Kristin Johnston Largen, a professor of theology at the Lutheran seminary at Gettysburg, has written a stimulating little book: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhism: Rethinking Salvation. In it she offers a summary of the key points of what Christianity and Buddhism mean by salvation and reflects on how Buddhist notions of salvation can shed light on–and even change–the way Christians think about what it means to be saved.

Recognizing that Buddhism is as multi-faceted a tradition as Christianity, Professor Largen focuses her discussion on the Mahayana school of Buddhism, particularly as represented by the 2nd-century Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna has been described as something of a philosophical skeptic, using the tools of logical analysis to deconstruct some of the elaborate metaphysical claims made by the Vedic and Buddhist philosophers of his day. He is particularly well known for his arguments against the idea that the world is made up of enduring metaphysical substances with fixed essences and for collapsing the distinction between nirvana (the state of being free from suffering) and samsara (the cycle of karmic birth and death which it is Buddhism’s goal to escape from). The upshot is a view of reality as a pulsating, ever-changing, relational nexus, rather than being composed of fixed, externally related entities

For Nagarjuna, salvation is realizing–experientially, not just intellectually–the fundamental “emptiness” of all things. This isn’t nihilism; it’s the view that nothing that is has a fixed essence or has its reason for being in itself. Rather, everything is dependent for its existence on relations with everything else. As human selves, we are constituted by our relations with others, and with the rest of the world. Emptiness just is, according to Largen, the fact of interdependence and impermanence. Which is why the distinction between nirvana and samsara vanishes when one attains englightenment: nirvana is not a realm beyond the empirical world; it’s the realization of the “emptiness,” the impermanence and interrelatedness, of all that is.

So what does this have to do with the Christian idea of salvation? Largen provides a helpful overview of various theories, or motifs, of the Atonement, including the Christus Victor, satisfaction, and exemplarist views. Each of these, she says, preserve important aspects of the truth. She also identifies certain other themes associated with salvation in the Christian tradition, such as the tension between the already/not-yet, individual/communal aspects, as well as between the emphasis on divine initiative and human response.

What Buddhism can do, Largen argues, is provide a new vantage point on some of these tensions. For instance, a Buddhist metaphysics of emptiness (if we can call it a metaphysics) undermines the sharp distinction between the individual and the communal (or social) that much Christian tradition takes for granted. Likewise, Buddhism might help us to learn to see the Kingdom as already present, or at least as closer to the present moment than some Christian eschatologies have portrayed it. These insights can affect our practice in encouraging us to live more compassionately and ecologically.

Largen even offers an, admittedly speculative, argument for universal salvation on the grounds that God, in becoming incarnate, became intimately related to all people, precisely becuase of the irreducible interrelatedness of all things. Christians have often intuited something like this, but they haven’t always had the metaphysics to back it up. The early fathers, with their strong Platonist leanings, could argue that Human Nature itself was transformed when the Word became flesh, but a more individualistic and less participatory metaphysics has trouble making sense of that notion. Thus we end up with a lot of talk about imputation and substitution, replacing ontological language with the language of contracts and debts. A quasi-Buddhist view of reality (which is surprisingly similar in some ways to the view of reality portrayed in contemporary physics) could provide a more hospitable environement for a more participatory understanding of salvation.

Of course, there are a whose of other issus to be considered. For instance, the Buddhist view that Largen describes doesn’t seem to require a creator God who is the unchanging ground of the flux of temporal being. It’s not immediately apparent how compatible Buddhist “emptiness” is with the doctrine of creation as Christians conceive it. On the other hand, creation ex nihilo does seem to have at least some affinities with Nagarjuna’s doctrine of “dependent origination.” According to the Christian view of reality, none of us has our reason for being in ourselves; we are all radically dependent on God at every moment of our existence. Moreover, some contemporary theologians have tried to articulate a “relational” ontology that views relationship as a fundamental consituent of being. Whether this ends up being compatible with what a Buddhist might say about the nature of being is an open question, but it at least indicates that some Christians are pointing in that direction.

Regardless, Largen’s book is a valuable example of genuine inter-religious dialogue where the convictions of the other party are taken seriously–neither rejected out of hand nor assimilated to one’s own. She has also demonstrated that Christians have a lot to learn from Buddhists in particular.

It doesn’t really get much more metal than this:

Here’s a Wired article from last year on assisted migration (or colonization) for species endangered by climate change, as discussed in the previous post. Apparently this is something that at least some ecologists take quite seriously. Obviously, a huge concern is the havoc that such transplants could wreak on their new ecosystems, as Camassia pointed out in a comment. Yet, others argue that, at least in some cases, the risks might be worth it.

The article has some good discussion of the pros and cons of both positions. Echoing Southgate, though, it makes the point that there is no longer any “pure” nature untouched by human influence. Like it or not, the fate of other species is now contingent on our actions (or inaction).

In Celia Deane-Drummond and David Clough’s Creaturely Theology, Christopher Southgate expands on an idea he discussed briefly in his recent book The Groaning of Creation (see my posts here). Southgate points out that, due to human-caused climate change, we’re looking at a massive die off of animal life in the near future (what has been called the sixth great extinction). Naturally, when we debate climate change and what, if anything, we should do about it, we focus primarily on the costs and benefits to us. Occasionally, if we’re feeling expansive, we might briefly consider the effects that rising temperatures and sea levels may have on millions desperately poor people around the world, but it would be a huge stretch to say that those people’s interests are given anything like the appropriate weight in our debates. How much less, then, are we taking into consideration the interests of the billions of non-human animals that will be affected?

Extinction, Southgate says, is a sui generis event. It’s not just a harm inflicted on numerous individual creatures, but the final disappearance of an entire way of being in the world. The seriousness of such an event, much less many such events, and the near-certainty of at least some degree of significant climate change should lead us, he argues, to consider whether we have responsibilities, Noah-like, to ensure the continued existence of threatened species.

Southgate argues that traditional environmentalist and animal-rights philosophies are ill-equipped to deal with this scenario. Environmentalists have tended to urge human beings to leave wild nature be–our responsibilities toward non-human creatures are couched in terms of restricting our impact on them. Meanwhile, animal rights proponents have been concerned primarily with the plight of animals already within the sphere of domestication and, hence, human society to some extent. But what Southgate urges us to recognize is that we’re rapidly approaching–if we haven’t already reached it–the point where human action is inescapably changing the conditions for all life on earth. (What Bill McKibben called “the end of nature.”) We can’t simply abdicate our responsibility for that influence by taking refuge in the comforting illusion that we can shrink our impact to nothing. The damage is done, or is inevitably being done, so we have some responsibility for mitigating it.

Given the limitations of existing environmentalist and animal rights frameworks, Southgate proposes turning to the Bible for some ethical principles. The OT teaches us that God cares for everything she has created, and the NT, while short on pro-ecology passages, upholds a normative ideal of concern for the other and servant-hood. Southgate here echoes Andrew Linzey’s idea that human beings are the “servant species,” the one kind of creature capable of taking an interest in the needs of others, even at great cost to itself. Moreover, Christian theology inculcates a moral preference for the most vulnerable, the voiceless, those who are unable to stand up for their own interests. Finally, Southgate appeals to a Pauline notion of community as mutual giving and receiving, suitably expanded to include non-human creatures. The interdependence of the entire ecosystem drives home the point that not only can non-humans be the beneficiaries of our gifts, but we also constantly receive from them.

With these principles in hand, Southgate proposes that we need to seriously consider costly programs of assisted migration for species threatened by habitat loss due to climate change. This could take two forms: the first would be the creation of “corridors” allowing animals safe passage from their old, increasingly unsuitable habitats to more hospitable ones; the second would be actually physically transplanting a viable population from one habitat to another. (Southgate offers a thought experiment of relocating polar bears to Antarctica.) Such measures would not be easy or cheap, but there may be cases where a daring and sacrificial use of resources would be called for. At a more practical level, merely making people aware of such seemingly far-fetched possibilities might drive home the need to make preventative changes now.

Southgate warns that we’re not in a position to save all the creatures as Noah was, but

the profoundly difficult and risky exercise of moving animals from one locus to another should reinforce the point that the earth is our only ark, and the great preponderance of our current current creativity and ingenuity must be towards prayerfully and humbly ensuring the continued health of the “vessel,” such that it is no longer necessary to keep displacing its inhabitants. (pp. 264-5).

This is a radically different notion of “dominion” or even “stewardship” than the one we’re used to: it calls upon humans to take active steps to foster the continued flourishing of the rest of creation, even if it requires significant sacrifice on our part. Southgate distinguishes between an anthropocentric and an anthropomonist ethic: we must recognize the central place that humans, inescapably, play in caring for creation, but without elevating our own interests to the sole, or even most important, criterion for how we exercise that care.

I’m obviously sympathetic to a lot of the proposals of Michael Pollan, et al., but some of what passes for criticism of our system of food production can come across as simplistic, naive, or nostalgic.

That’s why I was happy to discover the blog of historian and author Maureen Ogle who, among other things, subjects “Pollanism” and allied movements to a healthy dose of sympathetically critical scrutiny.

See here and here for two interesting series she’s written.

Ogle is also the author of the book Ambitious Brew, an unabashedly celebratory history of the big American beer makers–the sort of thing that drives beer snobs up a wall.

Saw the movie “An Education” yesterday. A small subplot turns on one of the characters pretending to know C.S. Lewis and forging an autograph on a copy of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Debate ensues about whether he goes by “Clive” or “C.S.” I know that he went by “Jack” with friends and family, and the letters I’ve seen are usually signed “C.S. Lewis,” “C.S.L.,” or “Jack.” Did he ever go by “Clive”?

Various bloggers have been offering reminders of the original meaning of Armistice Day, the reason for the season, if you will. See Jim Henley, John Quiggin, and Jacob T. Levy. Levy in particular gets to the heart of the matter:

A Veteran’s/ Armistice/ Remembrance Day observed on November 11 in particular shouldn’t just mean a gauzy and somber honoring of live veterans and fallen soldiers. It should be in part a day of anger and horror about the particular war that ended on this day, the stupid brutality of it, and the evil that followed in its wake. Of course, no continuously-existing government (US, UK, Canada) is likely to create a day officially dedicated to pointing out that its predecessor contributed to the deaths of millions for no good cause. But we have the capacity to remember lessons other than the official ones.

If there’s one thing we could stand to remember in light of recent (and ongoing) events, it’s that citizens’ first reaction when their leaders try to whip up war frenzy should be one of the deepest skepticism.

From Kim at Connexions: Happy birthday, Martin!

I was a young buck of 15 at the time, so naturally my memory of the events is filtered through rock music:

Jesus Jones, “Right Here, Right Now”

Scorpions, “Winds of Change”

[Edited because of embedding issues.]