Christ reveals to man his heavenly relationship. Man created in the likeness of
God stands in the highest relation of one person to another through love. He
likens this relation to that of father and son. He lifts man to the fellowship
with the divine. Yet such a fellowship that man preserves his personality.
Christ reveals man in his relation to men as a brother and the form of love
which shall control the relation of man to God as well as man to man.
Christ revealed and founded the Kingdom, a society of the saved, dominated by
the spirit of the founder and making this spirit of love and service the
organizing power in the world.
_(c) As the Saviour._—Mahayâna Buddhism emphasized saviourhood. Christ is
the saviour of men. In Buddhism the stress is placed upon the merit of the
saviour and the saved. There is no question that merit has some value. Yet
Christ does not save us by merit, nor do we help to save one another by merit.
Salvation is a moral and spiritual process. It is concerned with the biology of
the soul. The salvation that we preach is not the salvation by knowledge, or
meditation, or merit, but by the interpenetration of Christ’s spirit in ours,
by the mystic and moral union of our life with his. As Paul says: “That I may
know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His
suffering.” Yet He is not the saviour of the individual alone. He saves the
community, the church. Only as His spirit permeates and dominates the community
does he find his true self and the real salvation.
_(d) As the Eternal Son, of God._—The Mahayâna system does not emphasize
the historicity of Amitabha or of the Bodhisattvas. Spiritual truth is the
development of the soul. It is not limited by time and place. Likewise
Christianity must emphasize the eternal character of Jesus Christ. “The Logos
existed in the very beginning, the Logos was with God, the Logos was God.” To
the Mahâyânist this spiritual history is more real than any fact conditioned by
time and place.
The Christian worker must learn to understand the import of the Gospel of John.
He must see in Jesus Christ “The real Light, which enlightens every man.” He
must be able to convince himself that the Christ is the fulfillment of the
highest aspirations of the Mahâyâna system.
_7. How Christianity Expresses Itself in Buddhist Minds_
In 1920 a number of Buddhist monks, under the leadership of Rev. K. L. Reichelt
formed a Christian brotherhood. The members of this small brotherhood decided
that they must subscribe to vows and they took the four following:
“I promise before the Almighty and Omniscient God, that I with my whole heart
will surrender myself to the true Trinity, God the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit. I will with my whole heart have faith in Jesus Christ as the Saviour of
the world who gives completion to the profoundest and best objects of the
higher Buddhism. I will live in this faith now and ever after.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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