(PSSR 004) The Cosmic Breath.pdf

The Cosmic Breath

Philosophical Studies in Science and Religion Series Editor

F. LeRon Shults, University of Agder, Norway Advisory Board

Philip Clayton, Claremont University, USA George Ellis, University of Cape Town, South Africa Niels Henrik Gregersen, University of Copenhagen, Denmark Antje Jackelyn, Bishop of Lund, Sweden Nancey Murphy, Fuller Theological Seminary, USA Robert Neville, Boston University, USA Palmyre Oomen, Radboud University Nijmegen, The Netherlands V.V. Raman, University of Rochester, USA Robert John Russell, Graduate Theological Union, USA Nomanul Haq, University of Pennsylvania, USA Kang Phee Seng, Centre for Sino-Christian Studies, Hong Kong Trinh Xuan Thuan, University of Virginia, USA J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Princeton Theological Seminary, USA

VOLUME 4

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/pssr

The Cosmic Breath Spirit and Nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-Science Trialogue

By

Amos Yong

LEIDEN •• BOSTON 2012

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Yong, Amos.  The cosmic breath : spirit and nature in the Christianity-Buddhism-science trialogue / by Amos Yong.   p. cm. — (Philosophical studies in science and religion, ISSN 1877-8542 ; v. 4)  Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.  ISBN 978-90-04-20513-0 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Religion and science. 2. Christianity and other religions—Buddhism. 3. Buddhism—Relations—Christianity. I. Title.  BL240.3.Y65 2012  261.2’43—dc23 2012010130

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual “Brill” typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, IPA, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see www.brill.nl/brill-typeface. ISSN 1877-8542 ISBN 978 90 04 20513 0 (hardback) ISBN 978 90 04 23049 1 (e-book) Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Global Oriental, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers and Martinus Nijhofff Publishers. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

For Thomas Jay Oord

CONTENTS Preface  ................................................................................................................ 1. Introduction—Spirit, Science, and the Religions: Pneumatology and Philosophy of Nature in a Pluralistic World  ............................................................................................................. 1.1 Thinking about Nature: Methodological Issues in the Science-and-Religion Discussion ................................................ 1.2 Considering the Religions: Interfaith Dialogue and the Buddhist-Christian Encounter  .................................................... 1.3 Starting with the Spirit: Pneumatology and the Christian-Buddhist-Science Trialogue  ......................................

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1 2 10 20

PART ONE

PNEUMA: DIVINE PRESENCE AND NATURE IN THE THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE DIALOGUE 2. Spirit and Science: An Emerging Dialogue  ........................................ 2.1 Spirit and Science: What Kind of Relationship?  ................... 2.2 Spirit, Theology, and Science: Emerging Trajectories .......... 2.3 Pneumatology and Field Theory  ................................................

37 38 44 51

3. Spirit and Creation: Pneumatology, Genesis 1, and Modern Science  ................................................................................. 3.1 Spirit and the Creation Narrative  .............................................. 3.2 Spirit and Emergence  .................................................................... 3.3 Spirit, Systems Theory, and Divine Activity  ...........................

58 60 65 70

4. Spirit and Human Nature: The Breath of Life, Genesis 1–2, and the Neurosciences  ............................................................................. 4.1 Genesis and the Emergence of the Human  ............................ 4.2 Mind, Body, and the Neurosciences .......................................... 4.3 Divine Presence and Contemporary Theological Anthropology ....................................................................................

80 81 85 92

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contents PART TWO

SHUNYATA: NATURE AND SCIENCE IN MAHAYANA BUDDHISM 5. Buddhism and Contemporary Science  ............................................... 5.1 The Buddhist-Science Dialogue: An Overview  ..................... 5.2 Mind and Life: Contemporary Tibetan Buddhism and Science ............................................................................................... 5.3 Emptiness, Science, and the Kyoto School  ............................

103 104 112 120

6. Shunyata: The Nature of the World in Mahayana Traditions ..... 6.1 Madhyamaka and the Emergence of Shunyata  .................... 6.2 Huayen: Emptiness and Form .................................................... 6.3 Basho and the Emptying “Field” in Contemporary Cosmology  ........................................................................................

129 130 136

7. Self and Becoming Human in Buddhism and Science  .................. 7.1 “Non-Self,” “True-Self,” and the Neurosciences  ..................... 7.2 Buddhist Contemplation and the Science of Consciousness  ................................................................................. 7.3 Shunyata and Human Naturing .................................................

151 152

144

159 167

PART THREE

PNEUMA AND SHUNYATA: NATURE, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE CHRISTIAN-BUDDHIST-SCIENCE TRIALOGUE 8. Spirit, Nature, Humanity: A Trialogical Conversation  ................... 8.1 Pneuma and Shunyata: Science and Comparative Theology ............................................................................................ 8.2 Pneuma and Pratityasamutpada: On Cosmology and Philosophy of Nature  .................................................................... 8.3 Pneuma and Anatman: On Human Being and 8.4 Becoming  .......................................................................................... 9. Spirit and Method: Science, Religion, and Comparative Theology  ......................................................................................................  9.1 Interpreting the Human: Pneumato-christological Perspectives  .....................................................................................

177 178 185 192

198 200

contents  9.2  Interpreting the Cosmos: Pneumato-theological Approaches  ...................................................................................  9.3  Method in Science and Religion: A Pneumatological Assist  ............................................................................................... 10. Spirit and Environment: Toward a Christian Ecological Ethic “after” Buddhism  ...................................................... 10.1 Pneumatological Theology and the Environment ............ 10.2 Buddhist Self-Emptying and the Environment  ................. 10.3 Toward a Pneumato-ecological Ethic: ChristianBuddhist Convergences  ............................................................

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208 217

224 225 229 234

Epilogue  .............................................................................................................

242

Bibliography  ..................................................................................................... Name Index  ...................................................................................................... Subject Index ....................................................................................................

247 277 279

PREFACE The genesis of this volume is intertwined with the fortunes of a companion volume—Pneumatology and the Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Does the Spirit Blow through the Middle Way? Studies in Systematic Theology 11 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012)—which is making its way to press just a few months behind this book. That book is an exploration of a thesis regarding an approach to the interreligious encounter that suggests how pneumatological categories could facilitate adequate comparisons and contrasts in the Christian dialogue with Buddhist traditions. I have long been at work at the interface of constructive Christian theology, religious pluralism, and the interfaith dialogue, and that book inquires about the possibility of forging a twenty-fijirst century Christian theology after an in depth encounter with the complex worlds of Buddhism. And why Buddhism? Probably for some very basic reasons having to do with the fact that my parents were converts to Christianity from a very nominal form of Theravadin Buddhism in Malaysia (where I was born), that it of the major religious traditions of the world fijirst caught my attention when I was at graduate school almost twenty years ago (as of the time of this writing), and that as a generally non-theistic religious way of life, it presents unique challenges and opportunities for Christian theological reflection in a pluralistic world. Pneumatology and the Buddhist-Christian Dialogue represents my fijirst extended efffort to think theologically as a pentecostal Christian theologian in a world of many faiths, and does so with dialogue partners not primarily from the Western theological or philosophical tradition but with Gautama Buddha and others who have been enlightened by his teachings. In the fall semester of 2004, in the midst of working at that time through a draft of Pneumatology and the Buddhist-Christian Dialogue I was invited to serve as the Edward B. Brueggemann Chair in Theology and Dialogue at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio. During that term I was privileged to teach a graduate course on Religion and Science with Fr. Joseph Bracken, SJ. I realized at that point that Pneumatology and the Buddhist-Christian Dialogue included a rather long section on how both traditions interacted with the sciences. In order to get some feedback on this material, I extracted this portion of that manuscript and developed that into the fijirst version of the present book. I received input on that initial draft of what is

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now The Cosmic Breath from Fr. Bracken and students in the class, which led to a revised edition. Although this Christianity-Buddhism-science manuscript then lay fallow for the next few years because of other unrelated writing projects and commitments, I continued to work at the interface of its triad of topics. On the science side, my focus has been on developing pneumatological perspectives on the theology and science dialogue, and these have been published in the form of a number of journal articles, two edited books, and one self-authored volume. On the Buddhism side, I have continued to work on matters related to Buddhist-Christian dialogue but also increasingly turned my attention to the interface of Buddhism and science. Here I have also published a number of journal articles and review essays exploring contemporary Buddhist engagements with the religion and science conversation. This book on what I call the Christian-Buddhist-science “trialogue” brings together two very important theological tasks in our time: the interfaith dialogue in general and the Christian-Buddhist dialogue more specifijically on the one hand, and the religion-and-science conversation in general and the Buddhism-science and Christianity-science encounters more particularly. Each of these discussions has its own fundamental and persisting methodological challenges. As such, this is probably the most ambitious book that I have undertaken to date. The fundamental intuition driving this book, however, is that while bringing these various conversations together complexifijies the issues even exponentially, yet doing so may also provide the occasion for insights into the issues at hand in ways that may not be as generative in stand-alone discussions. In other words, I think the Buddhist-Christian dialogue can gain from factoring in contested matters in the religion-and-science arena even while the Christian theology-and-science conversation also can be illuminated by debates across the Buddhist-Christian encounter. Let me be more precise. It has turned out that The Cosmic Breath is, at one level, fundamentally a book about theological method in a scientifijic and pluralistic world. I have long been engaged in self-critical reflection about method in theology as a pentecostal Christian, initially formulated in terms of what I called a pneumatological imagination in the long book that was my second published volume (Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective, Ashgate/Wipf & Stock, 2002). Yet even there I argued that methodological issues in the theological task are inseparable from the material content of theology. My earlier work thus defended the pneumatological imagination both at the methodological

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and at the dogmatic levels, but did so primarily in conversation with the Western philosophical and theological tradition. The present volume picks up on that methodological orientation but focuses on the theological task in a scientifijic and interdisciplinary context on the one hand, and in a religiously pluralistic and interfaith environment on the other hand. Yet my core methodological intuition persists: that what I have called the pneumatological imagination—in this book, this simply means starting with the Spirit—provides an explicitly theological rationale for engaging with the many disciplines of science and the many voices and perspectives of a religiously plural world. This means that, as before, while methodologically driven, the present volume is also resolutely theological; so at a second level, then, there are also theological stakes to what appear in the following pages, not just methodological ones. Because of the scope of this volume—covering not just one or two but three fijields of inquiry: constructive theology, theology and science, and the interfaith and Buddhist-Christian dialogue—as its author I am keenly sensitive to the unfijinished nature of the following “argument.” There are so many loose ends and each one of them calls out for its own book-length treatment. Yet as I have wrestled with the questions herein over the last ten years, I think that for the sake of voicing them I will need to let this book go, as incomplete as it is. In the end, there are also ethical questions at stake regarding the natural world (our cosmic environment), and these urgently call for more extensive consideration. I can only hope that the ideas contained therein resonate with my readers and that others will be motivated to take up, engage, and maybe even complete the fragmentary thoughts that constitute this work. If that is the case, I will be both humbled and enriched by the trialogue that emerges at this intersection of Christianity, Buddhism, and science. While none of the following persons should be held responsible for the contents of the following pages, I would be remiss if I did not thank them for their contribution to this volume. I must begin with F. LeRon Shults, editor of the book series within which this volume is appearing, who saw the potential of the original proposal and enthusiastically embraced it. LeRon and I go back over ten years to when I fijirst arrived at Bethel University in the fall of 1999. He has been a wonderful colleague, encouraging friend, and trusted confijidant over the years—even after we left Bethel (me to Virginia and he to Norway)—while his scholarship at the frontiers of the theology and science discussion has been instructive, innovative, and inspiring.

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I am deeply grateful to Paul Ingram (Pacific Lutheran University) and Perry Schmidt-Leukel (University of Münster), for carefully reading a version of the manuscript and sending many very helpful comments. Paul and Perry’s pioneering efforts, on both sides of the Atlantic, in the Buddhist-Christian dialogue and the Buddhism-Christianity-science trialogue have opened up space for the work of others, including my own. Thanks also to Tony Richie and Christopher Stephenson, my fellow pentecostal theologian friends, for their comments on the manuscript, and also for journeying with me at these frontiers of pentecostal theology. My graduate assistant, Vincent Le, helped with the bibliography and indexes. Last, but not least, Suzanne Mekking, Liesbeth Hugenholtz, Mirjam Elbers (more recently), and the staff at Brill have been professionals from contract through to production, and for that, I am deeply appreciative. This book is dedicated to my longtime friend, Thomas Jay Oord. I first met Tom at a joint annual meeting of the Society for Pentecostal Studies (SPS) and the Wesleyan Theological Society (WTS) in 1998. Our initial “conversations” were quite apologetic and even polemical: me approaching him from a Peircean and pentecostal perspective (shaped at Boston University under Robert Cummings Neville) while he engaging me from his own more Whiteheadian and Wesleyan point of view (informed by his graduate studies at Claremont University under John B. Cobb Jr. and David Ray Griffin). Over the years, we have come to see our theological work as complementary, even if we still have our disagreements about this or that. Tom has been a wonderful dialogue partner and theological critic, often times going an extra mile in providing feedback on book manuscripts I have sent him for comments. In 2008, we were co-chairs of the joint SPS-WTS meeting on science and each did our part in editing one of a two-volume set of conference papers: The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth: Pentecostal Forays in Science and Theology of Creation (edited by me), and Divine Grace and Emerging Creation: Wesleyan Forays in Science and Theology of Creation (edited by Tom), both published by Pickwick Press in 2009. I am repeatedly challenged by his scholarship, not only for the academy but also for the church; I admire his love for the church, in particular for the Holiness tradition that has nurtured him in the faith; and I am grateful for his friendship, always spurring me on by his example, especially his theology and life of love. May the Spirit of Holiness bless all you do, my friend! * * * I need to acknowledge permission to use previously published material at various segments of this volume:

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• A very early version of this book’s argument was outlined in my article, “Christian and Buddhist Perspectives on Neuropsychology and the Human Person: Pneuma and Pratityasamutpada,” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 40:1 (2005): 143–65; I am grateful to the Board of Zygon and Wiley-Blackwell for permission to expand on this essay. • Part of chapter 5 includes sections adapted from my review essay, “Mind and Life, Religion and Science: The Dalai Lama and the BuddhistChristian-Science Trilogue,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 28 (2008): 43–63, and part of chapter 7 includes revisions of another review essay, “Tibetan Buddhism Going Global? A Case Study of a Contemporary Buddhist Encounter with Science,” Journal of Global Buddhism 9 (2008) [http:// www.globalbuddhism.org/]; thanks to the University of Hawai’i Press and to the editors of the Journal of Global Buddhism for permission to revise and reuse these articles in this book. • Portions of chapters 3–4 of my book, Pneumatology and the BuddhistChristian Dialogue: Does the Spirit Blow through the Middle Way? Studies in Systematic Theology 11 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012), have been revised and expanded for a number of sections of the present volume; I appreciate Brill’s permission to rework this material for this very different book. Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION SPIRIT, SCIENCE, AND THE RELIGIONS: PNEUMATOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE IN A PLURALISTIC WORLD The argument in this book triangulates around three sets of interlocking questions and methodological intuitions. For the Christian tradition, what does it mean to do theology in a pluralistic world of modern science? The response suggested in what follows is that starting with the Christian doctrine of the Spirit (pneumatology) may point a way forward that takes seriously both the deliverances of modern science and the voices of those in other faiths, even the perspectives of those in non-theistic traditions like Buddhism. With regard to the encounter between religions, then, how might the dialogue between faiths proceed? The reply here recommends that the hurdles confronting the interreligious dialogue in general and the Buddhist-Christian dialogue in particular might be positively reconfijigured when a “third party,” the religion and science conversation, is factored into the discussion. Last, but not least, with regard to some of the big questions about cosmology, the nature of the world, and the philosophy of nature, what does the future hold for the dialogue between science and religion and what are some of the promising trajectories for that discussion? The recommendation in this volume is that in the twentyfijirst century context, the Buddhist-Christian dialogue can contribute to certain developments in the science and philosophy of nature, including anthropology, by introducing pneumatological and relational categories into the discussion. While each of these topics deserves a book to itself—indeed, I have written one or more books on each of these considered separately1—our 1 On theology of religions, religious pluralism, and the interreligious dialogue, see my books Discerning the Spirit(s): A Pentecostal-Charismatic Contribution to Christian Theology of Religions, Journal of Pentecostal Theology Supplement Series 20 (Shefffijield, UK: Sheffijield Academic Press, 2000), and Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003). On Buddhist-Christian dialogue, see my Pneumatology and the Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Does the Spirit Blow through the Middle Way? Studies in Systematic Theology 11 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012). And on theology and science, see Yong, The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination, Pentecostal Manifestos 4 (Grand Rapids and

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goal here is to reflect on them together. The task then is to expand the theology and science dialogue and the Buddhist-Christian dialogue into a trialogue between Christianity, Buddhism, and science.2 My wager is that such a trialogical consideration will provide illumination unavailable when taken up on their own or even in pairs. The three parts of this introductory chapter clarify the methodological challenges involved, fijirst with regard to discussions in the science and philosophy of nature (§1.1), and then about developments in the interfaith dialogue (§1.2), before suggesting how a pneumatological approach to these matters has the potential to advance this exploration (§1.3). Our having to cover a good deal of ground results in this being one of the longest chapters of the book, but this is needed in order to explicate the threefold chord around which the following trialogue unfolds. 1.1 Thinking about Nature: Methodological Issues in the Science-and-Religion Discussion Discussions in the philosophy of nature have taken some interesting turns in the wake of our contemporary postmodern situation. Whereas modernist cosmologies and explications of the nature of the world were often positivistic and reductionistic in their materialist tendencies, postmodern accounts are much more varied. To be sure, naturalistic perspectives have

Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011). The present volume seeks to bring these disparate conversations together. 2 In one sense, the idea of a “trialogue” is simply a dialogue among more than two persons, parties, or perspectives; this is how it is used by Harvie M. Conn, Eternal Word and Changing Worlds: Theology, Anthropology, and Mission in Trialogue (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984). However, I also think “trialogue” captures the kind of complex interactions occurring amidst a tri-directional conversation that is taken for granted in our now trite cliché, “dialogue.” That the intricacy, density, and convolutedness of this kind of conversation increases exponentially when a third party is added into the mix can be seen in recent dialogues among Christians, Jews, and Muslims—e.g., Ignaz Maybaum, Trialogue between Jew, Christian and Muslim (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), Isma’īl Rājī Fārūqī, ed., Trialogue of the Abrahamic Faiths: Papers Presented to the Islāmic Studies Group of American Academy of Religion (Herndon, Vir.: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1982; 4th ed., Geltsville, Md.: Amana Publications, 1995), and, more recently, in Dan CohnSherbok, “Incarnation and Trialogue,” in Dan Cohn-Sherbok, ed., Islam in a World of Diverse Faiths (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 18–32. As used in this book, “trialogue” assumes just this kind of complexity; see also my elaboration of the trialogue-idea within a more hermeneutical framework in Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., and Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2002).

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persisted, but even here, some are not reticent to acknowledge or even discuss spiritual or even religious themes and motifs in their considerations.3 So if Enlightenment modes of thinking resulted in an eviscerated view of nature being all there is—devoid not only of human souls but also of spirit beings and even of deities as well—the present time is witnessing what some have come to call a reenchantment of the world.4 In such a reenchanted cosmos, nature may still be all there is, but the nature of nature itself is certainly much more complicated than when dissected by the modern mind. Unsurprisingly, within the scheme of these recent developments, theologians have reappeared in the conversation, suggesting that theological considerations can also be legitimately brought to bear in thinking about nature, the cosmos, and what is ultimately real.5 If discussions in the philosophy of nature were to include specifijically theological perspectives, however, an already complicated topic becomes even more complex, not least from a methodological point of view. Exacerbating the issue is, at least in part, the long theological tradition that has wrestled with the question of nature. It is not so simple to just say that philosophies of nature now have to consider theologies of nature since even the specifijic nomenclature of theology of nature itself is of fairly recent origin, evoked in large part from the awakening since the 1970s to the ecological crisis of our times. More to the point, over the past generation, the literature has proliferated not only as theology of nature, but also as theology of creation, theology of the environment (environmental theology), and theology of ecology (ecological theology), among other names. One point of entry into this discussion is to distinguish the project of theology of nature from the project of natural theology. Religion and science scholars such as Ian Barbour have suggested that whereas the 3 Here I am thinking not only about explicitly “new age” understandings of a natural world rife with spirits and even angels and demons but also about “gaia” and other similar philosophical cosmologies as well as more naturalistic philosophies of nature like that of Robert Corrington’s (who I discuss later, in §2.1). 4 E.g., Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1981); David Ray Grifffijin, ed., The Reenchantment of Science: Postmodern Proposals (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1988); James Kirk, Organicism as Reenchantment: Whitehead, Prigogine, and Barth, American University Studies V, Philosophy 167 (New York: Peter Lang, 1993); Thomas Moore, The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life (New York: HarperPerennial, 1997); and Ervin Laszlo, Science and the Reenchantment of the Cosmos: The Rise of the Integral Vision of Reality (Rochester, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2006). 5 Leading the way in this regard is Alister E. McGrath, The Reenchantment of Nature: The Denial of Religion and the Ecological Crisis (New York: Doubleday, 2002); see also Avihu Zakai, Jonathan Edwards’s Philosophy of Nature: The Re-enchantment of the World in an Age of Scientifijic Reasoning (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2010).

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entire project of natural theology can be said to have emerged during the Enlightenment in the attempt to proceed from cosmological and teleological arguments for the existence of God to theology, the current project in theology of nature starts instead with religious and theological data and works within that framework to integrate the empirical fijindings and theoretical hypotheses of modern science.6 Hence if natural theology is apologetically motivated and allows the sciences to establish the primary categories for theological reflection, theology of nature is religiously and theologically motivated and seeks to understand scientifijic advances with a theological worldview.7 Two observations follow from this distinction. First, theology of nature is primarily a theological exercise, guided by theological categories, and seeking theological coherence. As such, its dominant concepts derive from the biblical and ecclesial or theological traditions. At the same time, the doing of theology of nature is also a reflective task motivated by questions, curiosity, and even wonder.8 Toward those ends, theology of nature asks how biblical and theological ideas illuminate our comprehension of and engagement with the natural world as understood by the sciences. However, this means, second, that theology of nature inevitably interacts with the natural world or the world of nature. Now while some may wish to work with a defijinition of “nature” that is focused strictly on the material world,9 my attempt to develop a theology of nature understands nature as equivalent to the entirety of the created—created by God, that is—world, including, of course, the inanimate, animate, and human realms. Having said this, the obvious tension arises: whereas a theology of nature seeks to proceed from a biblical or theological starting point, it is by defijinition already caught up in a dialogue with its object of study: the world of nature. Now insofar as it is the business of science to study

6 Ian G. Barbour, Nature, Human Nature and God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002), 2. That this distinction is clear enough defijinitionally but nevertheless elusive in terms of accomplishment can be seen in the recent book by R.J. Berry, God’s Book of Works: The Nature and Theology of Nature (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2003). Despite his title, Berry blurs the lines between the two and is not as successful avoiding natural theology. 7 This is how Colin Gunton also defijines theology of nature in his The Triune Creator: A Historical and Systematic Study (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1998), chs. 6–8, esp. 134–35. 8 See Robert P. Meye, “Invitation to Wonder: Toward a Theology of Nature,” in Wesley Granberg-Michaelson, ed., Tending the Garden: Essays on the Gospel and the Earth (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), 30–49. 9 E.g., Olaf Pedersen, The Book of Nature (Vatican City: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1992).

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the world of nature using experimental and empirical methods, there is therefore always a dialectical interplay between the discourse of biblical/ theological studies and the world of science. As with other theological endeavors, theology of nature is also not exempt from the hermeneutical circle, in this case, the circle between Scripture/theology and nature/ science and vice-versa. These observations lead to the methodological question. On the one hand, if we proceed from a biblical and theological starting point, can we ever engage the world of nature and of science on its own terms?10 Would not the scientifijic data be either distorted (at best) or nullifijied (at worst) through theological interpretation? By privileging the biblical and theological tradition, do we not in efffect silence nature’s voice and the potential contributions of science? On the other hand, if we begin with the scientifijic data, theories, and categories, would the reverse distortion and nullifijication not occur such that the biblical and theological traditions are in efffect eclipsed?11 Put this way, of course, we touch on the perennial debate between Athens and Jerusalem and on how the complicated relationship between faith and learning is re-played in the religion and science conversation in general and in the theology and science dialogue more specifijically. There are a number of important questions embedded in this debate that have implications for the philosophy and theology of nature, of which I will explicate three. First, there is the question concerning the philosophy and epistemology of science. Here, the debate concerns, at least in part, science as a realistic enterprise. On the one side is the traditional view of science as describing the real world as it actually is, and providing empirical methods to engage and analyze that world. On the other side is an assortment of positions advocating a view of the language of science as instrumental for human purposes, internal to the discourse of scientists, seeking not proof but falsifijication of its theories, or even

10 That theology of nature is therefore always already “contaminated” by the world is exemplifijied in Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Toward an Ecological-Feminist Theology of Nature,” in Mary Heather MacKinnon and Moni McIntyre, eds., Readings in Ecology and Feminist Theology (Kansas City: Sheed & Ward, 1995), 89–93. 11 I suggest that these two approaches are evident in two of the earlier attempts to develop a theology of nature. George S. Hendry, Theology of Nature (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980), is long on theology and short on science, while Stephen Toulmin, The Return to Cosmology: Postmodern Science and the Theology of Nature (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), is long on science and short on theology.

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plainly metaphoric and self-referencing.12 Attempting to mediate between these views are those who admit that science proceeds within communities and traditions of inquiry, but respond that insofar as science serves human purposes of getting around in the world, to that extent a critical realist position is to be assumed. At another level, of course, that science rests, fijinally, on unproven assumptions—e.g., about the correspondence between scientifijic concepts and models with the external world, especially at the quantum level—raises questions about the scientifijic enterprise.13 While my own position presumes a critical realist epistemology—that there is a real world that exists apart from human minds, although human knowledge of that world is fallible and corrected at least in part by the scientifijic enterprise—all sides of the debate pose questions for the philosophy and theology of nature. On the one hand, the empirical method of science competes with the authoritative methods of scripture and theology; in this case, how can revelatory discourse withstand the ongoing deliverances of science? On the other hand, the doing of science or the engaging with science requires acceptance of its terms, entry into the “culture of science,” and embrace of a scientifijic worldview; in this case, at what point does science degenerate from being a method of inquiry to being an ideological hermeneutic that rivals theology? Part of the answer to this worry lies in the nature of science as a selfcorrecting enterprise. At its best, science is a method of inquiry that always stands ready to question both its conclusions and approaches. This is not to say that science is continuously changing its mind about things and that nothing stands still in a scientifijic world. To be sure, change happens, although generally it occurs slowly as scientists exchange ideas, conduct experiments, and test hypotheses. At least science is open to follow the data wherever that may lead. In that case, as Charles Sanders Peirce, the American philosopher and scientist, suggested, scientifijic activity is nonauthoritarian and directed toward attainment of the truth in the long run. Science is a fully public enterprise, open to anyone who is interested in

12 On the metaphoric nature of the scientifijic enterprise, see Stephen Happel, Metaphors for God’s Time in Science and Religion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), esp. ch. 1, and the classic by Ian G. Barbour, Myths, Models, and Paradigms: The Nature of Scientifijic and Religious Language (London: SCM Press, 1974). 13 Many of these disputes within philosophy of science are nicely overviewed in Samir Okasha, Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002).

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and willing to learn its empirical methods of inquiry.14 In this Peircean sense, theology also, when considered as aspiring toward the articulation of truth in the long (eschatological) run, is a fully public enterprise as well, open to any and all who are interested in engaging with the subject matter and its range of data.15 A second and related question can be asked concerning the nature of specifijically theological language. While there is a similarity between this question and that regarding the nature of the language of science in that there is a spectrum of mediating positions amidst realistic and positivistic views on each end, there is the compounding problem in theological discourse of references to the divine. Clearly, there are problems with assuming that theological language functions either univocally or equivocally. However, the traditional response that such language is analogical answers neither the question about how similarities are determined and to what extent they persist (extensive similarities result in religious and theological language being more univocal rather than analogical), nor the question about whether or not the diffferences which pertain are so radical that theological discourse lapses from analogy to equivocality.16 Given this situation, can there really be a theology of nature that somehow connects the world revealed through experience and scientifijic investigation to a divine referent? Relatedly, as already noted, to begin theologically for the Christian tradition is to begin biblically. Biblical categories, is should be clear, lead to a theology of creation rather than a theology of nature. The latter, after all, is a philosophical construct, whereas the biblical accounts begin with the creative activity of God. Hence from a biblical perspective, there is no “natural world” on its own terms (this is a modern concoction); rather

14 See Charles Sanders Peirce’s famous essay, “The Fixation of Belief,” in Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel, eds., The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, 1867–1893 (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1992), 109–23. 15 See also my theological appropriation of Peirce’s method of inquiry, “The Demise of Foundationalism and the Retention of Truth: What Evangelicals Can Learn from C.S. Peirce,” Christian Scholar’s Review 29:3 (Spring 2000): 563–88. 16 The challenges confronting the classical theory of analogy are superbly discussed in Robert Cummings Neville, God the Creator: On the Transcendence and Presence of God (1968; reprint, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992), esp. 16–22. Neville’s response to the dilemma is to develop a peculiar theory of divine creation. While plausible in some respects, it raises other theological questions that lead me to a more pneumatologically oriented response (to which we return later).

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there is only God the creator and the world as God’s creation.17 While this is surely the case, as a systematic theologian in a postmodern, postWestern, and even post-Christian world, I will remain engaged with the ongoing discussion in theology of nature rather than defer to the categories of biblical theology. Theology of nature is open to philosophical interrogation in the public square in ways that theology of creation is not. In particular, the idea of nature is more amenable for conversations and even debates with people of other faiths in general and Buddhists in particular than the notion of creation. The goal in what follows is to discern the plausibility of a theology of nature formulated in a more public conversation with both science and other religions. The third question related to the methodology of theology of nature then backs up from the level of theological language to that of religious language itself. If theology is to religion as reflection is to experience, then theological language fijinds meaning within the framework of a religious community and its religious practices.18 But at this level, there is not only the more technical issue of correlating scientifijic data with religious data given the uncertainty of whether or not religious language is univocal, equivocal, or analogical, there is also the broader challenge of correlating scientifijic data with data from multiple religious traditions that oftentimes seem to compete with and even disagree with each other. For those who think that a theology of nature should proceed only from biblical and theological premises, the difffijiculties thrown up by the plurality of religious traditions cannot be avoided since even the biblical tradition emerges from a religiously plural environment (e.g., the ancient Near Eastern, Judaic, and Hellenistic worlds), and since any contemporary understanding of the biblical and theological tradition is fijiltered through the theologian’s or philosopher’s own experience of religious pluralism. There are two further levels of complexity. On the one hand, the theology-science dialogue presumes theological approaches that would appear to require inclusion of at least Jewish and Islamic perspectives (the other major theistic traditions) alongside Christian ones, while on the other hand, the religion-science

17 E.g., Ronald A. Simkins, Creator and Creation: Nature in the Worldview of Ancient Israel (Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 1994), and Erich Zenger and Karl Löning, To Begin with, God Created . . .: Biblical Theologies of Creation, trans. Omar Kaste (Collegeville, Minn.: Michael Glazier Books, 2000). 18 By now, there is widespread acceptance of the postliberal thesis regarding the intertwining of doctrines or beliefs with practices and vice-versa, even if the precise relationship between the two as articulated by, e.g., George Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984), remains contested.

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dialogue presumes non-theistic religions in their multiplicity, diversity, and dynamism rather than simply religion defijined as Christianity (or as theistic). Finally, any attempt at theology of nature is an attempt to understand the world or cosmos in its totality, and here the perspectives of religious others are important not only because many of them have thought long and hard about these matters, but also because at the epistemic level it is difffijicult for anyone to claim that they have exclusive perspective on the whole that is unavailable to others. The challenge throughout is that each tradition interprets and engages the world and science diffferently. Yet other faiths are no less challenged than the Christian tradition with regard to the methodological issues pertaining to engaging science. With regard to the Buddhist tradition that we will be in dialogue with in the remainder of this book, for example, there is a similar spectrum of approaches but inevitably the rubber hits the road: which perspectives do we privilege, what categories do we deploy, and from where do we proceed in the discussion?19 Buddhist traditions, of course, have articulated cosmologies as rich as their Christian counterparts.20 Yet Buddhist thinking about the nature of ultimate reality has been generally subdued in light of the Buddha’s admonition about not being caught up in speculative enterprises that only cause further division between human beings and perpetuate sufffering. Nevertheless, preliminarily, it might be argued that even the Buddha’s Four Nobel Truths—that all is duhkha/dukkha (Sanskrit/Pali) or sufffering; that duhkha is caused by desire or, more accurately, thirst; that thirst is eliminable; and that the way to eliminate thirst is to embark upon the Nobel Eightfold Path—are suggestive for a Buddhist philosophy of nature.21 For those caught in the wheel of samsara, the conventional world of duhkha, which involves thirst or greed, nature is evil (sufffering/ duhkha—the fijirst two noble truths), whereas for those on the path of

19 See B. Alan Wallace, ed., Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). 20 E.g., Akira Sadakata, Buddhist Cosmology: Philosophy and Origins, trans. Gaynor Sekimori (Tokyo: Kōsei Publishing Co., 1997), and W. Randolph Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology: Science and Theology in the Images of Motion and Light (1983; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1989). 21 Robert A.F. Thurman, “Buddhist Views of Nature: Variations on the Theme,” in Leroy S. Rouner, ed., On Nature, Boston University Studies in Philosophy and Religion 6 (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 96–112.

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enlightenment, nature can be viewed as good (at least as engaged with compassion). We will return to expand on these considerations later in the book. Now, however, I simply want to note the methodological parallels. Christian theologies of nature instinctively begin with Christian presuppositions, even as Buddhist philosophies of nature spring offf Buddhist sensibilities. What happens if we attempt not just a religion-and-science conversation in the abstract but also bring to the discussion table the concrete beliefs and practices of two very diffferent religious traditions? All of a sudden, it is not just that we have two religion-and-science dialogues side-by-side but we also have a religion-and-religion encounter as well. In addition, the methodological issues for this interaction is just as, if not more, complex than it is for the other discussion. Before we look more closely at interfaith dialogical methods, let us briefly summarize the complications related to the methodological and philosophical task of theology of nature. There are three interrelated sets of questions. 1) For theology of nature to take nature seriously, it requires engaging with science and raises the question of the function and role of scientifijic methods, theories, and data in the theological enterprise; in this case, does not engaging science on its own terms threaten theological commitments? 2) For theology of nature to be uncompromisingly theological, it needs to privilege biblical and theological categories; in this case, can the voice of nature and the perspectives of science ever be seriously accommodated within the discourse of revelation? 3) For a theology of nature to be robustly theological, it has to locate its claims amidst a wider network of religious discourses and practices; in this case, how viable is a theology of nature that ignores the theological, philosophical, and cosmological ideas of other religious traditions? Together, these questions mean that the methodological and philosophical challenge for theology of nature is at once theological, scientifijic, and religious. 1.2 Considering the Religions: Interfaith Dialogue and the Buddhist-Christian Encounter I now want to expand on the religious dimension of our topic and its methodological problematic. In order to put in relief the major issues to be engaged in this book we will quickly cover three broad domains: the nature of the interreligious dialogue in general, the challenges related to the Buddhist-Christian encounter more specifijically, and how the Christian

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dialogue with Buddhism might influence our explorations in the philosophy and theology of nature. We shall encounter similar methodological challenges as detailed in the preceding pages. Alongside the many difffijicult questions raised by the encounter with modern science, Christian theology has also had to grapple seriously with an increasing awareness of our religiously plural world. The standard responses of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism, formulated initially to deal with the questions regarding heretical factions within the church and then later expanded to understand the soteriological fate of the unevangelized, have been adapted to account for the relationship between Christianity and other faiths.22 In brief, exclusivism insists that salvation, goodness, truth, and beauty are available either only or ultimately through Christianity and not through other religions. Inclusivism allows for the possibility that other religions may be salvifijic, or may grant access to the good, the true, or the beautiful, but if so, this is made possible only because of God’s provision in Christ. Pluralism suggests either that at least more than one if not many religions present paths to salvation, goodness, truth, and beauty, that the diffferent religions each salvifijically mediate the transcendent on their own terms in ways that enable their practitioners to achieve various soteriological ends, and that for salvifijic religions, none is superior to any of the others. Many questions persist about these theological claims,23 some of which we will return to later on in this book. Our concerns at this point, however, are methodological: what kind of difffijiculties emerge for the interreligious dialogue when considered according to this standard threefold theological construct? Interrelated epistemological and categorical aspects contribute to our methodological conundrum.

22 Initially formulated by Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1982), and revised and expanded variously in Paul F. Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002) and Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions: Biblical, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003). 23 For critical assessment of the theological usefulness of these three basic categories, see my article, “The Spirit, Christian Practices, and the Religions: Theology of Religions in Pentecostal and Pneumatological Perspective,” Asbury Journal 62:2 (2007): 5–31, esp. 13–19. The most vigorous recent argument to retain this threefold categorization is by Perry Schmidt-Leukel, “Exclusivism, Inclusivism, Pluralism: The Tripolar Typology—Clarifijied and Reafffijirmed,” in Paul F. Knitter, ed., The Myth of Religious Superiority: Multifaith Explorations of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005), 13–27.

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Epistemologically, the question concerns not only that of the justifijication for any of these positions but the implications of that position for the interreligious encounter. If all human knowers are historically situated and contextually circumscribed, how do they get a “bird’s eye view” from which to make judgments, theological or otherwise, about other faiths? More precisely, these soteriological judgments often appear to be based on premises internal to the home religion without due consideration of the views of others. Thus, any putative contradiction between religions is resolved fijideistically in favor of what the home religion teaches. The result is that interreligious dialogue is practically impossible. What is more likely to occur are rather interreligious apologetics, both positively or negatively engaged,24 or, monological proclamations for evangelistic or proselytistic purposes. I have nothing against either apologetics or evangelistic preaching unless that becomes the sole modalities of interfacing with those in other faiths. If people of faith know only their own religion and engage with religious others only on those terms and in order to convert others to their faith, they will be talking (if they can keep it at that level without getting exasperated) past one another. Categorically, the problem is the other side of the epistemological one: that of defijining other religions from an alien standpoint and according to a foreign set of categories.25 Exclusivists claim that their own religion tells them all that is important about other faiths. Inclusivists identify what is important in other faiths only to say that the home religion is either better or simply more encompassing. Some pluralists say that at least some religions are on par with others but others impose some metaphysical scheme upon all or insist on the incommensurability of many if not all religions. The question is whether these various approaches can ultimately sustain the interreligious encounter. Exclusivists are strong on making known their own beliefs but less able to appreciate the beliefs of others; any overtures to dialogue seem to be no more than masks of what are in the end proselytizing intents. Inclusivists appear to afffijirm the otherness of

24 Negative apologetics provides answers to challenges directed to the home religion while positive apologetics attempts to undermine the viability of the other religion; see Paul J. Grifffijiths, An Apology for Apologetics: A Study in the Logic of Interreligious Dialogue (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991). 25 On this issue of developing adequate comparative categories for interreligious dialogue, I have learned a great deal from my teacher, Robert Cummings Neville. See especially the three volumes of the Comparative Religious Ideas Project edited by him: Ultimate Realities; Religious Truth; The Human Condition (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001).

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people of diffferent faiths and to desire to learn from them, but in the end threaten to subsume what is acceptable of others within the home tradition. Pluralists either have to convince religionists from diverse faiths that their salvifijic experiences are complementary if not identical or they have to provide a framework for engaging in dialogue when “we” already know either that those in other faiths are “saved” anyway or that each tradition provides adequate means to achieve its own set of ultimate goals.26 The preceding considerations, of course, assume the value of dialogue as a mode of interreligious encounter. For various reasons (some already mentioned above and others of which I will touch on below), not all religionists would agree that dialogue either is the most important for or is even desirable at all when it comes to interacting with people of other faiths. My response would be that practically speaking, in any pluralistic society the exchanges and interactions between neighbors, coworkers, and classmates is already an occasion for and example of interreligious dialogue, non-technically considered. At a theological level, however, dialogue with thoughtful members of other faiths is both ethically obligatory for Christians and reflects the virtue of Christian hospitality in a pluralistic and globalizing world.27 Further, my claim would be that Christians cannot continue to engage the theological task ignorant or neglectful of other faith traditions. To be sure, there are multiple modalities of interfaith interactions and depending on the context, dialogue may not be the preferred method at any point in time.28 Yet it is also possible to cultivate a dialogical approach to our work as Christian theologians that undertakes reflecting on all there is in conversation with any and all who might have an interest in the subject matter.29 From this perspective, I only want to point out that each of the three major approaches of exclusivism,

26 There are of course exceptions to each of these claims about exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. In large part, however, these exceptions prove the rule, even while they introduce signifijicant modifijications to the traditional ways of understanding this three-fold typology. As the reader proceeds through this book, she or he might well think that the position articulated there is in exclusivist, inclusivist, or pluralist in diffferent respects. That is part of the point of undertaking such a comparative trialogical exercise. 27 E.g., David Lochhead, The Dialogical Imperative: A Christian Reflection on Interfaith Encounter (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989). 28 This is my argument of my book, Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor, Faith Meets Faith series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008). 29 See my article with John Sobert Sylvest, “Reasons and Values of the Heart in a Pluralistic World: Toward a Contemplative Phenomenology for Interreligious Dialogue,” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 20:2 (2010): 170–93.

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inclusivism, or pluralism faces major methodological hurdles that sometimes impede authentic dialogue. Let us turn specifijically to the Buddhist-Christian encounter in order to clarify this basic methodological point. In terms of exclusivisms, of course, the diffferences between Christian theism and Buddhist non-theism suggest that there is less of a risk that they will be easily confused. If Christians aspire after salvation understood as reconciliation to and union with God in Christ, Buddhists seek after enlightenment following the path of the Buddha. Few would argue that Buddhism leads to Christian salvation or that Christianity leads to Buddhist enlightenment. There will therefore be less resistance to the exclusive natures of the two religious traditions. Methodologically, however, such exclusivisms generally result in debate rather than dialogue. The contrasts are stark such that, even after expending time and energy to learn about the other, it comes down to a parting of ways. Christians will assert that a choice has to be made: “the Dharma or the Gospel?”30 Buddhist exclusivists, on the other hand, will counter-challenge: non-theism or theism?31 The point is precisely that dialogue within the exclusive frame of reference is subordinated to other aims: debate or proselytism. Again, I am not denying that there is a place for both. However, what happens when there are no clear-cut winners to our debates and what happens when either side refuses to convert to the other side. Do exclusivists then go their separate ways? Is that the end of Buddhist-Christian relations? Inclusivism appears at least at fijirst glance to be more conducive to longer-term interactive relationships. Christian inclusivists, on the one hand, might be open to how Buddhist notions can help Christians appreciate aspects of their own Christian faith that may have been neglected over time.32 Buddhist inclusivists, on the other hand, might be willing to grant that other faiths could provide a variety of skillful means to achieve enlightenment and freedom from duhkha.33 Inclusivists are generally

30 This is the title of the sixth and fijinal chapter of Keith Yandell and Harold Netland, Buddhism: A Christian Exploration and Appraisal (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009). 31 A classical Buddhist counter-theistic argument is Gunapala Dharmasiri, A Buddhist Critique of the Christian Concept of God (Antioch, Calif.: Golden Leaves, 1988). 32 See Gerald R. McDermott, Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions? Jesus, Revelation, and Religious Traditions (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000), ch. 6 on “Buddhist No-Self and No-Mind.” 33 E.g., John Makransky, “Buddhist Inclusivism: Reflections toward a Contemporary Buddhist Theology of Religions,” in Perry Schmidt-Leukel, ed., Buddhist Attitudes to Other Religions (St. Ottilien, Germany: EOS Editions, 2008), 47–68; see also Kristin Beise Kiblinger,

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open to learning from others and in this case, the vast diffferences between Christianity and Buddhism means, at least for some, that the “other” is less of a threat than religious traditions that are closer in substance to the home faith. Yet methodologically, in the end, the whole point about inclusivism is that whatever is good, true, and beautiful in other faiths either enables a deeper appreciation of or fijinds ultimate fulfijillment in the home faith. Christians might fijind revelation in Buddhism in so far as Buddhist traditions help Christians uncover or recover aspects of their own faith, but salvation is still through Christ; and if Buddhists are to be saved, they are saved through Christ either in his manifestation in Buddhism or because the highest aspirations of Buddhist faith and practice point beyond themselves to Christ. Buddhists might develop skillful means through engaging with Christians, but enlightenment is still most accessible through practice of the Nobel Eightfold Path, or its variants; and if Christians are to be enlightened, either they have to take refuge in the Buddha or their Christian practice will have to in some way include the practices favorable to the attainment of awakening. One version of inclusivism culminates in the anonymous Christianity thesis of Karl Rahner, which notion has been criticized severely by Bibhuti Yadav for not allowing Buddhism to speak on its own terms.34 Few like being labeled as closet believers or unconscious practitioners of another faith, and the methodological rationale for dialogue at this point breaks down. Although inclusivism begins the interfaith encounter expressing openness to being transformed by the dialogue, it turns out in the end that these interactions result in either conversion or the claim that even if no change of religious afffijiliation occurs, the “other” is practically part of “us” anyway. Again, I have nothing against religious conversion (if no coercion or unethical means are involved); but my methodological question is this: can inclusivist theologies on either side sustain interreligious relationships after a certain point? What about pluralist theological sensibilities? Christian and Buddhist pluralists would have no problems with what some call dual religious commitments,35 with the latter particularly flexible since Buddhism is

Buddhist Inclusivism: Attitudes toward Religious Others (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2005). 34 Bibhuti S. Yadav, “Protest against the Theology of Anonymous Christianity,” Religion and Society 24:4 (1977): 69–81. 35 E.g., Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian (Oxford: Oneworld, 2009).

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generally agreed to be fijirst a practice rather than a set of beliefs or as involving membership in a religious institution. Another version of a pluralist approach would insist that in a globalizing world, Christian faith ought to be open to transformation in its encounter with Buddhism through a process of dialogical integration.36 A third also Christian-inspired option is much more openended, for example viewing the Buddhist-Christian dialogue as a long-term history-of-religions research project driven by the interfaith encounter.37 These last two alternatives are more relevant to the interfaith dialogue as it unfolds in especially academic contexts. The methodological challenge for pluralism is twofold. On the one side, what are the objectives of a pluralistic approach to interfaith dialogue? For dual religious believers or practitioners, is the goal primarily that of furthering their own self-understanding or is there also a missiological dynamic wherein they might want to persuade others that such a dual religious identity is a desirable form of life? For dialogical integrationists, is the goal that of achieving some kind of theoretical, theological, or even doctrinal synthesis of two or more religious belief systems, or maybe even sets of religious practices, and if so, is this simply a conscious efffort at what has been called “syncretism” before and how might dialogical integration difffer from such projects as they have been historically documented? For dialogical researchers, toward what end or ends are such research, conversation, and exploration directed? Put alternatively what are the norms to be deployed in assessing the results of multiple religious belonging, or dialogical integration, or of dialogical research? How might we evaluate the various forms of integration? How do we analyze the fruits of historical research or judge the value of theological reflection? If we were to compare the discussion so far in this section with the preceding analysis of the theology-and-science conversation, we might observe that there are parallel challenges between these two ventures. Both dialogues press the question about starting points and norms. They highlight the nature of public conversation: how do particular traditions and modes of inquiry engage with interlocutors with diffferent methodological, ideological, philosophical, and religious/theological commitments? Can strangers attain a level of appreciation of diffferent paths, perspectives, or

36 Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Transformation by Integration: How Inter-Faith Encounter Changes Christianity (London: SCM Press, 2009), part II of which is devoted to four case studies of how Christianity is transformed in dialogue with Buddhist traditions. 37 E.g., Paul O. Ingram, The Process of Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2009).

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methods of inquiry and yet retain their integrity or do deeper and deeper levels of appreciation involve some sort of “conversion” to the other?38 How might these diffferent ways of inhabiting, describing, and engaging the world converge or diverge across communities of inquiry? If we now take a step back to reflect on the methodological issues identifijied so far in this chapter not only here with regard to the BuddhistChristian dialogue but also earlier with regard to the religion and science dialogue, it should be clear that having a Christianity-Buddhism-science trialogue complexifijies the task of the philosophy or theology of nature. Formerly,39 there was only the challenge of adjudicating between theology and science (or between philosophy and science, on the Buddhist side of things), and there would be those who would subordinate science to religious revelation on the one side or those who subjected theology to scientifijic inquiry on the other. At present, the question is which theology or revelation should be either subordinated to science or privileged over science. Formerly, there were also some who separated the two completely, either because they saw a certain incommensurability between the domains and methods of theology (as second order religious discourse) and science, or because they saw these two realms as parallel discourses irrelevant to one another, each providing alternative perspectives on human life in the world. At present, the radical diversity of religious

38 I raise and discuss some of these methodological and material questions in my “The True Believers? Francis X. Clooney and ‘Dual Religious Belonging’ in the Comparative Theological Enterprise,” Dharma Deepika: A South Asian Journal of Missiological Research (forthcoming). Tony Richie has reminded me also that Stephen Neill, The Christian Faith and Other Faiths, 2nd ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1984), defends the possibility of entering into “the heart and spirit of another religion without disloyalty to one’s own” (18); Neill rejects idealistic detachment as unrealistic and unnecessary, arguing that those most committed to their own faith can still be sympathetic toward others through a willingness to “suspend judgment” (18). 39 The various alternatives I have described in this paragraph as “formerly” existing can be found in the standard theology and science texts; see, e.g., Ian G. Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion (1966; New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1971); Robert John Russell, William R. Stoeger, S.J., and George V. Coyne, S.J., eds., Physics, Philosophy and Theology: A Common Quest for Understanding (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, 1988); Ted Peters, ed., Cosmos as Creation: Theology and Science in Consonance (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1989); Malcolm A. Jeeves and R.J. Berry, Science, Life and Christian Belief: A Survey of Contemporary Issues (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998); Niels Nenrik Gregersen and J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, eds., Rethinking Theology and Science: Six Models for the Current Dialogue (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998); and Richard F. Carlson, ed., Science and Christianity: Four Views (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000). While my examples here are drawn primarily from the Christian side of the engagement with science, I return in chapter 4 to discuss Buddhist models of interacting with science.

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traditions means that what was thought to be incommensurable given a specifijic religion-science conversation (e.g., Christianity-science) may not apply to another religion-science conversation (e.g., Buddhism-science). Formerly, there has also been nuanced responses that avoided either the extreme of justifying theology via science or vice-versa, and proceeded both with the conviction that theological claims should not be counterindicated by scientifijic or empirical evidence on the one hand,40 even while recognizing the provisionality of the deliverances of science and the reality that all inquiry, scientifijic and otherwise, is based on assumptions which can never be questioned wholesale on the other. For these, the hermeneutical spiral dictates nothing less than the ongoing, dialogical relationship between theology and science, each clarifying, complementing, and perhaps even correcting the other’s self-understanding at appropriate junctures in the human quest for truth. While there is much to be gained by proceeding in this direction, my claim in this book is that presently the dialogue needs to be expanded from that between Christian theology and science to include the religious claims of other faiths. So although the task of philosophy and theology of nature is certainly much more demanding if we proceed in this direction, opening up of the theology-science dialogue toward a theology-religion-science trialogue brings with it new opportunities as well. In any case, this strategy is gaining momentum. Christians and Muslims have begun such dialogues around the scientifijic roundtable,41 as have Christians and Buddhists. Although the latter trialogue is a bit farther along than the former, yet we are still very early in the process of sorting out the methodological, material, philosophical, and theological issues amidst this triadic conversation.42 On the

40 This is the position enunciated most clearly by Philip Clayton, Explanation from Physics to Theology: An Essay in Rationality and Religion (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1989), 161–67, and Clayton, God and Contemporary Science (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, and Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), esp. 5–9. 41 E.g., Ted Peters and Muzafffar Iqbal, eds., God, Life, and the Cosmos: Christian and Islamic Perspectives (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002). 42 A pioneer from an earlier generation was the biblical scholar Burnett Hillman Streeter, especially his The Buddha and the Christ: An Exploration of the Meaning of the Universe and of the Purpose of Human Life (London: Macmillan, 1932), which attempted to locate the ideals of both traditions within the modern world of science. Many of the methodological questions opened up by Streeter’s explorations remain unaddressed, as Pan-Chiu Lai, “Buddhist-Christian Studies in a Scientifijic Age: A Case Study of Burnett Hillman Streeter (1874–1937),” Studies in Interreligious Dialogue 19 (2009): 34–49, reminds us. Leading the way in the contemporary scene have been the Lutheran theologian, Paul O. Ingram, Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefijield, 2008), and the Tibetan Buddhist scholar, B. Alan Wallace, Mind in the Balance:

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one hand, perhaps the dialogue between Christian theology and science can be illuminated through observing the dialogue between another religious tradition and science. Comparison of two (or more) religion-science dialogues can help distinguish genuinely scientifijic problems from problems associated with particular religious traditions. On the other hand, perhaps lessons learned from the interreligious dialogue—for example, about perspectivalism or hermeneutical frameworks—itself can illuminate challenges confronting the religion-science dialogue. In some ways, those who argue that religion and science are parallel or relatively incommensurable discourses are in a position similar to those religionists who claim that diffferent religious traditions are irreconcilable. How religionists yet communicate with each other across such allegedly incongruent lines may shed light on how the religion-science dialogue nevertheless proceeds against expectations. To be sure, some scientists are reductionists when it comes to religious matters, dismissing religion as outmoded in a scientifijic age. This project proceeds cautiously, sensitive to such criticisms insofar as they touch upon naïve or uncritical religious self-understandings. But by and large, I will not spend time engaging with such accounts which have turned science into what I call scientism, by which I mean that the deliverances of science are wrongly claimed as supporting all kinds of anti-metaphysical (naturalistic) or anti-religious (materialistic) pre-commitments.43 There are many more scientists or scientifijically informed people who are genuinely interested in engaging with religious matters, not to mention religious pluralism as well. This book speaks into this triadic interface of Christianity, Buddhism, and science. Yet the question remains for the philosophy and theology of nature: how can such a project succeed in the face of these methodological challenges? In order for this project to be manageable and in order for it to have any chance of succeeding, there will need to be appropriate parameters (there Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009). Another volume edited by Paul D. Numrich, The Boundaries of Knowledge in Buddhism, Christianity, and Science (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), focuses more on epistemological issues. For a brief introduction to the possibilities of a ChristianityBuddhism-science trialogue, see Robert John Russell, “Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity, Buddhism and the Natural Sciences,” in Ryusei Takeda, ed., Religion and Science, Buddhism and Environmental Bioethics: Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (Kyoto, Japan: The Research Institute for Buddhist Culture, Ryukoku University, 2005), 71–99. 43 See, e.g., Mikael Stenmark, Scientism: Science, Ethics, and Religion (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2001).

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is neither space nor time for any exhaustive discussion), as well as an orienting framework and methodology that facilitates convergence of the religion-science and the interreligious dialogues. In the following pages, I suggest that a pneumatological theology provides a relational and participatory hermeneutic that can facilitate both the religion-science and the interreligious dialogues toward a philosophical theology of nature. 1.3 Starting with the Spirit: Pneumatology and the Christian-Buddhist-Science Trialogue My methodological thesis is that pneumatology opens us up to the possibility of a participatory epistemology which overcomes the dualistic and dichotomous thinking of subject and object—e.g., of theology and science, and of the world of Scripture and of nature—without collapsing the distinction between the two.44 Similarly, a pneumatological approach to religious pluralism also opens up to a participatory epistemology of self and otherness—e.g., of religious beliefs and religious practices, of the worlds of Scripture and other sacred texts, and of Christianity and other faiths—again without collapsing the distinctions between them.45 Allow me to elaborate on three basic elements of such a pneumatological epistemology and hermeneutic: its “grounding” in the Pentecost narrative of Acts 2; its furnishing dynamic categories for comprehending science and religion; and its providing a dialogical and intersubjective means of adjudicating multi-disciplinary and multi-religious claims to truth. Pneumatology and the “Ground” of Epistemic Pluralism—First, a pneumatological theology proceeds at least in part from the Pentecost narrative of the Spirit of God being poured out “upon all flesh” (Acts 2:17).46 This involves understanding “all flesh” to have universal application. This reading is supported by both the immediate context of this claim which includes sons and daughters, young and old, and slave and free, and the broader context of the Pentecostal outpouring of the Spirit upon the many 44 My Spirit-Word-Community, esp. part II, provides the book-length argument; a briefer article is my “The Hermeneutical Trialectic: Notes toward Consensual Hermeneutic and Theological Method,” Heythrop Journal 45:1 (2004): 22–39. 45 To be chronologically precise, I come to the religion-science dialogue from much more extensive work in theology of religions, but my pneumatological epistemology and methodology developed contextually within the latter framework was also always intended to engage with matters related to the former; see my Spirit-Word-Community, esp. §6.2. 46 The following is adapted from my The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), §4.3.3.

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who were gathered on the streets of Jerusalem from around the known (Mediterranean) world. While at one (exegetical) level it might be argued that “all flesh” is limited to the class of people drawn from the categories of sons, daughters, etc., at another (theological) level, the sons, daughters, etc., are who they are precisely because they are those upon whom the Spirit is poured out. In this latter reading, the “all flesh” would not be qualifijied by “Christians.” Further, while some might argue that the “all flesh” is limited to Jews and proselytes to Judaism derived from the Jewish diaspora, this overlooks three more universalistic trajectories embedded in this text: a) that proselytes are not full converts: rather, being at diffferent stages of their spiritual journeys, they embody in their lives multiple traditions and cultures in various degrees; b) that the summary list of regions and languages present in Jerusalem symbolize (weaker) or represent (stronger) the breadth of the known fijirst century world; and c) that Luke’s own narrative is guided by a universalistic vision whereby “all flesh” includes those from Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and “the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8; cf Acts 3:25).47 From this universalistic (epistemic, not soteriological) reading of the Pentecost narrative, it is but a short series of steps to understanding interdisciplinary and interreligious engagement in pneumatological perspective. First, it is undeniable that this Pentecost narrative should be read against the narrative of the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11) when human beings were dispersed across the earth through the confusion of their languages. Against this background, the outpouring of the Spirit redeems the diversity of languages, enabling each tongue to become a vehicle to communicate the wondrousness of “God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:11). Building on this, the diversity of languages is also correlated with the diversity of cultures (or, nations, tribes, and peoples, to use fijirst century Mediterranean categories; cf. Rev. 7:9 and passim) and, by extension, to the diversity of symbol systems (including, I argue in a moment, that of the various sciences). In this reading, Pentecost becomes the theological basis for not only accepting but also valuing the plurality of cultures, and the missiological basis for methods that emphasize the inculturation, indigenization, and contextualization of the Christian gospel. This connection between language and culture should then be extended to include, I suggest, other semiotic dimensions of human life, including

47 I provide such a reading to the book of Acts in my Who is the Holy Spirit? A Walk with the Apostles (Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete Press, 2011).

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both the world of the sciences and the world of the religions. With regard to the former, I propose that the world of the sciences is constituted by a plurality of semeiotic or symbolic systems (disciplines), each operating according to various grammars (rules), sustained by various practices, and directed to various functions, but all networked to one another by the common goal of inquiring into nature.48 With regard to the latter, the world of the religions is intrinsically linked to the diversity of cultures and languages, and only a modernist compartmentalization would divide between them. Hence, I argue, the Pentecost principle of linguistic and cultural plurality necessarily includes that of scientifijic endeavor and of religious diversity, and divine redemption includes not only human languages and cultures, but also human scientifijic inquiry and human religiosity. However, just as this does not mean that all human words and all aspects of human culture are holy without qualifijication, so also it does not mean that all scientifijic inquiry and all forms of human religiousness are ultimately saved or sanctifijied. Language and culture, science and religion, must all be tested and discerned, even as each is potentially a vehicle for mediating the truth, beauty, goodness, wondrousness, and even grace of God. However, acceptance of this possibility establishes the Day of Pentecost as the narrative “ground” for engaging the world of the sciences and the world of religions in pneumatological perspective. Now before proceeding, I need to be clear that I am not insisting that my elucidation of Acts 2 in the preceding (and following) pages captures the author’s original meaning or the intended audience’s understanding. Rather than being a strictly exegetical exercise, mine is a more theological interpretation wherein I am suggesting only one possible reading of Acts 2 for our twenty-fijirst pluralistic, scientifijic, and technological world. Now given that Luke’s purpose was also to show how the Spirit of Pentecost was the Spirit of Jesus, we will need to return later to a discussion of what our pneumatological hermeneutic of the religion-science and interreligious dialogues has to say about christology.49 Pneumatology and the Dynamism of Science and Religion—The second basic element of a pneumatological approach to science and religious

48 See my “Academic Glossolalia? Pentecostal Scholarship, Multi-disciplinarity, and the Science-Religion Conversation,” Journal of Pentecostal Theology 14:1 (2005): 61–80. 49 Elsewhere, I respond more specifijically and at length to this question of the Spirit of Pentecost as the Spirit of Jesus; see Yong, “A P(new)matological Paradigm for Christian Mission in a Religiously Plural World,” Missiology: An International Review 33:2 (2005): 175–91; see also §9.1 below.

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pluralism is that pneumatology furnishes dynamic categories for comprehending both domains of human experience. Let me explicate this dynamism in terms of a two fundamental notions: tradition and praxis. Tradition in pneumatological perspective is dynamic in light of the long-standing metaphor of the Spirit as the soul or life of the Church, especially when the latter is considered in its institutional form. Whereas the classical theological understanding of “tradition” (and the ecclesial tradition more specifijically) emphasized it’s given once-and-for-all nature, a pneumatological view of church and tradition highlights the fluidity and dynamic movement of both. In this pneumatological framework, the Christian tradition and church not only exist, but are also becoming, because the tradition and church are concrete expressions of human responses to and participation in the Spirit’s outpouring upon—presence and activity in—the world. Similarly, this pneumatological perspective recognizes the dynamic character of scientifijic inquiry and of other religious traditions. In the same way as the Christian tradition can be discerned only through its continually changing empirical manifestations—to see if the Spirit’s presence and activity can be detected or if the Spirit is absent in some respect—so also are the traditions of inquiry of the natural and human sciences, and of “Judaism,” “Islam,” “Buddhism,” “Hinduism,” etc., discernible through their permutations. A pneumatological perspective on science and a pneumatological theology of religions would be better equipped to recognize “science” and “religions” not as nouns, but as verbs: they are formed by the processes of human “traditioning” and are thereby shaped by the various human engagements with the world (the sciences) and various human responses to realities considered transcendent (the religions).50 This leads to our consideration of praxis. From a pneumatological perspective, praxis becomes just as, if not more, important than beliefs (doctrines) and that precisely because pneumatology calls attention to divine activity rather than divine being (at one level), and to sanctifijication rather than to mere confession (at another). This contrasts with the classical understanding wherein “praxis” was secondary to “doctrine” in defijining a religious tradition. The strength of a pneumatological theology is precisely its capacity to recognize the interrelatedness of praxis and doctrine 50 While the dynamic character of science is obvious, that of the religions is now much more widely accepted, especially since Wilfred Cantwell Smith’s The Meaning and End of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1962); cf. also Dale T. Irvin, Christian Histories, Christian Traditioning: Rendering Accounts (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1998).

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without subordinating either to the other. Rather, praxis is understood to be guided by doctrine even as praxis shapes, clarifijies, confijirms (or not), and even transforms doctrinal formulations. A pneumatological viewpoint both acknowledges and is able to provide a theological account for the interrelatedness between praxis and doctrine. For this reason, a pneumatological understanding of science emphasizes the process of inquiry rather than the content of scientifijic knowledge. This is especially important given the fallibility attached to all scientifijic discoveries, and the shifting nature of the scientifijic paradigms and frameworks. The advances of science are predicated on nothing less than the willingness to question previously accepted claims to truth and to start afresh. Scientifijic inquiry is therefore a set of practices oriented toward engagement with the world, and a pneumatological perspective on the religion-science dialogue would empower the practices of both religion and science in their common quest for truth. Similarly, a pneumatologically informed theology of religions is better able to comprehend religious otherness not only in terms of the category of doctrine but also in terms of other dynamic praxis categories like ritual, piety, devotion, morality, and the like.51 While many previous theologies of religions have had an almost exclusive focus on the beliefs of religious others,52 a pneumatological theologia religionum is better able to account for the diversity of beliefs that are linked to and shaped by diffferent social, moral, and religious practices. Together, these brief discussions of tradition and praxis are suggestive of how a pneumatological approach inculcates a more dynamic understanding of theology and its work, especially in its engagement with the worlds of nature and the religions. In the same way as pneumatology

51 On the intrinsic relationship between Christian beliefs and practices, see James William McClendon, Jr., Systematic Theology, 3 vols. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1986, 1994, 2000); Reinhard Hütter, Sufffering Divine Things: Theology as Church Practice (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2000); and Miroslav Volf and Dorothy C. Bass, eds., Practicing Theology: Beliefs and Practices in Christian Life (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002). 52 Some of the prominent exceptions, interestingly, have been those of pluralist theologians like John Hick (who has focused on the ethical-transformative processes of religious traditions) and Paul Knitter (whose emphases have been on orthopraxis); see John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1991), and Paul F. Knitter, One Earth Many Religions: Multifaith Dialogue and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995), and Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995).

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points to eschatology (the doctrine of things related to the end), so also a pneumatological theology of science and a pneumatological theology of religions recognizes the openendedness and unfijinished character of scientifijic inquiry and of religious traditions. Certainly, scientists and scholars of religion have long been advocates of this more dynamic understanding of each domain. The contribution of a pneumatological perspective is a specifijically theological (rather than philosophical or practical) rationale for this kind of dynamic interpretation of science and of religion. Pneumatology, Truth, and the Religions—This leads to the third basic element of a pneumatological approach to science and religious pluralism: its capacity to provide an intersubjective mode of engaging claims to truth.53 Previous theological approaches to science and other religious doctrines have noticed and, often, emphasized their contradictory quality when explicated in terms of the correspondence theory of truth. So most scientists believe in evolution via random mutation and natural selection, while some Christians believe that God created each species distinctively; or most Buddhists believe that death leads either to reincarnation or nirvana, while Christians classically believe that death leads either to heaven or hell—in which cases, either scientists or Christians and either Buddhists or Christians are right (and the other wrong) since both sets of claims cannot be simultaneously true. With regard to the question of evolution, there is both the challenge of what counts as data and the deeper issue of how to interpret the data when the lines between science and metaphysics are blurred. With regard to the question of nirvana or reincarnation versus heaven or hell, the problem is that such claims are either transcendental or eschatological, resulting in Buddhist and Christian claims and counterclaims without any means of adjudicating conclusively in the present life the apparent contradictions assuming the correspondence theory of truth. More recent developments have thus focused on the epistemological questions of how any particular truth claim is nested semiotically within a larger web of interlocking beliefs and practices. This is explicated in terms of the coherence theory regarding how truth is known. Considered in this way, the religion and science domains are disparate, with theological claims dealing with ultimate meaning, morality, sentiment, and piety that are embedded in religious practices, and scientifijic claims dealing

53 The following is a revision and adaptation of my “The Spirit Bears Witness: Pneumatology, Truth and the Religions,” Scottish Journal of Theology 57:1 (2004): 1–25.

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with matters of fact regarding the world that are embedded in traditions of empirical enquiry.54 Similarly, Buddhist or Christians claims only make sense within Buddhist or Christian frameworks since doctrines function with regard to religious traditions and practices in ways similar to how grammars function with regard to languages. In both the religion-science and interreligious dialogues, truth is to be assessed according to whether or not any statement coheres with other statements within the religious system (of beliefs and practices). Yet the turn to epistemic coherentism does not resolve the alethic issues. The problem here is twofold: either scientifijic and the diffferent religious frameworks are all incommensurable—based as they are on diffferent semiotic and praxis systems—and hence apparently contrary claims are essentially non-adjudicable; or any attempt to adjudicate scientifijicreligious or multiple religious claims requires that one not only learns about or observes from a distance another tradition but also that one enters into and participates in its semiotic system and practices. With regard to the religion-science conversation, to adopt the former position—that religion and science are incompatible languages—ignores the fact that religion makes claims regarding matters of fact and that science provides explanations on matters related to morality and even metaphysics. To adopt the latter position—that engaging religion with science and vice-versa requires cross-over and return—risks either mixing the two domains inappropriately or privileging one and subordinating the other. How then does religion and theology engage with science given this dilemma connected with the coherence theory of truth? With regard to the interreligious encounter, to assume that religious traditions are inapposite leads to relativism: what is true for the Buddhist is not true for the Christian and vice-versa. But to assume that adjudicating religious truth claims requires cross-over and return into another religious tradition and its practices threatens to compromise the kind of scholarly objectivity aspired to by scholars of religion,55 and raises the question of how to retain one’s Christian identity in the process of enter-

54 Expressed most straightforwardly in terms of the principle of religion and science providing “non-overlapping magisteria,” by Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine, 1999). 55 See Russell T. McCutcheon, ed., The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Religion: A Reader (London and New York: Cassell, 1998), and Elisabeth Arweck and Martin D. Stringer, eds., Theorizing Faith: The Insider/Outsider Problem in the Study of Ritual (Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham Press, 2002).

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ing into the beliefs and practices of another faith. Is it not advisable to follow anthropologists and their participant-observatory methods that do not require them to embrace fully the ways of life (both beliefs and practices) of those who they are studying? However, is it then possible in this way to adjudge between contrary claims to truth among the religions? The pneumatological approach to this dilemma provides a specifijically theological rationale for holding both correspondence and coherentist theories of truth and methods for their resolution in tension. Let me explicate this claim in two steps. First, going back to the theological reading of the Pentecost narrative proposed above, the outpouring of the Spirit enables each one to give witness to the wondrous works of God (Acts 2:11) in and through the diversity of languages. Now insofar as language can only be arbitrarily divorced from culture and from religion, to the same extent, then, cultures and religions are potentially vehicles for mediating the grace and truth of God. Therefore the Spirit who gives the capacity to speak in a foreign language also enables, by extension, participation in a foreign culture, a diffferent semeiotic system of beliefs and practices, and even in some aspects of an alien religion, so that one can experience and testify to those realities to some degree “from within.” If in more exegetical terms the Spirit’s outpouring on the Day of Pentecost redeemed the various languages for the purposes of God, my more theological interpretation and application to the religion-science and interreligious dialogues would be to embrace the “redemption” of both domains of human knowledge and experience, but attempt to present and discuss them in ways that respect their distinctive languages and perspectives. Hence I say that our dialogue with science and other faiths allows and even invites our engagement with them on their own terms and, to that degree, emically “from within” rather than merely etically “from without.”56 I therefore suggest also that the same Spirit whose outpouring on the Day of Pentecost enabled the speaking in foreign tongues might today enable genuine engagement with the sciences and with other faiths. This means, second, a pneumatological epistemology empowers a robustly dialogical and intersubjective approach to truth. On the one

56 My colleague, Tony Richie, also discusses, in dialogue with other evangelical theologians, the importance of entering into the viewpoint of religious others to whatever degree possible, without compromising Christian faith; see Richie, Speaking by the Spirit: A Pentecostal Model for Interreligious Encounter and Dialogue, Asbury Theological Seminary Series in World Christian Revitalization Movements in Pentecostal/Charismatic Studies 6 (Wilmore, Ky.: Emeth Press, 2011), 92–94.

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hand (from the Christian perspective), the Spirit graciously enables our entrance into, inhabitation of, and testimony to faith in Jesus Christ. On the other hand (from the religion-science or the theology of religions perspective), this same Spirit also graciously grants understanding of, guides participation in, and empowers engagement with other languages, cultures, semiotic systems, and even at least in some respects religious traditions. This dialogical relationship thus means that we engage our own and the other tradition both as “insiders” and as “outsiders,” albeit in diffferent respects. While it is obvious how we are “insiders” to our own tradition, it is also important to note that we are theological “outsiders” even to the Christian tradition insofar as we are still not yet fully converted to the image of Christ (on this side of the eschaton).57 On the other hand, while it is clear we are “outsiders” to other traditions, it is also important to note that we are potential “insiders” even to other traditions insofar as the Spirit enables us to speak in other languages and to crossover into other traditions. Hence we engage our own and other traditions neither merely “objectively” (as “outsiders”) nor merely “subjectively” (as “insiders”), but intersubjectively—e.g., both within and outside each tradition, as individuals and as members of (both) communities, in terms of both beliefs (doctrines) and practices (participation and inhabitation), in historical reality (in dialogue with others), and yet anticipating eschatological consummation. This dialogical and intersubjective engagement with truth therefore neglects neither the criteria of coherence nor that of correspondence, but highlights the processes of adjudication as involving the mutual transformation of traditions in dialogue by the power of the eschatological Spirit. * * * The promise of this pneumatological epistemology and hermeneutic needs to be tested in a pluralistic and scientifijic world. I propose to do so in this book by way of an exploration wherein Christianity, Buddhism, and science engage in a trialogue directed toward the development of a philosophy and theology of nature appropriate to the demands of life in the twenty-fijirst century. The following chapters argue two interrelated theses, one methodological and the other theological. The methodological thesis is that the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit opens up to a 57 I elaborate on the eschatological aspects of pneumatological theology in my “Performing Global Pentecostal Theology: A Response to Wolfgang Vondey,” PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 28:2 (2006): 313–21.

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dialogical and philosophical theology that respects the integrity of science and other faiths in general and Buddhism in particular. In this trialogue, Christian theological engagement with science can be illuminated from the encounter between Buddhism and science on the one hand, even while the religion-science dialogue can be illuminated by the interreligious dialogue on the other hand. The result is that a pneumatological approach to the religion-science and interfaith dialogues promises to advance and even integrate both conversations. By extension, the theological thesis is that a pneumatological perspective informed by science and Buddhism allows for the formulation of a theology of nature more appropriate to the demands of the religiously plural world of the twenty-fijirst century. A Christian theology of nature can and must learn from the sciences and other wisdom traditions, including Buddhism. The three parts of this book focus respectively on the Christian theology and science dialogue, the Buddhist philosophy and science dialogue, and the comparative theology and science dialogue respectively, all directed toward a philosophical, scientifijic, and interreligious theology of nature. Part I attempts to think about creation as the locus of divine presence, and does so by introducing the idea of “spirit” in the religionscience dialogue (chapter 2); by rethinking the doctrine of creation in pneumatological perspective through a close re-reading of the Genesis narrative while keeping in dialogue with recent developments in the cosmological sciences and in emergence, complexity, and systems theories (chapter 3); and by culminating with a reconsideration of the doctrine of human nature in pneumatological perspective through a close re-reading of Genesis 1 and 2 while keeping in dialogue with recent developments in the cognitive sciences (chapter 4). My objective here is to articulate a scientifijically informed theology of nature appropriate to the present time. Part II follows the same movement from introducing religion-science issues to discussing cosmological and anthropological matters, but does so in dialogue with the Buddhist tradition. I suggest that our pneumatological framework for discussing the natural world in the Christian tradition provides an avenue for conversation with perspectives on ultimate and phenomenal reality gathered around the Mahayana Buddhist notion of shunyata (literally: emptiness, or also understandable as referring to the doctrine of codependent or interdependent origination). I therefore begin by introducing the idea of shunyata as it has been formulated in Mahayana Buddhism and as it has been appropriated in the Buddhismscience dialogue (chapter 5); proceed by explicating an understanding of the world as dynamically self-emptying or interdependently constituting

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in the Huayen tradition of Buddhism and developed further in the dialogue between the Japanese Kyoto School and modern science (chapter 6); and conclude by exploring an understanding of human personhood and human nature as self-emptying or interdependently arising in dialogue with the “non-self ” and “true-self ” perspectives of especially Mahayana Buddhism and its recent dialogue with the neurosciences (chapter 7). Our goal here is to understand especially Mahayana Buddhist perspectives on the cosmos and human nature in order to set up the comparative exercise in the last part of the book. The separate treatments of Christian theology and Buddhist philosophy in the fijirst two parts of the book are designed to ensure that each tradition is fijirst presented and understood on its own terms. However a philosophical theology of nature emergent from the religion-science and the interreligious conversations will need eventually to get to the hard work of comparison. The last three chapters (in part three) attempt to do so by summarizing, sorting, and synthesizing the cosmological and anthropological results of the fijirst two parts (chapter 8); by stepping back to assess the theological synthesis and the pneumatological epistemology and methodology against the normative claims of the Christian theological tradition and the basic consensus of the religion-science conversation (chapter 9); and by concluding toward a preliminary application of the resultant theology of nature toward a more specifijic but still interreligiously shaped theology and ethics of the environment (chapter 10). Our conclusions thus hope to have methodological, theological, and ethical traction as informed by the Christianity-Buddhism-science trialogue. I should also say that the idea that the attempt to develop a philosophical theology of nature is not an excuse for taking up the “really important” matters in the religion-science dialogue or the interreligious dialogue. Rather the Christian understanding of nature itself stands to gain not only (obviously) from the sciences, but also (less obviously) from the collective wisdom of the religious traditions of humankind. In fact, what kind of theology—of nature or otherwise—is it that neglects the insights of any and all who have asked theological, philosophical, or ultimate questions about whatever it is being discussed? I suggest that just as any Christian theology in our pluralistic world needs to learn from and engage both the sciences and those in other religious traditions, so also a Christian theology of nature needs to be informed by the religion-science and interreligious dialogues. Hence, theology of nature is both a means to an end that facilitates a fresh encounter among religious and science traditions

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and an end in itself that draws from the interreligious dialogue with the sciences. In the end, this volume is best read as an efffort in constructive philosophical theology in global context. With regard to science and religion, in this case, Buddhism, the volume does not undertake the task of what is understood as negative Christian apologetics—the efffort to establish the basic correctness of Christian ideas against its competitors. While there remains a need for such tasks, and while there will be occasions in what follows to raise critical questions from the Christian perspective in dialogue with science and Buddhism, that is not the primary goal here. Instead, the goal is what might be called positive Christian apologetics in the interdisciplinary, intercultural, and interreligious context of the twenty-fijirst century—the efffort to articulate a Christian philosophy of nature in light of contemporary scientifijic developments and Buddhist traditions. With regard to the dialogue with Buddhism, the primarily methodological approach will be that of comparative theology, one that respects the diffferences between the two traditions and yet seeks synthesis (not syncresis) whenever such is deemed appropriate in the mutual quest for truth; with regard to the dialogue with science, the approach will be mediated through explorations of philosophical issues at the boundaries of where science meets religion (and theology). Brought together, the task of constructive theology is pursued with the conviction that a pneumatological framework can facilitate a triadic conversation that will deepen, perhaps transform, but—most importantly—expand Christian understandings of itself in relationship to the natural world. In the pages to come, then, the following questions guide—mostly implicitly, sometimes explicitly—our reflections. How should Christian theology engage with modern science in the twenty-fijirst century? How should Christian theology engage with other religious traditions? Given the radical diffferences between Christian theism and Buddhism nontheism, how can Christians and Buddhist engage each other rhetorically and, more substantively, theologically or philosophically? Finally, how should a Christian theology of nature—of the world, of creation, of the whole—be developed in a trialogue with the sciences and the religions? This volume proceeds persuaded that the pneumatological framework suggested here will be sufffijicient for engaging these questions and pushing the trialogue forward, but my readers will be the ones to decide fijinally whether that is the case.

PART ONE

PNEUMA: DIVINE PRESENCE AND NATURE IN THE THEOLOGY AND SCIENCE DIALOGUE

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The theological task before us is the quest for a philosophy and theology of nature that engages and is informed by the dialogues with science and with Buddhist traditions. The methodological engine developed to drive this project is the Christian doctrine of the Spirit. In the following three chapters, I sketch the basic cosmological (chapter 3) and anthropological (chapter 4) features of a pneumatological theology of nature derived from the dialogue between Christian theology and science (chapter 2). Our thinking about cosmology and anthropology is important because they will help us to get at the kinds of questions that a pneumatological theology of nature raises. Since the Christian theological tradition has generally understood the Holy Spirit as the presence and activity of God in the world, a pneumatological theology of nature seeks to probe more intentionally into the mode of that presence and activity. So, for example, what kind of world is it that allows God to be present and active by God’s Spirit? More specifijically, what kind of creatures are human beings such that we can and do consciously interact with the divine spirit? Because these cosmological and anthropological matters are especially pointed in a theology of nature developed in pneumatological perspective, they receive focused attention in this part of the book. Clearly, a pneumatological theology engages with the fijield of philosophy and theology of nature in a way that already privileges the category of spirit in the conversation. We will certainly have to tread carefully here. There have been far too many wrong turns historically in the encounter between theology and science in which various ontologies of spirit—substantial, ethereal, or vitalistic notions, for example—have been presumed that have not been amenable to scientifijic research and inquiry. People of faith can always make claims about divine, angelic, or even demonic spirits and how such influence, even determine, the ways of the world. Alternatively, the invisible, immaterial, and non-empirical nature of spiritual realities can often be posited as “explanations” for this or that phenomenon which is no diffferent than any “God-of-the-gaps” responses in the theological encounter with science, and these will inevitably result in foreclosing scientifijic inquiry. Deploying pneumatological categories in the religion and science dialogue cannot serve as an excuse to dismiss the scientifijic consensus when it is not religiously or theologically appealing, or to avoid doing the hard work of research in both domains. In fact, we have to be on even greater alert and be prepared to labor more intensely and persistently precisely because the pitfalls are even more ambiguous if not also more hazardous to making progress in the fijield. Certainly inquiry

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into this nexus of spirit and science is not for the faint of heart, at least not if we desire to take both sides of the equation very seriously. We therefore proceed tentatively and perspicaciously, if not courageously. The following biblical and theological analyses conducted in dialogue with the sciences lay the groundwork for the interreligious and interdisciplinary philosophy of nature that is part of the goal of this work. Part II will unfold Buddhist cosmological and anthropological understandings so that we can undertake a comparative exploration in the fijinal part of this volume. The pneumatological motif functions methodologically and materially as a Christian theological norm especially in the fijirst and last parts of the arguments in these pages.

CHAPTER TWO

SPIRIT AND SCIENCE: AN EMERGING DIALOGUE The two dominant symbols of divine presence in the Christian tradition have been Incarnation—God with us in the flesh—and Pentecost—the Spirit of God poured out on all flesh. The former christological symbol has emerged in the theology and science dialogue in various ways, whether it is in terms of cosmological evolution, spatiality and temporality, theological anthropology, or, more recently, information theory.1 These are important developments for the dialogue between Christian theology and the sciences, but the renaissance of trinitarian theology in the last few decades suggests also that the promise of a fully trinitarian theology will not be fulfijilled until christological considerations are complemented by specifijically pneumatological explorations as well.2 To be sure, there have been some rumblings about a pneumatological contribution to the theology and science discussion. Yet pneumatological input proposals to date have been far less systematic, precise, or sustained. In this chapter, I introduce previous attempts to engage the religion-science conversation in the terms and categories of spirit. We begin with generic understandings of spirit in the religion-science literature (§2.1), proceed to more theological uses, including introduction of the effforts of Wolfhart Pannenberg (§2.2), and then seek to explore and critically asses the links proposed between pneumatology and contemporary fijield theory (§2.3). The following considerations identify the emergence

1 On christology and cosmology, the speculative work of Teilhard de Chardin has led the way. On spatiality and temporality, see Thomas F. Torrance, Space, Time and Incarnation (London: Oxford University Press, 1969). On christology and theological anthropology, see Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientifijic Age: Being and Becoming—Natural, Divine, and Human, enlarged ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), esp. Part III. On christology and information theory, see John C. Puddefoot, “Information Theory, Biology, and Christology,” and Arthur Peacocke, “The Incarnation of the Informing Self-Expressive Word of God,” both in W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman, eds., Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 301–19 and 321–39 respectively. 2 I make some form of this argument in all of my books, most recently in Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2012).

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of specifijically pneumatological categories and motifs in the theology and science dialogue. Within the bigger scheme of things, however, this chapter, and this part of the book as well, seek to ask what diffference, if any, a pneumatological approach makes to thinking about a philosophy and theology of nature. Much Christian reflection on theology of nature has proceeded on vaguely theistic terms.3 Even projects devoted to thinking trinitarianly about theology and science believe that it is sufffijicient to explicate the christological register, but this neglects the pneumatological dimension.4 Building on this existing discussion and on my previous work,5 my goals for this volume include that of contributing to the theology and science discussion from a specifijically pneumatological perspective. Along the way, perhaps such an efffort can also illuminate longstanding philosophical questions about the nature of reality and even about the Buddhist-Christian dialogue. This chapter is but a fijirst constructive step toward such aspirations. 2.1 Spirit and Science: What Kind of Relationship? The language of spirit has been present in the religion-science dialogue in various forms. Five uses of spirit are pertinent for our purposes of introducing this conversation.6 3 The three volumes of Alister McGrath’s A Scientifijic Theology (Grand Rapids, and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2001–2003), are helpful, but operate mostly in general theistic categories. 4 E.g., John Polkinghorne, Science and the Trinity: The Christian Encounter with Reality (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004), while both on many counts, has a weak pneumatology. Andrew Robinson, God and the World of Signs: Trinity, Evolution, and the Metaphysical Semiotics of C.S. Peirce, Philosophical Studies in Science and Religion 2 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), is much better pneumatologically, although this will need translation for even for theologians because of the density of the ideas related to Peirce’s triadic system. 5 My own engagement with these questions until now has been explicitly from a pentecostal perspective, as evidenced in my editorial work on “Pentecostalism, Science, & Creation: New Voices in the Theology-Science Conversation,” a collection of six articles in Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion 43:4 (2008): 875–989, The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth: Pentecostal Forays in Science and Theology of Creation (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2009), and (with James K.A. Smith) Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2010), as well as my own book, The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination, Pentecostal Manifestos 4 (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011). This present volume attempts to expand the pneumatological horizons of these discussions in dialogue with Buddhist traditions. 6 Elsewhere, I generate a typology of fijifteen diffferent uses of “spirit” in the religionscience dialogue; see my “Discerning the Spirit(s) in the Natural World: Toward a Typology of ‘Spirit’ in the Theology and Science Conversation,” Theology & Science 3:3 (2005): 315–29.

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First, there is the very generic use of spirit which is synonymous with religion or spirituality. In this usage, the breadth, depth, flexibility, and ambiguity of the words religion and spirituality are simply transferred over into the word spirit. The generality of spirit operative here can be seen in such publications as the popular but very professional-looking periodical Science & Spirit, and in such projects as “Science and the Spiritual Quest” (http://www.ssq.net/).7 Within this category, spirit often refers to an overall religious orientation or disposition toward the spiritual dimensions of reality and of human experience.8 One of the early contributions toward this understanding may be Teilhard de Chardin’s ideas regarding the evolution of the human species from being materially constituted toward being consciously aware and spiritually awakened. While each of these variants of spirit has its benefijits, and while advocates can hardly be blamed taking advantage of the ambiguity of spirit as bequeathed by the tradition, it goes without saying that the imprecision of the idea of spirit in these cases requires further specifijication before it can become theologically useful. Second, some appearances of spirit in the religion-science conversation have been associated, however loosely, with the occult sciences. Perhaps anticipating the Teilhardian trajectory and even contributing to it from another perspective, spirit has been allied here with the tradition of theosophy. Derived in part from the philosophical idealism of Hegel (e.g., his use of Geist),9 and in part from Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), Rudolf Steiner (Anthroposophical Wisdom) and, more recently, contemporary New Age religious and consciousness movements, the theosophical spirit is understood primarily in terms of “spiritualism”—in contrast to materialism—with connections both to the esotericist tradition (which includes the ancient but reworked traditions of Gnosticism, Hermeticism and occultism) and to the tradition of alchemical sciences. Here, then, is both opportunity and challenge for the science and religion conversation: opportunity precisely because esotericists are intentional in their

7 This generic equation of “spirit” and “religion” is perhaps also exemplifijied in Camillus D. Talafous, O.S.B., ed., Readings in Science and Spirit (Englewood Clifffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1966), and Ravi Ravindra, ed., Science and Spirit (New York: Paragon House, 1991). 8 E.g., Kevin Sharpe, Sleuthing the Divine: The Nexus of Science and Spirit (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000). See also the discussions of “Spiritual Progress” and “Laws of the Spirit” in John M. Templeton, The Humble Approach: Scientists Discover God, new rev. ed. (New York: Continuum, 1995), chs. 8 and 13. 9 See Glenn Alexander Magee, Hegel and the Hermetic Tradition (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001), who argues for the occult underpinnings of Hegel’s idea of Geist.

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engaging with the realm of spirit (especially in terms of psi-phenomena), but challenge precisely because the alchemical and occult sciences are widely thought to belong (at best) in the category of the anomalistic sciences.10 Yet this connection, once made, opens up to the wide range of contemporary psychical research.11 From the perspective of orthodox Christian theology, however, much work needs to be done to separate the wheat from the chafff in the anomalistic sciences before the gains for a pneumatological theology of nature can be assessed. Third is spirit used especially by philosophers of religion in the circles of religious naturalism. Robert Corrington, for example, deploys the language of spirit in dialogue with the pragmatic philosophy of Peirce, the evolutionary metaphysics of Justus Buechler, and the depth psychology of Jung.12 While Corrington’s project assumes rather than specifijically engages the most recent advances in the sciences, it is also much more philosophically sophisticated than most other visions of religious naturalism. At the same time, such a naturalistic (non-theistic) understanding of spirit allows for the retention of a rigorous scientifijic platform without doing away completely with the kind of religious orientation to life which embraces the beauty and wonder in nature and the evolutionary process. If the main advantage that religious naturalism afffords is its assumption of a causally closed universe that can take the deliveries of the empirical sciences at face value, its major criticism comes from religionists who think that the naturalistic notion of spirit is evacuated of all substantive religious and theological content. Further research which intentionally brings advocates of religious naturalism into the science and religion dialogue is needed to advance the conversation. Fourth is the related philosophical use of spirit to talk about relationality. The recent James Loder’s (1932–2001) idea of spirit as relationality is

10 Even if the lines are not quite so easily drawn—see Henry Bauer, Science or Pseudoscience: Magnetic Healing, Psychic Phenomena, and Other Heterodoxies (Urbana, Ill.: The University of Illinois Press, 2001). 11 Such as that which occurs in the Society for Psychical Research (http://www.spr .ac.uk/), the American Society for Psychical Research (http://www.aspr.com/), the Australasian Society for Psychical Research (http://members.ozemail.com.au/~amilani/ufo.html), the Scottish Society for Psychical Research (http://www.sspr.co.uk/), and many others. See also my The Spirit of Creation, ch. 6, for further discussion. 12 Corrington is also active in the Unitarian Universalist Association. He has written or edited fourteen books. The most relevant for our purposes are Corrington, Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefijield, 1996), and Nature’s Religion (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefijield, 1997).

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developed, like Corrington’s, in substantive dialogue with the disciplines of philosophy and psychology.13 In brief, Loder suggests that spirit refers to the quality of relationality wherein two disparate things or realities are held together in a way that does not compromise their distinctiveness or integrity; he then expands this idea into a theological anthropology of human development. The pneumatological bases of Loder’s philosophy of spirit are clear: the biblical and theological tradition both testify to the Spirit who is of the Father and of the Son, who brings God into relationship with the world, who connects divinity and humanity, who bridges the creation and the eschaton, etc. Within this framework, Loder’s lifelong interests have been focused, from a Christian perspective, on the realization of spiritual healing and the actualization of spiritual maturity in human lives and on the question of how spiritual development can be nurtured in individuals, congregations, and communities. Certainly Loder has left a legacy, especially among practical theologians and behavioral psychologists. Hence, there is a need to bring Christian practical theologians and psychologists who work with Loder’s ideas together with other psychologists, philosophers, and religionists to explore further the convergences and divergences of a relational understanding of spirit at the intersection of these disciplines.14 The fijifth and fijinal use of spirit deserving mention in this introductory overview is that which picks up on another trajectory of Hegel’s philosophical idealism leading to the emergence of Geist as a philosophical category informing a wide range of socio-cultural, social philosophical, and the socio-political disciplines by the turn of the twentieth century. References to the spirit and law, spirit and culture, and spirit and the arts can be found across the spectrum of discourses in especially the human sciences. In disciplines like cultural anthropology, theorists have attempted

13 James E. Loder and W. Jim Neidhardt, The Knight’s Move: The Relational Logic of the Spirit in Theology and Science (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1992), and James Loder, The Logic of Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1998). I develop the idea of spirit and relationality partially in dialogue with Loder in my Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., and Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2002), esp. ch. 3. 14 The relational theologian F. LeRon Shults has taken up Loder’s mantle at the interface of psychology of theology, co-authoring two books with Steven J. Sandage, Faces of Forgiveness, The: Searching for Wholeness and Salvation, and Transforming Spirituality: Integrating Theology and Psychology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003 and 2006, respectively); for Shults relational pneumatology, see his book, with Andrea Hollingsworth, The Holy Spirit (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008).

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to retain notions of spirit as found in the extensively developed beliefs and practices surrounding spirit-beings. Thus earlier scholars like Tylor and Malinowski classifijied as animistic the religious beliefs and practices of these “primitive” cultures, while more recent researchers like I.M. Lewis, Felicitas Goodman, and Thomas Csordas have looked afresh at the phenomenon of spirit possession (known also as shamanism) among indigenous and pentecostal and charismatic religious groups through a variety of cultural-anthropological tools and lenses.15 This kind of cultural anthropological research provides both empirical and theoretical perspectives on the “popular” rituals and practices of masses of religious people. No doubt, the fijindings of this tradition of cultural anthropology will provide comparative data for religious behavior which exhibit phenomenological similarities across multiple religious traditions, and in that sense, further illuminate our understanding of the human religious spirit.16 As we can see from this very brief survey, the notion of spirit in the religion-science dialogue has been wide-ranging, including the very generic equation of spirit with religion or spirituality, the uses of spirit emergent in theosophical, naturalistic, and philosophical circles, and the understanding of spirit as referring generally to human nature especially in the human sciences. While our own attempt to develop a pneumatological theology of nature can certainly glean insights from these conversations, we still need a more robust theological framework in order to avoid the transformation of this project into a natural theology. Fortunately, the renaissance of pneumatology during the last generation has substantively impacted theological discourse. The import of this “turn to the Spirit” in contemporary systematic theology can be most clearly seen in the work of theologians like Jürgen Moltmann. After starting in the late 1960s with an eschatological theology, Moltmann’s has been led to rethink the entirety of the traditional theological loci from a pneumatological starting point, resulting in the movement from a pneuma-

15 Representative publications by Lewis, Csordas and Goodman include: I.M. Lewis, Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession (London: Routledge, 1989); Thomas J. Csordas, The Sacred Self: A Cultural Phenomenology of Charismatic Healing (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and Felicitas D. Goodman, Where the Spirits Ride the Wind: Trance Journeys and Other Ecstatic Experiences, and How about demons? Possession and Exorcism in the Modern World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988 and 1990 respectively). 16 I explore these themes further in my “The Spirit and Creation: Possibilities and Challenges for a Dialogue between Pentecostal Theology and the Sciences,” in Journal of the European Pentecostal Theological Association 25 (2005): 82–110.

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tological ecclesiology and Christology to a pneumatological doctrine of God, and even more recently, to a pneumatological theology of creation.17 In rethinking a Christian theology of nature from a pneumatological perspective, Moltmann has pushed the discussion forward considerably from where it was before, and that along two lines. First, Moltmann has helped to overcome the traditional dualism between spirit and matter in general and between Holy Spirit and nature or creation in particular. This further opens up the possibility for theologians to approach the dialogue with those working in the empirical sciences from an explicitly theological platform (rather than the theology being just an afterthought to the scientifijic perspective). On the other side, however, this pneumato-theological framework at the same time grants to the book of nature (and hence to science) its own authentic voice, perspective, and contribution. By this I mean to say that a pneumatological theology assumes the diversity, distinctiveness, and integrity of voices heard originally at Pentecost to be divinely ordained for the glory of God, and in this case, the voices from the sciences need to be heard on their own terms (and not just on the terms of the theologians).18 This leads, second, to the observation that Moltmann’s project can take seriously the perspectives of science and resist becoming a natural theology precisely because of its pneumatological framework. Beginning as he does with trinitarian theology, christology, and pneumatology proper, the fact is that the pneumatological logic of his theology has pushed him to develop a theology of creation which allows for, even demands, an engagement with science. The result is a triune and relational theology which understands the interconnectedness of God and creation, of human beings and society, of humankind and the environment, of mind and body, etc. In short, the Moltmannian project represents the emergence of a new trinitarian theological paradigm which values rather than disparages the contributions of the sciences, while at the same time also

17 Beginning with Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit: A Contribution to Messianic Ecclesiology (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1981), and continuing with God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1985), and The Spirit of Life: A Universal Afffijirmation (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992)—all translated by Margaret Kohl—among other works. 18 Moltmann’s recent and most focused engagement with science is Science and Wisdom, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003).

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enlarging the framework for pneumatological understanding to include, potentially, the entirety of the created order.19 An important methodological point should be mentioned here in light of the preceding discussion. Note that the notion of “spirit” is theologically robust, as our discussion of Moltmann’s pneumatology manifests; yet when present in the religion and science discussion, much of its use is either philosophical or otherwise rather vague. While such ambiguity will eventually need to be more clearly specifijied in order for the idea of “spirit” to be useful in the sciences, for the moment it is helpful to observe that categorical vagueness is often more helpful than not, especially when at the beginning stages of a research program (in this case, one that is not only interdisciplinary but also interreligious). In other words, a more vague notion of spirit initially opens up possibilities for interdisciplinary (and interreligious) dialogue since it is applicable in general to a larger set of phenomena, until and unless otherwise specifijied.20 2.2 Spirit, Theology, and Science: Emerging Trajectories Against this background, we see that a pneumatological theology of nature that is engaged with science has issued forth from and in conjunction with the more recent developments of trinitarian theology. Not coincidentally, trinitarian theology has been invoked in rethinking the notion of time and temporality, and in clarifying the idea of chaos, among other projects.21 These developments have introduced two distinct yet interrelated trajectories of pneumatological speculation into the theology and 19 See also T. David Beck, The Holy Spirit and the Renewal of All Things: Pneumatology in Paul and Jürgen Moltmann (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2007). 20 I discuss the heuristic value of vague categories further with the help of Charles Sanders Peirce in my Spirit-Word-Community, §5.1. 21 See, e.g., Michael Welker, “God’s Eternity, God’s Temporality, and Trinitarian Theology,” Theology Today 55:3 (1998): 317–28; Ted Peters, “The Trinity in and Beyond Time,” in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy and C.J. Isham, eds., Quantum Cosmology and the Laws of Nature: Scientifijic Perspectives on Divine Action, 2nd ed. (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley: The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1996), 263–89; and Denis Edwards, “The Discovery of Chaos and the Retrieval of the Trinity,” in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy and Arthur R. Peacocke, eds., Chaos and Complexity: Scientifijic Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley: The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1995), 157–75. So also a trinitarian conception of God as creator, Christ as material consummation, and the Spirit as evolutionary fulfijillment has been proposed by Sigurd-M. Daecke, “Gott—Opfer oder Schopfer der Evolution: christlicher Glaube und Entwicklungslehre,” Kerygma und Dogma 28 (1982): 230–47.

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science dialogue. The fijirst is best represented by the patristic model of the Word and Spirit as the “two hands of the Father” (Irenaeus). In the language of Eastern Orthodoxy, the Word is iconically represented by the creation and the Spirit is the iconographer, the “air” breathed by the world; together, both reveal the image and presence of God in and to creation.22 Translated into the idiom of process philosophy, the created order is constituted concretely by actual occasions (Word) and dynamically by creativity (Spirit), such that the Spirit drives the spontaneity of nature’s processes.23 When understood within a trinitarian framework, of course, all pneumatological insights into the theology and science dialogue will have christological implications (and vice-versa, even if many who have developed the christological approach have either ignored or failed to develop this reciprocity). The other trajectory represents those who have utilized a distinctively pneumatological starting point leading to a more explicitly trinitarian conceptualization. George Murphy, trained in physics and theology, has developed a pneumatological approach along three fronts.24 First, beginning with the Spirit as the bond between the Father and the Son, and as the fellowship of the ecclesial community, Murphy suggests that this 22 See John Chryssavgis, “The World of the Icon and Creation: An Orthodox Perspective on Ecology and Pneumatology,” in Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether, Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Bring of Earth and Humans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 83–96; cf. Gennadios Limouris, “Come Holy Spirit—Renew the Whole Creation: Pneumatology in Symphony with Christology,” in Limouris, ed., Come Holy Spirit—Renew the Whole Creation: An Orthodox approach for the Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Canberra, Australia 6–21 February 1991 (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1990), 7–19. See also Alexei V. Nesteruk, Light from the East: Theology, Science, and the Eastern Orthodox Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), for a rich discussion of the correlation between Orthodox theology and modern cosmology, albeit one developed in dialogue with christology (primarily) rather than pneumatology (minimally). 23 This latter point is observed by Robert Jenson in dialogue with process metaphysics; see Jenson’s “Cosmic Spirit,” in Robert W. Jenson and Carl Braaten, eds., Christian Dogmatics, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 2.165–78, esp. 170–73. Process theologians like Bernard Lee and Blair Reynolds argue similarly. Lee distinguishes between the realms of ruach (Spirit) and dabhar (Word) in the Hebrew prophets as referring to the deep structures and the concrete historical embodiments respectively of the people’s encounter with God, and Reynolds calls attention to the Spirit as the personal lure of God both relating to the world and calling the world toward actualizing its full potential; see Lee, “God as Spirit,” in Randolph Crump Miller, ed., Empirical Theology: A Handbook (Birmingham, Al.: Religious Education Press, 1992), 129–41, and Reynolds, Toward a Process Pneumatology (Selinsgrove: Suaquehanna University Press, and London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1990), esp. ch. 5. 24 George L. Murphy, “The Third Article in the Science-Theology Dialogue,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 45:3 (1993): 162–69.

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relational Spirit is also reflected in creation itself along with its living systems. Second, drawing from the Johannine imagery of the Spirit blowing unpredictably (3:8), Murphy makes connections with chaos theory and the role of chance in the spontaneous and somewhat random processes of natural evolution; along the way, he recognizes the Spirit as a source both of order and of surprise, of the impossible, and even of the resurrection from the dead. Third, the Spirit as the bestower of spiritual gifts also empowers humans in relationship to the natural world; thus science and technology are among the means accomplishing the divine purposes for a world in which Christ’s body is present, anticipating and participating in the eschatological sanctifijication of the cosmos. Unfortunately, Murphy does not expand on these pneumatological inquiries in his more recent work.25 In another exploratory article Ernest Simmons, religion professor at Concordia College (Moorhead, Minnesota), also has attempted to bring pneumatological motifs into dialogue with quantum fijield theory.26 In brief, Simmons makes two moves. First, drawing from the theology of the cross which sees the passion of Christ as revealing God’s kenosis or self-emptying into the world for the sake of the world, Simmons suggests both a kenotic creation wherein the world and its agents are made possible through the self-limitation of God, and a kenotic pneumatology wherein the Spirit is the “self-emptying, self-limiting agapeic love of God sanctifying the creation toward life and fulfijillment.”27 Second, then, the proposal is made that quantum holism provides an analogy for understanding God’s presence and activity in the world by the Spirit in terms of the entanglement, nonlocality, and indeterminacy operative at the level of the quantum fijield. Entanglement and nonlocality are related insofar as quantum research has demonstrated that photons or other subatomic particles separated by a distance nevertheless behave simultaneously as if they are connected or in communication (which is impossible given the widely accepted axiom that no information can be exchanged at a rate faster than the speed of light), leading to the conclusion that they must have been entangled from the beginning. Simmons wonders whether the

25 Murphy returns to more christologically oriented reflections in his theology and science book, The Cosmos in the Light of the Cross (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 2003). 26 Ernest L. Simmons, “Toward a Kenotic Pneumatology: Quantum Field Theory and the Theology of the Cross,” CTNS Bulletin 19:2 (1999): 11–16. 27 Simmons, “Toward a Kenotic Pneumatology,” 13.

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kenotic Spirit could be understood to be hidden in (or perhaps as) the quantum fijield entanglement. If so, then God could be present and active at the level of quantum indeterminacy, not only in terms of the Spirit’s self-emptying that gives creatures the freedom to actualize their own possibilities (the possibilities of the quantum fijield) in various ways, but also in terms of the Spirit being seen “as analogous to a fijield operator which makes various fijield states possible but nevertheless remains hidden within the fijield.”28 All this is set within a process-panentheistic framework which preserves, at least in that sense, God’s transcendence from the world even while emphasizing the divine kenosis into the world.29 While we will return to these matters later (§2.3), clearly, Murphy’s and Simmons’ approaches bring together religious and theological language with the discourse of the sciences. Equally clear, at least historically, is that pneumatological categories have been amenable to such speculation. Going back to antiquity, pneuma in the pre-Socratics was understood to refer to air as the life breath and as representative of the world soul (Anaximenes, early Pythagorean physicians, and Hippocrates) or to the logos or pure fijire (Heraclitus). Later speculation developed in the direction of opposing pneuma to logos or matter (the later Pythagoreans) or associating pneuma more deeply with the transcendent nous or mind of the world (Anaxagoras). In Plato, pneuma becomes the generative force within the metaphysical trinity which included also the One and the Good, as well as the source of aesthetic inspiration (Timaeus). Both ideas converged into that of pneuma as carrying forth and actualizing the logos, or the seeds of the logos (the logos spermatikos) that in-form the material world. From there, some extended Plato’s triad toward the development of a sophisticated demonology (Xenocrates, end of fourth century bce), while others developed his doctrine of the logos spermatikos (cf. Jn. 1:9 later) as that which fijills the universe and that which carries itself outward either prophetically or ecstatically (the Stoics). Posidonius (135–51 bce) then purifijied the notion of spirit from materiality, even while Seneca (4 bce–65 ce)

28 Simmons, “Toward a Kenotic Pneumatology,” 14. 29 Simmons discusses these ideas further in his “The Sighs of God: Kenosis, Quantum Field Theory, and the Spirit,” in Curtis L. Thompson and Terence E. Fretheim, eds., God, Evil and Sufffering: Essays in Honor of Paul R. Sponheim, published as Word & World Supplement Series 4 (St. Paul, Minn.: Luther Seminary, 2000), 182–91. See also the work of my student, Bradford McCall, “Kenosis and Emergence: A Theological Synthesis,” Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion 45:1 (2010): 149–64.

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opposed passive matter to the active, creative, and artistic pneuma who is “omnipotent and omniscient and determines the future.”30 While medieval thinkers focused on the realm of spirit and its humanistic implications, the speculative pneumatologies of the ancients were preserved in Gnostic and Hermeticist undercurrents in the West.31 Arguably, it is in the work of Hegel, Schelling, and the Romantics that the category of spirit is not only retrieved but also restored to the center of philosophical, theological, and even scientifijic discussion, with implications especially for understanding nature. Hence it is fair to say both that the recent renaissance of pneumatological reflection in philosophy and theology exhibit clear Hegelian impulses,32 and that the contemporary application of pneumatological ideas and categories to the religion and science dialogue participates in this venerable tradition of the ancients and moderns. No one is either more deeply located at the heart of this (Hegelian) theology-philosophy-science conversation or as well equipped to extend the discussion as is the German systematic theologian, Wolfhart Pannenberg. For over three decades now, Pannenberg has been engaged with the religion-science conversation.33 By the mid-1980s, he was the fijirst to develop a pneumatological theology of nature in the direction of conceiving the Spirit as the fijield bonding the Father and the Son in love, relating God and the world, and unifying the manyness of the world.34 Building on 30 I draw in this paragraph primarily from Walter Wili, “The History of the Spirit in Antiquity,” in Joseph Campbell, ed., Spirit and Nature: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, Bollingen Series 30.1, trans. Ralph Manheim (1954; reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 75–106; quote from 102–3. 31 See Paul S. MacDonald, History of the Concept of Mind: Speculations about Soul, Mind and Spirit from Homer to Hume (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2003), esp. ch. 5. 32 I hope to develop this argument in detail in the future. For now, a genealogical overview of the category of spirit in philosophical discourse through and from Hegel is outlined in my “A Theology of the Third Article? Hegel and the Contemporary Enterprise in First Philosophy and First Theology,” in Stanley E. Porter and Anthony L. Cross, eds., Semper Reformandum: Essays in Honor of Clark H. Pinnock (Carlisle, UK: Paternoster Press, 2003), 208–30; see also Steven G. Smith, The Concept of the Spiritual: An Essay in First Philosophy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988). 33 In addition to this, Pannenberg has, almost from the beginning of his theological career, been an ardent advocate of doing theology in dialogue with the world’s religious traditions. This was laid out initially in his programmatic essay, “Toward a Theology of the History of Religions,” in Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology: Collected Essays Volume II, trans. George H. Kehm (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), ch. 4. Sad to say, however, this vision has been largely unfulfijilled in Pannenberg’s subsequent three-volume Systematic Theology. 34 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Toward a Theology of Nature: Essays on Science and Faith, ed. Ted Peters (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), esp. 37–41. See also the

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the Stoic concept of pneuma as subtly penetrating the entire cosmos and holding it together, but revised away from its materialistic underpinnings with the help of Michael Faraday’s fijield concepts35—which reconceived the world as constituted primarily by active fijields of force rather than by masses and material bodies (now understood to manifest concentrations of force at specifijic points and places of the fijield)—Pannenberg suggested that spirit could be applied to the dynamic fijield potencies of creation in general and to material bodies and organic life in particular, all of which are continually self-transcending manifestations of the world’s evolutionary processes. Insofar as fijields are considered as dynamic environments and systems of self-organizing relationships, a pneumatological reconception would enable understanding of creation’s emergent potentialities and complexities. Not only could fijield theory pneumatologically defijined make intelligible divine presence in the particularities of the world, but it also enabled the overcoming of the Aristotelian doctrine of substance along with its problematic dualisms. In this way, Faraday’s concept of force fijields served as a resource for a pneumatological understanding of creation.36 In his Systematic Theology and later writings, Pannenberg extends his reflections along three lines.37 First, he distinguishes between the principle of order (Logos/the Son) and the principle of life (Spirit) from biblical data, and suggests how both work together in the actuality of the created overview provided by Henry Jansen, Relationality and the Concept of God, Currents of Encounter 10 (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1995), ch. 5, “God as the Infijinite Field of Love.” Jansen makes especially clear Pannenberg’s indebtedness to Hegel’s philosophical theology. 35 I discuss Faraday’s contributions in more detail in the next section. 36 Noteworthy here also is the very brief attempt of Jefffrey C. Pugh, Entertaining the Triune Mystery: God, Science, and the Space Between (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 2003), 92–94, to connect fijield theory with the triune Spirit of God. A much more extensive consideration of this theme than Pugh’s is Lawrence W. Fagg, Electromagnetism and the Sacred: At the Frontier of Spirit and Matter (New York: Continuum, 1999). Fagg considers the four forces of nature—the gravitational, the strong and weak nuclear forces which work at the atomic level, and the electromagnetic which holds atoms and molecules together allowing for the chemical and biological interactions undergirding the cosmos as a whole and human experience of the cosmos more particularly—and suggests that the electromagnetic fijield is especially suitable as a physical analogue for divine immanence. In that sense, Fagg’s project parallels Pannenberg’s, but I mention it only here in the notes since Fagg does not make a specifijically pneumatological argument. Spirit in Fagg’s title refers more to spirituality than to the Holy Spirit. 37 Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Vol. 2, trans. Geofffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), esp. §2, “The Spirit of God and the Dynamic of Natural Occurrence” (76–135), and Pannenberg, “God as Spirit—and Natural Science,” Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion 36:4 (2001): 783–94.

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order. In this view, Spirit both re-presents the concrete reality of the historical Jesus through the Church and makes present the divine Logos to nature and history. Second, developing on his own eschatological theology, Pannenberg associates the Spirit with the future as the creative fijield of possibility. Building on quantum indeterminacy (of present events) as opening up to fijield(s) of possibility, the Spirit is now understood to represent the creative and expressive fijield of the divine life as it interacts with the evolutionary processes of the world. Here, the Spirit as the source of new life, the resurrection, and the coming reign of God, is analogically applied to the evolution of creation itself. Finally, utilization of the fijield concept enables rescuing theological talk about divine omnipresence from vacuity. Of course, God as spirit is the fijield of possibility which gives space and time to creaturely possibilities. The divine immensity is not, of course, divisible, as are creaturely realities which “are granted existence of their own within the undivided space of God’s omnipresence and in the presence of his eternity.”38 In summary, “The ecstatic openness of life to its environment and to its future corresponds to the creative activity of the divine spirit, and if the divine spirit works as a dynamic fijield, then here we have a fijield concept that is connected with contingency regarding the efffijicacy of the fijield.”39 Various questions can and should be posed to Pannenberg’s pneumatological speculations. For starters, insofar as material realities are concentrations of fijields of force, to that extent forces not only exert regulative controls on these realities but are also constrained in some way by material movements. In that sense, fijields and material entities are mutually and relationally constituted. Does Pannenberg’s theology provide for or even demand such interrelationality such that God and the material world are mutually constituted, or is there an asymmetrical relationship between the divine fijield of force and the creaturely elements so that the latter is dependent on the former but not vice-versa? More importantly, if God is conceived in terms of physical fijields, then what is the need for God-talk at all assuming that fijields can bear the explanatory burden? From the science side of this specifijic question, does not Pannenberg’s project of talking about the Spirit as energy or fijield of force trespass upon the hard-won denotative language of science? Finally, even if Pannenberg were to gain approval to proceed, does not linking spirit and Faraday’s fijield theory end

38 Pannenberg, “God as Spirit—and Natural Science,” 791. 39 Pannenberg, “God as Spirit—and Natural Science,” 792.

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up wedding theology to a pre-evolutionary and even nineteenth century physics out of place in a post-Einsteinian world?40 We will need to keep these questions and concerns in mind as we proceed. 2.3 Pneumatology and Field Theory In order to understand these criticisms and Pannenberg’s response, a very cursory overview of the history of the concept of force fijields is necessary.41 From the Platonic idea of force conceived as the all-pervasive and universal world soul inherent to substances came the medieval notion of force as spiritual. For the medieval scholastics, force was the energetic nature of divine, angelic, or even demonic realities which were manifest in the movement of celestial and terrestrial bodies. Later, Bishop George Berkeley (1685–1753) and the Cambridge Platonists purifijied this notion to suggest that the real cause of motion is spirit, ultimately God. With God as the supremely efffijicient and fijinal cause, then, the movement of all things was naturally from and to God. It was hence a short step to Copernicus’ (1473–1543) theory of gravity as the tendency of “appetition” of parts to be united with the whole to which they belong—fundamentally a theological explanation. The shift introduced by Kepler (1571–1630) marked the transition toward a modern scientifijic understanding of force. Kepler introduced the concept of force into the exact sciences as a means of seeking a causal explanation of the relationship between planetary velocity and distance. In turn, Newton (1642–1727) developed his theory of gravitation which included the idea that matter exerts causal force on matter at or from a distance, even if mysteriously, within a framework of absolute material, corpuscular, and perhaps even fluidic space.42 In this closed universe, Pierre Simon 40 These are just some of the questions posed to Pannenberg’s fijield pneumatology by Mark William Worthing, God, Creation, and Contemporary Physics (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 117–24, and Jefffrey S. Wicken, “Theology and Science in the Evolving Cosmos: A Need for Dialogue,” Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion 23:1 (1988): 45–55, among other critics. 41 I rely primarily on Mary B. Hesse, Forces and Fields: The Concept of Action at a Distance in the History of Physics (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons Ltd., 1961); Max Jammer, Concepts of Force: A Study in the Foundations of Dynamics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957; reprinted with corrections, New York: Harper Torchbooks and The Science Library, 1962), esp. chs. 3–5; and Leslie Pearce Williams, The Origins of Field Theory (New York: Random House, 1966), chs. 1–2. 42 Descartes and Leibniz also denied the notion of empty spaces or the void, although the latter did so more for theological reasons: that the world would not be a perfect

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de Laplace (1749–1827) hypothesized that given knowledge of the position and momentum of every particle in the universe at any moment, the entire future course of the world could be predicted to eternity. Classical Newtonian mechanics had reached its zenith in the Laplacean hypothesis. Newtonianism also led to the notion that properties of things are ultimately properties of inherently insensible particles. Thus, heat and light, for example, were reduced to atoms and corpuscles moving through space, and our sensing heat and light was predicated on the transduction of the insensible realm of atoms to the sensible qualities of things. This anticipated, of course, nineteenth century ether theory. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), however, questioned this process of transduction. In fact, he critiqued also the notions of absolute space and absolute time, especially since knowledge was not about things in themselves, but derivative from the structures of the mind. Thus, in Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786), Kant suggested that matter be defijined by a) the resistance force of objects to penetration and attempts to move them, and b) the attraction force which keeps objects individualized and from “swelling up” or dispersing. All space is therefore fijilled by forces—so there is no such thing as “empty space.” However, while Kant understood the universal forces to be in equilibrium, Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854), a student of Kant’s ideas, saw these forces to be in continual conflict, each attempting to overcome the other. In his Sketch of a History of Nature (1797), Schelling posited the universe as consisting of polarized forces: darkness and light, the sexes, good and evil, etc. This led him and others to anticipate that chemistry would fijinally unlock the secrets of nature since chemical processes were micro-processes of forces reacting to each other. This sequence of developments in modern science and Naturphilosophie precipitated the revolutionary discoveries of fijield theory in the nineteenth century. Hans Christian Oersted (1777–1851) challenged the imponderable fluids theory of heat and light, and reduced the Kantian forces to that of combustion and combustibility thereby extending Schelling’s conflict-offorce idea. The result was a theory of the universe as a three-dimensional reality in which forces crossed either conflicting or harmonizing. More importantly, in the process Oersted discovered electromagnetism (in 1820), which called into question the mechanistic impact theory of causality on the one hand, even while pressing the question regarding the mysterious notion of action-at-a-distance on the other.

creation of God if it contained vacuums; see William Berkson, Fields of Force: The Development of a Worldview from Faraday to Einstein (New York: Wiley, 1974), 25.

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It was left up to Michael Faraday (1791–1867) and James Clerk Maxwell (1831–1879) to formulate the scientifijic details of classical fijield theory.43 The former, a devout Christian and one of the great experimental chemists of the nineteenth century, proposed that reality is constituted by forces as the sole physical substance. Material particles, solid bodies, electrical fijields, mass objects, etc., are all convergent points of associated forces. By explaining matter in terms of what he called “lines of force,” Faraday moved away from the problematic notions of action-at-a-distance and of absolute space which had held sway since Newton. Forces act contiguously on other forces, and causality is mediated through these lines of force. This launched his search for a unifijied fijield theory, resulting in the suggestion that electric, magnetic, and gravitational forces are but (perhaps geometrical) modifijications of one underlying type of force. Building on Faraday’s proposals, Maxwell shifted to the “fijields of force” terminology and provided it with the mathematical precision it had heretofore lacked. At the same time, Maxwell adjusted Faraday’s theory, specifijically in his distinguishing between electromagnetic fijields and matter. More importantly, his conclusions emphasized the continuous nature of the fijield (highlighted by Faraday) in contrast to the Newtonian conception of bodies located in absolute space and acting upon each other either contiguously or at a distance. This reopened the door for the mysterious ether to be understood as the medium for fijield activity. Maxwell, however, was ambiguous on this point. Either ether was understood only analogically, or it was reconceptualized as a series of discrete particles (waves within fijields) which vibrations are waves of various sorts—e.g., light or heat—thus enabling continuous action and mediating causal energy.44 By the end of the nineteenth century, however, Faraday’s and Maxwell’s force fijields were being rethought in part because the theory of ether to which it was connected was being abandoned, and in part because the priority of particles over waves was being overturned.45 The experiment by Albert Michelson (a physicist) and Edward Morley (a chemist) in 1887 showed that the speed of light was constant in all directions rather than 43 On Faraday and Maxwell, see Berkson, Fields of Force, and P.M. Harman, Energy, Force, and Matter: The Conceptual Development of Nineteenth-Century Physics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). 44 For an overview of Maxwell’s achievements, including a discussion of Maxwell and ether theory, see the editor’s introduction to James Clerk Maxwell, A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field, ed. Thomas F. Torrance (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1982), esp. 17–18. 45 Mendel Sachs, The Field Concept of Contemporary Science (Springfijield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1973).

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being afffected by ether (as predicted by classical fijield theory). Further, other experiments showed that light as a continuous manifestation of electromagnetism could be propagated even in a vacuum, thus showing the superfluity of the ether thought to mediate light corpuscles or waves. Finally, Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity in 1905 and General Theory in 1916 both showed that matter can be converted into energy and viceversa, resulting in particles and waves being considered as equally fundamental, and revealing the difffijiculty of correlating or assigning traditional measurement properties to either matter or fijields since such properties will have diffferent values from diffferent frames of reference. Yet the General Theory did, of course, understand reality ultimately in terms of fijields of activity. The diffference was that whereas Faraday saw the world as a fijield of continuous forces, Einstein saw fijields as geometrical curvatures of space; and whereas classical fijield theory understood force in terms of substances, Einstein moved toward an invariance theory which understood the only constant in the world to derive not from an ultimate substance or fijield of force, but from the speed of light in inertial reference frames. Nevertheless, light itself was soon found to be an indeterminate waveparticle duality, as described by Niels Bohr’s (1885–1962) Complementarity Principle in 1927. Thus classical fijield theory quickly gave way to quantum fijield theory featuring quanta of discrete and non-divisible “lumps” and “bits” of energy in the micro-world. Here, the waves and particles which are the fijinal “stufff ” of the world are interactive excitations of an underlying fijield, and particulate matter is a confluence of wave fluctuations in the quantum fijield.46 Unlike the lines of force in classical fijield theory, the wave functions of quantum fijield theory are mathematical representations of future possibilities. Insofar as any given quantum entity could be manifest either as a wave or a particle, but never both together (at least to human perceivers and their instrumental detectors), any attempt to measure the quantum entity would, as Werner Heisenberg (1901–1976) showed (1927), “collapse the wave function” such that if either momentum or location is known, the other is unknowable and efffectively non-existent (Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle). This introduces the idea that things are what they are—as collapsed wave functions—precisely in their measured interactions with other things, both sentient and non-sentient. 46 Attempting to comprehend Steven Weinberg’s massive and comprehensive The Quantum Theory of Fields, 3 vols. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995–2000), made me aware of how ill-prepared my background in religious studies and theology has left me for engaging with the details of this topic.

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Together, Bohr’s and Heisenberg’s principles have come to be known as the Copenhagen Interpretation. According to this view, a quantum entity is neither an actuality nor a fijiction, but a potentiality awaiting determination at least in interaction with an observer. At the same time, the quantum framework was also clearly at odds with Einstein’s geometrical but yet continuous space-time fijield, and its indeterminism and openendedness was thought incompatible with relativity theory’s (in principle) deterministic closed system. This is especially the case with regard to relationships between distant particles which appeared to “communicate” simultaneously across space-time. This not only called into question relativity theory’s rejection of instantaneous communication faster than the speed of light, but also revived the debates in classical mechanics about the possibility of action-at-a-distance. Yet the reigning consensus was not the triumph of this classical notion, but rather the emergence of a new paradigm known as holism, whereby quantum entities are always already mutually entangled and interwoven as “parts” of a larger whole (see the previous discussion of Simmons’ ideas in §2.2). The preceding overview, while horribly over-generalized, nevertheless highlights a number of important concepts and categories. Central to these, of course, is that the ontology of substance has been replaced over the last few hundred years by the concept of force understood both in terms of energy and in terms of causal power. Related and as important is the concept of fijield, whether consisting of waves or of particles. In the quantum fijield, of course, we have both, signifying perhaps a unity-in-duality or complementarity of continuity (waves) and distinctiveness (particles) at the heart of reality. Further, the category of potentiality has emerged, calling attention to the dynamic potency and force of the ultimate “buildingblocks” (i.e., quantum realities) of the natural world on the one hand, and to the indeterminacy and openendedness of reality at the quantum level on the other. Finally, the concept of holism not only attempts to integrate these various notions—e.g., relating parts and wholes, singularity and duality, waves and particles, force and matter, potentiality and actuality—but also points toward larger and larger wholes or fijields in what seems like a continuous stream of self-transcendence. We will return to discuss many of these issues later in other contexts. For the moment, we are focused on Pannenberg’s retrieval of Faraday’s fijield theory toward a pneumatological theology of nature. Against this background, it is understandable that Pannenberg sought to extricate the Stoic notion of pneuma as materiality from substance-metaphysics, and found help precisely in Faraday’s and Maxwell’s fijield theories which

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understood the ultimately real to be fijields of force (and matter as concentrations of forces). At the same time, it was important to avoid the nineteenth century fijield theories’ reliance upon causality propagated via ethereal substance. It is also clear that Pannenberg has not ignored contemporary quantum fijield theory’s modifijications and extensions of Faraday’s formulations. His linking of quantum indeterminacy with the unpredictability of the eschaton (to be brought about by the Holy Spirit whose comings are unknown and whose workings are unimaginable) reflects attempts to adjust his utilization of Faraday’s fijield theory. Yet Pannenberg’s crossing between fijield theory and pneumatological theology still raises all the questions previously encountered about both scientifijic language and theological language. This is especially acute given that quantum fijield theory is itself understood in general to be analogical language twice removed: once in its dependence upon classical nineteenth century fijield theory, and the second time in fijield theory as itself a model for understanding the world. Combined with the analogical language operative in Pannenberg’s theology (by his own admission), the question is whether or not this pneumatological theology of nature can meaningfully bridge the discourses of science and theology. Of course, Pannenberg recognizes the difffijiculties of his project but defends his correlation of pneumatological and fijield theory discourses for theology of nature. He writes: We see that the reality is the same because theological statements about the working of the Spirit of God in creation historically go back to the same philosophical root that by mathematical formalizing is also the source of the fijield theories of physics, and the diffferent theories give evidence of the same emphases that we fijind in the underlying metaphysical intuitions. We also see that the reality is the same because the theological (as distinct from the scientifijic) development of the concept is in a position to fijind a place in its reflection for the diffferent form of description in physics, for which there can be empirical demonstration, and in this way to confijirm the coherence of its own statements about the reality of the world.47

In places like this, Pannenberg’s language is ambiguous enough so that critics question if he intends, fijinally, to understand fijield theory as the literal mode of the divine Spirit’s presence and activity. My reading of Pannenberg, however, leads me to believe that he intends not a univocal equation of pneumatology and fijield theory but only a correlational relationship between the two, recognizing both notions as analogues of

47 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2.83.

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human inquiry. Having said that, note also that Pannenberg also qualifijies his theological use of fijield theory when he writes, “The person of the Holy Spirit is not himself to be understood as the fijield but as a unique manifestation (singularity) of the fijield of divine essentiality. But because the personal being of the Holy Spirit is manifest only in distinction from the Son (and therefore also from the Father), his working in creation has more of the character of dynamic fijield operations.”48 Further, his retrieval of Faraday’s fijield theory includes Faraday’s supremacy of the fijield over material bodies (themselves understood as manifestations of fijields of force), thereby enabling, by analogy, Pannanberg’s own prioritization of the fijield of the Spirit’s activity and the secondary and dependent nature of the creaturely orders. So, in response to the previous question regarding whether or not a pneumatological theology of nature leads to a mutuality between creator and creature, Pannenberg writes: “By nature the creative working of the divine Spirit cannot be regarded as conditioned by the resultant creaturely phenomena. But for the sake of the creatures this working can adjust itself to the conditions of their existence and activity and thus give them room to afffect the fijield structure of the Spirit’s working.”49 Difffijiculties obviously remain, not the least of which is that there is neither agreement among scientists especially about details of quantum fijield theory, nor among philosophers and theologians about the implications of fijield theory for their work. Yet the next two chapters are intended at least in part as an attempt to push Pannenberg’s theological project further along.50 I hope to do so here by way of reading the creation narratives through a pneumatological hermeneutic that should, I believe, provide a plausible biblical and theological framework for engaging and even extending Pannenberg’s pneumatological theology of nature. Judgment will need to made at the end of the day both about whether or not Pannenberg’s scientifijic and theological intuitions can or have been salvaged, and about the specifijically theological viability of the response to the question about mutuality. In the meanwhile, however, the immediate issue before us is if and how a reconception and extension of Pannenberg’s pneumatological theology of nature can help us understand divine presence in the world.

48 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2.83–84. 49 Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, 2.101. 50 Remember that Pannenberg views theology as “a universal science,” which is what motivates his engagement with all sources of knowledge, science included; see, e.g., Don H. Olive, Wolfhart Pannenberg: Makers of the Modern Theological Mind (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1973), 34–36.

CHAPTER THREE

SPIRIT AND CREATION: PNEUMATOLOGY, GENESIS 1, AND MODERN SCIENCE The preceding chapter introduced the emergence of pneumatology in the theology and science dialogue as a fijirst step in thinking about pneumatological contributions to the philosophy and theology of nature. The level of discussion there proceeded at an abstract level, understandably so given not only the vagueness of the category of spirit but also since much of the developments were focused specifijically in the domain of physics and fijield theory. Our strategy here will be to descend from the more speculative domain toward the particularities of the biblical traditions. This is not to say that we will take leave of theological abstractions altogether; it is to say that these more exploratory ventures will be disciplined in some respects by our engagement with the biblical text, in particular with Genesis 1. Our reasons for taking up the Genesis account include the pneumatological theme that is embedded therein, and this will be further clarifijied shortly.1 For now, note the following threefold purpose in rereading the creation narratives toward a pneumatological theology of nature. First, I seek to highlights elements in the biblical text that are overlooked on more traditional readings without doing violence to the text. Second, this rereading of Genesis 1 anticipates unleashing the pneumatological symbol’s hermeneutical power even while it enriches our understanding of God as spirit. Finally, I expect the results to be consistent with the most recent developments in the cosmological sciences even while it provides us with a matching theological vision accompanied by more expansive explanatory power especially with regard to the realms of ontology and metaphysics. We proceed from biblical interpretation (§3.1) to interaction with the science of emergence (§3.2) and with systems theory (§3.3).

1 My initial effforts along these lines were published as “Ruach, the Primordial Waters, and the Breath of Life: Emergence Theory and the Creation Narratives in Pneumatological Perspective,” in Michael Welker, ed., The Work of the Spirit: Pneumatology and Pentecostalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), 183–204. The following expands on those preliminary considerations.

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Before proceeding, however, I should register an important caveat: the following neither presumes a concordist understanding of Genesis 1 and modern science nor thinks such a presupposition to be viable either for understanding the biblical text or for the theology and science discussion. Concordism suggests that it is possible to map what the Genesis account says with the results of modern science, but this presumes both an anachronistic interpretation of scripture and a mistaken understanding of the genre and purposes of the early chapters of the Bible.2 I do not believe that the Bible is to be read as a textbook on matters of science, nor do I think it tells us how God created the world. However, I do think that what the Bible says will not contradict what the consensus of science tells us about the processes of creation, and in that sense, I see the book of scripture (interpreted appropriately) and the book of nature (understood correctly by the sciences) as being complementary, if not convergent.3 Both provide diffferent perspectives on the nature of the world. When in some instances they appear to suggest contradictory notions, interpretations of either or both could be in error. Yet it is also possible that, on occasion, conflicting views provoke corrective courses of inquiry in either direction: theological insights may initiate scientifijic hypotheses or scientifijic data may lead to revisions of theological conclusions. So, to be sure, mine is a theological and philosophical approach to an ancient text, an approach now also informed by modern scientifijic perspectives beyond the horizon of the ancient biblical authors. Yet rather than being primarily an attempt to explicate what the original authors might have meant, the following is instead an efffort to understand an ancient text in a vastly diffferent, contemporary context, and to explore the complementarity between the early creation narrative and modern science, as illuminated from a pneumatological perspective.

2 While fault may be found with some of the details of the argument in this book, I am by and large in agreement with the primary thesis of John H. Walton, The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2009), which is that the fijirst chapter of the Bible is about God’s purposes for creation rather than being a scientifijic description of the how of God’s creative activity. For an excellent overall argument against concordism—both its assumptions and methods—see Denis O. Lamoureux, Evolutionary Creation: A Christian Approach to Evolution (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2008), esp. ch. 5. 3 See my “Reading Scripture and Nature: Pentecostal Hermeneutics and Their Implications for the Contemporary Evangelical Theology and Science Conversation,” Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 53:1 (2011): 1–13.

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chapter three 3.1 Spirit and the Creation Narrative

A pneumatological rereading of the creation narratives begins, of course, with the Priestly account of the ruah Elohim (breath, wind, even storm of God) which “swept over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2), continues with the breath (nephesh) given to all living creatures (1:30), and culminates (relatively speaking) with the Yahwist account of the Lord breathing (naphach) specifijically into ha adam “the breath [nishmah] of life” (Gen. 2:7).4 While a canonical reading of the creation narrative justifijies connecting the breath given to ha adam with the ruah Elohim especially in light of Qohelet’s afffijirmation that “the dust returns to the earth as it was, and the spirit [ruah] returns to God who gave it” (Eccl. 12:7), there is no need to read the divine ruah here as referring to the third person of the Trinity since that would certainly be an anachronistic imposition upon this text. At the same time, given the Christian testament witness to God as spirit (cf. Jn. 4:24), a pneumatological rereading of Genesis 1 can proceed at least along these lines. Within this framework, creation can be understood to be thoroughly “en-spirited by God.”5 As such, not only does God create all things through Word—“Let there be . . .”—and Spirit, but all things are what they are as creatures of God precisely because they originate in the divine Word spoken and uttered by the ruah of God.6 Before proceeding, however, what about those who would reject readings of the creation narrative which accentuate the divine breath? Gerhard Von Rad claims that verse two and its reference to the divine breath stands on its own concerning God’s activity over the chaotic elements, and that the ruah elohim “takes no more active part in creation.”7 In response, 4 I refer to Priestly (Gen. 1:1–2:3) and Yahwist (Gen. 2:4–25) accounts more because they conveniently provide ways of identifying these complementary creation narratives than because I buy into their associated redaction theories. These designations nevertheless continue to persist as scholarly conventions, perhaps in part because no overarching theory has emerged to displace Wellhausen’s documentary hypothesis. For brief discussion, see Mark S. Smith, The Priestly Vision of Genesis 1 (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 2–3. 5 This phrase is from Jay McDaniel, “ ‘Where is the Holy Spirit Anyway?’ Response to a Sceptic Environmentalist,” Ecumenical Review 42:2 (1990): 162–74. 6 See Pannenberg’s discussion on “Cooperation of Son and Spirit in the Work of Creation,” in Systematic Theology, vol. 2, trans. Geofffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), 109–15. For another pneumatological theology of the creation narratives, see D. Lyle Dabney, “The Nature of the Spirit: Creation as a Premonition of God,” in Gordon Preece and Stephen Pickard, eds., Starting with the Spirit: Task of Theology Today II (Adelaide, Australia: Australia Theological Forum, Inc., and Openbook Publishers, 2001), 83–110. 7 Von Rad continues, “The Old Testament nowhere knows of such a cosmological signifijicance for the concept of the spirit of God”; Gerhard von Rad, Genesis: A Commentary, rev. ed., trans. John H. Marks (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1972), 49–50.

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while verse one certainly introduces the entire creation narrative, verse two equally belongs at least to the activities of God on the fijirst day.8 But, von Rad’s sweeping generalization can be questioned as the Psalmist also provides warrant for a pneumatological reading of the creation story: “By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of his mouth” (Ps. 33:6), and “When you hide your face, they [the animals] are dismayed; when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust. When you send forth your spirit, they are created; and you renew the face of the ground” (Ps. 104:29–30). Of course, this pneumato-theological account should then be understood not primarily as a scientifijic treatise about the history of creation (notice the creation of light, day and night and the appearance of terrestrial vegetation before the calling forth of the sun and moon), but rather as a statement against polytheism, astrological practices, and the pantheistic worship of nature in its variations, all prevalent in the surrounding ancient Near Eastern cultures.9 Having said this, rather than provide a verse-by-verse commentary on the text, I will make a few overall observations about the movements of the breath of God vis-à-vis the creation. First, note that the creation in all its complexity flows from the primeval chaos (tohuwabhohu).10 For good reason, then, the rabbis since at least the time of Philo have understood the ruah elohim as “the element of creative fijire, or the divine intellect that gives form to matter.”11 In this

8 Umberto Cassuto, A Commentary on the Book of Genesis, Part I: From Adam to Noah, Genesis I-VI8, trans. Israel Abrahams (1961; reprint, Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, The Hebrew University, 1989), 19–20; and Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion, S.J. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984), 94–97 and 102–10. 9 Thus, the Priestly writer’s insistence of the creaturely status of the sun and even light itself reflects his concern with the ancient worship of the sun. Later biblical writers, however, would equate light with the divine itself; cf. 1 Jn. 1:5, 1 Tim. 6:16, Js. 1:17, and Ps. 104:1–2, with Westerman, Genesis 1–11, 114. 10 If verse one is understood as introductory to the entire narrative, then any speculation about a primeval fall of angels, etc., between the fijirst two verses is just that: speculation read into the text rather than emergent from the text (see von Rad, Genesis, 50–51). Even the most recent and sophisticated argument for seeing the fall of angels in this creation account—Stephen Webb, The Dome of Eden (Eugene, Ore.: Cascade Books, 2010)—is unconvincing to me; see my The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination, Pentecostal Manifestos 4 (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), ch. 6, esp. 210n100. 11 Peter Ochs, “Genesis 1–2: Creation as Evolution,” Living Pulpit 9:2 (Apr.–June 2000): 8–10; quote from 9. See also Max Pulver, “The Experience of the Pneuma in Philo,” in Joseph Campbell, ed., Spirit and Nature: Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, Bollingen Series 30.1, trans. Ralph Manheim (1954; reprint, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), 107–21, who discusses Philo’s view of the pneuma as an intelligent cosmic principle. For contemporary science and religion writers who have deployed the metaphor of “fijire” to

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case, not only does the divine spirit restrain and reshape the primeval chaos, but also this chaos is itself neither vacuum nor literal void. Of course, those who afffijirm the traditional doctrine of creatio ex nihilo would understand the void to be purely chaotic and, hence, indeterminate and in that sense indistinguishable from nothing.12 Yet the Priestly author indicates that the ruah of God hovered not over pure nothing, but over the waters.13 Better, then, to understand the primeval chaos to connote “a state of maximal plenitude, in which all things are churning, boiling, but without the discrete unities and form that enable the stufff of this world to obey laws and enter into networks of relationship.”14 Referring not only to the chaos of disorder and randomness (the void), but also to that of overflowing plenitude (or plenum), tohuwabhohu arguably anticipates also the chaos of modern science with its unpredictable and nonlinear movement from simple perturbations of potentialities and possibilities to complex outcomes.15 From this, the working of the breath of God proceeds to order or divide light from darkness, evening and morning, on denote the spiritual or religious dimension that points to the secret order through which God sustains the world, see George Johnson, Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for Order (New York: Knopf, 1995); Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations: Science Religion & Search For God (Philadelphia: Templeton Foundation Press, 2004); and Adam Frank, The Constant Fire: Beyond the Science vs. Religion Debate (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). 12 For a more traditional defense of Genesis 1 as supporting the creation out of nothing doctrine, see Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation Out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientifijic Exploration (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004). Those who argue Genesis 1:2 supports instead a creation out of chaos include Jon D. Levenson, Creation and the Persistence of Evil: The Jewish Drama of Divine Omnipotence (New York: Harper & Row, 1987); Sjoerd L. Bonting, Chaos Theology: A Revised Creation Theology (Ottawa, Canada: Novalis and St. Paul University Press, and Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 2002); and Catherine Keller, Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming (New York: Routledge, 2003). 13 I agree with Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 109–10, when he says that the debate between creatio ex nihilo and creation out of chaos cannot be settled from Genesis 1–2. The Priestly writer intended neither of these ideas which arose in Judaism much later when it wrestled with Greek thought during the Intertestamental period. Yet, the primordial plenitude’s analogical parallel with nothingness is not only compatible with creation ex nihilo, but also parallels the Buddhist doctrine of shunyata. I will return to this point later. 14 Ochs, “Genesis 1–2,” 8; cf. Archie Lee Chi-Chung, “Creation Narratives and the Movement of the Spirit,” in John C. England and Alan J. Torrance, eds., Doing Theology with the Spirit’s Movement in Asia, ATESEA Occasional Papers 11 (Singapore: ATESEA, 1991), 15–26, and for full length theological argumentation, James E. Huchingson, Pandemonium Tremendum: Chaos and Mystery in the Life of God (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2001), esp. chs. 5–6. 15 See Trinh Xuan Thuan, Chaos and Harmony: Perspectives on Scientifijic Revolutions of the Twentieth Century, trans. Alex Reisinger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 3 on chaos.



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the first day (vs. 4–5), and separate the upper and lower waters, and the waters and the dry land, on the second day (vs. 6–7). We therefore see the creation emerging from out of primordial chaos through processes of division, distinction, differentiation, and particularization, beginning with the separation of light from darkness and continuing in the separating out of species of plants and types of animals, each in its own or after its own kind (1:11, 12, 21, 24, 25).16 These primordial divisions have not only ontological significance, but also epistemological and linguistic implications, thus providing for the possibility of thought (the Logos) and of language (the naming of things) as well.17 Second, note the interactivity and synergy between the divine and the creation along with its creatures.18 There is not only the commandment breathed out by and from God and the responsive performance of the created order throughout the creation narrative, but at a few points, God even seems to allow the creation to take the initiative. So, while in each case God “lets be” or allows the creation to organize and produce, not in all cases is the “let there be . . .” followed by the statement that God then acted. Thus God actively makes the dome and separated the waters (1:6); God makes the great lights and sets them in the skies (1:16–17); God creates the great sea monsters and the birds of the sky (1:21); and God makes the animals on the ground (1:25). However, in some cases, it should not be overlooked that God creates by saying (emphases mine): “Let the earth put forth vegetation: plants yielding seed, and fruit trees . . . that bear fruit . . .” (1:11); “Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures . . .” (1:20); and “Let the earth bring forth living creatures of every kind . . .” (1:24). In the first and third case (but not the second), God’s command is followed by an, “And it was so,” before indicating God’s response and activity. Further, 16 Leon R. Kass, “Evolution and the Bible: Genesis 1 Revisited,” Commentary 86 (1988): 29–39. For more on pneumatology and the distinctiveness, concreteness and particularity of created things, see George Hendry, Theology of Nature (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1980), 169–70, and Colin Gunton, The One, the Three, and the Many: God, Creation and the Culture of Modernity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 180–209. 17 This point is made by Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 123, following Franz Delitzsch. See also Alexei V. Nesteruk, “Design in the Universe and the Logos of Creation: Patristic Synthesis and Modern Cosmology,” in Niels Henrik Gregersen and Ulf Görman, eds., Design and Disorder: Perspectives from Science and Theology (London and New York: T & T Clark, 2002), 171–202, esp. 198: “all things are differentiated in creation and at the same time the principle of their unity is that they are differentiated. In particular, it provides a common principle for the unity of intelligible and sensible creation. . . .” 18 Here, I have been greatly helped by Michael Welker, “What is Creation? Rereading Genesis 1 and 2,” Theology Today 48 (1991): 56–71; and Welker, Creation and Reality, trans. John F. Hoffmeyer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999).

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on the third day, the dry land is allowed to appear and God proceeds only then to call it Earth (1:9–10). Subsequently, the earth itself is said explicitly to bring forth vegetation (plants, fruits, and trees), and God responds evaluatively, seeing and afffijirming this to be good (1:11–12). This leads, third, to the observation that the text emphasizes, on the one hand, God as reactive—seeing, naming and responding to creation—and, on the other, creation’s own environmental activity and agency in bringing forth and (re)producing various heterogeneous forms of life-processes. The creator-creature distinction certainly should not be blurred—that is, in large part, the main point of the creation account. At the same time, God also creates by calling forth the world as co-creator and enabling the creation and its creatures to participate in the processes of production and reproduction.19 Some would suggest that in this reading the debate over evolution shifts to a diffferent plane since the created order is considered not only to be fully gifted with evolutionary capacities from the beginning, but also to be equipped to make whatever adjustments are needed along the way.20 While this would reflect the unfathomable creativity and resourcefulness of the divine wisdom, it would also be open to the charge of deism unless (as I suggest here) creation’s work is set within a robust pneumatological framework that preserves the ongoing creative activity of God (creatio continua). The pneumatological hypothesis I am proposing is that the processes of separation, diffferentiation, division, and distinction seen in the creation narrative reflects the character of the divine spirit clearly articulated elsewhere in Scripture as the dynamic, particularizing, relational, and life-giving presence of God.21 To develop this thesis, I will show how the rereading of Genesis 1 suggested above is compatible with and even complementary to theories of emergence which have been formulated in the sciences over the past few generations.

19 Including humankind, as wonderfully portrayed by Philip Hefner, The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture, and Religion (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1993), esp. ch. 2, titled “A Theology of the Created Co-Creator.” 20 E.g., Howard Van Til, “The Fully Gifted Creation (‘Theistic Evolution’),” in J.P. Moreland and John Mark Reynolds, eds., Three Views on Creation and Evolution (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1999), 159–218. 21 These categories are not, of course, entirely absent from the creation narrative. I develop the biblical background in Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., and Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2002), ch. 1.

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3.2 Spirit and Emergence Two stages of emergence theory should be clearly demarcated. The former, developed primarily during the fijirst half of the twentieth century, attempted to provide a theory of the evolution of mind from material and biological life. Representative at this stage was Lloyd Morgan’s (1852–1936) thesis, advanced over two courses of Giffford Lectures from 1922–1923.22 Morgan suggested that the creation’s processes of development had proceeded through a series of qualitative leaps (anticipating later theories of “punctuated equilibrium”) toward increasing complexity—what he called “emergent evolution”23—culminating in human beings with mental capacities at the apex (at least so far) of the evolutionary pyramid. In the process, Morgan also retrieved and pressed into service the then not-widely known concept of supervenience.24 What this referred to was new kinds of relatedness—“new terms in new relations—hitherto not in being”—emergent in the evolutionary process.25 For Morgan, such supervenient relationships could be seen in life’s various forms, mentality, and even the divine life and mind. Thus, deity is also understood as a quality supervenient on reflective consciousness: “For better or worse, I acknowledge God as the Nisus through whose Activity emergents emerge, and the whole course of emergent evolution is directed.”26 As such, the process of emergence—from atoms to molecules to solids to life to mind—includes, fijinally, spirit.

22 Lloyd C. Morgan, Emergent Evolution: The Giffford Lectures Delivered in the University of St. Andrews in the Year 1922 (New York: Henry Holt and Company, and London: Williams and Norgate Ltd., 1927), and Life, Mind, and Spirit, Being the Second Course of The Giffford Lectures Delivered in the University of St Andrews in the Year 1923 under the General Title of Emergent Evolution (London: Williams and Norgate, Ltd., 1926). Morgan’s dialogue partners were Samuel Alexander, Henri Bergson, C.D. Broad, John Dewey, Albert Einstein, J.H. Haldane, William James, Henri Poincaré, Bertrand Russell, Wilfrid Sellars, Alfred North Whitehead, and Wilhelm Wundt, among others. 23 As Philip Clayton notes, by this Morgan thought he had identifijied a new kind of evolutionary process; in hindsight, however, it is better to talk not about “emergent evolution” but about “emergence in evolution.” See Clayton, Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 85. 24 Supervenience appears to have fijirst entered philosophical and theological literature with Leibniz. For an overview of its history, see the essay, “Supervenience as a philosophical concept,” in Jaegwon Kim, Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 131–60. This concept plays an ever-increasingly important role in contemporary philosophy of mind (see ch. 4). 25 Morgan, Emergent Evolution, 19. 26 Morgan, Emergent Evolution, 36. Shades of Teilhard de Chardin (see §2.1) should not be surprising, as Morgan and de Chardin were working within the same intellectual era.

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The problem with the emergentism of Morgan and others during this time was its being constrained (still) by the late nineteenth century debates between vitalism with its invocation of quasi-theistic inputs into the evolutionary process and mechanism with its naturalistic presuppositions. As such, advances in quantum mechanics and molecular biology have called into question many of the details of the early twentieth century emergentist project.27 Nevertheless, the more recent revival of emergence theories stands on the shoulders of Morgan, et al., in the attempt to fijind a way to talk not only about the appearance of life and mind in the evolutionary process, but also about the emergence of order and complexity in general. It is in this latter domain that fresh proposals that understand emergence in terms of realities whose properties are confijigurations and structures of wholes rather than of their individual parts have inundated the contemporary scientifijic landscape. Building on the work of Morgan and others (in particular, Joseph Needham), scientist-theologian Arthur Peacocke has formulated a taxonomy of the origins of living things in eight stages—from self-reproducing organic systems → active cell-like bacteria and blue-green algae → divided nuclei like flagellates and other protozoa → multicellular and cell-diffferentiated organisms like sponges, fungi and algae à diffferentiated systems of organs/tissues like coelenterates, flatworms and higher plants → organized central nervous system with developed limbs and sense organs as in anthropods and vertebrates → homoiothermic metabolistic mammals → and conscious planners like homo sapiens28—while biologist Max Pettersson has identifijied nine major levels of emergence: fundamental particles (1) → atoms (2) → molecules (3) → intermediate entities, centered on chromosomes (4) → ordinary cells with nuclei (5) → multicellular organisms (6) → one-mother family societies (7) → multifamily societies (8) → societies of sovereign states (9).29 Each level is composed of entities at the next lower level (except the lowest level), of which some bond together to constitute an entity at the next higher level (except the highest level). More recently the notion has also

27 Brian P. McLaughlin, “The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism,” in Ansgar Beckermann, Hans Flohr and Jaegwon Kim, eds., Emergence or Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992), 49–93, esp. 54–55. 28 Arthur Peacocke, God and the new Biology (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986); see the appendix on “Thermodynamics and Life,” 133–60. 29 Max Pettersson, Complexity and Evolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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been popularized, with sience writers like Steven Johnson following emergence from the bottom-up: from ants to colonies; from brains to minds; from persons to neighborhoods and cities; and even from software to the artifijicial emergence of the World Wide Web, etc.30 Even more extensively elaborated is the classifijication of biologist and longtime researcher on complexity, Harold Morowitz. Twenty-eight “steps” of emergence of wholes from antecedent parts, and irreducible to those parts, are distinguished: 1. something from nothing (the big bang) 2. the nonuniform universe 3. the stars 4. the periodic table of elements 5. solar systems 6. planetary structures 7. geospheres 8. metabolism (the biosphere) 9. cells 10. cells with organelles 11. multicellularity 12. neurons and neural networks 13. animalness 14. chordateness 15. vertebrates 16. fijish-amphibians 17. reptiles 18. mammals 19. arboreal (niches and niched) mammals 20. primates 21. great apes 22. hominids 23. toolmaking 24. language 25. agriculture 26. technology 27. philosophy 28. spirit 30 Steven Johnson, Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software (New York: Scribner, 2001).

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For Morowitz, emergence at each level is characterized by unpredictability, even while what emerges is foundational for the next emergent level (in retrospect) and adds something new to the universe which cannot be explained in terms of its constitutive parts.31 The preceding overview implies that at the “step” level of emergence theory, ongoing research can produce in the infijinite long run an indefijinite number of emergent realities, each more complex than the preceding. It is therefore at the conceptual level that these proposals are most relevant for our purposes. Not only does emergence theory emphasize the whole as greater than the sum of the parts and as irreducible to them, it also may illuminate the processes from the evolutionary primeval chaos to complexity, from relative disorder to increasing order. The primeval chaos, insofar as existent in some way, could only be if ordered, even in some miniscule level (complete disorder would be equivalent to indeterminate nothingness), according to some organizing features and energetic inputs. John Holland’s research on simple and complex systems explores precisely these issues. Complexity theorists generally agree that “a small number of rules or laws can generate systems of surprising complexity.”32 Holland shows that localized activity in a system exposed to prolonged interconnections with other systems both build indefijinite memory and make possible, if not probable, the re-organization and transformation of the original system. In some cases, because emergence is dynamic, small fluctuations or changes “governed” or constrained at the beginning by a succinct list of rules or laws can complexify greatly over time and lead to radically diffferent resulting states or outcomes. These chaotic systems (including even that of the primeval chaos?!) which exhibit ever increasingly complex patterns of transformation would then be systems of activity “governed” by laws which complexify exponentially as they proceed up the levels of emergence. Further, emergent phenomena are dynamic 31 Harold J. Morowitz, The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Ch. 32 on the emergence of spirit takes a basically Teilhardian interpretation, thus conceiving of spirit in terms of the present and future of the evolutionary process, rather than being involved in what has emerged so far. See also Morowitz, “Emergence of Transcendence,” in Niels Henrik Gregersen, ed., From Complexity to Life: On the Emergence of Life and Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 177–86. 32 John H. Holland, Emergence: From Chaos to Order (Reading, Mass.: Helix Books, 1998), 3. Holland is professor of psychology, electrical engineering, and computer science at the University of Michigan, and also author of Hidden Order: How Adaptation Builds Complexity (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1995).

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patterns or codes including even changing pieces and components, and this in unpredictable directions. Their environments may shape both their functions and their trajectories, but because interactions of emergent patterns enables increasing competence, their evolution operates according to laws of probability rather than deterministically.33 Finally, because wholes are greater than the sum of their parts, emergence theory not only allows but also leads inevitably to what classical mechanics could not entertain: the possibility and even reality of causation proceeding from the top down, from wholes to the varying levels of parts they envelop. From all of this, it is clear that the evolutionary process is driven by the interactivity of various dissipative (open rather than closed or isolated) systems or environments, each exchanging codifijied information with other systems, resulting in the potential emergence of ever-increasingly complex and systemic wholes. Against this backdrop, the value of emergence theory for a pneumatological theology of nature can begin to be delineated. Charles Raven, himself a contemporary of Morgan, saw the emergence thesis intersecting with the Christian doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Yet he introduced an important modifijication to Morgan’s theory such that “spirit” is not emergent only at the end of the evolutionary process, but rather sustains the processes of creative integration altogether. Sure, “the supreme experience of such unity is life ‘in the Spirit’.”34 However, supreme signals a diffference of degree, not of kind. Put in more contemporary idiom, if emphasis is placed on the working of the divine spirit from below, then emergent processes are those in which “a complex set of relations is transformed not in a monohierarchical way, but in a divine working on many individual constellations and relations simultaneously. In emergent processes they are freed to interact with each other in surprisingly new ways and to bring forth complex new constellations.”35

33 The rate of emergence would be unpredictable, given the nonlinearity of exchange involved. As James Gleick, Chaos: Making a New Science (New York: Viking, 1987), has shown, whereas in classical physics, diffferences in input were correlated (in a one-to-one manner) with diffferences in output, in the new chaos theory, diffferences in input produce exponential diffferences in output. The result is that while simple systems behaved simply in classical science, simple systems give rise to complex behavior and complex systems can give rise to simple behavior in chaos theory. 34 Charles E. Raven, The Creator Spirit: A Survey of Christian doctrine in the Light of Biology, Psychology and Mysticism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1928), 88. 35 Michael Welker, in his dialogue with John Polkinghorne, in Polkinghorne and Welker, Faith in the Living God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001), 97. See also Welker’s

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Emergence theory therefore intersects with the pneumatological rereading of the creation narrative. Can we say loosely, following Pannenberg, that the creation is a fijield of the divine spirit’s presence and activity, itself constituted by, from the viewpoint of Genesis 1:2 onwards, ascending levels or fijields of complexity? Is there an overarching parallel between the processes from the primeval chaos (tohuwabhohu) to the emergence of humankind and the evolutionary process as hypothesized by emergence theory? Granted, the creation narratives provide neither a strict chronological account nor a rigorous scientifijic description. Yet does not its testimony to the interactivity between God and creation on the one hand, and between the varying orders and domains of creation itself on the other, provide complementary perspectives on the holism uncovered by emergence theory? Can the various domains called and brought forth in the creation narrative be further explicated or specifijied in terms of the complex fijields of interactions posited by emergence theory? How might the interchanges both vertically (between God and creation) and horizontally (within creation itself ) be illuminated even further by advances made in the areas of dynamics as detailed in classical and quantum fijield theory or of systems interrelatedness research as developed in contemporary systems theory? What is encouraging, of course, is that quantum fijield theory and systems theory are two sides of explanation concerning the micro- and macro-worlds respectively. In what follows, I propose to further our investigation by bringing systems theory explicitly into the conversation.36 3.3 Spirit, Systems Theory, and Divine Activity I suggest that if emergence theory attempts to follow the movements of the breath of God from the primordial chaos toward complexity, systems theory may provide an enriched account of the divine spirit as the fijield that envelops the various levels or orders of creation.37 Combining extensive work in pneumatology: “The Holy Spirit,” Theology Today 46 (1989): 5–20, and God the Spirit, trans. John F. Hofffmeyer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994). 36 Connections between fijield theory and systems theory are overviewed in Diarmuid O’Murchu, M.S.C., Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics (New York: Crossroad, 1997), 66–72, and Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past (New York: Times Books, 1988). The work of Joseph Bracken, S.J., to which I will return later (§8.2), is also pertinent to this question. 37 In other words, my pneumatological reading of nature in dialogue with science is neutral with regard to which theory is fijinally decided to provide a better ultimate explanation of how things are. Here, I follow Michael Heller, Creative Tension: Essays on

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emergence with systems theory with the pneumatological rereading of Genesis 1 may advance Pannenberg’s intuition that a pneumatological theology of nature developed in dialogue with fijield theory enables the overcoming of a dualistic and static substance metaphysics no longer viable for our time. Systems theory has emerged largely over the last two generations in the work of Ervin Laszlo and his contemporaries.38 Its central concepts can be conveniently summarized. First, systems can be classifijied hierarchically as suborganic (atomic and quantum), organic (cells and persons), and even superorganic (groups) fijields or wholes with properties that are irreducible to their parts considered separately. As hierarchically conceived, each system is constituted by sub-systems (and so on, down) and is in turn a constituent of a larger system (and so on, up). Second, systems are self-maintaining and self-stabilizing in a changing environment, and self-creative and self-organizing in response to its environment. The relationship between any system and its environment can be described as involving feedback loops wherein inputs are received from the environment and decisions made (outputs) that in turn impact the environment. Going beyond the one-way causal relations of classical mechanics, these feedback processes involve the exchanging, decoding/ encoding, memorizing (or retaining), forgetting (or discarding), converting, reproducing, channeling, and distributing of matter/energy and information.39 Third, mind represents the “cognitive” domain of any system which governs its capacity to organize itself according to certain patterns, to

Science and Religion (Philadelphia and London: Templeton Foundation Press, 2003), esp. the very helpful ch. 2, “On Theological Interpretations of Physical Creation Theories” (esp. 13–15), where he suggests that this is the better route to go rather than to univocally equate a theological idea with a specifijic scientifijic theory. 38 See Ervin Laszlo, The Systems View of the World: The Natural Philosophy of the New Developments in the Sciences (New York: George Braziller, 1972); Introduction to Systems Philosophy: Toward a New Paradigm of Contemporary Thought (1972; reprint, New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1973); and A Strategy for the Future: The Systems approach to World Order (New York: George Braziller, 1974). 39 Recognizing here the anthropomorphic language applied to the self-organizing processes of systems. See Paul Cilliers, Complexity and Postmodernism: Understanding Complex Systems (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), esp. 91–93; cf. also John A. Dillon, Jr., Foundations of General Systems Theory (Seaside, Calif.: Intersystems Publications, 1983), ch. 11, on living systems, and Roger Lewin, Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1992), ch. 2, on biological systems. On the one-way causality of classical mechanics versus the multi-directional causality of the new physics, see Richard Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), 99–105.

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behave in line with its codes of functionality, and to exchange information with its environment. Laszlo explores the ontological framework of systems as irreducibly mental and physical, to be understood bi-perspectivally as both natural and cognitive. The latter dimension establishes the epistemic framework for any system’s interactivity and adaptability beyond objectivistic dualism or subjectivistic solipsism. Systems are in constant perceptual, aesthetic, and more-or-less reasonable—involving, that is, the exchange of information—interaction with their environments. In human systems, of course, freedom becomes a central mode of such interactions. Finally, the relationship between a system and its environment is akin to the criss-crossing force fijields of classical fijield theory which can produce either the kinds of fluctuations leading toward entropy on the one hand or stable patterns of interactions leading perhaps to the (gradual or sudden, depending on whether or not these are chaotic systems) emergence of complexity on the other. Together, the emergence of systems theory denotes a shift from quantitative to qualitative explanation, from parts to wholes, from objects to relationships, from substances to patterns. In each case, complementaries can be discerned with the reading of the creation narrative sketched above that builds on Pannenberg’s synthesis of pneumatology and fijield theory. First, the hierarchy of systems fijinds its theological counterpart in the creation narrative’s portrayal of the emergence of plants, animals, and human beings from the earth. Not only does each system includes elements contributed by “lower” systems, all systems are interrelated and interdependent, each with its own important role and function in relationship to the others. Here, the theme of the divine spirit as the relational fijield which energizes and organizes the systemic interconnections of the creation comes to the fore. In the words of Jürgen Moltmann, “All things are created in order to reflect God’s life, beauty, and community. The spirit of God fijills the earth and holds all things together. This is the creation-community. God’s creation is a community of creatures. Each creature in its own way participates and contributes to the rich and colorful community. The universe is not a monarchical pyramid . . ., but rather a covenanted, democratic community, consisting of living beings and environments.”40

40 Jürgen Moltmann, “Perichoresis: An Old Magic Word for a New Trinitarian Theology,” in M. Douglas Meeks, ed., Trinity, Community, and Power: Mapping Trajectories in Wesleyan Theology (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2000), 111–25; quote from 125.



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Second, creation’s systems are not only interconnected, but they are also open to each other in real self-transcending ways. More precisely, in the creation narrative, the world’s creatures are open both horizontally to one another in terms of cosmological interrelations and vertically to (the breath of ) God in terms of the ontological grounding and teleological direction of creation as a whole. God not only creates and calls forth, but also interactively responds to, names, directs (commands), and evaluates. Can it be hypothesized from a pneumato-theological perspective that apart from this latter ontological and teleological relationship, the world would be a closed system constrained by the entropic processes of the Second Law of Thermodynamics? I will return to this question in a moment. Third, and building from the second, is not the discernible presence of mind in creation complementary with the rabbinic understanding of the divine ruah as the world’s creative intellect? Even granting the anthropomorphic language, the fact is that in both theology and science we are dealing with models and metaphors for understanding reality. And insofar as mind or mentality signifies both distinctions, differentiations, and divisions on the one hand, and organization, patterns, codes, and the flow of information on the other, and insofar as there is a complementarity of the creation narratives and contemporary systems theory, to that extent, a pneumatological reading of Genesis 1 shows itself to be illuminating. Finally, creation’s systemic openness implies as well its intrinsic openendedness. In the creation narratives, this openendedness is signified especially in the dynamic relationships of the world’s emergent processes, producing unpredictable emergences on the one hand and entropic waste on the other amidst the created order’s struggle for stabilization and equilibrium. Entropic processes are implicit in the ambiguity of the primordial chaos (tohuwabhohu), the darkness separated out from the light on the first day, the continued presence of darkness each night, the transitionary, uncertain, and unpredictable periods of each evening and morning,41 and the indeterminate and unfinished character of humankind (of which more will be said in the next chapter). In this way, the outcome of the story remains to be told. From a pneumatological perspective, this opens up to the eschatological vision of the Spirit’s final work of ushering in the

41 This is pointed out by Robert Sacks, “The Lion and the Ass: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Chapters 1–10),” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 8:2–3 (1980): 29–101, esp. 36.

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reign of God—another central biblical theme—which completes and fulfijills the divine project of creation and recreation.42 Of course, from the perspective of science, this correlative reading of pneumatology, the creation narrative, emergence theory, and systems theory opens up other questions. Three sets of related issues are especially pertinent to this project. First, does not systems theory lose the individual in the whole? This is the question raised by those who see systems theory as an ideology that totalizes and marginalizes, that mechanizes and systematizes subjectivity, and that bureaucratizes social problems and issues.43 An initial response is that an emphasis on concrete rather than large-scale systems actually could counter this potential misuse and abuse of systems theory, even while it would resonate with postmodern emphases on the particular. Theological resources could point to the particularity of created things emergent from the processes of separation, division, and diffferentiation so clearly enunciated in the Genesis account. Following from the point made earlier, the creator spirit’s universal presence cannot and should not neglect or under-emphasize the divine spirit’s particularizing activity. Within a broader theological account, of course, the creation as the fijield of the Spirit does not imply that particular fijields of the God’s presence and activity—e.g., in the person and work of Christ and the body of Christ—do not exist or are unimportant. The second question is more momentous. Is the optimism of emergent evolution, systems theory, and a pneumatological theology of creation undermined by the laws of entropy? Put in terms of the Second Law of Thermodynamics—which stipulates that in any isolated system far from equilibrium, disorder either increases or remains the same—how can genuine emergence occur when systems seek homeostasis and equilibrium above all else?44 Is there not a contradiction between the nonreversible,

42 See my The Spirit of Creation, esp. chs. 3–4, for a more complete argument. 43 E.g., Robert Lilienfeld, The Rise of Systems Theory: An Ideological Analysis (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1978). 44 See esp. M. Hossein Partovi, “Entropy and Quantum Mechanics,” and H.D. Zeh, “Quantum Measurements and Entropy,” both in Wojciech H. Zurek, ed., Complexity, Entropy and the Physics of Information: The Proceedings of the 1988 Workshop on Complexity, Entropy, and the Physics of Information Held May–June, 1989, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity 8 (Redwood City, Calif., and Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, 1990), 356–66 and 405–22 respectively; also N. Katherine Hayles, “Making the Cut: The Interplay of Narrative and System, or What Systems Theory Can’t See,” in William Rasch and Cary Wolfe, eds., Observing Complexity: Systems Theory and Postmodernity (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 137–62.

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linear process of evolution—much less that of the eschatological direction of creation anticipating the reign of God—and the reversible, nonlinear, and interrelational processes that are at work in chaos, systems, and quantum fijield theories? This opens up, of course, to the perplexing question regarding the nature of time, among other things. Responses to this set of questions need to proceed at a variety of levels. First, the distinction needs to be made between closed and isolated systems versus open systems. If the Second Law is limited to the former and not necessarily the latter, then there could be pockets of evolutionary emergence within space-time even if the universe as a whole is subject to the laws of entropy. Yet on the cosmic scale, even an open and expanding, universe is anticipated to result in a cold death.45 Second, and related to the fijirst, even if the fijield of entropy is universal, knowledge of that “fact” is information that recognizes, identifijies, and at least in those senses if not others, introduces order into the same universe, thus resisting entropy.46 If “measurements” at the quantum level leading to the collapse of the wave function include the observer’s interactions as part of the production of knowledge, then a “subjective” process of information increase occurs alongside the “objective” processes of thermodynamic entropy. This allows for consideration of the Anthropic Principle—that the universe is so fijinely tuned to have allowed the emergence of conscious creatures like ourselves—as a parallel or perhaps superior trajectory within the universe if not pertaining to it as a whole.47 It also makes eminent sense from a theological perspective, of course, since the Christian faith understands the universe as a whole to be open to God who transcends it and the Second Law, and whose “observations” of and interactions with the world serve as inputs of at least “information”—the divine spirit’s intellective and creative presence—which direct the world toward the coming reign of God.48

45 Robert P. Kirshner, The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy and the Accelerating Cosmos (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). 46 This is the intriguing argument of Arie S. Issar and Robert G. Colodny, From Primeval Chaos to Infijinite Intelligence: On Information as a Dimension and on Entropy as a Field of Force (Aldershot, UK: Avebury, 1995). 47 Most extensively presented in John D. Barrow and Frank J. Tipler, The Anthropic Cosmological Principle (New York: Oxford University Press, and Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986). 48 Put in terms of chaos theory: “High energy input at fijirst increases randomness and chance, that is, chaos. Chaos may lead to previously undetermined possibilities. Sometimes a bifurcation point is reached. At this point the system may disintegrate into further chaos. Or it may leap to a new, more diffferentiated and higher level of order. The fluctuating

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Finally, however, going in this direction assumes that the universe is moving irreversibility toward a divinely appointed end—the reign of God—thus negating the possibility of reverse movements toward the hypothesized Big Crunch or Cold Death. Here, of course, emergence theory re-enters the picture, converging with the work of physicists and theologians exploring time as irreversible within the framework of the Anthropic Principle.49 Certainly, there are physical and theologicalreligious theories which support the notion of time either as set within the framework of eternality, if not defending the reversibility thesis itself— e.g., McTaggart’s B-series or Einsteinian relativity theory on the one hand, and neo-Platonic or Brahmanic theories of time as the moving image of eternity on the other; there are also, however, temporalist options in both. We will return to this question later (see §9.2). For now I simply note that pneumatology itself invites consideration of an eschatological and teleological perspective on the direction of the cosmos which counters the entropy that otherwise threatens the world.50 This would be a specifijically theological position that is informed by, albeit not limited to, the mathematical predictions regarding the end of the world prevalent across the most recent cosmological sciences. Responses to these fijirst two sets of questions moves us from emergence theory, and its emphasis on bottom-up causality (the dominant model in the classical framework), to the question regarding the possibility of top-down causality. This would certainly be an issue within a theistic

chaos becomes the source out of which new order emerges. . . . In short, chaos in an open system can be creative”; see Ted Peters, God as Trinity: Relationality and Temporality in Divine Life (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), 160. For more on systems, measurements, “outside” observers, minds, and God, see Stephen M. Barr, Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), ch. 24, and Wolfgang Smith, The Quantum Enigma: Finding the Hidden Key (Peru, Ill.: Sherwood Sugden & Company, 1995), ch. 6. Cf. also the essays of Arthur Peacocke, “Chance and Law in Irreversible Thermodynamics, Theoretical Biology, and Theology,” Polkinghorne, “The Metaphysics of Divine Action,” and Jürgen Moltmann, “Reflections on Chaos and God’s Interaction with the World from a Trinitarian Perspective,” all in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy and Arthur R. Peacocke, eds., Chaos and Complexity: Scientifijic Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley: The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1995), 123–43, 147–56, and 205–10 respectively. 49 E.g., esp. Ilya Prigogine, From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Co., 1980), and Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984). 50 On this point, see also the pneumatological argument by David Bradnick, “A Pentecostal Perspective on Entropy, Emergent Systems, and Eschatology,” Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion 43, no. 4 (2008): 925–42.

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perspective, even if some theologians fear that such talk of God’s topdown causation or action in the world “objectivizes” the divine to the point of reducing the divine spirit to just another agent within the universe. Further, how can we talk scientifijically about the cosmos’ receipt of information/energy from “outside” since we are unable to observe and thereby quantify such exchanges? The problems here revolve around the question of whether or not science can identify any kind of causal joint with regard to God’s action in the world.51 While these important cautions should be heeded, they do not mean that reflection on this issue is no longer important, especially given the pneumatological motifs we are concerned to explore. Here, the concept of supervenience introduced earlier in the emergentism of Lloyd Morgan and refijined since may have something to offfer. In more recent discussion, supervenience theory as it has made its way into moral reflection and philosophy of mind has been more precisely defijined: a set of properties A supervenes on another set of properties B if and only if two identical objects with B properties are also identical or indiscernible with regard to their A properties. The following three features of this defijinition of supervenience are noteworthy. First, mental facts or events A are dependent upon physical facts or events B, but not reducible to them. As such, mental events (supervenient A properties) can be correlated with physical events (subvenient B properties) in such a way that changes in the latter produce changes afffecting the former. However, second, this nonreductive dependence relationship avoids the Cartesian dualism of mind and brain even while afffijirming the central claims of systems theory that the whole is greater than the parts. Finally, then, emergent mental events A behave in such a way as to be able to influence physical events B in turn. Hence, given a certain level of development, emergent minds are not only influenced by brain and neural events but also can afffect them. My interests in contemporary supervenience theory are driven by the motivation to fijind a coherent way to talk about the possibility of top-down

51 I have taken up such questions at some length in my articles, “The Spirit at Work in the World: A Pentecostal-Charismatic Perspective on the Divine Action Project,” Theology & Science 7:2 (2009): 123–40, and “How Does God Do What God Does? Pentecostal-Charismatic Perspectives on Divine Action in Dialogue with Modern Science,” in Amos Yong and James K.A. Smith, eds., Science and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Engagement with the Sciences (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2010), 50–71, while developing an eschatological or teleological theory of divine action. See also The Spirit of Creation, chs. 3–4.

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causation. For some theologians, application of the supervenience model to this issue represents a signifijicant advance from talking about divine action either in terms of mystery or in terms of laws of nature that are currently unknown to us.52 These theological intuitions, however, capture an essential insight into the motivations of those exploring models for understanding top-down causality: the conviction that in principle, at least, dualistic models and the empiricism of classical mechanics cannot fijinally explain aspects of personhood like consciousness (mental references), intentionality, promise-making, caring, and mental causation.53 Further, contrary to the failed attempts of utilitarians to quantify the realm of ethics and morality, the idea of normative obligations also cannot fijinally be reduced to biological and brain phenomena.54 In these arenas of mental causation and ethical activity, there is no one-to-one correspondence that connects mental phenomena with brain phenomena. Those in quest of laws explaining the relationship between supervenient properties (mental states) and subvenient realities (brain states) have neither the conceptual nor mathematical tools to pull offf the reduction simply because knowledge required to explicate such reduction is necessarily infijinite.55 On the other

52 John Polkinghorne, “Chaos Theory and Divine Action,” in W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman, eds., Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 243–52. 53 Philip Clayton, “Neuroscience, the Person, and God: An Emergentist Account,” in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, Theo C. Meyering, and Michael A. Arbib, eds., Neuroscience and the Person: Scientifijic Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley: The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1999), 181–214, esp. 188–89. See also Theo C. Meyering, “Reduction and Explanation in the Mind/Brain Sciences,” CTNS Bulletin 19:1 (1999): 5–12, who argues for the autonomy of the psychological sciences to get at mind and cognition as domains ontologically distinct from that of the brain. 54 Nancey Murphy, “Supervenience and the Nonreducibility of Ethics to Biology,” in Robert John Russell, William R. Stoeger, S.J., and Francisco J. Ayala, eds., Evolutionary and Molecular Biology: Scientifijic Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley: Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1998), 463–89. Also, Nancey Murphy, Anglo-American Postmodernity: Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion, and Ethics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997), ch. 10, and Nancey Murphy and George F.R. Ellis, On the Moral Nature of the Universe: Theology, Cosmology, and Ethics (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996). 55 See Jim Baggott, The Meaning of Quantum Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 178. More explicitly, as Daniel Bonevac explains, psychophysical “laws” are such only in the mind of God; they may not be expressible in any humanly learnable language. Supervenient causation . . . requires necessary biconditionals linking properties of the supervening level to properties of the base level. . . . [T]hey require necessary biconditionals [which] may require a language with infijinitely long sentences; the infijinite disjunctions involved, reflect multiple realizability. . . . The psychophysical laws this strategy generates, therefore, may not be expressible in any fijinite, recur-

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side, of course, reductionists counter with the suggestion that the issue is epistemic—e.g., the connections are indecipherable simply because their complexity has not yet been unraveled by current research—not that there are emergent or nonreducible diffferences between the mental and the physical which are ineliminable with further research.56 There are related concerns that recourse to supervenience ideas in philosophy of mind is parallel to intelligent design arguments that ultimately reflect a questionable “God of the gaps” position. The issue at hand, of course, is that of divine presence and activity, more specifijically that of the ruah of God which is said to have “swept over the face of the waters” (Gen. 1:2). Discussion on this matter toward developing a pneumatological theology of nature has raised the possibility of downward causation and has in turn brought us into the thickets of philosophy of mind. I propose to explore further this question, then, by turning to a discussion of philosophical and theological anthropology in pneumatological perspective.

sively generated language. If we think of laws as relations between properties, then supervenient causation . . ., applied to the mind-body problem, yield psychophysical laws. If we think of laws as sentences of a humanly learnable language, however, they do not yield such laws. See Bonevac, “Reduction in the Mind of God,” in Elias E. Savellos and Ümit D. Yalçin, eds., Supervenience: New Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 124–39, quote from 137. 56 The most persistent and articulate being Jaegwon Kim, “The Non-Reductivist’s Troubles with Mental Causation,” in John Heil and Alfred Mele, eds., Mental Causation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 189–210; “The Myths of Nonreductive Materialism,” in Richard Warner and Tadeusz Szubka, eds., The Mind-Body Problem: A Guide to the Current Debate (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1994), 242–60; “ ‘Downward Causation’ in Emergentism and Nonreductive Physicalism,” in Ansgar Beckermann, Hans Flohr and Jaegwon Kim, eds., Emergence or Reduction? Essays on the Prospects of Nonreductive Physicalism (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1992), 119–38; and Kim, Supervenience and Mind, esp. 140–60.

CHAPTER FOUR

SPIRIT AND HUMAN NATURE: THE BREATH OF LIFE, GENESIS 1–2, AND THE NEUROSCIENCES So far in this part of the book we have moved from a more general discussion of the role of pneumatology in the theology and science dialogue to a more specifijic consideration of a pneumatological reading of the creation narratives in light of modern science. The preceding discussion has thus focused more broadly on the cosmological question related to the doctrine of creation (for the more theologically inclined) or to the philosophy and theology of nature (for the more scientifijically interested). Along the way, I have suggested that a pneumatological reading of Genesis 1 provides complementary perspectives on what the sciences of emergence and systems theory say about the nature of an evolutionary world. From a theological perspective, one might say that such a cosmos is “alive” with the divine breath, although from a scientifijic point of view one should be rightly wary about of the vitalist implications of such theological language and rhetoric.1 Building on the preceding discussion, three related paths of inquiry converge in the following discussion. First, a pneumatological reading of divine presence in the creation of the world (Genesis 1) leads to further inquiry about divine presence in human createdness. Second, the question about the possibility of divine causation within a top-down model of causality has led to issues in the philosophy of mind which we hope the discussion of human personhood and neuroscientifijic and psychological approaches to the mind-body relation can further illuminate. Finally, of course, the overarching quest in this volume to explore the ChristianBuddhist-science trialogue by way of pneumatology should not be

1 “Vitalism” refers to the early twentieth century idea that living organisms were imbued with a life principle distinct and apart from their biological and biochemical reactions; biologists, especially, were rightly concerned that such beliefs, which they saw as connected with theistic apologists, threatened to undermine their work. For further discussion of the issues, see Peter J. Bowler, Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), 166–77.

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forgotten. We proceed from biblical interpretation (§4.1) through neuroscientifijic commentary (§4.2) toward synthesis (§4.3). I should clarify that our goal here is not to resolve major issues in philosophy of mind or the cognitive sciences such as what some have called the “hard problem of consciousness.”2 I do think that over the course of this volume as a whole, some theological headway indeed may be made on this topic, particularly in dialogue with our Buddhist interlocutors. For now, however, my more limited objective is simply to bring pneumatological perspectives into dialogue with the cognitive sciences, as mediated through a contemporary reading of the biblical text. Might the cognitive sciences illuminate what the author of Genesis calls the breath of life and might pneumatological perspectives on human nature similarly provide insights into the mysterious nature of human mind and subjectivity? 4.1 Genesis and the Emergence of the Human I begin our explorations in this chapter by returning again to the Genesis text and focusing especially on the clues to the anthropological selfunderstanding embedded in the creation narrative. Our focus here is on the spiritual dimension of the human phenomenon. I highlight this aspect not because I think this is what set human beings apart from animals or other creaturely forms of life in any absolute sense, although that does not mean that we should deny the uniqueness of the human species either. The relevant text concerning the creation of ha adam in the creation narrative is Genesis 1:26–31 and 2:7. 1:26 Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fijish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.” 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. 28 God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fijill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fijish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” 29 God said, “See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall

2 See, e.g., Jonathan Shear, ed., Explaining Consciousness: The “Hard Problem” (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1997).

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chapter four have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. 31 God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. . . . 2:7. . . then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

A few observations are in order.3 First, beginning with the Yahwist account (2:7), ha adam is formed out of and thereby emergent from the dust of the ground. Ha adam, however, becomes a living being only with the breath of the Lord.4 This is certainly consistent with the rest of the biblical witness (e.g., Job 34:14–15; Eccl. 12:7; Ps. 104:28–29; Ezek., 37:1–14; Luke 23:46; Rom. 8:11 and 18–23). A canonical hermeneutic enables a combined reading of the Priestly and Yahwist creation accounts which in turn sustains a robust pneumatological theology, with regard to the creation and evolution of human beings. Second, and now moving back to the Priestly narrative, human beings are created in relation to God, in the divine image and likeness. As such, humans are both capable of being blessed and being addressed by God. To be blessed is to receive the divine favor. To be addressed is to have one’s response elicited and to imply the capacity to take responsibility and to be under obligation. The fijish of the sea and the birds of the air are also blessed and commanded to be fruitful and multiply (1:22).5 But, human beings are given further instructions regarding subduing and taking care of the earth. In this respect, human beings represent the unfijinished dimension of the creation, with the potential to fulfijill creation’s purposes, but also with the potential, given the greater dimension of freedom they are endowed with, perhaps to sabotage the divine intentions. It is noteworthy that the

3 My own theological anthropology—which is physicalist, relational, and yet not denying of a spiritual component or dimension—is sketched in a section of my book, Theology and Down Syndrome: Reimagining Disability in Late Modernity (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2007), 180–91. The following provides some of the exegetical considerations for the more theological discussion in the previous book. 4 See John H. Levison, Filled with the Spirit (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2009). 5 I suggest, building on the observation of Lawson Stone, that the fijish and the birds are also addressable by God because they also have the breath of life in them (1:30); see Lawson G. Stone, “The Soul: Possession, Part, or Person? The Genesis of Human Nature in Genesis 2:7,” in Joel B. Green, ed., What about the Soul? Neuroscience and Christian Anthropology (Nashville: Abingdon, 2004), 47–61, esp. 51–52.

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phrase, “And it was so,” does not follow the creation of ha adam as it does elsewhere (vs. 7, 9, 11, 15, 24, and 30), further implying the openendedness rather than defijiniteness of the human path or way to be.6 This ambiguous nature of what it means to be human may be the reason why God does not specifijically see and immediately pronounce ha adam as good, as God had done with the work of days three through fijive.7 The later narrative of the “fall” (Gen. 3) reflects human freedom exercised against, rather than in harmony with, the nature of things, thereby breaking the relationships among humanity and God, creation, and one another. Third, ha adam is created as a relational being, representing the divine image and likeness. Of course, the divine relationality in the creation narratives derives not from the allegedly proto-trinitarian, “Let us make . . .” (1:26), but from the God-world and God-humankind relationships. More specifijically, the divine image is revealed in the creation of ha adam as male and female. Here, the testimony of the later biblical traditions that the Spirit makes present the divine love within human hearts (Rom. 5:5) and replicates the fellowship of the triune God amidst the people of God (2 Cor. 13:13) fijills out the pneumatological content of ha adam given the breath of life to embrace each other as well as their creator. And of course, human relationality does not stop with God and human beings. Rather, as a close reading of 1:26b–30 reveals, the sexual diffferentiation of ha adam points both to interpersonal sociality and to inter-creaturely relationality. Ha adam as male and female are told not only to multiply and fijill the earth, but also to subdue and care for the created order.8 This clear relationship among human beings, the animals, and the earth itself, especially in light of the formation of ha adam from the dust of the ground, reflects the symbiotic and ecological character of what it means to be human. Before moving on, however, some further observations need to be registered about what has gone wrong with human nature. After all, as already noted above, the Genesis account of creation is followed by the

6 See Robert Sacks, “The Lion and the Ass: A Commentary on the Book of Genesis (Chapters 1–10),” Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 8:2–3 (1980): 29–101, esp. 38–39. 7 See Leo Strauss, “On the Interpretation of Genesis,” L’Homme 21:1 (1981): 5–20, esp. 18–19. 8 This point is clearly argued by Welker, Creation and Reality, trans. John F. Hofffmeyer (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999), 64–69. See also John McIntyre, The Shape of Pneumatology: Studies in the Doctrine of the Holy Spirit (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), 190–93, for the thesis that, “The Holy Spirit is God the Creator himself setting us in a right and responsible relation to the animal and natural order” (quote from 93).

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narrative of the expulsion from the primeval Garden, what the theological tradition has called the Fall into sin. Reinhold Niebuhr might have suggested that the Fall of humanity is the most empirically verifijiable of all Christian doctrines,9 although by this it is certainly not the case that it can be confijirmed scientifijically, at least not in terms of any conventional understanding of science. From a pneumatological perspective, I would suggest that the human Fall into sin concerns the disobedience exercised in resistance against the promptings of the divine breath of life given to every living creature. The Christian doctrine of redemption, then, pneumatologically conceived, involves the fresh blowing and even gift of the Spirit of God that softens, turns, and transforms the human spirit so as to render it more docile and responsive to that which is pleasing to God. A few additional comments should be made regarding the human constitution in anticipation of the discussion to follow. The traditional reading of Genesis 2:7 through the lenses of a Platonic and neo-Platonic soul-body framework has noticed (and emphasized) the duality of human beings as dust of the ground and breath of God. In light of the preceding, this duality needs to be refracted through the Priestly perspective in which human nature is constituted by and explicated in terms of webs of relations—divine-human, human-human, human-animals, human-earth, etc. So Claus Westermann’s conclusion is adaptable for our purposes: “The person as a living being is to be understood as a whole and any idea that one is made up of [only] body and soul is ruled out.”10 But more important, such an anthropology is also consistent with contemporary perspectives which go beyond traditional (Platonist and, especially, Cartesian) dualist defijinitions of humans as “disembodied souls” toward ontological holist understandings of human beings as emergent, inter-personal, interrelational, and cosmologically and environmentally situated creatures.11

9 This is one of claims of Niebuhr’s argument his Giffford Lectures, The Nature and Destiny of Man, 2 vols. (1941–1943; reprint, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1964). 10 Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Commentary, trans. John J. Scullion, S.J. (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1984), 207. 11 E.g., Joel B. Green, “ ‘Bodies—That Is, Human Lives’: A Re-examination of Human Nature in the Bible,” in Warren S. Brown, Nancey Murphy, and H. Newton Malony, eds., Whatever Happened to the Soul? Scientifijic and Theological Portraits of Human Nature (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1998), 149–73, and Green, “What Does It Mean to Be Human? Another Chapter in the Ongoing Interaction of Science and Scripture,” in Malcolm Jeeves, ed., From Cells to Souls—and Beyond: Changing Portraits of Human Nature (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2004), 179–98. A book length argument is presented in Green’s Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008).

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4.2 Mind, Body, and the Neurosciences Yet it was inevitable that the Hebrew understanding of human nature—as dust of the ground fijilled with the divine breath of life—would be complicated by later developments. Certainly, during the Hellenistic and Second Temple periods, Jewish perspectives were challenged by ancient Greek notions of pneuma as well as by Platonic views of the nous (mind) and the psyche (soul).12 By the time we get to the fijirst century ce, Hellenist Jews like St. Paul could thus invoke: “May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit [pneuma] and soul [psyche] and body [soma] be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Chris” (1 Thess. 5:23). Some Christians traditions have concluded from this Pauline formulation toward a tripartite anthropology. Arguably, the monism of the ancient Hebrew self-understanding is being stretched not only in a dualist direction (by the Platonic legacy) but also in a triadic perspective (through a certain reading of St. Paul) as well. The major streams of Christian thought since the apostolic period, then, have emphasized a body-soul/spirit dualism, largely as a result of the influence of Hellenistic cultural and philosophical patterns of thought. Since the patristic period and especially after Descartes, human beings have been understood in terms of a material body and a non-material soul or spirit, with the latter being more fundamental than the former to human identity. More contemporary retrievals of this view have tempered, but not rejected, the body-soul dualism either by seeking a more robust account of the role of embodiment or by depicting the body as necessary albeit insufffijicient for human personhood. These recent dualist theories—e.g., holist dualism, substance-dualism, compound-dualism, interactionism—have been revived in part because its advocates do not think reductionistic and naturalistic accounts provide satisfactory explanations either for the self-conscious subjectivity of the human person or for the phenomenon of top-down causation.13 For some who hold to a 12 For these associations, see Marie E. Isaacs, The Concept of Spirit: A Study of Pneuma in Hellenistic Judaism and Its Bearing on the New Testament, Heythrop Monographs 1 (London: Heythrop Journal, 1976); Hendrika Vende Kemp, “The Tension between Psychology and Theology: The Etymological Roots,” Journal of Pastoral Psychology and Theology 10:2 (1982): 105–12, esp. 105–6; and Paul S. MacDonald, History of the Concept of Mind: Speculations about Soul, Mind and Spirit from Homer to Hume (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003), chs. 1–3. 13 E.g., Charles Taliaferro and Stewart Goetz, “The Prospect of Christian Materialism,” Christian Scholar’s Review 37:3 (2008): 303–21, and John Turl, “Substance Dualism or BodySoul Duality?” Science & Christian Belief 22 (2010): 57–80.

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dualism of whatever sort, the solution in these views is anchored in the afffijirmation of the ontological priority of the soul: human beings do not have souls, but are souls, with bodies.14 Yet these dualistic renditions of human personhood are increasingly unpopular. The failure of naturalism to explain the phenomena of mind and top-down causation means neither that other explanations are more successful nor that non-dualistic models are in retreat. On both counts, there are still vigorous effforts being made to understand mind and body in monistic terms, usually reducing the former to the latter. In such cases we have either a naturalistic or mechanistic view of mind as an epiphenomenon of neurophysical brain states or we have a reductionist view of mind as supervenient upon, but fijinally explicable in terms of, brain activity.15 There are also views which are neither reductionistic nor materialistic nor dualistic, but at the same time also not easily categorized. This would include parallelists or synchronists who emphasize the functionality of mind and brain together; “dual-aspect” theorists who see mind and brain as two sides of one reality but decline to identify this one reality in dualistic or monistic, psychological, or materialistic, terms; and “dipolar monist” theorists who similarly understand the relationship between mind and brain within the framework of process philosophy. It also includes those who either think the nature of mind is in principle impenetrable by human beings or will be understood as variously as there are disciplinary perspectives and approaches to it, none being fijinally more defijinitive than any other. The dividing questions for all of these not-easily-categorized proposals remain the two fundamental problems in the philosophy of mind,

14 See also Wilder Penfijield, The Mystery of the Mind: A Critical Study of Consciousness and the Human Brain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975); Richard Swinburne, The Evolution of the Soul (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986); J.P. Moreland and Scott B. Rae, Body and Soul: Human Nature and the Crisis in Ethics (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2000); John W. Cooper, Body, Soul, and Life Everlasting: Biblical Anthropology and the MonismDualism Debate, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000); and the essays (except for William Hasker’s) in Kevin Corcoran, ed., Soul, Body and Survival: Essays on the Metaphysics of Human Persons (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2001). The interactionism of Karl R. Popper and John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain: An Argument for Interactionism (New York: Springer International, 1977), however, does not use soul-language. 15 See, e.g., Owen Flanagan, Consciousness Reconsidered (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Bradford Book/The MIT Press, 1992), and Gerhard D. Wassermann, A Philosophy of Matter and Mind: A New Look at an Old Major Topic in Philosophy (Aldershot, UK, and Brookfijield, Vt.: Avebury, 1994). Mark Rowlands, Supervenience and Materialism (Aldershot, UK, and Brookfijield, Vt.: Avebury, 1995), uses supervenience rhetoric to formulate a materialist theory of mind.

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neurobiology, and neuropsychology: that pertaining to the phenomenon of consciousness and the nature of mental causation.16 It is precisely at this point that I want to return to the supervenience proposals (§3.3) regarding the mind-body relationship, but doing so in light of the discussion regarding the creation and evolution of ha adam. Our rereading of the creation narrative highlighted human beings as enspirited and yet emergent from the dust of the ground, as capable of being addressed and of taking responsibility, and as interpersonal, social, and environmentally constituted. A supervenience theory of mind provides an account of consciousness that is emergent from, intimately connected with, and dependent on, but fijinally irreducible to the material workings of the brain, even while providing a viable model for understanding the phenomenon of mental causation.17 Set within a pneumatological framework, a supervenience theory of mind is transformed into a relational and systems theory of minds and bodies in interdependence with each other and with nature’s processes. Let me fijill this out in three broad steps. First, it is certainly the case that mental activities are emergent from and in that sense dependent upon brain functions. Recent advances in the neurosciences have clearly shown this. Thus a healthy prefrontal cortex is requisite for short-term memory with regard to performance, verbal memory and analytic reasoning. Frontotemporal degeneration, especially in the left frontal and anterior temporal brain regions and defective cerebral profusions in inferior parietal and superior temporal regions (common in Alzheimer’s patients) both afffect the use of language. Lesions or atrophy in the frontal lobe (e.g., in Huntington’s Disease) influence attention, concentration, planning and memory. Last, but not least, a William’s Syndrome score close to Down Syndrome (in the 50s–60s on IQ tests) because of the loss of the end of fijifteen (or more) genes in one of the copies of chromosome 7 results in limited writing and arithmetic abilities, but

16 Ably summarized by Jaegwon Kim, “The Mind-Body Problem after Fifty Years,” in Anthony O’Hear, ed., Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 3–21. See also the discussion of the status quaestiones in Morton Wagman, Cognitive Science and the Mind-Body Problem: From Philosophy to Psychology to Artifijicial Intelligence to Imaging of the Brain (Westport, Conn., and London: Praeger, 1998). 17 Here, I assume the overall thrust of the supervenience model as including, potentially, a variety of articulations ranging from Mario Bunge’s emergent materialism to David Ray Grifffijin’s nonreductive physicalism and panexperientialism. See Mario Bunge, The Mind-Body Problem: A Psychobiological Approach (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1980), and David Ray Grifffijin, Unsnarling the World-Knot: Consciousness, Freedom, and the Mind-Body Problem (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998). Other proponents will be noted in what follows.

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also heightens the capacity to recognize faces and facial features and to develop superior musical ability (except without being able to read written music). In all of this and more, Philip Clayton correctly observes: “Results such as these present a clear challenge to those who would rend thought and afffect from its physical substratum. The influences are both deep and bidirectional; they involve the deepest areas of mental functioning.”18 My claim is that such a relational framework of the mind and body is also understandable within a deeply pneumatological anthropology. The spiritual dimension of what it means to be human does not require the mind or souls to be set offf from the body since, as the Genesis narrative informs us, human beings are nothing less than en-spirited dust. Second, however, it is also the case that humans are spiritual beings, dust en-spirited and enlivened by the divine breath.19 Living beings are defijined biologically by the properties of reproduction, adaptive capacity, irritability, mobility, and nutrition (including ingestion, digestion, absorption, transport, metabolism, exchange of gases, excretion). Undeniably, “Living organisms are radically new systems of physical entities which are more complex and obey other laws than inanimate objects.”20 The diffference, I suggest, is that the exchange of “information” proceeds not only in one direction, but in multiple directions. So, molecular biologists are beginning to point out that natural selection on its own fails to

18 Philip Clayton, “Neuroscience, the Person, and God: An Emergentist Account,” in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, Theo C. Meyering, and Michael A. Arbib, eds., Neuroscience and the Person: Scientifijic Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley: The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1999), 181–214, esp. 182–84, quote from 184. See also Clayton, “Neuroscience, the Human Person, and God,” in Ted Peters and Gaymon Bennett, eds., Bridging Science and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 107–20; and Malcolm Jeeves, Mind Fields: Reflections on the Science of Mind and Brain (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1993), ch. 3. A full length argument can also be found in Philip Clayton, In Quest of Freedom: The Emergence of Spirit in the Natural World, Religion Theologie und Naturwissenschaft / Religion Theology and Natural Science 13 (Göttingen: Vendenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2009). 19 For a more philosophical analysis of the connection between the Spirit and life, see Philip J. Hefner, “Self-defijinition of Life and Human Purpose: Reflections upon the Divine Spirit and the Human Spirit,” Zygon: Journal of Science and Religion 8 (1973): 395–411. Extensive theological argumentation is provided by Jürgen Moltmann, The Spirit of Life: A Universal Afffijirmation, trans. Margaret Kohl (London: SCM Press, 1992), and The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1997). 20 J. Seifert, “On the Irreducibility of Life to Chaotic and Non-chaotic Physical Systems,” in Bernard Pullman, ed., The Emergence of Complexity in Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, and Biology: Proceedings Plenary Session of the Pontifijical Academy of Sciences, 27–31 October 1992, Pontifijiciae Academiae Scientiarum Scripta Varia 89 (Vatican City: Pontifijical Academy of Sciences, 1996), 339–58, quote from 347.

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explain the evolutionary process in its entirety insofar as it relies on a mechanistic and deterministic model of causality. Rather, spontaneous, self-ordering systems and natural selection work together, the former permitting, enabling, and limiting the latter while the latter molding the former, resulting in contingent and emergent wholes of complexity.21 More specifijically, it is now being confijirmed that while DNA structures certainly transfer information needed for protein formation (in efffect, the trajectory of bottom-up causation), the role of the environment in “switching on” genetic activity leading to the development and growth of bodily organs (for example) cannot be ignored (“top-down” causation).22 Clearly, the information continuously being exchanged at the molecular and neurological levels is coded to engage what goes on in the higher-level systems of the organism and the environment, and vice versa. So, if the problematic question is that of why subvenient properties do not fijinally govern supervenient ones—e.g., why neurobiological events do not fijinally govern mental states—the response is that supervenient properties participate in higher order networks and therefore have functional properties which include the provision of environmental feedback to the subvenient levels. As such, intellectual or mental states receive information from lower (including neural brain) orders but at the same time also function to exert “top-down” influence on the brain and body through the feedback loops, thereby even “reshaping . . . the agent’s neural pathways.”23 Gregory Peterson does caution that, “These top-down influences are not causes in the literal sense and do not contradict the causal laws of physics but should be understood as a ‘downward’ flow of information or as a ‘structuring cause’ that constrains the behavior of any local event or, in the case of the brain, local groups of neurons.”24 But if we take top-down causation seriously, I wonder if we could fijind a via media between bottom-up and top-down models of causality, perhaps what Niels Gregersen

21 See Stuart A. Kaufffman, The Origins of Order: Self-Organization and Selection in Evolution (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), an imposing, massive and technical book containing 650 pages of dense, fijine print argumentation, and almost 50 pages of bibliography reaching perhaps to 1200 sources. 22 See Ian G. Barbour, Nature, Human Nature and God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), esp. chs. 2–3. 23 Nancey Murphy, “Neuroscience and Human Nature: A Christian Perspective,” in Ted Peters, Muzafffar Iqbal and Syed Nomanul Haq, eds., God, Life, and the Cosmos: Christian and Islamic Perspectives (Aldershot, England, and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002), 357–89, quote from 384. 24 Gregory R. Peterson, Minding God: Theology and the Cognitive Sciences (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 63.

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calls “a third possibility, which focuses on the changeability of the probability patterns throughout evolution. The point here is that the dice of probabilities are not loaded once and for all but are constantly reloaded in the course of evolution.”25 I suggest that this “reloading” would occur at various (all) levels, even while it captures the pneumatological dynamism of the God-world relationship. At the micro-level of neural transmission, a quantum mechanical model of mind which understands the synaptical fijiring of electrochemical pulses to be indeterminate opens up toward the possibilities of both mental and agent causation.26 Electrochemical indeterminacies are the “loops” through which mind could be seen to influence the material world. Now if this is the case, does it not open the door also to the possibility of divine causation or influence through the divine spirit’s interaction with the human spirit? At the macro-level of the human person, it would suggest, at least in part, why humans are signifijied not only by organic bodies, but also in and through the powers of self-determination, teleological direction, dynamic self-understanding, and the capacity to overcome entropic processes.27 These are emergent features of the human beings as whole systems exhibiting both neurobiological and mental causation, and in that sense, resisting reductionistic explanations. Put in terms of quantum theory, human beings are under-determinate wave/particle dualities manifest as minds and brains (bodies) on the one hand, and as dynamic relatedness and thingness (individuality) on the other.28 I suggest that such correlates with the subvenient (brain) and supervenient (mind) features a pneumatological anthropology that can account for the unity of human experience.

25 Niels Henrik Gregersen, “From Anthropic Design to Self-Organized Complexity,” in Gregersen, ed., From Complexity to Life: On the Emergence of Life and Meaning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 206–34, quote from 225. 26 E.g., Casey Blood, Science, Sense and Soul: The Mystical-Physical Nature of Human Existence (Los Angeles: Renaissance Books, 2001), chs. 10–11 and 15. 27 Suggesting, of course, a holistic view of the human, as in Arthur Peacocke, God and the New Biology (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1986). Arguably, contemporary holist anthropologies capture Thomas’ achievement of an Aristotelian synthesis of human beings as hylomorphic creatures including both essential form and quantitative shape without the vitalistic implications and liabilities of the thirteenth century articulation. See Anton Charles Pegis, St. Thomas and the Problem of the Soul in the Thirteenth Century (Toronto: St. Michael’s College, 1934), ch. 4, for a summary of Thomas’ understanding. For contemporary restatements of Thomas’ Aristotelianized views, see Ric Machuga, In Defense of the Soul: What It Means to Be Human (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2002), esp. chs. 2 and 7. 28 See Danah Zohar, The Quantum Self: Human Nature and Consciousness Defijined by the New Physics (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1990), esp. chs. 7–9.

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But third, human beings as mental agents interact not only with their natural environments, but also with each other. The former is signifijicant in that it opens up to a fijield theory of consciousness which locates the knowing individual simultaneously as subject and object within his or her environments.29 William Hasker suggests, analogically, that “as a magnet generates its magnetic fijield, so the brain generates its fijield of consciousness.”30 Herein we discover a thoroughgoing and dynamic continuity between perceptions and perceived, between sensations and sensed, between mind and nature, between memories and experience, between attention (to) and judgment (of ). Of course, we pick out certain things in paying attention from a wider fijield, and our judgments of these things are also selective. However, the notion of “pure objectivity,” if attainable, would estrange us from ourselves, since human selves are no less than their locatedness in the concrete facticity of their environments. This means that life, knowledge, activity, etc., is ambiguous, an adventure in discerning the horizons of our identities. Thus the fijield of consciousness points to the flux of ourselves-in-the-world, and calls attention to the “public domain” of ourselves as selves. Further, however, human beings as mental agents interacting with one other also lead to a fijield theory of intersubjectivity which locates the knowing individual as an interpersonal and social being. To have focused almost exclusively only on the mind-brain problematic is to deal with only one-half of the problem. This is because this level of brain science tells us practically nothing regarding the relationship of mind and other minds, which is precisely the sociality and cultural reality we experience. If “mind is created as a kind of social practice,”31 then what we need is

29 On the links between philosophies of mind and the biology of organisms and their environments, see Peter Godfrey-Smith, Complexity and the Function of Mind in Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). For phenomenological analyses, see Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul; New York: The Humanities Press, 1962), esp. part I, and Aron Gurwitsch, The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1964). 30 William Hasker, The Emergent Self (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1999), 190. 31 See Leslie Brothers, Mistaken Identity: The Mind-Brain Problem Reconsidered (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), chs. 8–10; quote from 75. For more on the social character of human mentality, see also essays by Niels Henrik Gregersen, “God’s Public Trafffijic: Holist versus Physicalist Supervenience,” and John A. Teske, “The Social Construction of the Human Spirit,” both in Niels Henrik Gregersen, Willem B. Drees, and Ulf Görman, eds., The Human Person in Science and Theology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, and Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 153–88, and 189–211 respectively.

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research into neuropsychosociology which will enable us to talk not only about bottom up causation, but also about horizontal (interpersonal and social) mental causation. And opening up the discussion in this direction, of course, raises not only questions regarding corporate identity but also questions of a theological and pneumatological nature which converge in ecclesiology, or the doctrine of the Church. While we will return to explore this matter in more depth momentarily, the point is that nonreductive supervenience is holistic in seeing whole sets of properties as basic to the supervenient set of properties.32 It is certainly the case that we should be cautious in assuming that the plausibility of mental causation in the above argument secures the theological right to talk about divine downward causation.33 Yet I suggest that the pneumatological approach being developed here resists the various dichotomies—e.g., top-down versus bottom-up; mental v. physical; self v. other—precisely because of the relationality intrinsic to its concept. As such, it provides an explanatory framework for both the mind-mind and the mind-body relationship that enables (rather than demands) analogous understandings of the divine spirit’s presence and activity. 4.3 Divine Presence and Contemporary Theological Anthropology It is time to pull together the various threads of discussion. My thesis is that a rereading of the creation narratives through a pneumatological lens (motivated in part in dialogue with Wolfhart Pannenberg and others) leads to insights that are, at signifijicant points, complementary with the most recent advances in the cosmological and the cognitive sciences. Allow me to summarize the preceding by way of suggesting how a fijield theory of organization, relationality, and transcendence can contribute to the articulation of a contemporary pneumatological theology of human nature.

32 Robert Stalnaker, “Varieties of Supervenience,” in Jaegwon Kim, ed., Supervenience (Aldershot, UK, and Burlington, Vt.: Dartmouth and Ashgate, 2002), 189–209. 33 This, I take it, is the center of Dennis Bielfeldt’s concerns in his, “The Peril and Promise of Supervenience for the Science-Theology Discussion,” in Niels Henrik Gregersen, Willem B. Drees, and Ulf Görman, eds., The Human Person in Science and Theology (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, and Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 117–52. As such, Bielfeldt is led to argue for intra-level but not inter-level causation, even while attempting to salvage the concept of supervenience in theological articulation by steering between materialism and dualism on the one hand, and avoiding the peril of creation determining the creator on the other.

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We began by overviewing Pannenberg’s proposal to understand the creation as analogous to a fijield of divine presence and creativity. I have attempted to provide further exegetical underpinnings for this suggestion by way of rereading the creation narratives as events of the divine ruah from the beginning (hovering over the primeval chaos) to its culmination (gifting ha adam with life). Within this framework, we saw that the universal presence and activity of the breath of God is precisely what energizes, organizes, and produces the distinctions, divisions, separations, and particularities which constitute the world. Creaturely things are thereby fijields of self-organization concentrated in this way and not that. At the same time, of course, creatures are also thisses in relationship to thats. Thus, universality and particularity are conjoined in this pneumatological cosmology and ontology. As important, spirit and matter remain distinguishable, but are no longer dualistically conceived. This is most clearly seen, of course, in the age-old quest to understand the mind-body problem. The neural system of the brain can be understood as a self-organizing fijield of activity through which the body interacts with its environment. The human mind is in this sense not only supervenient upon the brain, but arguably supervenient upon the processes of the entire body that is environmentally situated. As such, the mind is embodied, receiving input from the body’s subsystems through the neural transmitters of the brain. There is therefore not only a somatic dimension to cognition, but also emotive and afffective impulses.34 Each dimension retains its irreducible particularity, organized according to its own distinctive fijields of activity. Yet each is related to and also partly constitutive of the emergent and self-organizing fijield of mind. But, a pneumatological cosmology and ontology provides not only for the self-organization of creaturely realities, but also for what I call their self-relational character. The Spirit not only constitutes the divine presence and hence relates God and the world, but also gifts creation with its relational structures. The mind, for example, is not only self-organized, but is self-organized in part through the various fijields of consciousness convergent therein. Arguably, these fijields of consciousness are precisely

34 On thinking and the body, see George Lakofff and Mark Johnson, Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought (New York: Basic Books, 1999). On the connection between the passions and the mind, see Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain (New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1994), and William J. Wainwright, Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995).

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what root our corporeality amidst the concreteness and specifijicity of the perceptual world. In other words, the embodied mind is not only primordially anchored with and inherent in the world, but informed by its responses to the world’s solicitations. For this reason, human beings are best characterized as interrelational and “intersubjective fijields of presences and presencing.”35 More explicitly, my suggestion is that humans are interrelational and intersubjective beings at least in part because they are spiritual beings. Here the pneumatological model opens up to and draws inspiration from the trinitarian understanding of God. The Spirit not only participates in the eternal perichoretic dance of the divine life, but is also the bond of love between the Father and the Son. Similarly, human beings are relationally constituted.36 As en-spirited (given life through the breath of God), human persons achieve full potential only in and through interactive and intersubjective relationship and participation with other creaturely fijields— e.g., of conscious persons (whether diffferentiated sexually or structured communally), of animals (cf. their naming in the creation narrative), and of nature (cf. the command to care for the earth). But, the Spirit’s openness to the world produces an “open space” wherein all creatures (and not just human beings) fijind themselves precisely as becoming-in-relationship. A pneumatologically confijigured world is a thoroughly relational, perichoretic confluence of self-organizing fijields of activity that participates with each other in composing a more-or-less harmonious creaturely response to God’s “letting be.” But, creaturely openendedness to other creatures is suggestive not only of the self-relational character of things in the world and the world as a whole, but also of the self-transcending aspect of such interactivity and intersubjectivity. The mark of self-transcendence signals fijirst the emer-

35 This derives from Merleau-Ponty; see Monika M. Langer, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception: A Guide and Commentary (Tallahassee, Fl.: The Florida State University Press, 1989), 149–77, esp. 166, for an summary discussion. 36 Amy Pauw Plantinga, “Personhood, Divine and Human,” Perspectives: A Journal of Reformed Thought 8:2 (1993): 12–14, Nicholas Lash, “Recovering Contingency,” in John Cornwell, ed., Consciousness and Human Identity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 197–211, and Stanley J. Grenz, The Social God and the Relational Self: A Trinitarian Theology of the Imago Dei (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2001)—all draw from trinitarian imagery in their discussion of human personhood and identity. See Calvin O. Schrag, The Self after Postmodernity (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), for more philosophical analysis, and F. LeRon Shults, Reforming Theological Anthropology: After the Philosophical Turn to Relationality (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003), for theological elucidation.

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gent, transformative, and transforming nature of self-organizing and selfrelating creatures. As we have seen previously (§3.2), the relational inputs coming from various directions enable the emergence of novelty. When this happens, creaturely self-transcendence occurs. This is also the case with human self-transcendence, at least as naturalistically conceived.37 Such self-transcendence is dramatically engaged when human persons encounter the divine. This is possible, of course, because the gift of divine ruah to human beings is the presence and activity of the Spirit that makes possible human relationship with God. Not without reason, the Greek poets also confessed that, “In him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).38 Most immediately and most often, this presence and activity are concretely experienced in the fellowship of the Spirit that emerges in human community in general and in ecclesial communities more specifijically.39 Individuals fijind their true particularity and identity “in Christ” precisely in being poured out on behalf of others and receiving from others. The Church emerges from the individuals who are gathered under a particular form of life inspired by Jesus. While the Church is both informed by a received linguistic grammar and embodied in the specifijic set of material practices initiated from the Day of Pentecost, at the same time the larger corporate body—of common humanity—also shapes the language

37 Thus there are also naturalistic (in some cases also reductionist) accounts of brain science and religion, including that of Michael A. Persinger, Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (New York: Praeger, 1987); Pascal Boyer, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); and Ilkka Pyysiäinen, How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion, Cognition and Culture Book Series 1 (Leiden, Boston and Köln: Brill, 2001). 38 Hence, the work of brain scientists can be helpful in their mapping of some of the neurobiological means through which human beings engage the divine on this side of the eschaton. See, e.g., James Ashbrook, The Human Mind and the Mind of God: Theological Promise in Brain Research (Lanham: University Press of America, 1984); Ashbrook, ed., Brain, Culture, and the Human Spirit: Essays from an Emergent Evolutionary Perspective (Lanham: University Press of America, 1993); Ashbrook and Carol Rausch Albright, The Humanizing Brain: Where Religion and Neuroscience Meet (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1997); Eugene G. D’Aquili and Andrew B. Newberg, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999); and Andrew B. Newberg, Eugene G. D’Aquili and Vince Rause, Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (New York: Ballantine Books, 2001). 39 C.A. Scott Anderson, “What Happened at Pentecost,” in B.H. Streeter, ed., The Spirit: God and His Relation to Man Considered from the Standpoint of Philosophy, Psychology and Art (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 1935), 117–58. See also Aaron Sang-won Son, Corporate Elements in Pauline Anthropology: A Study of Selected Terms, Idioms, and Concepts in the Light of Paul’s Usage and Background, Analecta Biblical 148 (Rome: Editrice Pontifijicio Istituto Biblico, 2001).

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and practices which constitute the catholic and ecumenical church, even while the church transforms the habits of the individuals who comprise it.40 Christians therefore transcend themselves in the body of Christ even while they are transformed by participation in that form of life. But such self-transcending transformation does not stop within the boundaries of the Church institutional, of course. Christian mission brings the body and its members into the world, empowering activity directed toward the transformation of social structures and the establishment of justice in human societies.41 And accomplishment of these goals requires intersubjective participation and input from the human community as a whole. So our giving a cup of water to those in prison is our giving to Christ (Matt. 25:31–40, esp. 35),42 even as our receiving the cup of water from the Samaritan (and those not of faith or even those in other faiths) is our receiving from the Spirit of Christ (Luke 10:29–37).43 In this way, the concrete and specifijic fijield of activity belonging to those empowered by the Spirit of Jesus of Nazareth interacts mutually with the various other natural and socio-historical fijields of activity as each is being redeemed by God.44 So, we have the embodied mind as a self-transcending reality precisely in its relationship with other minds and with its environment, and we have the social self transcending itself precisely in relationship with other ecclesial and social selves. But, insofar as creation itself can be said to be teleologically directed by the Spirit toward the consummation (e.g.,

40 The liturgical account of the Church as worshipping community provided by David F. Ford, Self and Salvation: Being Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), points to the material dimension of ecclesial identity, while the supervenience account of the Church provided by Brad J. Kallenberg, “All Sufffer the Afffliction of the One: Metaphysical Holism and the Presence of the Spirit,” Christian Scholars Review 31:2 (2001): 217–34, highlights its emergentist and socially directed character. 41 Samuel Rayan, The Holy Spirit: Heart of the Gospel and Christian Hope (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1978). 42 Which I explicate in my book, The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), ch. 5. 43 As detailed in my The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), §6.1.2; see also my Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor, Faith Meets Faith series (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2008). 44 I provide a pneumatological account of the doctrine of redemption understood in political and public terms in my In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology—The Cadbury Lectures 2009, Sacra Doctrina: Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age series (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), ch. 4.

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Rom. 8:19–23), human beings and communities are also directed eschatologically toward their creator.45 Yet this eschatological transcendence and transformation will retain some continuity with the embodied and social character of the initial creation’s structures. Herein we anticipate that the same Spirit “who raised Christ from the dead will give life to [our] mortal bodies” (Rom. 8:11), not only in the existentiality of this life but also in the concreteness of the next (1 Cor. 15), even as we confess that the Spirit is the pledge of the redemption of the people of God (Eph.1:13–14 and 2 Cor. 1:22) precisely through the social reconciliation to be accomplished at the eschatological judgment.46 In this way, the redemption of the world will be its transformation, not destruction. The ruah elohim who hovered over the primeval chaos will in the eschaton be the “communal, intersubjective fijigure, a personal power emerging out of many persons . . ., the wholeness toward which the oneness of God is pointing.”47 The preceding, I suggest, sufffijices at least to make plausible the possibilities of a pneumatological contribution to the Christian theology and science dialogue. Our focus, as given impetus by Pannenberg’s proposal to unite pneumatology and fijield theory, has been specifijically on bringing biblical pneumatology and anthropology into discussion with the cosmological and the cognitive sciences. What has emerged is a sketch of a twopronged theological vision informed by a pneumatological hermeneutic and imagination on the one side, and a scientifijic understanding of creaturely reality on the other. In the words of Robert Potter, Pannenberg is able to connect a modern scientifijic image of the world as a series of contingent fijields to an ancient religious image of the world as a manifestation of spirit. Everything exists in a hierarchy of contingent fijields;

45 While using “soul” language, Keith Ward’s anthropology is consistent with the emergentist model sketched here. He writes: “. . . the soul by nature ‘transcends’; it is oriented away from itself, to what is beyond itself ”; it is directed, fijinally, toward relationship with God, “the true end of the soul, and in this sense, its goal, its proper purpose and true nature”; Keith Ward, Defending the Soul (Oxford: Oneworld, 1992), 143 and 151. 46 See Ted Peters, “Resurrection of the Very Embodied Soul?” in Robert John Russell, Nancey Murphy, Theo C. Meyering, and Michael A. Arbib, eds., Neuroscience and the Person: Scientifijic Perspectives on Divine Action (Vatican City State: Vatican Observatory Publications, and Berkeley: The Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, 1999), 305–26, and Miroslav Volf, “The Final Reconciliation: Reflections on a Social Dimension of the Eschatological Transition,” Modern Theology 16:1 (2000): 91–113. 47 Peter C. Hodgson, Winds of the Spirit: A Constructive Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 172. I should note that while Hodgson seeks an eschatological trinitarianism which is neither modalistic nor tritheistic, in the process he denies the primordiality of the triune life of God. My quoting him at this point should not be taken as endorsing the particulars of his trinitarian reconstruction.

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Of course, argument is never complete this side of the eschaton, even as my own effforts to solidify Pannenberg’s intuitions probably have produced just as many questions as answers. In fact, one can write whole books on many of the preceding topics, certainly on each of the three chapters in this part of the volume. My goal, however, has been both to recognize and engage the complexity of spiritual and religious life in a scientifijic world. In that case, while there may be place for explicitly Christian—or ecclesial, to refer to the Barthian project of Church Dogmatics—reflection on any of these matters, the present project is intentionally designed to take up the task of Christian theology in an interdisciplinary and public context. But, there is more. As indicated in our introductory chapter, we live not only in a world awash with modern science but also in a pluralistic world. In order to further inquiry, then, we have to think not only in interdisciplinary terms but also in the presence of religious others. I therefore propose to bring a third party into the existing conversation: the religious tradition of Buddhism. The next three chapters will focus on explicating Buddhist views of science, of the world, and of human nature, before returning in part III to ask if Buddhist understandings can mediate the Christian theology and science dialogue on the one hand, even while the Christian-Buddhist dialogue can be furthered in conversation with science on the other.

48 Robert Potter, “Self-Transcendence: The Human Spirit and the Holy Spirit,” in Carol Rausch Albright and Joel Haugen, eds., Beginning with the End: God, Science, and Wolfhart Pannenberg (Chicago, Ill.: Open Court, 1997), 116–46, quote from 146.

PART TWO

SHUNYATA: NATURE AND SCIENCE IN MAHAYANA BUDDHISM

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In part I of this book, we overviewed the present state of the Christian theology-science encounter in general and the pneumatology-science discussion more specifijically, and explored ways in which complementary analogies between pneumatological categories and science advanced our thinking about divine presence in the creation as a whole and in human beings more specifijically. In part two, we will traverse a similar trajectory from the religion-science encounter through cosmology to anthropology, but do so in conversation with the Buddhist tradition. The complexities of the discussion between Christian theology and science already encountered in the preceding pages should alert us to similar challenges in the Buddhist-science dialogue. Two contemporary Mahayana Buddhist traditions, the Tibetan and the Japanese Kyoto School, have been most visibly involved and interested in science and its implications for Buddhist thought and practice. I have had a greater (although by no means extensive) familiarity with the latter, particularly related to the long-standing dialogue between members of the Kyoto School and Western Christian philosophy and theology dating back to the later Meiji period (1868–1912). At the same time, the emergence of the Tibetan dialogue with the sciences over the last thirty years means that there will be points where input from this direction will be helpful, and at those junctures we will heed developments especially as they have been spearheaded by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the widely recognized leader of the Tibetan government in exile. But, whereas a pneumatological hermeneutic informed the engagement with science in part I, that motif is absent from and cannot be used directly to interpret the Buddhist tradition in this part of the book. Just as it was important to wrestle previously with categories central both to Christian theology and to contemporary science, so it is in this discussion as well. What we need is either another central symbol or idea that is just as primordial to the Mahayana Buddhist tradition, and that can serve as a hermeneutical lens for our engagement with it. I suggest that the Mahayana notion of shunyata/sunyata (Sanskrit and Pali respectively, literally meaning emptiness) has the potential to illuminate the Buddhist encounter with science and with Christian theology. More specifijically, I propose that both Tibetan and East Asian Buddhist understandings of the world (nature) and human beings as ultimately emptiness (without self-substantiality) will open up surprising connections both to the cosmological and cognitive sciences, and to the pneumatological theology of nature we are attempting to develop. Although the symbol of shunyata is of minor import throughout Theravada Buddhism tradition and even

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has been neglected in some parts of the Mahayana tradition, its’ crucial role in some of the canonical Mahayana texts suggests it may hold promise for contemporary retrieval. Interestingly, that shunyata is a minor theme overall in Buddhism suggests that it can serve as a valuable comparative category since, as we have seen, pneuma has also been somewhat neglected in the main lines of Christian thought. In efffect, this volume explores the possibility of whether two relatively marginal motifs in the Christian and Buddhist traditions not only can enable a fresh engagement with the religion-and-science conversation but also can reinvigorate the Buddhist-Christian dialogue. (While this book does not attempt to show that shunyata has been as inappropriately marginalized in Buddhism as my corpus of work has argued pneuma has been in the Christian tradition, my hunch is that the appearance of books with emptiness in their titles in Buddhist studies is an indication of its growing prominence and retrieval; this volume is meant as a meager contribution to a reconsideration of the meaning of shunyata in our time.) Our explicit comparative work will have to wait until part III of this book. Our goal here is to delve into the interface of Buddhism and science in order to understand it fijirst on its own terms so as to lay the groundwork for our later task. Like our discussion of the role of pneuma in the dialogue between Christian theology and science, we will focus here on how the idea of shunyata has facilitated the encounter between especially Mahayana traditions of Buddhism and modern science. It will be important to provide both socio-historical, philosophical, and religious perspectives on this encounter in order to identity appropriate and adequate comparative categories for our task. As in part I, we will be covering a good deal of ground; but we should be expecting nothing less in our effforts to formulate a philosophical understanding of nature that recognizes the value of the many voices not only in the sciences but also in a religiously pluralistic world. One caveat ought to be registered before proceeding. Some Western readers may be approaching this material assuming that Buddhist traditions are more introspective than attentive to the natural world, least of all to engaging the world scientifijically. This stereotype may still be true for some forms of Buddhism focused on contemplative practice. In any case, as we shall see, Buddhists are now increasingly global citizens who inhabit a thoroughly scientifijic and technological world, and an increasing number are rethinking Buddhist teachings in light of modern science. Of course, many Christians remain both anti-intellectualistic and

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anti-science in their overall posture. This book neither attempts to convince such Christians of the import of this task nor tries to interact with like-minded Buddhists. In the context of the overall argument of this book, then, readers who think the religion and science dialogue is important and especially those familiar with Buddhism and the Buddhist-science discussion should be on the lookout for conceptual bridges into the Christian theology and science conversation, even if such will not be made explicit until part III of this book. In particular, preliminary observations can be made about the dynamic nature of shunyata and how that both enables the Buddhismscience dialogue on the one hand and yet also invites comparisons with the Christianity-science conversation on the other hand. Similarly, just as pneuma has been presented as a sufffijiciently vague and general category that can be specifijied variously in the Christian dialogue with the sciences, might it also be the case that shunyata is comparatively vague and general so as to be useful for Buddhist approaches to the sciences? Last, but not least, as pneuma has invited consideration of the divine mind in relationship to how God is present to and active in the world, does shunyata invite reflection on the nature of Buddha Mind, or consciousness, as the ultimate form of reality? These major questions will guide our inquiry.

CHAPTER FIVE

BUDDHISM AND CONTEMPORARY SCIENCE My hypothesis in this part of the book is that the Mahayana Buddhist understanding of the dynamically empty and self-emptying nature of all things (shunyata) will serve a threefold function methodologically amenable to the purposes of this volume.1 First, it is a central idea of at least the early Mahayana Buddhist tradition, particularly as interpreted from some Tibetan and East Asian Buddhist perspectives.2 Second, it resonates in various ways with and may potentially serve as a bridge to the categories of contemporary physics, especially quantum fijield theory and contemporary philosophy of mind. Finally, my hopes are that it will also serve the purposes of the Buddhist-Christian dialogue insofar as comparisons with a pneumatological approach are discernible. Of course, my readers will have to determine whether my intuitions about Buddhist shunyata in each case cashes out. It may be that while shunyata is a central Mahayana Buddhist motif and connects with the discourse of contemporary science, it may not correlate well with Christian pneumatology. Judgment should wait until the comparative analysis in part III. In this chapter I introduce the idea of shunyata and its role in the Buddhism-science dialogue. We begin with an overview of the Buddhistscience encounter (§5.1), proceed to delve into some of the details of this encounter particularly as reflected in the current Mind and Life dialogues 1 Many English texts rightly translate shunyata as “emptiness.” But, as we shall see later, this reifijied noun form is misleading since English language interpreters are led then to believe that shunyata is a kind of thing. Instead, as Zen philosopher Masao Abe notes, “This total dynamic movement of emptying, not a static state of emptiness, is the true meaning of Sunyata. . . . Sunyata should not be understood in its noun form but in its verbal form, for it is a dynamic and creative function of emptying everything and making alive everything”; see Abe, “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” in John B. Cobb, Jr. and Christopher Ives, eds., The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1990), 3–65, quotations from 28 and 33. For this reason, by and large in this book, I talk about “emptying” rather than “emptiness,” although the latter appears often enough, at least when I am citing other scholarship. 2 I touch some on Theravadan perspectives in §7.1, but then only in the discussion of Buddhist views of no-self; for an overview of the Theravadan encounter with science, see Richard H. Jones, Science and Mysticism: A Comparative Study of Western Natural Science, Theravada Buddhism, and Advaita Vedanta (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, and London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1986).

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held by Tibetan Buddhists and Western scientists (§5.2), and conclude with a basic sketch of the complementarities between shunyata and modern science especially as that has played out in the Kyoto School (§5.3). This discussion will land us at the heart of the contemporary Buddhist engagement with modern science. At the same time, we should also be mindful that the following cannot pretend to be exhaustive in its coverage. Our selection of what to include and what to leave out is guided in part by our focus on developments in the Mahayana tradition, and even then, especially on the Tibetan and Japanese fronts. These lenses are certainly limitations that preclude generalizations for the entirety of the Buddhist tradition. However, they are also reminders that as historically situated beings we have no choice but to begin with particularity, and that itself provides concreteness to discussions that might otherwise evaporate in a steam of philosophical abstractions. 5.1 The Buddhist-Science Dialogue: An Overview What is the current state of the relationship between Buddhist thought and science? How do Buddhists understand the application of Buddhist categories to the sciences, and how do scientists view the attempts to fijind resonances between the two domains of discourse? What are some of the questions and potential problems that have been identifijied in the conversation? These are important prolegomena issues that can help situate our reflections of what shunyata means in an age of science.3 The question of Buddhism and its relationship to modern science can be understood in part against the backdrop of the occidental “discovery of ” and fascination with the “exotic” East in the nineteenth century. At the same time that Max Müller (1823–1900) and others were beginning to translate Buddhist texts into English (in the Sacred Books of the East series), members of the Theosophical Society were traveling East

3 Succinct introductions to the Buddhism-science dialogue are Richard K. Payne, “Buddhism and the Sciences: Historical Background, Contemporary Developments,” in Ted Peters and Gaymon Bennett, eds., Bridging Science and Religion (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 153–72, and the essays by Jose Ignacio Cabezón and Thupten Jinpa in B. Alan Wallace, ed., Buddhism and Science: Breaking New Ground (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2008), is less a conventional history than it is vignettes especially into ideological aspects of the encounter.

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to explore its wisdom. Insofar as the West itself was wrestling then with what it meant to be both religious and scientifijic, it was inevitable that similar questions were asked of the Eastern religious and philosophical traditions. At the 1893 Parliament of Religions of the World’s Fair in Chicago, Shaku Soyen (1860–1919), the fijirst Zen teacher in the United States, spoke about the rationality of the “law of cause and efffect, as taught by the Buddha,” and Anagarika Dharmapala (1864–1933), a major reformer and modernizer of Sinhalese (Sri Lankan) Buddhism, waxed eloquent about Buddhism’s “sublime psychology” and its compatibility with evolutionary theory.4 Shortly thereafter, one of the fijirst books was published that argued not only for the compatibility of Buddhism to science, but also for the former’s superiority.5 Two main theses were presented. First, Western “science” is not as diffferent from Christian faith insofar as it has emerged in the West both as an apologetic strategy in the hands of persons of faith and as having its own “faith” presuppositions; as such, science (understood by the author as “Western science”) has served to fijill in the gaps of knowledge in faith’s striving to know the divine and the realm of the transcendent. Second, and by way of contrast to the fijirst thesis, it is Buddhism alone which provides satisfactory assurance, not by “the creation of any new knowledge [science] but by bringing to an end a beginningless ignorance.”6 As such, Buddhism is the true “science” which provides the most satisfactory (hypothetical) worldview for our engaging and experiencing reality. The author then proceeds in the attempt to demonstrate the superiority of Buddhism (the Buddha’s dharma and teachings) to the sciences of his time—e.g., physics, physiology, biology, cosmology, and epistemology/ rationality. Similar effforts at Buddhist apologetics vis-à-vis the claims of science have continued since. The rhetoric of these effforts expands on the argument that Buddhism is the true science in large part because it provides

4 Shaku Soyen, “The Law of Cause and Efffect, as Taught by Buddha,” and Anagarika Dharmapala, “The World’s Debt to Buddha,” both in Richard Hughes Seager, ed., The Dawn of Religious Pluralism: Voices from the World’s Parliament of Religion, 1893 (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1993), 406–9 and 410–19 respectively. Not surprisingly, of course, Dharmapala’s connections with the Theosophists were quite strong; see Tessa Bartholomeusz, “Dharmapala at Chicago: Mahayana Buddhist or Sinhala Chauvinist?” in Eric J. Ziolkowski, ed., A Museum of Faiths: Histories and Legacies of the 1893 World Parliament of Religions, Classics in Religious Studies 9 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1993), 235–50, esp. 237–42. 5 Paul Dahlke, Buddhism and Science, trans. Bhikkhu Sîlâcâra (London: Macmillan, 1913). 6 Dahlke, Buddhism and Science, 81; italics orig.

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not only for a rigorous empirical method, but also because it is more inclusive than science with its therapeutic and existentialist dimensions.7 Now of course there has always been resistance put up against this marriage of Buddhism and science, especially insofar as Buddhism is understood primarily as either a religious and existential philosophy or worldview.8 Yet even in cases like this, what comes to the forefront is the dimension of Buddhism that includes an extensively developed psychology or method of cultivating the mind, thus leading in some ways back toward convergence via this route. Against this background, it is understandable that the need to legitimate Buddhism in a colonialist world dominated by technological (read: scientifijic) progress led Buddhist intellectuals to apologetic strategies that engaged with rather than discounted the sciences.9 Thus, the twentieth century has seen a spectrum of claims regarding Buddhism not only as superior to science, but also as at least compatible and in harmony with science. In the latter cases, advocates have also urged, in light of the threats of technological advance which were beginning to be realized, that wisdom is needed to handle the deliverances of science and that such wisdom was available in the Eastern traditions. So Buddhist mysticism—specifijically the kind productive of wisdom, not of the superstitious kind—was important to guide the future progress of science as a whole.10 But Buddhism’s contribution was not limited, of course, to its wisdom. There were also many who were convinced that the overturning of classical physics and the dawn of quantum mechanics provided evidence for the truth of Buddhist claims concerning the nature of the cosmos through the ages. Those in this camp thought about Buddhism and science not in terms of superiority but in terms of each being complementary or parallel 7 K.N. Jayatilleke, Robert F. Spencer and Wu Shu, Buddhism and Science: Collected Essays (Kandy, Ceylon: Buddhist Publication Society, 1958), and various essayists in Buddhadasa P. Kirthisinghe, ed., Buddhism and Science (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984), make these claims. 8 For example, R.G. de S. Wettimuny, Buddhism and Its Relation to Religion and Science (Colombo: M.D. Gunasena and Co. Ltd., 1962). 9 A more recent volume in this genre is Mahinda Weerasinghe, The Origin of Species according to the Buddha (Colombo, Sri Lanka: Stamford Lake Publication, 2002), which argues that the Pali canon introduces ideas related to “sensory becoming” that anticipate as well as provide a more comprehensive explanation for evolutionary paths than the Darwinian theory on its own. 10 E.g., R.G.H. Siu, The Tao of Science: An Essay on Western Knowledge and Eastern Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1957); Hideki Yukawa, Creativity and Intuition: A Physicist Looks at East and West (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1973); and Mansel Davies, A Scientist Looks at Buddhism (Sussex, England: The Book Guild Ltd., 1990).

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to the other. However, they did not doubt that the central ideas of the Buddhist tradition could contribute to a deeper understanding of the new physics, especially in terms of providing reliable models for imaging, conceptualizing, and articulating the realities engaged in the micro-world. Buddhism was, in this case, understood to be at least parallel to modern science, both in terms of its methods and approaches to the natural world, and in terms of the content of knowledge delivered. And this was especially the case with explorations in philosophy of mind and quantum physics.11 As one Buddhist writer put it: the ancient Buddhist “insistence on knowledge as the key for salvation suggests an anticipation of the information age.”12 Not surprisingly, then, this genre of literature has inevitably featured some optimism about the possibilities of a synthesis between Buddhism and science, in part in order to establish the credentials of Buddhism in the modern world, but also in part in order to salvage and redeem the scientifijic enterprise for those with religious and spiritual commitments shaped by the traditions of the East. The work of three contemporary Buddhists is illuminating in this regard. Trinh Thuan is a widely published professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia who has explored the Buddhism-and-science interface with Matthieu Ricard, a Nobel prize-winning scientist trained in cellular genetics, who left the laboratory to pursue life as a Buddhist monk.13 Their book together dialogues widely across scientifijic and metaphysical

11 The literature is now staggering. For a sampling, see Michael Talbot, Mysticism and the New Physics (New York: Bantam Books, 1981); Ken Wilber, ed., The Holographic Paradigm and Other Paradoxes: Exploring the Leading Edge of Science (Boulder and London: Shambhala, 1982); Jeremy W. Hayward, Shifting Worlds, Changing Minds: Where the Sciences and Buddhism Meet (London: New Science Library, and Boston: Shambhala, 1987); Norman Friedman, Bridging Science and Spirit: Common Elements in David Bohm’s Physics, the Perennial Philosophy and Seth (1990; reprint, St. Louis, Mo.: Living Lake Books, 1994); Paul Barrows, Beyond the Self: Consciousness, Mysticism and the New Physics (London: Janus Publishing Company, 1998); and Gay Watson, Stephen Batchelor and Guy Claxton, eds., The Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Science, and Our Day-to-day Lives (York Beach, Me.: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 2000). 12 Tsung-I Dow, “Modern Science and the Rediscovery of Buddhism,” in Ramakrishna Puligandla and David Lee Miller, eds., Buddhism and the Emerging World Civilization: Essays in Honor of Nolan Pliny Jacobson (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois University Press, 1996), 113–24; quote from 124. 13 E.g., Trinh Xuan Thuan, The Secret Melody: And Man Created the Universe, trans. Storm Dunlop (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995; reprint, Philadelphia and London: Templeton Foundation Press, 2005), and Chaos and Harmony: Perspectives on the Scientifijic Revolutions of the Twentieth Century, trans. Axel Reisinger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001; reprint, Philadelphia and London: Templeton Foundation Press, 2006), and many other books.

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issues including the question of design, quantum physics, time, chaos, consciousness, beauty, and many other topics.14 What emerges is a contemporary scientifijic apologetic for Buddhism, especially of the Tibetan Mahayana version practiced by Ricard. While both Thuan and Ricard reject a materialistic interpretation of the world, the volume illuminates diffferences in how both engage the “big” metaphysical questions. Thuan the astrophysicist had, at least in his earlier work, admitted an openness to thinking about the First Cause of the universe in theistic terms (as vague as such were),15 while Ricard opts instead for a non-theistic view of consciousness in relationship to an evolutionary universe. At one level, this book can be understood as documenting Thuan’s own re-encounter with the Buddhism of his youth, and his attempts to explore the compatibility of the scientifijic worldview at the turn of the twenty-fijirst century with contemporary retrievals and reappropriations of the Buddhist tradition. If read in this light, the rhetorical shifts in Thuan’s metaphysical speculations are noteworthy. In contrast to the much more explicit theistic language in his other works, Thuan’s language in The Quantum and the Lotus is tempered in the direction of the mystical, if not explicitly pantheistic, sensibilities of Spinoza and Einstein. He thus clearly states: “I do not personally believe in a personifijied God, but rather in a pantheistic principle that is omnipresent in nature.”16 At the same time, given the fijine-tuned initial conditions and physical constraints of our present world, Thuan also suggests that such a principle of organization did produce laws of nature that have taken on most if not all of the traditional attributes of the personal God of monotheistic traditions: universality, absoluteness, timelessness, and omnipotence (in terms of being all-efffecting). Ricard’s Buddhist commitments, however, lead him to explain the laws of nature, along with the fijinely tuned constants, as simply reflecting the interdependence of nature’s phenomena. If Thuan insists that such a principle of organization is, if not personal, nevertheless intentional in terms of creating a world with conscious and intelligent observers such as ourselves, Ricard recourses instead to the non-theistic albeit deeply Mahayana Buddhist category of consciousness as providing a more satisfying ultimate form of explanation. Thus Ricard presumes a beginning-less succes14 Trinh Xuan Thuan and Matthieu Ricard, The Quantum and the Lotus: A Journey to the Frontiers Where Science and Buddhism Meet, trans. Ian Monk (reprint, New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004). 15 See Thuan, The Secret Melogy, 249, and Chaos and Harmony, 331–32. 16 Thuan and Ricard, Quantum and the Lotus, 50.

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sion of moments of consciousness so that “the universe and consciousness have always coexisted.”17 If some might think this notion of universal consciousness is compatible with Thuan’s universal creative principle, Ricard insists both that the primordial cosmic consciousness is certainly not personal, omnipotent, or creator out of nothing, and that there is the further assumption regarding some kind of cosmic dualism—the physical universe and consciousness—in the Buddhist tradition. But note that in the end, Ricard’s compatibilistic understanding of Buddhism and modern science is deeply informed by the meditative practices of the Tibetan tradition. For Ricard, the question of spiritual practice and even “soteriology,” if such can be generalized from the Christian to the Buddhist tradition that speaks not of salvation but of awakening and enlightenment, is not bracketed when discussing issues in the current encounter between religion and science from the Buddhist perspective. Instead, it is precisely such meditative practices that illuminate how the ultimate nature of the world can be understood in terms of consciousness that is yet not theistic in character. Theoretical astrophysicist Vic Mansfijield taught at Colgate University from 1973 until his death in 2008. Although widely published in Buddhism and science,18 his last book is most pertinent for our purposes.19 Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics explores the parallels and disjunctions between quantum mechanics and Buddhist compassion, and introduces the Madhyamaka or Middle Path tradition of Mahayana Buddhism. Now Mansfijield is careful to warn against attempting to “prove” the truths of Buddhism by appeal to physics or science. Yet the apologetic temptation is undoubtedly difffijicult to hold offf completely, as when—even if such statements appear only sporadically—we read that “no other major religious worldview has such an arresting and detailed connection to modern physics.”20 The heart of Mansfijield’s argument consists of attempts to further the dialogue between the notion of quantum nonlocality and Buddhist emptiness, to take up the challenge regarding non-causality that quantum

17 Thuan and Ricard, Quantum and the Lotus, 42. 18 Besides a wide range of articles, Mansfijield has also published Synchronicity, Science, and Soul-Making: Understanding Jungian Synchronicity through Physics, Buddhism, and Philosophy (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1995), and Head and Heart: A Personal Exploration of Science and the Sacred (Wheaton, Ill.: Quest Books, 2002). 19 See Vic Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics: Toward a Union of Love and Knowledge (West Conshohocken, Penn.: Templeton Foundation Press, 2008). 20 Mansfijield, Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics, 45.

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mechanics poses to the Tibetan tradition, and to explore the puzzles posed by relativity theory for both scientifijic and Buddhist understandings of time and temporality. Notable aspects of the discussion include his observation that the incomprehensible and impossible (according to Newtonian physical laws) quantum fact of “simultaneous action at a distance” reflects the Buddhist notion that nothing has independent or self-inherent existence, even as quantum nonlocality may illuminate the mystery of inter-personal knowledge we have of other persons, not to mention the feelings of compassion and love we have for and receive from others. It is the parallels of such a quantum mechanically confijirmed notion of interdependence with Mahayana Buddhist ideas which is suggestive of what Mansfijield calls a “physics of peace”21—or what we might also call an ontology of primordial peace (as opposed to the Darwinian characterization of nature “red in tooth and claw”). Further, the quantum mechanical problem that there is no causal explanation for the collapse of the wave function is confronted head-on. This fijinds extension in the basically a-teleological character of biological (Darwinian) evolution, but, Mansfijield acknowledges, it is simultaneously problematic for a Buddhist tradition that is deeply indebted to a robust view of causality. On this issue, Mansfijield courageously admits he can only hope that “holding this tension with intensity and integrity will allow some synthetic and satisfying point of view to arise, but there is no guarantee that such a view will come to pass.”22 Last but not least, the cosmologically expanding universe “driven” by the laws of entropy are suggested to be congruent with the decay and impermanence of the world that is announced in the fijirst Nobel Truth that all is duhkha (or sufffering). Is it possible to view the Buddhist encounter with science as an attempt to identify a convergence of love and knowledge in the world, as suggested by the subtitle of Mansfijield’s last book? Throughout his oeuvre, Mansfijield’s quest is neither only for scientifijic understanding on the one hand nor only for religious or philosophical clarity on the other, but always for perspective on how the two are either complementary or divergent, as the cases may be. Thus he seeks to hold onto the tension of quantum a-causality and bioevolutionary a-teleology as part of the most recent scientifijic consensuses, but yet still insists such must be only partial truths given the human conviction that “love and sufffering are deep truths of

21 Mansfijield, Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics, 90. 22 Mansfijield, Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics, 128.

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spiritual life, that they are pivots around which our moral actions turn.”23 Herein one senses that Mansfijield embraces rather than resolves the tension of engaging science without abandoning his Buddhist convictions. At the same time, the sought-after union of love and knowledge always has moral implications: as “all philosophic principles must have moral consequences,” so also “the truth of emptiness must be expressed in compassionate action.”24 The work of Thuan and Ricard, as well as of Mansfijield, press various methodological and material questions related to the Buddhist encounter with science. From the Ricardian perspective, what is the nature of consciousness in relationship to our understanding of the fundamental nature of the world? In both cases—whether regarding Mansfijield’s quest for the links between love and knowledge or Ricard’s resolution to the relationship between religion and science—what role might Buddhist practices, either meditative or practical-moral-ethical, play in the dialogue between Buddhism and science? There are certainly other questions, and we will return to many of these later. But, for now, how does one go about engaging and assessing this voluminous literature on the Buddhist encounter with modern science which increases daily? The same problem which Thuan, Ricard, and Mansfijield confront directly exists, of course, for those wishing to enter into the Christian theology and science discussion. While in part I the guiding motifs which enabled our navigation through that material were insights and categories drawn from pneumatology, here I propose a similar strategy, one suggested although not developed extensively by Mansfijield: that of relying upon one central Buddhist idea—the self-emptying character of all things (shunyata)—as a primary category to help steer our inquiry.25 Might this Mahayana notion of shunyata not only be suggestive for human morality or ethics but also hold the key to understanding the nature of the cosmos from a Buddhist perspective? This will actually accomplish two purposes. First, it will allow us to detect and highlight certain issues in the Buddhist and science dialogue that are informed by this important notion. Second, my hypothesis is that the ideas tracked will also serve to

23 Mansfijield, Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics, 127. 24 Mansfijield, Tibetan Buddhism and Modern Physics, 162. 25 Shunyata, as understood by the Madhyamaka, is the central idea of Buddhism, according to T.R.V. Murti, The Central Philosophy of Buddhism: A Study of the Madhyamika System, 2nd ed. (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1960). On the other hand, despite Murti’s claims, this idea remains relatively neglected in large strands of the Buddhist tradition. I provide some historical perspective in the next chapter.

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undergird the bridge partially erected in part I of this book. Before we commit ourselves to this path of inquiry, however, let us observe how other Tibetan Buddhists have navigated their encounter with science and the modern world. 5.2 Mind and Life: Contemporary Tibetan Buddhism and Science I want to turn now to what is the most sustained set of dialogues between Buddhists and scientists, that facilitated by the Mind and Life Institute which has been bringing together in conversation Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, including His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, and Western scientists and philosophers for almost the last thirty years. Established in 1985, the Mind and Life Institute has held over twenty conferences, with book publications resulting from almost every one. In this section, I very briefly summarize some of the volumes,26 with an eye toward thinking about how Buddhists have approached both the methodological issues related to their dialogue with science and what we have called the philosophy of nature. At the heart of the Tibetan encounter with science has been what Ricard has referred to: the nature of consciousness. Not surprisingly, then, the contemporary science of consciousness has featured prominently in considerations related to the cognitive neurosciences, experimental neuropsychology, philosophy of mind, artifijicial intelligence, evolutionary biology, neurobiology, psychiatry, memory, mental health and illness, and psychopharmacology.27 Of specifijic concern has been the question of the relationship of consciousness to the brain. Buddhists have not accepted the dominant neuroscientifijic tendency of reducing the mind to the brain. 26 I provide a more in depth overview of the dialogues and the published volumes through about 2006 in my review essay, “Mind and Life, Religion and Science: The Dalai Lama and the Buddhist-Christian-Science Trilogue,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 28 (2008): 43–63. 27 Note, for example, the earliest conference publications: Jeremy W. Hayward and Francisco J. Varela, eds., Gentle Bridges: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1992), and Zara Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston, and B. Alan Wallace, eds., Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 1999). See also the related publication, derived from a symposium involving His Holiness and sponsored by the Mind/Body Medical Institute of Harvard Medical School and the New England Deaconness Hospital, in conjunction with the Tibet House of New York: Daniel Goleman and Robert A.F. Thurman, eds., MindScience: An East-West Dialogue (Boston: Wisdom, 1991).

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However, His Holiness’ explanations of the Tibetan Buddhist view have also revealed nuances. On the one hand, His Holiness has indicated that consciousness is dependent, at least to some degree, on objects cognized: “a subjective agent . . . has the potential to arise correspondent to an object that appears to it. Through the force of the stimulus of the object, consciousness has the ability to arise in an aspect corresponding to the object.”28 In a sense, consciousness defijines objects retroactively; put alternatively, objects are teleologically determined, and consciousnesses make such determination. In either case, in the neuroscience-and-Buddhist dialogue, perceivers and objects arise simultaneously or co-dependently. Yet on the other hand, His Holiness has also afffijirmed a more genuine interdependence between consciousness and its object: “consciousness is understood as a multifaceted matrix of events. Some of them are utterly dependent on the brain, and, at the other end of the spectrum, some of them are completely independent of the brain. There is no one thing that is the mind or soul.”29 Herein we also see the fundamental Tibetan Buddhist understanding of consciousness at multiple levels: what the Buddhists called “gross consciousness” is brain and body-dependent, while the more subtle levels of consciousness provide a metaphysics or ontology for karmic reincarnation without positing a personal mind or soul that is carried over from life to life. This question regarding the nature or ontology of consciousness has been a central feature of the Mind and Life dialogues. The conversations have touched on various aspects of this important issue: the interrelationship between the emotions, the brain, and the body; the correlations between mindfulness and behavior as medicinal factors; the relationship between gross and subtle levels of consciousness; the consciousness of sleeping, dreaming, and dying; the nature of compassion, empathy, and altruism, as well as of destructive emotions, in psychosocial, neurobiological, and consciousness research; and neuroplasticity as related to learning and brain transformation, among other topics. It is important to note that throughout, His Holiness has been a vibrant dialogue partner, although by no means the dominant voice. Thus, His Holiness models a dialogical posture and a willingness to listen to and learn from (Western) scientists and philosophers about matters that have been treated at great depth over the

28 In Hayward and Varela, eds., Gentle Bridges, 194. 29 In Houshmand, Livingston, and Wallace, eds., Consciousness at the Crossroads, 40.

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centuries by Tibetan Buddhist adepts, scholars, and philosophers.30 There are certainly occasions when His Holiness and the Tibetan monks would “push back” against the dominant scientifijic fronts, e.g., against materialistic theories of mind or consciousness, or reductionist or epiphenomenalist explanations of the emotions, or a bifurcated “two worlds” view of science and ethics. Yet these are part and parcel of a dynamic discussion, with no sense that His Holiness is exercising any ultimate authority to speak on matters contested not only by scientists but also across Buddhist traditions. Methodologically it is important to note that Buddhist perspectives have come to play a more and more prominent role in the dialogues. When the dialogues fijirst began in the mid-1980s, there were few engaged in scientifijic research who also embraced a Buddhist way of life. Over the course of the dialogues, however, more of such scholar-scientist-practitioners have been identifijied. Part of the result is that Buddhist contemplative practices are no longer just being “talked about”; instead they are becoming more and more both the object and subject of experimental research. What has happened over time is that the repeated Buddhist insistence on the centrality of the role of introspection for the sciences of the mind and of consciousness has been gradually heeded. This has become possible as greater numbers of the scientists are also practicing Buddhists. So, whereas in previous generations introspection had been considered and rejected for fear of compromising the objectivity of the science of psychology, the dialogues have given further momentum to what is being increasingly recognized in the wider scientifijic community: that strict objectivity is an illusion and that there is an element of subjectivity, for example that involved in self-introspection, related to all scientifijic experimentation that needs to be controlled, but can nevertheless also be gainfully deployed for the purposeful advance of knowledge and the sciences. We will return to pick up on this important discussion of the science of consciousness later (§7.2). I now turn to a consideration of a volume uniquely focused on the “harder” natural sciences, especially physics.31 In this book the discussants

30 At one point, His Holiness said, “if you fijind from your own scientifijic perspective any arguments against a particular issue asserted in Buddhism, I would like you to be very frank, because I will learn and benefijit from that” (in Houshmand, Livingston, and Wallace, eds., Consciousness at the Crossroads, 48). 31 Arthur Zajonc, ed., The New Physics and Cosmology: Dialogues with the Dalai Lama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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engage directly how the paradoxes of quantum physics—e.g., wave-particle duality, nonlocality and quantum entanglement, the measurement problem—the nature of time and space-time relativity, and the cosmological and astrophysical sciences relate to especially Tibetan Buddhist philosophy, logic, and cosmology. The topics thus covered are by far the most wide-ranging—from physics to metaphysics, ontology, philosophy, epistemology, and logic—of the Mind and Life dialogues and their resulting publications. I want to focus my comments on the question of cosmic origins, partly because that has dominated the Christianity-science dialogue, but also partly because they illuminate the seamlessness of the Buddhist worldview. On the one hand, the team of physicists involved in the dialogue presented the status quaestiones of their fijields with regard to various debates in current cosmology, such as the notion of a fijinite but unbounded universe. This notion is also related to the idea that the moment of T=0 (the big bang) was a centerless explosion that occurred everywhere at once but yet with infijinite velocity (i.e., faster than the speed of light, contrary to the universal constraints of the post-inflationary period of the earliest moments in the history of the cosmos), resulting in a temporally fijinite but perhaps spatially infijinite world without a boundary or edge. From this emerges the paradox that the expansion of the universe is the same everywhere, yet from various frames of reference, the galaxies closest to the observer are receding at a slower pace while those furthest away are moving away most rapidly. These and other puzzling astrophysical and cosmological phenomena were extensively discussed. In each case, however, the entire group, Western scientists (and philosophers) and Tibetan Buddhists, wrestled with the implications of these theoretical postulations with regard to fundamental philosophical questions such as causality, the nature of space and time, and the origins and ultimate nature of the world. For example, is either space or time or space-time absolute? Some physicists would say yes to some or all of the above, others similarly no. Interestingly, in other Buddhism-andscience conversations that His Holiness has been a part of, the notion of an absolute and irreversible time based on thermodynamics, the generation of electromagnetic radiation, and the expansion of the universe have been defended by Eastern scientists.32 This in turn raises the Dalai Lama’s

32 See, e.g., Jayant V. Narlikar, “Concept of Time in Science,” in L.L. Mehrotra, ed., Science, Spirituality and the Future: A Vision for the Twenty-First Century—Essays in Honour of

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question of how the notion of “absolute” functions in discussing this set of questions. At various points in the conversation, His Holiness clarifijied some of the basic features of Buddhist cosmology. Three in particular are of interest at this juncture. First, His Holiness was inclined to say that the universe is infijinite or without absolute beginning, since to say otherwise requires an uncaused fijirst moment, which notion is contrary to Buddhist intuitions. Alternatively, all things arise interdependently from “space particles” (which were catalytically energized by karmic forces so as to produce the big bang and the subsequent evolutionary history of the world), which is postulated especially in the Kalachakra (literally, “wheel of time”) school of Tibetan Buddhism, the most complex set of Buddhist teachings presented in the Dalai Lama’s Geluk tradition. Finally, the boundarylessness of the world implies either what scientists have called an oscillating universe (an innumerable sequence of big bangs followed by universal collapses) or that our “universe” with its beginning at the big bang is part of an infijinite “multiverse” (as implied by the “many universes” theory related to the measurement problem suggested by some quantum cosmologists) with an incalculable number of worlds coming and going, albeit generally physically disconnected from one another.33 These are clearly heady and speculative subjects, a far cry from Shakyamuni Buddha’s reply, when asked about the origins of the world by inquiring disciples, regarding the uselessness of such matters for the purposes of curing human sufffering. Yet in the spirit of the Buddha, this conversation closed with a clear afffijirmation of knowledge, even the knowledge affforded by the natural sciences, as a means to reduce the sufffering of sentient beings. His Holiness has also recently published an autobiographical work reflecting on his dialogues with scientists over the last three decades.34 In this, he reflects on how his widespread travels have persuaded him that Tibetan Buddhist practices, spirituality, and ethics, which were always connected, could also combine with science to transform the world and

His Holiness The Fourteenth Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso (New Delhi: Mudrit, 1999), 103–12, esp. 109–10. 33 See Lee Smolin, The Life of the Cosmos (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), and Ervin Laszlo, Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything, 2nd ed. (Rosemont, Vt.: Inner Traditions, 2007), esp. 82–93, for examples of how such ideas are being entertained by those working out of the Western scientifijic tradition. 34 His Holiness the Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality (New York: Morgan Road, 2005).

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make it a better and more hospitable place for all people.35 Hence there is a complementarity between Buddhism and science, each with established traditions, perspectives, and goals, but yet also revisable and focused on better understanding the world. This complementarity is seen throughout His Holiness’ reflections on his life with science. Whether considering such esoteric topics as quantum physics, the big bang, the evolution of life, and the nature and science of consciousness, his insistence on the interrelationship of ethics, spirituality, and science for human life in the twenty-fijirst century is always palpable. While many of the topics and themes from the Mind and Life dialogues reappear amidst these autobiographical reflections—e.g., on karma as the driving engine of the evolutionary history of the world; the reality of downward causation from mind to brain; the notion of brain plasticity— what is noteworthy is His Holiness’s acknowledgments about how his own mind has changed either as a result of those dialogues or since then, based on further inquiry. One example of the latter is his connecting the Kalachakra theory of space particles with the emerging view of the big bang as deriving from the thermodynamic instabilities that physicists have recently termed a quantum vacuum.36 Here His Holiness shows a willingness to reinterpret traditional Buddhist metaphysical and cosmological ideas according to developments in modern cosmology. Yet what is of prime import is not the what of the Buddhist encounter with science but, as we saw in Mansfijield’s work, the so what? Throughout his autobiography, there is a conscious attempt to show how science and Buddhist spirituality is connected (as indicated by the book’s subtitle). As already noted, what is most important is how both science and Buddhism are focused on the formation of a better world, one in which there is less and less sufffering, and in which there is more happiness present as a result of our being here. What then can we say in light of the Mind and Life dialogues about the methodological tensions between science as providing a universal perspective and Tibetan Buddhism as providing a particular (religious or philosophical) vision? His Holiness has repeatedly said that the claims of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, if true, are empirically and experientially confijirmable quite apart from what Buddhism says. In that sense, his has 35 These are themes that His Holiness emphasized early in the Mind and Life dialogues—e.g., Houshmand, Livingston, and Wallace, eds., Consciousness at the Crossroads, 150–52. 36 The Dalai Lama, The Universe in a Single Atom, 85–87.

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always been the quest for a universal and secular ethics, one that is not tied down to any one religious or philosophical system. In his view, it is precisely science as a cross-cultural enterprise that is in the best position to identify an ethical posture based on nature itself. Interestingly, while many scientists also think that theirs is the quest for a universally true “viewpoint” (or that the domain of science is distinct from that of ethics— a minority position defended by a smaller number of scientists involved in the Mind and Life dialogues), some of them challenged the idea of a naturalistic ethics shorn of religious or philosophical presuppositions.37 What is increasingly realized is both that science itself operates according to assumptions derived from elsewhere, and that the fact-value—and nature-ethics—dichotomy is problematic. What is not agreed upon is the precise nature of the relationship between religious and/or philosophical (in this case, Tibetan Buddhist) traditions and science. On the one hand, the Dalai Lama has no interest in promoting Buddhism in any kind of classically understood missionary sense (hence, note, his autobiography is entitled Science and Spirituality, not Science and Buddhism);38 on the other hand, as a practicing Buddhist, there are certain motivating apologetic issues such that scientifijic legitimation for Buddhist beliefs and practices is embraced whenever such is discerned as present. I suggest this is unavoidable in cases when worldviews (or religious or philosophical systems) initially come into contact with science: there is an instinctive reaction to fijind confijirmation from science for apologetic purposes, even while there is at least an initial sense or recognition of the parochial and sectarian nature of one’s religious or philosophical tradition. It is only natural that the recent emergence of Tibetan Buddhism on the world stage has brought with it these evident tensions. The focus on the nature of consciousness throughout much of the Mind and Life conversations has resulted in marginal rather than central attention to the notion of shunyata or dynamic self-emptying. The 37 For extensive accounts of the back-and-forth interactions on this issue, see Daniel Goleman, ed., Healing Emotions: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mindfulness, Emotions, and Health (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1997), 17–31 and 243–50; Richard J. Davidson and Anne Harrington, eds., Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 214–22; and Anne Harrington and Arthur Zajonc, eds., The Dalai Lama at MIT (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 190–94, 206–10, 214–18, 236–41, and passim. 38 Elsewhere in the dialogues, His Holiness explicitly rejected any missionary motivations with regard to Tibetan Buddhist traditions; see Davidson and Harrington, eds., Visions of Compassion, 245.

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Dalai Lama, for example, recognizes the importance of the doctrine of shunyata when thinking about relativity theory and quantum mechanics, but these more speculative endeavors are ultimately subservient to the ethical task of forging a humane common future.39 If anything, the Tibetan focus has been what might be called soteriological—on awakening and enlightenment—rather than metaphysical. Matters related to the philosophy (or ontology or metaphysics) of nature are less important than are ethical concerns—that is the whole point behind the Mahayana insistence that we do not cling to our theories or doctrines about things. Thus, for example, contrary to the stereotypical Western view that the Buddhist idea of non-self included the rejection of “selfhood,” it is afffijirmed that there is a distinctively Bodhisattvic self-identity which allows for self-sacrifijice benefijiting other sentient beings.40 The point here is to minimize the philosophical debates in favor of thinking specifijically out of Tibetan Buddhist sensitivities and commitments. The reverse is more obviously the case when we transition to think about the Kyoto School of Zen in the twentieth century. What then are some of the ways in which the idea of the self-emptying character of all things has emerged from and perhaps even contributed to the Buddhist-science dialogue? While we will return in due time to a more historically oriented analysis of the Buddhist concept of shunyata (ch. 6), for our present purposes, we turn to the Kyoto School of Japanese Buddhism. One of our goals is to observe how shunyata has emerged as a central philosophical category in the Buddhist-science dialogue and to map some of its primary insights. The other objective is to explore how Buddhists have attempted to adjudicate the methodological issues inherent in their engagement with science. As we have already seen in the case of the Mind and Life dialogues, Buddhists can neither allow the sciences to dominate the conversation—to do so would be to risk losing the distinctive and essential commitments of the beliefs and practices long central to their way of life—nor ignore the advances of science altogether. To explore further the issues, we engage next with the ideas of Keiji Nishitani, a Kyoto School philosopher who was concerned both with the Buddhist encounter with science and with the retrieval and reappropriation of the traditional concept of shunyata.

39 Ch. 2 of His Holiness the Dalai Lama’s The Universe in a Single Atom is titled, “Emptiness, Relativity, and Quantum Physics,” but the idea of shunyata does not appear in the remainder of the book. 40 See Goleman, ed., Healing Emotions, ch. 9, “The Roots of Self-Esteem,” esp. 201.

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Nishitani’s dates (1900–1990) locate him and the period of his mature reflections not only during the years of Japanese modernization, but also squarely amidst the horrors and aftermath of the Second World War. Taught by Kitaro Nishida (see §6.2), Nishitani, along with Hajime Tanabe (1885–1962), another Nishida student, and Masao Abe (1915–2006), a more recent thinker, stands within a distinguished line of what has come to be known as the Kyoto School.41 Central to the School’s endeavors has been the attempt to bring Japanese Buddhist thought into dialogue with Western philosophy and theology.42 It was Nishitani, however, who, by the second half of the twentieth century, fijirst addressed science from the decidedly Buddhist and increasingly sophisticated perspectives of the Kyoto School. An overview of his thinking is provided in his essay, “Science and Zen.”43 Here, Nishitani articulated the commitment of the School to a completely open dialogue with the West, especially regarding the convergence of modern science, existentialism, secularization, and, operational (if not formal) atheism. In his rather acute reading of science and its fruits in the West—e.g., the elimination of teleology, spirit, soul, and even God not only from scientifijic discourse, but also from the depths of the cultural conscience—Nishitani was led to conclude: “. . . it is the fijield of emptiness . . . or absolute nothingness— or what may perhaps be called the None in contrast to, and beyond the One—which enables the myriad phenomena to attain their true being and realize their real truth.”44

41 There is no space here to deal with the questions some Buddhists have raised about the legitimacy of the Kyoto School’s belonging within the Buddhist lineage. The issues, however, are rightly noted as extending far beyond the Kyoto School to the Ch’an and Zen traditions as a whole since they involve the authenticity of ideas such as Buddha-nature and original enlightenment. For an overview of the debate and the response of those who would (rightly) defend both Ch’an and Zen as authentically Buddhist, see Jamie Hubbard and Paul L. Swanson, Pruning the Bodhi Tree: The Storm over Critical Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997). 42 See James Fredericks, “The Kyoto School: Modern Buddhist Philosophy and the Search for a Transcultural Theology,” Horizons 15:2 (1988): 299–315, and James W. Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness: An Essay on the Kyoto School (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001). Heisig’s volume has been especially helpful for nuancing my discussion of the Kyoto School. 43 Nishitani, “Science and Zen,” in Frederick Franck, ed., The Buddha Eye: An Anthology of the Kyoto School (New York: Crossroad, 1982), 111–37. 44 Nishitani, “Science and Zen,” 128.

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What is this “true being” and “real truth” referred to by Nishitani? It is that which emerges beyond either science or religion left on its own, and even beyond the dualism of science and religion. On its own, science, at least as popularly understood coming out of the nineteenth century advances in medicine and technology, promulgated an optimistic view of human progress and thus appeared to many as promising the “salvation” of humankind. It has delivered, instead, the mass destruction of WWII, the impersonalism of nature’s laws, and the mechanization and technologization of modern life. On its own, religion had also promised salvation. Especially in its modernist and post-Enlightenment guises, religion had delivered, instead, a narcissistic kind of subjectivism complicated by the strange incapacity to deal with the problems of existence confronted by modern persons. Arguably, these failures were linked, and that precisely because of the “warfare” that had emerged between science and religion. The former operated only within an objectivist framework which could not bear within it the existential and mythological orientation of the latter. In contrast, the latter sought to resist the explanatory power of the former through defensive-minded and reactionary strategies. While each in some senses required the other for the betterment of the human condition, they were unable to accomplish this reconciliation on their own terms. Instead, the antagonism and hostility between the two had forged a new kind of nihilism, one deeper than that which rejected this world for the rewards of the afterlife. At least in this latter otherworldly orientation, there was still the hope of the life beyond. In the radical nihilism of modernity, however, even this transcendental or after-worldly dimension was lost since its guarantor, God, could no longer be envisioned.45 In short, the problems confronting modern persons had emerged from the abyss or the chasm signifijied by the fragmentation of the cultural experience of science against religion and vice versa. Both “God is dead” and “science is dead”—this was the situation facing Nishitani and philosophy in the middle of the twentieth century.46

45 Nishitani devoted an entire book to the question of nihilism after the War (published in Japanese in 1949). His chief dialogue partner was Nietzsche, the “consummate nihilist” who embodied the loss of the soul and the divine in the very depths of his existence. See Nishitani, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism, trans. Graham Parkes and Setsuko Aihara (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990). 46 See Hase Shoto, “Nihilism, Science, and Emptiness in Nishitani,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 19 (1999): 139–54, esp. 153; cf. Steven Heine, “ ‘The Buddha or the Bomb’: Ethical Implications in Nishitani Keiji’s Zen View of Science,” in Charles Wei-hsun Fu and Sandra A. Wawrytko, eds., Buddhist Ethics and Modern Society: An International Symposium,

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The way forward lies in seeing the “other side” of both science and religion. Sensing the bankruptcy of scientifijic rationalism (scientism) and objectivism, Nishitani urged a paradigm change that he believed was capable of recognizing the subjective dimension of science most clearly seen in the perspectival framing of hypotheses and in the anthropocentric interests which science was understood to serve. On the other side, religion itself needed to come to grips with nature’s impersonal laws, and with the “God beyond God” who causes the sunshine and the raindrops indiscriminately and without partiality. But how could either science or religion recognize their “other” or “far” sides without being transformed at their very cores? Can science recognize its subjective dimension without destroying itself ? Can religion embrace impersonalism without undermining itself? These were both possible, if at all, Nishitani suggests, only on the more encompassing fijield of shunyata, the fijield of Absolute Nothingness or Emptiness that enables the healing of the hostilities between science and religion.47 It is important to note here that shunyata cannot be a third fijield alongside the domains of science and of religion. The disparity of the latter two realms is precisely the cause of the nihilistic abyss of the modern experience. Further, if shunyata were just another fijield, it would complicate the problem since now, potentially, there would be three divides—between shunyata and religion, between shunyata and science, and between science and religion—when before there was just one (between religion and science). No, shunyata had to be the self-emptying nature of all things, beyond the nihilism of science and the nihilism of religion, which not only allows them to be what they are but also brings into relationship what was before antagonistic hostility. Shunyata is that where afffijirmation and negation meet, resulting not in another thing, but in the coincidence between absolute negation and what the Zen tradition called the Great Afffijirmation. In fact, shunyata is where nihilism meets with existence,

Contributions to the Study of Religion 31 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1991), 281–95, and “Philosophy for an ‘Age of Death’: The Critique of Science and Technology in Heidegger and Nishitani,” Philosophy East and West 40:2 (1990): 175–93. Louis Roy, O.P., Mystical Consciousness: Western Perspectives in Dialogue with Japanese Thinkers (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003), 162–63, reminds us that Nishitani’s study under Heidegger in the 1930s influenced both his analysis of the world situation and his prognosis for how to best proceed. 47 Nishitani’s, Religion and Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), was written during the early 1950s, and would come to be acclaimed as his magnum opus.

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where nothingness meets with being, where the unconscious (or nonconsciousness) meets with consciousness, etc. In each case, what meets are the relatives which are defijined only in opposition or contrast to each other. Thus, “emptiness is the fijield on which an essential encounter can take place between entities normally taken to be most distantly related, even at enmity with each other, no less than between those that are most closely related.”48 As such, it is also the “home-fijield” or the “home-ground” for (relative) nothingness and (relative) being. Nishitani also called this the fijield of circuminsessional interpenetration.49 Here he was consciously drawing on both Western and Eastern resources. Circuminsessional derives from the patristic fathers, utilized to comprehend the relational subsistence of the members of the Trinity “within” each other in an eternal dance. This was seen also, for Nishitani, in Leibniz’s monads and in the Huayen School’s “Jewel Net of Indra” (see §6.2). In both cases, the monads and the jewels each reflected all other monads and jewels like dynamic mirrors in the universe. Only shunyata, the fijield of Absolute nothingness and emptiness, could allow for each monad or mirror to do what it does without interference, just as only shunyata could comprehend the individuality and particularity of the three persons as the one God. And only shunyata could allow science and religion to fulfijill their respective teloi even while healing their divisions: Now the circuminsessional system itself, whereby each thing in its being enters into the home-ground of every other thing, is not itself and yet precisely as such (namely, as located on the fijield of sunyata) never ceases to be itself, is nothing other than the force that links all things together into one. It is the very force that makes the world and lets it be a world. The fijield of sunyata is a fijield of force. The force of the world makes itself manifest in the force of each and every thing in the world.50

Understandably, then, Nishitani is enabled to speak, in typical Mahayana and Zen fashion, of shunyata as the fijield of nirvana-and-samsara (where enlightenment and freedom from rebirth meet the conventional world of sufffering and desire), of history-and-the-eschaton, of time-and-eternity, and of God-and-creation. Note then that Nishitani has to accomplished a reconceptualization of science and religion and the relationship between the two on the one

48 Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 102. 49 Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, ch. 3, §6, and passim. 50 Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 150.

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hand, and a retrieval of the liberational and existential notion of shunyata on the other. His hope, of course, is to save not only ourselves as needy human beings, but also science and religion, to liberate each from nihilistic impulses, and restore and purify them toward their original impulses—all by relocating each within the larger horizons of shunyata.51 Whereas the West had sought to transcend dualism via a “third way,” Nishitani assumed, within the Buddhist framework, a primordial nondualism. His is precisely the “middle way” of “emptiness,” of voidness, mutually dependent arising, circuminsessional interpenetration, and interdependent origination.52 What is the relevance of Nishitani’s contributions for the Buddhist encounter with modern science? In this fijinal part of this chapter, I briefly sketch how three interrelated main ideas of shunyata—that of voidness, that of transitoriness, and that of the causal interdependence of all things—has found expression in the contemporary Buddhist-science dialogue in general, and in application to the realm of quantum mechanics particularly. In the fijirst place, Buddhist self-emptying or self-voidness refers not to the absence of anything, but to the absence of a substantial, essential, or intrinsic nature of any and everything. This voidness begins to appear when, for example, the new physics indicates that atoms are practically empty: the nucleus is 99.9% of an atom’s mass, but “a thousandth of a trillionth of its volume.”53 It is surrounded by a cloud of negatively-charged electrons and positively-charged protons, held together through the strong nuclear force by neutrons without charges that provide the stability needed to keep the atom from disintegrating from the same-charged particles which repulse each other. Put in this way, as Thuan and Ricard note, “all the matter around us, that sofa, the chair, the walls . . . is almost totally empty. The only reason we can’t walk through walls is that atoms are linked together by the electromagnetic force.”54 Thus also Henning Genz writes:

51 The three chapters on Nishitani’s view of science and religion by Cora-Jean Eaton Robinson, Sten H. Stenson and Robert A.F. Thurman in Taitetsu Unno, ed., The Religious Philosophy of Nishitani Keiji: Encounter with Emptiness (Berkeley, Calif.: Asian Humanities Press, 1989), all approach this issue from various perspectives. 52 This is in part how Abe describes Nishitani’s engagement with science; see Masao Abe, “Christianity and Buddhism—Centering around Science and Nihilism,” Japanese Religions 5:3 (1968): 36–62. 53 Thuan and Ricard, The Quantum and the Lotus, 94. 54 Thuan and Ricard, The Quantum and the Lotus, 95.

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. . . the line that separates something from nothing, matter from empty space is blurred. . . . The universe is but one immense unit; it cannot be separated into spatial domains that are totally empty and others that are completely fijilled with matter. Matter and space can be distinguished from each other, but where we draw the blurred line between them is largely a matter of taste. Our notions of something and nothing, of matter and empty space, cannot be separately discussed.55

But does not even the atomic nucleus, however miniscule, call into question the Buddhist notion of all things as void or empty? Well, we should consider further several aspects of this matter. First, atoms are less substantive “things” than they are dynamic “bits” of energy.56 Put more precisely: at the subatomic level of quantum physics—remember that atoms are divisible—quantum “objects” are neither things nor should they be pictured as things. Rather, as previously discussed (§3.3), they should be understood as potentialities or probabilities. Measurement collapses the wave function so that we can determine only either its momentum (wave) or its location (particle), but not both. To observe a wave turns out a particle, and in that sense the energy fijields of “particles” and their waves are forever beyond actual description. So, according to the Copenhagen Interpretation, quantum mechanics tells us not about what quanta actually “are” in themselves, but about correlations in our experiences, and about how we relate to our world, in this case, the subatomic world. One-to-one correspondence goes out the window at the quantum level. Instead, the Copenhagen Interpretation informs us about our relationship with aggregates, and about the laws of probability that depict these relationships. This leads, second, to the notion of Buddhist self-emptiness or selfemptying (anatman or shunyata) as describing the transitoriness of all things. If the physical world is reduced in quantum theory ultimately to

55 Henning Genz, Nothingness: The Science of Empty Space, trans. Karin Heusch (Reading, Mass.: Perseus Books, 1999), 305. Genz is theoretical physicist at the University of Karlsruhe. 56 A generation ago, science popularizers like Gary Zukav could write that atoms are “hypothetical entities constructed to make experimental observations intelligible. No one, not one person, has ever seen an atom.” More recently, however, “the existence of atoms appears indisputable—images of atoms and molecules can even be seen with the aid of fijield-ion, electron or scanning tunneling microscopes.” See Gary Zukav, The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics (1979, reprint; Toronto: Bantam Books, 1980), 107, and Peter Coveney and Roger Highfijield, The Arrow of Time (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1990), 108. The book by Zukav along with those of Fritjof Capra—The Tao of Physics (1975, reprint; New York: Bantam Books, 1977), and The Turning Point: Science, Society, and the Rising Culture (New York: Bantam Books, 1983)—were forerunners in terms of making widely accessible the idea of ancient Buddhism’s complementarity with modern science.

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potentialities of fluid and dynamic quantum fijields or waves, then the “ground” of the physical world is the flux of constant change and becoming.57 This transitoriness can be imaged variously in light of quantum mechanics. One image is that of the quantum world as consisting of nothing more or less than an incessant dance of interacting and colliding subatomic particles, of mass changing to energy and vice-versa. Given Einstein’s fundamental equation of e = mc2, we can see the paradox that neither mass nor energy nor light “are” since each can be defijined by or seen to consist of the other two.58 Another image could be that of seeing subatomic “particles” as interactions between quantum fijields. Fields, like waves, both spread out over areas larger than particles (which are restricted to specifijic locations), and fijill given spaces (for example, the earth’s gravitational fijield surrounds the planet). It is the interaction of two fijields that “create” what we call particles (at the quantum level) or things (at the macro level). Either image results in the paradox of quantum mechanics: there is the interaction of energy and mass, the continual transformation of “things” devoid of their own self-existence. This leads, fijinally, to the Buddhist notion of self-emptying understood as the interdependence of all things (pratityasamutpada). Also known variously as the doctrine of interdependent or interdependent origination, the “emptiness” of all things is hereby construed positively so as to identify the interrelationality of all things: “Thus when this exists, that comes to be; with the arising of this, that arises. When this does not exist, that does not come to be; with the cessation of this, that ceases.”59 At its most basic level, Bohr’s Complementarity Principle showed that the wave-particle duality of light belongs not to light in and of itself, but to our interactions with it. In this case, not only is there neither light (which 57 Todd Lorentz, “Replanting the Bodhi Tree: New Paradigms for Buddhist Philosophy from Quantum Physics,” Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1:2 (2000): 227–42. 58 This raises the question, of course, about the constancy of the speed of light. To pursue this question would take us too far afijield. Sufffijice to say that the recent research in this area has explored the possibility of the existence of particles called tachyons which allegedly emerge as already traveling faster than the speed of light. Further, the possibility of nonlocal communication continues to challenge the assumptions regarding the speed of light. Finally, current researchers are exploring the possibility of the speed of light as being of almost infijinite velocity during the earliest moments of the big bang. On especially this last matter, see João Magueijo, Faster than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientifijic Speculation (Cambridge, Mass.: Perseus Book Group, 2003). 59 Samyutta Nikaya 12.3.21, from Bhikkhu Bodhi, trans., The Connected Discourses of the Buddha: A New Translation of the Samyutta Nikaya, 2 vols. (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000), 1.552.

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speed is the square root of energy over mass) nor energy (mass times the speed of light squared) nor mass (understood in relativity theory as nothing more than space-time curvature), but also that neither light nor anything at the quantum level has properties of self-existence independent of some kind of interaction. But to say this is not to say that nothing exists since relativity theory has shown that we observe dynamic relations and interactions, and quantum theory has defijined these relations and interactions in terms of potentialities, possibilities, and even probabilities. In this way, contemporary physics reveals the fijield of “emptiness” at the quantum level to be not nothingness simpliciter, but a creative and dynamic potentiality. So the world consists of interactions of possibilities and potentialities rather than of independently existing things. Things are what they are not because they have their own essentiality or substantiality, but because of the creative temporal nexus of relationships and interactions through which they manifest novelty. Far from being an exhaustive account, the foregoing serves only as a very selective sample introducing how the Buddhist idea of self-emptying opens up to some of the parallels which have been observed between Buddhism and science. Given these observations, it is easy to see how enthusiastically some have championed the possibility of envisioning a synthesis of ancient Buddhism and modern science. Yet criticisms of this enterprise should not be overlooked.60 Even those sympathetic with the project have usually begun by insisting on acknowledging the soteriological dimension at the core of the Buddhist tradition, a dimension usually neglected or ignored in the Buddhism-science dialogue. (Again, I use the concept of soteriology here not in the Christian sense but in the religious or existential sense that is applicable to any religious tradition that identifijies a fundamental human problem as well as provides for a resolution to that problem—which Buddhism does both.) Now while the Buddhist framework resists the dichotomizing of religion from philosophy from spirituality, etc., yet it is clear that the Buddhist-science dialogue has proceeded as if “emptiness” could be pressed into service apart from its

60 I rely in the following on Ethan Mills, “Buddhism and Science: A Comparison of Methods” (M.A. Thesis, Hamline University, 1999); Martin J. Verhoeven, “Buddhism and Science: Probing the Boundaries of Faith and Reason,” Religion East and West 1 (2001): 77–97; and, esp. Sal P. Restivo, “Parallels and Paradoxes in Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism: I—A Critical Reconnaissance,” Social Studies of Science 8:2 (1978): 143–81; and idem., “Parallels and Paradoxes in Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism: II—A Sociological Perspective on Parallelism,” Social Studies of Science 12:1 (1982): 37–81.

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implications in these other dimensions. As such, critics have warned that while similarities between Buddhism and science at the level of observation should be recognized, the diffferent frameworks of these two discourses for interpreting this “data” should not be glossed over. These two major concerns together highlight the methodological diffijiculties percolating amid the dialogue. Here, the questions are not only that of how comparisons are generated, or why do we pick out just these similarities that are noted. Rather, the question is whether the soteriological and hermeneutical framework of shunyata has been either muted or lost completely in the interface with science. Has not the Buddhist or Eastern side of the comparative equation in all its diversity and particularity been compromised by the discourse of science? More to the point, at the ontological level, how do we know that Buddhism mystical experiences of shunyata and contemporary quantum physics refer to the same experiences or levels of reality when, for example, Buddhist insights are primarily existential and soteriological rather than cosmological or ontological? We will return to some of the topics in later chapters. For the moment, note that Nishitani certainly redeems the soteriological dimensions of shunyata lacking in the popular Buddhism-science literature. In doing so, Nishitani’s project amounts, at the end of the day, to that of saving Buddhism. But is he as much help for those either doing or seeking to do science? On the other side, the parallelists were also scientists who thought that Buddhist categories illuminated the discoveries and the discourse of science. Is there no middle way between these two activities, as legitimate as they may be on their own? Can the soteriological respects of shunyata be maintained even while it is pressed into inquiring after cosmology and the way the world is, and after human beings and who and what they are? The discussion can proceed only with the assumption that an afffijirmative response to this question is still possible.

CHAPTER SIX

SHUNYATA: THE NATURE OF THE WORLD IN MAHAYANA TRADITIONS I propose to test the plausibility of this afffijirmative response to the question about whether the religious dimension of Buddhism can be retained in the Buddhism-science dialogue by returning to the question of cosmology and nature of the world in the Buddhist tradition, but this time within a more historical framework. More specifijically, I wish to explore certain streams of the Mahayana Buddhist tradition as it has wrestled with fundamental metaphysical and ontological questions. The Mahayana path literally refers the “great vehicle” of the bodhisattvas whose vows to save all sentient beings advance the cause of enlightenment in the world much more rapidly than does the Theravadin path of ascetic renunciation.1 Although rooted in the sayings of the Buddha, the Great Vehicle was spread primarily through translations of various sutras after the fijirst century ce, even as it was given impetus by the work of the Indian scholar Nagarjuna (about whom we will have much more to say soon) about that same time. Over the last two thousand years, the Mahayana tradition has taken fijirm hold in Tibet, China, East Asia, and part of Southeast Asia such as Vietnam. My hypothesis is that the doctrine of shunyata has indeed been suggestive and valuable for Buddhist perspectives on nature in ways which compromised neither its essentially religious character nor the empirical mindedness of those Buddhists for whom this was a central category.2 In

1 For a brief overview, see Rupert Gethin, The Foundations of Buddhism (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), ch. 9, or any other scholarly introduction to the Buddhist tradition. An accessible overview is Beatrice Lane Suzuki, Mahayana Buddhism: A Brief Outline, 3rd ed. (1959; reprint, New York: Macmillan, 1969), although it does not discuss the Tibetan expressions of the Mahayana tradition. 2 I hedge my bets on this thesis in part because shunyata is perhaps better understood as a devotional orientation “grasped” by wisdom—a spiritual attitude, even—than an intellectual doctrine accessed through rational analysis. As such, shunyata is best represented in the compassion of the bodhisattva whose realization of self-emptiness leads to the vow to postpone entry into nirvana until all sentient beings also come to realize the self-emptying nature of reality. See Moti Lal Pandit, Sūnyatā: The Essence of Mahāyāna Spirituality (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1998).

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order to see this, we will retrace our steps from Nishitani back through his teacher Nishida (§6.3) and the Huayen School (§6.2) of the T’ang Dynasty (618–907) to the ideas of Nagarjuna (§6.1), who stands at the fount of the Madhyamaka tradition. However, we will proceed in historical and chronological order and therefore begin with the last fijirst. In each case, of course, we can do no more than highlight the major points pertinent to our inquiry. What emerges, though, will be the contours of a Mahayana Buddhist cosmology, which in turn sheds light on how Buddhists in this tradition see the nature of the world ultimately in terms of shunyata. One point of clarifijication before proceeding. Any references to “reality” or “ultimate reality” are practically synonymous with what is known in the West as ontology. However, since Buddhism has what might be called an “ontology of becoming” rather than that of “being” (the Greek, ontos, as the participle form of “to be”), I prefer to talk about Buddhist views of the nature of the world—in short, cosmology or metaphysics—rather than of “Buddhist ontology.” Certainly, in the Western traditions, especially those informed by Alfred North Whitehead’s organismic cosmology, there has also emerged a process metaphysics that is very conducive to the dialogues with science and with Buddhism.3 In any case, the dynamism at the heart of Buddhist cosmological theories leads me to prefer here the nomenclature of nature rather than the rhetoric of ontology, liable as is the latter to degenerate into onto-philosophical constructs that lack the capacity to nurture self-critical perspective. 6.1 Madhyamaka and the Emergence of Shunyata The notion of shunyata makes its more visible appearance with the solidifijication of the Mahayana tradition around the beginning of the Christian era. The Indian monk, Nagarjuna (ca. 150–250 ce), of whom not much is known personally, is widely recognized as its primary systematizer.4 For

3 Such a point of departure, from the process philosophical and theological perspective, has been urged for the Christianity-Buddhism-science trialogue by Paul O. Ingram, Buddhist-Christian Dialogue in an Age of Science (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefijield, 2008). My own pneumatological approach to similar matters is itself informed by process perspectives (see §8.2), although, as I will register there, I have some misgivings about process theology. 4 The literature on Nagarjuna continues to grow. An overview of his philosophical system derived from works determined authentic to Nagarjuna is provided by Chr. Lindtner, Nagarjuniana: Studies in the Writings and Philosophy of Nagarjuna, Indiske Studier IV (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1982), 264–77. The standard book-length introduction

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our purposes, his project, as well as those of his disciples and followers, was twofold. First, the endeavor was made to retrieve two related ideas of the original Buddha: that concerned with the non-substantiality of the soul, and that about being wary of needless speculation regarding metaphysical questions. In the hands of the late canonical Abhidharma material, the former doctrine of non-soul (anatman) was certainly preserved, but extensive energy was expended in the attempt to defijine the fundamental constituents of reality itself in pluralistic terms of both atomic components (dharmas) and personal elements (skandhas). The emergence of the Perfection of Wisdom literature (Prajnaparamita sutras) around the turn of the Christian era, however, extended the anatman doctrine rigorously so as to see all things and not just human persons as being empty and devoid of self-being or self-subsistence.5 Nagarjuna synthesized this material and turned it into a polemic against the Abhidharmic system. His most important work, the Mulamadhyamakakarikas (MMK), literally, “root verses on the middle,” remains central to the Madhyamaka or “Middle Path” canon and philosophical tradition.6 The MMK is a forceful dialectical analysis of central ideas of the tradition handed down to him—e.g., causality, irreducible elements, time, sorrow (duhkha), self-existing things (svabhava), release (moksha), karma, the nature of errors, the Four Noble Truths, and even nirvana—resulting in the deconstruction of these basic categories, at least as construed by the Abhidharma literature. To take just one example, that of causality, it is incoherent to say that entity A causes entity B since such implied self-existence can only be understood apart from all relations, including causal ones. At the same time, neither can it be said that A does not cause B if in fact B arises as a fruit of or from A. There has to be, then, a way between or beyond either causation or noncausation. Hence only the selfvoiding nature of both A and B can deliver the A–B relationship, whether

remains Frederick J. Streng, Emptiness: A Study in Religious Meaning (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1967). A more recent and popular guide is Stephen Batchelor, Verses from the Center: A Buddhist Vision of the Sublime (New York: Riverhead Books, 2000). 5 On the Abhidharmic doctrines, see Th. Stcherbatsky, The Central Conception of Buddhism and the Meaning of the Word “Dharma” (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1970). On the Prajñaparamita sutras, see Kajiyama Yuichi, “Prajñaparamita and the Rise of Mahayana,” in Takeuchi Yoshinori, ed., Buddhist Spirituality: Indian, Southeast Asian, Tibetan, Early Chinese, World Spirituality: An Encyclopedic History of the Religious Quest 8 (New York: Crossroad, 1995), 137–54. 6 For a brief introduction to Nagarjuna and his Madhyamaka or “middle path” philosophy, see John P. Keenan, et al., Grounding Our Faith in a Pluralistic World: With a Little Help from Nāgārjuna (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2009), ch. 3, esp. 52–71.

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understood in terms of causality or otherwise. The prominence of shunyata in this response to the Abhidharma comes to be the central feature of the Madhyamaka “Middle Way” system of philosophy as synthesized by Nagarjuna. Second, however, was not to say that all things are empty or void also to say something about all things? Did Nagarjuna therefore proclaim a positive teaching regarding the shunyata of all things? In response to this question, interpreters of Nagarjuna and the Madhyamaka tradition are divided, and that precisely because of diffferent possible readings of his corpus in general and the MMK more specifijically. On the one side are those who focus on Nagarjuna’s intention to do away with all arguments and views, concluding with him that the task of refuting self-existence did not need to assume a self-existent standpoint and that precisely because all other statements are themselves non-self-existent.7 On the other side, however, Nagarjuna clearly recognized and wished to avoid the nihilistic implications of his deconstructive project. In response, he begins by afffijirming the traditional epistemological distinction between conventional and ultimate reality (MMK 24:8–10). To confuse the two could be disastrous: “A wrongly conceived sunyata can ruin a slow-witted person. It is like a badly seized snake or a wrongly executed incantation” (MMK 24:11).8 From here, however, he goes on to deny that the alternative is the reifijicationist, absolutist, and eternalist view of the world. To say that all things are empty is to say also that eternalism, nihilism, and even “emptiness” itself are empty (hence the greater accuracy of translating shunyata dynamically with regard to the self-emptying nature of all things than as a noun where it risks being reifijied as “something”). More importantly, to deny self-existence is not for its own sake, but for the soteriological purpose of recognizing the transitoriness and momentariness of all things on the one hand, and their interrelationality and interdependence on the other: “We declare that whatever is relational origination is sunyata. It is a provisional name (i.e., thought construction) for the

7 This reading appeals to Nagarjuna’s Vigrahavyavartani (Averting the Arguments), verses 21–28; see the translation in Streng, Emptiness, Appendix B, 221–27, esp. 223–24. 8 Various English translations of the MMK are available, each being the product of different hermeneutical perspectives—e.g., phenomenological (Frederick Streng’s), Tibetan (Jay Garfijield’s), Theravadin and pragmatist (David Kalupahana’s), Kantian (Mervyn Sprung’s). Given the scope of our interests here in working with the Kyoto School, unless otherwise noted I rely on Kenneth Inada’s translation informed by the perspective of the Zen tradition: Nagarjuna: A Translation of His Mulamadhyamakakarika with an Introductory Essay (Tokyo: The Hokuseido Press, 1970).

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mutuality of being and, indeed, it is the middle path” (MMK 24:18). Here, we come to the heart of Nagarjuna’s argument: that realization of the selfemptying nature of all things, including emptiness itself, is to walk the middle way between self-existence and eternalism on the one side and the denial of conventional realities or nihilism on the other. The difffijiculty here is whether the overcoming of epistemological distinction between conventional and ultimate reality—also known as the “two truths” theory—is itself only epistemological or also ontological. If the former, then have we enlightened upon the middle way, or have we reduced such to a set of epistemic propositions? But, if ontological, then how so since to afffijirm the via media of self-emptying is itself to declare its ultimacy utilizing conventional language and concepts.9 My own inclination is to read Nagarjuna’s doctrine of dependent or interdependent origination as oriented toward praxis even while recognizing that this interpretation may run against the grain of many other passages suggesting an equally plausible deconstructive reading.10 Still, I persist to say that for Nagarjuna, what emerges is less a doctrine denying anything in particular than a way of thinking, of becoming, and of acting. Nagarjuna is fijirst and foremost an epistemologist rather than a metaphysician, and his epistemological claims are directed toward human liberation from wrong views rather than toward providing an alternative metaphysics or ontology. Help may be found in more recent Nagarjuna scholarship which highlights his departure from Theravadin and Abhidharmic “orthodoxy” at

9 Difffijiculties such as these led the Chinese T’ien-T’ai School to elaborate a three-truths theory—the “truth of existence”; the real “truth of non-Being”; and the supreme “truth of the Middle Path”—in order to address the problematic relationship between ultimate and conventional views. See Paul L. Swanson, Foundations of T’ien-T’ai Philosophy: The Flowering of the Two Truths Theory in Chinese Buddhism (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1989). 10 This dilemma is explicated variously, e.g., C.W. Huntington, Jr., with Geshé Namgyal Wangchen, The Emptiness of Emptiness: An Introduction to Early Indian Madhyamika (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1989), xii, and M. David Eckel, “The Concept of the Ultimate in Madhyamaka Thought: In Memory of Frederick Streng,” in Sallie B. King and Paul O. Ingram, eds., The Sound of Liberating Truth: Buddhist-Christian Dialogues (Richmond: Curzon, 1999), 84–100. See also the work of Mervyn Sprung, “The Madhyamika Doctrine of Two Realities as a Metaphysic,” in Sprung, ed., The Problem of Two Truths in Buddhism and Vedanta (Boston and Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1973), 40–53, esp. 51; “Being and the Middle Way,” in Sprung, ed., The Question of Being: East-West Perspectives (University Park, Penn., and London: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1978), 127–39, esp. 129 and 135; and “The Thought of the Middle Way: Translator’s Introduction,” in Sprung, trans., Lucid Exposition of the Middle Way: The Essential Chapters from the Prasannapada of Candrakirti (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 15–18 and 23.

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least in three directions. First, Nagarjuna’s use of shunyata consisted of an extension of the notion through imagery drawn from the sky or space (akasa) already present in the early Prajnaparamita literature. Here, shunyata can be understood primarily not negatively in terms of the vacuum or the void, but positively in terms of luminousness, vastness, and boundarylessness. The emphasis here would be on shunya as a derivative from “cipher” or “zero” such that shunyata—the sufffijix “-ta” is exactly equivalent to “-ness” in English or “-heit” in German—marks the potentiality or possibility of everything, rather than the nihilism of all things.11 In this reading, shunyata’s “emptiness” is what it is precisely as “openness” radically conceived, with all the implications of the doctrine of co-dependent or interdependent origination included herein.12 This allows, second, for Nagarjuna’s transmutation of Theravadin nirvana (the enlightenment that leads to the extinguishing of desire, grasping, and greed) and samsara (the conventional world of sufffering) by collapsing the distinction altogether. If the distinction persists, sufffering would be permanent, salvation would be impossible, and the Eightfold Path would be inefffijicacious. But, from the Madhyamaka perspective, names, including nirvana and samsara, are conventionalities only, united ultimately in nondual reality precisely in their self-emptying nature and openness to each other such that nirvana arises interdependently with samsara and vice-versa. To walk the Middle Way is to “destroy (all notions of ) cause, efffect, doer, means of doing, doing, origination, extinction, and fruit (of action)” (MMK 24:17), and thus to cut offf the karmic forces perpetuating the samsaric cycle and hindering liberation. Third, the viability of this reading is confijirmed especially in light of developments in Chinese Buddhist schools of philosophy such as the Huayen, as we will see momentarily. The implications of all this for Buddhist views of nature, cosmology and science need to be teased out. Recall earlier (§5.2) that the main ideas associated with shunyata—voidness, transitoriness, and interdependent

11 Thanks to Perry Schmidt-Leukel for the elementary Sanskrit grammatical lesson. See also Douglas A. Fox, The Heart of Buddhist Wisdom: A Translation of the Heart Sutra with Historical Introduction and Commentary, Studies in Asian Thought and Religion 3 (Lewiston, Queenston, Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1985), 102; cf. Hosaku Matsuo, The Logic of Unity: The Discovery of Zero and Emptiness in Prajñaparamita Thought, trans. Kenneth K. Inada (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), esp. ch. 3, and Amaury de Riencourt, The Eye of Shiva: Eastern Mysticism and Science (New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1981), 172. 12 See the excellent work of Nancy McCagney, Nagarjuna and the Philosophy of Openness (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefijield Publishers, Inc., 1997), esp. ch. 3.

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origination—were correlated with certain key ideas in contemporary quantum physics, viz., that of the non-substantiality of the ultimate stufff of reality, that of reality being the transformations and interactions of quantum potentialities and possibilities, and that of the interdependent arising of all things, including minds and the empirical world. The preceding discussion of Nagarjuna’s project has the potential of fleshing out especially the connections between the doctrines of the void and of interdependent origination with quantum mechanical models of the nature of the world. For instance, the connection between the inherent nonself-existence of all things and the transitory and momentary nature of all things is also analogous to the quantum model of the interactive and relational nature of the ultimate quanta which constitute reality by fading in and out of existence, as it were. So Mahayana scholars have argued from the momentariness of mental entities and states, from the reality of change, and from the spiritual experience of transitoriness, to an ontological conclusion regarding what we today call the nature of the quantum world wherein the stufff of reality incessantly arises and fades away.13 Even more intriguing, the Madhyamaka doctrine afffijirming the lack of inherent existence of things parallels quantum theory’s denial of the independent existence of properties of objects in the micro-world. The diffference is that, as Mansfijield has noted, in quantum theory, “Objects become defijined spacetime phenomena only through the measurement act . . ., [but in] the language of Madhyamika, entities exist only as species of dependent arising.”14 In this case, both the entities being measured and the activity of measurement are expressions of dependent co-arising. Put alternatively, the “middle path” of Buddhism to fijind a way between eternalistic notions of self-causation and annihilationist notions of external causation turns out to be compatible with our understanding of the micro-cosmos, at least as portrayed by quantum mechanics.

13 See Alexander von Rospatt, The Buddhist Doctrine of Momentariness: A Survey of the Origins and Early Phase of This Doctrine up to Vasubandhu, Alt- und Neu-Indische Studien 47 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1995). 14 Victor Mansfijield, “Madhyamika Buddhism and Quantum Mechanics: Beginning a Dialogue,” International Philosophical Quarterly 29:4 (1989): 371–91, quote 187. In response to Mansfijield, Arun Balasubramaniam, “Explaining Strange Parallels: The Case of Quantum Mechanics and Madhyamika Buddhism,” International Philosophical Quarterly 32:2 (1992): 205–23, rightly cautions that these parallels are better understood analogically than literally, especially since Buddhism’s assertions concern the empirical objects of daily experience while quantum mechanics refers to micro-objects.

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But more importantly, this middle way is that of interdependent origination such that causality connects not two independent realities—e.g., the observer and the quantum wave—but describes an interaction or relationship. Not recognizing this leads to duhkha, or sufffering. Awakening to this relationality is what salvation, liberation, and enlightenment is all about. And, certainly, while the Buddha’s notions of causality were not “scientifijic” according to our current conception of science, and while Nagarjuna’s dialectical analysis of causality was not confijirmed in the laboratories of modern science, both were nonetheless emergent from extended empirical inquiry, derived from the observation and discernment of human experience, and directed toward the soteriological quest.15 As such, they are not merely intellectual profundities, but intrinsically connected with and designed to enable the achievement of liberation from the empirically and existentially confijirmed conditions of samsaric existence. 6.2 Huayen: Emptiness and Form Moving east from the Indian subcontinent, the insights of Nagarjuna and the Madhyamaka tradition continued to unfold, especially in the Chinese philosophical traditions of, initially, San-lun, T’ien-T’ai, and Ch’an, and, later, Huayen, in the seventh century ce.16 Named after the enormous Huayen Sutra (Chinese)—Sanskrit, Avatamsaka Sutra; English, Flower Ornament or Flower Garland Scripture—the Huayen philosophy is claimed to be “the highest development of Chinese Buddhist thought,” synthesizing as it did the various schools of Buddhist philosophy and practices, including the Ch’an and Pure Land versions, with Confucian

15 David J. Kalupahana, Causality: The Central Philosophy of Buddhism (Honolulu: The University of Hawai’i Press, 1975), emphasizes the empiricist underpinnings, and Rune E.A. Johannson, The Dynamic Psychology of Early Buddhism, Scandinavian Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series 37 (Oxford: Curzon Press, 1979), discusses the psychological dimensions, of the doctrine of dependent origination. 16 For the development of Mahayana doctrine from Nagarjuna through the Huayen transformations, see Paul Williams, Mahayana Buddhism: Its Doctrinal Foundations (London and New York: Routledge, 1989). The story of the historical transformation of Madhyamaka by the Chinese is told by Richard H. Robinson, Early Madhyamika in India and China (Milwaukee, Madison and London: The University of Milwaukee Press, 1970), and Ming-Wood Liu, Madhyamaka Thought in China, Sinica leidensia 30 (Leiden, New York and Köln: E. J. Brill, 1994). The connection between Madhyamaka and Ch’an is traced by Hsueh-li Cheng, Empty Logic: Madhyamika Buddhism from Chinese Sources (New York: Philosophical Library, 1984).

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piety and Taoist ideas.17 Even if it did not formally survive as a school the ninth century persecution of the Sangha by the Confucian elite, its syncretistic character worked both ways, fijirst enabling its absorption of other ideas into itself, and then by being carried forward toward later posterity through the Ch’an and Pure Land traditions.18 For our immediate purposes, however, Nagarjuna’s achievements in dialectical criticism were developed in a variety of constructive directions by the Huayen masters, Dushun (557–640), Zhiyan (602–668), Fazang (643–712), Chengguan (738–839), and Zongmi (738–841).19 Three of these have especially important implications regarding how the notion of shunyata continued to function soteriologically—to awaken and liberate otherwise enslaved human minds from ignorance—even while it was expanded to engage in speculative cosmology and metaphysics.20 First, shunyata, no longer only the void or emptiness (statically understood), is redefijined positively following the Heart Sutra as form. Verse 2 of the Sutra reads: “form is emptiness, emptiness is form. Form is not other than emptiness, and emptiness is not other than form. That which is form equals emptiness, and that which is emptiness is also form. Precisely

17 Wing-tsit Chan, trans., A Sourcebook in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), 406. A complete English translation of the Huayen Sutra is Thomas Cleary, trans., The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra, 3 vols. (Boulder, Colo., and London: Shambhala, 1984–1987); introductory selections of Huayen masters are in Thomas Clearly, Entry into the Inconceivable: An Introduction to Hua-yen Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1983). 18 Over and against the predominantly philosophical thrust of the school as it has been preserved and reappropriated in later history, the material and lived culture of the Huayen patriarchs should not be forgotten; for an introduction, see Peter Gregory, “The Teaching of Men and Gods: The Doctrinal and Social Basis of Lay Buddhist Practice in the Hua-yen Tradition,” and Robert Gimello, “Li T’ung-Hsüan and the Practical Dimensions of Hua-yen,” in Gimello and Gregory, eds., Studies in Ch’an and Hua-yen, Studies in East Asian Buddhism 1 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1983), 252–319 and 321–89 respectively. 19 By and large, our discussion to follow relies on the work of the third patriarch Fazang, spelled Fa-tsang under the Wade-Giles system and in many of the sources that I rely upon in my exposition of Huayen thought. 20 Arguably, the Chinese thinkers recoiled from the Indian tradition of Nagarjuna insofar as its deconstructive trajectory appeared to resist positive articulation regarding things ontological and cosmological. So by the seventh century, Chandrakirti had developed up to twenty defijinitions of shunyata in his Madhyamakavatara (Introduction to the Middle Way), none of which are explicitly cosmological. As such, the Chinese redeemed the task of speculative philosophizing amidst their soteriological concerns, culminating in part in the Huayen tradition. For this point, see Francis Cook, Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), ch. 3; on Chandrakirti’s defijinitions, see Peter Fenner, The Ontology of the Middle Way, Studies of Classical India 11 (Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), 37–44, esp. the list on 41.

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the same may be said of form and the other skandhas: feeling, perception, impulse and consciousness.”21 Fa-tsang (643–712), the third patriarch but arguably chief architect of the Huayen School and certainly its most prolifijic author, explains the meaning of this in his Treatise on the Golden Lion (Chin-shih-tzu chang). One can say either that there is neither gold (because there is the lion) nor lion (because there is the gold) or that there is either (gold or lion) or both (gold and lion). This is because either mediates the other and neither is apart from the other. It is also because the principle “form is emptiness/emptiness is form” can be applied to gold and lion: as empty of own-being, gold and lion can mediate each other. So Fa-tsang writes, “The lion is not existent, but the substance of the gold is not nonexistent. Therefore they are [separately] called matter and Emptiness. Furthermore, Emptiness has no character of its own; it shows itself by means of matter.”22 Shunyata now can be elaborated quadratically as 1) negating emptiness (principle) and afffijirming form (or phenomena); 2) negating form (phenomena) and afffijirming emptiness (principle); 3) the co-existence of both form and emptiness in each other; and 4) the identity and hence obliteration of form and emptiness. Taken together, we arrive at “a state that transcends all dichotomies.”23 But, second, this transcending of all dichotomies is also at the same time a re-afffijirmation of all particularities because emptiness is not only (the annihilation of ) emptiness but each and every form (the fijirst and third meanings of shunyata as defijined by Fa-tsang, above). In fact, looking again at the lion: “If the eye of the lion completely takes in the lion, then the all (the whole lion) is purely the eye (the one). If the ear completely takes in the lion, then the all is purely the ear. If all the sense organs simultaneously take in [the lion] and all are complete in their possession, then each of them is at the same time mixed (involving others) and pure (being itself ), thus possessing the perfect storehouse.”24 The lion’s eyes and

21 From Douglas Fox’s translation in The Heart of Buddhist Wisdom, 82. The Heart Sutra most probably dates to the second period of Madhyamaka literature after Nagarjuna (the fourth or fijifth century ce). Its succinctness makes it one of the most widely known and recited of the Prajñaparamita texts. 22 Fa-tsang, Treatise on the Golden Lion, 2, in Chan, Sourcebook, 409; parentheses from translation. 23 Fa-tsang, except from A Commentary on the Heart Sutra, in Garma C.C. Chang, The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism (University Park, Penn., and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), 197–206; quote from 203. Part III of Chang’s book provides other original Huayen sources. 24 Fa-tsang, Treatise on the Golden Lion, 7.1, in Chan, Sourcebook, 411; brackets from translation.

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ears take in the whole lion, at least in the sense that each part is intrinsic to the whole and the whole would no longer be what it is if it were missing but one part.25 So each part is not only essential to the whole in order for the whole to be what it is, but also reflects the whole. But each part also interpenetrates, reflects, and realizes every other part. For this reason, In each of the lion’s eyes, ears, limbs, joints, and in each and every hair, there is the golden lion. All the lions embraced by all the single hairs simultaneously and instantaneously enter a single hair. Thus in each and every hair there are an infijinite number of lions, and in addition all the single hairs, together with their infijinite number of lions, in turn enter into a single hair. In this way the geometric progression is infijinite, like the jewels of Celestial Lord Indra’s net.26

Just as Lord Indra’s net featured a jewel at each knot that reflected the image of every other jewel on to infijinity, Fa-tsang illuminated (pun intended) this truth in his famous “hall of mirrors,” each of which reflected the light of all the other mirrors ad infijinitum. In fact, each particular is important not only because it reflects the whole, but because it mediates and makes possible the reality of the whole, and in that sense includes the whole within itself. Shunyata thus makes possible the discrimination of the parts against the background fijield of the whole and vice-versa. Herein is the interrelationality between foreground and background; between the center and the margins; between the one and the many—in every case the former opening up to the latter and the latter as inclusive of the former. In Fa-tsang’s view, these exemplify ultimately the non-obstructedness, non-impededness, distinctionlessness, limitlessness, boundlessness, measurelessness, mutual interpenetratedness, and mutual containment of fact (phenomenon; Chinese: Shih) and principle (noumenon; Chinese: Li); of matter and emptiness; of the small (e.g., the mote of dust) and the big

25 Other examples given included the relationship between the rafter and the building and that between the wave and the ocean. For the former, see the translation of Fa-tsang’s brief text and commentary by Francis Cook in his Hua-yen Buddhism, ch. 6, esp. 76–77; for the latter, see fijirst patriarch Tu Shun (557–640), On the Meditation of Dharmadhatu, in Chang, Buddhist Teaching of Totality, 207–23, esp. 214–15. 26 Fa-tsang, Treatise on the Golden Lion, 7.7, in Chan, Sourcebook, 412. Thus the “cosmologies of thousands” and the “cosmologies of innumerables” in the Buddhist tradition, are designed to call attention to the universe’s infijinitude on the one hand, even as such are now understood to be somewhat consistent with the numbers generated by astrophysicists and quantum theorists on the other. See ch. 30 on “Incalculables” in Cleary, trans., The Flower Ornament Scripture, 2.201–16; cf. W. Randolph Kloetzli, Buddhist Cosmology: Science and Theology in the Images of Motion and Light (1983; reprint, Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1989), esp. 138–40.

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(e.g., the mountain); of the near and the far; of the mixed and the pure; of the present moment and the past and future; of the restricted or determinate and the unrestricted or indeterminate—all in “harmonious combination and spontaneity.”27 The third way in which Huayen advances upon Nagarjuna’s dialectical criticism is in the afffijirmation of shunyata positively as mind. It is in this way that Huayen cosmology and metaphysics re-connect with epistemology and soteriology, and that precisely by retrieving the Buddha Mind motif from the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) tradition. So, “The gold and the lion may be hidden or manifest. . . . Neither has self-nature. They are [always] turning and transforming in accordance with the mind. Whether spoken of as fact or principle, there is the way (the mind) by which they are formed and exist. This is called the gate of the excellent completion through the turning and transformation of the mind only.”28 Achieving perfect wisdom (bodhi) is to be fully enlightened such that, “When we look at the lion and the gold, the two characters both perish and affflictions resulting from passions will no longer be produced. Although beauty and ugliness are displayed before the eye, the mind is as calm as the sea. Erroneous thoughts all cease, and there are no compulsions. One gets out of bondage and is free from hindrances, and forever cuts offf the source of sufffering. This is called entry into Nirvana.”29 To see this is to awaken from the world constructed by our own ephemeral mentalities, to realize the interdependent origination and nondual character of mind and all things, and to realize the Buddha Mind within oneself.30 Further, since “each dharma becomes charged with intrinsic value precisely because it is a necessary cause for every other dharma in

27 Fa-tsang, Hundred Gates to the Sea of Ideas of the Flowery Splendor Scripture, ch. 4, in Chan, Sourcebook, 420–24. 28 Fa-tsang, Treatise on the Golden Lion, 7.10, in Chan, Sourcebook, 413; brackets from translation. 29 Fa-tsang, Treatise on the Golden Lion, 10, in Chan, Sourcebook, 413–14; see also Fa-tsang, Hundred Gates to the Sea of Ideas of the Flowery Splendor Scripture, 1.7–1.8, in Chan, Sourcebook, 418, for further elaboration of these exact themes. 30 Yet because of the dialectical relationship between the one and the many, Huayen idealism, if it may be called such, is more objective (as in the tradition of Peirce and Royce) than it is subjective (as in either Berkeley or Schelling). Certainly, it is in this way that the Huayen masters distinguished their ideas from the idealism of the Yogacara tradition, accepting the latter’s doctrine of Buddha mind which also allowed for recognition of the reality of conventional phenomena as well. See Imre Hamar, “Interpretation of Yogācāra Philosophy in Huayan Buddhism,” Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37:2 (2010): 181–97. For more on Yogacara idealism as itself a response to earlier Abhidharmic realism, see Fernando Tola and Carmen Dragonetti, “General Introduction,” in Being as Consciousness:

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the universe,”31 enlightened minds have the deepest compassion for each and every (especially sentient) being. So the voluminous Huayen Sutra talks about the wisdom and compassion of the three great bodhisattvas, Avalokiteshvara, Mañjusri and Samantabhadra, along with their (especially the last’s) vows to save all sentient beings.32 Of course, “when one sees that form is Voidness, he accomplishes the great Wisdom, and he abides no more in samsara. When one sees that the Voidness is form, he attains the great compassion and will no more remain in Nirvana. Because form and Voidness, Wisdom and compassion, have all become non-diffferentiated, he is able to practice the non-abiding acts.”33 While much more can and should be said about the Huayen synthesis, its anticipation of the discourse of holism in contemporary science should be apparent. More specifijically, there are parallels between Huayen ideas and systems theory (see §3.3) which are worth exploring, and that along three lines.34 First, systems theory, as characterized by its ontology of becoming, its notion of self-organizing physical and mental patterns, and its principles of dynamic natural systems, is consonant with the Buddhist doctrine of dependent origination. Just as Huayen afffijirms each part as open to, dependent upon, and constitutive of the whole, systems theory afffijirms levels of systems all open to those within which they are nested as well as dependent upon those through which they are constituted. That systems are wholes which contain smaller wholes and subsystems even while being located as subsystems within larger wholes and systems points to their openness in both directions and to their interdependence and interrelationality. This is nothing less than the interpenetrating and internetworking worlds of the Huayen universe.

Yogācāra Philosophy of Buddhism (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 2004), xi–xl, esp. xi–xii. 31 Steve Odin, Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration vs. Interpenetration (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), 20. 32 For a selection, see “The Great Vows of Samantabhadra,” in Chang, Buddhist Teaching of Totality, 188–96. Gadjin Nagao, The Foundational Standpoint of Madhyamika Philosophy, trans. John P. Keenan (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 2, rightly notes that “the identifijication of emptiness and dependent co-arising reflects the Madhyamika awareness of more ethical and critical concerns.” 33 Fa-tsang, A Commentary on the Heart Sutra, in Chang, The Buddhist Teaching of Totality, 204. 34 Here, I have learned some from Joanna Macy, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), and will adapt her fijindings, derivative primarily from engagement with pre-Abhidharma material (the Suttas and Vinayas), to a comparison with Huayen.

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Second, systems theory exchanges the one-way or linear causality model of classical mechanics for a multi-directional, non-linear, and reciprocity model drawn primarily from the biological sciences. Certainly, one-way causality is recognized by systems theory as adequate, but only for two-variable problems or relationships. When dealing with multivariable and complex systems, whether it be even atoms which have more than two electrons (hydrogen atoms have only one electron, but these aren’t the only atoms in the world) or the complex electrochemical patterns which characterize living organisms, “variables appeared as mutually conditioned and irreducible to a linear causal chain. In consequence the systems view focused not on substance but on process—process in which cause and efffect could no longer be categorically isolated.”35 Rather, through the feedback process, systems fijind a way to be self-monitoring and self-adjusting, even with regard to their goals, as they receive input from the “outside.” “Negative feedback” preserves equilibrium, stabilizing the system, and fijights offf entropy by reducing the deviation between the performance of the system and its structured goal. “Positive feedback” introduces patterns of growth, development, novelty, and complexifijication into the system by amplifying deviations between its performance and its goals (thus clarifying anti-entropic processes in ways which linear causality has not). “Both demonstrated how, through the exchange and processing of energy and information, systems function as integrated networks,”36 thus moving us beyond either the classical (Newtonian) predetermined universe or the random and arbitrary quantum universe. The results are more practically important when applied to social problems, leading to what might be called a symbiotic, synergistic, pluralistic, and mutualistic worldview which has much greater explanatory power than the classical models, especially as the latter may block inquiry due to increased specialization. The connections with the Huayen worldview are fairly direct on two counts. First, the Huayen view understands the universe to arise as an interdependent whole, with each part mirroring and constituting the whole. The transformation of any part both reflects and enables the arising of another whole, even as perturbations in any part of the system causes fluctuations that afffect and transform the system. As in systems theory,

35 Macy, Mutual Causality, 16. 36 Macy, Mutual Causality, 17.

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“cause” in Huayen concerns less temporal sequence than it does the conditioned character of all things. To remove any one item or thing from the universe would destroy that particular universe since what remains would no longer be that universe wherein each and every thing supports everything else by doing its job on the one hand, while each and every thing is also supported by everything else doing their jobs on the other hand. This leads, second, to the compassion revealed by the bodhisattva who understands not only social problems but also the fundamental problem of duhkha in the universe and puts offf entering into nirvana precisely because he or she recognizes the mutuality and reciprocity between all beings. Together, this accounts for the relationship (and tension) between the one and the many, the particular and the universal fijields and systems, of both Huayen and systems theory. Finally, insofar as systems theory emerged in the efffort to understand scientifijic phenomena that eluded a mechanistic view of the world, specifijically the biological sciences, it recognizes a subjective dimension to systems operations. Now as already noted, causality proceeds neither only from the bottom-up (materialism) nor only from the top-down (subjective idealism). But an open system “maintains and organizes itself by exchanging matter, energy, and information with its environment.”37 And insofar as animals, plants and even suborganic systems all possess the kind of subjectivity that processes information via feedback mechanisms and “decide” about and “adjust” to their environments in order to sustain and perpetuate systemic life, can it not be said that mind or consciousness at least emerges from (if not precedes) and is intrinsic to the phenomenal world which is self-organizational naturally? As such, “systems philosophy sees mind as co-extensive with the physical universe. Although it does not speculate on the nature of the mind whose observable counterpart is manifest in systems other than the human, it acknowledges, by the logic of biperspectivalism, its existence.”38 Once the line separating interiorizing beings from non-interiorizing ones is blurred, recognition of the Buddha mind in every dust mote of the universe becomes possible.

37 Macy, Mutual Causality, 73; emphasis mine. 38 Macy, Mutual Causality, 152. Fritjof Capra, The Web of Life: A New Scientifijic Understanding of Living Systems (New York: Anchor Books, 1996), esp. ch. 7, also believes it valid to understand the systemic exchange and processing of codifijied information as “acts of cognition.”

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I jump from the Huayen of the earlier T’ang Dynasty to the “Nishida philosophy” of the twentieth century in order to pick up the previous discussion with the Kyoto School and Nishitani’s religious philosophy of science (§5.3). As the recognized founder of the Kyoto School, Kitaro Nishida (1870–1945) stands as one of the giants of modern Japanese, Buddhist, and, arguably, world philosophy.39 From his initial Inquiry into the Good (1911) through his The Dialectical World and the World of Action (1933–34) to his late essays on the philosophy of Absolute Nothingness (1943–45),40 Nishida strove not only to bridge East and West, but to resolve the fundamental problems of occidental and oriental philosophy. Yet in doing so, however, Nishida worked from deep within the Buddhist tradition— seen not only in his intense practice of zazen under a Zen master from 1897 to about 1905 (fijinally discontinued only after appearance of Inquiry into the Good), but also in his conceptual dependence upon the Huayen (Japanese, Kegon) and Soto schools of thought—even if he rarely explicitly referenced his predecessors or focused on exegetical argumentation.41 While his ideas are certainly intertwined with the complex period of time 39 David Dilworth suggests that Nishida be considered “perhaps the fijirst of the worldtheologians of our times”; see his, “Introduction: Nishida’s Critique of the Religious Consciousness,” in Kitaro Nishida, Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, trans. David A. Dilworth (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987), 1–45, quote from 34. For other introductions to Nishida, see Nishitani Keiji, Nishida Kitaro, trans. Yamamoto Seisaku and James W. Heisig (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), and Michiko Yusa, Zen and Philosophy: An Intellectual Biography of Nishida Kitaro (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2002). 40 There are various translations and, especially, editions of these volumes. Accessible to me were Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, trans. Masao Abe and Christopher Ives (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990); Fundamental Problems of Philosophy: The World of Action and the Dialectical World, trans. David A. Dilworth (Tokyo: Sophia University, 1970); Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness: Three Philosophical Essays, trans. Robert Schinzinger, in collaboration with I. Koyama, and T. Kojima (1958; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1973); and Last Writings: Nothingness and the Religious Worldview, trans. David A. Dilworth (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987). 41 This raises a question about whether or not the particularity of Nishida’s practice of zazen renders his philosophical insights inpenetrable to those who have not attained to similar experiences. Thus does Robert Wilkinson, Nishida and Western Philosophy (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2009), argue that there is an incommensurability between the main lines of Nishida’s philosophy, as a natural outgrowth of his Buddhist and Zen experience of satori (awakening), and the major trajectory of the western philosophical tradition. Does this apply also to engaging Nishida’s ideas with science? I am reluctant to move too quickly to assertions of incommensurability, even as, simultaneously, I want to acknowledge the particularity of zazen practice and the profundity of its implications for philosophical and religious thinking. Let’s see how this discussion unfolds.

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stretching from the Meiji era (1868–1911) to the Second World War, our own purposes are to explore the functional role of shunyata in Nishida’s philosophy against the previous discussions of cosmology and nature.42 I propose to do so via a discussion of Nishida’s philosophy and logic of basho.43 Basho derives in part from Plato’s “receptacle” (topos) in the Timaeus. Literally, it is synonymous with “place,” “fijield” (as in a physical fijield), “matrix,” “medium,” or even “world.” This wide range of meaning should alert us to how and why Nishida thinks the logic of basho resolves the three perennial philosophical conundrums: that of particularity and universality (logic), that of the subject and object (epistemology), and that of the one and the many (metaphysics). To see this, an overview of the levels at which basho functions in Nishida’s thought will be helpful. First, as Plato’s receptacle is akin to the universal material fijield from which the forms emerge, so basho “also has the sense of a fijield in the expression ‘force fijield’.”44 Objects are thus not just “in space” but are energy concentrations, each object being understood as specifijications or determinations of the energy fijield(s) of which it is a part. These energy concentrations are internal to the fijield(s) and receive their unity from the fijield(s). The fijield(s) are constituted by these concentrations (e.g., possesses such and such characteristics) without being reducible to them in terms of their grounding. A tree, for example, is a concentration of various energetic fijields, including that of the sun, the earth, the climate in general and the rain in particular, and the larger environment. Robert Carter summarizes: “in a fijield of energy, focuses or concentrations of energy are

42 For a thorough discussion of the complicity of “Nishida philosophy” in Japan’s war effforts, see James W. Heisig and John C. Maraldo, eds., Rude Awakenings: Zen, the Kyoto School, and the Question of Nationalism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994). 43 I should note that if I were able to read Japanese (which I cannot), the corpus of Nishida’s student, Hajime Tanabe (1885–1962), might have presented a more fruitful line of comparative inquiry given not only Tanabe’s standing within the Pure Land trajectory of Buddhism (Nishida and Nishitani are more dependent on the Zen tradition), but also Tanabe’s early studies in modern physics, especially relativity theory and quantum mechanics. However, most of that work remains untranslated into English. For an introduction to Tanabe, see his magnum opus, Philosophy as Metanoetics, trans. Takeuchi Yoshinori with Valdo Viglielmo and James W. Heisig (Berkeley: University Press of California, 1986), and Taitetsu Unno and James W. Heisig, eds., The Religious Philosophy of Tanabe Hajime: The Metanoetic Imperative (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1990). 44 Robert J.J. Wargo, The Logic of Nothingness: A Study of Nishida Kitarō (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 225n1.

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really specifijications of the whole.”45 Basho as Absolute Nothingness is the all-encompassing matrix or energy fijield source from, in, or within which all particular energy fijields operate. Second, and building on the fijirst, basho serves as the principle of individuation. “Color” is the “fijield” in which specifijications such as green, blue, and yellow arise. “Number” is a “fijield” in which each one, two, and three come into focus, after each the other. In these examples, it is important to note that fijields are, as universals, nothing with respect to their constitutive elements. Fields are said neither to exist nor not-exist, just as it would not make sense to say of color either that it exists or does not exist. Yet fijields provide the unity for their elements, just as color unites reds, greens, etc. The diffference from the Aristotelian logic of universals which Nishida repeatedly emphasizes, however, is that Aristotle’s predicative logic loses the concrete particularity of the judgment—e.g., “I am a human being” tell us what I am only in the abstract—whereas Nishida’s own logic of the concrete universal emphasizes the individuating diffferences of the particular entity and is absolutely nothing apart from such particularities. Yet this is not strict nominalism either since the particularities are themselves essentially empty. As such, Nishida’s basho as the principle of individuation is diffferent from the Western understanding of individuation grounded in an essential substance. (Note that Nishida’s concrete universal also difffers from Hegel’s insofar as the latter’s becomes the self-existent Absolute and the former denies any absolute apart from the manifest particularities.) Here, the connection to the Huayen doctrine of the interpenetration of li (principle) and shih (phenomenon) should be evident. This leads, third, to basho as a spatial metaphor for the fijield of awareness which decenters the self as conscious and individual agent and highlights the matrices of reality that give rise to the self-subject and other-object together. Just as the universal embraces the individuating particularities in the subsumptive judgment, so basho embraces the self-aware self and the “self’s” objects of awareness. The “I” of awareness should be understood not as “a subjective unity . . ., but [as] a predicative unity; not a point, but a circle; not a thing, but a place . . . of experience in which the logical as well as the sensory are located.”46 So the Japanese language frequently trans45 Robert E. Carter, The Nothingness Beyond God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Nishida Kitaro (New York: Paragon House, 1989), 29. 46 Nishida, Collected Works [Japanese], 4.279, in Ueda Shizuteru, “Nishida’s Thought,” trans. Jan Van Bragt, Eastern Buddhist 28:1 (1995): 29–47, quoted on 30.

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lates into English in the passive voice—e.g., they say and write “watashi ni” (something is conscious to me or in me), rather than “watashi ga” (I, as subject, am aware); “the alarm is able to be heard” or “the sound of the alarm can be heard,” rather than “I hear the alarm” or “I hear the bell”; “a thought occurred to me,” rather than “I had a thought.”47 Two corollary ideas follow. First, for Nishida, to place the “I” as prior to the activity of the person is to make a fundamental inversion of reality as experienced, and to result in the Cartesian and Kantian dualism of “I” and the thing experienced in itself. Instead, the I-other arise together in activity. Second, the “I” or “it” becomes an abstraction apart from considerations of its interactive relations. There is no “bird” in the abstract, but only this bird flying, in this or that location and direction, at this or that time, and so on. As such, the given fact is always the interdependent origination of each thing amidst its various contexts, contractable and expandable as appropriate to the discussion at hand. So it is the case that we might talk not about “this bird” in the abstract but about “this beak chewing this or that” (to contract the fijield of inquiry); or “these loose feathers falling away . . .,” or “this bird flying over the red barn (sitting next to the blue shed . . .) . . .,” or even “this bird flying over the red barn (next to the blue shed . . .) heading south for the winter . . .,” etc. (to expand the fijield of inquiry). In each case, the fijield of reference can be either more precisely focused (all the way to the microscopic level) or enlarged to be more and more inclusive (in principle, to include the universe as a whole). From this, fourth, basho becomes the fijield of creative action wherein subjects and objects emerge and are relationally defijined. Nishida came to see pure experience (the central idea of his Inquiry into the Good) as delivering “acting beings” or “personal actions” in the real spatiotemporal and socio-historical worlds which are the concrete fusion of embodiedindividuals-acting-with-others-within-their-environment. This is the dialectical fijield of reality that precedes the Cartesian cogito thus resulting in “I act, therefore I am.” But since the “I” never acts alone, “The world of action is a fijield of the mutual determination of individuals.”48 Even more, basho is itself the fijield wherein individuals act to determine each other even as they are determined by one another and by their environment. At one level, it is appropriate to say “I act,” but at another level, it is better

47 These examples are of Nishida’s are discussed in Ueda, “Nishida’s Thought,” 30–33, and Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness, 73. 48 Nishida, Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, 99; my emphasis.

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to say that “I am acted upon”—both by others and by the world of action. From the perspective of the acting self, the act is free and creative. But from the perspective of the determining world, its actions are free and creative rather than the actions of the individuals therein. In any case, the “self ” is not substance but activity. This fijield of action, however, not only bridges the subject-object dualism and the self-other dichotomy, but also the temporal dualism of past and future time. It makes change comprehensible, explicating how one thing can come to be another or how humans negate and reconstitute themselves afresh with each activity. On the human level, personal action is a “unity of contradictions” that represents continuity in discontinuity, and interpersonal action and reaction are the mutually determining personal actions of individuals, bound up as they are in the concrete relational fijield.49 We arrive, fijifth, to basho as the dialectical world which unites all opposites. From the preceding, it is clear that basho rests squarely in the Huayen tradition of “form is emptiness and emptiness is form.” In Nishida philosophy, however, basho is the unity of the one and the many; of the universal and the individual; of subject and object; of freedom and determinism; and of past and future—what he calls the “absolutely contradictory self identity.”50 Tapping into the religious domains of East and West, Nishida’s basho is also the fijield of nirvana and samsara; of God and the world; of other-power and self-power; of life and death; of nothingness and somethingness. This is because, to synthesize the religious language of East and West, The world of unity of opposites has its unity and self-identity, but not in itself. Identity, as unity of opposites, is always transcendent for this world. . . . The fact that the world has unity and identity in absolute transcendence, means that the individual many are confronted with the transcendent one, and that the individual is individual because it confronts transcendence. By confronting God, we have and are personality. The fact that we, as personal Self,

49 See David A. Dilworth’s summary of this point in his “The Concrete World of Action in Nishida’s Later Thought,” in Yoshinoro Nitta and Hirotaka Tatematsu, eds., Japanese Phenomenology: Phenomenology as the Trans-cultural Philosophical Approach, Analecta Husserliana: The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research 8 (Dordrecht, Boston and London: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1979), 249–70, esp. 259–60; cf. Nishida, “The World as Identity of Absolute Contradiction,” in David A. Dilworth, Valdo H. Viglielmo and Agustin Jacinto Zavala, eds., Sourcebook for Modern Japanese Philosophy: Selected Documents (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1998), 54–72. 50 See Nishida, “The Unity of Opposites,” in Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness, 163–241, passim.

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are confronting and opposing God, means . . ., at the same time, that we are joined with God. God and we are in the relationship of absolute identity of the opposites of the one and the many.51

Thus, sixth and lastly (for our purposes), basho is, ultimately speaking, the mu no basho, or “place of nothingness” which gives rise to all things. But note that the nothingness here is not just nonbeing. If it were, it would be relative to being and both would require together a wider discursive domain and more inclusive ontological matrix. Rather, basho is here Absolute Nothingness. Its genealogy, of course, includes the shunyata of Madhyamaka and the “totality” of Huayen, and its successors (or descendents) include Nishitani’s absolute nothingness (as we discussed in §5.3). It may also correlate with the absolute transcendence that the West has traditionally understood as Being (so long as this Being is not set alongside either something or nothing, but the Being which gives rise to both beings and nothing together). As such, basho is the place not only of our realization of the absolute, but also of the absolute’s own self-realization. In summary, drawing from the resources of Western philosophical and religious discourse, Nishida says: True life exists by recognizing that which, being “absolute nothingness,” is self-determining, i.e. by hearing the Word of God within the self-determining world, as something which “lives through dying,” i.e. something which is a contradiction in itself. . . . [W]hen the world which determines itself in creative activities determines itself in infijinite expressive forms, it may also be considered as a Thou. Thus Christians must call God Thou. But we must distinguish such a Thou from the Thou which we use when we call our neighbor a Thou. The former Thou must rather be called Father or Lord. Therefore, even loving one’s neighbor as oneself is communication with God.52

All too briefly, I want to suggest points of contact between Nishida’s logic of basho and modern science, especially fijield theory (§2.3), along three interrelated lines. First, the collapse of the wave function in interaction with an observer parallels the realization and emergence of things and selves from action. Second, the quantum fijield understood as a waveparticle unity-in-duality is analogous to absolute nothingness understood as the fijield where opposites meet. Third, quantum indeterminacy—recall that at the quantum realm it is better to speak of possibility and probability rather than actuality—resonates with absolute nothingness as the 51 Nishida, Intelligibility and the Philosophy of Nothingness, 234. Of course, Nishida’s references to God draw from Western philosophical rather than religious discourse. 52 Nishida, Fundamental Problems of Philosophy, 106 and 111.

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widest ontological context or fijield of emergent possibilities. Together, basho as fijield (Nishida) and as nothingness (Nishida and Nishitani) shows itself capable of engaging modern science from relativity theory to quantum mechanics. And, when the most recent scientifijic consensus can be understood to support both the idea that natural reality consists of energy fijields and that such energy fijields and their concentrations of force are only with difffijiculty, if at all, distinguishable from nothing, to that extent the ruminations of the Kyoto School bridges East and West along the pathway of modern science. As important is the methodological principle that emerges from this discussion both of the Huayen School and Nishida’s ideas regarding philosophy of science. The retrieval of Huayen’s emphasis on particularity as illuminating the whole combined with Nishida’s fijields of reference legitimates the various disciplines as valid paths to knowledge, each from their own perspective. This fijinds correlation as well with relativity theory’s frames of reference which enable varied descriptions of the same thing from diffferent viewpoints. Against this background, the scientifijic disciplines are contextual fijields of inquiry, each valid as such so long as their perspectival character is acknowledged, but not to be absolutized beyond their proper domains.53 The preceding reflections have sought to show not only how the notion of shunyata may yet be productive in the dialogue between Buddhism and science, but also how it does this without compromising its distinctively soteriological (i.e., Buddhist) content. We have made some headway on both counts—as evidenced most clearly in the Madhyamaka doctrine of dependent or interdependent origination and the emergence of the idea of compassion in the Huayen tradition—but we are only halfway home. To more deeply or fully accomplish both objectives, the discussion of shunyata and science needs to move from the domain of cosmology to anthropology. The issue at stake is not only whether or not the idea of shunyata illuminates what it means to be human but also how it enables the task of humanization in the world of modern science and technology. Here, the more pointed questions concerning the ethical implications of the doctrine of emptiness-of-self (non-self ) can be addressed as well.

53 For more on this point, see Jay L. Garfijield, Empty Words: Buddhist Philosophy and Cross-Cultural Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 73–76.

CHAPTER SEVEN

SELF AND BECOMING HUMAN IN BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE Buddhism is probably most well known in the West for its doctrine of non-self (anatman). The rationale for such a position can be somewhat discerned from the preceding discussion. However, as in any world religious tradition, it would be misleading simply to afffijirm the doctrine in a literal and uncritical sense and leave it at that. As we shall see in what follows, Buddhists certainly reject any substantive notion of the self, insisting that the “true self ” is self-emptying;1 but they also afffijirm the interrelatedness of the self as well. Our goal in this chapter is to continue the inquiry from the previous discussion regarding how the notion of shunyata in the Buddhist tradition not only informs its cosmological self-understanding but also its view of what it means to be human. The following discussion thus attempts to clarify some of the nuances and subtleties accompanying the anatman doctrine, especially as it relates to our discussion of the soteriological implications of shunyata on the one hand, and of the Buddhist-science dialogue on the nature of being human on the other. To do this, I begin with an overview of the connections between the earliest Buddhist debates regarding “non-self ” and what the Zen tradition calls the “true self ” in conjunction with the perspectives of Buddhists working in the neurosciences (§7.1), explore one facet of the contemporary Tibetan Buddhist quest for a science of consciousness (§7.2), and conclude with a summary of human personhood as pratityasamutpada or interdependently originating (§7.3). Our goal is to understand how the Buddhist notion of shunyata applies to their view of what it means to be human, and to do so in dialogue with the contemporary cognitive sciences. As before, we will be focused in our discussion, hardly able to explore the many complexities at the intersection of the Buddhist dialogue with the cognitive sciences. We have already in the preceding (§5.2) caught a glimpse of the intricate issues involved. Our selectivity will be constrained

1 In this chapter and in the rest of the book, I put “true self ” in quotation marks to remind the reader that while this is a notion used by Buddhist scholars and some practitioners, it should not be read in terms of an Aristotelian metaphysics of substance.

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in part by the methodological concerns raised between the (soteriological) Buddhist quest for enlightenment on the one side and (putative) scientifijic objectivity on the other side, and guided in part by our larger objective of developing a cross-cultural and interreligious understanding of human nature within a broader cosmological vision. 7.1 “Non-Self,” “True-Self,” and the Neurosciences In the famous discussions between Nagasena and King Milinda, the quest to understand the human self is juxtaposed with the attempt to defijine the chariot. Just as the latter is but an “account of its having . . . the pole, and the axle, the wheels, and the framework, the ropes, the yoke, the spokes, and the goad,” so is the phenomenal self a convenient designation of the elementary aggregates (skandhas) which constitute what we understand as the human self.2 What then are the elementary aggregates that combine to produce the self ? The Theravadin theory, subjected to detailed analysis especially in the Abhidharma literature, was that the individual consisted of matter (rupa); sensation or feeling derived from the six sense organs of sight, hearing, smell, touch, taste, and mind (vedana); perceptions of color/ shape, sound, odor, taste, sensations, and non-mental objects (sañña): mental states or activities, including volition (samkhara); and consciousness (viññana).3 Since the fijive aggregates arise together along with their appropriate physical and mental objects, the phenomenal self also arises and fades away with them. So Nagasena responds that it is on account of “the fijive constituent elements of being—that I come under the generally understood term, the designation in common use, of ‘Nagasena’.”4 Here, it is important to note that the Buddha’s denial of the existence of an eternal or substantive soul was directed against the Brahmanic doctrine of Atman. Whereas the latter idea of the soul or Self might have been intended to secure some measure of permanence behind the fleeting appearances of the world, the Buddha’s concern was that to embrace this idea would render escape from the ill of samsara impossible. This would be because, “When the uninstructed worldling is contacted by a feeling born

2 Milindapanha 27, in T.W. Rhys Davids, trans., The Questions of King Milinda, 2 vols., Sacred Books of the East 35–36 (1890; reprint, New York: Dover, 1963), 1.44. 3 Mathieu Boisvert, The Five Aggregates: Understanding Theravada Psychology and Soteriology, Editions SR 17 (Waterloo, Ont.: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1995). 4 Milindapanha 28, in Rhys Davids, trans., The Questions of King Milinda, 1.44.

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of ignorance-contact, craving arises.”5 So his considerations were fijinally soteriological, pragmatic, and ethical. What was needed was a via media between the Brahmanic eternalist or spiritualist understanding on the one side and the skeptical annihilationist or materialist conception on the other. Inevitably, this middle way was understood in terms that denied both the substantive self and the nihilistic self and afffijirmed the empirical, existential, and functional self of the skandhas. As David Kalupahana notes: It is this method of deconstruction in the analysis of experience that elminated [sic] the belief in the purity of any form of experience, feeling, sensation or even knowledge, that is represented by the Buddha’s conception of non-substantiality, leaving in its trail, not any form of absolute nothingness or emptiness, but the empirical notions of the ‘dependent’ and ‘dependence’ providing justifijication for an enlightened form of ethical pragmatism.6

But can the idea of the empirical self on its own sustain the Buddhist soteriology? While the sufffering self is an immediate datum of experience, does not the testimony of the Buddha and the arhats (saints) also confijirm the delivered, enlightened, or liberated self ? In this view, the achievement of nirvana is not the absolute extinction of the ontological self, but the epistemological realization that we have mistaken the phenomenal self for the “true self.” It suggests that the “true self ” cognizes there is no substantial self, realizing that all concepts apply only to the phenomenal self. For these reasons, the personalists countered that the Buddha only warned against mistaking the false self as the transcendental and “true self,” and not against afffijirming the “true self ” as such.7 5 Samyutta Nikaya, 22.3.81, in Bodhi, trans., Connected Discourses of the Buddha, 1.922. So much so that later Buddhists like Vasubandhu, a fourth or fijifth century (ce) monk who is perhaps the chief systematizer of the mind-only idealism of the Yogacara School of Mahayana Buddhism, insisted that there is no salvation apart from Buddhism because other traditions afffijirmed the erroneous view of the soul’s existence; see the appendix to the eighth chapter of Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakosa, translated in Theodore Stcherbatsky, The Soul Theory of the Buddhists, 2nd ed. (Varanasi: Bharatiya Vidya Prakasana, 1970), 11–15; or the translation by Louis de La Vallée Poussin, Abhidharmakosabhasyam, 4 vols., Eng. trans. Leo M. Pruden (Berkeley: Asian Humanities Press, 1988–1991), 4.1313–14. 6 David J. Kalupahana, The Principles of Buddhist Psychology (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1987), 147. The soteriological dimension of Buddhist views of the self is the dominant thread throughout Gay Watson, The Resonance of Emptiness: A Buddhist Inspiration for a Contemporary Psychotherapy (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1998). See also Rune A.E. Johansson, The Psychology of Nirvana (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1970), and Padmasiri de Silva, An Introduction to Buddhist Psychology (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1979), for existentialist and functionalist interpretations of selfhood, respectively. 7 See Vasubandhu’s Abhidharmakosabhasayam, vol. 4, ch. 9. The personalist argument is preserved, and countered, by Vasubandhu. For a summary of this series of arguments, see George Grimm, Buddhist Wisdom: The Mystery of the Self, trans. Carroll Aiken, ed.

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The result is that the anatta teaching is open to at least two readings. Taken at face value, it rejects the idea of a self-existent and eternal soul behind the aggregates constituting the human individual. Understood soteriologically, awakening to nirvana enables recognition of the phenomenon of human personhood as an ephemeral illusion even as it unveils the true but inefffable self. The dissonance between these interpretations may be resolved variously, depending on which tradition or interpreter we consult. It may also be alleviated when connected with the Madhyamaka doctrine of shunyata. In this view, human persons, no less than rocks, trees and birds, are equally devoid of self-existence given their transitoriness and interdependent origination. The previous discussion of the Madhyamaka and Huayen metaphysics (§6.1 and §6.2) emphasized precisely this self-emptying character of all things, including the form of human personhood. Yet if emptiness is form and form is emptiness, then the empirical particularity of human forms can be afffijirmed as interdependent originations of the pervasive Buddha Mind, the transcendental fijield of nature as self-emptying. The emptyingself is enabled thereby to be such as it is, and hence achieves authentic and genuine “selfhood.” By the time of the Sung Dynasty (1126–1279 ce), this set of Huayen ideas had been absorbed as the theoretical framework for Ch’an meditation practice.8 In Japan, it was given clear articulation in the teachings of Dogen (1200–1253), founder of the Soto sect of Zen. For Dogen, meditation signifijied what he called the dropping offf of concepts of mind and body (equivalent to the Huayen li and shih, or principle and form or phenomena), and the emergence of the “true self ” of the Buddha nature (Dharmakaya) or Buddha mind. In the Genjokoan section of his famous Shobogenzo, Dogen observes: “To learn the Buddha Way is to learn one’s own self. To learn one’s self is to forget one’s self. To forget one’s self is to be confijirmed by all dharmas. To be confijirmed by all dhar-

M. Keller-Grimm 2nd rev. ed. (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1978). Grimm is not alone on this issue. Peter Harvey, The Selfless Mind: Personality, Consciousness and Nirvana in Early Buddhism (Richmond: Curzon Press, 1995), 7–8 and 17–19, notes that this interpretation has been proposed by a wide range of recognized Buddhist scholars over the decades, including Caroline Rhys Davids, Ananda Coomaraswamy, I.B. Horner, and even Edward Conze. This same point is argued also by Christmas Humphreys, Buddhism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1951), 86–88. 8 The key fijigure in this convergence is probably Tsung-mi (780–841), the posthumously designated fijifth patriarch of Huayen; see Peter N. Gregory, “What Happened to the ‘Perfect Teaching’? Another Look at Hua-yen Buddhist Hermeneutics,” in Donald S. Lopez, Jr., Buddhist Hermeneutics, Studies in East Asian Buddhism 6 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1988), 207–30, esp. 223–25.

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mas is to afffect the casting offf of one’s own body and mind and the bodies and minds of others as well. All traces of enlightenment (then) disappear, and this traceless enlightenment is continued on and on endlessly.”9 In the Soto Zen tradition, then, enlightenment (satori) is the immediate— rather than the culmination of a long process of meditation, as advocated by the Rinzai School of Zen—realization and manifestation of this genuinely emptying self. Rather than being egotistically motivated, this “true self ” is characterized by boundlessness and unlimitedness; naturalness and immediacy; austere sublimity or lofty dryness; subtle profundity or profound subtlety; freedom from attachment; tranquility and deep calm; openness; and compassion. “The characteristics belonging to the Formless Self discussed here constitute man’s true and ultimate manner of being.”10 Now whereas Dogen’s “casting offf mind and body” is more soteriologically oriented, Nishida’s “pure experience” is more epistemologically and ontologically concerned.11 The fusion of the Huayen and Soto Zen traditions in Nishida produced his philosophy of basho where “emptiness” is understood as the fijield of energetic activity and becoming—more precisely, self-emptying—as the principle of individuality, and as the fijield uniting opposites. Not coincidentally, the “person” in Japanese is ningen, which is combination of “human” and “between,” referencing the betweenness of human beings rather than their individuality. Nishida’s basho captures this sense of “betweenness,” emphasizing the “fijield” within which and wherein human beings fijind themselves in relationship. Even more inclusively, as Yuasa Yasuo summarizes, “the essential destiny of human life is to be embraced by life’s rhythms in natural space; it is to be together with the animals and plants, with all things that have life, with what the Buddhists call ‘all sentient beings’ or ‘all living beings’.”12

9 Dogen, in Norman Waddell and Masao Abe, trans., “Shobogenzo Genjokoan,” The Eastern Buddhist, n.s. 5:2 (1972): 133, quoted in Joan Stambaugh, Impermanence is Buddha-Nature: Dogen’s Understanding of Temporality (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1990), 10. 10 See Joan Stambaugh, The Formless Self (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), ch. 1, for a discussion of Dogen; quotation from 89. 11 Gereon Kopf, Beyond Personal Identity: Dogen, Nishida, and a Phenomenology of NoSelf (Richmond, UK: Curzon Press, 2001). 12 Yuasa Yasuo, The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, ed. T.P. Kasulis, trans. Nagatomo Shigenori and T.P. Kasulis (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987), 45–46. Chapter two of this volume is an excellent discussion of the Japanese view of the mind-body relationship in light of Nishida’s philosophy. See also Yuasa Yasuo, “A Contemporary Scientifijic Paradigm and the Discovery of the Inner Cosmos,” in Thomas P. Kasulis,

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Yet Nishida’s basho concerns not only the fijield of interpersonal relationships, but also the intrapersonal fijield uniting mind and body. His moving from ordinary experience wherein mind (active) and body (passive) are separated is directed toward a unity of mind-body whereby the body is subjectivized and the mind objectivized (balancing the former dichotomy). Only there, in the fijield of action emanating from the selfemptying realm of basho, is the dualism of mind and body overcome since now the subject-object distinction no longer holds. But even more precisely, as Yuasa Yasuo notes, Nishida reflects the strong tendency in the Japanese philosophical tradition to graph the authentic self as a creative, productive “function” (hataraki), or “fijield” (ba) of lifeenergy. Consequently, the authentic self is felt and acquired through some sort of life-energy emanating downward from the metaphysical dimension; its fijield of acquisition and feeling is one’s body-mind within meditative cultivation. . . . Nishida’s acting intuition means to act as a self without being a self, to be guided by creative intuition while receiving its power springing from the basho vis-à-vis nothing, the region of the authentic self.13

Further light can be shed on Nishida’s self-emptying fijield from the neuropsychological sciences. When the neurophysiological system is functioning properly, the physical sensations of the external world are delivered through the centripetal circuit to the cerebral cortex. Thinking then proceeds through the frontal lobe and other areas of the cerebral cortex, even as emotions and feelings are processed in the center area of the underlying frontal lobe in the cortex and, more importantly, through the limbic system. The expression of emotions derive from the hypothalamus of the diencephalon, and are modulated by sympathetic nerves and parasympathetic nerves (both constituting the central nervous system) directed toward “homeostasis.” The endocrine gland’s secretion of hormones also attempts to modulate the stress level experienced by the body. But note that motor sensations are processed not only through the external organs, but also through the splanchnic sensations of the body’s internal perception. These are transmitted through visceral affferent nerves to a very small area of the cortex, which explains the vagueness of internal sensations (in comparison with external sensations). For similar reasons, emotions

Roger T. Ames, and Wimal Dissanayake, eds., Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 347–62, and, for a more complete constructive argument, Yuasa Yasuo, The Body, Self-Cultivation, and Ki-Energy, trans. Shigenori Nagatomo and Monte S. Hull (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). 13 Yuasa Yasuo, The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, 223–24.

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are also less clearly felt, being more unconsciously experienced realities. All of this also highlights the diffferences emergent via the limbic system between surface consciousness or ordinary functionality of the everyday self and the underlying subconscious of the self in dreaming, sleeping, and dying, as well as that associated with neuroses and various mental disorders.14 Unfortunately, human actions are conditioned primarily by the ignorance, disorderedness, and passions of the unconscious self. Might it be the case that these tendencies in turn obfuscate the proper functionality of the nervous system? It is perhaps this that the meditative process of Buddhism in general and of Zen practice in particular is designed to uncover and harness toward a more humane personality. Put starkly, Zen meditation is a course of deconstruction, deprogramming, and depersonalization directed toward to cultivation of authentic “selfhood.” Prolonged meditation with its precisely defijined breathing techniques accomplishes this in two ways. First, it calms the mind by quieting the fijiring activity of nerve cells in the brain, thus creating longer lasting and deeper pauses in brain activity. Second, it exerts a destabilizing influence on the mind’s routines via sensorimotor deprivation and disruptions of sleep-waking cycles, among other means. The result is periodic and increasingly intense breakthroughs to the fullness of the present moment and reality as it is. This highlights the interconnectedness of the brain’s capacity to change and the mind’s creative capacity to reconstitute the deconstructed self.15 Together, zazen accomplishes the psycho-physiological and biochemical changes which enable the process of the “deep emptying out from consciousness of every former subjective distinction and personal attachment.”16 Enlightenment can thereby be understood as the twofold process of a) bringing these aspects of the “self ” to the surface so as to enrich the consciousness by integrating and assimilating these unconscious elements, and of b) fully awakening and opening up to the suchness of the world so as to “totally, continually, and directly [be] in touch with what is going on in the present moment.”17 In this is the experience

14 For the distinction between surface and underlying consciousness, see Yuasa, The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, 223–24; cf. also Francisco J. Varela, ed., Sleeping, Dreaming, and Dying: An Exploration of Consciousness with the Dalai Lama (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1997). 15 James H. Austin, M.D., Zen and the Brain: Towards an Understanding of Meditation and Consciousness (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 641. 16 Austin, Zen and the Brain, 571. 17 Austin, Zen and the Brain, 637.

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of total freedom because the dualism between the self and otherness is overcome enabling the individual to relate spontaneously to reality as it is in all of its complexity and as it demands response.18 Herein we have a somewhat interactionist account of brain-mindenvironment. Cognition is connected to not only the brain but also to the entire human organism, without being reduced either to the brain or to the body. Further, cognition is interactive, and mind is therefore what it is only in and through its interrelational activity. Finally consciousness is an ontologically complex public afffair of reciprocity and mutuality. As such, the mind can be understood in terms of an emergent and supervenient reality relating afffectively embodied interactions with the environment, even while being irreducible to neither the bodily functions nor the environmental constraints. The result is the hermeneutical spiral of lived experience ←→ neural emergences ←→ formal mental structures ←→ lived experience, and so on. “Only a generative, mutual reciprocity can replace the age-old friction of duality that haunts both cognitive science and also the spiritual traditions.”19 Thus the “true self ” emerges beyond absolutism and nihilism from the groundless nothingness that is “the very condition for the richly textured and interdependent world of human experience . . ., revealed in cognition as ‘common sense’, that is, in knowing how to negotiate our way through a world that is not fijixed and pregiven but that is continually shaped by the types of actions in which we engage.”20 Such fairly standard neuropsychological fijindings appear

18 See Hubert Benoit, The Supreme Doctrine: Psychological Studies in Zen Thought (New York: Pantheon Books, 1955), ch. 7, “Liberty as Total Determinism”; cf. John Crook, “Mind in Western Zen,” in John Crook and David Fontana, eds., Space in Mind: East-West Psychology and Contemporary Buddhism (Dorset, UK: Element Books, 1990), 92–109. 19 Francisco J. Varela, “Why a Proper Science of Mind Implies the Transcendence of Nature,” in Jensine Andresen, ed., Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Belief, Ritual, and Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 207–36, quote from 234. See also Varela, “Steps to a Science of Inter-being: Unfolding the Dharma Implicit in Modern Cognitive Science,” in Gay Watson, Stephen Batchelor and Guy Claxton, eds., The Psychology of Awakening: Buddhism, Science, and Our Day-to-day Lives (York Beach, Me.: Samuel Weiser, Inc., 2000), 71–89, and Varela, “Upwards and Downwards Causation in the Brain: Case Studies on the Emergence and Efffijicacy of Consciousness,” in Kunio Yasue, et al., eds., No Matter, Never Mind: Proceedings of Towards a Science of Consciousness— Fundamental Approaches (Tokyo ’99) (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2002), 95–107. Varela was, until his untimely death in 2001, a neuroscientist at the Ecole Polytechnique, Paris, who was also a practicing Buddhist. 20 Francisco J. Varela, Evan Thompson, and Eleanor Rosch, The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (London and Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1991), 144. Elsewhere, Varela has teamed up with biologist Humberto Maturana to explore a via media— one that is deeply informed by Buddhist perspectives—between representationalism and

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to map well onto Buddhist views of the self. It is, to resort to the language of the Kyoto School, to cut through, move between, and get behind (or beyond) the false dichotomy of subject and object precisely through embracing the activity made possible by Absolute Nothingness. Pursuit of this “question concerning basho vis-à-vis nothing amounts to asking how a self can go from the inauthentic to the authentic dimension.”21 7.2 Buddhist Contemplation and the Science of Consciousness At the same time, we should be cautious in our attempts to correlate neuroscientifijic research directly with Buddhist meditational practices and experiences. After all, the study of brain alone may not lead to knowledge of mental phenomena, even as Buddhist studies of consciousness over millennia have not led, at least so far, directly to scientifijic theories about the brain. Further, since science can only detect physical phenomena and adjudicate issues in that realm and since we know only less than half of one percent of the functioning of the brain, to this point mental events can be neither verifijied nor falsifijied by science.22 As Tibetan Buddhist scholar B. Alan Wallace reminds us, “strictly speaking, there is still no scientifijic evidence for the existence of consciousness!” as “all states of consciousness may be regarded as too subtle for modern neuroscience to detect.”23

solipsism in understanding of the biological aspects of cognition; see Humberto R. Maturana and Francisco J. Varela, Autopoiesis and Cognition: The Realization of the Living, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 42 (London, Boston, and Dordrecht, Holland: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1980), and Maturana and Varela, The Tree of Knowledge: The Biological Roots of Human Understanding, rev. ed., trans. J.Z. Young (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1992), esp. ch. 7. 21 Yuasa Yasuo, The Body: Toward an Eastern Mind-Body Theory, 93. See also the discussion of Nishitani in Varela, Thompson, and Rosch, The Embodied Mind, 241–45. 22 So, after massive 579 pages of text and 55 pages of bibliography (almost 2000 entries!), Paul MacLean concludes his study with this observation: “And so, one might conclude, we are left with the question as to whether or not there can ever evolve an intelligence that will be intelligent enough to take measure of itself and at the same time discover a Braille for reading the blind message of evolution”; see Paul D. MacLean, The Triune Brain in Evolution: Role in Paleocerebral Functions (New York and London: Plenum Press, 1990), 579. 23 Alan Wallace, “Afterward: Buddhist Reflections,” in Zara Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston and B. Alan Wallace, eds., Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1999), 153–73, esp. 164 and 166.

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It is here that I want to re-engage the Tibetan tradition’s dialogue with modern science, especially as that has unfolded in Wallace’s work.24 Wallace studied science, philosophy, and religion in the Western academy, but also spent a number of years in Tibet, eventually serving His Holiness the Dalai Lama as a translator in many of the Mind and Life dialogues (about which see §5.2). He has published widely, convinced that the way of dialogue is best suited to chart a via media between scientistic materialism on the one hand and postmodern relativism on the other. In what follows, I will engage with the basic thrust of his ideas, especially as found in his scholarly publications directed toward the quest for what Wallace calls the science of consciousness. We begin with Wallace’s Amherst College thesis, written under the guidance of professors Arthur Zajonc (a physicist) and Robert Thurman (a scholar-practitioner of Tibetan Buddhism), and published as Choosing Reality: A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind.25 Wallace’s quest in this volume was to seek out a “middle way” between a naïve realism and a solipsistic instrumentalism in science. For Wallace, neither realism nor instrumentalism remain as viable options given developments in quantum physics (where physics bleeds into metaphysics and religion, where objectivism breaks down on the wave/particle duality, where the role of the observer seems essential to the results of quantum experimentation, and when there is widespread agreement, following Heisenberg and others, that we observe not nature itself but nature which is open to our questioning, etc.); given the “conclusions” handed on by the history of science (e.g., that Newton’s Principia was more a mathematical predicting device than an explanatory tool regarding “reality”); given developments in mathematics (from Euclidean geometry to Gödelian conventionalism); and given a critical re-reading of the ancients (e.g., the implausible legacies of Ptolemaic astronomy which saved the appearances and of Platonic philosophy which idealized empirical reality). In the late twentieth century context, we can no longer think we have an “objective” view of reality in the sense that science provides us with the one true view of the world. Thus, Wallace’s major contribution in Choosing Reality may be the sustained, almost 100-page, argument he provides in the fijirst half of

24 I provide some biographical details on Wallace in the fijirst part of my article, “Tibetan Buddhism Going Global? A Case Study of a Contemporary Buddhist Encounter with Science,” Journal of Global Buddhism 9 (2008) [http://www.globalbuddhism.org/]. 25 B. Alan Wallace, Choosing Reality: A Buddhist View of Physics and the Mind (Ithaca, NY, and Boulder, Colo.: Snow Lion Publications, 1996).

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the book against an uncritical realist position. Yet at the same time, he also argues that neither can we depend only on an instrumentalist view of science since that requires an untenable agnosticism regarding the world and our engagements with it, and it undercut both the possibility of scientifijic advances and of our (human) enjoyment of the fruits of scientifijic technology. What then might be a way forward? Drawing from and applying a Madhyamaka Buddhist viewpoint, Wallace presents in the second half of the volume a participatory universe that avoids dichotomizing experience into objective or subjective, and that opens up to a contemplative and introspective approach to the mind, to embodiment, and to the world. A participatory and nondualist approach rejects the Kantian bifurcation between noumena and phenomena, and hence allows for what Wallace calls a participatory centrism: our conceptions bring the world that we know into existence. Wallace reminds us that the word conception means not only “derived from cognition,” but also suggests origination: “The anthropic principle . . . suggests that the world that we experience can be grasped by thought because it owes its very existence to our concepts. The two are mutually interdependent. The universe that we observe is then a human-oriented world, and it would not exist apart from our presence in it.”26 Human interdependence with the world therefore opens up multiple interpretations of reality, which in turn endow human subjects with the responsibility to “choose” their realities in intersubjective interdependence with others. Before moving on, it is fair to ask what we are to make of these ideas? At times, Wallace’s rhetoric suggests that he thinks his argument overthrows even critical realist positions. Although uncharitable critics could probably argue that there is little diffference between Wallace’s centrism and the instrumentalism that he—all too briefly, in one chapter—rejects, a charitable reading of Choosing Reality would interpret his own “centrist” proposal as a form of critical realism. In this latter account, Wallace would be right to reject the Kantian thing-in-itself, but ironically is enabled to do so whilst engaging modern science only by accepting the other half of the Kantian idea, namely Kant’s epistemological perspectivalism which insists that things are known to us only to the extent that our epistemic

26 Wallace, Choosing Reality, 109.

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apparatuses permit. Wallace’s participatory centrism thus reconceived the Kantian epistemology in Madhyamakan Buddhist terms.27 If Choosing Reality provides the basic metaphysic and epistemology for a Buddhist encounter with modern science, Wallace’s next book on the topic, The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness,28 further expands on two topics: a critical assessment of the ideology of scientifijic materialism (part I), and a consciousness-based approach to science (parts II and III). The former must be explicitly undertaken because otherwise the stronghold of a positivistic approach to science—scientism, in the pejorative sense—will continue to block the emergence of any science of consciousness. Wallace’s goal, informed by decades of meditation practice devoted to engaging, exploring, and transforming the mind, is to register consciousness on the scientifijic agenda. What is consciousness? In brief, consciousness is, for Wallace, “the sheer events of sensory and mental awareness by which we perceive colors and shapes, sounds, smells, tastes, tactile sensations, and mental events such as feelings, thoughts, and mental imagery.”29 Wallace’s argument for a new science of consciousness to replace the objectivism, monism, and reductionism of scientism unfolds in three basic steps. First, building on the basic thrust of Choosing Reality, after the quantum revolution in twentieth century science, consciousness can no longer be ignored in scientifijic endeavors. Second, we need to take another serious look at the work of William James (1842–1910), one of the founding fathers of the science of psychology, especially his proposals for a science of introspection. James’ ideas were discarded by behaviorist approaches, and the materialist ontology of behaviorist psychology continues to dominate brain science even to the present day. While the cognitive neurosciences privilege the use of mechanical instruments in brain study (e.g., those related to the new technologies that enable studies of brain states correlated with mental functions), these so-called “hard sciences” of the brain are nowhere close to resolving the Cartesian problem of the mind-brain relationship, or to understanding the intricate and complex workings of the mind. What they are attempting to do—a study of consciousness from the outside— will leave us seriously defijicient in our understanding of the mind. Instead,

27 Thanks to Perry Schmidt-Leukel for requesting clarity on Wallace’s thesis in Choosing Reality; the entire preceding paragraph responds to Schmidt-Leukel’s prompts. 28 B. Alan Wallace, The Taboo of Subjectivity: Toward a New Science of Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). 29 Wallace, The Taboo of Subjectivity, 5–6.

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the sciences of introspection may be our only hope of probing mental phenomena more deeply and directly. Third, Wallace recommends the methods for refijining attention that are essential for developing introspection as a viable scientifijic inquiry. Here he draws from the meditative practices of the wide range of Theravada and Mahayana traditions, especially the Tibetan traditions with which he is most familiar. These millennia-old approaches have been cultivated by contemplative adepts, and their usefulness for understanding the wide range of consciousness has been repeatedly confijirmed through repeated testimony by Buddhist sages, contemplatives, and adepts. So yes, the new science of consciousness will involve personal introspection, but the results are not merely subjective when assessed against the fijindings of the long history of Buddhist praxis. Wallace’s thesis is honed, next, in sustained interaction with the cognitive neurosciences.30 The shift of language from “science of consciousness” to “contemplative science,” however, signals the emergence of a more mature Wallace, one less concerned with appeasing scientists and more concerned with championing the cause of contemplation for both scientifijic inquiry and religious practice. His goal is still to argue for a more or less intersubjective account of consciousness, but the major developments in this volume have to do, I suggest, with his taking seriously the religious traditions that comprehend and the cognitive sciences that attempt to understand the contemplative practices being discussed. Hence contemplative science is just as much about religion as it is about science. Wallace is here attentive to the religious character of Buddhist meditation practice, as well as sensitive to the charge that religion just as often collides rather than cooperates with science. He hypothesizes that while the emergence of Western science was motivated (at least in part) by a theology of creation, this same set of theological convictions eventually hindered the flourishing of a science of introspection.31 Yet these divergent trajectories between Buddhist traditions and western monotheistic ones do not ultimately mean that no common ground is to be found. Instead, any honest survey of Buddhist traditions will reveal a wide range of attitudes, ranging from the quasi-agnosticism of most Theravadin traditions to the quasi-monotheism, even polytheism, of Mahayana traditions,

30 B. Alan Wallace, Contemplative Science: Where Buddhism and Neuroscience Meet (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). 31 Wallace, Contemplative Science, ch. 4, esp. 66–67.

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and even a kind of robust monotheism in Vajrayāna sources. This discussion is directed toward making the case that contemplation not only funds the convergence (at best) or complementarity (at least) between Buddhism and science, but also provides a possible bridge for dialogue between East and West. A major thread running throughout at least his more recent work concerns the spiritual, moral, and transformative goals of contemplative practice. This is a theme we have already noted among Tibetan Buddhists engaging with the sciences (§5.2), and Wallace has learned well from his teachers in the Tibetan tradition. Contemplation is not an end in itself but serves the purposes of making possible a meaningful life, the essential features of which include clarifying the truth, nurturing health and wholeness, cultivating virtue, and bringing about psychological flourishing and happiness.32 Buddhist meditation—especially in the Samantha practice prevalent in Wallace’s Tibetan tradition—“begins with the premise that the mind is the primary source of human joy and misery and is central to understanding the natural world as a whole,” and the “central goals of its cultivation are the development of attentional stability and acuity.”33 Western science as traditionally understood, of course, could not and did not factor these teleological realities into its equations as these lay in the domain of religion. Wallace therefore works hard to show that the highest religious aspirations of East and West—of monotheistic faiths and Buddhist traditions—not only converge on these ideals but also could potentially agree about the value of contemplative practice for the purpose of attaining these objectives.34 To be sure, meditative practices could lead to the idolization of the “self,” just as monotheistic faith may lead to the idolization of the deity.35 However, the best in both traditions, especially the guidelines developed by Buddhist adepts to keep meditation focused, provide safeguards against the seductions that would otherwise hinder the goals of the practice from being achieved.

32 Wallace, Contemplative Science, 2–6. Hence Wallace has also translated Yeshi Dhonden’s Healing from the Sources: The Science and Lore of Tibetan Medicine (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion, 2000). 33 Wallace, Contemplative Science, 136 and 137. 34 Wallace briefly mentions the perennial philosophy as one possible explanation of this convergence, not necessarily endorsing it, but suggesting that deployment of the empirical science of introspection may help us further understand the issues; see Contemplative Science, 107–08. 35 Wallace, Contemplative Science, 149–52.

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Before moving on, I want to call attention to Wallace’s Hidden Dimensions: The Unifijication of Physics and Consciousness.36 This volume in some ways brings us back full circle to the metaphysical explorations of his early work. Wallace, however, advances the discussion by presenting what he calls a special and a general theory of ontological relativity. The special theory advocates that our perceived realities, both physical and mental phenomena, “emerge from and exist only relative to a subtle dimension of existence of pure forms, or archetypal symbols.”37 This is a metaphysical theory that expands on the participatory universe idea, but does so in dialogue with Spinoza’s causa sui, Jung’s archetypal domain, and Bohm’s “implicate order,” among other proposals regarding mind and matter as being in efffect emergent from two sides of one underlying reality. The general theory of ontological relativity is more an epistemological theory that, drawing from Einstein’s theory of general relativity regarding the invariant speed of light vis-à-vis all frames of reference, states “there is no theory or mode of observation—no infallible method of inquiry, scientifijic or otherwise—that provides an absolute frame of reference within which to test all other perceptions or ideas.”38 This is because although “there is one truth that is invariant across all cognitive frames of reference: everything that we apprehend, whether perceptually or conceptually [as opposed to Wallace’s special theory of ontological relativity which concerns perceptual phenomena only], is devoid of its own inherent nature, or identity, independent of the means by which it is known. Perceived objects, or observable entities, exist relative to the sensory faculties or systems of measurement by which they are detected.”39 Hence what we need is a science of intersubjectivity, albeit one that is not limited to individual claims but critically interacts with views that have withstood the test of time across a variety of contemplative traditions. This would be a science of introspection that is unabashedly anthropomorphic in recognizing the central role of the mind in our knowledge of the world, but that results neither in a Kantian dualism (because knowers participate, however perspectivally, in and with reality) nor a nihilistic relativism (since there are norms for truth, goodness, and even beauty based on the community of knowers).

36 B. Alan Wallace, Hidden Dimensions: The Unifijication of Physics and Consciousness (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007), xi + 158 pages, ISBN 0-231-14150-5. 37 Wallace, Hidden Dimensions, 70. 38 Wallace, Hidden Dimensions, 71. 39 Wallace, Hidden Dimensions, 72; italics original.

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Combined, Wallace’s special and general theories of ontological relativity suggest that at the ontological level of human consciousness, the extinction of our (human) consciousness will result also in the extinction of the world as we know it, although that does not mean that the world ceases to exist in relationship to other sentient beings or creatures.40 At the same time, this also means that no one theory will sufffijice to explain or enable understanding of the richness of the world as we experience it. Thus we need both “top-down” (e.g., mathematical or Platonic) and “bottom-up” (e.g., empirical, introspective, and even physicalist) approaches that complement each other.41 However, given the interdependent and participatory universe as articulated in the special theory, the introspective sciences of mind and of consciousness provide indispensable empirical modes of inquiry for illuminating all other fijields of knowledge, including philosophy, mathematics, religion, and even the sciences. Entry into what Buddhists call the “Great Perfection” would confijirm, both perceptually and conceptually, this “unifijication of physics and consciousness” (the subtitle of Hidden Dimensions).42 But sustained interaction with the textual legacy of a cumulative contemplative tradition and extensive and substantive meditative practices refijined over the course of thousands of hours of individual practice are both necessary for this task. The latter means that, whatever the virtues of Wallace’s proposals, they are beyond what the neurosciences on their own can either confijirm or disconfijirm. So we might say that Wallace has left the empirical domain and is now making philosophical (or soteriological, broadly understood) recommendations. Alternatively, we might also say that contemporary science understood as a merely descriptive enterprise begs for philosophical elucidation. Thus Wallace’s arguments press the methodological question confronting the religion and science dialogue in general and the Buddhism-science encounter more specifijically. Is he successful in calling for a science of consciousness that is at least informed by if not also derived from Buddhist meditative and contemplative practices? But, what about the radically disparate interpretive frameworks of Buddhism and modern science? For

40 Wallace writes: “all possible worlds vanish simultaneously with the disappearance of the cognitive frames of reference within which they are apprehended. The worlds experienced by other conscious beings will continue to exist relative to them. In this sense, conscious observers cocreate the worlds in which they dwell” (Hidden Dimensions, 80). 41 Wallace, Hidden Dimensions, 56–57. 42 Wallace discusses the Great Perfection in the fijinal chapter of Hidden Dimensions.

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example, “If scientists did not believe in reincarnation, which is so important to Buddhist philosophy, then how can they interpret the results they obtain in a way that takes the Buddhist context of the training [millennia old institutional establishments] into account?”43 Is not the empiricist method and mechanistic analysis of science diffferent from the meditative observationist method and idealistic descriptivism of Buddhism?44 Yet do all of these factors combine to highlight the tradition of Buddhist insight not only into the non-substantiality, ephemerality and transitoriness of the phenomenal self, but also into the interdependence, interrelational, and intersubjective nature of the “true self ” that is Buddha Nature? 7.3 Shunyata and Human Naturing It is time to pull together the various threads of discussion. I have proposed a conversation between Buddhism and science as read through the central Buddhist idea of shunyata. Allow me to summarize the preceding by way of suggesting how shunyata understood positively as pratityasamutpada or interdependent origination opens up to a Buddhist understanding of personal selfhood and human nature that is consistent with the most recent advances in the cosmological, neurobiological, and psychosocial sciences. What we shall see is a dynamic “self ” that is continuously emerging precisely because of its self-emptying nature. It is precisely for this reason that it is more appropriate to speak, in the Mahayana case, in terms of human naturing rather than human nature. Four major features highlight how the “true self ” is a verb, rather than a noun, a dynamic flux of becoming rather than a static or essential being. First, the “true self ” is the embodied and afffective self. Certainly there is plenty in the Buddhist tradition, especially in some of the Theravadin literature, about the body as disgusting, repulsive, and to be renounced. Yet the body is also considered more positively as a skillful means for fulfijilling

43 Richard J. Davidson, Anne Harrington, Cliffford Saran, and Zara Houshmand, “Training the Mind: First Steps in a Cross-Cultural Collaboration in Neuroscientifijic Research,” in Davidson and Harrington, eds., Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 3–17, quote from 12. 44 R. Christopher deCharms, Two Views of Mind: Abhidharma and Brain Science (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1997), ch. 5. Other diffferences noted by deCharms include causation understood in terms of interdependent origination in Buddhism versus in terms of physical laws in science, and the focus on resolving the subject-object problem in Buddhism versus that on the mind-body dualism in science.

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the bodhisattva vow of not entering into nirvana until all sentient beings have been enlightened. As important, Buddhists also recognize the intimate connectedness between brain and mind, and among brain, mind, the emotions and the afffections.45 At this level, the “true self ” is nothing more or less than the fluid empirical and phenomenal self, except without its being either reifijied or grasped after. Further, at this level, the “true self ” as the empirical self is a concrete instantiation of the principle enunciated in the Heart Sutra and embraced by the Huayen School: that emptiness is form and form is emptiness. As such, emptiness is manifest through and realized in the particularities of empirical reality such that all things are dynamically self-emptying precisely in their concreteness, phenomenality, and conventionality. Similarly, the self-emptying nature of human persons is manifest through and realized in the dynamic conventionality of their embodied and afffective selves. Second, the “true self ” is the intersubjective self.46 Human persons are not only embodied and afffective but also dynamically constituted by social, communal, and interpersonal relationships. In part for this reason, the Buddhist “Triple Refuge” includes the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, the community of monks and nuns.47 Yet there is also the mutuality of the laity and the Sangha seen in their interdependence: the latter depending on the former for gifts of food and other mundane concerns, and the former on the latter for ritual blessings (especially during death and burial ceremonies) and for the accumulation of meritorious karma. Most striking, however, is the bodhisattva’s vow not to enter nirvana apart from the salvation of all sentient beings. Herein is depicted the interrelatedness of human identities such that the fulfijillment of the bodhisattva’s

45 See Paul Williams, “Some Mahayana Buddhist Perspectives on the Body,” in Sarah Coakley, ed., Religion and the Body (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 205–30. Cf. also the discussion following Antonio R. Damasio, “Mapping Brain Functions: The Evidence of Damage to Specifijic Brain Regions,” in Zara Houshmand, Robert B. Livingston and B. Alan Wallace, eds., Consciousness at the Crossroads: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Brain Science and Buddhism (Ithaca, NY: Snow Lion Publications, 1999), 57–68, as well as Francisco Varela, “The Body’s Self,” and Clifff Saron and Richard J. Davidson, “The Brain and Emotions,” both in Daniel Goleman, ed., Healing Emotions: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mindfulness, Emotions, and Health (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1997), 49–60 and 68–79 respectively. 46 This is argued at length by Steve Odin, The Social Self in Zen and American Pragmatism (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996). 47 See Varghese J. Manimala, Being, Person, and Community: A Study of Intersubjectivity in Existentialism with Special Reference to Marcel, Sartre, and the Concept of Sangha in Buddhism (New Delhi: Intercultural Publications, 1991), ch. 5, esp. 211–17, and ch. 6, esp. 238–39.

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existence is intertwined with that of all sentient beings on the one hand, even while any particular individual is the source and in that sense author of the bodhisattva’s vow to begin with. Third, the “true self ” is the environmental and ecological self. Embodied, afffective, and intersubjective selves are fijields of interpersonal activity which converge to and emerge from complex and dynamic environmental networks which sustain animals, plants, and the natural world. Nishitani thus reflected upon his eating a bowl of rice after a long period of eating Western food: “This experience made me think of the meaning of the notion of ‘homeland’, which is fundamentally that of the inseparable relation between the soil and the human being, in particular the human being as a body. . . . The vital link that since time immemorial has bound together the rice, the soil, and those countless people who are my ancestors forms the background of my life and is actually contained in it.”48 So, samsara (the conventional world), which is also nirvana (the world of awakened or enlightened minds), is not only the entire fijield of the world taken as a whole, but also the particular and interactive fijields of animals, plants, things, and generations of persons. The self-environment relationship is therefore such that the former shapes the latter as well as is influenced and in some ways determined by the latter. Hence the “true self ” is a complex inter-generational network of developmental fijields or streams of consciousness, holistic patterns, and relational sequences bound up with the dynamic movements of its environment. Of course, this is nothing less than the truth of the Buddhist doctrine of the relational self defijined as an interdependently arising fijield rather than as a substantive soul.49 From this, fourth, the “true self ” is the acting, active, and acted upon self. The embodied, afffective, and environment self is also a dynamic set of interactive relationships. Thus, for example, as already indicated, the Japanese language avoids using personal pronouns except when absolutely necessary, preferring directional words which highlight the relationships

48 Quoted in Heisig, Philosophers of Nothingness, 214; cf. also Watsuji Tetsuro, Climate and Culture: A Philosophical Study, trans. Geofffrey Bownas (1961; reprint, New York: Greenwood Press, 1988), which suggests a spatialized and topographical view of personhood and human society in contrast to the temporalist notions of selfhood prevalent in the West. 49 On these points, see Ken Wilber, “Waves, Streams, States and Self: Further Considerations for an Integral Theory of Consciousness,” in Jensine Andresen and Robert K.C. Forman, eds., Cognitive Models and Spiritual Maps: Interdisciplinary Explorations of Religious Experience (Bowling Green, Oh.: Imprint Academic, 2000), 145–76, and Mendel Sachs, “Comparison of the Field Concept of Matter in Relativity Physics, and the Buddhist Idea of Nonself,” Philosophy East and West 33 (1983): 395–99.

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comprising the situation rather than the persons involved. In “I hit the baseball,” myself and the baseball emerge together as aspects related by the act of swinging such that “I” and the “ball” are no longer two. As such, the person “does not perform action; rather, action performs the person” so that the goal is to be “the personal act appropriate to the occasion.”50 Herein lies Nishida’s point that human personhood should be understood as a fijield of personal activity. The implications of this are twofold. First, we have the complex and dynamic interrelationality of genes, culture, and environment bound up together in the fijield of action. Put in terms of evolutionary biology: Actions thus constitute an indispensable link in a positive feedback cycle: our inherited capacities (which result from previous actions) facilitate our current activities (based upon inherited capacities) which in turn condition future evolutionary developments. . . . The radical implications of evolutionary biology is that the very forms and structures of human life reflect the cumulative results of past activities of innumerable beings over countless generations. . . . In this perspective, we are contingent and historical creatures through and through, lacking any unchanging “species-essence” or fijixed “human nature”. . . .51

The lines between self and other (or self and nature), between subject and object, and between past, present, and future, all become interrelated in this view. But this is as it should be in a dynamic ontology of interwoven fijields rather than a static ontology of atomic substances, whether applied to the human person or to the ultimate nature of cosmological realities. The second and more intriguing implication, however, is that all personal activity (and hence, personal selfhood) is as much emergent from being acted upon as it is from action taken. At this point the dialectical tension most clearly enunciated in the self-power versus other-power debate—between Nishida and Tanabe, representative of the ongoing dispute between the Zen and Pure Land traditions—manifests itself. The self-emptying self means precisely that the self as self cannot establish (and certainly not save) itself. Rather, the endowment of the self comes as a gift from the activity of others. More to the point, especially as Tanabe 50 Thomas P. Kasulis, Zen Action Zen Person (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1981), 139 and 154; cf. 7–11 and 56–61, for the comments regarding the Japanese language and the baseball analogy. 51 William S. Waldron, “Beyond Nature/Nurture: Buddhism and Biology on Interdependence,” Contemporary Buddhism: An Interdisciplinary Journal 1:2 (2000): 199–226, quote from 203.; emphasis orig. See also Robin Cooper, The Evolving Mind: Buddhism, Biology, and Consciousness (Birmingham, UK: Windhorse Publications, 1996).

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understood it from a Pure Land perspective, the “salvation” of the self comes precisely from its being acted upon, mediated by other selves which and who are also empty, but ultimately by the Absolute Nothingness of Other Power who sustains and values all things individually and collectively. The “redemption” of the self comes in its recognition of its incapacity to “save” itself (its repentance) and its trusting completely in Other Power to be manifest salvifijically in and through the concrete particularities of being.52 On the other side, of course, Other Power is also inefffective without the operation of self power; hence their mutual and reciprocal character. So, the self-empty or self-emptying self (shunyata) is but the flip side to the interdependently arising self (pratityasamutpada). Together, they combine to chart the “middle way” of conceptualizing the “true self ” as the activity of the individual in relationship to the whole and vice versa. As in the “Jewel Net of Indra”, the “true self ” emerges precisely in its reflecting others, even as, at the same time, the others are established in the same activity.53 Put in terms of emergence and systems theory, each level of complexity plays its indispensable role, from the atom→molecule→ cell→organism→brain→person→community→society→ecosystem to the planet→solar systems→galaxy, etc. Herein lies the middle way between reductionism and personalistic absolutism: wholes are greater than the sums of their parts even as wholes are empty without the parts and wholes are always parts of larger wholes. Herein also is the middle way of holistic intercausality between upward and downward causation. Considered thus, the concept of feedback charts a middle way between freedom and determinism, between self-regulation and self-activity versus other-regulation and other-activity. Last, but certainly not least, that information is exchanged through codifijied structures and interpersonal activity enables a biperspectival middle view between idealism on the one side and materialism on the other. Is this how Buddhist metaphysics afffijirms both the individuality and the relationality of the dynamic “self ”?

52 Besides Tanabe’s monumental Philosophy as Metanoetics, the Pure Land tradition is also represented in the contemporary debate by Takeuchi Yoshinori, The Heart of Buddhism: In Search of the Timeless Spirit of Primitive Buddhism, trans. James W. Heisig (New York: Crossroad, 1983); Taitetsu Unno, River of Fire, River of Water: An Introduction to the Pure Land Tradition of Shin Buddhism (New York: Doubleday, 1998); and Dennis Hirota, ed., Toward a Contemporary Understanding of Pure Land Buddhism: Creating a Shin Buddhist Theology in a Religiously Plural World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). 53 Linda E. Olds, Metaphors of Interrelatedness: Toward a Systems Theory of Psychology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992).

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My task in these last three chapters has been to show how the concept of shunyata has and can further contribute to the dialogue between Buddhism and science and yet retain its religious and soteriological signifijicance. In Nagarjuna’s case, soteriological insight is mediated through epistemological enlightenment and recognition of the limitations of language. For Huayen, salvation comes through the compassionate disposition realized in awakening to the interpenetration of all things. For Nishida and Nishitani of the Kyoto School, absolute nothingness is fijirst and foremost a religious idea which bridges shunyata and Being, and in doing so, reconciles and heals East and West, the one and the many, modern science and the human soul. This it accomplishes precisely by locating the domain of science in its proper place (basho), and illuminating the nature of humanity and of the cosmos as devoid of substantive and unchanging self-existence, as transitory and contingent, and as ultimately interdependently originated and originating. At the same time, of course, because emptiness is form and vice-versa, science itself now also has a redemptive Buddhist function: to show the emptiness of emptiness—so that voidness of self-existence, transitoriness and contingency, and interdependent origination, etc., are not reifijied as most ultimately real—and that precisely through its empirical methods and provisional deliverances subject to ongoing inquiry. This is the path embraced also by our Tibetan Buddhist interlocutors, insofar as their pursuit of a contemplative science is suggestive of the interdependence between human consciousness and the natural world as we know it. Of course, argument is never complete, especially in the case of Buddhism which rejects the notion of fijirst cause, and hence, of ultimate and fijinal explanation. It is certainly the case that my own effforts to follow out the intuitions of the Mahayana tradition in dialogue with modern science have produced just as many questions as answers. These range from the methodological to the philosophical and metaphysical. Some of these questions will be engaged next as we juxtapose the tentative conclusions of parts I and II alongside each other.

PART THREE

PNEUMA AND SHUNYATA: NATURE, THE ENVIRONMENT, AND THE CHRISTIAN-BUDDHIST-SCIENCE TRIALOGUE

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The task of this book is to follow out a trialogue among Christian theology, Buddhist philosophy, and modern science, both in order to compare and contrast the religion-science and the interreligious dialogues, and to work toward the development of a philosophy and theology of nature appropriate to the needs of the religiously plural world of the twenty-fijirst century. So far, we have explored the basic features of a Christian pneumatological theology of nature in dialogue with science, and of a Mahayana Buddhist understanding of the world as ultimately self-emptying and interdependently originating. How to talk about God’s presence in and to the world led us in part I to a discussion of the Christian doctrine of creation, both of the natural/cosmic and human realms, in pneumatological perspective. This was then followed by a similar inquiry in part II using Buddhist understandings of nature and humanity and read through the Madhyamaka notion of shunyata. The conviction that comparative theology can only proceed following an in depth explication of how a religious symbol functions fijirst within the framework of its religious tradition has led to the preceding discussions of these ideas separately and in their own context. At the same time, the hypothesis of this book is that a pneumatological theology of nature can bring into dialogue not only diffferent religious traditions, but also religion, theology, and modern science. Hence the trialogue among Christian theology, Buddhist thought, and science. This last part of the book will therefore explore the trajectories such a conversation could take, trusting that the pneumatological hermeneutic developed earlier will enable crossover, inhabitation, and return not only in the interfaith dialogue with the Buddhist tradition, but also in the encounter between Christian theology and modern science. Here, more than ever, we will be covering much interreligious and interdisciplinary ground. The goal in what follows is not necessarily to resolve preexisting questions or concerns but to model a method of inquiry in a pluralistic and scientifijic context, and to explore the fecundity of the pneumatological imagination for such a task. If we are successful, what emerges at the end will be a philosophy and theology of nature and of the environment that will be informed by both Christian and Buddhist perspectives; more importantly, such a philosophical vision will also include an ethical component that will enable Christians and Buddhists to work together for the care and even liberation of the world. I should note, however, that our task here is a distinctively Christian one: I am, after all, a Christian theologian, not a Buddhist philosopher. Here the Christian commitments bracketed in part II of this book are re-asserted. At the same time, it should also be clear by now that the

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following will not—cannot, actually—be merely a series of claims maintaining Christian views over and against Buddhist ones. Rather, after our attempt to understand Buddhist perspectives on their own terms in the preceding pages, I will be walking a fijine line in the rest of this book: on the one hand seeking to be faithful to the historic Christian tradition as a Christian theologian, but on the other hand being sensitive to how Christian self-understandings may be deepened, corrected, and even transformed by our dialogue with modern science and Buddhist traditions. (And if Buddhist readers also gain something in turn from what follows about how to understand their own traditions in new ways, then that will be an added bonus for which I can only be grateful.) The fijinal three chapters of this part of the book therefore will be concerned not only with the formal elements of a pneumatological theology of nature (of the cosmos and of human beings—chapter 8), but also with the methodological challenges confronting both the religion-science and interreligious dialogues which was introduced in the introductory chapter and which have followed us throughout (chapter 9). My hypothesis is that the pneumatological approach adopted in this volume will enable the emergence of a provisionary Christian understanding of nature and an ecological and environmental ethic informed both by science and central insights of the Buddhist tradition (chapter 10). We will now proceed in an explicitly comparative manner, albeit always aware that our effforts are preliminary and tentative, subject to our partial understanding achieved by the preceding discussion and dependent upon our having identifijied the proper and adequate comparative categories to pursue and accomplish our task. The culmination of my argument in this part of the volume will determine whether or to what degree our effforts fijinally pay offf.

CHAPTER EIGHT

SPIRIT, NATURE, HUMANITY: A TRIALOGICAL CONVERSATION We are now in the stretch run of our attempt to develop a theology of nature informed by dialogue with modern science and with Buddhist traditions. The basic questions are threefold: First, how do Christian and Buddhist views of nature and the cosmos in general and of human nature and personhood more particularly compare and contrast? Second, in what ways has the inclusion of modern science been illuminating for this conversation? Finally, does a pneumatological approach establish a bridge toward the furthering of religion-science and interreligious dialogues on these topics? These three foundational questions have motivated our inquiry from the beginning. In this chapter I begin by summarizing the fijindings of parts I and II, noting especially similarities between the two traditions’ views on creation/ nature and human personhood as elicited through the pneumatological framework of inquiry (§8.1). From this, we attempt a deeper analysis of the Christian-Buddhism-science trialogue by pushing the discussion forward in the direction of what might be called a pneumatological theology of the cosmos (§8.2) and a pneumatological anthropology (§8.3). This chapter thus is an initial sketch of a philosophy and theology of nature in light of the Christianity-Buddhism-science trialogue. Needless to say, even this fijirst leg of our comparative project will be expansive as we not only crossover in the interreligious dialogue but also take up contested matters in the religion and science conversation.1 At one level, our effforts will only traverse as far as our comparative categories are adequate.2 What I mean is that if we end up trying to compare apples and oranges, then inquiry will turn out to be nothing less than a missed

1 Our attempts to enter into another religious tradition in order to return enriched to our own follows the model charted by John S. Dunne, The Way of All the Earth: Experiments in Truth and Religion (New York: Macmillan, and London: Collier Macmillan, 1972), and John B. Cobb, Jr., Beyond Dialogue: Toward a Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982). 2 I discuss the important of developing adequate comparative categories in my Beyond the Impasse: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003), ch. 7.

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opportunity. On the other hand, if pneuma is comparable to shunyata, or creation is comparable to nature, or relational theology is comparable to interdependent origination, then perhaps we can make some headway both in the Buddhist-Christian dialogue and in the Christianity-Buddhismscience trialogue. In the end, however, our comparative work results not merely in observing similarities and diffferences but in a normative theological vision for Christian practice. But if we have attended carefully enough to what is said both by the sciences and those in other faiths, then what emerges may have ethical purchase not only for Christians but for all truth seekers who are concerned about the common good. 8.1 Pneuma and Shunyata: Science and Comparative Theology How might we summarize the basic features of the theology of nature, of the cosmos, and of humanity, emergent from the preceding dialogues between Christian theology and science and between Buddhist thought and science? We began with Pannenberg’s correlation of fijield theory and pneumatological theology, only to fijind a parallel especially in the discourse of the Kyoto School. On the Christian side, Pannenberg’s theological appropriation of the model (§2.2 and §2.3) is grounded in the dynamic and essential character of God as spirit and creation as the fijield of God’s presence and activity. The results include a) its enabling the transition from a substance to an event or dynamic ontology; b) its opening up to systems and environmental analyses; c) its undergirding a metaphysics of temporality and creativity; and d) its categorical emphases on potentiality, possibility, and contingency rather than actuality. On the Buddhist side, we observed that Nishitani’s encompassing fijield of shunyata reconceptualizes this basic Mahayana Buddhist motif as the ontological context of mutuality in and from which not only science and religion (among other domains) emerge, but through which they also perichoretically interpenetrate (§5.3). Informing Nishitani’s usage is Nishida’s logic of basho (§6.3) which emphasizes the fijield of shunyata as a) the energetic dynamism of interdependent origination; b) the principle of individuation and particularization; c) the “place” from which subject and object arise together; d) the activity which relates and defijines relata; e) the unity of opposites; and e) the Absolute Nothingness that gives rise to all things. Initially, what is unmistakable is the emphasis on dynamism and the categorical import of possibility and activity (rather than substance or actuality) that emerges as each side frames its ideas in dialogue with fijield theories and concepts.

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Perhaps more important is that the fijield model opens up to emergence and systems theories of nature and its processes. The idea of emergence as developed in the sciences arguably illuminates and highlights the dynamic processes of creation from chaos to complexity featured in the Genesis narrative, especially when read through a pneumatological perspective (§3.2). It also resonates in the Madhyamaka idea of the interdependent arising of all things at their various levels and domains from the fijield of shunyata (§6.1).3 This leads, of course, to systems theory. Here, the Spirit as relationality connects well with systems theory’s primary explanatory features (§3.3): the interrelationality, interdependence, and openendedness of all systems, multi-directional causality, and the information-exchange character of systemic interactions. Parallels with Buddhism, especially as seen in the Huayen tradition (§6.2), clearly emphasize further the interdependent origination of all things, the importance of parts to wholes and signifijicance of parts within wholes, and the nonduality between mind— in this case, Buddha Mind—and nature. By this time, of course, a variety of interesting questions has opened up which may allow for a fruitful comparison of metaphysical and theological issues between Christian and Buddhism. Beginning with the parallels delivered from the appropriation of fijield theory, what is the signifijicance of Pannenberg’s correlation of pneumatology and fijield ontology on the one side and the Kyoto School’s fijield metaphysics on the other? While Pannenberg would understand the divine fijield as giving “space” to creaturely fijields of activity, thereby distinguishing between God and creatures and avoiding pantheism, Nishida and Nishitani would both understand the transcendental fijield of shunyata as the “context” of concrete fijields of activity and thereby attempt to fijind a way between the idealism of Yogacara schools of Buddhism and the realism characteristic of the earliest Abhidharmic literature. To be sure, neither Nishida nor Nishitani—or Buddhists in general, for that matter—would understand such a transcendental fijield

3 Thus does Episcopalian priest and New Testament scholar, John P. Keenan, “The Genesis of All Our Dependently Arisen Histories: The Divine Plan of Creation,” in Damien Keown, ed., Buddhist Studies from India to America: Essays in Honor of Charles S. Prebish (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), 260–69, esp. 266–28, sketch a “Mahayana reading of Genesis” emphasizing emptiness, dependent arising, and two truths—with the last leading to a revisioning of Hebrew-Christian salvation history as dependently arisen narratives explicating “our” experience and holding “us” accountable (rather than a sovereign creator God) for how things will turn out in the bigger picture with regard to the seventh day of sabbath rest. As an evangelical and pentecostal theologian, I can afffijirm Keenan’s emphasis on human (moral) responsibility without denying the role for divine providence.

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in theistic terms amenable to classical Christian orthodoxy, even if the rhetoric of “absolute emptiness” is employed. Yet, even with this caveat, does the Kyoto School’s fijield ontology accomplish some of what Christian theology does with its doctrine of God the Creator? From this dialogical perspective, then, a further set of questions emerge. Is it possible to read both accounts as sustaining a theological understanding of creation or nature as emergent from the divine ruah’s hovering over the waters? From this, insofar as basho serves as the fijield or principle of individuation enabling the further specifijication and particularization of things, does this connect with the Genesis narrative’s explication of the creation’s processes as involving division, diffferentiation and separation? If Stephen Happel is correct in saying that, “What the best science is telling us [is] about the way divine action operates in our world,”4 then is it possible to understand the science of emergence and of interrelatedness as not only confijirming the insights of pneumatological theology, but also as connecting with the wisdom of the Buddhist tradition? What about the parallels connected with emergence theory? Here we are confronted with the related question about the nature of contingency and of the ground of the world or cosmos. A central claim of the doctrine of shunyata is that everything has no existence on its own, that all beings and things are transitory, and that all emerge in interdependence with each other. Is the world as a whole also therefore contingent and not necessary? Does this connect with the Christian experience and doctrine of grace? Is this compatible with the testimony of the creation narrative about the world as a whole and all the things in it as contingent and dependent fijinally upon the willing activity of God the creator Spirit? The related question regarding the world’s ground emerges at exactly this point. These have to do not only with what that ground is and how it is to be understood, but also with whether or not even the category itself is helpful in thinking about the ultimate nature of things. The Buddhists are explicit and consistent in afffijirming the interdependent origination of all things out of nothingness: All things derive from and return to shunyata, the “fijield” of Absolute Nothingness. On the Christian side, things are as complex. The traditional tension has been between the theological notion of creation out of nothing on the one side and creation out of chaos on the

4 Stephen Happel, Metaphors for God’s Time in Science and Religion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 73.

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other.5 While the former could be said to be implied in Genesis 1:1—even if its most explicit scriptural or extra-canonical (depending on whether one is Catholic or Protestant) articulation lies elsewhere (e.g., II Maccabees 7:28, II Baruch 21:4, and perhaps Rom. 4:17 and Heb. 11:3)—the latter idea seems to be much more clearly supported by the creation narrative as a whole, especially in light of Genesis 1:2. Can Christian theology therefore afffijirm both, with the doctrine of creation ex nihilo pointing to the ontological contingency of the world in its dependence upon the willing activity of God and the doctrine of creation out of chaos suggestive of the cosmological processes of the divine activity? In either case, major comparative questions persist. For starters, are not the difffijicult questions related to the Christian doctrine of creation, including the question of “how an unconditioned, permanent, immutable, simple god could create a world which is conditioned, temporally structured, changing and internally diversifijied,”6 parallel to the difffijicult questions in Buddhist metaphysics about how a material world, illusory though that may be to some, can be derived from what is ultimately mind or consciousness? Further, can we view the Buddha’s admonition against speculating about cosmogony as an alternative response that parallels Aquinas’ doctrine of creation that was flexible enough to accommodate either the world being everlasting or its having had a beginning?7 Was not Aquinas attempting to make sense of the received biblical and theological traditions amidst the best philosophic and scientifijic ideas of his time and did not his response create some theological space for scholastic and medieval Christians to reconsider afresh the issues? Last, but not least, might there be a parallel between the role of ruah elohim in the Genesis creation narratives and that of shunyata in the cosmology of the Mahayana tradition? Does not the Christian notion of the divine breath or spirit also refer to the divine mind on the one hand, and is not the Mahayana shunyata also understood in the Huayen and 5 I discuss these notions further, along with the idea of creatio ex Deo (creation out of the divine) in my “Possibility and Actuality: The Doctrine of Creation and Its Implications for Divine Omniscience,” The Wesleyan Philosophical Society Online Journal [http://david .snu.edu/~brint.fs/wpsjnl/v1n1.htm] 1:1 (2001). For further discussion, see Paul Copan and William Lane Craig, Creation Out of Nothing: A Biblical, Philosophical, and Scientifijic Exploration (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2004). 6 See Perry Schmidt-Leukel, “The Unbridgeable Gulf ? Towards a Buddhist-Christian Theology of Creation,” in Perry Schmidt-Leukel ed., Buddhism, Christianity and the Question of Creation: Karmic or Divine? (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 109–78, quote from 160. 7 See Schmidt-Leukel, “The Unbridgeable Gulf ?” 166–70.

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Tibetan streams, at least, also in terms of the consciousness of the Buddha Mind? Of shunyata, it has been said: “Creation is contemplation and contemplation is creation. When sunyata remains in itself and with itself, it is contemplation; when it subjects itself to diffferentiation it creates. As this act of diffferentiation is not something imposed upon it but an act of self-generation, it is creation; we can say it is a creation out of nothing. Sunyata is not to be conceived statically but dynamically, or better, as at once static and dynamic.”8 Is this a plausible Buddhist articulation, in an idealistic philosophical framework, of the pneumatological reading of Genesis where creation emerges from chaos through a process of division and separation as guided by the work of divine consciousness? I return to this question momentarily. Beyond these comparative questions related to the origins of the world, interesting parallels emerge from systems theory with pertinent philosophical and theological implications, two of which will retain our attention. The fijirst is that a systems-theory reading of the primeval narratives highlights the hierarchical embeddedness, nestedness, and interconnectedness of all things understood as interworking structures. Similarly, the Huayen metaphysics that insists on the mutuality of emptiness and form, of principle and phenomena, of the one and the many, of universality and particularity, and of mind and concrete actuality, intersects with systems theory’s nested confijigurations, feedback loops, and information exchanges. However, within the pneumato-theological framework of the creation account, such interdependence and openendedness extends beyond the “horizontal” trajectories of creation’s relationships to include the “vertical” trajectory of the God-world relationship. Of course, Christian theology has never denied this relationship even if, as was previously mentioned, God is better said to “respond to” rather than “depend on” the world. Yet how might the Christian and Huayen perspectives mutually inform and perhaps even illuminate a more satisfying and coherent account of the God-world relationship (on the Christian side) and the one-andthe-many problematic (on the Buddhist side)? Can Huayen metaphysics which emphasizes the interpenetration of the many in the one and viceversa provide a more robust ontological account of the contribution of

8 Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, “Reason and Intuition in Buddhist Philosophy,” in Charles A. Moore, ed., Essays in East-West Philosophy: An Attempt at World Philosophical Synthesis (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1951), 17–48, quote from 45.

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the many to the one such that the value of each particularity is not only preserved but accentuated? This notion may be helpful to those with eyes illuminated by the Spirit: the view that all things, maybe even the tragic and the evil, are understood to have redemptive value in the larger theological scheme of things can be provided with a more robust metaphysical underpinning. On the other side, can the Christian theological account of the perichoretic relationality of the triune persons which preserves the distinctions of the three as interrelated even while emphasizing the unity (albeit not as a fourth) provide a more robust personalistic account of universality-and-particularity and the-one-and-many such that the ethical and moral dimension of relationality is not only preserved but underscored? This in turn may provide the Buddha Mind with a more robust metaphysical account both for the discernment of good and evil and for the ethical obligation confronting all sentient beings, not just enlightened bodhisattvas. The second set of issues derived from systems theory with relevant philosophical and theological concerns is that regarding the relationality or nonduality of mind and materiality, subject and object. Here, it is noted that the exchange of information and intercausal structurings between dissipative systems can be said to be fundamentally “cognitive” in character (§3.3). At this level, there are actually two distinct but related matters, one ontological and the other epistemological. The former concerns the relationship between mind or consciousness and the natural world. On the Christian side, the pneumatological rereading of the creation narratives leads to an understanding of the ruah of God as the intellective form of the world’s formative processes. Ruah is the divine means of speaking, dividing, separating, and structuring the world and its things. Divine creation thereby overcomes the dualism between bottom-up causal processes on the one side and top-down mental causation on the other. On the Buddhist side, the self-emptying nature of the world means that the cosmos is ultimately nothing more or less than the universal Buddha Mind that enables all phenomena to arise. The Huayen School here treads a middle way between the “mind-only” idealism of the Yogacara Buddhist tradition on the one side and the dharmic or atomistic realism of the early Abhidharma schools on the other. We began this volume many pages ago noting the appearance of a vision of an “enchanted” world in our contemporary postmodern times. Might the emergence of notions of spirit in the religion and science conversation not only participate in such a reenchantment of the cosmos but also be a prime contributor to the discussion? From the perspective of

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Buddhists involved in the religion and science dialogue, are there similar developments in terms of the foundational role of consciousness to the evolution of the world? To be sure, what Christians mean by Spirit and what Buddhists mean by consciousness are very diffferent. Yet it is undeniable that both sides have reacted to materialistic views of nature that involve positivistic and reductionistic interpretations of the scientifijic data. Both Christians and Buddhists thus have resisted any rampant scientism that eliminates the role of spirit or consciousness in the world. The epistemological issue concerns the unity of the subjective knower and the objects of knowledge, be they empirical or abstract. On the Christian side, humans are knowing beings precisely as en-spirited by the divine ruah. As such, the Spirit is the ground of both the relationship between human beings and the natural world, and of the interpersonality and intersubjectivity characterizing human interaction and identity. On the Buddhist side, basho is the fijield or context of consciousness which gives rise to the subject and the object together. As such, basho is the relational “between” before and beyond subject and object. Can these notions be given more robust theological content? Can they fijind further confijirmation in the idea that the Spirit is the relational “between” also concerning God and the world? Even more radically, can this also point a “middle way” to the truth of the Spirit as being the “between” of the Father and the Son, the love who unites the Lover and the Beloved? Put pointedly, are there similarities between a pneumatological epistemology—what I call a pneumatological imagination—and an epistemology of basho? After all, as the Catholic theologian Donald Mitchell notes, it could be said that the “Holy Spirit is the very love that unites the Father and the Son, a unity in which, because of their ekstasis in it, they are all one. Since the Father and the Son mutually indwell in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit indwells in the Father and the Son. In his kenosis, he keeps nothing for himself but is fully love of Father and Son. This relation determines his dynamic identity as well.”9 Compare this with the following, informed by Nishida’s logic of basho: “ . . . the Trinity’s place is the work of the Holy Spirit, whose main function is to confront the Father and the Son with one another in their distinctive relationships. Needless to say, the work of the Holy Spirit is not something external to the Father and the Son, as a container is external to its contents, for the Holy Spirit

9 Donald W. Mitchell, Spirituality and Emptiness: The Dynamics of Spiritual Life in Buddhism and Christianity (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1991), 93.

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works through the interdependent relationship of the Father with the Son. Consequently, the topos of the Trinity is the existential place where the persons are confronted by the Holy Spirit.”10 Might Christians receive unexpected philosophic resources to engage with issues of perennial wonder in the Christian tradition if they turned East for a change, and engaged in dialogue not just with Plato and his heirs but with the Buddha and his followers?11 Of course, the diffferences might be that at the end of the day, Christian theology afffijirms the personal character of the divine ruah, while Buddhism insists on the emptiness (or the self-emptying nature) of even the Buddha Mind in the attempt to strike a middle way between personalism and impersonalism. Here, it would seem, we come upon the impasse in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue.12 Rather than engaging this question immediately, however, I wish to explore further comparisons between Christianity and Buddhism that may alleviate some of the dissonance on precisely this point, and do so precisely by thinking further about a pneumatological theology of creation and the cosmos. 8.2 Pneuma and Pratityasamutpada: On Cosmology and Philosophy of Nature Having begun the comparative survey of pneuma and shunyata along with identifying some of the mutually informative philosophical and theological issues, we are in some position to attempt a reconstruction of the Christian doctrine of creation and the cosmos from a pneumatological perspective in dialogue with science and Buddhism. To facilitate this, I will engage in conversation with the work of Joseph A. Bracken, SJ, professor emeritus of theology at Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio.

10 See Masaaki Honda, “The Encounter of Christianity with the Buddhist Logic of Soku: An Essay in Topological Theology,” in Paul Ingram and Frederick Streng, eds., BuddhistChristian Dialogue: Mutual Renewal and Transformation (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1986), 217–30, quotation at 225. 11 This is the question pondered by Gerald McDermott, “What If Paul Had Been From China? Reflections on the Possibility of Revelation in Non-Christian Religions,” in John G. Stackhouse, Jr., ed., No Other Gods Before Me? Evangelicals and the Challenge of World Religions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2001), 17–36. 12 As argued by Russell H. Bowers, Jr., Someone or Nothing? Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness as a Foundation for Christian-Buddhist Dialogue, Asian Thought and Culture 27 (New York: Peter Lang, 1996).

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My interest in Bracken’s project derives from his prolonged attempt to develop a Christian trinitarian and pneumatological theology in dialogue fijirst with the German idealism of Hegel and Schelling and the process philosophy and theology of Alfred North Whitehead, and then later extended to include the interreligious dialogue.13 The initial results of his constructive efffort were presented in Spirit and Society: A Trinitarian Cosmology.14 In this volume, the title’s two central categories are synthesized so that the world’s ultimate constitutive realities, societies, are organized by varying elements of form (spirit, especially the Hegelian Geist or concept). To fijill out the argument, Bracken accomplishes a shift in Whitehead’s process philosophy so that it is not actual occasions alone that are the fundamental building blocks of reality, but actual occasions and the aggregates of actual occasions organized socially which are able to exercise agency collectively as societies. The organizational pattern of social structures is termed “objective spirit” using the language of Hegel, while the collective agency directed toward self-constitution, perpetuation, and transformation is termed “subjective spirit” using the language of Schelling.15 More specifijically, Whitehead’s notion of “societies in terms of fijields governed by diffferent patterns of order and/or intelligibility” is extended in dialogue with Laszlo’s systems theory, and Whitehead’s idea of the extensive continuum as the “all-embracing fijield of relationships for actual occasions past, present, and future” is not only the fijield of the world process but also that of the divine activity.16

13 The trinitarian theology is developed in early on: Joseph A. Bracken, What are They Saying about the Trinity? (New York: Paulist Press, 1979), and The Triune Symbol: Persons, Process, and Community (Lanham: University Press of America, 1985). For an overview, see Bracken, “Panentheism from a Process Perspective,” in Bracken and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, eds., Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology of God (New York: Continuum, 1997), 95–113. 14 Joseph Bracken, S.J., Spirit and Society: A Trinitarian Cosmology (Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press, and London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1991); cf. also Bracken, “Spirit and Society: A Study of Two Concepts,” Process Studies 15:4 (1986): 244–55. 15 So Bracken writes: “From Hegel’s notion of spirit, I draw the idea that ontological totalities are more than aggregates of material elements by reason of an immanent principle of self-organization that unites these elements to one another and constitutes them an intelligible whole or structured fijield of activity. . . . Objective spirit, therefore, is not the self-expression of a suprahuman individual subjectivity . . ., but rather the ongoing selfexpression of a complex community of individual subjectivities” (Spirit and Society, 112 and 119). 16 Bracken, Spirit and Society, 68 and 59 respectively.

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Bracken’s metaphysical revisioning comes not at the expense of traditional or orthodox Christian trinitarianism, but as a contribution to the renaissance of trinitarian theology in the modern and postmodern world. Hence the suggestion is made that “each of the three divine persons should be understood as a personally ordered society of occasions and that their unity as one God is the unity of a Whiteheadian structured society or society of subsocieties”; drawing from the patristic notion of perichoresis, “the three divine persons co-constitute from moment to moment their communal reality as one God through their interrelated activities vis-àvis one another.”17 In this view, the Father is the originating principle not only of the Godhead but also of the world, while the Son is respondent to the Father as well as the focal point of the world’s unifijied response to the divine lure. The Spirit is then both the vivifying principle between the Father and the Son even as the Spirit relates God and the world. Together, “each of the divine persons is a subsistent fijield of (intentional) activity and that their ongoing interaction with one another results in a common fijield of intentional activity, which I would identify as the extensive continuum within Whitehead’s categorical scheme.”18 Reminiscent then of the language of Pannenberg, the hypothesis is proposed of “God and the world as interpenetrating fijields of activity with the fijield proper to creation contained within the even larger fijield of the divine intentional activity.”19 This proposal attempts to solve the trinitarian problem since the divine community/unity exists only in and through the interrelational fijields of the three persons, thus avoiding a “fourth” divine nature. In this conception, Bracken proposes a panentheistic model of the God-world relationship wherein God is neither only apart from nor only immanent in the world, but the world is constituted within the energy fijield of the triune persons. At the conclusion of Society and Spirit, Bracken devotes a tantalizing two pages and half a dozen paragraphs to note the parallels between his proposal and that of Nishitani’s fijield of shunyata.20 This lead is followed up on in his next two books. The thesis of The Divine Matrix is that the Infijinite, testifijied to in all religious traditions, is experienced not

17 Bracken, Spirit and Society, 124, recapitulating and adapting the argument in The Triune Symbol. 18 Bracken, Spirit and Society, 129. 19 Bracken, Spirit and Society, 159. 20 Bracken, Spirit and Society, 163–64.

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as an entity but as an ongoing activity.21 What is understood in the West in terms of Aristotle’s notion of motion, Aquinas’ idea of pure act, Eckhart’s, Schelling’s and Heidegger’s concept of subjectivity, or Whitehead’s doctrine of creativity, is identifijied in the East in terms of the dynamic identity-in-diffference of Brahman and Atman, the Buddhist dependent co-origination, and the way of the Tao. Here Bracken picks up his discussion with Buddhism and Nishitani by resorting to Nagarjuna’s doctrine of shunyata as interdependent arising (pratityasamutpada) and to Nishida’s idea “pure experience” and “logic of the place of nothingness.” With regard to Nishida, Bracken notes, “in virtue of this genuinely ‘existential’ logic, one is fijinally coming to terms with God and existential selves as interactive subjects of existence and activity rather than as simply interrelated objects of thought within one’s world view or metaphysical scheme.”22 Bracken is careful to distinguish God and existential selves as interactive subjects in order to guard against a pantheistic identifijication of God and the world. Here, his distinction between the Godhead as the intersubjective fijield of activity of the three persons is important. Bracken’s The One in the Many develops this argument even further.23 In completing his turn toward a relational theology, Bracken proposes a neo-Whiteheadian universal metaphysics of intersubjectivity that highlights the equiprimordiality of “societies” alongside their constituent actual occasions as the basic building blocks of reality. A relational, dynamic and social ontology emerges that argues for the intersubjective nature of all things within the tripersonal intersubjective reality of God. The problematic of the one and the many is recast in the intersubjectivist framework so that the one is understood as the sociality and interactivity of the many. Within this framework, Bracken hopes to extend what he considers to be the insufffijiciently theological notion of supervenience (of Philip Clayton, Jaegwon Kim, and others) with the help of a reconceptualized Whiteheadian concept of society.24 Rather than saying that mind is merely a higher-level entity of brain emergent in a new context, Bracken understands the mind as a “fijield-based entity” inseparable from

21 Joseph Bracken, The Divine Matrix: Creativity as Link Between East and West (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1995). 22 Bracken, The Divine Matrix, 93–11, esp. 110; italics original. 23 Joseph A. Bracken, S.J., The One in the Many: A Contemporary Reconstruction of the God-World Relationship (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 2001). 24 See Bracken, The One in the Many, ch. 6, and, “The World: Body of God or Field of Cosmic Activity?” in Santiago Sia, ed., Charles Hartshorne’s Concept of God: Philosophical and Theological Responses, Studies in Philosophy and Religion 12 (Dordrecht, Boston and London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1990), 89–102.

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the brain and the body in this life on the one hand, but capable of being incorporated progressively into the divine fijield of activity so as to exist apart from the brain and body but in relationship with God in the afterlife on the other. In his discussion of Nishida in this volume, Bracken notes the parallels between his own proposal and that of Nishida’s “logic of place,” especially as developed in the idea of “pure experience in the Inquiry into the Good (1911).25 It is clear that Bracken has arrived at this point of his career to insights very close to what Nishida began with in another context. Clearly influenced by the Geist of Hegel and German idealism, Nishida had at that time already afffijirmed “Spirit” as the unifying activity of reality in general and of the self in particular. Of course, “there is no unifying activity apart from that which is unifijied and no subjective spirit apart from objective nature.”26 Similarly, God is the infijinite base of activity giving rise to reality as a whole, including subjectivity and objectivity, spirit and nature, preserving their distinctions, yet overcoming the received dualisms.27 The connections between this view and Bracken’s understanding of God as the infijinite—albeit trinitarian—fijield which gives space to creaturely fijields of activity are clear. There are certainly remaining questions in Bracken’s project, including that pertaining to the idealist leaven of Hegel and Schelling throughout his reconceptualization. What is most important for our purposes, however, is Bracken’s serious grappling with reformulating a theological vision that not only makes metaphysical claims and takes the interreligious dialogue seriously, but also attempts to engage the discussions in contemporary science.28 From the pneumatological perspective which informs this investigation, allow me to make three observations.

25 Bracken, The One in the Many, 111–20. 26 Kitaro Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, trans. Masao Abe and Christopher Ives (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990), ch. 13 on “Spirit”; quotation from 76. 27 Nishida, An Inquiry into the Good, chs. 14, 30 and 31. In his comparative study of Nishida (esp. his The Logic of Place and a Religious World-View) and Luther, Christian theologian Kazuo Muto, “ ‘Immanent Transcendence’ in Religion,” Japanese Religions 12:1 (1981): 1–20, esp. 20, notes that Nishida’s “place of nothingness” might be called a place “fijilled with the omnipresent Holy Spirit. There the ‘hidden God’, who is ‘absolute Being because He is absolute Nothingness’ and ground of the world, will reveal himself as in a ‘seeing face to face’.” 28 Bracken has continued to fijill out his ideas in a series of books published over the last six years, although no major innovations are introduced; I overview three of these volumes in my review article, “A Catholic Commitment to Process Cosmology: An Appreciation of Joseph Bracken’s Latest Works,” in The Global Spiral: A Publication of the Metanexus Institute (2010) [http://www.metanexus.net/book-review/catholic-commitment-process-cosmology].

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First, I fijind helpful Bracken’s distinction between the tri-personal dimensions of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the transpersonal, social and intersubjective unity of the Godhead. I would suggest a similar distinction pertains between God as Spirit and the Holy Spirit. The former could be understood in terms of the intersubjective unity of the triune persons while the latter is the specifijic fijield of divinity relating fijirst to the other two persons and then to the world as the presence and activity of God. In this scheme, the oneness of God is nothing apart from the three and vice-versa. In the language of the patristic theologians, the triune God is a perichoretic or circuminsessional relationality. I fijind complementarities between this view and the Huayen conviction that the one and the many not only arise together but are also completely interpenetrative. To extend this observation, second, would be to observe the coorigination of God’s identity as creator of the world by Spirit and Word (Irenaeus’ “two hands of the Father”) and the world as the terminus of God’s creative act. Note the precise claim here is not that God comes to exist with the world but that God assumes the feature of “creator” only through the creative act. Conversely, the world is creation only through the divine creative activity, and that apart from that creativity, the world is itself indeterminate, even chaotic emptiness (at least according to the Priestly author).29 But we have both God as creator and the world as created precisely through the ruah Elohim’s hovering over the waters and enabling the speech-act of God. Herein we fijind a convergence of Bracken’s claim regarding God as Infijinite act or activity and Nishida’s understanding of basho as the empty fijield of activity. The biblical witness of God as Spirit confijirms this fundamental intuition regarding God as relational creator. The result is the creation, including human beings, gifted with the power

29 Note the possible convergence here of not only the world’s self-emptiness, the motif of creation ex nihilo, and the aboriginal Nothingness as indistinguishable from God. For detailed argument, see Robert Cummings Neville, God the Creator: On the Transcendence and Presence of God (1968; reprint, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); Neville, The Tao and the Daimon: Segments of a Religious Inquiry (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982), chs. 4, 6 and 9; and Neville, Behind the Masks of God: An Essay toward Comparative Theology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), chs. 3 and 5. For exegetical intimations derived from the creation narrative, see Milton Scarborough, “In the Beginning: Hebrew God and Zen Nothingness,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 20 (2000): 191–216, and Scarborough, “Myth and Phenomenology,” in Kevin Schilbrack, ed., Thinking through Myths: Philosophical Perspectives (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 46–64.

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of co-creating according to their being fashioned after the image of God (see also the discussion in §3.1 above). This leads, third, to Bracken’s understanding of the intersubjective, interrelational, and interactive character of all things. We found this insight enunciated already in our pneumatological reading of the creation narratives (§4.3) as well as in the Madhyamaka doctrine of interdependent arising elaborated by the Huayen metaphysics of interpenetration (§6.2). Bracken’s accomplishment is to tie together insights from emergence, systems, and supervenience theory so as to articulate a robustly relational metaphysic replete with theological insight.30 My own contribution is to emphasize the pneumatological underpinnings of such a theology or metaphysics of relationality. The Spirit is, after all, always the shy or neglected member of the Tri-unity, and that precisely because the Spirit points always to the Son even while the Spirit is the Spirit of Christ and the Spirit of God. As such, the Spirit makes God present and active, not substantively, but relationally. Similarly, the Spirit is the “between” which enables creaturely relationality and human interrelationality. In a pluralistic, globally interdependent/networked, and interdisciplinary world, can Bracken’s insights contribute further to an understanding of the kind of pneumatological theology of nature envisioned here? At the level of ontological or metaphysical abstraction, of course, vague philosophical categories can be specifijied variously so that it would appear the answer is yes. But what if we descended a bit more into the concrete issues related to the discussion of human nature?

30 I have been reading Bracken for over a decade. It is difffijicult to say how he’s influenced my argument in this volume. At the very least, in retrospect while reviewing this section, I can say that he and I have arrived at substantially the same position, even if I may have begun more with pneumatology and he with process cosmology. See also my SpiritWord-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., and Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 112–14, for more on Bracken. For another robustly relational worldview, see Harold H. Oliver, A Relational Metaphysic (The Hague, Boston and London: Martinus Nijhofff, 1981), Relatedness: Essays in Metaphysics and Theology (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1984), and Metaphysics, Theology, and Self: Relational Essays (Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 2006). See also the discussion about “The Relatedness of All Things” conceptualized after creation’s participating in the trinitarian life of God by Samuel M. Powell, Participating in God: Creation and Trinity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), ch. 8; the relational theology of F. LeRon Shults (see discussion about in §2.1, n.14); and the process relational theology of Paul Sponheim: Faith and the Other: A Relational Theology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), and Speaking of God: Relational Theology (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2006).

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Bracken’s metaphysics of intersubjectivity provides an excellent transition toward a Christian pneumato-theological anthropology in and after the dialogue with Buddhism and with science. The previous discussions have led to emphases on human beings as emergent, interpersonal, and environmentally and cosmologically situated on the one hand, and self-organizing, self-relating, and self-transcending on the other (on the Christian side; ch. 3); and as fundamentally empty of self-existence and thoroughly relational and interdependently arising fijields of converging interpersonal and intrapersonal activity on the one hand, and yet manifestations of the “true self ” of Buddha Nature and Buddha Mind on the other (on the Buddhist side; ch. 6). Here, I want to introduce the pneumatological anthropology of Lynn de Silva (1919–1982), Methodist theologian and missionary to Sri Lanka, in order to solidify the results of this dialogue on human nature. Engaging with de Silva’s proposals will also enable us to include Theravadin Buddhism—the predominant Buddhist tradition in Sri Lanka—as a complement to our focus on Mahayana ideas so far in this volume. De Silva’s most important work (for our purposes) is his The Problem of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity.31 In this book, he challenges the assumption that the Christian doctrine of the soul and the Theravadin Buddhist doctrine of non-self are contrary; rather, the biblical view of the human is consonant with the Buddhist denial of an immortal soul, which makes it possible to articulate a biblical anthropology in Theravadin Buddhist categories. In his own words, de Silva argues the following thesis: “Spirit” is thus a category of self-transcendence. In transcending one’s self one can cease to be a self, i.e. realise that one is anatta. But selfhood is always being fulfijilled by being transcended. It is by transcending the self that self can be negated and afffijirmed. This is possible only in an “I-Thou” relationship. In this “I-Thou” relationship is to be found the true meaning of anatta, which denies the “soul” without yielding to a nihilistic view, and which afffijirms authentic selfhood without yielding to an eternalistic view. In such a view the doctrine of anatta is not rejected; rather the spiritual meaning implied in it is preserved. The spiritual meaning of anatta is the

31 Lynn A. de Silva, The Problem of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity (New York: and London: Barnes & Noble Import Division of Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., and The Macmillan Press Ltd., 1979).

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realisation that by oneself one is nothing and that it is by self-negation or denying oneself that one’s true self can be discovered in a relationship.32

De Silva’s argument proceeds along three lines. First de Silva clarifijies the Theravadin no-soul theory (recall the Sinhalese context of his ministry) against the Vedantic and Indian background as an attempt to fijind a via media between eternalism and nihilism. Second, he discusses the “biblical view of man” not only as multi-dimensional, interpersonal, communal, and relational creature, but also through the scriptural metaphors of dust, shadow, and mist. Here, de Silva draws a parallel between the psychophysical unity of human beings in the biblical framework and the nameform unity (nama-rupa) of the Buddhist analysis. He also points out, however, that while Buddhism denies the immortality of the soul, yet it also insists both on self-salvation (recall again that de Silva is working primarily with the Theravada tradition) and on the capacity for karmic perpetuation of the skandhas of the “self ” in rebirth. By contrast, in the Bible, human beings neither have an immortal soul since it is created ex nihilo and sustained by divine graciousness, nor are able to save themselves. As such, “in the Bible we have a thoroughgoing doctrine of anatta which in a sense is far more radical than the Buddhist doctrine. Thus when the Bible says ‘no’ to eternalism it says so without any reserve. Is the biblical view then a thorough-going nihilism?”33 Of course, the answer is negative. This leads, third, to the pneumatological dimension of de Silva’s reconstructed theological anthropology. The category of “spirit,” of course, is polyvalent in the Bible, referencing the omnipresence and omnipotence of God; that which constitutes personality and personhood; the communal dimension of human interpersonal and intersubjective relationality; and the self-transcending aspect of human becoming. Set alongside the anatta teaching of Buddhism, however, de Silva proposes to understand human beings as anatta-pneuma: “the self-empty but spirit-full life.”34 This is explicated in three dimensions. First, the anatta teaching rightly denies the idea of humans as having or being eternal souls; yet, the pneuma doctrine is also correct to point out that humans are not merely psychosomatic beings nor a bundle of

32 De Silva, The Problem of the Self, 5–6. This argument is anticipated by Hans Waldenfels’ discussion, in a Japanese Zen context, of Christ as “the emptiness of man”; see Waldenfels, Absolute Nothingness: Foundations for a Christian-Buddhist Dialogue, trans. James W. Heisig (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 160–62. 33 De Silva, The Problem of the Self, 84–111; quote from 85. 34 De Silva, The Problem of the Self, 89; cf. 101–03.

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aggregates but a dynamic relational and self-transcending quality. Second, anatta rightly exposes the self-emptying nature of the “self ” in order to liberate human beings from grasping and to enable the cultivation of the proper ethical orientation; yet, pneuma’s relationalism re-grounds such non-attachment within a communalism that safeguards a socially relevant ethic. Finally, anatta does direct human beings toward the transcendent summum bonum, even as Buddhists then wrestle with the tension between nirvana as supreme bliss and as extinction and annihilation; pneuma enables such a losing of the self in order to fijind the “true self ” in relational communion with the divine.35 As such, de Silva’s thesis is that “if anatta is real, God is necessary; it is in relation to the reality of God that the reality of anatta can be meaningful. Because man is anatta, God is indispensable; because man is absolutely anatta, God is absolutely necessary. The conditioned man (samkhata) has nothing to hope for unless there is an Unconditioned Reality (asamkhata) and it is in relation to the Unconditioned (God) that the full depth and signifijicance of anatta can be understood.”36 The anatta-pneuma conceptualization thus enables us to understand human beings as mutually related, not individualistically or egotistically constituted, and directed toward the transcendent relationship with the divine Spirit. In sum, “Anatta serves to stress the non-egocentric aspect and Pneuma the relational aspect of personhood. Anatta-Pneuma therefore signifijies what might be called nonegocentric relationality, or egoless mutuality. Thus, the anatta-pneuma formula captures in a nutshell, as it were, the essence of the nature of man.”37

35 I fijind the study of William Kraft, a Roman Catholic psychologist, all the more interesting in light of de Silva’s thesis. Kraft suggests that “Man cannot be fulfijilled without nothingness: to be something, to be someone, man must admit that he is nothing. Man must own up and live through nothingness to penetrate more fully the mystery of living. Nothingness calls man to live more fully. Nothingness says to man: Become who you are instead of ‘somebody’. Become vitally happy instead of reasonably content. Be, instead of not being”; see William F. Kraft, A Psychology of Nothingness (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1974), 129. 36 De Silva, The Problem of the Self, 9–10; cf. ch. 13 on “Anatta and God.” From the perspective of the psychological sciences, see also the parallel thesis of John H. Coe, “Beyond Relationality to Union: Musings Toward a Pneumadynamic approach to Personality and Psychopathology,” Journal of Psychology and Christianity 18:2 (1999): 109–128. 37 De Silva, The Problem of the Self, 103. Masumi Shimizu, “Das ‘Selbst’ im MahayanaBuddhismus in japanischer Sicht und die ‘Person’ im Christentum im Licht des Neuen Testaments” (Doctoral dissertation, Rheimischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Bonn, 1979), argues a similar thesis without explicitly utilizing the pneumatological hermeneutic

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De Silva goes on to discuss the “spiritual body” of the resurrection, the notion of progressive sanctifijication during and even after this life,38 and the reign of God as a beloved and loving community, all in the attempt to clarify his notion of human beings as anatta-pneuma and extend the scope of the anatta-pneuma understanding. De Silva is to be commended for taking his Buddhist neighbors seriously and learning from them, even as questions certainly remain for his project.39 When understood within the contact of the Mahayana understanding of shunyata in terms not only of voidness of inherent self-existence (anatman) but also in terms of transitoriness and especially interdependent origination, de Silva’s reading of pneuma points to a robust idea of interpersonal relationality. Recall that the Kyoto School did not emphasize the denial of the permanent “self,” but explicated shunyata as pointing to the interdependent emergence and arising of the self with the rest of reality.40 The resulting Madhyamaka ethic of compassion grounded in the interdependent arising of all beings would also complement de Silva’s quest for a viable social ethic. Yet de Silva’s project also opens up toward an analysis of the deeper issues surrounding the quest for a pneumatological anthropology. This concerns, of course, the specifijically theological dimensions of what he

adopted by de Silva; cf. also Silvio E. Fittipaldi, “Zen-Mind, Christian-Mind, Empty-Mind,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 19:1 (1982): 69–84. 38 Thus, there is an eschatological convergence in Buddhist and Christian understandings of the self. As Leonard Swidler puts it, “the authentic self is a never-ending project, an open-ended movement toward an ever-receding horizon, toward a fullness that is never completed—a constant growth toward that which Christians and others call the in-fijinite God”; see Swidler, “A Jerusalem-Tokyo Bridge,” in Seiichi Yagi and Leonard Swidler, ed., A Bridge to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1990), 1–72; quote from 13. 39 The most serious charge I have found is Winston King’s criticism that de Silva’s dialogue with Buddhism is from the periphery of the Christian tradition in terms of the apophatic strains, rather then from its center; see King, “No-Self, No-Mind, and Emptiness Revisited,” in Paul O. Ingram and Frederick J. Streng, ed., Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Mutual Renewal and Transformation (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1986), 155–76, esp. 160–61. Otherwise, those who have written on de Silva’s theology have been quite sympathetic, rather than critical. See Tissa Brian de Alwis, “Christian-Buddhist Dialogue in the Writings of Lynn A. de Silva” (unpublished Th.D. dissertation, Andrews University, 1982); Van Ni, “Christian-Buddhist Conversation: The Relevance of the Lynn A. De Silva approach in the Context of Myanmar” (Th.M. thesis, Western Theological Seminary, 1999); and Ian Gillman, “Some Reflections on the Self in Christianity and Buddhism—After and Beyond Those of Lynn De Silva,” Asia Journal of Theology 1:1 (1987): 106–12. 40 See Harry Lee Wells, “The Problem of the Phenomenal Self: A Study of the Buddhist Doctrine of Anatta with Specifijic regard to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue” (Ph.D. diss., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, 1988; Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfijilms International, 1988).

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calls anatta-pneuma. Certainly, the parallels between Nishida’s “mutual determination of individuals,” Nishitani’s “circuminsessional interpenetration” of all beings, and St. John’s vision of the perichoretic unity between Jesus and the Father as paradigmatic also of the community of disciples (cf. Jn. 17:21–26) should not be underplayed.41 Yet it is also the case that Christian anthropology follows from Christian theology rather than, as in the Buddhist case, anthropological considerations preceding reflection on things ultimate. More specifijically, Christian understanding of what it means to be human follows from extended deliberation over the mysteries of Christ as the divine-human person and the triune personality of God.42 It is therefore not without reason that Jesus Christ is the paradigmatic model of authentic and true personhood, himself confessed by Christians to being the exact image (eikon) of the invisible God in all of the divine gloriousness (cf. Col. 1:15 and Heb. 1:3). Perhaps not coincidentally, de Silva himself has provided, in another article, a reconsideration of the doctrine of Christ, albeit one that (unfortunately) is not directly correlated with his pneumatological anthropology.43 Instead of developing a Spirit-christology, de Silva opts to correlate Christ as Logos in John with the kenotic Christ of Philippians 2 in order to follow through with the paradox of how he “negated himself [through self-emptying] without losing himself [because of his identity with the unconditioned God].”44 The pay-offf for de Silva is that such a biblical portrait of Christ’s self-denial resonates with other mythical and typological analogies in other faiths, Mahayana Buddhism in particular, that highlight similar acts of self-denial (by the Buddha or other bodhisattvas) in order to provide for the salvation of sentient beings. My contribution would be to complement de Silva’s christological reflections with his pneumatological anthropology in general and a Spirit-christology in particular. In this account, both the kenosis of the Christ is made possible by the Spirit (through whom Jesus is conceived) and the Son’s identifijication with the Father during his period of incarnation is also due to the bond of the Spirit. While we will return to consider the kenosis passage more

41 See Donald W. Mitchell, “The ‘Place’ of the Self in Christian Spirituality: A Response to the Buddhist-Christian Dialogue,” Japanese Religions 13:3 (December 1984): 2–26. 42 Cf. Julia Ching, “Paradigms of the Self in Buddhism and Christianity,” BuddhistChristian Studies 4 (1984): 31–50. 43 Lynn de Silva, “Buddhism and Christianity Relativised,” Dialogue NS 9:1–3 (1982): 43–72, esp. 56–60. 44 de Silva, “Buddhism and Christianity Relativised,” 57.

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extensively in the next chapter, for the present, note that connecting Silva’s kenotic christology with his pneumatological anthropology reinforces the explicitly theological elements of the latter. The result is that even those most sympathetic to an apophatic spirituality and anthropology would, from the Christian perspective, ultimately fijind the language of “authentic human selfhood” wedded to the Christ symbol more satisfying and coherent than a merely “non-self ” understanding.45 At the end of the day, then, do Christians and Buddhists part ways in their fijinal understandings of the self even given the similarities that we have uncovered, at least on the surface? This seems to be the case given that the apparent parallels of human beings as relational or interdependently originating are interpreted diffferently in each tradition, viz., the “true self ” understood fijinally either in terms of Christ or in terms of the Buddha Mind. Yet perhaps this is still too quick. It lapses back into what the dogmatic tradition says about the nature of Christ while overlooking the performative and practical dimensions of christology. Such a move might be said to privilege orthodoxy over orthopraxy in a fairly arbitrary manner so that who Jesus is comes to defijine what he does or what we ought to do, rather than, as the original disciples came to see, that their following Jesus itself resulted in inferences and, eventually, confessions about who he was. If we take such a praxis-oriented approach, then there may be more dialogue possible with Buddhist traditions that, after all, are focused on the achievement of liberation from the bonds of samsaric existence. In that case, Christ is less a model for theological anthropology than he is a soteriological guide, just as the Buddha also pointed beyond himself to nirvanic enlightenment. Thus we are led, in our next chapter, to take up these methodological issues that are also, for Christians, fundamentally christological, and for both traditions, fundamentally soteriological.

45 So even a contemporary Eckhartian spirituality would fijind Christian and even human fulfijillment in identity with Christ, going as far as to say such union occurs most intimately and deeply in and through the Eucharistic experience. See Bernadette Roberts, The Experience of No-Self: A Contemplative Journey, rev. ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), 127–63, esp. 144; cf. Roberts, The Path to No-self: Life at the Center, rev. ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991).

CHAPTER NINE

SPIRIT AND METHOD: SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY The preceding chapter attempted to both summarize the fijindings of parts I and II of this book, and to push toward a deeper philosophical theology of nature (cosmology and anthropology) in dialogue with the work of Joseph Bracken and Lynn de Silva respectively. Before concluding with specifijic reflections on the implications for our task for a more specifijic theology of the environment, however, we need to return to engage substantively the methodological and normative theological questions already introduced in the introductory chapter and elsewhere (e.g., §2.1 and §5.2). Simply put: can there be Christian and Buddhist dialogue given the disparity of the horizons of interpretation and understanding of the two worldviews? And, can there be religion and science dialogue in general—and Christian-Buddhist-science trialogue, more specifijically—given the explicitly soteriological hermeneutical frameworks of Christianity and Buddhism and the methodological agnosticism (at best) of science?1 The normative question is whether or not our pneumatological hermeneutic embraces the insights derived from dialogue at the cost of losing its distinctive Christian identity, or whether the christological center of Christian theology has been compromised in this attempt to develop a multidisciplinary and perhaps multireligious theology of nature.2 Put another way, while a pneumatological hermeneutic has been presented as providing an explicitly theological rationale for engaging theology of

1 Methodological agnosticism would merely acknowledge that the status of transcendent claims are beyond the purview of science, and thus from at least a social scientifijic perspective, be willing to represent the beliefs of subjects of study without presuming one way or the other about their truthfulness. For a description of such a methodologically agnostic stance and how it is more faithful to social scientifijic inquiry, see Ralph W. Hood, Jr., “Methodological Agnosticism for the Social Sciences? Lessons from Sorokin’s and James’s Allusions to Psychoanalysis, Mysticism and Godly Love,” in Matthew T. Lee and Amos Yong, eds., The Science and Theology of Godly Love (DeKalb, Ill., Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), 121–40. 2 I have raised some of these questions in another context in my “The Holy Spirit and the World Religions: On the Christian Discernment of Spirit(s) ‘after’ Buddhism,” BuddhistChristian Studies 24 (2004): 191–207.

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nature in dialogue with science and other faiths, how can the resulting fijindings (chapter 8) be both distinctively Christian and yet respect the alterity or diffferences represented by the other religious tradition (in this case, Buddhism)? We had proceeded with the hope that returning to the methodological and normative questions later may be more fruitful in terms of the avenues of dialogue already opened up. I wish to now take up this set of questions, and will engage the problematic of theological anthropology fijirst (§9.1) and the question of cosmology after that (§9.2). These inquiries will then lead to more direct comments on the methodological issue of religion and science percolating throughout this study (§9.3). Throughout, we will continue our dialogue with the Buddhist tradition through the fourth generation Kyoto School philosopher, Masao Abe. It goes without saying that the following extends considerations of theological method in a decidedly interreligious and interdisciplinary context.3 Much of the Christian discussion of theological method has been concerned with the sources and then the operational or functional procedures for doing theology.4 Yet we have come to see that methodological intuitions are intertwined with theological and normative commitments, oftentimes subtly so. In a pluralistic world then, methodological considerations have to be at least sensitive to the philosophical or theological loyalties of more than a singular religious tradition. Comparative notes then have to observe how such religious loyalties play out methodologically, so that the comparisons and contrasts are much more complicated than one might imagine.5 In the case of this volume, of course, we have not only an interreligious conversation underway but also matters pertaining to the religion and science dialogue that have to be adjudicated methodologically. Let us see then how the Christianity-Buddhism-science trialogue fares in light of our journey so far.

3 Again, I had registered the import of these horizons for theological method at various places in my Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., and Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2002); this volume as a whole, and this chapter in particular, extend that discussion. 4 The apex of this discussion remains the very important work of Bernard Lonergan, Method in Theology (New York: Herder & Herder, 1972). 5 The complexities are clearly laid out in Robert W. Smid, Methodologies of Comparative Philosophy: The Pragmatist and Process Traditions (Albany, NY: State University of Chicago Press, 2009).

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chapter nine 9.1 Interpreting the Human: Pneumato-christological Perspectives

Succinctly stated, the hermeneutical problem before us is this: in spite of the similarities between Christian and Buddhist understandings of the human person uncovered in this inquiry—viz., human beings as relational or interdependently originated, or human beings as, in de Silva’s view, pneuma-anatta—do such parallels actually hold up when we press further into the Christian and Buddhist self-understandings of what it means to be truly human? After all, in the Christian view, human beings are understood fijinally through the image of Jesus the Christ, while in the Buddhist view, human beings are understood fijinally, in the Mahayana tradition at least, through the self-emptying Buddha Mind. Does not even de Silva suggest that anatta serves a deconstructive purpose of clearing away false views of the self while pneuma serves a reconstructive purpose of identifying the “true self ” made in the divine image? But, this is too simplistic. What if, now that we have been informed by a Buddhist set of lenses, we re-approached the Christian scriptures or, in particular, St. Paul’s injunction (Phil. 2:5–8) to “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”?6 More specifijically, St. Paul goes on to clarify this mind of Christ: . . . who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.7

6 This section in particular responds to criticisms—e.g., Todd L. Miles, A God of Many Understandings? The Gospel and Theology of Religions (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2010), ch. 6, and Keith E. Johnson, Rethinking the Trinity and Religious Pluralism: An Augustinian Assessment (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2011), ch. 4—that my pneumatological theology of religions severs the work of the Spirit from the work of the Son. Not only have my critics not contextualized my claims adequately in light of my extant work, they have also failed to provide an alternative theological rationale for engagement with other faiths on their terms. Perhaps they do not think such a task is important at the present time, which is fijine; but theologians should at least ask what kinds of questions those they are criticizing are asking before claiming the higher ground. 7 For a historical-critical analysis of this passage, see Jack T. Sanders, The New Testament Christological Hymns: Their Historical Religious Background, Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 15 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971).

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In the context of the Christian-Buddhist dialogue, the following questions are at least worthy of consideration. Does this christological model of the kenotic Christ return us to the Buddhist vision of the empty self ? Does not the image of Jesus emptying himself exemplify the authentic mode of being human? Is it perhaps for this reason that Jesus said, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life” (Jn. 12: 24–25; cf. Mk. 8:34–37)? And if afffijirmative responses to these questions are at least plausible, then does the anatta of Buddhism and the Mahayana teaching of non-self invite comparison with the central truth of the Christian message regarding the ultimate nature of humanity, and that precisely through a convergence of the existential and theological meaning of Jesus Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection? Could Jesus’ entire life in this framework be understood as a process of self-disidentifijication from even the most fundamental of categories (deity itself ) and an entrance into an identity beyond such categories at least as historically understood?8 Some of these ideas have been suggested by Masao Abe (1915–2006). For the past generation, Abe has been an able interlocutor for Christian theologians wishing to engage Buddhism in general and Zen Buddhism more specifijically.9 In a ground-breaking essay developed slightly after and quite apart from de Silva’s reflections, and later greatly expanded, Abe’s creative 8 See, Agnes C.J. Lee, “Mahayana Teaching of No-Self and Christian Kenosis,” ChingFeng, 28:2–3 (1985): 130–51; Bonnie Bowman Thurston, “The Conquered Self: Emptiness and God in a Buddhist-Christian Dialogue,” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 12:4 (1985): 343–53; Tokiyuki Nobuhara, “Sunyata, Kenosis, and Jihi or Friendly Compassionate Love: Toward a Buddhist-Christian Theology of Loyalty,” Japanese-Religions 15:4 (1989): 50–66; and Rewata Dhamma, “Sunyata-Emptiness and Self-Emptying-Kenosis,” Middle-Way 68 (1993): 77–84. 9 Carrying forth the mission of the Kyoto School intentionally, Abe’s numerous books have all engaged with the philosophical and theological traditions of the West. See his A Study of Dogen: His Philosophy and Religion, ed. Steven Heine (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992); and the trilogy, Zen and Western Thought, ed. William R. LaFleur (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1985); Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, ed. Steven Heine (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1995); and Zen and Comparative Studies, ed. Steven Heine (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997). In addition, four volumes of Abe’s dialogues have been published, one more philosophical, Donald W. Mitchell, ed., Masao Abe: A Zen Life of Dialogue (Boston: C.E. Tuttle, 1998); and the other three with Christian theologians: Roger Corless and Paul F. Knitter, eds., Buddhist Emptiness and Christian Trinity: Essays and Explorations (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1990); John B. Cobb, Jr. and Christopher Ives, eds., The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990); and Christopher Ives, ed., Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation with Masao Abe (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1995). In what follows, I draw primarily from these dialogical volumes.

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proposal is that the true and empty self is the kenotic Christ revealing the self-emptying God.10 The language of “kenotic Christ” should not be confused with the nineteenth century kenotic christologies which speculated about the pre-existent Logos laying aside certain divine attributes in order to assume human form.11 No, “kenosis or emptying is not an attribute . . . of God, but the fundamental nature of God himself.”12 Thus Abe’s koan-like thesis: “The Son of God is not the Son of God (for he is essentially and fundamentally self-emptying). Precisely because he is not the Son of God, he is truly the Son of God (for he originally and always works as Christ, the Messiah, in his salvational function of self-emptying).”13 This provides a christological hermeneutic replete with theological and anthropological conclusions: “God is not God (for God is love and completely self-emptying); precisely because God is not a self-afffijirmative God, God is truly a God of love (for through complete self-abnegation God is totally identifijied with everything including sinful humans)”; and “Self is not self (for the old self must be crucifijied with Christ); precisely because it is not, self is truly self (for the new Self resurrects with Christ).”14 For this reason, to “have the mind of Christ” is to recognize that human beings created in the image of God should embrace their self-emptiness precisely as that divine image is most clearly revealed in the kenotic Christ. This christo-theo-anthropological understanding of Abe’s is informed, of course, by his Zen Buddhist perspective which afffijirms both that the fundamental human problem producing sufffering is self-centeredness, and that, as his Kyoto School teachers have long insisted, the ground of existence, shunyata is the unobjectifijiable nothingness “deep enough to

10 Originally from a 1984 conference, Masao Abe, “Kenosis and Emptiness,” in Corless and Knitter, eds., Buddhist Emptiness and Christian Trinity, 5–25. The expanded version is “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” in Cobb and Ives, eds., The Emptying God, 3–65. 11 On this point, see Steve Odin, “Abe Masao and the Kyoto School on Christian Kenosis and Buddhist Sunyata,” Japanese Religions 15:3 (1989): 1–18, esp. 14. Note that Abe’s Christian dialogue partners include not only Tillich and Altizer, but also Rahner and, especially Moltmann and his The Crucifijied God (1972); see Abe, Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, chs. 8 and 12, and “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” 14–26. For an overview of the diffferences of present kenotic christologies from their nineteenth century precedents, see Lucien J. Richard, O.M.I., A Kenotic Christology: In the Humanity of Jesus The Christ, The Compassion of Our God (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1982), passim, but esp. ch. 6. 12 Abe, “Kenosis and Emptiness,” 18, emphasis Abe’s; cf. “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” 16. 13 Abe, “Kenosis and Emptiness,” 13, italics Abe’s; cf. “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” 11. 14 Abe, “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” 16 and 12 respectively.

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encompass even God, the ‘object’ of mystical union as well as the object of faith.”15 As such, even shunyata must not be grasped on to: “any attachment to Mind must be done away with. Mind which is identical with Buddha is not a psychological mind or a metaphysical mind. It is no mind, because the true mind is no mind. Likewise, true Buddha must be no Buddha. Hence ‘No mind: no Buddha’.”16 Not surprisingly, then, this truth of shunyata—that the “true self ” is the Buddha Mind which as itself empty is thereby no mind—is what Abe posits at the heart of Christian faith. Understood positively and soteriologically alongside his suggested reading of the Philippian hymn, shunyata enables the “boundless openness” of all things to all other things, including that of God to the world and vice-versa, so as to avoid any kind of self-centeredness, whether that be anthropocentrism or even theocentrism. Further, shunyata enables each thing to respond spontaneously and naturally to all other things given each thing’s self-emptying nature, and describes the “interpenetration and mutual reversibility” of all things as devoid of self-existence and fully open to each other. Finally, shunyata as self-emptying is not-shunyata, and as such is better understood not as a noun but as the dynamic and creative activity of emptying all things in order to make each what it is. For this reason, as Abe says later, “in my interpretation of the Trinity, I do not impose the Buddhist category of Shunyata on the Christian notion of the Trinity from outside but try to grasp it from within as deeply and dynamically as possible.”17 There are a number of questions for consideration in any Christian dialogue with Abe. At one level, there is the question of how faithful Abe is to the Mahayana tradition, especially that of Nagarjuna. Although Abe attempts to retrieve, as did other Kyoto School members, the Madhyamaka notion of shunyata, there are tendencies that reflect his absolutization of the concept not present in Nagarjuna’s more epistemological approach. As I am not a scholar of Buddhism, I will not take up this particular issue. At a second level, of course, Abe offfers an interpretation of Christian doctrines

15 See Abe, “The Problem of Self-Centeredness as the Root-Source of Human Sufffering,” in Buddhism and Interfaith Dialogue, 63–72; and Abe, “God, Emptiness, and the True Self,” The Eastern Buddhist 2:2 (1969): 15–30, quotation from 28. 16 See Abe, “The Concept of Self as Reflected in Zen Buddhist Literature,” in his Zen and Comparative Studies, 67–74; quote from 72. 17 Abe, “Rejoinder,” in Christopher Ives, ed., Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation with Masao Abe (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1995), 175–204, esp. 190; cf. Abe, “Kenosis and Emptiness,” 20–22, and “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” 29–33.

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from his Buddhist standpoint. As we shall see, his proposals have been severely criticized. My own more charitable reading of Abe’s suggestions, however, attempts to put into practice the sensibilities of the middle way doctrine of getting beyond either-or—either Abe is right or he is wrong— although I am motivated fijirst and foremost pneumatologically rather than by Madhyamakan commitments. Hence given Abe’s overtures, how might Christians respond in an age of modern science? The central question has to be something like this: has Abe succeeded in re-reading the central Christian myth through his own Buddhist lenses in terms that preserve the Christian and Buddhist understandings of true human personhood previously acquired? Perhaps, but perhaps not. There have been a number of critical responses especially by Christian theologians questioning his proposal on various points. Exegetically, does Abe’s reading ignore the sacramental and liturgical context of the Philippians hymn as well as the eschatological metamorphosis anticipated not only in the exaltation of the Son (cf. Phil. 2:9–11) but also in the fullness of the reign of God? Hermeneutically and theologically, can Abe move from the kenosis of Christ to the kenosis of the Father or of God as quickly or as easily as he does? How valid is Abe’s metaphysical interpretation of a text written to shape afffective and cognitive dispositions—“Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus . . .”—and thereby to inform Christian praxis?18 For our purposes, the question lies at the level of the logic of the interreligious dialogue. Does Abe’s approach preserve the real otherness of Christianity in his Buddhist re-construal? Is it in fact possible that the interreligious dialogue can preserve the integrity of both sides so that each side informs but is not absorbed by the other?19 Whatever other

18 For these specifijic critical questions, see, e.g., Steve Odin, “A Critique of the Kenosis/Sunyata Motif in Nishida and the Kyoto School,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 9 (1989): 71–86; Wolfhart Pannenberg, “God’s Love and the Kenosis of the Son: A Response to Masao Abe,” in Christopher Ives, ed., Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A BuddhistJewish-Christian Conversation with Masao Abe (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1995), 244–50; E.D. Cabanne, “Beyond Kenosis: New Foundations for Buddhist-Christian Dialogue,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 13 (1993): 103–17; and Eric Hall, “Kenosis, Sunyata, and Comportment: Interreligious Discourse beyond Concepts,” Journal of Interreligious Dialogue 7 (August 2011) [http://irdialogue.org/category/journal/issue07/]. 19 These questions are posed by Robert Magliola, “In No Wise is Healing Holistic: A Deconstructive Alternative to Masao Abe’s ‘Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata’,” in David Loy, ed., Healing Deconstruction: Postmodern Thought in Buddhism and Christianity, AAR Reflection and Theory in the Study of Religion 3 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1996), 99–118, and Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, “Sunyata, Trinity, and Community,” in Christopher Ives,

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criticisms, it needs to be acknowledged that true to the intention of the Kyoto School to contribute to the emergence of a world philosophy and world theology, Abe’s Zen Buddhist perspective has opened up an alternative view on the Christian understanding of human selfhood as interpreted through historic christological and theological convictions. In that sense, he has reached out to the Christian tradition from his Buddhist vantage point and sought to engage the other on its own terms (christological, in this case) albeit as informed by the categories familiar to Abe’s home tradition. The results are such that even if the details of Abe’s proposal are fijinally rejected by Christian theologians, can anyone be so sure as to say that no theological ground has been gained?20 My own work reciprocates Abe’s effforts and engages Buddhism albeit in ways informed and enabled by the categories familiar to my own tradition. In my case, of course, the dominant categories are those derived from pneumatology. As such, my response enables an afffijirmation of Buddhist shunyata understood as interdependent coorigination from the pneumatological standpoint of relationality. In de Silva’s terms, human beings are anatta—devoid of self-existence—even as they are pneumatically and relationally constituted, fijirst with others and with the environment, and ultimately with the divine. In terms of Abe’s kenotic christo-theo-anthropology, I would suggest a pneumato-christo-anthropology. Hence, I propose that true human selfhood be understood in terms of Jesus the Christ, respecting Christian theological and hermeneutical commitments on the one hand even while reaching back to Abe’s initiations on the other. Let me explicate briefly in two steps. First, note what Abe is attempting to accomplish. His kenotic christology is a reaction to the Logos or pre-existence christology wedded to a substance or Aristotelian metaphysic. To be avoided are the dualistic and static implications of a christology within an outmoded three-story universe. If there are a range of responses that have emerged to these issues, Abe’s arguably deserves consideration. My Christian and pneumatological perspective, however, provides an alternative toward accomplishing

ed., Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation with Masao Abe (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1995), 136–49. 20 The recent book by David Jensen, In the Company of Others: A Dialogical Christology (Cleveland, Oh.: Pilgrim Press, 2001), attempts to advance the dialogue with Buddhism precisely through the Pauline image of the kenotic Christ.

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just these objectives—via a Spirit-christology.21 In this view, Jesus is the Christ precisely as the anointed one. More explicitly, Jesus is “a man attested . . . by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs” (Acts 2:22), and “God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power” (Acts 10:38). In fact, the entirety of the Christ event can and should be understood within such a pneumatological framework. This is clearly seen not only in Jesus’ conception (Luke 1:35), fetal development (1:39–44), dedication (2:25–35), baptism (3:21–22), temptation (4:1–14), and ministry (4:18–19), but also in his death through the “eternal Spirit” (Heb. 9:14) and resurrection from the dead according to the “Spirit of Holiness” (Rom. 1:2– 4). Yet pneumatology illuminates not only the christological mystery, but also the anthropological one. This is because Luke’s story of Jesus as the anointed one serves also as a prelude to his account of the new humanity, the ecclesia of God birthed on the Day of Pentecost by the outpouring of the Spirit. This leads, second, to the next move that parallels Abe’s reconstitution of theology and anthropology from the foundation of kenotic christology. In my case, however, the move made is from Luke’s Spirit-christology to Luke’s Spirit-ecclesiology and hence, Spirit-anthropology. Human beings are able to emulate Jesus as their paradigmatic model—and thus were also called anointed ones or “Christians” (Acts 11:26)—not on their own strength but as enabled by the Spirit of God. Using the field-metaphor, the acts and deeds of Jesus Christ continue to inform, shape, inspire, and illuminate those of Christians as mediated through the presence and activity of the Holy Spirit. Here, I borrow and develop Seiichi Yagi’s suggestion that, “If a star is extinguished even millions of years ago, its light continues still to reach the earth, as the words of Jesus reach us and continue to address us although he himself died 2,000 years ago. In the case of the extinguished star we encounter a star here and now as it was several million years ago.”22 The trinitarian mystery here replicates itself in the

21 For starters, see Ralph Del Colle, Christ and the Spirit: Spirit-Christology in Trinitarian Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), and Sammy Alfaro, Divino Compañero: Toward a Hispanic Pentecostal Christology (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Press, 2010); cf. also my Spirit-Word-Community, 28–32, The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), §2.1, and Who is the Holy Spirit? A Walk with the Apostles (Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete Press, 2011). 22 See Seiichi Yagi, “A Bridge from Buddhist to Christian Thinking: The ‘Front-­Structure’,” in Yagi and Leonard Swidler, A Bridge to Buddhist-Christian Dialogue (New York and Mahwah: Paulist Press, 1990), 73–144, esp. 82. Cf. also Buri, The Buddha-Christ as the Lord of the True Self: The Religious Philosophy of the Kyoto School and Christianity, trans. Harold H.

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domain of theological anthropology. Jesus is who he is precisely as the one anointed by the Spirit even as the Spirit’s identity is selflessly that of Jesus the Christ, and of God. Similarly, the followers of Jesus gain their lives precisely in losing them through baptism into the death of the kenotic Christ and resurrection by the Spirit of Jesus (Rom. 6:1–11 and 8:1–12). So, in the paradoxical words of St. Paul, “I have been crucifijied with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). Paradoxical, of course, precisely because the speaker here can be solely or strictly neither Paul, if he were truly crucifijied with Christ and no longer living, nor Christ, who cannot speak apart from a living and breathing (through the divine ruach) Paul.23 Only a pneumatological framework enables such distinction and yet also fusion of identities since only Paul as made alive or en-spirited by the Spirit of Jesus can speak as himself even while the living Christ speaks through the apostle who has died, or has been put to death through his encounter with the risen Christ as a necessary prelude to his being born again through the Holy Spirit. If so, then is it only a pneumatological ontology that charts a middle way between monism and dualism such that what might be considered a kind of non- or qualifijied-dualism emerges, one that still respects the diffference between God and creation, even as it invites comparison with the nondualism of the Buddhist tradition? Of course, this mystery of the God present and active by Spirit and Word returns us to the creation narrative where the ruah Elohim enabled the creative word (dabhar) that called the world into existence, order, and complexity. And if on Christian theological terms the immanent Trinity is

Oliver (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1997), esp. ch. 10.3 on “Enlightenment and the Holy Spirit,” 347–50. 23 This was Nishitani’s observation; see Shizuteru Ueda, “Jesus in Contemporary Japanese Zen, with Special Regards to Keiji Nishitani,” in Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Thomas Josef Götz, and Gerhard Köberlin, eds., Buddhist Perceptions of Jesus (St. Ottilien: EOS, 2001), 42–58, esp. 48–51. Cf. also Seiichi Yagi, “Ego and Self in the New Testament and in Zen,” in Walter Dietrich and Ulrich Luz, eds., The Bible in a World Context: An Experiment in Contextual Hermeneutics (Grand Rapids, Mi., and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 33–49, and the comments of J.K. Kadowaki, S.J., Zen and the Bible: A Priest’s Experience, trans. Joan Rieck (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980), 122–23, on 1 Cor. 6:19—“After several months of arduous practice [of zazen], he suddenly awakens one day to the marvelous reality of Paul’s words. . . . He realizes that prayer is not himself speaking to God with human words, but God speaking within him in His own words. When his whole ‘body’ is penetrated by and made one with this reality, and he realizes that this is rightly his own prayer, that it comes from his own heart, and that this is what real prayer is, how great his joy will be!”

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the economic Trinity and vice-versa, in that sense, the Spirit and the Word which or who empty themselves for the sake of the world do so precisely as an extension of their mutually self-emptying and self-donating activity within the divine life.24 This preserves both the Christian perichoretic understanding of God as being three personally constituted relations and perhaps also Abe’s Buddhist-inspired insight that it is the divine emptiness alone which constitutes God as three and yet one. Is it the case, then, that such a Spirit-christology can be authentically Christian but also open to interreligious and interdisciplinary interpretations? Alongside and parallel with this question is the anthropological one: is such a pneumatological anthropology also possibly consistent with what science tells us about human nature and with Buddhist perspectives on humanity in its dynamic self-emptying? Does pneumatology enable such comparative and interdisciplinary insights that complement and illuminate, rather than undermine, traditional christological and anthropological orthodoxies? 9.2 Interpreting the Cosmos: Pneumato-theological Approaches Yet, even granting the potentiality of the preceding pneumatological approach for resolving the christological and buddhological impasse between the two traditions, the methodological skeptic may remain unconvinced. Christianity and Buddhism are so fundamentally diffferent that any attempt to compare the two can proceed only by ignoring their deep disagreements: kenosis by choice versus kenosis as compulsion; adherence to the Aristotelian logic of noncontradiction versus afffijirmation of the conjunction of opposites; commitment to revelatory Scripture versus the emphasis on experience and the openendedness of the Dharma; sin versus ignorance as the primordial human problem; othersalvation versus self-salvation; divine command ethics versus situationist ethics; resurrection versus reincarnation; personal God versus impersonal shunyata, and so on.25 Of course, these are generalizations that admit of exceptions on both sides. 24 John Polkinghorne, ed., The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, and London: SPCK, 2001). 25 Detailed in Russell H. Bowers, Jr., Someone or Nothing? Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness as a Foundation for Christian-Buddhist Dialogue, Asian Thought and Culture 27 (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), esp. ch. 4. I here itemize objections from an evangelical theologian precisely because evangelicals are more apt to highlight the diffferences rather than

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But, even if allowances were made that there is diversity of views in Christianity and Buddhism on each point to enable the two traditions to dialogue, the classical response is that the positions articulated at such meeting points would more often than not threaten to betray the historical and orthodox teachings of each tradition. So, for example, Eckhart’s “God beyond God” may be brought into fruitful dialogue with Nishida’s God as unity of opposites, of personality and impersonality (§6.3), but only at the risk of admitting into the discussion some heterodox ideas as measured by historical and dogmatic standards. Permit me this one digression regarding the personal God of traditional perfect-being theism versus impersonal shunyata. Garma Chang reminds us, for example, that: A Buddha never “thinks,” but always “sees.” This is to say that no thinking or reasoning process ever takes place in a Buddha’s Mind; he is always in the realm of direct realization, a realm that is intrinsically symbol-less. The claim that a symbol-less Buddha-Mind can convey its experience to men by means of symbols, is perhaps an eternal mystery that can never be solved by reason. But is it not also true that if such a mystery exists, it cannot be otherwise than indescribable—a term denoting the impossibility of approximating something through symbolization?. . . . A mind that sees all must not, and cannot follow the shifting-realm, and one-at-a-time approach; it must see things in numerous realms, one penetrating another, all simultaneously arising on an enormous scale!26

Does this illuminate the Buddha’s omniscience? Even more strikingly, does this illuminate the Christian theological claim regarding divine omniscience?27 Christian reflection on divine omniscience has led some to explore the mode of God’s cognition as being non-discursive and

similarities between Christianity and other world religions. To their credit, however, evangelicals are currently engaging more with the interreligious dialogue than ever before. Still, these are not just “evangelical” problems, but also basically Christian ones. For another discussion of the diffferences, see Ninian Smart, “The Work of the Buddha and the Work of Christ,” in S.G.S. Brandon, ed., The Saviour God: Comparative Studies in the Concept of Salvation (1963; reprint, Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980), 160–73. 26 Garma C.C. Chang, Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism (University Park, Penn., and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), 8 and 19. 27 See Bruce Reichenbach, “Omniscience and Deliberation,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16 (1984): 225–36. For an overview of the debated issues concerning omniscience and especially divine foreknowledge, see my “Divine Knowledge and Future Contingents: Weighing the Presuppositional Issues in the Contemporary Debate,” Evangelical Review of Theology 26:3 (2002): 240–64, and “Divine Knowledge and Relation to Time,” in Thomas Jay Oord, ed., Philosophy of Religion: Introductory Essays (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press/Nazarene Publishing House, 2003), 136–52.

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nondual, notions that parallel the Buddha Mind.28 But here, of course, we have moved from the center of historic orthodoxy towards speculative philosophical theology. The goal of this volume is neither to resolve every difffijicult question in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue nor to sort out all of the issues regarding divine omniscience. My more modest task here is to provide a justifijication for the position that the incommensurability— at least in some circles—between Christianity and Buddhism on the one hand and between religion and science on the other is not so radical that communication is impossible, especially not for those open to exploring possible avenues of bridging from one tradition to the other. In order to continue pursuing this more limited objective, I want to take up the difffijicult concept of time in Christianity and Buddhism which we have already broached in passing before (§3.3). At one level, the disparity of their views is highlighted when it is alleged the former understands time in terms of linearity best exemplifijied in the irreversibility of nature’s and history’s processes while the latter understands time in cyclical terms that enable a kind of reversibility of both natural and historical events. If such were the case, the allegation continues, then any convergences between Christianity and Buddhism on the one hand and any complementarity between Buddhism and science on the other would remain only on the surface given the radical disparity that exists at this fundamental level of world- or time-views. It is fair to say that the allegations concerning this point are not entirely without merit. This is especially the case given the Huayen understanding of the interpenetration of all things, including the modes of time (see §6.2),29 as well as Nishida’s reappropriation of this doctrine in his understanding of basho as the fijield unifying opposites or contradictories (§6.3). This has led Masao Abe to defend this notion of temporal reversibility more recently, saying that “in the clear realization of the beginningless and endlessness of the process of living-dying at this moment, the whole process of time is concentrated in this moment and, with this moment as a pivot, past and future can be reversed.”30 If Abe means exactly what

28 Which I discuss briefly in my article, “Ignorance, Knowledge, and Omniscience: At and Beyond the Limits of Faith and Reason after Shinran,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 31 (2011): 201–10, esp. 207–8. 29 This is argued extensively by Steve Odin, Process Metaphysics and Hua-yen Buddhism: A Critical Study of Cumulative Penetration vs. Interpenetration (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1982). 30 Abe, “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” 59; my emphasis. Elsewhere, Abe notes that with such realization, “The unidirectionality of time is thus overcome and the reversibility

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he says, is there not a problem between this view and the assumptions of science concerning the laws of entropy and the evolutionary direction of natural and historical processes even despite the questions about this issue at the quantum level?31 But even at the quantum realm, is there not a fairly clear distinction between reversibility understood in terms of reverting to the conditions of previous states (allowed by quantum mechanics) and reversibility understood in terms of backward transformations or backward causation (disputed, if not disallowed)?32 How can Huayen Buddhism and the Kyoto School assume the reversibility of time and yet sustain a dialogue with science? Just as difffijicult is the dialogue with Christianity. On this point, does not the Huayen view of the interrelatedness and interpenetration of the one and the many, and of past, present, and future, undermine not only the linearity of time and of history’s movement but also the ethical dimension of causal responsibility? In the latter case, does not saying that all things cause the one even while the one causes all things prohibit the assignment of moral responsibility in the ethical domain? To be sure, Huayen thinkers throughout history have salvaged the notion of personal ethical responsibility as identifijiable while granting that causal notions cannot be absolutized in the “Net of Indra.”33 Of course, their critics, even fellow Buddhists, have not been convinced. Thus, to extend this set of questions, even if temporal notions of before and after are fuzzy at best

of time is realized from this bottomless depth of eternity”; see Abe, “Time in Buddhism,” in his Zen and Comparative Studies, 163–69, quote from 167. Cf. also the Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, trans. Jan Van Bragt (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), chs. 5–6 on sunyata, time, and history, from whom Abe’s discussion draws. 31 The idea of temporal irreversibility is practically axiomatic in the sciences; see David Ray Grifffijin, ed., Physics and the Ultimate Signifijicance of Time: Bohm, Prigogine, and Process Philosophy (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1986); Peter Coveney and Roger Highfijield, The Arrow of Time (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1990); Paul Davies and John Gribbin, The Matter Myth (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992); Ilya Prigogine, From Being to Becoming: Time and Complexity in the Physical Sciences (San Francisco: W.H. Freeman & Co., 1980); and Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, Order Out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1984), esp. chs. 7–9. Cf. also Lawrence W. Fagg, The Becoming of Time: Integrating Physical and Religious Time (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995). 32 See Victor J. Stenger, The Unconscious Quantum: Metaphysics in Modern Physics and Cosmology (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1995), 263–66, esp. 266n14. The question of backward causation aside, of course, there is also the unresolved issue of simultaneity in quantum theory; see the intriguing discussion in Victor Mansfijield, Synchronicity, Science, and Soul-Making: Understanding Jungian Synchronicity through Physics, Buddhism, and Philosophy (Chicago: Open Court, 1995). 33 See Jin Y. Park, Buddhism and Postmodernity: Zen, Huayen, and the Possibility of a Buddhist Postmodern Ethics (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2008), ch. 10.

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and incoherent at worst at the quantum level, this does not help human flourishing at the macro-world, dependent as that is on notions of moral responsibility which assume the irreversibility of history’s processes. In sum, is dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism possible given Abe’s position on time’s reversibility? Of course, the fijirst thing to do is to clarify exactly what Abe does and does not mean. Abe is not afffijirming the reversibility of physical time as assumed and explored by natural science, or as captured by a reel of fijilm (reversible in a technical or artifijicial sense), nor is he afffijirming the popular notion of reversibility associated with the myth of the primordial or eternal return. This is because the standpoint of shunyata aspires to go beyond precisely the linear-cyclical dichotomy.34 Abe is, however, making a number of positive claims. First, time, like everything else, is empty or interdependently originated. In itself, time is but an abstraction; it is only given in things, seasons, events, etc. Second, and more important, time is best “grasped” by humans existentially from within, realized from moment to moment as what Abe calls our “living-dying.” This is the Buddhist insight into our experience of continuity and discontinuity, of nirvana and samsara, of “the depth of time rather than the expanse of time.”35 Each moment is an advance and a return to the vertical dimension of shunyata as the root source of time and history; each moment, time dies and is reborn. In this way, time is both reversible in one respect (in the vertical or awakened dimension which has attained the insight that we are not fijinally temporal but also “eternal” beings),36 but irreversible in

34 Abe, “A Rejoinder,” in John B. Cobb, Jr. and Christopher Ives, eds., The Emptying God: A Buddhist-Jewish-Christian Conversation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), 157–200, includes a section titled “Time and History,” 189–95; see esp. 189–90. 35 Abe, “Rejoinder,” in Divine Emptiness and Historical Fullness, 202. 36 For a retrieval and reappropriation of this Platonic idea of eternity as the unity of time’s past, present and future modalities, see Robert Cummings Neville, Eternity and Time’s Flow (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993). Two distinct features of Neville’s position need to be noted, however. First, whereas Abe privileges the “eternal” present as that which unifijies past and future, Neville understands the three modes of time to be unifijied by eternity. Second, Neville denies the neo-Platonic hierarchical order and its emanationism insofar as it is understood to afffijirm a continuity between the One and the many. Given the qualitative distinction between the divine and the created world, it is possible to afffijirm the radical transcendence of God and a systems ordering of the world without assuming that the latter’s hierarchies at some point cross over or reach a contactpoint with the divine reality. For Christian theologians and philosophers looking for an alternative to the Whiteheadian and process ontology and view of temporality, Neville’s is as good a candidate as any that is sensitive to classical theories of the relationship between time and eternity.

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another (on the horizontal or conventional dimension of compassionate action). In Abe’s view, this latter horizontal or conventional dimension is, of course, the proper fijield of ethical responsibility and action. Such a distinction is also what makes possible the expression of the bodhisattva’s compassionate self-emptying directed toward the salvation of all beings. This “endless process of the compassionate work of an awakened person trying to awaken others is no less that [sic] the aforementioned process of Sunyata turning itself into vow and into act through its self-emptying.”37 Abe’s is thus not merely subjectivistic or psychologistic notion of temporal reversibility, but existential and soteriological to its core. As such, Abe insists that “Buddhism is not closed to the possibility of a forwardmoving and irreversible historical time; further, it afffijirms anew every possible identity of history and time on the basis of the transtemporal depth of eternity.”38 But how does this fijit in a world of modern science? To be sure, Abe’s reconceptualization also allows him to revision Christianity’s “realized eschatology,” that which makes possible, at least within his metaphysical scheme, not only the Christian experience of repentance and forgiveness but also the ontological declaration of justifijication whereby our past is transformed in light of divine graciousness.39 There are intercultural implications here for Christian theology, especially concerning the doctrine of redemption. Given Abe’s presuppositions, is he not correct to see that the soteriological confession of the forgiveness of sins understood as covering or expiation implies a kind of reversibility regarding historical time such that it becomes possible for us to stand justifijied before God in Christ (Rom. 4:7–8 and Ps. 103:10–12)? Thus Nishitani observes: 37 Abe, “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” 60. What follows could also be understood as Abe’s answer to Inada’s insistence on the importance of understanding humanity as open and moving toward realization; see Kenneth K. Inada, “Problematics of the Buddhist Nature of Self,” Philosophy East and West 29:2 (1979): 141–58. 38 Abe, “A Rejoinder,” in The Emptying God, 194. Abe, “Time in Buddhism,” 168, thus afffijirms the unrepeatable and unidirectional forward movement of history even while insisting that “real forward movement must include its self-negation, that is the repeatability and reversibility of time.” Is this not parallel to Kaufman’s biohistorical via media proposal (between a linear and holistic understanding of time) which includes both a foundationalist aspect that sees history and biology as “grounding” the human condition, but at the same time also understands us not only as products of our environment and genes, but also as shapers of them? See Gordon Kaufman, God, Mystery, Diversity: Christian Theology in a Pluralistic World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 174–77. 39 Abe, “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” 60, and “A Rejoinder,” in The Emptying God, 193.

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chapter nine In a sense, the totality of time can only exist at a single instant. At the point in the home-ground of the present where the Will of God and creatures come into contact with one another, where time and eternity intersect, the things that occur as consecutive but once-and-for-all occurrences must be simultaneous. It is there that we have a fijield where irreversible time, without ceasing to be irreversible, becomes reversible. Repentance, the forgiveness of sins, resurrection from the dead, and the like, are inconceivable except on such a fijield.40

Further, just as there is a sense in which the one sin (of Adam) implicates and in that sense causes the fallenness of all,41 even so there is a sense in which the one righteous act (of Christ) implicates and in that sense causes—both proleptically and eschatologically (if not universalistically)— the redemption of the all (cf. Rom. 5:12–21 and 1 Cor. 15:28). Finally, insofar as the practice of meditation or the embarking on the Eightfold Path is identical with the realization of enlightenment itself, does this present an alternative perspective on the interpenetration of justifijication and sanctifijication, of faith and works, as nondual aspects of the salvation experience? If we think with Abe along these lines, salvation is once-for-all and processive, rather than either-or; and enlightenment is both sudden and gradual, rather than either-or.42 For these reasons, the living-dying of each moment which opens up to the transtemporal dimension of eternity not only illuminates the Buddhist insight into the unity of continuity and discontinuity, nirvana and samsara, in our experience, but may also parallel the biblical claims that living we die and dying we live (2 Cor. 4:7–12; cf. Job 14:1), and that we realize eternity in our hearts, and the past and the future in our minds (cf. Eccl. 3:11). Does this in turn not illuminate the claim that salvation can also be understood, at least in part, as a redemption of the original design of creation from the defacement of the fall—e.g., as in the Pauline metaphor of the

40 Nishitani, Religion and Nothingness, 270. 41 This has recently been postulated, utilizing quantum entanglement theory as applied to the Big Bang, in terms of Adam’s fall having equal application both back toward T=0 and forward to the eschatological “end of time”; for a synopsis of the argument, see Martin J. Rice, “Universal Processes as Natural Impediments to and Facilitators of Godly Love,” in Matthew T. Lee and Amos Yong, eds., Godly Love: Impediments and Possibilities (Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2012), 171–94. 42 The latter is illustrated most clearly in the “Manifestation of the Tathagata” chapter of the Avatamsaka Sutra. See the translator’s introduction to Cheng Chien Bhikshu, Manifestation of the Tathagata: Buddhahood according to the Avatamsaka Sutra (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 1993), 3–44, esp. 23–26. Cf. also Peter N. Gregory, ed., Sudden and Gradual: Approaches to Enlightenment in Chinese Thought, Studies in East Asian Buddhism 5 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1987).

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Second Adam restoring the original intentions of the creation and of the First Adam; as in the idea of a new creation replacing the fallen world; and as in Irenaeus’ “recapitulation theology”—thus suggesting that Christian theological reflection has been open to considering time and history not only in linear terms, but also according to a somewhat cyclical model? Thus the prominence of the linear view of time and history, while dominant since St. Augustine, does not mean that other models are completely foreign to Christian theology. It is beginning to be realized, then, that there are various ways to understand the modes of time from a Christian perspective that ignore neither the plurality of human temporal experiences nor the diversity of the biblical witness to the ways in which God interacts with the world.43 How we understand time may thus not be an exact science. Rather, human temporality can be understood either biologically or as conscious experience in mythic, linear, or mystic terms, while scientifijic views of time can be broken down into according to the second law of thermodynamics, the general theory of relativity, or chaos theory, even as theological time can be understood according to the Hebrew Bible’s “salvation history” (of God’s interaction with Israel), the prophetic experiences, the wisdom or apocalyptic modes, or the New Testament’s witness to the divine reign as present, as coming, or as already-and-not-yet.44 Are there then not only many ways to view time but also many modes of time, even in the biblical traditions? Might these initial observations be further clarifijied from the perspective of pneumatological theology? Within this framework, justifijication is not the be-all and end-all of the Christian soteriology, but the initial saving act of God brought about by the Spirit (cf. 1 Cor. 6:11).45 Life in the Spirit is then an expression of the reality of justifijication so that there is not only a reversible transformation of the past (in Abe’s terms) but also a forward-looking trajectory to the justifijied life known as the process 43 I discuss some models in my articles, “Divine Knowledge and Relation to Time,” in Thomas Jay Oord, ed., Philosophy of Religion: Introductory Essays (Kansas City, Mo.: Beacon Hill Press/Nazarene Publishing House, 2003), 136–52. 44 See Wolfgang Achtner, Stefan Kunz, and Thomas Walter, Dimensions of Time: The Structures of the Time of Humans, of the World, and of God, trans. Arthur H. Williams, Jr. (Grand Rapids and Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002). 45 See Frank D. Macchia, “Justifijication and the Spirit: A Pentecostal Reflection on the Doctrine by which the Church Stands or Falls,” PNEUMA: The Journal of the Society for Pentecostal Studies 22 (2000): 3–22, as well as his book length argument, Justifijied in the Spirit: Creation, Redemption, and the Triune God (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010).

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of sanctifijication that culminates in glorifijication. For this reason, when Jesus comes into the life of Zacchaeus, his redemption includes a transformation of heart and perspective and a rectifijication of previous wrongs: “Lord . . . if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much” (Luke 19:8). This is the work of the Spirit, not only to constitute the original creation, but to accomplish the re-creation or re-constitution of the world (without just going backwards in time). Hence this is more than just an epistemological claim that to be caught up “in the Spirit on the Lord’s day” (Rev. 1:10) enables seeing what was, what is, and what is to come (cf. Rev. 1:19). It is also the ontological claim that to be in the Spirit is to be in the presence of God (Rev. 4:2fff.), and to be renewed by the Spirit is to be in Christ, wherein “there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see everything has become new!” (2 Cor. 5:17).46 It cannot be under-emphasized that this passing away of the old is not just a reference to time’s natural and historical flow. If that were the case, then the “arrival” of the new would be trivial, hardly worth the emphatic pronouncement of St. Paul. Rather, to live in the Spirit is to experience the freedom which liberates human beings from the yokes of the past (Gal. 5:1) even as it frees them to afffect the future (Gal. 5:13). Is this not what it means for people to experience the resurrection from the dead here and now (Gal. 5:24–25)? For this reason, the outpouring and reception of the Spirit of God not only inaugurates the last days in the present moment (cf. Acts 2:17), but also emphasizes the presence of the reign of God in our midst (cf. Luke 11:20 and 17:21). This is the grace of God, the presence and activity of the Spirit which calls us to realize that “now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” (2 Cor. 6:1–2). So also we have the call of God not to resist the Spirit: “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts” (cp. Acts 7:51 and Heb. 3:8). Herein, we observe not only the basis for the realized eschatology that Abe resonates with, but also a pneumatological point of entry into the meeting of time and eternity that Abe gestures to. In light of this discussion, is there a sense in which a pneumatological theology not only contributes to the possibility of a Christian understanding and perhaps even clarifijication of the Buddhist notion of time? Put alternatively, I am suggesting that there are, arguably, resources within 46 I develop this pneumatological model of eschatological temporality in my The Spirit of Creation: Modern Science and Divine Action in the Pentecostal-Charismatic Imagination, Pentecostal Manifestos 4 (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011), esp. chs. 3–4.

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the trajectory of pneumatological theology on the Christian side and the tradition of Kyoto School reflections on the Buddhist side for a potentially illuminating understanding of important worldview issues such as that of time and its relationship to eternity. Much more can and should be said not only about this topic, not only about whether or not such a pneumatological model commits one to be for or against the dominant philosophical and scientifijic views of time and history,47 but also about the many other difffijicult theological and philosophical issues which distinguish Christianity and Buddhism. My point here is simply that a pneumatological approach to the Christian-Buddhist dialogue perhaps has the potential to chart a mediating path forward so as to extend and further the conversation. The methodological impasse is bridgeable, I suggest, via a pneumatological hermeneutic. The claims about the incommensurability of the two traditions need to be heeded, but cautious and patient comparative work guided by a pneumatological interpretive framework can be fruitful. The question now is whether this potential convergence does anything to allay the fears of those skeptical about the religion and science dialogue to begin with. Even if those critics are willing to grant the potential value of a pneumatological imagination for the Christian-Buddhist conversation, how can it contribute anything to a discussion where one of the dialogue partners eschews notions related to the idea of pneumatology altogether? Is not a pneumatological hermeneutic exactly that, an instrument of interpretation? If so, what can it accomplish in the world of facts, the domain widely agreed upon as belonging to science? 9.3 Method in Science and Religion: A Pneumatological Assist I have suggested that a pneumatological approach to the religion-science dialogue provides a theological rationale for engaging the claims of science on its own terms. In some ways, science has served as a “neutral” participant in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue, not neutral in the a-historic

47 And things here are not simple, as futurity oriented theologians like Moltmann and Pannenberg have been accused of presupposing a block spatiotemporal universe rather than a truly evolving one; see Luco J. Van den Brom, “Eschatology and Time: Reversal of the Time Direction?” in David Fergusson and Marcel Sarot, eds., The Future as God’s Gift: Exploration in Christian Eschatology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2000), 159–67. My limitations force me to punt at this point since I wish only to spur on the conversation, not to resolve all the issues.

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sense, but neutral in the sense of being neither Christian nor Buddhist. At the same time, it is not possible to adjudicate simplistically the disagreements observed between Christianity and Buddhism by appealing to science as fijinal arbiter since the scientifijic enterprise itself comes with its own set of assumptions and practices not entirely unconnected to religion or devoid of religious signifijicance. Given this hermeneutical situation, my goal has been to show that these three “languages,” as it were, are not incommensurable but potentially (at least) mutually illuminating. My hypothesis is that the neutral categories of science will serve to facilitate conversation between the otherwise disparate and strange tongues of Christianity and Buddhism so as to enable the task of comparative theology to proceed. Therefore, the more specifijic questions are whether or not the set of neutral and yet vague categories provided by science resonates with the categories emergent from both Christian pneumatological theology and Buddhist shunyata metaphysics so as to further the ChristianBuddhist dialogue, and as a followup question, whether the Christian and Buddhist perspectives themselves have shed any light on the scientifijic enterprise. To confront the full force of these questions, it is important fijirst to heed Abe’s distinction between science and scientism.48 The former is a valid human enterprise designed to understand the phenomenal (conventional) world. The latter is the absolutization of science and scientifijic method which not only marginalizes the religious perspective but even goes as far as to negate it. Here, Nishitani’s concerns about the prospects of nihilism arising out of the ashes of modernity are reiterated by Abe. However, it remains inevitable that religion needs to confront the legitimate issues which science raises about the place and extent of critical rationality. For Abe, even if such rationality poses much more difffijicult questions for Christian theism, Buddhists nevertheless must still “demonstrate the religious signifijicance of Buddhist truth in relation to scientifijic truth.”49 But this is exactly the methodological question persisting underneath the entire religion-science discussion. What does religion concerned with existential and soteriological issues have to do with science concerned with empirical ones? Can religion with its afffijirmation of transcendence engage science with its assumptions about naturalism and the causal (at 48 See Abe, “Kenosis and Emptiness,” 6–9, and “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” 4–6. See also Abe Masao, “Christianity and Buddhism: Centering around Science and Nihilism,” Japanese Religions 5:3 (1968): 36–62. 49 Abe, “Kenotic God and Dynamic Sunyata,” 6.

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least) closure of this world? What truck has Jerusalem and Kyoto with Athens and Tokyo? When we broached this question previously, we saw then that Pannenberg, at least, depended on the doctrine of analogy as enabling the application of theological language and concepts to the realm of the sciences (§2.3). Arguably, in light of the present state of scientifijic knowledge surrounding quantum mechanics, the principle of analogy applies in the sciences as well. At least at the quantum level, our theories about reality are more models that shed light on our interactions with the world than they are objective descriptions of the way quanta are in themselves. However, in the domain of the sciences, the conceptual designator for this interactive modality is not analogy but complementarity. This derives from Niels Bohr’s understanding of light as both wave (with its peculiar characteristics such as reflection, refraction, difffusion, and interference) and particle (with its spatiality and position) and his “solution” to treat “waves” and “particles” as primarily epistemic rather than ontological categories given their contrariness. In this view, waves and particles are heuristic tools that purport to explain the behavior of light as measured by human beings. Lai Pan-chiu identifijies this strategy of Bohr as “realistic instrumentalism.”50 He also suggests that Christianity and Buddhism have their own types of complementarity that are at the same time analogous to that operating in quantum mechanics. In the former case, there is certainly the paradoxical complementarity of the two natures of Christ. In the latter case, there is the complementarity of the Madhyamaka Middle Way doctrine, including the two-truths theory (and Nishida’s logic of self-contradictory identity). In both traditions, however, the complementarity sought after concerns chiefly the abyss between transcendence and immanence, eternity and time, the one and the many,51 not that regarding empirical paradoxes. Now given a more scientifijically defijined understanding of complementarity—Kafatos and Nadeau’s is: “1) when the theory consists of two individually complete constructs; 2) when the constructs preclude one another in a description of the unique physical situation to which

50 Lai Pan-chiu, “Buddhist-Christian Complementarity in the Perspective of Quantum Physics,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002): 149–62, esp. 151. 51 In these senses, Christianity and Buddhism could be considered as complementary. Ninian Smart, Buddhism and Christianity: Rivals and Allies (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1993), ch. 8, uses the complementarity language to suggest that there is a convergence of their ideals amidst divergences which also serves as useful criticisms in their encounters with other traditions.

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they both apply, and 3) when both constitute a complete description of that situation”52—is such a notion analogous not only to Bohr’s understanding but also to Buddhist and Christian ideas about complementarity? The problem here is that the quantum physicist community has not, in the last generation, been too enthusiastic about Bohr’s complementarity and even the most recent texts have been silent about the notion’s implicit advocacy of contradiction.53 As such, while it may be arguable that the doctrine of complementarity serves as a bridge from Christianity to Buddhism and vice-versa, it may be too much to expect it to resolve methodological issues in the religion and science dialogue. But what if, for Christian theology at least, following the motivating intuitions of this theological thought experiment, we began with pneumatology instead? While Loder and Niedhardt have suggested the christomorphic character of complementarity according to the Chalcedonian defijinition which identifijied Christ as two (distinct) natures in one person,54 they have also seen the trinitarian and hence, pneumatological, connection. They point out that this connection is made explicit in the later Barth.55 Although Barth began with a christocentric hermeneutic, his trinitarian commitments led him to ask specifijically pneumatological questions toward the end of his massive Church Dogmatics. So Barth observed:

52 Menas Kafatos and Robert Nadeau, The Conscious Universe: Part and Whole in Modern Physical Theory (New York and Berlin: Springer Verlag, 1990), 84. 53 Edward Mackinnon, “Complementarity,” in W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman, eds., Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 255–70, esp. 269–70. 54 Note that the way in which the Chalcedonian fathers protected the mystery of Christ’s two natures in one person—via the “four fences” which declare apophatically the natures to be “without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation”—is arguably parallel to the way which the Huayen tradition afffijirmed the mysterious identity of form and emptiness—via the four reality realms which declare form and emptiness (or phenomena and principle) as distinct realms, form and emptiness integrated and yet mutually noninterfering, and form (phenomena) as integrated and yet mutually noninterfering (see §6.2). In each case, there is distinction yet mutuality, but without numerical identity. See Roger E. Olson, The Story of Christian Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 233–34, and 20–21; cf. the “Introduction” to Thomas Cleary, trans., The Flower Ornament Scripture: A Translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra, 3 vols. (Boulder, Colo., and London: Shambhala, 1984–1987), 1.20–21. 55 See James E. Loder and W. Jim Neidhardt, The Knight’s Move: The Relational Logic of the Spirit in Theology and Science (Colorado Springs: Helmers & Howard, 1992); James E. Loder, The Logic of Spirit: Human Development in Theological Perspective (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 1998); and James E. Loder and W. Jim Niedhardt, “Barth, Bohr and Dialectic,” in W. Mark Richardson and Wesley J. Wildman, eds., Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue (New York and London: Routledge, 1996), 271–89.

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The work of the Holy Spirit . . . is to bring and to hold together that which is diffferent and therefore, as it would seem, necessarily and irresistibly disruptive in the relationship of Jesus Christ to His community, namely, the divine working, being, and action on the one side and the human on the other, the creative freedom and act on one side and the human on the other, the eternal reality and possibility on one side and the temporal on the other. His work is to bring and to hold them together, not to identify, intermingle nor confound them, not to change the one into the other nor to merge the one into the other, but to coordinate them, to make them parallel, to bring them into harmony and herefore to bind them into a true unity.56

This leads me to recall our epistemological hypothesis (§1.3): that all interpretation proceeds from a pneumatological starting point wherein subject and object, knower and known, fijind themselves already in a relationship.57 Let me flesh this out fijirst from the standpoint of theology, and then from the standpoint of science. Theologically, I suggest that all interpretation is pneumatological because human beings are en-spirited, that is, always already constituted by the Spirit.58 The Spirit is the fijield of divine activity which not only enables creaturely fijields of activity, but also constitutes creatures relationally. In the case of human beings, the relations are at least triadic: with one another, with the natural world, and with the divine. Human knowing is thus always already participatory, emergent from the mutuality and reciprocity of the relationships which constitute human being and becoming. The connections between this view and Nishida’s Huayen-informed logic of basho are clear, even if further analysis can always be undertaken. Scientifijically, I suggest that all interpretation is pneumatological in the sense that pneumatology provides an intersubjectivist framework between, beyond, and even before the dichotomy of objectivism or subjectivism.59 Here, I am transferring Nishida’s notion of “pure experience” prior to the

56 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV/3, 2nd half, eds. G.W. Bromiley and T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1962), 761. This quotation occurs in the context of Barth’s discussion of the Spirit, the Church, and the Christian mission (§72). 57 Detailed argumentation for what follows can be found also in my Spirit-WordCommunity, Parts II and III. 58 So D. Lyle Dabney suggests that we are “Otherwise Engaged in the Spirit: A First Theology for the Twenty-First Century,” in Miroslav Volf, Carmen Krieg, and Thomas Kucharz, eds., The Future of Theology: Essays in Honor of Jürgen Moltmann (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 154–63. 59 Cf. Peter Gabel, “Creationism and Evolution: Radical Perspectives on the Confrontation of Spirit and Science,” Tikkun 2:5 (1987): 55–63, and Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983).

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subject-object split from the domain of mysticism to that of day-to-day social life. The emergence of this intersubjective paradigm acknowledges that the positivistic notion of “objectivity” is a false ideal based on a classical mechanistic worldview (even if it continues to be advocated today both by creation scientists and by staunch Darwinian evolutionists). On the other side, neither are we shut up solipsistically within our perspectives. Rather, human knowledge is personal knowledge (to use Polanyi’s notion), proceeding in empathetic, sympathetic, and interactive engagement with otherness and attempting to allow such otherness to inform and instruct ourselves. Methodologically, then, a pneumatological framework opens up to interpretation as a triadic activity involving a) subjects (always constituted and informed by other subjects); b) asking questions of objects (which could include the self or others); c) directed toward enabling truthful and practical engagement with our world.60 Interpretation as subjective needs to be checked continuously by with and against the community of interpreters. Hence the import and necessity of a multiplicity of perspectives and disciplines to the knowing process. Interpretation as objective means that reality or the world is the measure of our interpretations.61 Better interpretations identify what is important about the objects of interpretation as defijined fijirst and foremost by the objects; worse interpretations impose our own estimations of what is important on the objects of interpretation. Finally, interpretation as truthful and pragmatic means both that our goal is to correlate our understanding to reality as it is so as to engage it more successfully and that there are no such things as humanly-knowable facts apart from the values and instrumental purposes with which we approach these facts given the lived-needs of human beings. All this is the case even while we recognize that our access to the correspondence of our interpretations with reality (a dyadic relationship) is never direct but always mediated semiotically, viz., through a sign standing for something to someone (a triadic relationship). Hence the analogical character of all knowing, including scientifijic knowing, as involving signs, symbols, models, and metaphors, even as these are not just merely constructed at whim,

60 Again, as I spell out in my Spirit-Word-Community, part II. 61 Spelled out most forcefully by Robert Cummings Neville, Recovery of the Measure: Interpretation and Nature (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989).

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but are communally negotiated through ethical—and compassionate— engagement with the world.62 If this is the case, then perhaps the pneumatological methodology adopted in this volume can indeed facilitate the complexities of a trialogical encounter. The many tongues of Christianity can meet and interact with the many tongues of Buddhist traditions and scientifijic disciplines, and even amidst that cacophony, some theological understanding can emerge that is relevant to a pluralistic and modern scientifijic world. Might other Christians grant that in and through these many discourses and “languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power” (Acts 2:11)?

62 This semiotic thesis has been recently developed at the interface of theology and science by Andrew Robinson, God and the World of Signs: Trinity, Evolution, and the Metaphysical Semiotics of C.S. Peirce, Philosophical Studies in Science and Religion 2 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010).

CHAPTER TEN

SPIRIT AND ENVIRONMENT: TOWARD A CHRISTIAN ECOLOGICAL ETHIC “AFTER” BUDDHISM The results of our trialogue among Christianity, Buddhism, and science suggests that pneumatological categories can be informative both about how Christians understand the presence of God in the world and about how Buddhists comprehend reality as ultimately constituted and experienced. At the same time, science, religion and theology are interested in truth not in the abstract but as lived. Hence the Christian-Buddhistscience trialogue in these pages should conclude neither apophatically nor with simply saying there is common ground for dialogue, but with a positive theological and philosophical afffijirmation. Of course, the preceding has already included some suggestive theological reconstruction, and much of what has been proposed can and should be further developed. Thus, in the closing pages of this book I sketch what might be called a Christian theology of the environment after Buddhism. “After,” again, means not necessarily leaving behind, but being informed by crossing over and returning transformed. I proceed by briefly summarizing Christian (§10.1) and Buddhist (§10.2) thinking on this topic respectively before attempting an exploratory synthesis (§10.3). The task is to illuminate the practical and ethical dimensions of Christian, Buddhist and scientifijic perspectives on the natural world as mediated through the pneumatological categories.1 From the Buddhist perspective, knowledge is purposive, always in order to generate the compassionate activity that saves a world floundering amid the desires and lusts of ignorance. For Christians, knowledge also leads to sanctifijication and holiness, and their concomitant behaviors designed to impact and transform the world in the name of Christ. The goal here, then, is to sketch an environmental ethic that “puts feet on” the pneumatological imagination at work in this volume. Of course, in the scope of a brief chapter, we cannot hope to either adjudicate all of 1 Here I build on the work of my colleagues, e.g., Shane Clifton, “Preaching the ‘Full Gospel’ in the Context of Global Environment Crises,” and Matthew Tallman, “Pentecostal Ecology: A Theological Paradigm for Pentecostal Environmentalism,” both in Amos Yong, ed., The Spirit Renews the Face of the Earth: Pentecostal Forays in Science and Theology of Creation (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick Publications, 2009), 117–34 and 135–54 respectively.

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the moral issues or resolve all of the socio-political conundrums related to an ecological philosophy and theology.2 But the question of how to live relationally in a pluralistic and scientifijic world and yet be people of Christian faith—begs for some kind of response. 10.1 Pneumatological Theology and the Environment Amidst the burgeoning literature on the environment since the late 1960s,3 theological contributions have been increasingly informed by pneumatological perspectives. The creator Spiritus as the basis for natural theology; spirituality and mysticism perspectives on Gaia- and eco-theology; feminist approaches with emphases on relationality and embodiment; liberationist and political theology frameworks lifting up the Spirit of life over and against the exploitation of humankind; conciliar celebrations of the Spirit’s cosmic activity—these and others have emerged over the past generation in a attempt to construct what I think is fairly called a pneumatological theology of the environment.4 The pneumatological motif 2 Other glimpses of the possibilities affforded by a multi-religious conversation that engages science in varying degrees can be seen in John E. Carroll, Paul Brockelman, and Mary Westfall, eds., The Greening of Faith: God, the Environment, and the Good Life (Hanover, NH, and London: The University Press of New Hampshire, 1997). The suggestiveness of such a volume, along with other collections of introductory essays representing the various religious traditions engaging a common theme in theology and philosophy of nature, begs for more in depth comparative analysis. The present chapter is a step in precisely this direction. 3 The clarion call awakening the conscience of the West to the environmental crisis was the now famous essay by Lynn White: originally, “The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155 (10 March 1967): 1203–7, and reprinted many times since. 4 On the creator Spiritus, see George S. Hendry, Theology of Nature (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1980), part II; Michael Lodahl, God of Nature and of Grace: Reading the World in a Wesleyan Way (Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2003), ch. 1; and Denis Edwards, Breath of Life: A Theology of the Creator Spirit (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004). On Gaia- and eco-theology, see Helder Camara, Sister Earth: Ecology and the Spirit (London, Dublin, Edinburgh: New City, 1990); Michael Dowd, Earthspirit: A Handbook for Nurturing an Ecological Christianity (Mystic, Conn.: Twenty-Third Publications, 1991); and Fritz Hull, ed., Earth and Spirit: The Spiritual Dimension of the Environmental Crisis (New York: Continuum, 1993). On feminism and pneumatological ecology, see Rebecca Button Prichard, Sensing the Spirit: The Holy Spirit in Feminist Perspective (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1999), ch. 2; Elisabeth A. Johnson, Women, Earth, and the Creator Spirit (New York and Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1993); and the oeuvre of Sallie McFague. On liberation and political theology perspectives, see Jürgen Moltmann, God in Creation: A New Theology of Creation and the Spirit of God, trans. Margaret Kohl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), and David G. Hallman, ed., Ecotheology: Voices from South and North (Geneva, Switzerland: WCC Publications, and Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994). At the conciliar level, see Vassilios Giultsis, “Creation and the Ecological Problem,” in Gennadios Limouris, ed., Come Holy Spirit—Renew the Whole Creation: An

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has been an especially powerful resource given the seemingly intractable dualisms—mind v. body; male v. female; spirit v. matter; humans v. nature, etc.—characterizing certain strands of the modern West.5 These dualisms have contributed their fair share to the human objectifijication of the environment, and been presumed by those looking to justify human exploitation of earth’s resources. Part of the result is the emergence of manipulative practices driven by a posture of consumerism rather than an ethic of care. The way to overcome these destructive habits and ideas, Grace Jantzen suggests, is to accentuate the Spirit’s relational character and her healing and reconciling work.6 The beginnings of such a pneumatological theology of the environment can be gleaned from the creation narrative itself. As we have previously seen (§3.1), the ruah Elohim who hovered over the face of the deep is the one through whom the divisions, separations, and diffferentiations of creation have been called forth, even while the same breath of life is the one through whom the distinct creatures of the world are interrelated. As such, the divine spirit is not only the creator of diffferences and complexities, but also the principle and personality of communion. Leonardo Bofff, the Brazilian theologian of liberation, thus calls the realm of the Spirit the pneumatosphere which includes within itself the domains of plants, animals, and human beings, including the especially inspired prophets of God.7 In the latter domains, the Spirit is the source of human community, socialization, and communication in general, and the giver of lifesustaining and life-enhancing gifts more particularly. In all domains, the Spirit is the source of life, initiating newness and novelty on the one hand, and renewing the creation on the other, in anticipation of the already-butnot-yet eschatological reign of God: “The Spirit uniting everything inside

Orthodox approach for the Seventh Assembly of the World Council of Churches, Canberra, Australia 6–21 February 1991 (Brookline, Mass.: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1990), 234–49. For a very brief overview, consult Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Pneumatology: The Holy Spirit in Ecumenical, International, and Contextual Perspective (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002), 159–64. 5 I develop this theme at much greater length in my The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh: Pentecostalism and the Possibility of Global Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), esp. ch. 7, “The Heavens Above and the Earth Below: Toward a Pneumatological Theology of Creation.” 6 Grace M. Jantzen, “Healing Our Brokenness: The Spirit and Creation,” in Mary Heather MacKinnon and Moni McIntyre, eds., Readings in Ecology and Feminist Theology (Kansas City: Sheed and Ward, 1995), 284–98. 7 Leonardo Bofff, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, trans. Philip Berryman (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1997), 160.

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and outside the Trinity will orchestrate the universal symphony. Ecology will be complete, for all will be in their true oikos in an infijinite bond of sympathy, in their maternal and paternal home where the Spirit has ever been dwelling, now fully illuminated and transfijigured by the Spirit’s utter self-communication.”8 Such an “ecological pneumatology” has been developed most intentionally and at length by Mark I. Wallace.9 Preferring a rhetorical rather than metaphysical approach, Wallace’s strategy is to retrieve the biblical narratives of the Spirit as the healing life-force engendering human flourishing and the welfare of the planet in the hopes of revitalizing human resolve in the face of the environmental crisis. Three aspects of Wallace’s project deserve to be highlighted. First, the biblical narratives of the Spirit are not homogeneous, but conflicted. The Spirit both breathes life into dry bones and slays Ananias and Sapphira. Might focus on this “dark side” of the divine life highlight divine violence in the biblical texts alongside the experienced reality of human violence to others and to the earth? And might not this also enable an understanding of the divine Spirit as destabilizing and disrupting of the status quo in order to establish righteousness, peace, and justice on the earth? Second, the Spirit of truth and the truth of the Spirit is understood in performative terms. Wallace’s wager is that the retrieval of the biblical narratives toward an ecological pneumatology transforms the communal identity in a way which empowers its members to take up and embody the Spirit’s reality in the establishment of a just society and in the development of a sustainable environmental praxis. This leads, fijinally, to a teleological or even eschatological understanding of the Spirit who emerges amidst the co-partnership of human beings with one another, the creaturely and natural world. As such, the Spirit is the life-breath of the creation at one level, but is also the life-force which emerges from the co-partnership of creatures at another. So Wallace’s ecological pneumatology turns out to be more than a rhetorical enterprise insofar as it is suggestive of a socio-political and practical agenda directed toward the healing of a broken and fragmented

8 Bofff, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, 162–63 and 166–67; quote from 173. 9 The book-length arguments are Mark I. Wallace, Fragments of the Spirit: Nature, Violence, and the Renewal of Creation (New York: Continuum, 1996; reprint, Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 2002), and Finding God in the Singing River: Christianity, Spirit, Nature (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2005). The synopsis is Wallace, “The Wounded Spirit as the Basis for Hope in an Age of Radical Ecology,” in Dieter T. Hessel and Rosemary Radford Ruether, Christianity and Ecology: Seeking the Well-Bring of Earth and Humans (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2000), 51–72.

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world. For explicit movement from theory to praxis, however, we need to look at the work of Reformed theologian, Marthinus Daneel.10 Drawing not from Wallace (he is not cited by Daneel) but from his longtime experience as missionary and theological educator among the Shona in Zimbabwe, Daneel’s distinctive contribution is his bridging the worlds of the African Initiated Churches (AICs) and African Traditionalist Religion. Involvement with grassroots organizations like the Zimbabwean Institute for Religious Research and Ecological Conservation and their two afffijiliated groups, the Association of Zimbabwean Traditional Ecologists and the Association of African Earthkeeping Churches, has led Daneel into the thickets of not only interfaith dialogue but also interfaith cooperation. At this interreligious level, Daneel has learned much from African Traditionalists. Their effforts to liberate the land from exploitation through what is called “ecological warfare” involve an understanding of the environment as an en-spirited domain, the realm which unites present occupants with past ancestors and future descendents. Oracular directives from spirit-mediums through ritual activity have contributed to the emergence of a distinctive strategy for salvaging the land, including reforestation and protecting and increasing wildlife and water resources. The result is that stewardship over the environment is the responsibility not only of governmental politics but also of the Traditionalist religious community. Engaging the indigenous worldview from a Christian theological perspective has resulted not only in a renewed ecclesiology, theology and christology—the Church as a healing and liberating institution, the creator as transcendent and immanent, and Christ as healer and earthkeeper— but also in a pneumatological theology of the environment which emphasizes the Spirit as both the fountain of life and the healer of the land. Concretely, however, this means that the Spirit’s presence and activity is directed against the “destroyer of the world.”11 This is manifest fijirst in the Spirit’s bringing to awareness our ecological sinfulness and complicity with the destructive wizardry at work through the realm of the human, whether that be in our excessive consumption of natural resources, ignoring land husbandry laws, unrestricted tree-felling, blatant promotion of soil erosion, acts of pollution, over-fijishing, over-hunting (out of season or in outlawed areas), etc. Such Spirit-wrought confession and repentance 10 Marthinus L. Daneel, African Earthkeepers: Wholistic Interfaith Mission (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2001), especially ch. 11, “Toward an African Theology of the Environment: The Holy Spirit in Creation.” 11 See further my discussion in The Spirit Poured Out on All Flesh, §1.3.1.

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are the initial steps in the ritual expulsion of evil from the midst of the community.12 This might be followed by ritual acts of tree-planting which are given sacramental signifijicance around the Eucharistic table. The ritual re-enactment emphasizes the divine overcoming of evil rather than on the present or future power of the satan and his demons. The result, theologically, is that AICs have developed an indigenous theology of healing and exorcism in the African context without neglecting the transformative element of the gospel. A holistic and even social understanding of sin enables both personal and environmental soteriological visions to converge, or at least be mutually informing and perhaps transforming. There is the recognition that the power of the Holy Spirit is available as gift, rather than through magical means. A pneumatological theology of the environment thus empowers the AICs toward socio-environmental action and concrete engagement with urgent environmental and ecological issues within a interfaith context. Thus pneumatological is not merely otherworldly in its orientation, as might be the case with some charismatic groups or movements. As already noted, the ruah Elohim gives life to the materiality of the earth and the Spirit of God herself descends not only upon the incarnate Christ but also is poured out upon all flesh.13 In that case, the gift of the Spirit graces the created order and empowers responsible human activity as “cocreators” with God in caring for the earth.14 10.2 Buddhist Self-Emptying and the Environment Awareness of the environmental crisis has also led Buddhists to produce a humongous literature addressing the current situation.15 In this overview,

12 I explicate the political and environmental implications of charismatic practices in my In the Days of Caesar: Pentecostalism and Political Theology—The Cadbury Lectures 2009, Sacra Doctrina: Christian Theology for a Postmodern Age series (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010), chs. 4 and 9. 13 The “materiality” of the Spirit’s person and work is emphasized by Eugene F. Rogers, Jr., After the Spirit: A Constructive Pneumatology from Resources outside the Modern West (Grand Rapids and Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2005). 14 See also my Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2012), for further discussion of the Spirit as the gift of God. 15 For starters, see Brian Brown, “Toward a Buddhist Ecological Cosmology,” in Mary Evelyn Tucker and John A. Grim, eds., Worldviews and Ecology: Religion, Philosophy and the Environment (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994), 124–37; Alan Sponberg, “The Buddhist Conception of an Ecological Self,” in Sallie B. King and Paul O. Ingram, eds., The Sound of Liberating Truth: Buddhist-Christian Dialogues (Richmond: Curzon, 1999), 107–27; and

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however, I want to focus on reflections out of the Mahayana tradition in general and the idea of shunyata emphasized in the Madhyamaka lineage more specifijically. In terms introduced previously, the Prajnaparamita idea of the self-emptying and interdependently originating nature of all things, the Huayen doctrine of the interpenetration of all things, and the Kyoto School non-dual standpoint of absolute nothingness all combine to inform the discussion. Within this framework, the following aspects of a Buddhist environmental ethic deserve elaboration. First, Buddhism can be said to be “biocentric” insofar as its soteriological focus is on the decentering of the self or ego.16 The latter seeks to relocate the self within the web of interrelatedness. This does not mean that we still cannot distinguish the self from otherness. It only means that the causal relations between self and otherness are intimate and complex. In fact, our environment includes not only our selves and the natural world but also the tools we have developed from nature’s resources to help us get around. So, to use Nishida’s language, there is a mutual determination between ourselves as historical beings and our environment within which we are located: basho is the environmental sum of myself and other selves—sentient and nonsentient—as mutually defijining.17 Second, the Madhyamaka teaching on emptiness as form and vice versa leads to a nondual understanding of mind and nature. This is the basis, of course, for the flowering of the doctrine that all things are Buddha Mind or have Buddha Nature precisely in their self-emptying character. The result, however, is the “Middle Way” doctrine which collapses the distinction between sentient and nonsentient beings. If enlightenment itself is understood as being awakened to the nonduality of all things, this means that nonsentient beings also “realize” Buddha Nature upon the realization of Buddha Mind by sentient beings.18 Hence the import of meditation for “raising ecological consciousness. In meditation, awareness of our

Stephanie Kaza and Kenneth Kraft, eds., Dharma Rain: Sources of Buddhist Environmentalism (Boston and London: Shambhala, 2000). 16 Malcolm David Eckel, “Is There a Buddhist Philosophy of Nature?” in Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan Ryuken Williams, eds., Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 327–49, esp. 343. 17 Michiko Yusa, “From topos to Environment: A Conversation with Nishida Kitaro,” in Christopher Lamb and Dan Cohn-Sherbok, eds., The Future of Religion: Postmodern Perspectives—Essays in Honour of Ninian Smart (London: Middlesex University Press, 1999), 112–27. 18 William Grosnick, “The Buddhahood of the Trees and the Trees: Ecological Sensitivity or Scriptural Misunderstanding?” in Michael Barnes, ed., An Ecology of the Spirit: Religious Reflection and Environmental Consciousness, The Annual Publication of the College

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environment deepens and our identity expands to include the multitude of circumstances and conditions that come together to form our existence.”19 Now while meditation practice with its emphasis on interiority and its focus on the present moment can detract from an active stance toward social and environmental issues, its cultivating mindfulness and awakening to the “true self ” amidst the ordinary world also counters the tendency toward dichotomizing inwardness and outwardness and activates “skillful means” designed to address the problems of our local situations and global environment. In this way, meditation brings to awareness the interconnectedness of the pollution of mind and that of nature, and cultivates a non-anthropocentric sense of compassion that motivates human environmental activity on behalf of all things. Hence planetary health and wholeness arise along with mental health and wholeness. “If we accept the thesis that the pollution of nature and the pollution of mind are facets of one problem, exploring an environmental psychology becomes a signifijicant venture.”20 Third, the “pan-Buddhism” found especially in the Huayen tradition demands greater consideration with regard to developing an environmental ethic.21 This view understands the universe as a whole and every particle of dust within it as the bodily manifestation of the cosmic Vairocana Buddha. This is possible, of course, because the principle of form is emptiness and vice versa leads to that of emptiness is fullness and vice versa: the self-emptying dynamic of the universe as a whole, every particle of dust, and the Vairocana Buddha itself enables appreciation and valuation of the each particle within the whole.22 The Zen tradition therefore says that before enlightenment, the flower is a flower or the mountain a mountain; with initial enlightenment, the flower is no longer a flower, nor the mountain a mountain; with full enlightenment the flower is again just a flower and the mountain a mountain. The point here is that Buddhist

Theology Society 36 (Lanham, New York and London: University Press of America, 1994), 197–208, esp. 201. 19 Allan Hunt Badiner, “Introduction” to Badiner, ed., Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1990), xiii–xviii; quote from xvii. 20 Padmasiri de Silva, “Buddhist Environmental Ethics,” in Allan Hunt Badiner, ed., Dharma Gaia: A Harvest of Essays in Buddhism and Ecology (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1990), 14–19, quote from 16. 21 See David Landis Barnhill, “Relational Holism: Huayan Buddhism and Deep Ecology,” in David Landis Barnhill and Roger S. Gottlieb, eds., Deep Ecology and World Religions: New Essays on Sacred Grounds (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2001), 77–106. 22 Francis Cook, Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977), ch. 7.

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enlightenment produces an environmental consciousness sensitive to the particularity of each and every thing and its causal relations within the “Jewel Net of Indra.” The pollution of one region of the world has implications for the whole. Realization of global crises like the Greenhouse Efffect therefore means that the individualistic paradigms of addressing the environmental condition are no longer viable. Some kind of holistic or systems model is called for which is able to account for multi-directional causal conditions linking cells, atoms, organs, organisms, families, communities, nations, systems of economies, etc., in terms of organization as integrated and integrating wholes rather than as mechanistic aggregates in isolated networks.23 How does this work in the real world? From the perspective of the enlightenment experience, then, Buddhist awareness emphasizes the cultivation of certain dispositions, orientations, and postures for ecological engagement. Afffection, love, and compassion are the most important of these.24 These enable the bodhisattva to carry out the vow to save all sentient beings, and therefore also empower Buddhist social and environmental action. From this, the right conduct necessary to restore earth from its degenerated state can ensue. Buddhist examples across the spectrum of the tradition range from the respect for and nurturance of animal and plant life to the ecological activity of the forest monks in Thailand, and from the creation of ecological communities in America to the engaged Buddhism of Thich Nhat Hanh and others regarding nuclear ecology, population and consumption management, and global ethics and the Earth Charter.25 So far so good. The Buddhist emphasis on interdependent origination, interconnectedness, and interrelatedness necessitates an ecological vision 23 See Peter Timmerman, “It is Dark Outside: Western Buddhism from the Enlightenment to the Global Crisis,” in Martine Batchelor and Kerry Brown, eds., Buddhism and Ecology (New York: Cassell, 1992), 65–76. Cf. Filita P. Bharucha, Buddhist Theory of Causation and Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, Bibliotheca Indo Buddhica Series 111 (Delhi: Sri Satguru Publications/Indian Books Centre, 1992), esp. ch. 7. 24 See Dalai Lama (Tenzin Gyatso), “A Tibetan Buddhist Perspective on Spirit in Nature,” in Steven C. Rockefeller and John C. Elder, eds., Spirit and Nature: Why the Environment is a Religious Issue (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 109–23. 25 These are discussed in the various sections of Mary Evelyn Tucker and Duncan Ryuken Williams, eds., Buddhism and Ecology: The Interconnection of Dharma and Deeds (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997). Cf. Amy Morgante, ed., Buddhist Perspectives on the Earth Charter (Cambridge, Mass.: Boston Research Center for the 21st Century, 1997), and Stephanie Kaza, “To Save All Beings: Buddhist Environmental Activism,” in Christopher S. Queen, ed., Engaged Buddhism in the West (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2000), 159–83.

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consistent with contemporary systems theory understandings of natural environments. Holistic modes of thinking are better equipped to deal with the various problems confronting the global village. The nonduality of mind and nature, of human and other creatures, and of sentient and nonsentient beings, all provide a theoretical and existential (insofar as realization of these truths are acted upon) framework toward an environmentally conscious Buddhist ethic.26 Yet there are also important questions which need to be attended to within this framework. The chief of these derives from the implications of central doctrinal assumptions embedded within the Madhyamaka tradition. I refer primarily to the Huayen notions of totality and the interpenetration of all things which, arguably, make explicit the axiomatic intuitions of the idea of shunyata in Nagarjuna and other preceding Buddhist traditions and from there inform succeeding generations of Buddhist reflection including that of the Kyoto School thinkers. Let me make this critical question more explicit. Put theoretically, the central issue is that the holism of Huayen with its emphasis on mutual identity would understand each and every particularity to interpenetrate and in that sense be a contributing cause of every other particularity and of the whole. This is, of course, not only consistent with, but assumes the Madhyamaka doctrine of interdependent origination (pratityasamutpada). The whole is what it is precisely because all the parts arise together, and each part is what it is precisely through its relationship with everything else in the universe. Put concretely, of course, Ian Harris points out that the Huayen position of total interpenetration of all things results in the view that nuclear waste and the endangered plant species are interconnected such that everything in the universe, not just the endangered plant species, is dependent on nuclear waste!27 Put ethically and eminently practically, the question is how to go about saving the endangered plant species given its dependence upon nuclear waste, precisely the cause of endangerment. We have already seen (§9.2) a very preliminary response to this question which emphasizes that the ethical domain pertains precisely to the conventional world. Thus this puts the ethical question squarely back on

26 David Loy, Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1997), 295–98, discusses the ethical implications of Madhyamakan nondualism. 27 Ian Harris, “Buddhism and Ecology,” in Damien Keown, ed., Contemporary Buddhist Ethics (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 2000), 113–35, esp. 125.

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the discussion table since it is precisely a world in which nuclear waste does not arise that endangered plant species are also absent. So, to press the issue pointedly: what can we do to bring such a world in which both nuclear waste and endangered plant species are absent? 10.3 Toward a Pneumato-ecological Ethic: Christian-Buddhist Convergences Yet even with the preceding response, it is important to note that this question is problematic not only within the Madhyamaka system (as developed specifijically in the Huayen teaching) or within systems theory. In fact, it reflects, from the perspective of Christian theological discourse, the combined and related conundrums of both the problem of evil and the freedom of creatures. The former is the question of how evil arises in a world created and recognized by God to be good. The latter is the question not only of how free creatures can actualize evil states of afffairs, but how such states of afffairs can be rectifijied. The ethical, moral, and existential question is if and how free creatures such as human beings can go about doing the good which is necessary—in the case delineated above—to abolish nuclear weapons and save endangered plant species. In the Christian theological tradition, of course, the combined problem of evil and creaturely freedom leads to the challenge of theodicy. In its starkest form: from whence comes evil if God as creator of the world is both omnipotent and omnibenevolent? If for Buddhists evil—with its desire and sufffering—is simply part of the conventional world of samsara as we know it, for Christians, evil is simply part of the fallen human condition as we experience it. If Buddhists say that evil is ultimately related to the grasping and desiring of sentient beings, then Christians might say that evil is ultimately due to the disobedient propensities and proclivities that afffectively motivate creaturely—whether human or angelic or demonic—choices and behaviors. If the Buddhist argument is that evil is ultimately illusory, to be unveiled as such through human awakening to enlightenment and the true Buddha nature, the Christian version might say that what is thought to be evil from a fijinite perspective will ultimately—eschatologically—be shown, if not to be good, at least to have served the good purposes of God. Neither of these lines of responses, however, resolve the problem; they only push the question back even further: for Christians, is God justifijied for permitting creaturely freedom and the horrendous evils that has brought, and for Buddhists, even if illusion

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itself is the key evil, from whence comes illusion if the Buddha nature is true human nature?28 Neither religious tradition—nor their theological and philosophical counterparts—has satisfactorily resolved the intellectual aspects of the problem of evil. Yet the problem of evil as an intellectual puzzle is only one side of the question; more importantly on the other side is the ethical issue of how evil should be responded to.29 This is also the more crucial issue if our task concerns the possibility of developing a Christian environment ethic “after” (having crossed over and returned from) the dialogue with Buddhism given the Buddha’s focus on the practicalities of liberation. On this front, then, the question concerns the possibility of such an ethical response given the implications of pratityasamutpada on the one side and the interpenetration of all things on the other. As it is articulated within the Augustinian tradition, the problem simply put is this: in a fallen and sinful world, how can free creatures accomplish the required good in order to be saved? Translated into our present concerns, the question is: in a fallen and sinful world which includes both nuclear waste and endangered plant species, how can free creatures bring about a better world without these evils? The Augustinian response, of course, is that the problem is the result of free creatures left to their own fallen and sinful devises. In this state of afffairs, such creatures are free only to perpetuate their fallen and sinful practices, and are throughout incapable in themselves of remedying their plight. As such, salvation has to come from outside the human condition. And it has, of course, been given to us purely gratuitously by God in Jesus Christ. Observe, however, the intriguing parallels precisely here with the soteriological claims of Buddhism. First, there is the emphasis on nirvana not as something to be gained or earned through efffort but to be awakened to and realized here and now; more specifijically, this is seen in the afffijirmation of enlightenment as a sudden awakening (in the Soto Zen traditions)

28 Some of these issues related to the problem of evil are discussed in James W. Boyd, Satan and Mara: Christian and Buddhist Symbols of Evil, Studies in the History of Religions (Supplements to Numen) 27 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), and Peter N. Gregory, “The Problem of Theodicy in the Awakening of Faith,” Religious Studies 22 (1986): 63–78; see also part III of my Pneumatology and the Buddhist-Christian Dialogue: Does the Spirit Blow through the Middle Way? Studies in Systematic Theology 11 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2012). 29 This is the argument of Terrence W. Tilley, The Evils of Theodicy (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1991). Another praxis- and ethically-oriented response is provided by Sarah Katherine Pinnock, Beyond Theodicy: Jewish and Christian Continental Thinkers Respond to the Holocaust (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2002).

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rather than being the result of a long and gradual process of self-efffort.30 Further, there is the claim (in Huayen) that salvation derives from the vow of the bodhisattva to save all sentient beings. Finally, there is the insistence (in the Amida and Pure Land traditions) that entry into nirvana is purely a gift given (or accessed) in response to uttering the Buddha’s name since, in the current age, sentient beings are thoroughly incapable of saving themselves. This would be to recall Tanabe’s insistent emphasis on the vow of Amida Buddha as opposed to Nishida’s deliberations about self-power (§7.3). Now while the full force of these soteriological visions, both Christian and Buddhist, should not be blunted to avoid reducing the marvelous good news they proclaim, it is nevertheless clear that they implicitly sanction a kind of quietism that would undermine the necessity of ethical reflection at the theoretical level and of moral activity at the practical level. So how do we negotiate a middle/way between understanding salvation or enlightenment as nothing but a gift even while afffijirming the centrality of response and activity? From the Christian point of view, how do we work out our salvation with fear and trembling even while afffijirming that it is God who is at work in us enabling our willing and working for his good pleasure (cf. Phil. 2:12–13)? From a Buddhist perspective, what is the role of “self ” power as opposed to the gratuitous and necessary gift of “other” power represented in taking refuge in the Dharma of the Buddha? It should come as no surprise that the via media attempted here is also pneumatologically formulated.31 Going back to the creation as emergent from the Spirit’s hovering over the waters, three points should be recalled. First, creation itself was gifted with the capacity to participate in the creative work of God: the earth brought forth, co-created, as enabled by the empowering of the Spirit. Second, there was a genuine emergence of complexity, a movement from chaos to order, in varying “steps” and diffferentiated levels: the six days culminating with the fijinal en-spiriting of specifijic

30 See Sung Bae Park, Buddhist Faith and Sudden Enlightenment (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1983). 31 While the doctrine of the Holy Spirit has long been connected with the doctrine of sanctifijication, explicit articulation of a pneumatological ethics has been lacking. The starting point for such a task must be, Karl Barth’s The Holy Spirit and the Christian Life: The Theological Basis of Ethics, ed. Robin W. Lovin (1938; reprint, Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), which has since been expanded by Paul Chung, Spirituality and Social Ethics in John Calvin: A Pneumatological Perspective (Lanham: University Press of America, 2000). The following represents my minuscule contribution, focused on an environmental ethics.

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forms of dust resulting in living creatures. Finally, there is a genuine and systemic interrelationality—between male and female; between human and other sentient beings; between sentient beings and the natural world; between the natural and spiritual domains, etc.—brought about by the Spirit. Creation is herein realized as a web of living interconnectedness, but yet comprised of particularities, separatedness, and diffferentiatedness: each is in its own place amidst the whole, with its own functions and contributions to the whole, and having its own density and value among the whole. So, from the Genesis account, I suggest that a pneumatological understanding of the creation is poised to negotiate the tensions between the created order as systematically interrelated and interconnected on the one hand, and the created order as en-spirited, emergent, and dynamic on the other. This allows emphasis on and valuation of the individuality and particularity of systemic levels and parts within the whole, while it permits and even encourages the ongoing transformation of the status quo in anticipation of the eschatological reign of God. Both are gifts from God. The former provides the relational matrices within which we live, move, and have our being, while the latter empowers the dynamism of creaturely activities and participation in actualizing the divine mandate to be, to bring forth, to reproduce. Understood pneumatically, freedom can be given a sufffijiciently robust account so as to illuminate how horrifijic evils such as nuclear waste and endangered plant species have actualized (not to mention the Holocaust) even while hope for the elimination of such evils can also be anticipated. The creational breath of life enables and the pentecostal wind and fijire of the Spirit empowers creaturely compliance with the common good, symbolized (for Christians) in the metanarrative as the coming reign of God and (for Buddhists) in the Mahayana vision as the Pure Land of compassionate bliss. While such hopes are ultimately eschatological confessions, they can begin to be actualized in the here and now as creatures align their directives with the divine will (for Christians) and the teachings of the Buddha (for those committed to Buddhist practice). For Christians, there is newness and novelty to the eschatological work of Spirit, and such comes about at least in part through their responses to the Spirit’s enabling and prompting. The connections between pneumatology and eschatology are most clearly pronounced in the Day of Pentecost narrative in Acts 2. In his account of the events on that day, the author of Acts recorded St. Peter’s appeal to the Hebrew prophet Joel as prophesying that the outpouring

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of the Spirit upon all flesh would occur “In the last days” (Acts 2:17). My argument, however, is that such a thoroughly pneumatological approach to eschatology is more this-worldly than it is other-worldly: the outpouring of the Spirit announces the coming of the reign of God with ethical implications for human action, behavior, and responsibility in the here and now.32 So might a Christian pneumato-ecological theology of nature in global context “after” Buddhism see the convergence of the following themes and their attendant ethical implications? First, could the Spirit as the supremely mediational and relational symbol parallel the self-emptying nature of all things understood in terms of interdependence and interrelationality? If so, would this signify a possible convergence of theological and philosophical rationales for privileging a metaphysics of interconnectedness rather than one of substance? Second, might the Spirit as enabling the intersubjectivity of human persons and the interrelationality of humans and the environment parallel the self-emptying and interpenetrating character of all things? If so, would this signify a potential convergence of personalist and impersonalist rationales motivating environmental responsibility and ecological activity?33 Third, if the Spirit is not only the source of life but also of gifts and charisms appropriate to creaturely functions in inviting their participation in the creative process, would this parallel shunyata as the locus or fijield of action and activity which invites—even nurtures—creaturely participation in the creative process? And if so, is this signifijicant of a plausible convergence of the ruah Elohim with the Buddha’s Dharma insofar as each is concerned with spirituality, community, ethics, values, and the quality of human life and flourishing?34 Fourth, a pneumatological perspective would emphasize 32 I argue this pneumatological-eschatological-ethical connection in my In the Days of Caesar, esp. ch. 8; Spirit of Love, esp. part II; and Who is the Holy Spirit? A Walk with the Apostles (Brewster, Mass.: Paraclete Press, 2011), passim. 33 Here, might I go even farther and recognize with Michael Lodahl that the Spirit has a diffferent sort of persona than that of Father or Son? After all, the Spirit is their common “breath” in communication and communion. Yet as Richard of St. Victor shows, the Spirit is “person” and personal precisely in and through the interpersonal bond of love between the Father and Son. See Michael E. Lodahl, “Una Natura Divina, Tres Nescio Quid: What Sorts of Personae are Divine Personae?” Wesleyan Theological Journal 36:1 (Spring 2001): 218–30; and on Richard, see my discussion in Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective, (Burlington, Vt., and Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., and Eugene, Ore.: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 66–67. 34 This last question is motivated by Kosuke Koyama’s discussion of “The Buddhist Dharma and the Christian Ruah”; see Koyama, “Observation and Revelation: A Global Dialogue with Buddhism,” in Max L. Stackhouse and Diane B. Obenchain, eds., God and

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that the Spirit groans with human beings and with creation itself for its redemption and renewal (Rom. 8:18–27) even as Buddhists earnestly await the illuminating power of the bodhisattva’s vow, the Buddha’s Dharma, and the coming of Matreiya Buddha to save all sentient beings.35 But perhaps most importantly, a pneumatological approach to a Christian environmental ethic after Buddhism can capitalize on the Buddhist resistance to any reductionistic or materialistic view of nature as well. This is because a pneumatological theology of nature, while not involving a dualistic construal of spirit versus nature (as the preceding arguments should have made clear), nevertheless views nature as en-spirited with the divine breath of life. Nature does not consist ultimately only of inert matter, and Buddhist emphases on the fundamental nature of mind or consciousness also suggest a potential rapprochement regarding an enchanted world. This is not to suggest that there are “spirit beings” behind every tree, but that human beings have a responsibility to care for a world of which they are part, rather than being entirely distinct. Granted the foregoing connections, the gift of the Spirit is supremely relevant for the contemporary environmental crisis. According to the words of the prophet Isaiah (32:15–17):  . . .until a spirit from on high is poured out on us, and the wilderness becomes a fruitful fijield, and the fruitful fijield is deemed a forest. Then justice will dwell in the wilderness, and righteousness abide in the fruitful fijield. The efffect of righteousness will be peace, and the result of righteousness, quietness and trust forever.

Here, the interdependence of the environment, living creatures, human flourishing, and the Spirit’s presence and activity is clear. A pneumatological approach would sustain an ethic of embodiment, participation, and relationality vis-à-vis the environment.36 Therefore, the call should thus be for a deeper and more conscious realization of the Spirit’s presence

Globalization, Vol. 3: Christ and the Dominions of Civilization (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 2002), 239–71, esp. 245–52. 35 See Alex Wayman, “Eschatology in Buddhism,” in Eschatology in Christianity and Other Religions, Studia Missionalia 32 (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1983), 71–94. 36 E.g., Sharon Betcher, “Grounding the Spirit: An Ecofeminist Pneumatology,” in Laurel Kearns and Catherine Keller, eds., Ecospirit: Religions and Philosophies for the Earth (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007), 315–36.

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and activity in our midst. In this case, might we be able to agree with Ruben Habito who writes: Zen practice brings all this from an abstract and conceptual theological plane down to a very concrete and experiential level in one’s awareness, as one deepens in familiarity and intimacy with the Breath in day-to-day life. As I live my life in full attunement with the Breath and let it become the guiding power in my life, I experience the gift of being healed of my own woundedness and am empowered in my own little way to become an instrument of this breath in its work of healing a wounded Earth.37

A pneumatological ethics of the environment, then, would emphasize a threefold task in our contemporary multireligious context. First, humanity has the responsibility of restoring and renewing the environmental resources that are being used for human purposes; life in the Spirit involves participation in such renewing activity. Second, human beings ought to be mindful of the waste that is generated by modern ways of life and formulate appropriate responses to handling and disposing of such waste; life in the Spirit includes articulating and embodying a doctrine of sanctifijication which has implications for environmental care. Finally, humankind is obligated to develop a sustainable plan of environmental and ecological care that looks out for the wellbeing of our children and our children’s children into the far offf future; life in the Spirit is eschatological, which intertwines those who are coming with our lives in the present. These are interrelated and fundamental ethical tasks which details can be fleshed out in myriads of directions. A pneumatological theology of nature and environmental ethic will engage all voices—scientifijic, interdisciplinary, and interreligious—that can shed practical light on these tasks. Notice then here that what is being proposed is not an un-thoughtful syncretism of Buddhist and Christian ideas, but a resolutely Christian ecological theology and environmental ethic, albeit one that is now more deeply Christian in part because it has also been informed by a dialogue with Buddhist traditions. It is more deeply Christian, I suggest, because it is now able to return to, retrieve, and reappropriate the scriptural resources of Christian theology albeit within a global, intercultural, interdisciplinary, and interreligious discursive context. Christians should not be hesitant about testing their beliefs in a pluralistic world and this testing happens

37 Ruben L.F. Habito, Healing Breath: Zen Spirituality for a Wounded Earth (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1993), 57; cf. Habito, Total Liberation: Zen Spirituality and the Social Dimension (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989), 104–6.

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in authentic dialogue with those in other faiths. If true for more than just Christians, such claims will survive dialogical testing, even if they might be reformulated in surprising ways. It is precisely because I believe in the truth of Christianity that I have endeavored to comprehend its claims in a pluralistic world in dialogue with Buddhist traditions.38 Provisionally, then, I suggest that a pneumatological approach to the Christian-Buddhist-science trialogue opens up fruitful lines of mutual inquiry. It provides various perspectives on important contemporary issues ranging from the cosmological sciences through the cognitive sciences to the environmental sciences. It also has the potential to empower ethically compassionate feelings, thoughts, and actions on behalf of a suffering world. These are gains that we can now claim having achieved in the preceding. Yet the last word has hardly been said. But enough has been said, I hope, to further the conversation and to demonstrate the potentiality of the pneumatological approach to the Christian-Buddhistscience trialogue.

38 This is the constructive dimension to theology that has to be vulnerable to the widest possible public that might have an interest in its claims; for Christian theology, this would be the global context as a whole. See Yong, Spirit-Word-Community, part II.

EPILOGUE So what has been accomplished in this volume? After working our way through this long book, some readers might be disappointed that there may not seem to be any fijirm answers in response to some of the perennial questions confronting Christian theology in a world of many faiths. Perhaps some Christians might be able to afffijirm at least some of the discussion of Christian views especially in part I and perhaps also at various places in the third part of this book. Other Christians will no doubt suggest alternative Christian responses are available even as the reaction to Christian reflections “after” Buddhism will be divided: on the one side will be those who do not think I have gone far enough while on the other side will be those who think I have gone too far. Similarly, some Buddhists might be able to afffijirm at least some of my discussion in part II and perhaps also aspects of the proposals in part III. Other Buddhists will no doubt register diffferent Buddhist perspectives on these matters even as my own theological musing “after” Buddhism will be disputed: on the one side will be those who think that I have instrumentalized Buddhist traditions for Christian purposes while on the other wise will be those who wonder why, after perceiving all that Buddhism has to offfer, I remain a Christian. All of this is to recognize that interfaith dialogue in general and the Buddhist-Christian dialogue in particular is hard work that does not always result either in clear syntheses or in perspicacious answers to old questions. In fact, it has taken Christians almost two thousand years to wrestle with the “pagan” legacy of Plato and his descendents, and Christians still debate not only about the legitimacy but also about the pay-offf of such an enterprise. Why then might we think one book will resolve questions at the frontier of the Buddhist-Christian encounter that have been contested for two millennia quite apart from Buddhist interlocutors? As I hope we have seen in the preceding pages, on some issues Buddhists can appeal to Christian dialogue partners against their own Buddhist opponents, while on other issues Christians can draw from and be resourced by Buddhist conversationalists against their own Christian disputants. If nothing else, the Buddhist-Christian dialogue unfolded in these pages shows that things don’t always line up between Christians on one side and Buddhists on the other.

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The situation has been complicated in this volume in light of the ongoing religion and science dialogue as well. Buddhists and Christians here have been engaging not just one another but also with secularists, scientists, and scientistic opponents. It has been all the more imperative then to have identifijied adequate comparative categories that can facilitate proper comparisons and contrasts in such a trialogue between Christianity, Buddhism, and science. As we have seen, the notions of “salvation” and “nature” have functioned as vague categories—the former more religious and the latter more scientifijic—that have allowed some semblance of a trialogical conversation. I have also suggested pneuma and shunyata as bridges from the Christian and Buddhist sides, respectively, to the other two domains. Have we made advances in mutual understanding or are things even more obfuscated than before we began? Still, let me suggest that there are at least three possible sets of “next steps” regarding the exercise in comparative theology of nature unfolded in this volume. First, some readers might experience a “change of mind” of some sort, perhaps in more than one direction. Christians might certainly decide that either Buddhist or scientifijic perspectives provide for greater intellectual and/or existential coherence and be set offf on a journey in either or both directions. Buddhists might also become more interested in Christian or scientifijic perspectives and decide to explore either or both further. Or scientists might decide that there is more to nature than material entities and seek to inquire into Christian and/or Buddhist perspectives to enable further understanding on these matters. Such a response is unpredictable at the beginning of any authentic conversation involving respectful hearing out of the other sides and the willingness to entertain novel ideas and arguments. I can say that I did not set out on this task to achieve this kind of goal intentionally, but I cannot control what readers decide to do with this exploratory undertaking. A second possible response might be along the following lines: that since such an extended trialogical conversation has not resulted in any meaningful (that is, quantitatively measurable) answers or theological or philosophical progress, then such activities are a waste of time. I hope that none of my readers feel this way, although I cannot also dismiss the possibility that some will come to such a conclusion. In our continually shrinking global village, we cannot ignore either the advance of science or the presence of religious others. This is especially the case for those of us who are interested in pursuing the truth: I do not see how either Christians or Buddhists or scientists can proceed on their merry ways without paying some attention to how those in these other “camps” think about

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matters that they have not only long thought about but probably also disputed, in many cases, heatedly and persistently so. If anything, I hope the preceding has provided one model of how we might be able to gain something of value from patient engagement with other points of view; if nothing else, perhaps we are now in a better position to articulate what we believe about matters of common interest. This leads us to the third type of outcome possible from this volume, one that I hope is engendered in most of my readers: that interdisciplinary and interreligious expertise is not only important and needed but also valuable for our ongoing vocations, whatever that may be. Even if scientists do not become religious, perhaps they might become more cognizant of religious perspectives that can enable them to be better scientists and do their scientifijic work in ways that shed light on religious phenomena and takes into account religious perspectives. Even if Buddhists or Christians do not convert, perhaps our respective faiths can be deepened, at least as we understand them, in light of patient dialogue and collaborative conversation. While there is a place for Buddhist philosophy internal to the global Buddhist Sangha, and even as there is surely value for what Barth termed “church dogmatics”—in terms of second order reflection produced by, in, and for the church or the Christian community—I also feel it is increasingly naïve to think that such considerations can take place in any kind of historical vacuum that ignores the results of science and the ideas of those in other faiths. We cannot now go back as if to exist without knowledge of science or of other religions traditions, just as we cannot now undo the Renaissance, or the Reformation, or the Great Awakenings. Note that I am not saying that we cannot be confijirmed Christians or Buddhists. But, I am saying that the substance of our afffijirmation cannot and do not occur in the silos of our own halls without any onlookers. So while that does not mean that we will need to tailor our confessions for the outsider, it does mean that at some point, we will need to ask if the substance of our confessions make sense in the kind of interdisciplinary and interreligious world that characterizes human existence in the twenty-fijirst century. I, for one, feel as a result of the ChristianityBuddhism-science trialogue even more deeply committed to the Christian faith, but my understanding of that faith has indeed been afffected by the thinking of others. Is this a betrayal of Christian commitments? Probably for some who believe in and adhere to prior formulations of that faith as being inviolable, yes. But for me, who believes in and is committed to

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following a living Christ as carried by the Spirit—whose “wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” ( John 3:8)—such openness is one prominent characteristic of Christian faithfulness. It is Christian faithfulness that is and remains hopeful when we see through a mirror dimly (1 Cor. 13:12). Such faithfulness persists in asking questions and believing that the Spirit of Christ is also the Spirit who leads into all truth, wherever that may be found. Such inquiry will involve the sciences, even as it has the potential to transform what happens in scientifijic inquiry; such exploration will also involve those in other faiths, including Buddhists, even as it has the potential to make a diffference also in such conversations. Further, such dialogical inquiry is essential to understanding our Buddhist neighbors who are global citizens with us, and this understanding is crucial to bearing proper witness to and about them. Christians have perpetuated too many false stereotypes about our Buddhist friends over the centuries, mostly informed by half-truths or otherwise simply the result of thoughtless ignorance. In worst case scenarios, Christians and Buddhists have responded in violence to one another, betraying fundamental commitments of their own religious traditions along the say; and the world remains fraught with wars and rumors of wars, some tinged and others driven directly, at least in part, by religious rhetoric and disagreements— witness the case of Sri Lanka, for example. We ought to oppose violence and usually such begins by telling the truth rather than bearing false witness. Herein are our Christian ethical responsibilities in light of the Gospel of Christ, which urges us always to speak truthfully to and about others. Yet we cannot tell the truth about others if we know little about who they are or if we do not take the time to get to know them quite apart from the otherwise valid activity of evangelization. This book urges us to take the time to learn about “them” so that we can live more faithfully as Christfollowers in a pluralistic world. However, most of all, such faithfulness will result in the transformation of ourselves. We will be shaped and impacted by the gifts of the interdisciplinary and interreligious dialogues, and these will be, for us at least, means of divine grace to enable more faithful engagement with the world. In the end, such transformations will and must involve ethical activity: loving God with all of our hearts, minds, souls, and strength will involve loving others—including our neighbors in other faiths and, in light of the convictions of our Buddhist friends, all sentient beings—as ourselves.

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Such interdisciplinary and interreligious trialogue cannot but empower more faithful witness to the living Christ that will benefijit the common good. That itself will be a living expression of what Christians call the Holy Spirit, even if our Buddhist interlocutors might only experience this reality as no more than an ephemeral cosmic breath.

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NAME INDEX Abe, Masao 103n1, 201–08, 210–13, 218 Anaxagoras of Clazomenae 47 Anaximenes of Miletus 47 Aquinas, Thomas 90n27, 181, 188 Augustine of Hippo 215 Barth, Karl 220–21, 236n31 Berkeley, George 51, 140n30 Berry, R.J. 4n6 Bielfeldt, Dennis 92n33 Bofff, Leonardo 226 Bohm, David 165 Bohr, Niels 54, 55, 126, 219, 220 Bonevac, Daniel 78n55 Bowers, Russell H. Jr. 208n25 Bracken, Joseph xi, 185–92 Candrakīrti 137n20 Carter, Robert 145 Chang, Garma 209 Clayton, Philip 65n23, 88, 188 Cook, Francis 139 Copernicus, Nicolaus 51 Corrington, Robert 3n3, 40, 41 Dalai Lama XIV 100, 112–19, 160 Daneel, Marthinus 228 de Chardin, Teilhard 39, 65n26 deCharms, R. Christopher 167n44 de Laplace, Pierre Simon 51 Descartes, René 85 de Silva, Lynn 192, 201, 205 Dharmapala, Anagarika 105 Dōgen 154, 155 Eckhart, Meister 188, 197n45, 209 Einstein, Albert 54, 55, 76, 108, 126, 165 Euclid of Alexandria 160 Fagg, Lawrence W. 49n36 Faraday, Michael 49, 53, 54, 55, 56 Fa-tsang 137–41 Fazang, see Fa-tsang Genz, Henning 124, 125n55 Gregory, Peter 137n18 Gödel, Kurt 160 Gregersen, Niels Henrik 89 Gunton, Colin 4n7

Habito, Ruben 240 Happel, Stephen 180 Harris, Ian 233 Harvey, Peter 153–54n4 Hasker, William 91 Hefner, Philip J. 88n19 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 39, 48, 186, 189 Heidegger, Martin 188 Heisenberg, Werner 54, 55 Heller, Michael 70n37 Heraclitus of Ephesus 47 Hick, John 24n58 Hippocrates 47 Hodgson, Peter C. 97n47 Holland, John 68 Irenaeus of Lyons 45, 215 James, William 162 Johnson, Keith E. 200n6 Johnson, Steven 67 Jung, Carl 165 Kalupahana, David 153 Kant, Immanuel 52, 161 Kaufffman, Stuart A. 89 Kaufman, Gordon 213n38 Keenan, John P. 179n3 Kepler, Johannes 51 Kim, Jaegwon 79n56, 188 King, Winston 195n39 Knitter, Paul 24n58 Kraft, William 194n35 Lai, Pan-chiu 219 Laszlo, Ervin 71, 72, 186 Lee, Bernard 45n23 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 65n24, 123 Lindbeck, George 8n18 Lodahl, Michael 238n33 Loder, James 40, 41, 220 MacLean, Paul 159n22 Macy, Joanna 141n34, 142n35–36, 143n37–38 Mansfijield, Victor 109, 111, 117, 135n14 Maxwell, James Clerk 53, 55 McTaggart, J.M.E. 76

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Meyering, Theo C. 78n53 Miles, Todd L. 200n6 Milinda 152 Mitchell, Donald 184 Moltmann, Jürgen 42, 43, 44, 72, 217n47 Morgan, Lloyd 65, 66, 77 Morowitz, Harold 67, 68 Müller, Max 104 Murphy, George 45–47 Nāgārjuna 129, 130–136, 172, 203 Nāgasena 152 Needham, Joseph 66 Neill, Stephen 17 Nesteruk, Alexei V. 45, 63n17 Neville, Robert Cummings 7, 12, 190, 212n36 Newton, Isaac 51, 52, 160 Nishida, Kitaro 144–50, 155–56, 170, 172, 178–79, 184, 188–89, 196, 209, 210, 230, 236 Nishitani, Keiji 120–124, 144, 149–50, 172, 178–79, 187–88, 196, 207n23, 213, 214n40, 218 Oersted, Hans Christian 52 Pannenberg, Wolfhart 48, 50–51, 55–57, 60n6, 70–72, 92–93, 97–98, 178–79, 187, 217n47, 219 Peacocke, Arthur 66 Peirce, Charles Sanders 6, 7, 140n30 Peters, Ted 76 Pettersson, Max 66 Philo of Alexandria 61n11 Plato 47, 145 Posidonius of Apameia 47 Potter, Robert 97, 98n48 Ptolemy, Claudius 160 Rahner, Karl 15 Raven, Charles 69 Reynolds, Blair 45

Ricard, Matthieu 107–109, 111, 112, 124 Rice, Martin J. 214n41 Richard of St. Victor 238n33 Royce, Josiah 140n30 Schelling, Friedrich 48, 52, 140n30, 186, 188, 189 Shults, F. LeRon 41, 94n36, 191n39 Simmons, Ernest 46, 47 Smart, Ninian 219n51 Smith, Mark S. 60n4 Soyen, Shaku 105 Spinoza, Baruch 108, 165 Streeter, Burnett Hillman 18n42 Swidler, Leonard 195n38 Tanabe, Hajime 145n45, 170, 171n52, 236 Thurman, Robert 160 Trinh, Xuan Thuan 107–109, 111, 124 Tsung-mi 154n8 Vasubandhu 153n5, 153n7 Von Rad, Gerhard 60 Wallace, B. Alan 159–67 Wallace, Mark I. 227, 228 Walton, John H. 59n2 Ward, Keith 97n45 Weerasinghe, Mahinda 106n9 Weinberg, Steven 54n46 Westermann, Claus 84 White, Lynn 225n3 Whitehead, Alfred North 186, 187 Wili, Walter 48n30 Wilkinson, Robert 144n41 Xenocrates of Chalcedon 47 Yagi, Seiichi 206, 207n23 Yasuo, Yuasa 155, 156 Zajonc, Arthur 160 Zukav, Gary 125n56

SUBJECT INDEX Abhidharma Buddhism 131, 133, 152, 183 absolute nothingness, see nothingness, absolute action 110, 147–48, 169 Adam 214  First 215  Second 215 agnosticism, methodological 198n1 Amida Buddha 236 analogy, principle of 219 anatman (non-self) 151, 192–97, 201 anatta see anatman angels, fall of 61n10 animism 42 anonymous Christianity 15 Anthropic Principle 75, 76 anthropology, apologetics 12, 31, 118 Buddhist 105, 167–72 cultural 42 physicalist 82n3 pneumatological 206–08 relational 82n3 theological 81–84, 92–98, 200–208, 207 Association of African Earthkeeping Churches 228–29 atman (self) 152 atom 124 awareness 146–47 basho 144–50, 156, 172, 178, 184, 221 Big Bang 115, 214n41 Big Crunch 76 bodhisattvas 141, 143, 196, 213 Brahmanism 152, 153 brain science 95n37 Buddha Mind 102, 140, 143, 154, 179, 182, 183, 185, 192, 197, 200, 203, 210, 230 Buddha Nature 154, 167, 192, 230, 234, 235 Buddhist-Christian encounter 10–20 Cambridge Platonism 51 causality 131, 135, 143  backward causation 211n32  top-down causation 85, 89 Ch’an meditation 154 chaos theory 69, 75n48

Christology, Chalcedonian 220n54 see also Jesus Christ, and Spirit  Christology Church 95, 96n40 circuminsessional interpenetration 123, 124 coherentism 26 communalism 194 comparative theology 29, 31, 178–85  comparative categories 177n2 compassion 109, 111, 129n2, 141, 143, 150, 172, 195, 213, 232, 237 complementarity 54, 126, 219n51, 220 complexity theory 68 concordism 59 consciousness 81, 91, 108, 112, 113, 158, 182  science of 159–67 contemplation 159–67 See also science, contemplative contingency 50, 178, 180, 181 conversion 17 Copenhagen Interpretation 55, 125 cosmology 181, 185–91, 208 Buddhist 116 contemporary 144–50 modern 117 creation creatio continua 64 creatio ex nihilo 62, 181, 190, 193 Christian doctrine of 181 narrative of 60–64 out of chaos 62n12, 62n13 theology of 7 creator Spiritus 225 death 201 deconstruction 132 Down syndrome 87 dipolar monism 86 dualism 43, 86, 109, 148, 205 Cartesian 84, 162 Kantian 165 of past and future time 148 Platonist 84, 85 temporal 148 ecology 169, 227, 228 ecotheology 225

280

subject index

Eightfold Path 134, 214 e = mc2 126 emergence theory 179, 180, 191 emptiness 120–28  and form 136–43  see also self-emptying entropy 72, 74, 75, 76n59, 110, 142, 211 environment Buddhist philosophy of 229–34 ethics of 234–41 theology of 225–29 epistemic pluralism 20–22 epistemology 6, 12, 20, 132, 133, 184, 221  participatory 20 eschatology, realized 216 eternalism 132, 135 eternity 212n36 ethics 208  Buddhist ethics 233 pneumatological 234–41, 236n31 evolution 110, 170 exclusivism 11, 12, 14 fact-value dichotomy 118 fallen world 214, 235 fallibility 24 feminist theology 225 fijield theory 49–50, 51–57, 70n36, 72, 178  see also quantum fijield theory Four Noble Truths 9, 131 Gaia theology 3n3, 225 Gnosticism 39 God-of-the-gaps 34, 79 Heart Sutra 138n21 holism 141, 233 Huayen Buddhism 123, 136–43, 148–50, 168, 182, 210, 211 human being 192–197 becoming 192–97 idealism 41, 140, 143  German 189 imagination, pneumatological xii, 184 impersonalism 185, 208 inclusivism 11, 12, 14, 15 indigenous worldview 228 individuation, principle of 146 instrumentalism 160, 161, 219 interdisciplinarity 244 interfaith dialogue 10–20, 242 interrelationality 23, 151, 180, 230, 232

intersubjectivity 27, 28, 94, 168, 188, 191, 222, 238 introspection 162, 165 irreversibility, temporal 211 Jesus Christ 95, 96, 196, 197, 200, 205 as healer and earthkeeper 228 Jewel Net of Indra 123, 139, 171, 211, 232 justifijication 215 Kalachakra Buddhism 116 kenosis 196, 201, 202, 204, 205 Kyoto School 100, 120–128, 144, 150, 172, 178, 179, 180, 195, 201n9, 202, 203, 217 language  religious 8 theological 7 liberation theology 225 Logos 196 Madhyamaka Buddhism 130–36, 149, 150, 179, 195, 203 materialism 86, 87, 143 mechanics, classical 69, 71, 78, 142 quantum see quantum mechanics metaphysics 133, 165 Mind and Life Dialogues 112–19 mind-body relationship 85–92, 93, 158, 162 multiverse 116 mysticism 225 Buddhist mysticism 106 natural selection 89 natural theology 4 naturalism 85, 95n37  religious 40 nature Buddhist philosophy of 9 nature-ethics 118  philosophy of 3, 5, 17–19, 30, 185–91 pneumatological theology of 34 theology of 3–5, 7–10, 17–19, 29, 30, 239 neurosciences 85–92, 95n38, 152–59 New Age 3n3 nihilism 121, 122, 132 nirvana 123, 129n2, 131, 134, 148, 168, 169, 194, 235 Noble Eightfold Path 15 noncontradiction 208 nondualism/nonduality 124, 179, 183, 207, 230, 233 non-self 152–59, 193, 201

subject index non-theism 14 nothingness, absolute 120, 122, 123, 144, 145, 149, 159, 171, 178, 180, 195n35 objectivism 160, 221 occult 39 omniscience 209 ontology 133 trinitarian 94n36 origination dependent 135 interdependent 29, 30, 116, 124, 133–34, 136, 147, 154, 161, 166–67, 178–79, 185, 191–92, 195, 212, 230, 232 panexperientialism 87 pantheism 108 Parliament of Religions 105 passion 140, 157, 201 Pentecost, Day of 20, 21, 22, 27, 95, 206, 237 perennial philosophy 164n34 Perfection of Wisdom, see Prajnaparamita personalism 185 perspectivalism 19 phenomenology 91n29 philosophy of mind 107 physicalism 87 physics 114 pluralism 11, 12, 13, 15, 16, 24n52 pneuma, Stoic notion of 55 political theology 225 polytheism 163 postliberalism 8n18 Prajnaparamita 131, 134, 140, 230 pratityasamutpada 126, 167, 171, 185–91, 188, 233, 235k praxis 23, 24 pre-Socratics 47 problem of evil 234, 235 process philosophy 130n3 psychology 41 punctuated equilibrium 65 Pure Land Buddhism 145n43, 170, 236, 237 quantum cosmology 116 quantum fijield theory 46, 126, 127 149 quantum indeterminacy 149 quantum mechanics 115, 119, 125, 135, 150, 160, 211n32, 219 quantum nonlocality 109, 110 rationalism 122 realism 160  critical 6

281

recapitulation 215 redemption 96n44, 214, 216 reductionistism 19, 78, 85, 86 reenchantment of the world 3 reincarnation 208 relationality 41, 93, 94n36, 194 relational theology 191n39 relativity theory 76 General Theory 54, 165, 166  Special Theory 54 relativism 26, 165 religion, methodological study of 217–23 resurrection 195, 201, 208 Romanticism 48 Samantha practice 164 sanctifijication 195 science contemplative 114 philosophy of 6, 150 science-and-religion  methodological issues 2–10 scientifijic method 6, 217–23 scientism 122, 218 self-emptying 46, 111, 118, 124–26, 155, 167, 170, 171, 174, 196, 213, 230, 238 self-ordering systems 89 self-organization 93 self-transcendence 95 shamanism 42 shunyata 103n1, 111n25, 118, 129n2 sinful world 235 social brain 91–92 soteriology 215 soul 97n45 speed of light 54, 115, 126n58, 127, 165 Spirit Christology 196, 206 ecclesiology 206 and emergence 65–70 ontology of 34 spiritualism 39 spirituality 39  apophatic 197 subjectivism 221 supervenience 65n24, 77–79, 87, 89, 90, 93, 191 syncretism 16, 240 systems theory 70–79, 141, 142, 143, 179, 182, 186, 191 systems, self-organizing processes of 71n39 theodicy, see problem of evil theological method 199, 217–23

282

subject index

theology, philosophical 31 Theosophical Society 104 Theravada Buddhism xi, 100, 103n2, 129, 133, 134, 152, 163, 192–99 thermodynamics, second law of 73–75, 215 Tibetan Buddhism 112–19 T’ien T’ai Buddhism 133n9 Timaeus 47, 145 time, and temporality 210–17 tohuwabhohu 61, 62, 70, 73 tradition 23 trialogue 2n2 Trinity 184, 185, 190, 191, 203, 208 true-self 152–59, 167–72, 205, 231 truth 25–28 correspondence theory of 27 dialogical approach to 27 “two truths” theory 133, 179n3

Uncertainty Principle 54 unity of opposites 148, 178 Vairocana Buddha 231 Vajrayyana sources 164 Vedantic eternalism 193 Vedantic nihilism 193 vitalism 80n1, 90n27 wave function 54, 75, 110, 125, 149 Williams Syndrome 87 Word and Spirit 45, 190 Yogacara Buddhism 140, 153, 179, 183 Zen Buddhism 144, 151, 157, 170, 202, 205, 231, 240 Rinzai School 155  Soto sect 154, 155