Lecture: Buddhist Religion from Christian Perspective

Dr. Bradley Holt, Augsburg College (guest lecturer for Payap University)
January 2002

I had the good fortune to join with a group of students from Augsburg College, under the leadership of Dr. Bradley Holt, who were studying Buddhism for their winter term of study. At the last minute, Dr. Holt provided a replacement lecture for Rev. John Butt of Payap University who had to be hospitalized. In response to Ajaan Saeng's lecture on Buddhism and Christianity, Dr. Bradley Holt gave a passionate lecture on Buddhist and Christian dialogue.

I. God is love.

I differ in thinking about God as personal and involved. The Holy Spirit melts me. God is sexual. Look at the Song of Songs. There is longing in God that is like sexual longing. God is a jealous God, like a lover. He wants the beloved to respond wholly to the lover. There is also a courteous love. Julian of Norwich talks of this kind of love which respects the beloved. God longs for me.

I disagrees about the Old Testament. It is not just an add on. It is not a different God. The Marcionites would have agreed with Ajaan Saeng, but the church said Marcion was wrong. You can't understand the New Testament without the Old Testament. It is inaccurate to say that God is wrathful in the Old Testament. God is good, tender, merciful, full of steadfast love in the Old Testament. God can indeed be nationalist. God can ask for death of people. The Bible developed over 100's of years and there is change within the Bible.

II. Jesus Christ is a human being, a healer.

No other founder spent his time doing this. Sex is good and physical problems are taken seriously. The people believe in the miracles of Jesus because they show the compassion and care for the whole person. He's prophet, priest, and king. He stood up at great personal cost. He identified with the marginalized, the poor, and women. He criticized people who thought they were the most religious.

III. The Holy Spirit is God in us.

The Holy Spirit is both personal and impersonal. The law of Karma is the Holy Spirit working, saying "See Your God is Too Small," expanding the concept of God. The Holy Spirit is pouring God's love into my heart to be less egotistical and more loving. The Holy Spirit is the power of God. The Buddha image becomes something of power. Does Jesus have spiritual power? For many Christians there is not much power. In the 18th century Enlightenment we backed away from the concept of spiritual power. God will make all things well in the end. You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you guilty! We like to deny our racism, etc. Jesus was speaking about himself…truth is a person, not a statement. There is freedom from and freedom for. There is freedom from religions of merit and banking in religion. Two men go to the temple to pray and one is filled with merit. God loves me never mind my merit. There is freedom from fear of the spirits, as we heard from the Karen people yesterday on our visit to their village. In order to have freedom for, there is love and service to others.

I am freed to be my true self, to die to the false self, the egotistical arrogant self. Then the true self in the image of God comes into being

IV. Scripture:

We value it so much. Through it we preserve our contact with first century Christianity. I can carry it in one hand. We have wandered from original origins. The Good news is not good advice. It comes to all as good news. Christians have misused it, failed to understand it and they make it into bad news sometime. It is not first of all beliefs or ethics, in its essence it is good news. The church must always be reforming, open to criticism all the time. We still need it today.

V. Mission:

Mission is essential to Christianity and essential to Buddhism too. The three universalizing religions in the world are Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. An ethics of mission is needed. Any forcing is not good. Christian missions connect with imperial powers. Why didn't Christians just wait for someone to ask them about good news? Jesus went out a priori and so did his followers.

With dialogue there are several possibilities:

1. We agree
2. We clash
3. Skew lines where we are not on same planes. See Thomas Merton's A Chritsian Looks at Zen
4. Appreciate and adopt/adapt, i.e. take meditation as an example
5. Whole new understanding that they never would've understood without talking to each other. Both sides learn something new.

We agree:
What is the same about Buddhism and Christianity? Both regret the idea that human life is circumstance of possessions, the religion of consumerism...central mall is the greatest temple of Chiangmai.

We clash:
Where do we clash? The personal character of God. Forgiveness versus karma. Structure of cause and effect. Forgiveness is restoration of relationship. It is not about accounting. Materialism: Yes, Judaism and Christianity are materialist, but there is a proper sense of materialism: to affirm the goodness of creation. All physical things are not against the spiritual, but this is not to say our lives consist in what we consume. In the dialectical materialism of Karl Marx: only reality is material. Christianity and Judaism only teach the first kind of materialism, the goodness of creation.

Skew Matters:
Christians cannot affirm spiritual realms. I just don't know about that and in a similar way Buddhism is not concerned with History of Israel, for instance.

Adapting and Adopting
Meditation is a neglected part of Christian tradition. But it's not like a Hindu meditation: Let go…don't want to be attached. But my goal is not nirvana. Nirvana does not describe anything I want: no more desires, candle blown out, no more self. It's humble but not convincing. I prefer to picture the self in community, praising God, loving other people. This is heaven to me: situation of community, love and praise.

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After the lectures, I joined a group discussion with students from the Augsburg Group:

Both Buddhists and Christians have at some point suggested that theirs is not a religion but a message. Are we forcing them into categories that don't fit either? Language has a separating function.

"Everything I've ever loved, every loved me, made me reach out...it's been you this whole time." C.S. Lewis

One student said that being here in Thailand: makes me want to take a stand to step up to the platform and decide what I believe...