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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 September 2014
Buddhist thinking centers not on a transcendent God, but on the nothingness and emptiness of Sunyata. Nevertheless, Masao Abe's reflections on the symbol of God as self-emptying can enhance our understanding of what God means. Abe interprets the self-humbling and self-sacrificing act of Jesus as a manifestation that God has vacated the transcendence of otherness in becoming world. These reflections allow us to consider a religious perspective that centers not on God, but on world and the continuum of living-dying-relatedness that represents the reciprocal and mutual interrelatedness that is world. In being returned to world, we are invited to participate in the original and originating activity of God as giving of self in compassion to one another. God is to be experienced not as a transcendent center, but as the fundamental meaning of world and its context of interrelatedness.
1 Tzu, Lao, Tao Te Ching, trans. Lau, D.C. (New York: Penguin, 1963). Chap. 11Google Scholar of the Tao makes reference to three items with regard to which emptiness is constitutive: the hub of a wheel, a cup, a room.
2 Masao Abe's discussion of contingent co-arising appears throughout his writings. In particular, see Zen and Western Thought, ed. LaFleur, William (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1985), 125–26 and 152–58.Google Scholar Also see the discussion of Keiji Nishitani who uses the term “circuminsessional interpenetration” to translate pratitya samutpada in Religion and Nothingness, trans. Bragt, Jan Van (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 146–67.Google Scholar
3 Masao presents his interpretation of the self-emptying god in his essay “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” in The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation, ed. Cobb, John and Ives, Christopher (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1990), 3–65.Google Scholar It is also found in Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist, Jewish, Christian Conversation with Masao Abe, ed. Ives, Christopher (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995), 25–90.Google Scholar The essay is a reflection on Abe's interpretation of the Phillipians text: “Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of man; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.”
4 Küng, Hans, “God's Self-Renunciation and Buddhist Emptiness: A Christian Response to Masao Abe,” in Buddhist Emptiness and Christian Trinity, ed. Corless, Roger and Knitter, Paul (New York: Paulist, 1990), 26–43.Google Scholar This essay can be found in Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist, Jewish, Christian Conversation with Masao Abe, 207–23.
5 Ogden, Schubert, “Faith In God and Realization of Emptiness,” in The Emptying God, 125–34.Google Scholar
6 For Abe's responses to the several theologians who have engaged him in this discussion, see his “A Rejoinder,” in The Emptying God, 157–200. A further set of responses can be found in his “A Rejoinder,” in Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist, Jewish, Christian Conversation with Masao Abe, 175–204.
7 Altizer, Thomas J.J., “Buddhist Emptiness and the Crucifixion of God,” in The Emptying God, 69–78.Google Scholar
8 See the discussion by David Tracy concerning the possibility of maintaining a duality between God and world without falling into the problem of dualism: “Kenosis, Sunyata, and Trinity: A Dialogue with Masao Abe,” in The Emptying God, 135–54.
9 Feuerbach, Ludwig, The Essence of Christianity (New York: Harper, 1957).Google Scholar
10 Dewey, John, A Common Faith (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934)Google Scholar; Fromm, Erich, Psychoanalysis and Religion (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950).Google Scholar
11 Abe states often in his writing that the one common issue religious thinkers need to address within the modern age is what he sees to be our nihilistic way of thinking and living. See “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” in The Emptying God, 3–8.
12 Abe, Masao, “Tillich from a Buddhist Point of View,” in Zen and Western Thought, 171–85.Google Scholar See also Abe, Masao, “Double Negation As an Essential For Attaining the Ultimate Reality: Comparing Tillich and Buddhism,” in Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, ed. Heine, Steven (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 104–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
13 Abe, Masao, “A Rejoinder,” in The Self-Emptying God, 190.Google Scholar
14 For a discussion of the meaning of Great Death, see Abe, Masao, Zen and Comparative Studies, ed. Heine, Steven (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 38–41CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and 178–79. Also Zen and Western Thought, 125–26, and 152–58.
15 Deshimaru, Taisen, The Ring of the Way (New York: Dutton, 1983), 50.Google Scholar
16 Cobb, John, “On the Deepening of Buddhism,” in The Emptying God, 91–101.Google Scholar See also Waldenfels, Hans, “God's Kenosis and Buddhist Sunyata in the World of Today,” in Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness, 150–64.Google Scholar
17 See the exchange between Knitter, Paul and Abe, Masao in the Editorial Symposium, “Spirituality and Liberation: A Buddhist-Christian Conversation,” Horizons 15/2 (1988): 347–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
18 Lk 17:33: “Anyone who tries to preserve his life will lose it; and anyone who loses it will keep it safe.”