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)...

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Detalhes bibliográficos
Autor principal: Zappulli, Davide Andrea (Author)
Tipo de documento: Recurso Electrónico Artigo
Idioma:Inglês
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Interlibrary Loan:Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany)
Publicado em: 2023
Em: Religious studies
Ano: 2023, Volume: 59, Número: 4, Páginas: 762-774
Outras palavras-chave:B Buddhism
B suchness
B One Mind
B Perfect Being Theology
B God
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Descrição
Resumo: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.
ISSN:1469-901X
Obras secundárias:Enthalten in: Religious studies
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1017/S0034412522000725