A Buddhist Critique of the Christian Concept of God
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19428751 |
|---|---|
| Authors | G W Houston, Gunapala Dharmasiri |
| Year | 1983 |
| Volume | 3 |
| Pages | 161 |
| Publication date | 1983-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Buddhist-Christian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0882-0945 • E-ISSN: 1527-9472 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/1389923 |
| OpenAlex | W2008860342 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
I have prepared this review because this book is relatively inaccessible and needs to be better known even though it has been out eight years. is an original and provocative study. There are eight chapters in all: God and Soul; God as the Creator and the Designer; God as Benevolent, Omnipotent and Omniscient; God as the Good; God, Cosmos and Evolution; God as Experience; The Nature and Existence of God; Revelation and Reason. The positive contribution of this book is that it is one of the few attempts that I am aware of by a Theravadin monk to wrestle with deep theological issues of Christianity. He has read theologians such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Karl Barth, J. A. T. Robinson, John Macquarrie, Charles Hartshorne, John B. Cobb, Jr., Paul Tillich, and others. Besides, Dharmasiri has studied under Ninian Smart about whom he wrote: It is with the utmost respect for his scholarship that I disagree with some of his theories in the present work. From a Buddhist point of view, I found his ideas to be the strongest Christian position a Buddhist has to face because Professor Smart has been admirably sensitive to the possible Buddhist criticisms of the Christian seems that Dharmasiri opposes any Christians position. And, in my opinion, he asks theology to do something outside of its method and scope, namely, to prove the existence of God. He does not understand that modern theology assumes God. God is a given and one judges theology by its clarity and inner consistency. The author of this book seems unaware of this. This is one cause of his frustration with Christianity. Also, a second problem with his critique is that he assumes Buddhism as a united philosophy or religion over and against a confused and pluralistic Christianity. Be never mentions any other schools of Buddhism other than his own. So he demonstrates an assumed solidarity from Buddhism
Buddhism · Epistemology · Theology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Christian Theology and Mission · Historical and Architectural Studies · Philosophy · Religious studies
| Citations per year | 0.07 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1982 - 2012 (31) |
| Highly cited | No |