body of information about God, but to engender a sense of the presence of
God beyond all words. All proclaimed knowledge of God is parable, not
entailing acceptance of a given state of affairs in the Godhead but
eliciting conversions in the minds of the hearers."

Given the tension between our experience of transcendence and our worldly
experience, it is no accident that Keenan chooses to reflect on the Gospel
of Mark in light of a Mahayana reading. Mark's Gospel is the least
obviously "supernatural" of the Gospels--no virgin birth and, in its
original form, probably no Resurrection appearances. And although Keenan
has read the Gospel against the background of all the available Markan
literature, he has a clear bias toward the more radical critics.

But if Keenan simply read Mark's Gospel in a radical way, he would not add
much to what John Dominic Crossan and others have already proposed. The
Mahayana Jesus who comes through the commentary is certainly not a "divine
man" (as he ought not be for Christian orthodoxy!) and certainly not a
mythological figure. Yet it would be a mistake to think that, for Keenan,
Jesus is "only human," since in the Mahayana framework in which there are
no essences it does not make sense to speak of either a divine or a human
essence or "nature." As "dependently co-arisen," Keenan's Jesus is the
product of his own history and of the history of Israel, just as the New
Testament is the "dependently co-arisen" product of the early Christian
community. In this Mahayana Buddhist framework, it doesn't really make
sense to speak of "divinity" at all. But if we want to honor the experience
that led theologians to speak of "the divinity of Christ," we will say that
it is Jesus' total emptiness of self which makes him nothing but
sacramental sign of the ever unseen Father--nothing but "the word which
comes forth from the silence."

If we want to go further on a Buddhist-Christian way, Keenan's Mahayana
theology may well serve as a starting point (though I suspect his
conceptual framework will cause more problems to metaphysically inclined
theologians than to the average devout Christian). And, of course, from any
Christian standpoint, it is not enough to read just one of the Gospels.
Mark's Gospel has its own special significance and its integrity needs to
be maintained, but it has to be brought into dialogue (and dialectic) with
the other three Gospels, with Paul, and the rest of the New
Testament--Keenan does deal with the whole New Testament in his systematic
work. In the end, we may even find that there is more salvific value to
traditional (if deconstructed) Christian metaphysics than a Buddhist
reading allows.

Even with these cautions, I think Keenan has given us a valuable starting
point. If I were to contrast his work with Thich Nhat Hanh's Living Buddha,
Living Christ (Putnam), for example, I would say that for Thich Nhat Hanh
it would not matter if the historical Jesus had not lived, as long as the
teachings of Jesus were kept alive. (In fairness, I think Thich Nhat Hanh
would say the same thing about the historical Buddha.) For Keenan, on the
other hand, Jesus' life, death, and Resurrection, proclaimed in the
Gospels, and continued in us, is the teaching. The "story" is vitally
important and cannot be dispensed with in favor of a body of spiritual
teaching. Indeed, Keenan has said explicitly that the point of his writing
a gospel commentary was to maintain the historicity of the Christian
tradition.

There are many questions I would want to address to Keenan, not the least
of them concerning the experience of transcendence which at first look
seems so different in the Buddhist and Christian traditions. Reviewers have
called his work "intriguing," "courageous," and "challenging." It is
certainly groundbreaking, and, given his resistance to absolute statement,
I am sure he would not ask that it be given a value beyond "worldly
convention."

But most of all, I think it shows that it will be a while before we can
give a good answer to your question of "what Christianity adds to
Buddhism." Quick dogmatic answers will probably miss the intention of
Buddhist critiques of religion and will not advance the dialogue, now just
really beginning, between these two rich and complex religious traditions.
In the meantime, let us continue to practice mindfully, attentive to the
story in which we live, humbly aware of our own limits but also of the
Mystery that we have barely glimpsed.
In Christ Jesus,
Jack Healey