This is the introductory volume of a multivolume, verse-by-verse, interfaith rereading of the New Testament letter to the Ephesians. It looks to the Tiantai Buddhist master Zhiyi and his “threefold truth” to enhance our appreciation of nascent trinitarian themes in Ephesians. And it draws upon a broad array of scientific, theological, and philosophical thinkers in aid of rejecting the epistle's ancient, geocentric cosmology and its accommodations to the misogynistic, patriarchal, and slaveholding norms of its first-century surroundings. As a whole, the work constitutes a twenty-first century apologetic for doctrinal humility and for theologizing within a global theological commons.

This is volume 2 of a wide-ranging interfaith reading of the Letter to the Ephesians—a New Testament text whose words have inspired and enhanced Christian spiritual life and liturgy over the centuries. Unfortunately, at the same time, Ephesians has provided apparent scriptural support to those who would defend slavery, patriarchy, misogyny, and the physical power of Christ over the cosmos. How on earth are today’s Christians to receive and understand such a text as this? Earthing the Cosmic Christ of Ephesians: The Universe, Trinity, and Zhiyi’s Threefold Truth draws upon a broad array of scientific, theological, and philosophical thinkers who enable us both to marvel at today’s ever-expanding knowledge of our vast cosmos and to appreciate the importance of the Ephesian letter in the canon of our Christian scriptures, even while we acknowledge the archaic geocentric cosmology that underlies its claims about the cosmic Christ and reject its accommodation to the patriarchal, misogynistic, and slaveholding norms of its first-century culture. Throughout this reading of Ephesians, we look to Chinese Buddhist master Zhiyi and his “threefold truth” to enhance our understanding of trinity and the nascent trinitarian themes within this letter. As a whole, this work constitutes a new appreciation for Ephesians as well as a twenty-first century apologetic for doctrinal humility and for theologizing within a global theological commons.

As both a scholar of Buddhism and a Christian priest, John P. Keenan engages with the New Testament letter to the Ephesians, written by a member of the Pauline school likely near the end of the first century—a time when both the cultural world and the cosmos were much narrower than for us today. In pondering this scripture’s significance for residents of the twenty-first century, Keenan looks to the work of scholars and thinkers both ancient and modern, Eastern and Western, scientists and philosophers. Particular attention is given to Chinese Buddhist master Zhiyi’s explanation of a threefold truth, which resonates with an early trinitarian theme in Ephesians and suggests the riches to be discovered upon the global theological commons.

This is the introductory volume of a multivolume, verse-by-verse, interfaith rereading of the New Testament letter to the Ephesians. It looks to the Tiantai Buddhist master Zhiyi and his "threefold truth" to enhance our appreciation of nascent trinitarian themes in Ephesians. And it draws upon a broad array of scientific, theological, and philosophical thinkers in aid of rejecting the epistle's ancient, geocentric cosmology and its accommodations to the misogynistic, patriarchal, and slaveholding norms of its first-century surroundings. As a whole, the work constitutes a twenty-first century apologetic for doctrinal humility and for theologizing within a global theological commons.

In a Tiantai theology, conventional truth is conventionally arisen, which means that such truth is never set once and for all, but is to be cherished and rethought in new circumstances, whether interreligious or scientific—but always in critical consonance with its ancient embodiments. Contexts shift frameworks, but life in Christ is translatable across cultures. Christian faith and theology discourage the assumption that the point of it can be clearly pinned down. God’s appearance to Elijah out of the whirlwind is an eternal reminder of the paltriness of all human perspectives. Symbolic worlds of faith and wisdom are not themselves finished products. Because it has a past and a future, the cosmos itself is unfinished. Christian creeds ought not be defended as last-word ideological positions and bastions against relativity, but instead recognized in their cultural contexts and affirmed as grammars of communal and personal assent.

Before the Gospels were written, long before the creeds of the Church were hammered out, Christ followers in Philippi sang a hymn of the Christ who, "although he was in the form of God . . . emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born as are all humans." But this emptied Christ never fit neatly into later theologies of the church, shaped by Greek thought, concerned with being and essence. In Philippians, Paul struggles, stumbling over his own awkward words to express his hope, his eschatological faith, that he might "gain Christ and be found in him . . . and participate in his sufferings by being conformed to his death, if in some way I may reach to what goes beyond the resurrection from the dead." Might we better comprehend Paul's inchoate, even mystical, faith in Jesus Christ with aid from a less empirical world of thought than our western heritage offers? Might the thinking of Mahā[set macron over a]yā[set macron over a]na Buddhism guide us toward an awareness of a truth in the Christian faith that is more profound than anything reducible to historical "facts," or even to human language?

Profiles Jesus Christ as the human face of God, taking into the account the multiple ways his life has been viewed and retold, and dramatizing the transformation from a man to a myth.

John Keenan's 'The Gospel of Mark' is a radically new reading of this most intriguing of the Synoptic gospels - a remarkable feat in the face of the explosion of Markan scholarship over the last twenty years. Keenan accomplishes this by approaching Mark as no other scholar has done: through the lens of Mahayana-Buddhist philosophy. This view stresses the emptying of all preconceived notions of how to begin reading as well as reclamation of such notions in terms of dependent co-arising and Jesus' assault on the validity of conventional religiosity. 'The Gospel of Mark' displays an alternative hermeneutical procedure, one generated by the Mahayana understanding of the function of text and doctrine, and informed by Mahayana philosophy. Part One of 'The Gospel of Mark' provides an overview of different interpretive techniques in Markan scholarship. It describes and argues for the validity of a Buddhist approach to this charter document of the Christian Gospel. Here the author demonstrates a profound grasp not only of scriptural scholarship but of Mahayana philosophy. Keenan discusses themes such as Mark's elliptical style and the journeying that provides the impetus for the narrative, and explores them through the lens of emptiness and dependent co-arising which are the focal points of a Mahayana reading. In Part Two Keenan gives the reader truly fresh insights into the paradoxical world of Mark's Jesus. Through a Buddhist lens, the text offers startling and new perspectives on Jesus himself, the experience of the Kingdom, miracle stories and parables, the passion and death, the resurrection and return.

The Meaning of Christ reinterprets Christian tradition in the light of Mahāyāna Buddhist philosophy. Mahāyāna theology declares Christ to be "empty of essence," defined only in the "dependently co-arisen" course of his life, death, and resurrection. Kenan uses Buddhist thought to unveil "facets of meaning in Christ not focused on in western thinking," and to enable western Christians to reclaim their mystic tradition. Part I examines the meaning of Christ as developed in the early church. Through primary sources, Keenan brings to lifht the cumulative research, interpretations and historical understanding of a broad host of Christian scholars. He argues that the Christian West has failed to relate its own mystic thinkers to its doctrinal, theoretical thinking. Part II outlines Indian Buddhist thought from the early Nikāyas through the Abhidharma theorists, the Prajn̄āpāramitaā and Mādhyanuja thinkers, to the development of critical theory in Yogācāra. Keenan then develops the Yogācāra concept of consciousness, addresses some of the objections to the adoption of Mahāyāna philosophy in Christian theology, and applies the Mahāyāna approach to the doctrines of Incarnation and Trinity.