Theism in Buddhism and Christianity

Two great masters Buddha and Jesus. One fetched the title ‘atheist’ (Buddha) and the other ‘theist’ (Jesus). They were dialectically integral but pedagogically critical due to which one got the ‘privilege’ of being the founder of a ‘theistic’ way (Christianity) and the other had to face the ‘ignominy’ of being the founder an ‘atheistic’ way (Buddhism). Both started as ‘Way’. Christianity was initially known as ‘The Way’. Finally both got relegated into a religion. Christianity giving predominant importance to the orthodox dimension of religiosity and Buddhism giving vitality to the orthopraxis realm of religiosity. What is required is to bring the orthodoxy and orthopraxy dimensions together to break the cocoon of religion and reclaim the fragrance of the Way. This is an attempt to bring together the thoughts of either master on theism.

Buddha and Jesus     

There has always been an argument that Buddha rejected the notion of God and so he was even called an ‘atheist’ whereas God was of much importance to Jesus. This is not true. When we traverse the recent studies we find that Buddha rejected the notion of a Personal God i.e. God as a supernatural being separated from the universe. But there is another notion of God, namely the sacred as ‘Godhead’; as the unborn, uncreated, undifferentiated, incorporeal source of all that is present now here and not yet. Jesus took a step further by calling God ‘Abba’ thereby making the transcendental, immanent through incarnation.  There is a social and political passion in Jesus that we do not find in the Buddha. Jesus was a social prophet more than a rabbi. He challenged the dominant hegemonic powers of his day and its ruling elites and affirmed an alternative social vision. Indeed Jesus’ activity as a social prophet – as a voice of religious social protest is the most likely reason that his public activity was so brief compared to the Buddha’s.  That is exactly the reason why he was executed as a criminal. Regarding the birth of two masters; Buddha was born into a wealthy ruling class, Jesus into an oppressed peasant class. As Crossan says (cited by Marcus Borg), “a passion for justice comes from the experience of injustice”. Jesus stood in the tradition of Moses’ and the classical prophets of ancient Israel, all of them God-intoxicated voices of religious and social protest.

Theism/ ‘Atheism’ of Buddhism

The origin of the idea that Buddhism is ‘atheistic’ per se is based on following four points:

1. First is the common belief that Buddhism denies that existence of soul, the atman – conscious being or substance (nairatyamavada).

2. Secondly in Buddhism the end of human beings is understood as total extinction and complete annihilation.

3. Thirdly is the Buddhist discovery that seems to exclude a transcendent cause.

4. Fourthly is the negative interpretation of Buddha’s silence, especially that concerning another worldly experience. 

The Ontic Apophaticism of Buddha

When we hear the word Apophaticism we most often try to link it with epistemological Apophaticism, posting merely that Ultimate Reality is ineffable – human intelligence is incapable of neither grasping it nor embracing it. Or else we seek shelter in gnoseological apophaticism that comforts the ineffability on the part of the Ultimate Reality, we respect. Buddhist Apophaticism, on the other hand, seeks to transport this ineffability to the heart of ultimate reality itself declaring this ultimate reality in its expressions and communications no longer pertains to the order of ultimate reality but precisely to the manifestation of that order is ineffable not merely in our regard but as such ‘itself’. Thus Buddhist Apophaticism is an ontic apophaticism. Raimundo Panikkar says, to quote verbatim :

“Being after all is what is; but what is, by the very fact of being, is in some manner thinkable or communicable. It belongs to the order of manifestation, of being. And therefore it cannot be considered to be the Ultimate Reality itself.”

It means that to define and express the Ultimate Reality we need to conquer ‘it’. And if ‘it’ is conquered then ‘it’ no longer remains the Ultimate Reality. This is the reason why the Buddha chose the pedagogy of ontic apophaticism. There is a tradition in Buddhism as per Sarvajna. “A point on which Buddhist tradition is unanimous”; Buddha celebrated his Enlightenment with Brahma. In this myth, the first reaction of Buddha to his Enlightenment was an inclination to withdraw into absolute silence and to communicate his intuition to no one. Brahma insisted him to reconsider. Reluctant and skeptical Buddha’s bewilderment augmented whether he would find many disciples capable of grasping his message. Brahma reassures him; but still the Enlightened One determines to speak only of the way to reach the goal and not the goal itself – the ultimate and most sublime truth i.e. nirvana. So the Buddha in order to keep the transcendental, transcendental per se denies ‘it’. If this is not done then we would be reducing the Ultimate Reality into intra-mundane, one more being among beings, however earnest the protest of our lips and even of our heart that it is sublime and ineffable. Minoru Nambara states, “For him who has awakened it does not matter whether the world exists or does not exist, both Brahman and Atman are no more.” As Ludwig Wittgenstein remarks “Human language cannot even describe the aroma of a coffee then how could it express a concept so sublime as ‘God’”.

Christian Theism

According to Tetsutarao Ariga, a Japanese theologian pertinently a religious scholar, speaks in Japanese Review of Japanese Religions as cited by Panikkar; there are two kinds of thinking. A hayatheological thinking and ontological thinking. The former would be the property of Hebrew mentality and the latter of the Greek. This is because it is fascinating to note that the Hebrew word hayah is not ‘being’ but ‘becoming’, ‘toiling’ and even ‘occurring’.  It was only after the intellectual and theological invasion of Greeks, Christians in their Hellenistic arena started to attribute this hayah with the Greek so called equivalent Theos or to be specific ontology. That is Being = God. Actually Theos in classical Greek is a common noun, properly denoting an event, a divine fact. In Hebrew redaction, God is still given the proper name – Yahweh but Christians used this name bearing a personalistic connotation to designate the ‘Father’ of Jesus Christ. What we Christians have done and in fact very much derogatory de facto, we have anthropomorphized the dynamic realm of Theos into a word of personal connotations. We have projected all are intentions, desires and all that we (humanity) lack to or on this ‘God’. This has led to various trajectories like, Divinization of Being which includes; Anthropomorphism, Ontomorphism and Personalism and Deontologization of God. In spite of all these, at the bottom of Christianity, God remains ‘humankind divinized’. It is in this context a re-visioning of Christ becomes exigent. The incarnation of Christ does not only make us realize the immanence of the transcendental but also throws light on the nature of ‘it’. Whenever situations demanded of Christ to speak of belief in God, instead of spending his energy in describing the nature of God he spoke of the qualities of the true believer. What Jesus the Christ promoted exclusively was a behavioural acknowledgment of God.

The sublime of Humanity turns out be the healthy ground on which all ‘Ways’ could enter into a dialogue; a dialogue that transcends the finitude of language and becomes a lifestyle. Buddhism teaches God as ‘Humanity Divinized’ but Christians (not Christ) made ‘Humankind Divinized’ and clearly demarcates the objectivity of the Divine and the subjectivity of the humans. Paul Tillich comes up with a more or less similar attitude having a slight propensity towards Buddhist theism. Tillich using his Dialectical Humanism Methodology argues a concept ‘God beyond God’. It is the system that describes an unfulfilled deity struggling for self-realization, a God that moves in Hegel-Marx fashion from potential unity (thesis) to actual self-estrangement (anti-thesis) toward actualized potentiality (synthesis). Reflecting this divine dialectic is a human one; human moves in parable from union to separation to reunion, from God to no God to the non-supernatural God – humanity. This could be the animating principle for inter-faith harmony. In the cry of dereliction we see Jesus crying “My God My God why have you forsaken me?”; this being the first time when Jesus addressed God as God. All other times Jesus addressed the Divine as ‘Abba’. Through these words he challenges the God of Religions and it is very interesting to see his next statement “Father into your hands I commend my spirit.” Jesus affirmed his Abba consciousness and breathed his last. Jesus’ Abba and Buddha’s sunyata are one but to realize them we must understand their silence. I would like to conclude with the words of Hans Waldenfels:

“Do not the smile of the enlightened Buddha; And the tortured countenance of the crucified Christ; really come face to face, when there is a sharing in the depths where the true self resurrects in poverty, death and absolute nothingness?”