The Buddha-Christ may well be the crowning achievement of a career
rich in insights and endowed with courage. No one will fail to
learn something from this book, and few will complete it without
some appreciation of the gift Buri has given us.
The Buddha-Christ arose out of Buri's preoccupation over an
extended period with the spiritual world of Buddhism. But "I cannot
even speak of Buddhism", he says in his foreword, "without thereby
stating what I mean by Christianity, both for its own sake and for
the evaluation of Buddhism. For both Buddhism as well as
Christianity are about the 'Lord of the True Self". Buri explains
that
For Buddhists ... The Lord of the True Self is a fundamental
statement about kyamuni (Gautama the Buddha) and their relationship
to him, just as for Christians, especially from the perspective of
Paul, the confession of Jesus as Lord is of central significance.
With this Lord if he really is the Lord we are not dealing with a
product of one's own heart, but with a Beyond, with the
Transcendence to which they experience themselves related. The Lord
of the True Self is an expression for the transcendent relatedness
of self-understanding.
Theology today is becoming increasingly aware of a new world
openness of Christianity (to use the title of the Festschrift
presented to Buri on his eightieth birthday in 1987). Translator
Harold Oliver suggests that "it may well be that what Buri has
attempted in this volume vis-a-vis the legacy of Japanese culture
... will need to be extended to other world religions and could
serve as a model for such undertakings. This must be done, "Oliver
concludes, "not as a distracting aside within theology, but as an
essential part ofthe theological task itself".
Christian theology will long be indebted to Buri for sharing his
world openness with us. Also, English-reading students of Christian
theology must be grateful to Harold Oliver for making the profound
insights of Buri readily available for serious contemplation.
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