Towards a Buddhist theism
My claim in this article is that the thesis that Buddhism has no God, insofar as it is taken to apply to Buddhism universally, is false. I defend this claim by interpreting a central text in East-Asian Buddhism - The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna - through the lenses of perfect being theology (PBT)...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | |
| Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
| Published: |
2023
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| In: |
Religious studies
Year: 2023, Volume: 59, Issue: 4, Pages: 762-774 |
| Further subjects: | B
Buddhism
B suchness B One Mind B Perfect Being Theology B God |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (kostenfrei) Volltext (kostenfrei) |
| Summary: | My claim in this article is that the thesis that Buddhism has no God, insofar as it is taken to apply to Buddhism universally, is false. I defend this claim by interpreting a central text in East-Asian Buddhism - The Awakening of Faith in Mahāyāna - through the lenses of perfect being theology (PBT), a research programme in philosophy of religion that attempts to provide a description of God through a two-step process: (1) defining God in terms of maximal greatness; (2) inferring the properties or attributes that God must have in virtue of satisfying the definition. My argument comprises two steps. First, I argue that, since PBT is a method for providing a description of God starting from a definition of God, any text that contains a PBT ipso facto contains a notion of God. Second, I argue through textual evidence that The Awakening articulates a PBT, concluding that it contains a notion of God. Since the method of PBT leaves open what descriptions are to be inferred, my argument allows me to conclude that a text contains a notion of God without previously committing to any particular conception of the divine, which makes it particularly versatile and powerful. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-901X |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Religious studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0034412522000725 |