Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian.
Young, Richard Fox
By Paul F. Knitter. Oxford: Oneworld, 2009. Pp. xvii, 240.
Paperback 12.99[pounds sterling]/$22.95.
Standing on the edges between two religions, can you see into both
better than when you stick close to the center of either one? The answer
is more likely a "yes" than a "no" or a
"maybe." That is why I prefer for theologians who talk about
the religions to be literate at least in one besides Christianity. In
this respect, Knitter stands out. Not the type who is offended by the
un-Barthian notion that religious similarities might have theological
significance, he discloses in Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian
his "love affair" with Buddhism and tells us that he now has a
Tibetan name, Lotus Healer (Urgyen Menla).
Does this kind of conversion entail apostasy? Knitter thinks not,
and until the penultimate page where the admission is made, he talks as
if having Buddhism as an interlocutor simply adds stereoscopic depth to
his Christian faith. Knitter anticipates the charge of infidelity with
the dubious defense that "at the end of the day, I go home to
Jesus" (p. 215). Conceptually, one wonders how
"double-belonging" really works. Does not one have to have a
primary symbol system to do the heavy lifting? Would not the dissonance
otherwise become unbearable?
Knitter's profession of faithfulness might sound more
convincing if the Christianity he talks about did not look so
theologically unattractive. For a person who enjoyed the best of
Catholic educations (at the feet of Karl Rahner), it seems a shame that
the stale Catholicism of his Chicago youth still constrains his vision
of its possibilities. In contrast, Buddhism seems to him as fresh as the
morning dew. Though Knitter's Buddhism is utterly ahistorical and
quintessentially American, I actually find it reassuring that I cannot
recognize it as Theravada or Mahayana or Vajrayana. This tells me that,
metabolically, he continues to process "Buddhism" as a
Christian, cognitively if not affectively.
Richard Fox Young holds the Timby Chair in the History of Religions
at Princeton Theological Seminary.
