In a letter written shortly before his death, and published posthumously in the North East Journal for Theology, Karl Barth issued a remarkable challenge to theologians in Asia to do their work contextually. There was, he wrote, no need to be Europeans, still less Barthian, rather:

Japan's theological love affair with Barth had deep roots. German academic theology began to have an impact in Japan from the beginning of the twentieth century, displacing the earlier conservative dominance. Bultmann, Brunner and Tillich were all read, but it was Barth who, from the 1930s, became the major influence on Japanese theologians. Odagaki characterises the whole period up to 1970 as one of ‘German captivity’ in which Barth's influence was predominant,Footnote ² while SatoFootnote ³ sees the period between 1935 and 1945 as one when Barthianism almost became official Japanese orthodoxy. He argues that it was the radicalism of Barth which attracted Japanese theologians who were seeking something more intellectually satisfying than American missionary theology. Katsume Takizawa was however unusual in that he attempted to bring Barth into dialogue with Japanese Buddhism. Indeed OdagakiFootnote ⁴ describes him as the first person to compare Christianity and Buddhism ‘on the level of the being of religion’. His point is that with Takizawa we are not dealing with simple phenomenological parallels but with a comparison of the deeper structures of the religions, the ontology of religion (though Odagaki would prefer the term ‘me-ontology’, the ‘ontology of nothing, of the void’ used in Heidegger's sense).

Takizawa was born in 1909, into a Zen Buddhist household near to Tokyo, the son of a lacquer worker. After a brief period studying law, he enrolled at Kyusu Imperial University in 1929 to study philosophy, and was appointed to an academic post on graduation. During this period he came under the influence of the leading Japanese philosopher of the period, Kataro Nishida. He later claimed that after struggling to understand Nishida's work he experienced a sudden insight (characteristic of Zen) in which all became clear. The result was the publication of a paper on Nishida's philosophy which deeply impressed the latter. On Nishida'sFootnote ⁵ recommendation he went to Berlin in 1935, on a Humboldt scholarship, to study under Barth. His first experience of Barth was hearing him lecture on the virgin birth, which profoundly affected the later development of his thought. After Barth came into conflict with the Nazi authorities, Takizawa transferred to Marburg to study with Bultmann. On his return to Japan Takizawa taught philosophy at Kyusu. Despite his attraction to Christianity he was not baptised until 1958. From the 1960s he returned several times to Germany to lecture at various universities, and much of his work which is available to European readers comes from this period. In 1984 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Heidelberg, but he died of leukaemia in June of that year.

It is regrettable that Takizawa's writings are not easily accessible to the non-Japanese reader. His study in Germany before the Second World War and his visits there afterwards, however, resulted in several of his shorter writings and lectures being published in German, edited by German scholars.Footnote ⁶ Some of these papers are translations from the Japanese, but the majority were written by Takizawa himself. Takizawa's German style is somewhat idiosyncratic, and fluctuates between the poetic and the pedantic. His use of words with double meanings, his love of paradox, the complexity of some of his grammatical constructions (of which Barth himself would surely have been proud), and the almost complete absence of referencing, sometimes obscures his intentions (I have noted some of his key German terms in brackets). And since most these are short papers given over a couple of decades there is inevitably some repetition as well as development of ideas. Added to this, as SundermeierFootnote ⁷ has pointed out, is the fact that Japanese Buddhism is itself quite unfamiliar terrain to most Western readers, as is the paradoxical nature of Nishida's philosophy which influenced Takizawa so profoundly. However, Takizawa can only be understood within this Buddhist tradition, which was for him the point of entry into Christian theology and the basis on which he interpreted it. He therefore seems to me a classic example of what can happen when a particular Western theological position (in this case that of Barth) is understood from within an Eastern religion.

The influences which shaped Takizawa's thought then are twofold: Buddhism as received in the Japanese schools of Jodo-shin (Pure Land) and Zen, and in the philosophy of Nishida, and Christian theology as set out by Karl Barth.Footnote ⁸ In the process he subjected both to his own quite substantial modification. I shall look at these influences in turn and then examine how they come together in Takizawa's innovative synthesis.

Buddhism

The two manifestations of Buddhism which influenced Takizawa, Pure Land (Jodo-shin) and Zen are both technically ‘exclusive’ sects. Both entered Japan from China. Pure Land is essentially a saviour cult: there are many buddhas who have obtained enlightenment, but who voluntarily renounce their blessedness. They are boddhisatvas who rule over their own ‘pure lands’ – other worlds than ours – and take a vow to save all intelligent beings. The Pure Land is not a perfect heaven but a kind of intermediate paradise. All those who call upon them in faith will be reborn in the Pure Lands. The most famous of the boddhisatvas is Amitabha (Amida, in Japan Amidabutsu) whose Pure Land is in the west and who is identified with the historical Buddha, Sakyamuni.

The ‘initial vow’Footnote ⁹ of the boddhisatva (a key concept in Takizawa's philosophy) is thus a means of channelling merit through successive generations until the vow is fulfilled. Its essence depends on the saving grace of the buddha figure, and merit is received as a gift by the repetition of his name. Pure Land is a democratic and popular form of Mahayana Buddhism in that it is not restricted to the religious elites who are able to practise meditation and asceticism, but is freely available to all solely on the basis of faith in the merit of the boddhisatva. The parallels with Christianity have often been remarked, and Takizawa himself admits the possibility that Pure Land may have been influenced by the Nestorian Christianity which reached China in the fifth century. Pure Land became popular in Japan during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, among the commoners and the elites, especially through Honen (1133–1212) and his disciple Shinran (1173–1262). The essence of their teaching, as BlackerFootnote ¹⁰ puts it, is that there is ‘nothing we ourselves can do to escape the horrors of the ordinary human state or from the horrors of rebirth somewhere worse. Our only hope of salvation lies in the grace of Amida to save all those who call on his Name.’

Whereas for Pure Land salvation from incessant rebirth is only to be found outside the individual in the grace of the boddhisatva, Zen focuses on the inner nature of the person.Footnote ¹¹ For Zen the buddha-nature is within, it does not have to be attained or even expected: it lies within each individual and simply needs to be recognised. It brings to light what is already latent by means of a sudden insight or awakening (satori). Such insight may come through meditation or by intense concentration on paradoxical concepts or sayings (koans) which raise the mind beyond normal levels. By such insight the duality of subject and object is transcended and the true nature of reality is perceived, characterised as void or nothingness (sunnyata).Footnote ¹²

Takizawa experienced both Jodo-shin and Zen during his early life. His take on them however is innovative, in that (in good Zen fashion) he attempted to bring the two together by arguing that at root both were saying the same thing. That Takazawa can do this with a fair degree of conviction is due to his adoption of the philosophical approach of Nishida. In his paper ‘Die Kraft des Anderen und die Kraft des Selbst im Buddhismus verglichen mit dem Christentum’,Footnote ¹³ Takizawa starts by pointing out the common view of salvation in the two sects. For Jodo-shin, in the teaching of Shinran, salvation is usually taken to be grounded in the power of the Other, that is, in Amitabha, Amida Buddha. In Zen on the other hand, as taught by the ninth-century master Dogen, it is regarded as grounded in the self. Takizawa questions this simplistic reading. He believed that there was another dimension to Shinran's teaching, namely that for him the self cannot be envisaged without at the same time understanding the initial vow of Amida as the only essential source and underpinning of the being (Dasein) of the individual self. Thus the relationship between Amida and the self is a ‘given’ which cannot be shattered even by the individual's worst sins. So faith, according to Shinran, is nothing less than the awakening of the self to this fact as ‘the indestructible truth which lies and lives in his own self’.Footnote ¹⁴ Faith thus does not come from the self immediately, but has its real source in the buddha-nature which lies at the ground of being. In Takizawa's view, for Shinran the wholly other is the boddhisatva, who through his initial vow has bound himself irrevocably to all people. The relationship between Amida Buddha and the self lies in the very being of human nature itself, irrespective of what we do, and is manifested in the self calling upon the name of Amida (the cry ‘Nametsu’, i.e. Namu-Amidha-Buddha).Footnote ¹⁵

In Zen satori (enlightenment) is the awakening of the person to the truth of his own self. Again Takizawa finds this too simplistic. He argues that Dogen does not reject the wholly other (dharma). While the boundary point between the other and the self is in fact uncrossable, dharma belongs to the structure of being of the person himself. It is both a boundary and also a unity, and the individual has to awaken to it. It is a paradox of separation and identity. In Nishida's phrase it is ‘the absolutely contradictory self-identity’ or better, ‘the self-identity of the absolute contradiction’. In Takizawa's view both religious leaders tended to absolutise their positions rather than seeing them as contingent forms of absolute truth, and as complementary rather than contradictory.

It is beyond my competence to comment on the validity of this proposition. For our purposes we need only note the thrust of Takizawa's argument, namely that the buddha-nature lies at the ground of being of the individual self. This relationship with the wholly other is fundamental, original and ineradicable. ‘The initial vow of Amida’, writes Takizawa, ‘means for Shinran, the true salvation and underpinning (Stütze) of life which precedes all human thinking and feeling.’ Similarly, Zen has nothing at all to do with a Western individualism which isolates the self from its real ground. It is rather that the self and the buddha-nature are fundamentally one whether this is realised or not.Footnote ¹⁶ Takizawa's debt to NishidaFootnote ¹⁷ is very clear here. Indeed the whole thesis might be summed up in a poem by Kokusi Daito which Nishida was apparently fond of quoting:

Takizawa is here, like Nishida, questioning the concept of the autonomous self. To assume the autonomous subjectivity of the individual and define ourselves only by it only leads to life becoming an incomprehensible absurdity. The solution to this absurdity is found in Nishida's ‘absolutely contradictory self-identity’, which is not an academic construct but – assuming one accepts that there is something ultimate that really exists – the unavoidable basic structure of life and being. ‘All human life is dependent upon being, separated from which man can neither live, speak, create, or even die.’Footnote ¹⁹ ‘The finite Ego (Ich-Selbst), which is simply a finite thing and not a subject, is directly one with the absolute infinite Subject (but) without in the least ceasing to be a finite thing.’Footnote ²⁰ This is the ‘self-identity in the absolute contradiction’, the Ego (the individual) is one with the Absolute Self, yet in a unity which at the same time embraces a division, a contradiction. While the ‘Logos’ exists in all, this does not mean that all are identified with the Logos. Unity and distinction exist paradoxically at the same time.

The reliance of this position on Zen seems fairly clear. Takizawa, though, claimed that Nishida's concept of unity in contradiction was not so much strictly Buddhist as universal, and he sought to demonstrate that there was a structural agreement with this concept in the anthropological ontology found in religion as such, and specifically in Christian theology.

The influence of Barth

This leads us to the second major influence on his thought, Karl Barth. It might indeed seem curious that one who had such an intimate commitment to and understanding of two of the most experiential forms of Buddhism should be attracted to the hard dogmatism of a theologian of Barth's stature. Takizawa's understanding and interpretation of Karl Barth are certainly not without their problems, and Takizawa is not averse to disagreeing with Barth. None the less it is true, as Terazono commented, that in dealing with Christian theology Takizawa always takes Barth as his point of departure.Footnote ²¹

Takizawa's acknowledgement of his debt to Barth is generous and frequentFootnote ²² and his use of the concept of Emmanuel is taken directly from Barth.Footnote ²³ Takizawa's main problem with Barth (as one might expect) is his ‘absolutising’ of the Christian faith. He devotes a whole paper to Barth's note on the similarity of Jodo-shin, as a salvation religion, to Christianity.Footnote ²⁴ This volume of Church Dogmatics appeared in 1927 well before Takizawa met Barth, and is one of few excursions by Barth into the field of comparative religion. Barth's grasp and appreciation of non-Christian religions was limited. His much vaunted diatribe against religion as a form of unbelief should not be seen in the context of what today would be called religious dialogue but rather against the background of religion as understood by nineteenth-century German liberalism. If his foray into Japanese Buddhism was unfortunate, it did at least provide Takizawa with an Anknüpfungspunkt to latch on to. Barth regards Jodo-shin as the nearest parallel to the Reformed concept of grace in what he calls heathen (Heiden) religions. While he sees several differences between Jodo-shin and Christianity, the main distinction – as one would expect given the christocentric nature of his dogmatics – is the fact that ‘the truth claim of Christianity is contained in the one name Jesus Christ and nothing else’. Other religions may share the same structure and the ‘symptoms’ of Christianity as a religion of grace but because they are not grounded in Jesus Christ their adherents remain ‘poor quite lost heathens’. In other words, the truth of Christianity is not found in its structures and systems – even its way of salvation – but in the person and name Jesus Christ.Footnote ²⁵ Takizawa, I think correctly, sees this as absolutising Christianity to the exclusion of any other world-view. However, rather than dismissing Barth he goes on to ask a deeper question: what exactly does Barth mean by ‘the name Jesus Christ?’ In 1936 Takizawa had already commented that whoever listens to Karl Barth's preaching should not measure it by his own picture of Christ, ‘to praise or condemn it’, but simply try to hear which Christ Barth preaches in the whole correlation (Zusammenhang) of his preaching’.Footnote ²⁶ For Barth, argues Takizawa, the name Jesus Christ is something completely independent of our thinking or actions, and absolutely different from the ‘religious’, whether Christian or not. This ‘something’ (Etwas), which Barth calls the name Jesus Christ, ‘exists where the person really exists’ irrespective of who or what that person is, whether he recognises it or not. It is something that exists for each of us and from which we cannot for a moment be separated. This fact (Faktum) is on an entirely different plane from all else in human life and experience. It is an original primal relationship (ursprünglich Beziehung), an undeserved gift of grace, a sure and indestructible foundation (Stütze) of the individual life. This original relation between the ‘something’ and the existing person is a simple given, a fact. But we are unaware that this fact lies at the basis of our human life until we are awakened to it.Footnote ²⁷ So, argues Takizawa, what is important for Barth is not doctrine, church practice, or even ethics but the primal relationship between God and man, ‘the absolutely individual yet at the same time universal living word’ which is the name Jesus Christ. Religion – whether Christianity or any other – is simply an appearance (Erscheinung) which mirrors the truth of this relationship.Footnote ²⁸ False religion is to take this appearance for reality.

In this way Takizawa can claim that in Barth ‘absolutism has nothing to do with the general widespread Western absolutism’ or exclusivism (though later Barthians, misunderstanding Barth, thought it did!). Rather the name Jesus Christ turns out to be a kind of light which lightens every man, or rather the ground structure of human being which Takizawa (taking his cue from lectures he heard Barth give on the virgin birth) prefers to call ‘Emmanuel’, which becomes a key term for him.Footnote ²⁹ Barth's fault, according to Takizawa, is that he did not make sufficiently clear the distinction in his use of the phrase ‘the name Jesus Christ’ between the original fact (Urfakt) of human being on the one hand, and the outward expression of that same fact in the historical world in the life of Jesus on the other. In Takizawa's terminology these are respectively the ‘first Emmanuel’ and the ‘second Emmanuel’. The latter is a symptom, a manifestation of the first. Consequently, despite Barth's emphatic denial of natural theology, ‘there still remains in him a platform (Bodensatz) of theologia naturalis’.Footnote ³⁰

The convinced Barthian might be somewhat perplexed by this interpretation. On the other hand one can see where Takizawa is coming from. Given his immersion in both Jodo-shin and Zen and his interpretation of these forms of Japanese Buddhism, it is perhaps not too surprising that he should have read into the work of Barth, his second teacher, a similar religious structure.

Leading themes

At this point I want to attempt to examine in more detail the leading themes that determine Takizawa's theology: the basic structure of religion, his view of reality and anthropology and his understanding of Christ.

In Takizawa's view all religions, regardless of the form in which they are manifested (Erscheinungsformen) have as their centre the unity of God and man.Footnote ³¹ His use of the term Emmanuel provides a christological (in its broadest sense) basis for his general theory of religion and of anthropology. This theory is most clearly discussed in his lecture ‘Religionen als Sache der Gegenwart’ in which he poses the question, ‘Where can one find the ultimate underpinning (Stütze) in life?’ He suggests a definition wider than the usual understanding of religion as the relation between God and man. For him, the basic question is where man finds a basic grounding for his relationship with other people and inanimate things. This for him is essentially a question of religion as such, not simply of individual religions – whether Buddhism or Christianity. It is something which concerns each person in his or her inner being (Lebenskern), whether he or she is consciously aware of this or not. Where does one find this ground (Stütze)? There are two possibilities: either in the Ego (Ich-Selbst) or in something outside of it (we have met this duality already in his interpretation of Jodo-shin and Zen). He rejects the suggestion that the underpinning is to be found outside the self for, he argues, ‘nothing that is not unconditionally one (eins) with our Ego and which is separate from us can hold fast (fassen) our Ego and support (Stützen) the whole life of the individual’.Footnote ³² The other possibility, which assumes the autonomy of the Ego, is likewise rejected since he believes no one can deny that the Ego is like a yawning chasm of endless solitude that nothing can completely satisfy. Is there then no alternative but for the individual to be torn asunder between the two poles of autonomy and heteronomy? This tearing apart is called in Buddhism ignorance and in Christian theology it is called sin.

A way out of this dilemma exists, however, through which a person may find a new existence. This comes not by logic, instinct, piety or mysticism, but is nevertheless near to everyone. It stems from the basic structure of human being (die Grundstruktur des menschlichen Seins) both in its origins and in its existence (Entstehen und Bestehen – one of Takizawa's favourite phrases). It is a fundamental fact (Urfaktum) of man's existence, whether he realises or deserves it or not. It is the absolute contingency of human existence which nothing can annul.Footnote ³³

This ‘something’ is called in the Bible Yahweh, God Almighty, and in Buddhism is called the self. However this does not mean the identity of the Ego with God in a pantheistic sense, for there is an absolute boundary line (Grenzlinie) between God and man which cannot be obliterated. The essence of religion is the recognition of this simple but decisive relationship – that man is not identified with God but is none the less one with him in a ‘living, indivisible, yet unconfused irreversible relationship’, a ‘self-identity in absolute contradiction’, that man is one with God but at the same time is not identified with God.Footnote ³⁵ For Takizawa this self-identification in contradiction is universally valid and applies to all men and women (not just to Jesus) whether each individually awakens to it or not. It lies at the basis of the existence as such of the human subject and is the universal basic structure of all religion.Footnote ³⁶

Takizawa derived the thesis of the ‘unity in difference’ between God and man as the basic factor (Urfaktum) in human existence from Nishida. And it was from this perspective that he came to hear Barth's lectures on the virgin birth.Footnote ³⁷ The concept of Emmanuel, God with us, seemed to him to correspond to and confirm this basic theo-anthropology he had discerned in Buddhism. Consequently Takizawa developed a kind of Christian form of this thesis. The deep structure which underpins human existence is ‘God-with-us, Emmanuel’. However (as in his interpretation of Buddhism) this unity with God as a basic structure of human existence is as yet unconscious, the Ego needs to be awakened to this fact. Takizawa calls this second stage ‘Emmanuel 2’. And it is in connection with this ‘second Emmanuel’ that he explores christology. His interpretation of the human figure of Jesus is not entirely consistent or systematic, nor is his use of the New Testament very critical. This should not perhaps surprise since he approaches the figure of Jesus from a religious tradition which is less concerned with history than it is with tradition and religious experience.Footnote ³⁸ Nor should we expect sharp metaphysical definitions such as characterise the creeds. Jesus, for Takazawa, is (like the Buddha) the ‘enlightened one’ who is saviour-example. He is the one who is conscious of being one (eins) with God. The Jesus of Nazareth of the Gospels is for Takizawa one who ‘in his words and deeds is the figure (Gestalt) in which God, who exists only in and for himself, has clearly revealed himself in the midst of the world of men which stands against him, and which is rushing into an empty abyss’.Footnote ³⁹ While Jesus claims authority he does not wish to set himself up as the final foundation (Stütze) or source of life.Footnote ⁴⁰ Rather he manifests what is (ideally) true of all of us. Takizawa agrees that Jesus was from the beginning ‘one with God’, but this does not mean that the boundary between God and man, between the mortal human person and the omnipresent God, is transcended. On the contrary it means that Jesus of Nazareth is not a self-sufficient individual (selbststaendiges Selbst) but is a contingent being, whose ground of being lies outside his self. In so far as he lived selflessly and faithfully, his life ‘is nothing other than the life in which God himself has revealed his will over against men’.Footnote ⁴¹ It is in this sense that he can be called Christ, in that his human life is a manifestation of the divine ground of being (God) which underpins us all. The confession ‘Jesus is Christ’ then indicates for Takizawa the ‘double-sidedness’ of the visible man Jesus. The figure Jesus is the exact expression of the boundary between God and man, first as the self-expression of God through a human being, and second (as the reverse side of this) as the reflection of God through a man in Jesus’ words and deeds. Put another way: the word of God, the command of God, sounds within us all, even when we do not hear it. The man Jesus, however, precisely heard the word of command which dwelt within him, the word which was the ground of his Being, and he then proclaimed it. In Takizawa's view the same word of God also dwells in and is the source of being of all people, in the same concrete way as in Jesus. Thus a ‘clear echo’ of this word of command should be evident even in those who never saw nor have ever heard of the man Jesus. Jesus as a flesh and blood man of history is thus to be distinguished from the ‘name Jesus’ (Mark 1:23; Luke 1:28–35). The name – Emmanuel 1 – signifies the true essence, the genesis and ground of being (Entstehenspunkt) common to all but fully realised in Jesus the man.Footnote ⁴² The name is the original contact point between God and man, the common ground of life of the whole human race.Footnote ⁴³ The earthly life of Jesus is not the same thing as Emmanuel. What was affirmed from eternity (Emmanuel as the Urfaktum) is in Jesus eternally present.Footnote ⁴⁴

Takizawa finds no ground for thinking that Jesus’ disciples ever believed that the boundary point between God and man had been crossed in Jesus, that is, in traditional terms, that he shared the two natures of God and man. His relevance for us is quite different, it is as our example (Vorbild). In so far as he was completely obedient to God he awakens us also to the awareness of God as the ground of being which is within each one of us. This is possible only because Jesus – our example and teacher of truth – and we share the same common ground of being in God.Footnote ⁴⁵ Jesus is a ‘living symptom’, a reflection (Widerschein) within this world which demonstrates the original and basic relationship between God and man.Footnote ⁴⁶ The confession ‘Jesus is Christ’, which has been transmitted through the Bible and the church, becomes for us an existential experience which ‘breaks out within ourselves from the true ground of our self’. This was the realisation of the disciples who, though they had known him ‘after the flesh’ in his human life, only subsequently came to see the truth through the Holy Spirit. For the disciples the resurrection is not physicalFootnote ⁴⁷ but rather the joy of the realisation that Jesus still lived with and in them. The idea seems to be that the flesh and blood Jesus, who taught and acted and on whom the disciples relied, is only a mirror of Emmanuel, the Urfaktum ‘God with us’. By the cross Jesus put to death his Ego and thereby revealed the Emmanuel, which is God as the ground of being of all men. The disciples awakened to this fact of Emmanuel. ‘Through the words and deeds, life and death of this concrete man Jesus, we are all awakened to the same Christ . . . his Spirit commands each of us to hold fast to the absolutely concrete, but at the same time universal, Christ, the Urfaktum Emmanuel.’Footnote ⁴⁸

Critique

In this concluding section I will try briefly to identify what seem to me the most problematic issues in Takizawa's approach. Primarily, Takizawa's treatment of religions, from which he derives his concept of the deep structures of religion as such, is actually very limited. It is based only on Christianity (and Christian theology as interpreted by Karl Barth) and Mahayana Buddhism in two of its Japanese manifestations (as interpreted by himself). He does not consider other approaches to Christian theology aside from Barth, still less does he examine other world religions, or indeed the traditional primal religion which lies behind many of them. Had he done so he might have modified his conviction that there is a deep structure in religion as such. His theory of religion is constructed on far too narrow and limited a base to warrant his claim that this relationship is a universal religious fact. Religion is understood by Takizawa largely in terms of the Buddhist idea of dharma. This is a sanskritic, not a universal concept; moreover it is a concept which many will find much too impersonal and lacking a sense of history. Furthermore, while Takizawa rejects the drawing of superficial parallels of a phenomenological nature between Buddhism and Christianity this, it seems to me, is exactly what he does in his theory of structural similarities. The parallels between the two religions are forced rather than obvious. Takizawa has to reinterpret both Barth and Buddhism to make them fit into an epistemological and ontological theory. Yagi claims that, for Takizawa, ‘Gottama Buddha was a man who realised the secondary contact, so that Buddhism as a whole is another form of true religion, parallel to Christianity.’Footnote ⁴⁹ I suggest it is more than this. Takizawa seems rather to be trying to accommodate Christianity into a religious theory arrived at through his own interpretation of Buddhism (in a sense he might be accused of making us all anonymous Buddhists, which is no doubt why he has attracted the attention of academics interested in religious dialogue). In his interpretation of Barth also he is unconvincing. Barth has been swallowed up into Zen and it is not surprising that that the result is somewhat indigestible.

Behind this reinterpretation stands a particular type of epistemological theory, characteristic of, though by no means confined to, Buddhism. This is the rejection of the supposed ‘Western’ view of a dichotomy between the perceiving subject and the perceived object, and the assertion that there is an intimate unbreakable relationship between the one and the other. This is not pantheism, the absorption of the subject into the object, nor is it separation; it lies somewhere between the two, unity in duality (as expressed in Daito's poem).Footnote ⁵⁰ More relevant at this point though is the ‘Christ-mysticism’ of Paul. YagiFootnote ⁵¹ cogently refers in this connection to Galatians 2:19–29. In v.19b Paul identifies himself with Christ, but in the following verse there is a distinction between himself and Christ. The same identification in distinction is found in John's Gospel with respect to Christ and God.Footnote ⁵² Such expressions seem to be a frequent feature of biblical language.

There is however a paradox here, which Takizawa does not address. If the object–subject relationship is necessarily beyond ‘objective’ knowledge, how then can we know and recognise it? In Paul it is by faith, in Zen satori. This may be self-authenticating for the individual but it is difficult to see how it can be a valid universal authentication, which Takizawa claims it is. But of course this is problem that the Christian faith shares with Buddhism, that in the final analysis faith or enlightenment lies beyond normal perception and is therefore unprovable. Christian theology can address this problem only by assuming the internal witness of the Holy Spirit.

There seems to me to be a fundamental difficulty with Taklizawa's christology. His ‘Emmanuel 1’ really has nothing at all to do with the historical figure of Jesus. It is a principle which lies hidden or latent in everyone. The incarnate Jesus is rather the symptom of awakening to ‘Emmanuel 1’ in the form of ‘Emmanuel 2’, just as Sakyamuni or Amida Buddha is a symptom or reflection of the Buddha principle which lies in everyone. In this respect Takizawa's use of the term Emmanuel (which in Matthew applies to the incarnate Jesus) to refer to the deep structures he finds in all religions seems to me an unnecessary confusion (though perhaps no more so than the patristic usage of Logos). Furthermore, as Yagi has argued, ‘Emmanuel 1’ is theologically redundant. His point is that, since no one realises the presence of ‘Emmanuel 1’ until it is awakened by ‘Emmanuel 2’, then ‘Emmanuel 1’ as only potentiality has no real theological function.Footnote ⁵³ Indeed how can one know it really exists at all? Is Takizawa saying any more than that there is an innate potential for God in everyone which reaches fulfilment if and when the Spirit awakens the individual to faith in Christ (or in Takizawa's Buddhist terminology, to its true self)? Takizawa's treatment of the earthly life of Jesus also seems to me seriously defective. Moltmann, in a letter to Takizawa,Footnote ⁵⁴ suggested that his christology might be docetic, a charge which the latter rejected.Footnote ⁵⁵ But there is certainly a strong strand of ahistoricism in it. Jesus, like Sakyamuni and Amida, is less an historical figure than the embodiment of an eternal truth, a cosmic principle. Takizawa does of course quote from the Gospels. The way he uses them however indicates that he is not really interested in the Gospels as a historical record or in the tools of historical criticism.Footnote ⁵⁶ TagawaFootnote ⁵⁷ bluntly, but I think correctly, comments that ‘as far as biblical exegesis is concerned Takizawa does not understand after all what historical study of the Bible means’. Similarly he fails to situate the Gospels within their first-century Palestinian context, which seriously skews his understanding of Jesus’ teaching.Footnote ⁵⁸ Nor is his Jesus the Christ of Paul. He is a person who shares in sinful human nature, and is the mirror of what we can all become if we would but awaken to our true selves, the primary contact with God which lies within us all. In all this there remains a basic dislocation of Jesus from history – perhaps a result as much of his study with Bultmann as of his Buddhist background. The real flesh and blood Jesus, it seems to me, has as little immediate and integral relationship to ‘Emmanuel 2’ as to ‘Emmanuel 1’. As the buddha-nature is manifested in many Buddhas, so Emmanuel 2 could equally have been manifested in others besides Jesus. There is nothing specifically unique about him except as a supreme example of what lies potentially within all of us. It is significant that the nearest Takizawa comes to discussing the ‘historical’ Jesus is in a comparison with the hero of a work of fiction,Footnote ⁵⁹ and even there he is less interested in Jesus as such than in his legacy to the disciples. But whatever Takizawa, or anyone else, makes of Jesus, he was originally a historical figure. To distance him from that history is to raise serious questions about authenticity.