Harold Netland
THE EAST COMES WEST
(OR WHY JESUS INSTEAD OF THE BUDDHA?)
Harold Netland
The past century has produced dramatic changes in the religious landscape of the West. Whereas at the beginning of the twentieth century the majority of Christians were in Europe and North America, most Christians today are in Asia, Latin America, and Africa.1 As a result of the phenomenal growth of the church worldwide during the twentieth century, Christianity is today a genuinely global religion.
Growth in the number of Christians worldwide, however, has been combined with the declining significance of Christianity in much of the West. Not only has the church lost much of its cultural and social influence in Europe, but the numbers of Christians there is in serious decline. Although Christianity remains the dominant religion in the United States and retains greater cultural influence there than in Europe, the religious demographics of both North America and Europe are being transformed as growing numbers of Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Jains reside in the West. The presence of adherents of other religions has become so pronounced that Diana Eck of Harvard states, “The United States has become the religiously most diverse nation on earth. … Nowhere, even in today's world of mass migrations, is the sheer range of religious faith as wide as it is in the United States.”2 Changing immigration patterns, along with globalization and new telecommunications technologies which bring the world into our living rooms, have produced an unprecedented awareness of other religious traditions.
Western Fascination with Eastern Religions
The West has long had a fascination with Eastern religions. Europeans were captivated by the exotic reports from seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries to China. The Chinese thinker Confucius was idealized as a rational theist who had arrived at belief in God and sophisticated moral teachings apart from any divine special revelation.3 Increased British contact with India, culminating in the colonization of the Indian subcontinent in the nineteenth century, had a significant impact on European intellectuals. The Hindu sacred text Bhagavad Gita was translated into English in 1785, and translations of other Hindu and Buddhist texts soon followed. Philosophers and literary figures in Great Britain and Germany such as Shelley, Byron, Coleridge, Herder, Schelling, and Schopenhauer were well acquainted with Hindu and Buddhist thought and helped to popularize concepts from Eastern religious traditions.
In the United States during the 1840s, transcendentalists such as Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau were fascinated by the Vedanta philosophy of Hinduism and the Bhagavad Gita. Later in the nineteenth century Buddhism became sufficiently attractive to American intellectuals that prominent Christians began to speak of Buddhism as a threat to Christianity. The remarkable popular appeal of Buddhism is illustrated in the phenomenal success of The Light of Asia, a poem about the life of Gautama the Buddha published in 1879 by Sir Edwin Arnold. The book went through sixty English and eighty American editions, selling between half a million and one million copies in the United States and England.4
The 1893 World Parliament of Religions in Chicago was a major event which greatly increased popular awareness of Eastern religions and helped to legitimize them as alternatives to Christianity.5 The eloquent Hindu Swami Vivekananda had an electrifying effect upon the conference and quickly became a symbol of reasoned, enlightened tolerance, in contrast to the alleged intolerance of Christian missionaries. One of the most significant results of the parliament was setting in motion the first Buddhist mission to the United States. Japanese Buddhists returned home convinced that America was decadent and spiritually bankrupt. A Buddhist participant at the parliament, Shaku Soen, recruited his disciple D. T. Suzuki as a Buddhist missionary to the West. Suzuki arrived in the U.S. in 1897, and during the next five decades he split his time between Japan and America, lecturing and writing on Buddhism for Westerners.6 Suzuki became the most influential spokesman for Buddhism in the West.
During the 1960s and 1970s Eastern religious traditions became especially prominent in American culture. In part, this was due to greatly increased immigration of Asians, as a result of the immigration law reforms of 1965. Among the new immigrants were Hindus, Buddhists, Sihks, Jains, Confucianists, and Daoists. At the same time, growing numbers of Americans were traveling and studying abroad, bringing back with them greater appreciation of Asian cultures and religions. Disillusionment with Western social and cultural patterns found expression in the countercultural movements of the 1960s, which incorporated many Eastern religious symbols and spiritual practices. The attraction of Eastern mysticism was enhanced by the 1968 visit by the Beatles to India and their public identification with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi of Transcendental Meditation fame. During the 1970s a steady stream of self-proclaimed holy men and gurus found their way to America, spreading their dharma of enlightenment and peace.
By the 1980s and 1990s, what had been countercultural and exotic was mainstream and chic in the form of the New Age movement. Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist terms became part of the cultural lexicon and were reflected in movies and popular music. Buddhism, especially Tibetan Buddhism, became popular within the entertainment industry and the academy, due in no small part to the enormously attractive figure of the Dalai Lama. But in some ways the forms of Hinduism and Buddhism now found in the West are different from those which developed in Asia. The elaborate metaphysical frameworks and cosmologies of these ancient traditions (especially assumptions about rebirth as nonhuman forms of life and multiple, ghoulish hells) receive little attention in the West, where the focus tends to be on the practical “this worldly” benefits of meditation.
Growing awareness of other religions—and especially personal interaction with intelligent, morally respectable and deeply committed Hindus and Buddhists—raises troubling questions for Christians. How can Christians claim that Jesus alone is the one Savior for all peoples? Does it make sense to believe that so many sincere, intelligent, and good people are simply wrong in their religious convictions? How do we know that Christianity is distinctively true? Why should one be a Christian rather than a Hindu or Buddhist?7 The church in the West must be intentional in preparing people to understand and respond appropriately to questions prompted by exposure to Eastern religions. Although we cannot explore these questions further here, I will summarize briefly the perspectives of some Asian religions, highlight some challenges they present to the Christian faith, and conclude with some contrasts between Gautama the Buddha and Jesus Christ.
Some Asian Religious Traditions
Many in the West assume that all Eastern religious traditions are basically the same: they offer variations on the same basic theme, usually characterized as a vague monism which maintains that “all is one.” But this is misleading. There is enormous variety, both among various Asian religions and within a single religion such as Hinduism or Buddhism.
Indian traditions include Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism. Although Hinduism includes a bewildering variety of religious and philosophical movements which have developed over the past thirty-five hundred years, all accept in some sense the authority of the Vedas as sacred literature, belief in reincarnation of the soul (atman) in accordance with karma, and, at least until modern times, the importance of caste.
According to the doctrine of reincarnation, persons (and other living things) are continually being reborn as the atman passes from one life to another. The endless cycle of rebirths is regulated by karma, a metaphysical principle which determines current and future states on the basis of past actions and dispositions. The entire process of birth, death, and rebirth is samsara, and the soteriological goal of Hinduism is moksha, or liberation from rebirth through breaking the causal conditions of karma. Traditionally, there are three ways in which moksha can be attained: the way of knowledge or correct insight, the way of works or duty, or the way of devotion to a personal deity.
Many, but not all, Hindu traditions accept the idea of Brahman as the ultimate reality and sustaining power of the cosmos. But there is disagreement over the nature of Brahman and its relation to the human person. Advaita Vedanta claims that the sole reality is Brahman, a nonpersonal reality utterly beyond human concepts and categories, and that moksha comes only through an existential awareness of one's essential identity with Brahman. More theistic forms of Hinduism regard Brahman (or Shiva or Vishnu) as a personal deity and insist that liberation comes not through knowledge alone but through devotion to the deity.
Buddhism, based on the teachings of Siddhartha Gautama (c. fifth century BC), accepts assumptions about samsara but differs from Hinduism in its rejection of the authority of the Vedas. Gautama was born into the home of a local chieftan or ruler. But, determined to discover the cause of suffering, he rejected the comfortable lifestyle of a prince and entered the ascetic life. In his enlightenment experience he discerned the causes of suffering and its cure. The Buddha, as Gautama was known after his enlightenment, traveled around India for over forty years teaching the way to enlightenment and attracting a large following.
The heart of the Buddha's teaching is expressed concisely in the Four Noble Truths: (1) All of existence is characterized by dukkha (suffering, pain, dissatisfaction). That is, dukkha is found in every aspect of existence. (2) The root cause of suffering is tanha (literally “thirst,” but often translated “craving” or “desire”). (3) The disease of dukkha is curable, and when tanha ceases, then dukkha ceases as well. (4) The cessation of dukkha is achieved through following the Noble Eightfold Path.
The Buddha held that everything that exists is characterized by anitya or impermanence and is continually coming into being and passing out of being. He rejected contemporary Hindu and Jain views on the reality of a substantial soul which passes from one life to another. What we normally think of as a person is no more than the ever-changing combination of psychophysical forces—the Five Aggregates of matter, sensations, perceptions, mental formations, and consciousness. What passes from this life to the next is merely the cumulative karmic effects of actions, which form in the next life the (mistaken) perception of an enduring person. Only nirvana is permanent and unconditioned. Nirvana is not annihilation or extinction; it is the ultimate reality which is realized when the conditions producing rebirth are eliminated.
Jainism, founded by Mahavira (d. 527 BC), also rejects the authority of the Vedas. It accepts belief in karma and rebirth but maintains that the soul (jiva) is eternal, self-conscious, and indestructible. Karma is composed of fine particles of matter which cling to the soul and weigh it down, resulting in rebirth. Final liberation comes from the release of the soul from all matter, resulting in the bliss of nirvana. Strict asceticism and adherence to ahimsa (nonviolence to all living things) are necessary for liberation. Jainism traditionally has been atheistic, denying the reality of a supreme being.
We should note briefly the major Chinese religions Confucianism and Daoism. Confucianism, deriving from the teachings of Confucius (d. 479 BC), is primarily a system of moral, social, and political teachings. At a time of great social and political turmoil, Confucius sought principles and virtues which, when manifest in the ruler, society at large, and the family would ensure social harmony and human flourishing. The obligations of filial piety and ancestral veneration reinforce the importance of family and strict social roles for social harmony. Confucianism holds that social and ethical patterns should reflect the cosmic moral order of heaven (Tian). Confucianism eventually came to maintain that human nature is originally good and is corrupted by external influences. Rigorous education, strict enforcement of laws, and careful observation of the rites for ancestral spirits all work together to sustain human flourishing.
Philosophical Daoism (or Taoism) is in many ways a response to Confucianism. Daoism maintains that the cosmos is a manifestation of the eternal Dao (the Way) and that our lives are to be ordered in accordance with the Dao. As the metaphysical ultimate, the Dao is the source of everything. It is mysterious and cannot be captured in words or concepts. Individuals flourish when external constraints are removed, and they follow the natural Way. Paradoxically, it is through wu-wei (nonaction) and reverting back to the Dao, not through formal education and strict laws, that social harmony is realized.
Even this cursory survey reveals that Asian religions are not all the same. The diversity can be seen in the ways they answer two questions. First, is there a Supreme Being who has personal attributes (is good, merciful, an agent who can act, etc.)? Buddhism and Jainism both deny the existence of a Supreme Being or Creator. Although Buddhism acknowledges the reality of many buddhas and bodhisattavas, and Mahayana Buddhism teaches the ultimacy of the Dharmakaya or universal Buddha-essence, Buddhist metaphysics rules out the possibility of an eternal creator God. Some Hindu traditions, for example those following the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara (d. 820), claim that the religious ultimate is Nirguna Brahman, a nonpersonal absolute. By contrast, the Vishist Advaita Vedanta tradition of Ramanuja (d. 1137) insists that the religious ultimate is a Supreme Being with personal attributes, Saguna Brahman. In the case of Daoism, the Dao is generally regarded not as a personal being but as a nonpersonal, metaphysical ultimate.
Second, are there real, enduring persons or souls? This issue was hotly debated by the three major Indian religions. Buddhism emphatically denies the reality of an enduring substantial soul, whereas this is affirmed by both Hindu and Jain traditions.
Diversity in Eastern religions is also found in their respective views on reason and rationality. Eastern traditions are widely understood in the West as rejecting reason in favor of an antirational mysticism. It is true that some forms of Buddhism, Zen in particular, do reject rigorous rational analysis as an obstacle to attaining enlightenment. And certainly meditation and various forms of mystical experience are integral to Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.
But some major forms of these religions also value rigorous rational activity. Theravada Buddhists typically stress the highly rational nature of the Buddha's teaching. The Four Noble Truths exhibit a rational structure that proceeds logically from diagnosis of the problem to a prescription for the cure of suffering. Many Buddhists insist that Buddhism is based solely on reason and experience and has no place for faith. The Japanese Buddhist scholar Hajime Nakamura states, “According to Buddhism, faith becomes superstition when it is not examined by reason. Gotama was described as one who has reasoned according to the truth rather than on the basis of the authority of the Vedas or tradition.”8
Christian Theism and Eastern Perspectives
While there are some similarities between Christian faith and Eastern religious traditions, the differences are clear and significant. Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist perspectives challenge Christian theism at several critical points.
1. What is the nature of ultimate reality? Is the religious ultimate a personal being or a nonpersonal reality? Christian theism maintains that an eternal Creator God exists and that God is a personal being. God is a moral being—good, holy, and merciful. God acts in time and history and reveals himself in an intelligible manner to human beings.
Many, but not all, Hindu, Buddhist, and Taoist traditions regard the religious ultimate as a nonpersonal reality. And yet, as we have seen, there is disagreement among them over the nature of this non-personal reality. Advaita Vedantin Hindus claim the religious ultimate is Nirguna Braham, a nonpersonal absolute. Theravada Buddhists ascribe religious ultimacy to nirvana. For Mahayana Buddhists the ultimate is the Dharmakaya or sunyata (emptiness), and Daoists hold that the ultimate is the Dao.
2. How do we attain religious truth? Do we do so through divine revelation or through introspective mystical experience? Christian faith maintains that the one eternal God has spoken and revealed Himself to humankind, preeminently through the incarnation (Heb 1:1—3). God's self-revelation to the patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and in the incarnation is preserved in recorded form for us in the Old and New Testaments.
Hindus also regard their scriptures as divinely inspired, but the Hindu understanding of inspiration is different from that of Christianity.9 The Vedas are records of what the rishis or seers “saw” or inwardly “heard” through special mystical experiences. Buddhist texts, by contrast, are not said to be divinely inspired since there is no God/gods to reveal the texts.
In attaining religious truth, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism give priority to mystical or introspective experiences based on rigorous psychophysical meditative disciplines, which are said to provide direct, unmediated access to ultimate reality. Enlightenment and liberation from rebirth come from a correct understanding of ultimate reality, an insight gained not from divine revelation but through intense introspective experiences which transcend the ordinary world of experience.
3. Can religious truth be expressed adequately in words? Or is “ultimate truth” something that eludes conceptual and linguistic categories and must be directly experienced? Christian faith maintains that God has spoken and revealed Himself to humankind in an intelligible manner. It is significant that the preincarnate Christ is referred to in John 1 as “the Logos,” a term which includes within its range of meanings notions of rationality and intelligibility. Christian faith maintains that, although God cannot be exhaustively or comprehensively known by finite human beings, He can be adequately understood through His self-revelation.
Many Hindu, Buddhist, and Daoist traditions, however, are deeply suspicious of words and doctrines and stress the importance of direct intuitive experiences which cannot be expressed in words. The enigmatic Dao de Jing, a major text of Daoism, begins with this cryptic statement: “The Dao that can be told of is not the eternal Dao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name.” Suspicion of words is evident in statements such as, “The one who knows does not speak; the one who speaks does not know.”10 Zen Buddhism, heavily influenced by Daoism, similarly rejects the idea that the dharma, or Buddhist truth, can be expressed adequately in language; it is passed on directly from roshi (master) to disciple. Buddhists frequently say that words and doctrines are like a finger pointing to the moon; the finger helps one to focus on the moon, but one must not mistake the finger for the moon.
4. Has God revealed Himself uniquely in the incarnation in Jesus? Was Jesus really God become man, God incarnate; or was He simply one of many great religious figures? Christians claim that the incarnation in Jesus Christ was a one-time, utterly unique event. The astonishing claim of the New Testament is that in Jesus of Nazareth the one eternal God has become man. “The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us” (John 1:14). Understood within the context of strict Jewish monotheism, this is an amazing assertion, without parallel in other religions. And it is precisely this that makes the question of Jesus so controversial today. As Sri Lankan theologian Vinoth Ramachandra remarks, “It is this traditional claim—that in the human person of Jesus, God himself has come amongst us in a decisive and unrepeatable way—that constitutes an offence to pluralist society.”11
The biblical teaching on the incarnation is sometimes said to resemble the Hindu notion of avatar, according to which a deity takes on human or animal form. In the Bhagavad Gita, for example, Krishna is depicted as an avatar of Vishnu who is born into the world repeatedly in evil times to revive true doctrine, to destroy the wicked, and to restore righteousness.
But the biblical teaching of incarnation is different from that of avatar in Hinduism. First, the avatars in Hinduism take the form not only of humans but also of various animals and mythological figures. Furthermore, there are multiple Hindu avatars; indeed, many Hindus include religious figures from other religions—such as Jesus or Gautama the Buddha—as avatars. Thus there is nothing definitive about any one avatar. Finally, to the philosophical Hindu, belief in such avatars represents a lower level of spiritual insight and is an accommodation for the less sophisticated. As one matures in theological and philosophical insight, one moves beyond the need for such beliefs.
But the New Testament picture of Jesus is different. Jesus was a historical figure; and His life, death, and resurrection are firmly rooted in first-century Palestine. According to the New Testament, in a unique one-time event the eternal Creator became man, lived a sinless life as a man, took upon Himself the punishment for the sins of the world in His sacrificial death on the cross, and then rose victorious over death. And through this one-time event sinful humankind can be reconciled to God.
Why Jesus Instead of the Buddha?
In considering a Christian response to challenges from Eastern religions, two questions are especially significant: Does God exist? Who is Jesus Christ? Although we cannot pursue either question here, we will conclude by pointing out several respects in which Jesus is different from the Buddha.
1. The relation between Jesus and history in Christianity is different from the relation between history and Gautama in Buddhism. In 1960 the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich visited Japan, and in conversation with Buddhist scholars in Kyoto, he asked the following question: “If some historian should make it probable that a man of the name Gautama never lived, what would be the consequence for Buddhism?” The Buddhist scholars responded by saying that the question of the historicity of Gautama Buddha had never been an issue for Buddhism. “According to the doctrine of Buddhism, the dharma kaya [the body of truth] is eternal, and so it does not depend upon the historicity of Gautama.”12 Whether Gautama actually said and did what is ascribed to him does not affect the truth of Buddhist teaching, which transcends historical events.
The same cannot be said about Jesus Christ. Christian faith is inextricably rooted in the historical person of Jesus of Nazareth. The apostle Paul unambiguously states that if in fact Jesus was not raised from the dead, then our faith is futile and useless, and we are still in our sins (1 Cor 15:14—19). Christianity is not merely a collection of religious teachings. At the center of Christian faith is God's active intervention in history, revealing His purposes for the redemption of sinful humanity and then the provision of the means for our redemption through the incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth. What Jesus did on the cross and through the resurrection, and not simply what He taught, makes reconciliation with God possible.
Moreover, we have much greater access to the historical Jesus and the early Christian community than we do to Gautama and the early Buddhist community. Although we cannot treat here the issue of the historical Jesus, we should note that the gap in time between the death of Jesus and the earliest New Testament writings is much smaller than the time between the death of Gautama and the earliest written Buddhist texts.13 Jesus was crucified in either AD 30 or 33. The earliest New Testament writings were written about AD 50 or 51, leaving a gap of only seventeen to twenty-one years from the time of His death to the first writings. Furthermore, we can be confident that the text of the New Testament today is the same text the early Christians accepted. New Testament scholar Paul Barnett states, “There still exist more than five thousand early manuscript copies of part or all of the New Testament in Greek. In addition, there are numerous early translations into Coptic, Latin, Syriac, Armenian, Georgian, etc.”14
By contrast, although there is little question that Gautama actually existed, there is considerable uncertainty about his life. Scholars are not certain even about the century in which he lived. The dates for his life are given as either 566-486 BC or 448-368 BC. The earliest Buddhist scriptures, which were primarily concerned with monastic practice, were not put into writing until sometime near the end of the first century BC.15 Extant versions of the life of the Buddha did not appear until much later; the influential Buddhacarita (The Acts of the Buddha) was written around the second century AD. So, depending on the dates of Gautama's death, there is a gap of roughly three or four hundred years between the Buddha's death and the first Buddhist scriptures being written, with the versions of the Buddha's life coming even later.
2. Jesus and the Buddha disagree on the question of God's existence. The teaching of the Buddha is usually understood as ruling out the possibility of God's existence. The Buddhist scholar Jayatilleke observes that if by “God” we mean a Supreme Being and Creator, then “the Buddha is an atheist and Buddhism in both its Theravada and Mahayana forms is atheistic. … In denying that the universe is a product of a Personal God, who creates it in time and plans a consummation at the end of time, Buddhism is a form of atheism.”16 The Buddha made no claim to special inspiration or revelation from any divine source. If he was concerned about the question of the existence of God, this was a matter on which the Buddha remained silent.
By contrast, Jesus Christ was a strict monotheist who accepted the Old Testament understanding of Yahweh as the one eternal God, Creator of all that exists. Not only that, but Jesus identified Himself in a unique manner with the one eternal Creator God, resulting in the Christian understanding of the divine incarnation.17
3. Jesus and the Buddha disagree on what is the root problem plaguing humankind. The Buddha diagnosed the root problem as ignorance—ignorance about the true nature of reality and the impermanence of all things, which results in craving and attachment and thus the suffering of rebirth. Although he has much to say about the importance of doing what is right and avoiding evil, nothing in his teaching resembles the biblical understanding of sin. Nor is this surprising. For sin, according to Christian Scripture, is always an offense against a holy and righteous God, something conspicuously absent in Buddhism.
The difference here with Jesus is striking. According to Jesus our root problem is not ignorance but rather sin, the deliberate rejection of God's righteous ways (Mark 7:1—22). Furthermore, although Jesus consistently called others to repentance, He never repented for any sin. He challenged others to point out any sin in His own life and claimed to have the authority to forgive sin (John 8:46; Mark 2:1-12).
4. Early Buddhism teaches that we are each responsible for attaining our own liberation, whereas the New Testament teaches that we cannot save ourselves. There is within the early teachings attributed to the Buddha a strong sense of the human individual being responsible for his or her own liberation. The Buddha proclaimed the dharma (true teaching) which results in liberation, and in this way he can be said to assist all sentient beings. But it is up to the individual to grasp the truth, to appropriate it, and thereby attain nirvana. Although later Buddhism did develop the idea of the bodhisattva who assists others on the way to nirvana, the Buddha himself seems to have regarded each person as responsible for his own destiny. The Buddhist scholar Walpola Rahula puts it this way: “If the Buddha is to be called a ‘saviour’ at all, it is only in the sense that he discovered and showed the Path to Liberation, Nirvana. But we must tread the Path ourselves.”18
The difference here with Jesus is unmistakable. According to the Bible, human beings cannot save themselves; we are utterly helpless and hopeless apart from the grace of God and the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross for us. What we cannot do for ourselves, God in Christ has done for us (Eph 2:1—10). Jesus thus called on others to believe in Him and to find salvation only in Him. Jesus does not merely teach the way; He claims to be the way (John 14:6). It is not simply that Jesus has discovered the way and the truth and that if we follow His teachings we too can find the way for ourselves. The Buddha, in effect, says, “Follow me and my teachings, and you too can experience the way leading to enlightenment.” But Jesus says more than that He has discovered the way to the Father and that if we follow Him and His teachings we too can find the way. Jesus makes the much stronger claim that in Himself He embodies the way, the truth, and the life. The truth of Jesus' teachings cannot be separated from the grounding of this truth in the person of Christ as the incarnate Word of God. It is because of who He is and what He has done for us on the cross that He is Himself the way, the one Savior for all people in all cultures.
5. The Buddha, like Jesus and other great religious leaders, died, but there is no reliable historical record of any others—apart from Jesus—being resurrected after death. With the resurrection we come to the foundation of the Christian faith. Death—the ultimate symbol of sin, evil, and suffering—has been conquered through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of Christ's resurrection, “death has been swallowed up in victory” (1 Cor 15:54 NIV). Both Jesus and Gautama were concerned with the causes of suffering. Gautama pointed to eliminating the causes of suffering by breaking the causal chain resulting in rebirth through eliminating desire (tanha). Jesus, by contrast, accepted upon Himself the causes of suffering, namely the effects and penalty of sin, in His death on the cross on behalf of sinful humanity. And in His victorious resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ broke the power of sin and death, providing hope for our own resurrection (1 Cor 15:20-22). While Jesus' resurrection from the dead is central to Christian faith, it is not something that is to be blindly accepted apart from corroborating evidence. Significantly, the apostle Paul reminded King Agrippa that Jesus' death and resurrection was publicly accessible, for “it was not done in a corner” (Acts 26:26 NIV). A recurring theme in early Christian preaching is the fact that the apostles and other Christians were witnesses to Christ's being raised from the dead (cf. Acts 2:22-24,32; 1 Cor 15:3-8). The resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth sets Jesus Christ apart from Gautama and puts the Christian faith in a different category from Eastern religions.
1 On the changing demographics of Christianity worldwide, see Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); and Lamin Sanneh, Whose Religion Is Christianity? The Gospel beyond the West (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
2 Diana Eck, A New Religious America: How a “Christian Country” Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation (New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 4—5.
3 See, for example, P. J. Marshall and Glyndwr Williams, The Great Map of Mankind: British Perceptions of the World in the Age of Enlightenment (London: J. M. Dent, 1982), chapters 3—4; J. J. Clarke, Oriental Enlightenment: The Encounter between Asian and Western Thought (London: Routledge, 1997), chapter 3.
4 Edwin Arnold, The Light of Asia, or the Great Renunciation (New York: A. L. Burt, 1879). See also Carl T. Jackson, The Oriental Religions and American Thought: Nineteenth Century Explorations (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981), 143.
5 On the 1893 Parliament and its effects, see The Dawn of Religious Pluralism: Voices from the World's Parliament of Religions, 1893, ed. Richard Hughes Seager (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1993); and Joseph Kitagawa, “The 1893 World's Parliament and Its Legacy,” in Joseph Kitagawa, The History of Religions: Understanding Human Experience (Atlanta: Scholar's Press, 1987).
6 Among Suzuki's many writings are An Introduction to Zen Buddhism (London: Rider and Company, 1948); Zen Buddhism (New York: Doubleday, 1956); and Mysticism: Christian and Buddhist (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1957).
7 See Robert Wuthnow, America and the Challenges of Religious Diversity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005). I have addressed some of these issues in Harold Netland, Encountering Religious Pluralism (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2001).
8 Hajime Nakamura, “Unity and Diversity in Buddhism,” in The Path of the Buddha: Buddhism Interpreted by Buddhists, ed. Kenneth W. Morgan (New York: Ronald, 1956), 372.
9 On the views of the religions regarding their sacred texts, see The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective, ed. Frederick M. Denny and Rodney L. Taylor (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1985).
10 Lao Tzu: Tao te Ching, trans. D. C. Lau (New York: Viking Penguin, 1963), 57, 117.
11 Vinoth Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission: Beyond the Pluralist Paradigm (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 181.
12 See “Tillich Encounters Japan,” ed. Robert W. Wood, Japanese Religions 2 (May 1961): 48-71.
13 There is much discussion over questions about the historical Jesus. Helpful introductions to the issues can be found in Ben Witherington III, The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 1997); C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Paul Barnett, Is the New Testament Reliable? 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2003). On historical issues concerning Gautama the Buddha, see Donald W. Mitchell, Buddhism: Introducing the Buddhist Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002); Hajime Nakamura, Gotama Buddha: A Biography Based on the Most Reliable Texts, vol. 1, trans. Gaynor Sekimori (Tokyo: Kosei, 2000); and David Edward Shaner, “Biographies of the Buddha,” Philosophy East and West 37 (1987): 306-22.
14 Paul Barnett, Is The New Testament Reliable? 44.
15 See Donald Mitchell, Buddhism, 65.
16 K. N. Jayatilleke, The Message of the Buddha, ed. Ninian Smart (New York: Free Press, 1974), 105. On Buddhist critiques of the idea of God, see Paul Williams, “Aquinas Meets the Buddhists,” in Aquinas in Dialogue: Thomas for the Twenty-first Century, ed. Jim Fodor and Frederick Christian Bauerschmidt (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), 87-117.
17 On the New Testament understanding of Jesus and Jesus' own self-understanding, see James R. Edwards, Is Jesus the Only Savior? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005).
18 Walpola Rahula, What the Buddha Taught, 2nd ed. (New York: Grove, 1974), 1-2.