buddhist philosophy and new testament theology

Buddhist Philosophy and New Testament TheologyAuthor(s): Yagi SeiichiSource: Buddhist-Christian Studies, Vol. 19 (1999), pp. 165-172Published by: University of Hawai'i PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1390534 .

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NISHITANI

Buddhist Philosophy and New Testament Theology

Yagi Seiichi Toin University

PROLOGUE

By way of Buddhist-Christian dialogue we Christians can become aware of the latent motifs in our own tradition. The dialogue gives us opportunities to rethink the Chris- tian tradition, not to interpret it from Buddhist viewpoint but, based on these actu- alized motifs, to find a more adequate interpretation of its own. In this way Buddhist- Christian dialogue is relevant also for the construction of New Testament theology.

ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF NISHIDA, HISAMATSU, AND NISHITANI

The central problems of Nishida Kitaro's philosophy were (1) keiken (immediate experience) in his early period, (2) jikaku (seeing oneself in oneself) in his middle period, and (3) basho (topos) in his last years.1 It should be noted that these terms together cover the essential fields of Buddhist cognition.

Nishida began his book Studies of the Good2 with statements concerning immediate experience. After the publication of the book, he felt compelled to consider the nature of the subject of philosophical cognition at the scene of immediate experience, for the subject in this case is not reason in the sense of Western philosophy. Thus in his middle period, jikaku became the main theme of his reflection. Jikaku means that the self sees itself in itself, and Nishida named the deepest, ultimate self, the self that embraces and sees all levels of cognition in "the field of transcendental predicate." Then in his last years, Nishida grasped it anew as the topos, in which the individuals work on one another. The structure of the topos was defined as the "unity of the contradictory," for in the topos the absolute and the relative define each other.

His student, Hisamatsu Shin'ichi, made jikaku his central theme, whereas the thinking ofNishitani Keiji, another eminent student of Nishida, was centered mainly on topos. Nishida's understanding ofjikaku reminds us somewhat of the Hegelian Geist, for it concerns primarily the subject of cognition. Hisamatsu, however, spoke simply of 'kaku' (awakening) of the Formless Self. It means that the ego is awakened to the Formless Self. At the same time it is the awakening of the Formless Self to

Buddhist-Christian Studies 19 (1999). ? by University of Hawai'i Press. All rights reserved.



YAGI SEIICHI

Itself. We should note that kaku is not simply self-cognition but rather the actual- ization of the Self. As is well known, Hisamatsu rejected theism. God or Buddha as 'other' or 'over against' is at best a secondary human construction and not primary reality. So, if we call God the absolute Other, God must be at the same time the ultimate Self: God as the absolute Other, in Hisamatsu's view, must be at the same time God who acts as the ultimate subject of humanity.3 On the other hand, Nishi- tani preferred the terms common to Mahayana-Buddhism in general: ku (nothing- ness), engi (dependent orinination), andjijimuge (infinite-fold mutual penetration of the individuals). In his book What Is Religion,4 Nishitani tried to rethink such Christian themes as personality, time, and history from the standpoint of ku.

Remarkably, he stated that the topos of ku is the field of power: "As far as all beings penetrate one another in their being, they are not what they are. On the other hand they are as such what they are. This relation of mutual penetration itself is the power which gathers and binds all beings into one, the power which makes the world the world. The field of ku is the field of power."5 As is well known, from the viewpoint ofjijimuge, the infinite-fold mutual penetration of the individuals, there is nothing transcendent. Therefore Nishitani, when he speaks of this aspect of reality, does not refer to the paradoxical unity of the absolute and the relative. The field of ku is sim-

ply the field of power in which mutual penetration of the individuals is realized. If we combine three keywords of these three philosophers, namely Nishida's

"immediate experience," Hisamatsu's "awakening to the Self," and Nishitani's "field of ku as the field of power," they seem to me more genuinely Buddhist than Nishi- da's terms: keiken, jikaku, and basho. Whereas Nishida-who as a pioneer attempted to construct a philosophical system from the Zen standpoint-was at least to some extent still bound to Western conceptuality, Hisamatsu and Nishitani were both free to use conceptions more adequate to Buddhist thinking. In other words, in the think-

ing of both Hisamatsu and Nishitani, the fundamental category was not substance but rather activity, and awakening concerned the whole person rather than the sub-

ject of cognition. We might say that such was also the view of Nishida in its nature. But Hisamatsu and Nishitani, in their use of terms, were more clearly aware of the nature of Buddhist thinking. Indeed the sentences of both thinkers, even nominal sentences in their philosophical discourses, are virtually verbal rather than nominal.

Similarly, their conceptions are principally more verbal than substantive. We can see this in a sentence such as "The field of ku is the field of power" (Nishitani) or in such words as "awakening as activity" (Hisamatsu). In Buddhist thinking, especially in Zen language, the nouns referring to human being and to Buddha are originally verbal (infinitive or gerund in nature), as is the case with such words as life (to be born) and death (to die), oneness soku manyness (T'ien-t'ai), which I believe is

dynamic, or "Awakening to and realizing Buddha nature" (Zen). Buddhist thinking prefers verbal nouns to abstract nouns so that, for example, in Buddhist understanding, Amida Buddha is primarily the power of his Vow rather than a person.

As far as the principal category of religious thinking is activity, religious cognition should not be presented in the form of a logical system. It should rather be a

presentation of the relations among powers and the events in the field of power, as

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BUDDHIST PHILOSOPHY AND NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY

is the case especially with Hisamatsu and Nishitani. In the following we examine the case with New Testament thinking.

ON THE CONCEPTUALITY OF NEW TESTAMENT THEOLOGY

Since the encounter of Christianity with Greek philosophy, Christian theology has used an ontological-personalist language. We might well ask how far that is adequate to its nature. In the New Testament itself, the language is more verbal. If that is the case, New Testament theology must be constructed accordingly. It cannot be presented as a logical system, and a systematic presentation of New Testament thoughts should be done in such a way that they articulate what takes place in the field of power.

After the Second World War, R. Bultmann, an eminent German New Testament scholar, advocated a method of New Testament interpretation called demythologiz- ing, which tries to explicate the existential self-understanding of religious texts.6 He executed his method in his works such as Jesus, New Testament Theology Commen- tary on the Gospel According to John, and so on.7 According to Bultmann, the existential conceptuality of Heidegger is most adequate for the explication of the New Testament understanding of human existence. But this view is not free from diffi- culty because Heideggerian conceptuality is not neutral as far as it is determined by his own philosophical view. In addition to that, the description of what takes place in the field of transcendent power will not be existentialist.

In seeking an adequate conceptuality, we should take into account, as was said above, that the language of the New Testament is in its nature verbal-the very core of its message is the narrative of the salvation act of God through Jesus Christ. Human salvation takes place in the field of powers, divine and demoniac. The nouns used in the New Testament must therefore be eminently verbal ones. To name some examples, we find a sentence in Phil. 2:21: "To me to live is Christ." It is interesting to see that the subject of the sentence is the infinitive of the verb "to live," and therefore the predicate, "Christ," is neither a being nor a person. Christ is here a power that bears the whole life of Paul. Another example: The Johannine Christ says, "My father has been working until now. (Therefore) I work also" (John 5:17). This word, which brings to light the relation between Father and Son, has not much attracted the attention of New Testament theology. But since this statement is central to Johannine thinking, I will examine similar examples below under three main categories of the Buddhist philosophers mentioned above: immediate experience, awakening to the Self, and the field of power in which the oneness of activities is realized.

Immediacy

"On one occasion a lawyer came forward to put this test question to him (Jesus), 'Master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?' Jesus said, 'What is written in the Law? What is your reading of it?' He replied, 'Love the Lord your God with all your



YAGI SEIICHI

heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.' 'That is the right answer,' said Jesus; 'Do that and you will live.' But he wanted to vindicate himself, so he said to Jesus, 'And who is my neighbor?"' (Luke 10:25-29)

Jesus then tells the parable of "the Good Samaritan" who, seeing a wounded Jew, saved him, though Jews at that time discriminated against Samaritans and excluded them from their community, the people of God. Interesting is the question of the

lawyer. It seems as if he loved his neighbor because it is ordered by God in the Law: if he should love his neighbor, he must know correctly who his neighbor is. Without the definition he does not know whom he should love. Apart from the question of how far the dialogue between Jesus and the lawyer reflects the historical situation at that time, we pay attention to the use of the word we by the lawyer. For apparently the lawyer presumed that "I" and "the neighbors" whom "I" should love constitute "we" and that it can be clearly defined who belongs to "we"-the people of God who are obliged to love one another. That is to say: in the use of "we" by the lawyer, the

membership of "we" is closed. Such a use of the personal pronoun we produces not

only the substantial distinction between "we" and "others" but, assuming the existence of such substance as "we," separates "we" from "others" and makes the discrimination against "others" possible. This use of "we" limits the extension of the humans who belong to "we" and posits the "others" outside of the scope of "we." Then the

following can take place: "We" categorize certain people outside of "we" and, sim-

ply because they are thus categorized, hold them inferior and unclean so that "we"

marginalize them. It is what we call discrimination. It is important to note that this

negative evaluation of "others" has nothing to do with what the marginalized really are or are not. But the discriminators nevertheless conceive of the discriminated in such a way that their negative evaluation of the latter is always justified, the herme- neutic technique of self-justification. Thus, not only Pharisees against outcasts at that time, but in turn Christians themselves have discriminated against Jews and the heathens. But this was not the case with Jesus. To Jesus the membership of "we"- the humans who love and help one another-is infinitely open, so that, in his think-

ing, even the discriminated Samaritan, seeing a suffering Jew, could have natural pity on him. Here we see an example of the immediate experience-not immediacy between subject and object as is the case with early Nishida, but an immediate encounter between "I" and "Thou," an immediate encounter in which the "invisible wall" (Nishitani)8 of categorization is broken down.

Awakening to the Self and Mutual Penetration of the Persons

"I died through the Law to the Law that I may live to God. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no more I who live but Christ in me" (Gal. 2:19-20).

In the verse 20b, Christ is no objective being to Paul. Christ is Paul's ultimate

subject (Self) and Paul is aware of that. This is the way we cognize what cannot be

objectified: awareness to the Self or awakening to it. Of course, Paul can state the crucifixion of Jesus as a historical, objective event (1 Cor. 1:2-3, passim). But it is




"subjectified" in the quotation above, namely the crucifixion of Jesus is understood as the ground of the spiritual death of Paul-just as it is the case with "baptism" (Rom. 6:3-5), which means the spiritual death and resurrection of the believers with Christ: Paul writes here on the death and resurrection of Christ in the way in which he expresses how his spiritual death and resurrection took place.

There are sentences that show the importance of the phrase "Christ in me." Paul's conversion is told as an event in which the Son of God was revealed in Paul: "But when it pleased God, to reveal His Son in me" (Gal. 1:16). The verse quoted before (Gal. 2:20) shows that Christ, who was revealed in him, did not disappear anymore but stayed in him as the power that bears his whole life. On the other hand, the life under the reign of the power of sin is described as follows: "If I do what I would not, it is no more I who do it, but sin which dwells in me" (Rom. 7:20). The exact oppo- site fact is told in the same form: "It is no more I who do it, but the power which is in me." In other words, the change of the ultimate subject took place at Paul's conversion.

There is another related expression: "The believers (are) in Christ." Paul says, "I thank God for His grace given to you in Christ Jesus" (1 Cor. 4). The believers are "in Christ": they are posited in the field of his power and receive graceful gifts of Christ to them. Thus the phrase "the believers in Christ" means that they are posited in the field of Christ's power, whereas "Christ in the believers" means that Christ is the ultimate subject. Remarkably enough, Christ is on the one hand present in Paul but on the other hand in the Church as his body (1 Cor. 12:27). Therefore the believers are also called the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), thus the whole corresponding to the individual. In other words, each believer encounters, at the ground of their subjectivity-namely in their awareness of the Self-the power that gathers and binds the believers into one body, the Church as the body of Christ. The reality of the church is in this way the reality of Christ in the world, so that church can be identified with Christ (1 Cor. 12:12 ). Christ and church form a paradoxical identity of"one soku many." "So that we, being many, are one body in Christ, each of us being the limbs of others" (Rom. 12:5). We see herejijimuge (mutual penetration of the individuals) among persons. The believers (the individual believer and the church as a whole), when they are posited in the field of the power of Christ, become aware of the power of Christ in them and, based on his power, form an inte- grated community ofjijimuge.

Oneness ofActivities in the Field of Power

As shown above, Christ and his believers dwell in each other to form oneness. Like- wise, in the Gospel according to John, God and Christ dwell in each other. Thus the believers are united to God in Christ (17:20-23). But the Christian Church avoids speaking of the oneness of the believers with God, for it seems to apotheosize humans. For precisely this reason, Gnostic religion and mysticism have been held to be heterodox. Whereas the Gnostic religion spoke of the substantial oneness of the human being with divinity, there is another oneness that is biblical: the oneness of



YAGI SEIICHI

divine and human activities. It is impossible for different substances to become one. That would mean that they become one and the same substance. On the contrary, it is possible for the activities of different substances to become one, as Nishitani, referring to a sermon of Meister Eckhart, pointed out between God and humans.9

To name some understandable analogies: we understand that living body and matter are substantially different. Otherwise there would be no distinction between life and death. On the other hand, we know that all reactions in our body are material, physical, or chemical. The oxidation of hemoglobins in our lungs is a chemical reaction, but it is at the same time the activity of our living body-or to give to it a more verbal expression, a material reaction in our body is working as an activity of our body.

There are other similar examples. While it is impossible for two balls to become one, we can compose two waves into one as is the case in a duet. The wave of the air in the case of the duet can be written with a single line on a disc. But our ears

perceive two singers; it is not the case that two singers become substantially one. Here "one soku two" comes to exist. The words of a messenger are, being his words, the words of his master who sent him. In such cases we speak of oneness not of different substances, but of their activities. Indeed, in the Bible the apostles or prophets are compared to the messengers of God.

When Paul says that Christ wrought through him in the mission of Paul (Rom. 15:18), it is just what I call "oneness of activities." Applying this oneness to the relation of Jesus to God, we can say that Jesus a Jew and God are substantially different but that they form oneness of activities, so that we encounter God when we encounter Jesus. His activity-human activity-is working as God's activity, just as the material reactions in our body are working as the activity of our living body. With ontological or personalist conceptuality, we cannot state the oneness of God and the human, whereas we can do that with the conception of the oneness of activities. With it we can show that the encounter with Jesus is the encounter with God.

We do not need to identify Jesus as a historical person with God. That means the fundamental category of New Testament language is neither substance nor person, but activity. God is not the supreme being as is the case in traditional Christian the-

ology since the Middle Ages or in Western philosophy of Greek origin. God is primarily a transcendent-immanent activity. If so, the noun God is also verbal in nature: the home of the noun God lies in the verb, not in the substantive. Indeed, religions in general speak of god, not because they perceive god as an objective being or a person. When humans experience mysterious activities that help or punish human acts, hidden or obvious, they verbalize the origin, the "thence" of the activities as "god." The noun god is the sign that refers to the invisible "thence" of the mystery. We never

experience god directly as an object. But, as any sentence consists of subject and

predicate, we need the subject (noun) with which to form the sentence that verbal- izes and communicates the experience of mystery.

The "thence" of mystery is then substantialized or personalized so that not the observation, nor the cognition of, but the communal faith in god is established. But we should see that the noun god refers to the presumed "thence" of the mysterious

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activities we experience, that it is therefore a personalized origin of mysterious activity. Both in Buddhism and Christianity, the adherents experience these activities as the power that constitutes human life. God is originally not a common noun referring to an object nor an abstract noun. There are activities that the Bible calls the activities of God and we can experience them in our life and self-awareness, though we do not see God nor encounter God as an object. Based on this awareness, we speak of divine activities in history.

We do not experience God directly. What we experience is mystery, and when we name its "thence," God the mystery is understood as divine-human or divine- worldly, namely as oneness of divine and human activities. Indeed, we find in the New Testament the statement "He who loves knows God, for God is love and love is from God" (John 4:7). We do not see God. But we experience love as something divine-human: human love is experienced, understood as holy, that is, divine- human. This is one of the main origins of the language that speaks of God. If we are not clear about this state of affairs, we will be unable to answer the question posed by naive atheism or naive doubt about the divinity of the historical Jesus-for the pictures of Jesus that are reconstructed by the modern historical-critical New Testament studies represent nothing other than a picture of a human in every respect.

CONCLUSION

In New Testament studies, there is a discipline called New Testament theology. It tries to systematize the theological statements in the New Testament or to present a systematic theology of the New Testament. But it is well known that a unified systematic New Testament theology is impossible because theological thinking of the New Testament is pluralist. I affirm that. Yet what is a theological system? In the Western tradition, geometry was the model of strict cognition, and we can find a good example of such a system in Spinoza's Ethics. Hegelian philosophy is not a logical system modeled after geometry. It is constructed "dialectically"-the logical analysis of the conceptions brings to light the dialectical relations among them that enable the thinker to build a system. In Christian theology, Thomas Aquinus, primarily based on divine revelation, constructed a logical system of theological propo- sitions in his Summa theologica. In such a tradition, New Testament scholars, who well know the impossibility of a unified New Testament theology, nevertheless seek, consciously or unconsciously, to present a logical system of the theological thinking of the New Testament. They want to explicate and define New Testament conceptions and ask: What do such terms as body, soul, life, sin, faith, righteousness, and so on mean? But if the terms of New Testament are in their nature verbal, this way is not quite adequate. New Testament theology should rather represent what is realized in the field of saving power: oneness of divine and human activities as salvation. The meaning of the terms must be sought in this context. Of course, the activities of the powers are not seen objectively. We become aware of them in ourjikaku, awakening to the Self. These powers in the New Testament have not passed away but are still real in our lives and wait for explication.



YAGI SEIICHI

NOTES

1. Ueda Shizuteru, Reading Nishida Kitaro (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1991). 2. Nishida Kitaro, Zenno Kenkyu, (Tokyo: Kodokan, 1911): reprint in The Complete Works

ofNishida Kitaro, vol. 1 (Tokyo: Iwanami, 1965). 3. Hisamatsu Shin'ichi, "Atheism," Toho 12 (1949); reprint in The Collected Works ofHisa-

matsu Shin'ichi, vol. 2 (Kyoto: Hozokan, 1994), pp. 53-93. 4. Nishitani Keiji, Shukyotowa Nanika (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1961); reprint in The Collected

Works ofNishitani Keiji, vol. 10 (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1987). 5. Keiji op. cit. Cited from a.a.0, 169. Translation by Yagi. 6. "Neues Testament und Mythologie," 1941; reprint in Kerygma undMythos, hrsg. H. B.

Bartsch, 1 (1960), pp. 15-48. 7. Jesus (Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1926); Thologie des Nenen Testaments (Tubingen: J. C.

B. Mohr, 1953); Johannesevangelium (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1941). 8. As I talked with him he said that the invisible wall that had separated him from imme-

diate experience disappeared as he realized the latter. I understand the invisible wall as the lan-

guage (in our case categorization in general), for it is the medium that distorts the reality as it is. See Yagi, S., Language and Religion-Language ofReligion (Tokyo: Nippon Kirisutokyou- dan Shuppankyoku, 1995).

9. Nishitani Keiji, "Active Oneness of God and the Human," in God andAbsolute Nothing- ness, The Collected Works ofNishitani Keiji, vol. 7 (Tokyo: Sobunsha, 1987), pp. 34-53.

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