The Church in the World

In his book Christianity and the World Religions, Hans Kiing compares Gautama Buddha to Jesus Christ., One of the comparative points that he makes, which caught my eye while preparing to write this paper, is that the Buddha's life has a sense of completion about it while that of Jesus does not. The Buddha taught the Dharma and established a large Sangha for nearly fifty years after his enlightenment before peacefully entering Parinirvana. On the other hand, Jesus lived only a few years of public life, a life that was ended by crucifixion. While the life of the Buddha has a sense of wholeness about it, the life ofJesus seems fragmentary, somehow incomplete. I think that this sense of incompleteness about the life of Jesus is important to understanding the Christian mode of being-in-the-world. This is the thesis that I would like to explore. I will do so by first looking at how this sense of incompleteness draws Christians to seek a more communal mode of being-in-the-world as the Church. Then I will go on to examine the dialogical, ethical, and spiritual implications of this communal life in the world today. Because of my own interest in Christian spirituality, I will especially emphasize that particular dimension of the Church's being-in-the-world

Dialogical self · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Sociology · Biblical Studies and Interpretation · Christian Theology and Mission · Philosophy · Psychology · Religious Education and Schools · Social Psychology

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