Paul Tillich and Hinduism: A Short Reflection

When Paul Tillich introduced the concept of the “God beyond God,” a famous phrase found in his two volume Systematic Theology, there was legitimate excitement again about the prospects of a Christian philosophy alongside the work already being done by such heavyweights as Karl Barth. This phrase referred to the idea that above and beyond the anthropomorphic representations of the god who finds his way into the narratives of Judeo-Christian scripture, there was a god-principle that exists as the ground of all being. This god was the formless, timeless reality, to quote Thomas Aquinas “whose essence was existence itself.” In this sense, any God formed below this philosophically rooted god was inferior in nature and scope. He was subject to passions and moral deficiencies, a point borne out in scripture where Yahweh regularly shows such emotions as anger, sorrow, and even love.

For Tillich, however, this lower stratum of godhood was an essential concept as well, primarily because like Barth, he believed that the God beyond God was radically transcendent in a way that made human communion impossible with such a reality. The intermediary of “God in the flesh” was consummated then in the person of Jesus Christ. While the God of the Hebrew bible was certainly similar in form and function to the Greek gods or any other god, the prospect of Jesus made possible God in the fullness of time (kairos) through the fullness of man. If humanity had any chance of penetrating God, it was through the formal witness of Christ.

The concept, however innovative, in as far as Christianity was making use of philosophy, was hardly new to religious reflection. Hinduism had for thousands of years, for example in the laws of Manu and the Vedas Samhitas, made the distinction between Brahma, an anthropomorphic god with four arms and four heads, posturing as the head of the trideva godhead in Hinduism against the life force of all existence known as Brahman. In this latter concept, Brahman is the existential unity of all reality and the efficient and final cause of all that is and all that exists, even Brahma himself. Brahman subsumed into itself Brahma in the same way Tillich asserted that God as the ground of being subsumed into himself the God of the bible. Perhaps most notable is that scholars believe the concept of Brahman developed about a thousand years earlier than the anthropomorphic stories of Brahma. In Christianity, because the concept of God as the reality of all being appears outside the more practical interventionist language of an anthropomorphic God in the bible, the former is often seen as a late, if not uninspired, addition to the tradition. This is one reason why you won’t find much teaching on it without a heavy capitulation to the anthropomorphic tradition. Unlike Hinduism where philosophical schools flourished outside the bhakti worship traditions of India, Christianity’s philosophical tradition was often remanded to the university and left out of the church. Today in India, you may be lucky to find a handful of temples to Brahma despite his prominence in the Hindu pantheon. Given these differences in development, it is interesting to note that the latter tradition gets less attention in the practical and day-to-day experience of the two religions.

Seven Provocative Portraits of Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Few theologians have been more venerated by generations of well-meaning seminary students, doting pastors, and laymen than Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The idea that Bonhoeffer easily translates into our modern worldview seems to ignore the fact that since his passing 72 years ago, both secular culture and Christianity have evolved in unexpected ways. As time pushes forward, the portrait of Bonhoeffer we create looks less like the aristocrat of mid-20^th century Germany and more like an evangelical Lutheran from the United States complete with contemporary sensibilities and an acute perceptiveness regarding the tension between secular and sacred worldviews.

But like all historical biographies, the Bonhoeffer of history is not immune to embellishment, and it is left to theologians and historians to establish his proper place on our world stage. So I wanted to offer seven portraits of Bonhoeffer in hopes that a more humanizing account of this great figure will emerge to lend us personal encouragement even as we deal with our own moral imperfections. Even if you don’t agree that all of these portraits rise to the level of moral offense or you believe that some underlying teleology shapes their justifications, perhaps there is something in the following pages that relates to your own struggles in trying to live up to an ideal that has so often eluded even the most diligent among us. Christianity is not an ideal, but a way of life that offers deep reflection into the morass of human frailty. Understanding like Paul that we see through a glass darkly in our present condition reminds us that faith is the center of one’s profession and not peripheral to a book of laws or rules that often appear ambiguous in the complicated nature of life’s many trials. And as we look at the person of Bonhoeffer, it helps to meditate on own words that capture this sentiment precisely: “Whenever a man in a position of weakness – physical or social or moral or religious weakness – is aware of his existence with God, he shares God’s life.”

Bullfighting

Forms of entertainment that involve the involuntary participation of animals have been met with outright scorn in our time. From dog racing to the highly publicized closure of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey circus, it seems that wherever we go, protections against animal cruelty have moved us towards a heightened sensitivity in our interactions with our animal neighbors. In his early days travelling around Europe, Bonhoeffer spent time in Barcelona and Madrid where he came across the spectacle of bullfighting with his brother Klaus, who, from what we gather, was an immediate convert to the sport. From his journal entries, Bonhoeffer appears to have been enamored by the spectacle, characterizing the action as a mythic struggle between man and beast.

“I cannot truly say that I was horrified by it as many people think they ought to be because of their Central European civilization. It is, after all, a tremendous thing, savage, uninhibited brute force and blind fury attacking and being defeated by disciplined courage, presence of mind and skill.”

The growing outrage against such forms of entertainment in our day leaves us to wonder how Bonhoeffer might have reacted in response to such things had he been privy to the same secularly influenced push towards ending wanton violence against animals. The journal entry at least hints at the fact that there was outrage, but it was an outrage that unfortunately Bonhoeffer did not share at that moment in history.

Standing to Salute the Nazi Flag

There is an abundance of anecdotal information about Bonhoeffer that comes from friends who survived him. Eberhard Bethge, who was largely responsible for making Bonhoeffer a household name in the West, tells the story of how the two of them were in a café in Memel when the news that France had surrendered to Germany in 1940 reached their ears. As the Germans gathered there stood to perform the Nazi salute, Bethge and Bonhoeffer could have remained seated. It would have been their “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego” moment and would have been a grand symbolic gesture with regard to the escalating tension within the population of Germans who secretly resisted Nazism. But Bonhoeffer, who on the surface looked to be acting more like Peter than Jesus, quickly scolded Bethge. Asking him first if he was crazy, he told his friend that the salute was the least of their concerns.

Most of those reading Bonhoeffer who have already forgiven him before they ever get to such accounts, have trouble making sense of such moral dilemmas. It is easy to release Bonhoeffer from such indiscretions when history is in the rear window. Yet in the moment, Bethge’s concern for taking a bold stand in the face of evil was met with Bonhoeffer’s own careful inaction. He encouraged his friend that there would be a moment for resistance, but now was the time to keep up appearances. How many of us would know when such a time should come? Bonhoeffer was not a seer but a hopeful actor in play that he did not know how it would end.

Drinking and Smoking

It is no secret that in Bonhoeffer’s own German culture there was an acceptance of drinking and smoking, and he often enjoyed a good drink and cigarette. While more puritanical diatribes and even secular pushback have turned cigarettes into outlaw paraphernalia, and churches in the United States are in general coy about open-armed acceptance of drinking, Charles Marsh notes that Bonhoeffer came from a “nation of smokers,” and Ferdinand Schlingensiepen reminds us how Bonhoeffer would carry on conversations with his student “amid clouds of cigarette smoke.” Bonhoeffer’s creature comforts are often overshadowed by more robust attention on his theology and self-discerning social action. But in Germany today, it’s not odd to find a church event where drinking remains part of the normal course of festivities. For the American Evangelical Protestant wing elevating Bonhoeffer as a model of righteousness and personal sacrifice, these facts tend to be inconvenient outliers. Yet throughout his short life, alcohol and smoking, were never far from the pastor and theologian.

Refusing to Conduct a Church Service for Fear of Offending an Atheist

In a day when some Christians are doggedly fighting to return prayer to public schools, the idea that Bonhoeffer would actually consider rejecting a request for an impromptu service for fear he would offend the only atheist in the room seems to send the wrong kind of message. Furthermore, when every impulse is measured by a life exhausted for the sake of the gospel, when those with a mind towards salvation picture every encounter as a possible non-repeatable singularity in the space-time continuum, when one missed chance to evangelize could be the difference between damnation and salvation for the person being considered, Bonhoeffer’s act appears as an uneven ripple in a non-negotiable mandate: Go out into all the world and preach the gospel. Making matters worse, the incident in question occurred as Bonhoeffer and his companions were in the final leg of their journey towards their own executions. How many of those men might have benefited from some hardy words of encouragement? To complicate matters, Bonhoeffer was teaching Wasily Wasiliew Kokorin the fundamentals of Christianity in exchange for Russian lessons. So knowing that Kokorin knew Bonhoeffer was a Christian, why would Bonhoeffer be concerned that Kokorin would refuse him the conviction of his faith and that of his comrades’ faith? The next time you are in church, imagine your pastor stopping the service out of respect for someone who accidentally wonders into the church because he disagrees with the message.

Contemplating Suicide

During Bonhoeffer’s imprisonment, which was no doubt as harsh as it was isolating for a man who was a communal Christian in both his pastoral and theological life, suicide weighed heavy on his mind. At the time of the writing of his unfinished magnum opus, Ethics, and with the deterioration of the Confessing Church, Bonhoeffer was struggling with the question of how the Christ of the Church becomes the foundation for Christ in the World. As he writes, “God embraces the whole reality of the world in this narrow space and reveals its ultimate foundation. So also the church of Jesus Christ is the place…in the world where the reign of Jesus Christ over the whole world is not to be demonstrated or proclaimed.” This was a man whose intellectual challenges were not mental abstractions but concrete lenses through which to view the practical problems of the day. This may give us some insight into why evangelism to his atheist friend wasn’t the first thing on his mind as they were being moved between prisons. But prison was as difficult for Bonhoeffer as everyone else. And despite the long-standing prohibition on suicide in major religious denominations, Bonhoeffer’s own words scribbled down as notes haunt us: “Suicide, not out of a sense of guilt, but because I am practically dead already, the closing of the book, sum total.” The editorial note in the afterword of the Letters and Papers from Prison where this note is mentioned makes an attempt to save face, but even the removal and replacement of a few words does not undo the feeling of despair recorded here, nor the moral stigma often attached to this final act.

Views on the Place of Women

Liberals who embrace Bonhoeffer as a kindred spirit are sometimes unaware of the rift he causes with one of their more faithful allies:  Feminists. Scholars of feminist theology, who have taken the time to read Bonhoeffer, come away with a view of a man who was patriarchal in his views and a product of his time. Judith Plaskow minces no words when she calls Bonhoeffer’s statements on marriage “appalling.” Much of the venom comes from Bonhoeffer’s “Wedding Sermon from a Prison Cell” written for his friend Eberhard Bethge and sister Renate Bethge. The sermon has become a soft target because of Bonhoeffer’s advice to his own sister about occupying her place as a subordinate under his friend. For someone supposedly on the cusp of European progressive sensibility, who was concerned an atheist would be offended by the Christian message and defended the radical theologian Rudolf Bultmann when his contemporaries shuddered at his theological conclusions, this violation of conduct appears hard to reconcile with his perceived open-mindedness on other issues, such as his advocacy towards the Jewish population of Germany.  

Participating in the Murder of a World Leader

For those who know Bonhoeffer or have gleaned a short summary of his life’s work, this is no doubt the event with which they are most acquainted, and surprisingly the one they seem most willing to forgive. It certainly appears to be Karl Barth’s opinion in Church Dogmatik that Bonhoeffer’s act of resistance was an in extremis decision, the kind that at certain times and under severe duress becomes inescapable. This conclusion appears to have been upheld by decades of well-meaning Christians despite the fact that a year after Adolf Hitler’s death, Bonhoeffer was not memorialized in Berlin and still treated as a traitor by those in the German Lutheran church for his involvement and knowledge of plans to assassinate der Führer. The question of whether murder is the proper category for someone posing a threat to human civilization was an idea worked out in Bonhoeffer’s more sophisticated writing, and he settles on more existentially layered words like “destruction” and “guilt” to speak of the act. Nevertheless, the taking of a human life against the commandment “thou shalt not kill,” produced an anxiety in Bonhoeffer’s writings and personal interactions that at times can be felt vividly and clearly. 

While most of the actions listed above do not represent some moral crucible in which a life and death decision needed resolution, in some cases, these examples found in the information we have about Bonhoeffer reflect the foggy territory of moral decision making in general and help us to appreciate why continental theologians writing at the time put such an emphasis on faith as an existential experience between God and man. We often do not have the luxury of pre-packaged answers even when the commandments are in our hands. We find ourselves often stumbling through the uncertainty of our decisions and the anxious nature of reflecting on their aftermath. But in each situation, Bonhoeffer’s famous line resonates before us: “Who is Jesus for us today?” We can’t simply look at Bonhoeffer and decide that he did what he thought was right. Bonhoeffer’s actions are a call for us to examine our own actions, no matter the seriousness, and ask ourselves if we are in keeping with Christ. Bonhoeffer’s theological method is one that prizes faith above moral platitudes. Moral certainty shuns the existential anxiety of being alone with our decisions, but in doing so it undermines the quality of personal faith. For what need is there of faith, if the answers are already laid out before us? Like a great banquet from which we have limitless decisions, so Bonhoeffer’s life was fraught with a future whose only anchor was the knowledge that his relationship with Jesus was made new for him each day.

Bonhoeffer is one of those rare gems in the Church who found the opportunity to blend meaningful theology with necessary action. In looking at these portraits, we can see which aspects that Church tradition has chosen to ignore and the way it has chosen to remember Bonhoeffer. In recovering some of these portraits, we humanize Bonhoeffer once again, and grant ourselves the mercy and patience we so mercifully grant him.

Exploring the Social Theology of Amish Lancaster

I recently had the opportunity to visit Lancaster County, Pennsylvania where 34,000 Amish live and work.  I have lived an hour south of Lancaster for most of my life, but as my interests in marginalized religious communities grew, I only recently “rediscovered” the Amish. The Lancaster Amish in this part of the country are part of the Old Order Amish and are what most people think about when they imagine Amish communities, although it should be noted that the Amish differ in self-governance from one "church district" to another so there can be quite a variety of factions and differences in communal prohibition. 


I decided to take a few day trips to Lancaster over the past few weeks, tour some of the county, talk with locals and visit a few Amish sites where I came into contact with a few working families.  I do not intend the following to be any kind of scholarly treatment of the Amish, just an attempt to work out initial impressions of this very unique people.

I think what struck me most about the greater Lancaster community where Amish and “English” mix is how the latter is often territorial about their Amish community. Both I and my guests felt the tour guides were doing their best to preserve and balance the quaint and quirky self-exile of the Amish community despite the fact that our guides themselves were coming out of conservative evangelical Christian communities that have very robust opinions on right and wrong living and the requirements for salvation.

Lancaster is about as conservative as a county can get, which aside from a reverence for biblical Christianity includes all the subsequent feelings of patriotism that come with the typical conservative profile today. As we toured the countryside, our guide was peppered with a question about the Amish stance on nonviolence, which took us back to World War II in which the community either served in non-combat roles or paid individuals to fight for them. Asked about it, the guide suggested that the Amish were patriotic insofar as “they recognized that others were fighting for them and that without that they could not enjoy the life they have today.” I found it interesting the way this guide absolved the Amish from patriotism and wondered if the same scenario presented itself with people of Middle Eastern descent, how the community might react.  Nevertheless, I saved such questions for myself but remain hopeful that evangelicals in Lancaster appreciate the comparisons.

As the tour continued, a pattern began to develop that I caught on quickly. The Amish will work in English-owned businesses that use electricity provided they aren’t supplying it themselves. The Amish can ride in vehicles provided they are not the ones driving. The Amish can own a rental property to turn a profit but will hire the English (i.e., those outside the community) to enforce any late payment retrieval or eviction because they reject confrontation.

This idea of using an intermediary is a social theology which has the effect of absolving the Amish of the responsibility and risk required in moral decision making where retreat or inwardness is not possible. It does not seem very different than the Jewish Orthodox community which use Shabbatgoyim to take care of business they themselves cannot on Sabbath.  Bringing the English in to do the work the Amish cannot because of the rules imposed upon them by their Ordnung (order or law) brings into question their own moral righteousness.  To put it bluntly, the Amish believe that the English are not on the path of salvation because they embrace the world. Rather than evangelize them to their form of salvation, the Amish seem contented with allowing them to continue along a path of perceived disobedience and self-destruction. When spun positively, it is only that the Amish are a non-proselytizing group so that the English way of life should not be of concern for them. To speak into their way of life would be as presumptuous a task as the English attempting to convert the Amish. Yet it is precisely because they let the English continue in their “error” that, with regard to biblical theology, the Amish are blame-worthy. They do not act as their brother’s keeper and do not believe the world around them is worth saving. Neither do they believe that against the Ordnung, one should seek to save someone outside the community in the same way an oxen that has fallen into a ditch should be saved on the Sabbath despite the midrash teaching.

This perhaps is the conversation that the million-dollar tourism industry does not want you having coming out of Lancaster. The tourism industry has continued to grow, so much that land developers have “spared” a few tour companies positioning themselves on historic Amish property because those businesses represent a growing channel of revenue. Instead, they want you leaving with a superficial feeling that the Amish don’t reject you and your existence, or think of you as hell-bound reprobates, but that they are just people minding their own affairs in a world gone off the rails. In fact, there were multiple times one tour guide reminded us that the Amish read all the English newspapers and observe how bad the world around them is--a position with which our tour guide agreed. Indeed, the Amish are the largest participants in the local English fire departments. And no one can forget the Amish response to their own tragedy in 2006 when the world forced its way through their closed doors and five girls were shot dead in Lancaster by an outsider in a now razed one-room schoolhouse. Yet separation is not a response that simply rejects a way of life that they believe is not in keeping with righteous living, but involves a tacit rejection of the people around them. Righteous biblical living has never just been about living in the midst of one’s enemy, but participating in the life of the community outside your own.  One recalls that in the legendary Amish story of Dirk Willems, a Dutch Anabaptist whose pursuer fell through ice, everyone tends to focus on the fact that the fleeing Amish man turned and saved his pursuer's life, and forget what the Amish have not; namely, that at the end of the tale, Willems is apprehended and put to the stake for his faith. The "strangers-and-sojourners" lifestyle of the Epistle of 1 Peter has been replaced by an alternate social order that seeks to set up camp in the land, but doing so outside the gates of the enemy. The early connection, most likely lost on generations of English that have come and gone, is that the Amish were victims to terrible religious persecution, a mindset that was brought and remains here. Within the evangelical community, there is plenty of room to commiserate with their Amish cousins even as the evangelical church has moved more to the fringes with regard to setting up activities, social events, and commerce that is self-interested and self-sustaining. Both communities share a "martyr mentality" and both have their place.

Amish Lancaster can be a mystifying, romanticized experience or it can be viewed as a social derivation of a theology gone wrong. Rejection of the world should remind those versed in Christian theology how far the Amish are from scriptures that are fundamental to the mission of the eschatological Jesus. Amish that have left the community and found English communities have complained that the Amish have replaced the salvation gospel of Jesus Christ with a gospel of social inwardness, family, and good works. It is hard to read Matthew chapters 5 through 7 and not see places where the Amish completely fail. These are a people who have hidden their lamps under bushels.  They do not go out into the world and preach the gospel and therefore they cannot act as lights to the world or salt for the unsavory, because in all of these cases, there is risk involved, one which threatens the Amish with a loss of identity and self.  So while thousands of people visit the Amish every year, the impressions they leave with from tours and local lore, while helping to demystify some misconceptions, never get to the heart of the people and their social theology.

Jesus and the Shin Buddhist: An Encounter from the Japanese "Bible"

The Story of Jesus and the Buddhist Teacher

Of all the episodes in Christian literature that fall outside the canon, one of the most delightfully bizarre is the Tenchi Hajimari no Koto, commonly translated as The Beginning of Heaven and Earth. While the content has very little to do with the origins of the universe, it does contain a number of very interesting stories about Jesus living out his existence in a uniquely Japanese world.

To what extent the Tenchi was considered sacred scripture and read within the communities of southern Japan is a matter of scholarly debate. What makes this work unique is that unlike other non-canonical works, such as the Gnostic gospels that competed for attention among ancient Christians in the same communities and geographical regions where the Bible would come to dominate, the Tenchi represents as genuine a cultural appropriation as one can imagine.  Given what appropriation has come to mean in our time, it can certainly be argued that one way to view the Tenchi is as a deeply flawed attempt at Christian testimony. But perhaps the reason for this has as much to do with the short, but palpable, existence of Christianity in the age prior to Japan’s expulsion order, which forced Westerners out of the country.  The incomplete nature of the Tenchi and its mix of broken biblical narrative suggests that those Japanese Christians in the south who were most affected by the foreign religion never entirely succumbed to its influence.

Among all the episodes found in the Tenchi, the confrontation between Jesus (who is called The Holy One) and the Buddhist teacher Gakujuran in a temple is among the liveliest. And perhaps it is because the confrontation fails to promote Christianity in a way that recommends the new religion above other religions, that the Tenchi becomes uniquely Japanese, both because it retains the content of its Japanese surroundings as well as the Japanese tendency to blend religious traditions.

Christal Whelan’s popular translation of the Tenchi records how Jesus first encounters Gakujuran, whose name signals his function in society.  The word gakusha in Japanese means scholar, and so it seems more appropriate to think of this man as a scholar in the Buddhist scriptures, rather than only a teacher or practitioner.  The Holy One comes to a temple to hear from this man, who teaches the Buddhist scriptures and others (we can assume the latter means other holy books outside the Buddhist canon). Gakujuran tells those listening that the six-lettered name Amida Namu Butsu, a reference to the Shin Buddhist recitation formula known as the nembutsu, saves those who recite it so they may attain Buddhahood in the next world. The reference to Amida leaves little doubt about the influence of Shin Buddhism on the Tenchi given that the practice of this recitation is unique to this sect. In an interesting exchange, Jesus does not argue this point with Gakujuran, but asks him to further explain about the types of places people go after they die. The scholar responds that on a Boat of Vows (a popular image in Shin Buddhism) they go to either the Buddhist heaven or hell. Again the Holy One appears to concede this point and changes the subject, asking about the terms under which creation came into being. The teacher responds by asking him instead to explain those origins. The Holy One accepts the challenge and after a short exposition tells the people that those worshipping Buddha are in fact worshipping Deusu (the God of the Christians) who made all things. Gakujuran’s disciples decide to follow the Holy One but note that the former had taught them the truth of cause and effect, a nod to the continuing wisdom found in Buddhism. The final movement creates a bit more drama, as the Holy One tells Gakujuran to cast aside the Buddhist scriptures to follow him. Gakujuran responds that the scriptures are important and too valuable to discard. The narrator tells us that because such an argument about which scriptures are important is futile, The Holy One instead creates a test in which the full body of the Buddhist scriptures are set up against the weight of one book (presumably the Tenchi itself or a reference to the Christian scriptures, which the Japanese Christians may or may not have encountered at some point in time). When the books are weighed, the one book is heavier than the issai-kyo (all the Buddhist scriptures combined). At this point, Gakujuran asks to be baptized.

Looking at this short episode, some observations about the text can be made that provide insight into the Japanese Christians, their culture, and the continuing influence of Buddhism in their lives. It is no accident that the whole incident occurs in a temple. Jesus’ first encounter of the Jewish religious leaders was at the Temple in Jerusalem. But this is no Jewish temple in the Tenchi. Rather than a bimah (a raised platform in the temple used for reading the Torah scroll), we find a raised seat in the center of the temple, reflecting Buddhist architecture.

Second, Amida Buddha is compared to Jesus and both function as saviors. One cannot but help to hear echoes of St. Paul speaking in front of the Greeks at the Areopagus in Athens, where he declares that the statue they erected to an unknown god is actually the Christian god (Acts 17:23-31), and continues by quoting from their own poets and dramatists to explain the ways in which God is omnipresent to us all. Or one is reminded of the words of St. Paul in the Epistle to the Romans who notes that the pre-Christian world knew God in their hearts but intentionally chose not to serve him. These small glimpses may have been the same kind that influenced Japanese Christians to respond to the possibility of universalism, even if the Western tradition does not retain these stories in such a way.  Yet the Tenchi’s universalism is even more pronounced. The Holy One gives no indication that Buddhism is a flawed path. The classic example of the Japanese doctrine of honji suijaki, in which Shinto deities take on roles in the Buddhist pantheon, is on full display as Jesus simply lets Gokujuran’s statement stand about Amida as a means to salvation. In fact, The Holy One directly supports this view, when in his concluding remarks, he declares: “As for the one you worship as Buddha, he is called Deusu, Lord of Heaven. He is the Buddha who introduced the salvation to help humankind in the world yet to come.”

If we take seriously the Pure Land teachings of Shin Buddhism that most notably arise in this episode, then we can look to the contest of the books as they are weighed against each other. Shin Buddhism was often distinguished by its appeal to simplicity and the common people against meditative versions of Japanese Buddhism that developed alongside their counterpart as institutional norms. Teachers such as Yuenbo and Rennyo argued that Shin Buddhism did not require the level of literacy or sophistication found among the followers of other sects whose central focus was meditation. Nor did Shin Buddhism require long hours of meditation in the pursuit of enlightenment (satori), which was both a luxury reserved for those who had the means and a hardship for those who could not forsake their livelihoods. Shin Buddhism invited simplicity and this was reflected in the recitation of the nembutsu as the only necessary practice.  So perhaps it is not surprising that in an ironic twist of fate, the Tenchi appears to reverse the roles of its characters in this final moment. While the Shin Buddhist Gokujuran adopts the role of the book-smart scholar who has accumulated a vast library of Buddhist learning (the issai-kyo), it is Jesus who reflects the virtue of simplicity when he recommends just one book, which is heavier than all the other books combined. The writer may have been having some fun at the reader’s expense. By reflecting a Shin Buddhist value as a Christian one, it turns out that Jesus becomes the more observant Shin Buddhist because he understands that a great repository of book smarts is not the answer to a more virtuous life.

Whelan reports that Japanese Christians became embarrassed by the fantastic stories and the mythical quality of the contents found in the Tenchi when confronted by outside Christians who later returned to Japan and were not a part of these generational communities. Yet the Tenchi’s view of a Jesus who maintained a close connection to Buddhism is important given the ease with which foreign materials and ideas were apprehended, boiled down, but often reshaped into the collective consciousness of the Japanese people. From kanji and tea culture that found its way from China and a syllabary language known as katakana built intentionally for foreign loan words to pop culture and sports, cultural philosophy in Japan has regularly affirmed foreign influence, rather than chasing it away. It is only under such conditions, where appropriation is not a scare word, that Jesus can become a Buddhist and the adoption of a text like the Tenchi became possible.

Are the Four Noble Truths Really the First and Primary Teaching of the Historical Gautama Buddha?

One of the most interesting questions, at least among scholars, in all branches of Buddhism remains whether the historical founder and teacher known as Gautama existed. But a second, and probably, more ascertainable, question has to do with the nature of his teaching (i.e., when, where, and how it developed). This not only a classic line of inquiry among Western scholars of Buddhism, but Christianity and other world religions as well. Scholars routinely find that great teachings and teachers do not develop in a cultural vacuum, but within a cultural context. And it is not only the language of the time that tells the story of an ancient people used in a such a manner that is appropriate for a prescientific world, but it is also the appropriation of ideas that already exists in the culture that tends to make the teachings less “miraculous” in their rise as well. For example, while there are unique differences between the resurrection accounts of Jesus and Attis of the Greeks or Horus of the Egyptians, the idea of rising from the dead in a salvific form was not unknown to these two cultures that bumped up against one another, usually through some unremarkable form of cultural interaction like mercantilism.

It is popular among Western Buddhists to disarm Gautama’s teaching of its supernatural dimension to focus on the Dharma. While this is fine, the approach is certainly not historical, at least according to scholars of the Pali Canon, who work on the issue of the historical canon. The reason being is quite elementary. The Dhammacakkapavattana sutra, which contains the Dharma teaching, known synonymously as the Four Noble Truths, is thought to be a latter development, with other scholars suggesting the Truths are themselves a latter addition to the sutra. The teaching does not come to prominence nor is it recommended until the commentaries written about 1,000 years after the Buddha’s death. That is a thousand years of oral and ancestral transmission....a thousand years to play the game of telephone and eventually turn the message into something that may  have looked quite different from its original intent. Indeed, variations in the Theravada texts show that the  earliest readings of the Four Noble Truths were not thought to be keys to the liberation of the practitioner. Even the question of whether the teaching is original with Gautama is questioned, since various scholars see it as a syncretic appendage of Indus Valley philosophy and Jain theology. Others like Carol S. Anderson have questioned its compartmentalized nature. Are the Four Noble Truths really the Dharma or simply a part of a larger Dharma teaching? The latter tends to be the current trend in scholarship.

The question of the Buddha’s existence is not a new one in Western scholarship. Friedrich Nietzsche’s aphorism sums up the view that not even Buddhism is immune to immortalization: “After Buddha was dead, his shadow was still shown for centuries in a cave – a tremendous, gruesome shadow. God is dead; but given the way of men, there may still be caves for thousands of years in which his shadow will be shown.” Yet given that there is less resistance in Western Buddhism to withdraw from the historical nature of such a person called Gautama than in Christianity where resistance to the elimination of Jesus is much more unified among both believing and agnostic scholars, it is more than likely that the Buddha need not remain for the teaching to maintain its attractiveness.  Buddhism in the West has become its own experiment that allows for ample testing away from the harsh realities of dogmatic communities in the East that clutch at the reigns for control.

While it might not matter whether the Buddha existed as a historical figure and even the manner in which the insights of the four noble truths arise, if we are looking to keep one another honest, it may stand to reason that we are no longer dealing with “Buddhism” as in the “teaching of the enlightened One” but one teaching of 84,000 possible teachings attributed (though most likely impossibly) to the Buddha that gained prominence through the tradition.


Again, not even the transmission history needs to matter if we find what we want. This is precisely the critique leveled against Mahayana followers of Jodo Shinshu, namely that the recitation of the nembutsu is a periphery teaching of tertiary importance, and not a core teaching like the Four Noble Truths. But if the Four Noble Truths is not the primary teaching as we are led to imagine, but the one which through a transmission history rose to prominence, then the criticism against nembutsu practitioners who through Amida have already overcome the world through Tariki power, is also dubious.  This is why scholarship is an importance dimension of Buddhist study. The placement of the Four Noble Truths as the core around which all other teachings orbit is not settled. Using Occam’s Razor may very well end with cutting out the teaching we suppose is the core. And if the core has not been proven in its essential connection to Buddhism, then perhaps all a follower of the Four Noble Truths can declare is only the practicality with which it might be practiced. But what we cannot say is that it deserves more attention, veneration, or reflection than other components if one remains a Buddhist. 

However, all of this does matter, if, for the sake of historical accuracy, teachers who write on the subject of practical application and meditation continue to invoke the name of Buddha and articulate that the Four Noble Truths rise with Gautama’s earliest teaching all while claiming that talks about gods and divine beings were latter accretions that should be ignored as attempts by tribal sects to import their own unique presentation.  It may not matter the way it matters to Christians who are trying to secure textual inspiration but cannot tell us why God can inspire the text but not preserve it properly given the many variations of the texts that have existed through the Christian era. For those interested in Buddhism, whether Gautama existed or what was central to his teaching matters in a way that does not summon divine judgment. But it matters if we are interested in honesty. It matters if we are interested in the integrity of our own words and if we are going to be people of integrity. It matters because saying that it doesn't matter actually makes us just as dogmatic if we were to say it does matter! Such a statement is simply reverse engineered to the same effect.


We can certainly say "we don't know" in a way that maintains the integrity of our intellectual curiosity and practice. But we should not put ourselves in a position to suggest that ideas and material developments are two different creatures. We actually lock ourselves into a kind of Western materialistic dualism by doing so, where ideas just float "out there" but the only truth that we should take seriously are material truths, such as the medical dosage necessary to administer to a patient in the proper amount without taking his life. Those material realities with the force of science backing them should not be non-negotiables while our thought life is scattered to the winds of arbitrariness. Science always maintains room for modification and so should we. There is a measure of responsibility that the Buddha teaches that each one of us maintain over our thought life. It is actually a part of the Four Noble Truths and appears as a component of the Eightfold Path. And while I cannot recommend that it did or did not come first, or whether the one to whom we attribute its existence himself existed, it is ample reinforcement from the tradition that holds our attention.

Theology through the eye of Anthropic Reasoning – Can a Case be made for a Comparative Theology?

Finding comparative material as a scholar of comparative religious studies is a different task from finding comparative material as a theologian. To begin, the theologian is interested in a field that is scarcely viewed as anything more than hypothetical at best with regard to a system of belief or faith, all while working with ideas that because of their lineage are causally disconnected. Verses that crop up in ancient texts expounding the wide reach of some divine being are often subsumed under the  doctrinarian impulses of the tribe that prefer a more insular revelation. Those who study their faith do so under the superintendence of history and anthropology, where any deviation from the well- defined borders of what the tradition has come to regard as part of its heritage is jettisoned as rank supernaturalism, despite the supernaturalist expressions those traditions honor. Supernaturalism does not becomes a dragnet of God’s activity interdicting other religious revelations but a pencil-thin line traceable only through the texts and practices approved by those communities. A God whose dominion spans the world but is only known by those who actively engage this God in their own tradition is the farce of all supernaturalist claims primarily because such claims always lack universal footprints.

Books that are published that compare the statements of Muhammad or the Buddha with that of Jesus are done so tongue-in-cheek, as good-hearted experiments thanks to the pluralism of our day, but rarely with a meaningful goal in mind that might inspire a new approach to faith. Universalists, other than the Unitarian brand, are often looked at with caution, as those taking part in a non-sanctioned experiment, whose companionship is often tolerated.  

But when someone moves from one religion to another, he cannot help but bring with him a store of information and experience that at times appears to intersect with the new information and experience he obtains. These incidents make for curious encounters and oftentimes lend to an experience of the divine that defies well-defined boundaries. Recognizing for example the New Testament in the Tannisho, where certain verses run deeper than the broad overlay of general religious principles is always exciting for someone who takes the claim of a universal God interested in the universal welfare of all beings seriously. The cross-pollination of ideas is acceptable only insofar as the unspoken rule against proselytizing will not be secretly violated.  It is not the hope of the organizers of Vatican II or the Parliament of World Religions that one might walk out seeking a new religious approach, but indeed these opportunities do occur. We see those like Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, or Paul Knitter looking to the East for guidance, while we see those like D.T. Suzuki, Takeda Kiyoto, and Kitaro Nishida of the Kyoto School looking to the West. One will not find, however, existential communion with scholars who study religion as a cultural phenomenon or through a linguistic approach linked to creating a better understanding of the original textual interpretations in which events arise. In each of these approaches, religion in its most diagnostic form is not a living experience but a series of events that evolve or perish through objective causation.

Those interested in theology as a comparative activity will find it hard to express themselves where no objective causation is testable. At best, we can say human situations are not that different. People tend to experience many of the same problems, and complicated social structures do not entirely condemn those problems to variation. The same questions that stir action in one religion are not unknown to those in others: equal rights, monasticism vs. individualism, faith vs. works, all of these come from the same observable encounter with the world around us. Rather than diminish the supernatural origins of any religion by appealing to a kind of directed human evolution we share in common, could it be that what drives those essential similarities uncovers a core experience in the domain of human existence that could only propagate such questions? One is reminded of the old dilemma posed from the Anthropic Principle: is it because the world is observable that I see it, or do I see it because it is observable?

Could it be that a comparative theology is possible because the similarities experienced across religious borders are possible? Learning how we evolve socially and structurally as religious-minded people may best be learned through a genuine examination of the way religious ideas come into existence across unrelated spectrums rather than in spite of them, in the same world claimed by divine.  This represents a possible philosophical basis for a comparative theology that is not merely glimpsed as another cause for celebrating our shared humanity, but one that captures and equalizes it at a much deeper level.

The Silent Survival of Jodo Shinshu and the Westernization of Buddhism

In this post, I wanted to examine the background of adversity which has silenced Jodo Shinshu Buddhists over the centuries, and especially address this through the lens of the modernization of Buddhism, which has effectively removed all sects from their supernatural (or superstitious) origins to forms that attain towards self-reflection and modesty.

Buddhism has not been apt to resist the incursion of Western rationalism. One likely reason has been that Buddhism’s lack of resistance is evidence of the absence of an intellectual heritage, which unlike in Christianity saw doctrinal disputes and intellectual showdowns as the norm. Of course it would be a somewhat simplistic effort to paint over disputations that occurred in Buddhism, and the sects that did form did not do so out of an abundance of encouragement towards self-expression. It does, however, seem that the Western assault by scholars of Buddhism was much fiercer than ever could be anticipated. One only has to look at the parallel incursion into Islam made by challenges to its origins, texts, and ideas that have been met with severe and even radical retaliations, including fatwas against Western intellectuals. The West has always done a tidy job of forcing its neighbors into conversations they didn’t want to participate in, and using language that isn’t always familiar or appropriate.

In Japan, Jodo Shinshu has been censored at numerous points in its history. During his own time Shinran, the founder, was persecuted and defrocked, and sent into exile. The sect rose to prominence again under Rennyo, but was shortly after persecuted by the Tendai school who used sohei (warrior monks) to oppose him. Rennyo had to flee for his life, but the Shin Buddhists found their own form of resistance in the ikko-ikki, a group of warrior monks that came from the ranks of the common people and fought back. Eventually, the Tokugawa shogun Ieyasu split the sect in two in order to diffuse the concentration of power. The West and East schools were formed as a result. Still in many places, Shin Buddhists were persecuted and had to go underground, practicing their strange nenbutsu in secret.

The swirling defeat of Japan at the hands of the United States had serious religious repercussions. Emperor Hirohito spoke to the people of his country directly and offered a surrender of Japanese forces to the Allies. For many in Japan who were hearing his voice for the first time, the revelation of the emperor was a painful and unbearable thing. The religious organizations around Jodo Shinshu suffered as well. Existential realities were laid bare:  the emperor who was thought to be a god living among his people, a descendant of the sun god Amaterasu, was not invincible. The Ohigashi Schism of 1962, urged by the Dobokai movement, which was itself in favor of joining the modern world, demonstrated how deeply divided the faithful (shinjin)were on issues relating to Pure Land doctrine. The Dobokai Movement (of the Eastern Jodo Shinshu) wished to scrub much of the superstition of the ancient order and replace it with a “thoughtful” alternative that enjoyed a kind of Buddhism a la carte, trying to undo the more tenuous doctrines of reincarnations and Pure Lands that exist on some otherworldly metaphysical plane. Like many of the Buddhist sects in Japan, Jodo Shinshu was able to escape annihilation primarily because nothing like the Western philosophy of a church and state architecture existed. The questions raised by secularism did not require an answer that required the takedown of the entire sect. If one looks deeper, it is worth mentioning that the full canon of Buddhist doctrines (issai-kyo) were never venerated in the community of Shin Buddhists who built their own path primarily on three seminal sutras. But the same was true of most sects. Yet, discriminating never took on the form of rejection that it did in the a la carte style of the West that ignored or invalidated material. Shin Buddhism again could transform without having to rebrand itself given and so it did.

Across seas, the situation was similar. In the United States, where Shin Buddhism was introduced on the West Coast in the 1800s, there were minor outcries and concerns that priests from Japan had come to convert. Despite this, temples stayed secluded in their respective immigrant communities. To keep suspicion at an absolute minimum, many temples were built to resemble churches, used pews and lecterns, and featured songs similar in style to Christian hymns. The Buddhist Churches of America, drew their name in 1944 for the purposes of not being singled out, but assimilating, after many Japanese had been interned under suspicion of loyalty to Japan during the war. Under the terms of their internment during the war, many Japanese were forced to sell their houses and businesses and shut down their Buddhist temples. So when they were released and others came to the United States, it was clear that blending in remained the only reasonable gamble.

Shin Buddhism, which is currently the largest sect of Buddhism in the United States, is perhaps the most invisible, since despite sharing Buddhism in its namesake, the sect carries on traditions that are quite different from the meditative components found in other Southeast Asian forms. The rise in popularity of meditation in the West and the move away from the more superstitious elements has caused Jodo Shinshu Buddhists to re-evaluate their fundamental core principles. Both immigrant and native Shinshu Buddhist populations have in one form or another surrendered to a more sophisticated aura that is enjoyed in the West. This has not been received as a defeat as the very nature of the Buddhist scriptures and the overwhelming amount of material meant that Buddhism itself was never a canonistic religion. There was never a New Testament canon that had to be venerated by all of the sects, so that each sect was free to hold onto those writings near and dear to its own understandings. In such a scenario, shifting emphases seemed to invite variation. The newfangled rise of psychological sciences over the past 100 years, gave Buddhism further leverage with which to work as the study of the brain became more sophisticated. Even today, those like the Dali Lama have embraced this relationship and expressed how psychology is a sibling of Buddhist practice, while scientists run observations or do brainwave scans on meditating Buddhists to give further credence to the performative structures that have long been a part of its methodology.  Given the lack of contemplation on a First Cause or Creator God, the faithful had as much a chance of enlightenment as the Buddha who offered it. Not even the moral exemplarist model found in Christianity could compare. All Buddhists had the ability to become buddhas. All could become enlightened. And since there was no need for a Creator God, even an atheistic Buddhism could be established in the a la carte Buddhism of our day. Books like Buddhism Without Beliefs by Stephen Batchelor, a New York Times bestseller, demonstrated the potential of a Buddhism that is capable of recognition in a world that is increasingly hostile to religious belief and dogma. Nevertheless, where the West had created a Buddhism that could be appreciated for its secular flexibility, Buddhism in its various native contexts never fully extricated itself from its supernatural origins.