christian doctrine of the trinity. distinctive concerns ... · in this judeo-christian psalm the...

B. NITSCHE: CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY PAGE 1

Christian Doctrine of the Trinity.

Distinctive Concerns and Possible Encounters with Buddhism and Islam

Bernhard Nitsche, Münster/Germany

In 1984 there were some very promising attempts of Christian-Buddhist dialogue with regard

to the issue of the Trinity. Especially Masao Abe contributed a lot to the understanding of the

concept of the Trinity from a Buddhist perspective. Also the field of the Muslim-Christian

dialogue moved on to work on that problem. I will focus primarily on Buddhist-Christian

thinking in my lecture. Although I would also love to expand on the Muslim-Christian

dialogue, I will not be able to do so in the same way.

It is a pleasure for me to elaborate on this topic again and to continue this discussion, because

to me the Trinity is one of the core concepts of Christianity. It is, however, not only a core

concept, but also one of the hardest concepts to understand, even for Christians themselves.

This may be the reason for some of the misunderstandings in the discussions about the Trinity

in the past. To avoid some of these misunderstandings, I will give a short historical

introduction on the origin of Trinitarian thinking, bevor I outline a systematic approach to the

idea of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is not just a metaphysical concept. It has its

roots in the earliest performances of Christian faith, in baptism and the Eucharist. You find

references to Trinitarian thinking in the letters of Paul, so they must have been part of the

faith of the early Christian community. The reason for this early development was the way

Jesus presented himself to the people. The power he presented and his absolutely unique and

innovative way of bringing salvation and love to the people made it impossible for them to

take him just as a human being. Thus, he was understood, on the one hand, as unsurpassable

presence of the divine in human reality. On the other hand, his disciples took him as the

promised Messiah, the Son of God inside their Jewish community of Sonship. It was his self-

distinction from his Father in heaven and from the Holy Spirit, that Jesus and his Father

would explicitly send to humankind after Jesus’ death led to the concept of a distinct unity in

God.

So the Trinity is not a riddle Christianity gave to other religions and not just a theoretical,

hypothetical kind of philosophy, but a practical understanding of God’s own revelation in

Jesus Christ, which is one of the core foundations of Christianity itself.


After explaining some Christian basics about the development of Trinitarian thinking, I will

secondly elaborate the logic of divine fullness and worldly presence under the key concept of

self-surrender. Finally I will put out some musings for dialogical bridges.

Part I: Christian Basics

1. Soteriological Concerns of Trinitarian Theology

To develop the Christian Trinitarian theology, the soteriological concerns are crucial. The

Christian Trinitarian theology did not arise from abstract speculative needs, but as mentioned

above, follows from certain salvation-historical experiences, especially from the person of

Jesus Christ. As already implied, only the soteriological difference between God and world

can explain why human beings are not eternally entangled in misery and suffering. An

eschatological difference, which corresponds to this soteriological difference, allows trust in

and hope for another reality devoid of the hardships of this world.

Thinking God in a Christian way thus operates under Hebrew premises. It is part of this

Jewish heritage in Christian thinking that salvation and peace (shalom, salam) can only be

effected through God himself. If human beings can find salvation and peace only in a trustful

surrender to God, to the other power, two key questions arise:

(a) Can Christians trust in the fact that in Jesus they are not meeting just a created cosmic

mediator to God or even a demonic force pervaded with worldly illusions but with God

himself?

(b) Can Christians trust in the fact that they are meeting THE holy one in the Spirit that

heals, sanctifies, saves and guides into truth?

These two fundamental questions address the insight according to which Christians are in

communion with God, but not unless God himself is present to them in the Son and his

message as well as in the Spirit and his grace and communion: Can the true “givenness” of

God in the Logos and Pneuma be conceived as self-gift of the Father in the Son and Spirit,

which defines God’s inner and own reality (Eigen-Wirklichkeit)?

For the Christian tradition the problem arose whether the newness of their faith could be

framed in taking a position different from Judaism on the one hand and in remaining faithful

to Jewish monotheism on the other hand. The hymn in Phil 2:5–11, in the form of a Christ

psalm, already tries to phrase the extraordinary significance of Jesus Christ in the two basic


models of the selfless „descent“ and the graceful „ascent“ of the servant, obedient to the death

on the cross, into God’s glory. In this Judeo-Christian psalm the origin of Jesus as well as the

reflexiveness of Jesus Christ to God is expressed through clearly divine predication (divine

status, name over all names, etc.). The biblical theocentricity that prioritizes the Father

remains in that. This Christ-psalm refers all to the glory of the Father (Phil 2:5–11). As new

models and figures of speech needed to be established in order to characterize the Christian

confession of the divine presence in the Son and the Spirit, Jewish traditions of divine

intermediaries like the wisdom of God (chokmah), the word of God (dabar) and the spirit of

God (ruah) could be drawn upon. On the other hand, new terms and ways of thinking needed

to be developed in a process of trial and error.

2. Systematical types

As mentioned above, the experience of the soteriological presence of God in Jesus Christ

demands a new way of thinking of God. It becomes necessary to trace back the redemptive

presence of God in his creation to God’s own identity. Thus, the problem arises of how the

differences between the experiences of Father, Son and Holy Spirit (“Ghost”) can be named

while emphasizing the specific Christian-Biblical experience of God, but at the same time, not

threatening the unity of God. In systematic terms, the question was elaborated on in the

history of Christian faith in different ways. There are three possible directions for solutions:

• one can think beginning with the one divine essence evolving the trinity of the persons

• one can think from the salvation-historical trinity of persons to their unity in dynamic

essence

• or, one can ask, starting with the primacy of the Father of the Old Testament, as

originless origin of the being of the Son and the empowering Holy Spirit (“Ghost”)

The three constructions become clear by asking the question “From which point do we start to

think?”. In the history of Christian thinking they emerged several times and where either

rejected as “unsuccessful attempts” or merely accepted as sufficient systematizations.


One of the rejected attempts was the idea, that the three Trinitarian persons where just

external appearances of the one monistic god. This means that the distinction of the persons is

only a predication of the external engagement of God in his creation, while the internal

godhead is monistic. Because the distinction only concerns the modalities of God in his

creation, this idea was called modalism.

A second way of systematization leads to another extreme idea. It is called tritheism and

emphasizes the independence of the three persons and the concept of a subsequent unity of

their essential nature. Although this position was never really taken up in the history of

Christianity, it has often been associated with the word “Trinity”. In the past, this caused a lot

of misunderstanding. From a Muslim perspective, Trinity was understood as Shirk, idolatry

(Beigesellung).

One of the last unsuccessful attempts is called subordination. According to this theory, the

divine logos of truth incarnated in Jesus and the Holy Spirit (“Ghost”) were only regarded as

created and cosmic mediators of God, like angels. Consequently, they both were not seen as

parts of the interior structure of God himself.


(The concept of a created mediator can be traced back to Arius, so the whole idea of

Subordinationism is known as Arianism. From a human point of view, Jesus was more than a

human being. He was some kind of mediator to God and a moral super-human. But with

regard to the Trinity, the incarnated logos, as the word of God, was inferior to God himself.

So Jesus Christ is neither God nor human. This causes a lot of soteriological problems,

because it was no longer God himself who was engaged in the process of the redemption of

his creation and humankind. In this divine subordination and human superordination theory, it

could no longer be pointed out that it is really God himself who, for the sake of all beings,

becomes human.)

From these unsuccessful attempts some successful ones can be distinguished, which found

profound support in early Christian communities and the theology of the patriarchs. They

were elaborated on in different traditions and in a process of dissociation with the

unsuccessful attempts.

One of these successful attempts was the idea of “intrapersonal Analogy”. It was developed

by Augustine, who took the structure of the human mind in its daily processing as an

analogical picture for the structure of the deity’s inner dynamic. He reworked his first own

idea of the structural similarity between God and a loving person, who is united with their

beloved one in love. He turned his attention to the inner process of the human mind, in which

a subject reflects on itself. Like the human mind the subjectivity of God reflects itself in three

ways: The memory of its own origin (memoria sui), the awareness of itself (intelligentia sui)

and the loving volition of its own life and of the lives of other people (voluntas sui). These

three mind processes are represented by the three Trinitarian persons, the Father, the Son and

the Holy Spirit (“Ghost”).

In 1984 Michael von Brück related to this model when he quoted Bruteau: »This relational

oneness is most clearly experienced in love and knowledge, both of which depend on the

merging of two into one consciousness without collapsing into identity. Consciousness

becomes aware of itself only when it realizes what it is conscious of. Although it is unified in

itself, it is so only on the basis of a distinction. Even pure consciousness, insofar as it is

awareness, has this dynamic, relational aspect. This distinction arises from the existential

reality of the autonomous acts of knowing and loving which also constitute the unity. So the

plurality and the unity are both referred to the same act, and that act is characteristic of the

highest conscious selfhood«.


Later, this model could be radicalized through subsistent relations by Thomas Aquinas, in

which the relations became primary and the persons secondary aspects of the relations within

the divine self-realization. This way, the Trinity can be thought, not as a choreographic

performance of three interacting agents, but as an infinite play of distinct relations, whose

points of contact are called “persons”. Possibly, this concept draws an analogy to the

Buddhidst concept of pratitya samutpada.

In the context of medieval monastic life, Richard of Saint Victor developed the idea of an

“interpersonal analogy”. In his view the Father is the origin of love, the Son is the beloved

one and from him and the Father the love opens itself up to the Holy Spirit (“Ghost”) as the

third beloved. So the Holy Spirit (“Ghost”) becomes not only the uniting bond of the love of

Father and Son, but also the instantiated and objectified love of God. As a consequence, the

Holy Spirit (“Ghost”) is the active agent, who opens up a space of love in God itself and in

creation, in which every human being can take part.

Before that, the Cappadocian patriarchs claimed that the three persons in the inner dynamic of

God should be taken as three distinct and discernable hypo-stases of the one love, which is

their perfect communion as the one Godhead. While being distinct, these free carriers were at

the same time understood to implement the fundamental common aspect of the inner life of

God. In their inner dynamic process each one of them is designated with the attributes eternity,

holiness, and faithfulness. Even in this tradition of communial thinking there was never the

thought of three different Gods, which retroactively represented a becoming unity.

Thirdly, there was a school which took the Son as the divine word of God’s ultimate truth in

history. This truth of the Word of God became flesh in the person Jesus Christ. On the other

hand, the Holy Spirit (“Ghost”) was understood as the instantiated love, which is poured into

all human hearts. In this model, God turns his inner essence to his creation in the word of the

truth (Logos) and the love of the Spirit. This way, the Father is excentric in the Spirit as inner

dynamic of the universe and the divine self-communication to all humankind. At the same

time, the Father becomes concentric in the word of promise and of the gospel especially in

Jesus.

These three models of successful systematization could be understood as interpretations of the

inner core of the Christian confession. In that regard we have to distinguish between the

Latin-Western, the Greek-Eastern and the relational-modern way of interpreting the

experience with God. The three basic types reflecting on the Christian experience of the


divine express the legitimate plurality, as well as the correcting and supplementing function of

the different ways of systematizing the confession of faith. They also show the reciprocity of

practical living and theological reflection. In view of tritheism and the suspicion of

insufficient unity, Christianity never abandons the axiom that God is only one in divine unity.

(We can now answer the question “Which point do we start from?”: The Latin way of

thinking starts from the one unity and tries to understand the differentiations afterwards. The

interpersonal tradition starts with the three distinct hypostases and tries to reach the unity. The

Eastern tradition understands the Son and the Holy Spirit as the two innerdivine preconditions

in which God is engaged in his creation.)

The monosubjective or intrapersonal analogy is closer to Muslim theology. Its radicalization

in the concept of subsistent relations of the one essence can be thought as infinite and perfect

complement to the always finite worldly relations and therewith to the Buddhist concept of

pratitya samutpada. Nevertheless this Latin-Western radicalization cannot do justice to the

biblically attested differentiation of the persons and their character as hypostases of the one

divine being. Thus, I will try to build a bridge between Buddhism and Christianity with the

model of relational-subordination. It draws on the Eastern tradition of Christian theology and

has already been introduced to a possible dialogue between Buddhism and Hinduism by

Raimon Panikkar.

Part II: The Logic of Divine fullness beyond and worldly presence

3. God as inaccessible fullness

Christian thinking speaks of God as an ungraspable mystery. In such mystery, God is free of

miraculous circumstances as he is not a riddle that can eventually be solved. But he is the

foundation of all reality. This foundation of all reality has to be more comprehending than the

experienced reality. This foundation is not graspable because it encompasses everything and

gives a home to everything. This way, the mystery assembles all reality within itself and

reveals it. A revolution of thinking God is expressed in this. God is radiating life, internally as

well as externally, utter self-communication. He is not the one self-enclosing salvation, but

pure self-gift and free externalization.

Despite all effort of thinking and hoping, God is infinite origin and therefore also the

inaccessible abyss (Un-Grund). This origin describes an inaccessible fullness and in that sense


also transcends all concepts in its beyondness. This way of thinking God is associated with

the ideas of infinity, perfection and unity. If one wants to talk about God in a meaningful way,

God can only be the one who is himself in perfect abundance. According to the traditional

theory of Anselm of Canterbury, God is the one being greater und more ungraspable than

everything human beings can imagine and think. The formal and material “identity” of God is

strictly only given in God him-self. This radical divine immanence “for himself” remains

concealed to Christian faith reflection. But in his eternal self-communication and self-gift as

love he gives reason for presence and hope. The mirror of constitutive Christian experiences

allows to say:

(1) God has destined himself to be present in human history;

(2) God in himself is unfathomable fullness, but not entirely different from the one he is in his

eternal open attitude towards human beings;

(3) a reality belongs to this God, that precedes the worldly reality in a soteriological

difference and exceeds the worldly reality;

(4) finally this God takes care of the world and human beings. Everything occurs for the

benefit of human beings, for the salvation of human beings and the whole of creation.

That is why the specific feature of Christian faith lies in the “soteriological difference”

between divine reality and worldly reality. The salvation of the world and of human beings is

only evident in this difference that the divine is connected with a different quality as opposed

to misery and suffering.

With this mode of thinking God as absolute fullness, the Christian way of thinking is probably

close to Hinduism and the words of the Īśā-Upaniṣad: “All this is full. All that is full. From

fullness, fullness comes. When fullness is taken from fullness, fullness still remains.”

Expressed in other words this means: God can never be disempowered in his ungraspable

originality and fullness. Where such disempowerment takes place, there is no God anymore,

but a finite idol invented by human beings.

Like this, one can state that all reality and all things are in God, but that God is not all things,

i.e. God does not find his fulfilment in all the reality of the cosmic universe, which we can

describe and can as human beings think as the entirety of possible objects. For God is greater

(Deus semper maior) than everything human beings can conceive.


In consequence, the terms “oneness” or “unity” are not self-evident. An analysis of human

reason shows: the idea of oneness or unity is only searched for within different concepts of

unity and oneness. Like God, “unity” describes an ultimate dimension orienting human

thinking while at the same time demanding too much of it. Human beings only can think unity

in different concepts of unity. These concepts are approximations of the idea which is as such

not graspable.

In any case, there is an inevitable correspondence between the idea of God and the idea of

unity as fullness and perfection. That’s why in the Vedas, the philosophical insight is

essential: “God is One, (although) the wise call him by many names.” Likewise, in Hebrew

thinking it is possible to understand the unity of the one God in the revelation of God’s name

on Mount Sinai as “dynamic unity”. Moses Mendelsohn and Leopold Zunz preferred to say

that God is dynamic essence in a union of total agreement. In this version, the dynamic unity

of the eternal event of divine life in its beyondness becomes worldly presence.

4. Between inaccessible fullness and non-discriminating openness?

Whether a Buddhist-Christian dialogue is possible here, depends decisively on the possible

references of the great silence of the Buddha. This silence includes the extinguishment of all

concepts. The detachment with respect to all limiting concepts, which sham wrong security,

can be explained through the gospel of Mark.

In chapter four Mark recounts the narration of the storm on the sea of Galilea. The disciples

sitting in the boat with Jesus are excited and exasperated and are afraid that they will drown in

the waves of the sea. The narrative depicts Jesus as an antitype, who is sleeping in the face of

the storm. As an image of a liberated life, the story wants to say: during a passage over the

heaving sea of life and on a tack to the shores of liberated life, it is essential to rest in God.

Those who trust in God will not startle as the disciples do, but, like Jesus, will rest in God as

on a pillow. The aim is resting in God, although the storms of life are raging. Does this

metaphor represent a bridge for a Buddhist-Christian dialogue?

The raging sea of life would point to an ocean of origin, which has left all foaming and

roaring behind and indicates another-reality of silence and peaceful clearness, which wants to

become present in our lives. God is an ungraspable mystery and inaccessible abyss (Un-

Grund). Facing him, human beings have to voluntarily and trustfully let go of everything,


which binds them to their ego, their self-empowered I of self-identification. This is possible to

human beings, first, because they do not live all by themselves. Their lives are mysteriously

opened up and made possible through God. Second, this is possible to human beings, because

there is a difference between the psychological self-centered ego and the originally free

capacity of spontaneity and self-actualizing. Third, this is assigned to human beings, because

the fulfilling substance of existence does not lie in narcissist self-apotheosis. The aim of life

lies in a double devotedness to other free human beings and to the free and inaccessible

foundation of existence.

This foundation, however, cannot be grasped through the principle of sufficient reason. The

foundation is a gift of the inaccessible abyss (Un-Grund) during humans’ passage over the sea

of life. As inaccessible abyss and free origin, this reality can be indicated, but not

imperatively be defined. This originless origin, which the great silence shows to be ineffable

origin, defines an ultimate horizon or shoreless ocean that vivifies the seas of human life. This

primordial ocean is different from the describable seas of life, that are travelled through, in

that it cannot be delimited.

As a shoreless and limitless ocean, it is the inner reality of everything without being

composed of everything. This ocean precedes all seas and allows for them to exist. This

divine ocean does not find fulfillment in the entirety of reality. It is at the same time an event

of presence and absence in abundance. Martin Heidegger’s thought of ontological difference

allows for understanding the event beyond the principle of sufficient reason. The original

release of world and human beings occurs within the event of inaccessible presence and

existence.

Within the Christian tradition, the positivity is usually not negated and the faintly burning

wick is not quenched. All finite, delimiting and defining statements are not enough for stating

divine infinity and perfection in positive fullness. That is why they have to be purified in the

stream of fire (Feuerbach) of negation. It would, however, constitute a misunderstanding if

this necessary bursting of all finite terms and concepts would lead to determining the negation

in pure negativity. Instead, in Christianity, it is all about showing a fullness that cannot be

grasped by human thoughts, because it is abundance.

When, according to Christian understanding, God is neither the graspable and the ungraspable

positive existence of being nor the negative “existence“ of non-being, God or the ocean would

have to be thought as this unfathomable horizon, by which the difference of being and non-


being could be understood. Insofar as Christian thinking understands the ungraspable and

unfathomable God as the horizon of the difference between being and non-being, the question

arises of whether the great silence of the Buddha is an empty silence, because there is nothing

to be said or it is a fulfilled silence, as all that can be said is not enough.

In this second sense, I interpret Shunyata with Masao Abe in the sense of a logic of boundless

openness without excluding decisions and without discrimination (Offenhaltung). In relation

to divinity or God there is no positive or negative decision to be made. That which refers to

the Great Silence, is neither being in the sense of a determinable being nor in the sense of the

entirety of all being (finite things); nor is it non-being in the sense of an empty nothingness.

Defining the negation in pure negativity, would hypostatize being into a nothingness (nihil

negativum). Nirvana is entirely unobjectifiable and unconceptualizable. With the words of

Masao Abe, it can be stated that “Shunyata is Non-Shunyata (ashunyata); therefore it is

ultimate Shunyata (atyanta-shunyata).”

In contrast to this the Christian tradition would emphasize the possibility of ultimate positivity

so this revers to the question of the positive unity of identity and difference. Knowing that,

two directions for clarification and query form themselves:

First: Can Shunyata be interpreted as a boundless openness for the event of the horizon in

concrete ultimate fullness in the silence?

Second: Is there a Buddhist tradition that can appreciate the positivity of unity in distinct

difference, especially between Samsara and Nirvana?

In Christian thinking of soteriological difference, God is the horizon, in which being and non-

being can be discerned. It emphasizes that God embraces all beings in love, without

eliminating the conditioned existence inside the universe.

5. From unfathomable origin to the experience of presence


In agreement with this, Hans Urs von Balthasar and Raimon Panikkar have rendered the

Christological motif of kenosis profitable for grasping the Father and the Trinity as a whole.

God in himself and in view of the world is pure self-surrender and self-kenosis (Philippians

2:5–11). This way, it can also be stated within the Christian tradition that the Father is full

self-surrender. He fully empties himself. This occurs when he breathes the equally eternal

Spirit of love and the equally eternal Son or Logos of truth. Even the world itself is an

outcome of this kenotic structure of God.

By virtue of the Spirit, God lives in the world and in the hearts of human beings as an offer

inside the inner dynamic. In the Son or in eternal Wisdom, he takes shape; because God’s

eternal self-expression and God’s eternal wisdom are preimages and prototypes

(Vorausbilder) of the world and of creation. That is why the invisible Father is only visible in

the Son or in the Wisdom. According to Christian understanding, part of this self-emptying of

the Father is that God passes everything of himself, on to the Son and in that sense devolves

all power and glory to the Son. Therefore, the eternal Son or the eternal Wisdom can be

named ‘image’ of the Father. Saint Irenaeus thus emphasizes that the Son is visibility of the

invisible Father. I agree with Raimon Panikkar when he says that if God is the abyss of

silence, God is graspable in this unfathomable depth: „God is utter and absolute silence, the

silence of being and not only the being of silence. His word, which expresses and consumes

himself fully, is the Son. The Father does not have being: the Son is his being. The origin of

being is not being […].

The self-statement „I“ can only be stated in relation to a „You“, a „You“ that can itself only

emerge if there is an „It“. The Father quoad se, for himself is not and therefore he is not even

an „I“. He only reveals himself as the Son in the Spirit. […] Surrendering to the Father results

in an apophasis of being; it is a movement to nowhere, a permanently open prayer to a

limitless horizon that looks like a mirage because he is nowhere. The image, the icon,

however, exists: it is the Logos. Being is only a metaphor, a revelation of what would not

even be if it was fully revealed, because being itself is its manifestation, its epiphany, its

symbol.“ Rather this kenosis of the Father becomes concrete in the course of the world and

history. Insofar as the Father devolves all power and glory to the eternal Son and the eternal

Wisdom, he is present to the world through the preimage and prototype (Vorausbild). The

unoriginated origin can only be recognized in the Son as epitome of the world.

(„Whoever sees Christ, sees the Father, because he is the Father made visible, because there is

nothing to see of the Father apart from the result of his fatherhood, that is the Son. But seeing


the Son means seeing him as the Son of the Father and therefore seeing the Father, or better

seeing him through the Son. There are not two perspectives, one for the Son and the other for

the Father: ‘Whoever sees me, sees the I in me that begets me and gives me existence.’

Strictly speaking, one does not see the Son beyond the Father, nor the Father beyond the

Son.“)

[Francis D’Sa frames this Trinitarian dimension agreeing with Panikkar: “The Father is the I,

entirely transcendent and therefore ineffable. In a similar way, the Spirit is the spirit of

communication between I and Thou/You. It is the We of the Trinity. Neither the I nor the We

is being; the I is the origin of being and the We is the foundation of being. The transcendent I

is the silence of being, the silence that we connect with Buddha, with Nirvana and Sunyata.

Buddhism emphasizes the apophatic way regarding the high and holy mystery, Panikkar

thinks. On the other hand, the immanent We is the foundation of being; therefore we cannot

be in direct contact with it. The original We is the ineffable, ‘neither this or that’ of the

Upanishad.”]

In such externalisation, God’s surrender occurs for the world and for history and its liberation

from self-estrangement. In that, God radically and wholly promises himself in the Son or in

the Wisdom. Human beings do not need to bind themselves to finite entities, but can let go of

themselves and at the same time can wholly appreciate themselves. Human beings are elected

metaphors of God and as such are possible locations of truth. But they can also be possible

locations of failing untruth. Knowing that the Father unconditionally wants them, which is

revealed in the Son as true gnosis, human beings can leave behind much of their mechanisms

and strategies of self-assertion and rivaling and just „be“. They do not need a reason for being

allowed to exist that needs to be acquired or fought for. In God’s self-emptying in favour of

human beings, they can, out of divine promise and appreciation, live freely. Can such a self-

comprehending in love and freedom in Budhhism be understood as “natural”?

[The eternal self-utterance of the Father is, in the person of Jesus, the human way

(nirmānakāya) of unsurpassable and exhaustive presence. Deducing from this singular case, it

is surmisable that something like that can also happen through other human beings. Although

not in the same way and not in the same quality, Christian theology can acknowledge other

forms of presence of ultimate truth and redeemed life. Especially encountering Buddha is,

through Christian eyes, a central challenge. With that in mind, Romano Guardini already

wrote in the thirties of the last century: „There is only one, who could be thought of as

moving close to Jesus: Buddha. This man is a great mystery. He is free in a terrifying and


almost superhuman way; at the same time he is merciful with a mercy as powerful as a world-

force. Perhaps, Buddha will be the last one that Christianity will need to face up to. What his

meaning is for Christianity, no one has said yet.“]

Part III: Aspects for discussion

For Christian thinking personal presence of the divine is constitutive. This touches on two

aspects: First, the distinction between Dharmakaya and Nirmanakaya as well as the

relationship between an entrusted person with the Buddha. In this concern, supposedly, there

is rather a link to the vocation and reverence to Buddha in Honens interpersonal

understanding of the encounter with Amida than in the understanding of Buddha in Shinrans

Jodoshinshu. Second, the question of presence relates to the unity in discernable difference

between Samsara and Nirvana. If there is no qualitative difference, any distinction of the two

terms Samsara and Nirvana is superfluous. And if there is such qualitative difference, but it

cannot be recognized and named under the conditions of human existence, nothing can be

done about that problem and no other truth, which is different from Samsara or the normative

force of the factual, can be recognized.

[(In other words and from a Christian perspective: according to Christian understanding the

divine inaccessibility and infinity can be understood as a shoreless ocean of the human soul

and of human existence. This shoreless ocean is, however, no devouring abyss but an

originless origin testifying life. As origin, this sea intends a surplus of life and never its

extinction. That is why the shoreless ocean at the bottom of the human spirit and at the bottom

of all human experience of reality shows to be an ocean which exceeds a horizon to

understand the difference of being and non-being. All oceans of life, which human beings

pass in the rhythm of the tides, in the whirlwind of activity or the waves of life are

expressions of the fullness of being.)]

In the Christian tradition, this qualitative and soteriological difference between humankind

and the fullness of being in Christ is usually interpreted as an ontological surplus or a

metaphysical “more” in Christian thinking. In substance, it is more about a qualitative

otherness, which human beings cannot produce by means of their self-power (jiriki), but

which is given to them by an other-power (tariki). What matters in dialogue with Buddhism is

how the qualitative priority or surplus of the Buddha-being or the Buddha-truth (dharmakāya)

can be expressed as an implication of Nirvana.


This thought can be evolved in a twofold way and thereby be distinguished for a

Buddhist-Christian and a Christian-Muslim dialogue. According to Christian understanding,

divine presence is an inaccessible gift in the divine event of self-surrender. This presence

happens in two modalities:

First, the divine Spirit (or rūḥ al‐qudus) that, testifying life, is alive within the divine

opens up closeness within the finite world and Samsarian reality from within. Augustine had

stated for Christian thinking: But you were more inward to me than my most inward part; and

higher than my highest (»interior intimo meo et superior summo meo« (Confessions, III,6,11).

It would therefore also be possible to state within Christian thinking that God is by virtue of

his Spirit more inward and closer to human beings than their carotid artery.

The Spirit names the connecting immanence in God as well as the connecting,

vivifying and dynamiting divine immanence in the world. It is divine reality, which precedes

all worldly reality, which is inward and opens up finite reality. Keiji Nishitani points out: »the

spirit of Tathāgata (‘the one who thus comes and goes as he is and as what he is’) is reflected

in the spirit of man, and at the same time the spirit of man enters that of the Tathāgata«.

Second: The divine word of truth, on the other hand, differs from this. It designates

eternal self-utterance of the origin and God’s eternal promise on behalf of human beings.

[Here, there is a difference between the comprehensive term of truth or all truth (dharmakāya)

and the limited words of truth (dharma). In this connection Nishitani, von Brück and Lai

recognize a functional equivalent between the presence of dharma or dharmakāya in

Siddhārtha Gautama and the presence of the divine logos in Jesus. This equivalence evokes

the Christian query of whether the Buddhist understanding of the dharmakāya obviously

requires a distinction between the eternal yet apophatic higher presupposition of all becoming

(nirvāṇa) and the eternal truth (dharmakāya). The eternal truth of dharmakāya is thus

undetermined. But it seems determinable by suchness.

For Christian thinking, it is decisive that singular testimonies of truth are only on their way to

the ultimate truth, which can only be God himself. Also the difference between the infinite

and eternal divine truth and the finite and temporal human truth is expressed in these terms.

According to an old metaphor, they are on a pilgrimage in time to see, in the future, the

eternal truth of God. The inaccessibility arises as a result of this difference between divine

quality and human faculty of understanding. The reliable presence, however, is the result of

the divine attentiveness and promise. Thus, the truth of God is only possible in the modalities


of loving trust and hoping venture. For the Christian-Buddhist dialogue a question relates to

this: Can the dharmakāya, which reaches out beyond all determination, be defined by human

beings, while it differentiates itself in the different dharmas?]

In the dialogue between Christianity and Islam, it is significant that the Christian doctrine of

the Trinity performs no (temporal, ontic) addition or idolatry (Beigesellung) (shirk) of three

entities, only united subsequently. Unity has always existed within the Godhead from all

eternity, but can be thought differently with different concepts of unity!

For the dialogue between Christianity and Islam the question evolves of how Q 4:171 might

be understood: The Messiah, Jesus son of Mary, was but a messenger of Allah, and His word,

which He conveyed unto Mary, and a spirit from Him. (Q 4:171). What does the formulation

of “his word“ (Q 3:45) and “spirit from him” (Q 26:192) mean in this context, when it is

related to God himself? Can this sentence self-critically lead one to recognize, that there can

be different exegetical interpretations of the Quran? Then the possibility to translate “a word”

or “his word”, “a spirit” or “his spirit” cannot easily be played off against each other. There

seems to exist a legitimacy for both variants, with different systematic implications.

In any case, it is inspiring when the Sunnit scholar Ibn Taymīya acknowledges that for the

presence of the divine spirit or the divine word that, even from a Muslim perspective, an

obligatory subordinating mediation through the archangel Gabriel does not have to be thought.

Thus the divine word and the divine spirit can also be thought of as unmediatedly given

presence of God.

To Ibn Taymīya problems arise because he interprets the Christian faith in an ontic, not in an

ontological manner. He presents an ontic order of finite relations. The communion of Father,

Son and Holy Spirit is then understood in terms of a temporal and ontic subordination. This is

the case “when you claim that ‘the Father is the divine being and origin of life and of

speaking’, then the Father pre-cedes living [spirit] and divine speaking [word], because the

origin is always first, but you cannot think this of God.” At this point the divine dynamic are

thought finitely. It is temporalized and onticized, thus lined up like as a sequence of finite

entities.

Summary: In contrast to some interpretations from outside and misunderstandings from inside,

Christian self-understanding proclaims the eternal divine life as a soteriological as well as


ontological communion of dynamic fullness and love. According to Christian thinking, it is

central that there is a logical order without ontological subordination. The dynamic

communion in God is pure fullness and pure perfection of the hypostases in reciprocal self-

surrender and in total accordance. Looking at the eternal self-gift one can summarize: In

accordance with Panikkar and von Brück, I can formulate: The originless origin of the Father

is, without temporal difference or ontic inferiority, the logical condition of the Son and the

Spirit. He is the “wherefrom” (origin, source of the whole Godhead). The Logos-Son is

eternal self-utterance and the Spirit is eternal self-witnessing of life. In total kenosis the Father

finds his fulfillment as self-gift to the eternal and divine word of truth as fullness of being.

Through the Son as fullness of being and distinct fullness of truth all being exists. He is the

creative and creating wisdom. The Father also finds his fulfillment in the self-gift to the

eternal and divine Spirit of love. This vivifying and creative power is the mystic foundation of

all dynamic processes in the world. Through the eternal word of truth in the Son and through

the eternal Spirit of love, the Father gains inaccessible and unconditioned presence in

humankind. In contrast to Karl Rahner and to the critique of Masao Abe in view of Rahner’s

thinking, it can be said, that the eternal and infinite God is in himself eternal and infinite

relation as well as perfect unity in communion. That’s why the Trinitarian patterns expresses

the dynamic unity in innerdivine discernement as “advaita (non-duality) of individuation and

unification”. In transcendental difference to and soterial solidarity with the universe the triune

God constitutes a union in love and out of love: “God is above (epi), through (dia) and in (en)

all (Eph 4:6).

christian doctrine of the trinity. distinctive concerns ... · in this judeo-christian psalm the...

Documents