ‘i zai )e Cu i ulu .
M a ti le Diffe e tialis i Chi ese C’han and French Deconstruction: Some Test-Cases from
the Wu-men-kuan, Journal of Chinese Philosophy (U. of Hawaii), Vol. 17 (1990), pp. 87-97,
draws from many pertaining sources to demonstrate the many off/rational modes of gong’an
(koans).
ix Paul omits what is the prime factor explaining why, historically, Buddhists have not become
directly involved in issues of civil justice. F o the Buddhist poi t of ie , the u foldi g of
e e ts is dete i ed karma, the Buddhist Law of Causality. In short, the Buddhist typically
has i te p eted life s e e ts to e just, ot u just, e ause life s out o es a e deserved. I met
both in Taiwan and Thailand during my years in these countries many a student who told me
that their father maltreated their mother or their mother maltreated their father, but the
whole family felt that the maltreated party was getting just recompense for pertaining faults of
a p e ious life. M othe tole ates that
fathe alt eats he e ause she ealizes she
ust ha e alt eated hi i a p e ious life as a o
o ef ai . I ha e e e hea d e i e t
Buddhist monks attributing the rise and fall of nations to group-karma. Only now, with the rise
of the e gaged Buddhis that Paul K itte efe e es, a e Buddhists e o i g o e so iall
engaged in controversial issues—they usually do so by justifying such engagement as a form of
compassion, even—for some of them—the indispensable duty of compassion.
x The works of some recent theologians—and I do not mean those of Roger Haight in this
instance—have prompted official Notification from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith, because they have been seen to imply either or both of the following two erroneous
propositions: (1) That the Holy Spirit directly inspires founders of religions other than
Christianity, so that the other religions are salvific in their own right (this proposal disassociates
the Holy Spirit from the unique saving mission of Jesus Christ); and (2) That the Word (the
Logos) directly embodies in founders of religions other than Christianity (this proposal offends
against the unique Hypostatic Union).
ii