The Metaphysic of Christianity and Buddhism: A Symphony

by D. M. Strong

"As the sleeping Logos did Christ live potentially in the Father's bosom, long, long before he came into this world of ours.... Wherever there is intelligence, in all stages of life, where there is the least spark of instinct, there dwells Christ, if Christ is the Logos. In this right and rational view do not the Fathers all agree? Do they not speak of an all-pervading Christ? Do not they bear unequivocal testimony to Christ in Socrates? Even in barbarian philosophy and in all Hellenic literature they saw and adored their Logos, Christ.... I deny and repudiate the little Christ of popular theology, and stand up for a greater Christ, a fuller Christ, a more eternal Christ, a more universal Christ.

"I plead for the eternal Logos of the Fathers, and I challenge the world's assent.

"This is the Christ who was in Greece and Rome, in Egypt and in India. In the bards and the poets of the Rig-Veda was he. He dwelt in Confucius and in Sakya Muni (Gotama Buddha). This is the true Christ, whom I can see everywhere, in all lands and in all times, in Europe and in Asia, in Africa, in America, in ancient and modern times. He is not the monopoly of any nation or creed. All literature, all science, all philosophy, every doctrine that is true, every form of righteousness, every virtue that belongs to the Son, is the true subjective Christ, whom all ages glorify. He is pure intelligence (Bodhi), the word of God, mighty Logos. Scattered in all schools of philosophy and in all religious sects, scattered in all men and women of the East and the West, are multitudinous Christ-principles and fragments of Christ-life, one vast and identical Sonship diversely manifested."

The writer of an article in a review[G] says that the expression, Logos, is introduced "with startling suddenness by St. John in the exordium of his Gospel, and that there is nothing in the Old Testament or in the Synoptic Gospels to prepare the way for it, or to explain it." He inclines, the writer says, to attribute the introduction of the idea by St. John to the influence of Philo-Judæus, who elaborated it from the account of the Creation given in Genesis, to such an extent that he came to call the Logos, or intermediary power, the Son of God. Philo, after profound meditation, to quote his own words, "heard even a more solemn voice from my soul, accustomed often to be possessed by God and to discourse of things which it knew not, which, if I can, I will recall." Philo, the writer says, must have "observed that the Mosaic cosmogony leaves the modus operandi of creation in obscurity. The account given is 'God said, Let there be light,' and so on. Thus the spoken word of God is represented as the efficient cause of creation. But to attribute speech to the Most High was manifestly a concession to the frailty of the human intellect."

Mr. W. E. Ball concedes that the Logos-idea was prevalent in the East long before the time of the Evangelist, and in this connection he refers to the Vedic vach or speech. This notion also possibly emanated from a cosmogony similar to that found in Genesis. He proceeds to say "that the editors of the Septuagint deliberately set themselves to soften down those passages in the earlier books of the Bible which were conceived to be most open to the charge of anthropomorphism. A single example will suffice. In Exodus xxiv. 9-11 it is related that Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy elders, ascended Mount Sinai 'and saw the God of Israel.' The Hebrew text is clear beyond dispute; but in the Septuagint the passage reads, 'and saw the place where the God of Israel stood.'" Then we are referred to the "one living and true God, who, according to the Christian articles of faith, is without body, parts, or passions." As, however, in the Christian Scriptures it was recorded that he had been seen and conversed with, it became necessary to assume an emanation or intermediary power for this speaking and visible phase of God; hence, first, the unpersonified Logos of Philo, and afterwards the Logos made flesh in the person of Jesus according to St. John. The writer thinks that, however much the conception of Philo in the direction of a Logos as the Son of God may be minimized in its importance (on account of Philo's silence on the divine human as a Messiah) with reference to its bearing upon the writings of St. John, there is no doubt that Philo supplied "a theological vocabulary for the expression of Johannine and Pauline doctrine." "St. John grasped Philo's conception of the word as not only the revelation of the silent God, but also as a reflection of the invisible God." "Jesus never described himself as the son of God." Such endeavours, however, as the above to fix the genesis and growth of an idea from a concrete statement in a book, and to hypothecate its translation from one leader of thought to another, leaves out of reckoning the possibility of ideas finding a place in individual minds by means of a mystical faculty, or what is commonly called revelation. This mystical faculty is the power of sublimating ideas, a power, evolved from materialities, that, at a certain stage of thought, produces a capacity for abnormal insight into the nature of things, a capacity that can be developed by training; that is to say, when the faculty of knowledge becomes so far removed from the mechanical influences of the brain that its connection with the nervous system may be considered to be on the verge of absolute severance. This faculty is due to no individualized external power, but is simply a development from the totality of things, their inherent qualities, their relationship and interactions.

Both Philo and St. John may be credited with the possession of a certain amount of this abnormal power, and considered as presentations of Logos, but not in the same perfection as Jesus and Gotama. "Bôdhi," Dr. Paul Carus says, "is that which conditions the cosmic order of the world and the uniformities of reality. Bôdhi is the everlasting prototype of truth, partial aspects of which are formulated by scientists in the various laws of nature. Above all, Bôdhi is the basis of the Dharma; it is the foundation of religion; it is the objective reality in the constitution of being from which the good law of righteousness is derived; it is the ultimate authority for moral conduct."

It is evident from historical sources that there were many Buddhists living at and after the time of Gotama, when traditions and legends accumulated, who had not assimilated his doctrines in their entirety and purity. So it was in the case of Jesus, whose followers and interpreters arrived at various conclusions in respect of his teaching.

Some who have emancipated themselves from the "letter that kills," and have acquired the power of grasping realities, have conceived the true position of Jesus and Gotama to have been that of clairvoyants, and, consequently, it is not to be expected that a complete mastery of the meaning of their communications would ever be attainable by ordinary human knowledge. This latter conclusion, in respect of Jesus, is most clearly established by passages to be found in the New Testament.

Jesus and Gotama laboured under the same difficulty: they knew more than was translatable into language, or communicable to their followers. Parables were attempted as media for imparting a glimmering of this knowledge to the ignorant and obtuse. Professor Oldenberg says: "When we try to resuscitate, in our own way and our own language, the thoughts that are embedded in the Buddhist teaching, we can scarcely help forming the impression that it was not a mere idle statement which the sacred texts present to us, that the Perfect One knew much more which he thought inadvisable to say than what he esteemed it profitable to say."