In this deeply engaging, honest book Knitter honors and recognizes the complex differencesbetween two traditions while showing how closely related they are in their approaches tocompassion and loving-kindness. As for the seemingly very different ways they view ultimatereality̶non-theistic and theistic̶he reminds us that all our words about God are symbols.Language itself is composed of symbols, and when we use words for God, they are fingerspointing at the moon.

Knitter, who holds a licentiate in theology from the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome anda doctorate from the University of Marburg, Germany, passes from his own struggle with adualistic Christian belief to how a Buddhist may deal with these questions, then passes backagain to what he has learned from Buddhism, which has helped him to retrieve and deepen hisown Christian belief. Professor Knitter isn’t alone in his journey. Many of us are “doublebelongers,” a phrase he uses for people drawn into an interfaith dialogue that embraces twofaiths.

“In the future Christians will be mystics, or they will not be anything,” Knitter states, quoting hisseminary teacher, the twentieth-century Christian theologian Karl Rahner. Christian mysticalexperiences are unitive, allowing the experiencer to begin to feel “connected with, part of, unitedwith, aware of, one with, something or some activity larger than oneself.” God is an experience.Knitter explains: “Christian saints and mystics have described this encounter with God asputting on the ‘Mind of Christ,’ and Christian literature includes such expressions as ‘one withChrist,’ ‘temple of the Holy Spirit,’ ‘the body of Christ,’ the ‘Divine indwelling,’ ‘participants in thedivine nature.’”1

This is an understanding of the non-duality of God that begins for Christians with kenosis, theGreek word for emptiness. It is a way of understanding Christ as the “Incarnate Word.” Thesecond chapter of Philippians, known as the Kenosis Hymn, describes the kenosis of Christ:

“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God,did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking theform of a slave, being born in human likeness.”

This is an encouragement to empty ourselves, to become as servants to one another, and toenter into the fullness of our humanity, and our full human potential. This practice of kenosis, of

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putting on the “Mind of Christ” and emptying our self, is one way a Christian may come tounderstand Jesus as redeemer, revealer, reconciler, and to accept him as savior. Knittertouches on kenosis when he explains that the “ideal of Christian life is to lose one’s ownself-centered identity in the wider activity of the risen Christ-Spirit. It is to step back and let thisSpirit live in and as us.”2 This stepping back or emptying ourselves of ourselves resonates withthe Buddhist bodhisattva, who develops universal compassion and a spontaneous wish to attainBuddhahood not for his or her own sake but for the benefit of all sentient beings. It is also in theBible, in Romans 8:26-27, 38-39 (RSV):

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought,but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.

27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spiritintercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, northings to come, nor powers,

39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from thelove of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Stepping back, letting the Spirit live in us, allowing the Spirit to pray in and through us,practicing meditation as a “Sacrament of Silence”3 as Professor Knitter suggests, emptying andletting go of the self, 4 offers a way to nurtureand grow within ourselves the graciousness of spirit that God gives to each of us in ways thatare known only to God. Knitter’s work offers a way in which the mystery and light of Christ maybecome known through dialogue and practice with other sacred traditions; here the Holy Spiritof the Christian Trinity becomes boundless, without boundaries, without limitations, infinite inlove, infinite in acceptance, infinite in potential, endless in compassion and wisdom.

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The thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Christian mystic Meister Eckhart expresses kenosis oftenin his writings: “God must act and pour himself into us when we are ready, in other words whenwe are totally empty of self and creatures. So stand still and do not waver from your emptiness.”5

Elsewhere the great German master writes: “Therefore discard the form and be joined to theformless essence, for the spiritual comfort of God is very subtle.”6

And famously: “Only the hand that erases can write the true thing.”7

On the Buddhist side, there is the experience of nirvana̶Snyat or emptiness̶and the relatedconcept of dependent origination or arising. Knitter affirms that God is best understood as the“Ground of Being,” an idea introduced by the twentieth-century theologian Paul Tillich, andthrough our relationships. He points out that the contemporary Vietnamese Zen Master ThichNhat Hanh “translates Snyat more freely and more engagingly as InterBeing, the interconnectedstate of things that are constantly churning out new connections, new possibilities, newproblems, and new life.”8

Understanding God through relationships is critical to Knitter. The source and power of ourrelationships are driven by the presence of the “Holy Spirit.” The importance of this concept ?issummarized by his statement that “behind and within all the different images and symbolsChristians use for God̶Creator, Father (Abba), Redeemer, Word, Spirit̶the mostfundamental, the deepest truth Christians can speak of God is that God is the source and powerof relationships.”

Knitter continues: “To take this concept even further, up to the next level if you will, God as averb is the activity of giving and receiving, of knowing and loving, of losing and finding, of dyingand living that embraces and infuses all of us, all of creation. If we’re going to talk about God,God is neither a noun nor an adjective. God is a Verb! God is much more an environment inwhich ‘we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:29), or God is ‘above all things, throughall things, and in all things’ (Eph. 4:6).”

To this reader, it seems that the more awake we are to this presence and this mystery, the morewe will come to know God is here in this very moment, in the eternal now. This to me is thecentral message of Jesus when he teaches us that his relationship with God the Father (Abba)is intimate, eternal, and within.

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This presence “above, through, and in” constantly calls us into relationships of knowing andloving one another all through our lives, filling us with the deepest joy when we empty ourselves(kenosis) for the sake of others, seeing and finding ourselves in others. This presence is whatwe feel when we are loved and accepted, when we love and accept others, and when we openand give of ourselves selflessly. As it says in Luke 17: 20-21:

And when the Pharisees had demanded of Him when the Kingdom of God should come, Heanswered them and said, “The Kingdom of God cometh not with outward show. Neither shallthey say, ‘Lo, it is here!’ or ‘Lo, it is there!’ For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you.”

Knitter tells us, “A better image of creation might be a pouring forth of God, an extension ofGod, in which the Divine carries on the divine activity of inter-relating in and with and throughcreation.” This pouring forth of God is the engine or fuel of creation, but we as a “People ofGod,” created in the “Image of God,” are also a part of this pouring forth. How this all works isalso part of the mystery.

Another way to say this might be: God as the Trinity is the silence and the stillness before allthings, out of which all creation arises from the nothingness and emptiness that is without formand void, an image taken from the first chapter of Genesis̶when there was nothing exceptGod. It is out of this nothingness (no-thing) or emptiness that we all arise.

As a lifelong Christian, I have been taught my whole life that “the way of Christ” is a way thatcalls me to love others unconditionally with great compassion and loving-kindness. For myself,this is a call that I must answer by loving others in all their diversity of beliefs and ethnicity, evenin all their suffering, and in showing them through that love how Christ lives and dwells withinmy own being.

In the sermon Jesus, The Way That is Open to Other Ways, Knitter quotes John Cobb, anotherChristian theologian, stating: “Jesus is not the way that excludes, overpowers, demeans otherways; rather he is the way that opens us to, connects us with, and calls us to relate to otherways in a process that can best be described as ‘dialogue.’

“If Jesus really is the Way that is open to other Ways, then dialogue with other religions andother believers, should be part of what it means to be a Christian. As many Asian bishops and

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theologians are saying, today dialogue is a new way of being in church. Today we are called tobe religious interreligiously. Committed to Jesus and the Gospel we must also be open to otherreligions and believers.”9

As a Christian̶even a Christian-Buddhist̶someone grounded in Christ and intimatelyinvolved in this interfaith dialogue, I couldn’t agree more. Learning to value the truth andteachings of other faiths while sharing our own is another way for a Christian to be embraced bythe risen Christ and to encounter the Holy Spirit at work in the world.

Without Buddha I Could Not Be a ChristianPaul F. Knitter. Oneworld (www.oneworld-publications.com),2009. Pp. 336. $22.95 Paper

1 Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not Be A Christian (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books,2002), p. 14‒23.2 Ibid., p. 88.3 Ibid., p. 153.4 See Roger Corless and Paul F. Knitter, eds., Buddhist Emptiness and Christian Trinity:Essays and Explorations (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990).5 Eckhart Society‒His Teachings‒Letting Ourselves Go‒Sermon 4: http://www.eckhartsociety.org/ eckhart/his-teachings;see Maurice O’C. Walshe, trans., The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (New York:Crossroad Publishing Co., 2010).6 Karen J. Campbell, German Mystical Writings (Continuum International Publishing Group,1991), p. 91.7 Urban Tigner Holmes III, A History of Christian Spirituality: An Analytical Introduction (NewYork: Seabury Press,1980) p. 151. 8 See Thich Nhat Hanh, The Heart of Understanding: Commentaries on the PrajnaparamitaHeart Sutra (Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press, 1988).9 Knitter, “Jesus, The Way That is Open to Other Ways,” http://www.tcpc.org/library/article.cfmlibrary_id=518, sermon.

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Ron Starbuck: From a Christian perspective, how can an interfaith dialogue open us up to God?

Paul Knitter: Dialogue is necessary in order to be open to and learn evermore about the divinemystery that we call God. The whole purpose of the Christian church, the purpose of anyreligious community I would say, is to receive and to live the very life of that which we call“Ultimate Mystery.”

There is an awareness that this mystery of God, revealed for Christians through Jesus ofNazareth, whom we call the “Son of God” as a strong, powerful, saving, and transforming imageof God, is always going to be greater than anything we can comprehend. As Jesus said, theFather is so much greater than I. In other words the Ultimate Mystery is always more than wecan imagine. It is clear, therefore, that dialogue, opening our hearts and minds to others, issimply essential. Being a religious or spiritual person means realizing that there is always moreto learn, always more to respond to, always more to be surprised by, and that those surprisescan be provided for us in our dialogue with persons of another religion.

RS: In your role as a teacher at Union Theological Seminary, how do you see a new generationof graduate students and church leadership approaching religious pluralism?

PK: Union is an example of a growing awareness within Christian seminaries that other religionsmust be included in various ways in the curriculum and in the whole educational philosophy ofthe school. Christian seminaries are beginning to recognize that in order to teach Christiantheology it is no longer sufficient to teach only the Bible, only the history of the church, only theteaching and doctrines of the church. All of that, of course, remains essential.

When other religions are included, and the dialogue is expanded to include other traditions suchas Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Islam, and Native American spiritualities, it has two primaryeffects. For some students this engagement with other religions becomes an eye opener and aheart opener that calls them to do some further theological homework about how they haveunderstood themselves. For other students this is an opportunity to answer so many of theirown nagging questions about their Christian beliefs and identity, especially beliefs that hold upJesus as the only savior.

To summarize, there is growing awareness among future Christian leaders that one can

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continue to be fully committed to Jesus of Nazareth as savior, as someone who can bring aboutprofound changes for the good in life, and at the same time be truly open to what God may haveto say and reveal through other religions and traditions.

Full commitment to one’s own identity, and true, authentic openness to the identities ofothers̶this balancing of commitment and openness, this is something that is clarifying formany students. As it clarifies, it encourages their explorations. It makes theology an all the moreexciting and life-giving experience.

RS: Is there a way for a Christian to be in a relationship with God as three distinct Personsfound within the Trinity, but also in a more non-theistic transformative way, in a Sacrament ofSilence?

PK: If we accept that God is beyond all our conceptual understanding, then we have to look atall our traditional ways of speaking about God, including the Trinity, as symbolic. Mypredecessor at Union, Paul Tillich, used to say that if you understand what a symbol reallymeans you will never say it’s just a symbol. A symbol reveals, a symbol makes known, alwayssuggestively. Our Trinitarian language is trying to express the way the Christian communitycame to experience the mystery of the divine that was communicated and embodied for them inJesus of Nazareth. It is how they came to talk about the mysterious way in which this one realityof the divine is present in very different ways in our lives.

It includes God as the incomprehensible source of all reality as well as the expression of God asWord, God going out to communicate God’s self. And then there is the experience that the earlycommunity had of God as this abiding inherent spirit within our very being, that animates us,that reveals things to us, that calls us to love. So, there is the father, the son or word, and thespirit or animating energy.

Yet we have to remind ourselves that while these ways of speaking are very important forforming Christian experience and nurturing Christian experience down through the centuries,they are symbols. The mystery that they are indicating is beyond those symbols. We have toremind ourselves that the reality of God is more than can be caught and captured and stirred upin us with the image of a father, with a theistic image. The great Christian mystic MeisterEckhart realized this. He said we must give up God in order to open ourselves and experiencethe reality of God beyond God, the divine reality beyond all of our concepts of God.

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I think Christians can still hold to their images of God by recognizing that they are symbols. Atthe same time, they can be open to the experience of the divine reality that is beyond Godimagery, beyond our way of talking about the divine mystery as God. We need to get beyondsymbols into silence. So, yes, I think there can be a kind of dual practice, which is especiallycalled forth by the dialogue between Christians and Buddhists. Some Buddhists stress silence,and some Christians may stress symbols and images, and doctrines. Yet doctrines call tosilence, silence gives life to doctrines. I think it can be a very enriching way of carrying on one’sspirituality̶

double belonging, double practice, exploring various forms of practice.

RS: John 14:26-27 and Romans 8:26-27, tell us: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom theFather will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said toyou. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Donot let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” ... “Likewise the Spirit helps us inour weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes withsighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of theSpirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

When we enter into a practice of prayer and meditation, into a Sacrament of Silence, do youthink the Holy Spirit is waiting for us in that space as comforter and counselor, to teach us allthings, and remind us of what Jesus taught, and to give us his peace, God’s peace, the peacethat passes all understanding?

PK: My simple answer to your question is a definite “Yes.” This is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit thatis present, that is active, that is moving in ways that we cannot understand or foresee, andwhich are beyond our comprehension. When we do follow these forms of contemplative prayer,prayer in which we open ourselves to the Spirit, without necessarily thinking, without holding onto any image, when we open ourselves in profound radical openness and acceptance of whatour faith tells us, we have the opportunity of deeply and personally coming to the realization thatthe Spirit is part of us, that the Spirit is given to us.

As a theologian I have read that section from Romans often enough, but I can also hear it withinthe context of our discussion on Buddhist-Christian dialogue. As I try to explain in Without

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Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, when I read those words from Romans with, as it were,Buddhist glasses, the words become all the more revelatory, all the more engaging. Paul istalking about the reality he calls Spirit. I call Spirit the reality my Buddhist teacher speaks ofwhen he calls me to let go of all concepts. To let go and to open myself utterly to the presentmoment, in the trust that this present moment contains all that I need, that all that I need isgiven to me in my very being, in my very being lived right now, in this moment, in this particularcontext. That is the Spirit.

I hope that I’m not being too quick here but Buddhism has helped me to appreciate and begrateful for this wonderful, powerful image of the divine that we have been given as Christians:This setting aside of words and imagery and opening oneself to what St. Paul calls God asSpirit, letting that Spirit make itself (or herself or himself) felt within us, grow within us, to leadus. That is a beautiful passage, and I think it is a passage whose richness can never be fullyappreciated. But I think Buddhism is a way of helping Christians possibly appreciate it a little bitmore.

RS: Are the Buddhist concepts of Nirvana-Snyat and the Christian concept ofKenosis-Self-emptying two sides of the same coin?

PK: I would not want to say that Nirvana/Snyat and Kenosis/Self-

emptying are two sides of the same coin. That might be a little too neat and give the impressionthat there are no real differences between them. I would prefer to say that they are two different,but similar, fingers pointing to the same moon. In their different ways̶

Buddhists emphasizing the practice of meditation that leads to prajna or wisdom, and Christiansemphasizing the practice of social engagement that calls for compassion and justice̶both ofthem attain basically the same goal of a radical personal self-emptying that brings about therealization that our true identities are not to be found in our selves. 

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