Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian Quotes

“Loving others, therefore, is not a question so much of “doing God’s will” but, rather, of “living God’s life.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“As some theologians have commented, if we’re convinced that the starting point for our individual lives, or for the human project in general, is marked “original sin” rather than “original blessing,” it’s going to be all the more difficult to move on.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“And yet, and yet, if my belief in Jesus as the only Son of God requires me, explicitly or implicitly, to denigrate or subordinate other religious figures and religions, then such a belief becomes a clot in the free and life-giving flow of my faith’s circulatory system. I’m sorry. It just does.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“If Mystery is the goal and content of all religious experience, then Silence is a necessary means of letting Mystery speak.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“Symbols and myths and poetry are like the well-defined beam of a flashlight that illuminates something that we didn’t realize existed, or only hoped was there, in the dark room of what we sometimes call “the human condition.” The deeper power of a symbol is not determined by the size or shape of its own beam, but by the truth that it makes clear and alive.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“It’s the most basic, and the simplest, thing we can say about ourselves and about God: we exist through relationships of knowing and loving and giving because that’s how God exists.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“In their heart of hearts, religions deal with a Reality they recognize to be indefinable, incomprehensible, unspeakable.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“I believe I have discovered something that I suspect characterizes religious experience in whatever tradition or historical context: the more deeply one enters into the core experience that animates one’s own tradition, the more broadly one is enabled and perhaps moved to enter into the experiences of other traditions. The more deeply one sinks into one’s own religious truth, the more broadly one can appreciate and learn from other truths.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“There are some fingers in my inherited Christian liturgy and language that just don’t point, no matter how much I drench them in silence. But in these cases it’s not because they are overly anthropomorphic or suggestive of dualism. It’s because they’re wrong, or false, or inconsistent with the message of Jesus. I’m speaking especially of patriarchal language that so stresses the power of God that it puts God’s love in jeopardy. So when liturgical prayers or hymns present me with a God who has enemies whom he vanquishes, or a God who gets so angry he damns or destroys, I just clam up, both spontaneously and in protest. And as much as I can, and as sensitively as I can, I let my fellow parishioners and the pastor know of my discomfort and protest. It takes time to change the language of institutions and tradition.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“But you Christians also say that Jesus is the Son of God,” he retorted. “That makes Jesus very different from Muhammad. We would never say that about Muhammad because we believe that he was a real human being, just like us. Besides, we can’t understand how Allah can engender a son. How is that possible?” Stammering somewhat, I trotted out my standard response: “Of course, literally, God cannot have a son. Many of us Christians would view ‘Son of God’ as a symbol.” The gleam in Iqbal’s eyes grew brighter. “Well, why use it? What does it mean?” I won’t go into the exercise in friendly frustration that was the rest of the class. But I did walk home realizing that the questions of my Muslim students were still really my own.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“when, in our contemporary idiom, “talking” about compassion becomes more important than “walking” in compassion – then words show their ever-lurking danger.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“God is and has been for me, rather, the Mystery of InterBeing that surrounds me and animates me. But it is a Mystery that is also personally present to me. When I say “personally present,” I mean that I have sensed that this Mystery touches me and affects me in ways that I can, and must, describe as personal.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“Buddhism has enabled me to identify and affirm what I have been sensing throughout the last few decades of my struggling spiritual life: that God is not an almighty, loving Somebody, a divine Personal Being with whom I have essentially the same kind of interpersonal relationship that I have with the other personal beings in my life.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“My own simplistic definition would be: dualism results when we make necessary distinctions, and then take those distinctions too seriously. We turn those distinctions into dividing lines rather than connecting lines; we use them as no-trespassing signs. We not only distinguish, we separate. And the separation usually leads to ranking: one side is superior to and dominant over the other. Thus, we have the dualism of matter and spirit, East and West, nature and history, male and female, God and the world.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“If Christians insist that “if you want peace, work for justice,” the Buddhists would counter-insist, “if you want peace, be peace.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“To put it bluntly but also imploringly: we Christians need more silence in our services and liturgies. Just how this might be realized, just how we”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“Christian prayer is generally too worshipful and therefore dualistic. And it is too wordy.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“Salvation, therefore, is not a transaction that takes place outside us, but rather an empowering awareness that explodes within and then pervades our entire being.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“Buddhism also throws new, and I believe fuller, light on an oft-quoted passage from John’s Gospel: “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” (John 12:24). In this passage, Jesus, in looking ahead to his own death, speaks about death for all of us. Death means that as “single grains” we really die. The “singleness” of our identities is no longer to be found. The “fruit” that comes forth is very, very different from the single, little seed. Again, we’re dealing here with symbols, with pointing fingers. But they seem to point to a life after death that is no longer life lived as individuals.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“Certainly, the Kindom for Jesus, in all that it meant and was, was not yet here since it was still out there in the future. But at the same time, it was already here, already arrived, especially in his mission and person. We don’t have to wait until the end of history – until heaven – to experience the Kindom of God. Jesus instructed his followers to remember this every day when they pray “Thy Kindom come, thy will be done, on earth [right now!] as it is in heaven [still to come].”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“Rather, when we say that Jesus is divine, Rahner insisted, we are saying that he realized the full potential of human nature; he attained what all of us, whether we realize it or not, are striving for. We are all imbued with this openness to the Infinite, we are all “finite beings capable of the Infinite.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“if a belief makes for bad psychology, it probably makes for bad theology.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“taking our language seriously rather than literally – or as I just put it, in focusing on “what does it mean?” rather than “what really happened?”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“what I have found helpful for myself and for my students is the reminder that to call something a symbol or a myth is not to deny its truth. Just because it “didn’t happen,” or it may not have happened in precisely the way that is reported, doesn’t mean that it isn’t packing a powerful truth. On the contrary, as we just said, its truth may be more wrenching and exciting.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“Mystics are both loyal followers and uncomfortable critics – which, it seems to me, is exactly what Christian churches need today.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“The required personal experience may be mediated through a community or church, but it has to be one’s own. Without such a personal, mystical happening, one cannot authentically and honestly call oneself religious.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“Unless I retrieve my Christian mystical tradition, I’m not going to be able to hang in there with my imperfect, often frustrating church.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“I feel the powerful symbols of the Eucharistic liturgy with Buddhist sensitivity.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“If St. Paul urged us "to pray always" (Eph. 6:18), Buddha would make it "meditate always.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“Translation: the primary purpose of all the language in the Bible and in the creeds and catechism is to tell us how to live rather than provide us with clear, final answers about the nature of God and the universe.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian