Saving God
Tripp Fuller's Christology
and Christ the Bodhisattva
There is an empty space in God's heart. A broken-heartedness. It shines forth into the world, seeking love. Its light is inside us in our own search for love. A love for one another, especially those who are vulnerable, a love for animals, a love for the earth, a love for God. The empty space is Christ the Bodhisattva: the one who promises never to be saved until all and each are saved: each animal, each plant, each living cell, each person, each spirit, each god, each goddess, each memory, each sentient being in outer space. It will be broken-hearted until all are saved.
*
The empty space in God's heart includes a promise. It promises never to enter final nirvana, final joy, until all living beings can come along. The empty space can be felt and addressed in personal terms: as Amma or Abba. Or as Christ the Bodhisattva. We can reach out in prayer and say "You" to the empty space, and something is listening.
Christ the Bodhisattva is not a puppeteer. She does not pull the strings. She is affected by all that happens and responds as a luring presence, a guiding yet noncontrolling spirit, who beckons the world into wholeness, refusing to be fully whole until the world responds. Every morning she takes a vow:
Beings are numberless, I vow to save them.
Illusions are numberless, I bow to end them.
Dharma Gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.
The Way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it.
*
I say every morning but I really mean all the time. The vow is continuous, perpetual. Whitehead calls it the primordial nature of God as informed by the consequent nature of God such that it becomes a perpetual invitation in each actual entity, changing from circumstance to circumstance, but always for richness of experience in relation to others, otherwise call the "initial aim" of each experience. But that's overly technical and beside the point. What is important is that we feel it as a calling presence. It is how Christ the Bodhisattva is in the world.
*
How to respond? Christ the Bodhisattva invites each of us and all of us to take the vow, too. It is a promise in which we can participate. A promise and a hope, as Tripp Fuller might put it. Here's how he puts it in his book on Christology: "Divine Self-Investment: An Open and Relational Constructive Christology."
This hope is a promise. This promise comes from the very nature of God. The promise of the God of love is that God will be ever faithful, that the God of love is ever shaped by God’s deep solidarity with the world, and that the God of love promises to bear each moment of history within God while offering greater beauty, healing, and goodness to each moment of the Creation’s becoming. The process of salvation is thus sustained by the constant dreaming and becoming of both God and the world.
*
Of all the theologians I know, Tripp Fuller has stated most succinctly that God needs salvation from broken-heartedness and pain. In his words: "God is not only the bringer of salvation but also in need of it."
His point is not simply that God needs human beings to be saved from their broken hearts; it is that God needs to be saved from God's own broken heart. Here he is influenced by the work of Korean American theologian Andrew Sung Park in "The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin." In Korean culture."
In Korean culture Han refers to a collective feeling of sorrow and injustice, a deep-seated grief that arises from severe oppression or injustice. In juxtaposing Han with the Christian doctrine of sin, Fuller (indebted to Park) examines how deep emotional and societal wounds intersect with theological concepts of sin and human brokenness. Fuller sees the crucifixion of Jesus as a place where Han and sin come together, and he sees the healing ministry of Jesus as an invitation to participate in the healing ministry of God. This is a ministry in which God, too, seeks healing, not healing from sin but healing from Han, from being brokenhearted. Fuller puts it this way:
The cross not only exposed and revealed God’s broken-heartedness and wounded-ness, but Godself was exposed on the cross, generating Han within the divine life itself. In this way, the risk turns into a binding in which God too is sin-injured and Han-suffering. For Park, God in God’s own self needs salvation and healing, and this cannot be done outside of relationship with Creation.
*
What has broken God's heart? Need I even ask? Look around. Look at the violence we humans inflict on one another, look at what we do to other animals and the earth. Read the newspaper. See the hatred, the envy, the injustices, the sin.
We could imagine God as a distant spectator, taking it all in but not being affected by it. However, this is not the approach of open and relational (process) theologians like Tripp Fuller. They—we—believe in a God of love, not a separate entity isolated by divine boundaries, but rather the living whole of the universe, albeit with a life of its own: a cosmic Thou. A divine Bodhisattva.
And we believe that this love is moved and affected by all that happens in the world. What happens in the world becomes part of God's very heart. The only salvation available to us is, as it were, a mutual salvation. Affected by all that happens, God acts as a cosmic lure, promoting healing and wholeness beyond and within us, and we, drawn by this lure, respond in ways that can heal both ourselves and God. We are saved together, if we are to be saved at all.
*
It is possible that we will never be saved: not us and not God. The future is not yet decided. But for Fuller and other Christians in the open and relational tradition, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus embodies the hope and, in its own way, the promise that, with our cooperation, salvation is possible.
*
What would God's salvation look like? For my part, as a Christian influenced by Buddhism, I think it might have multiple dimensions. I believe in a continuing journey after death for all living beings. But here on Earth, it would look like what most of us really want, despite our violent implications to the contrary. We want to live together, in a spirit of love and justice, with one another, with other creatures, and the earth. This is God's dream for us; this harmony would be our salvation. To be sure, it would not be static. It would be an ongoing process. It would not have finality. But it would certainly be better, much better, than what we now have. We want beloved community that includes other animals, hills and rivers, trees and lakes, in which all are cared form, with no one left behind. This hope, this dream, is how we experience Christ the Bodhisattva.
*
I have a friend who is a Buddhist. She sees the God of open and relational theology as a cosmic Bodhisattva, not all-powerful but all-loving. Her name for this Bodhisattva is Amida. I told her about Fuller's idea, that even God is in need of salvation, and asked her what she thought.
I thought that she might say God (or Amida) is enlightened and therefore doesn't "need" salvation, but she didn't say this. She said that the promise of a Bodhisattva is never to enter final salvation (parinirvana) until all living beings can join him or her, and that the Bodhisattva will forever choose rebirth until this eventuality unfolds. "So, Amida needs saving too?" I asked her. "Yes," she said, "Amida postpones final salvation until we ourselves choose the enlightened way. Amida depends on us and cannot force us." "Does Amida's postponement mean that, in principle Amida could leave the world behind?" No, she says: "Amida's very nature is self-emptying love. She would never leave the world behind. She cannot not love."
I think of another theologian, Thomas Oord, who speaks of the self-emptying love of God and how this is God's very nature. I think Thomas Oord and my friend would get along well.
*
I was tempted here to tell her about John Cobb’s idea that a Buddhist likemight reco gnize Jesus of Nazareth as a revelation of Amida. He argues this in “Beyond Dialogue: A Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism.” But I didn’t do so. I didn’t want my inner evangelical to come out.
I also wondered what Tripp Fuller might say. Might he wonder if, as John Cobb believes, Buddhism might help Christians grow more deeply into a perfection of love? Cobb argues this in “Christ in a Pluralistic Age,” Chapter Thirteen. See "The Perfection of Love: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhism." But I didn’t ask Tripp Fuller, either. I didn't want my inner Buddhist to come out.
*
Still, I find myself wondering if a Christian understanding of the salvation of God, of which Fuller so beautifully speaks, might be enriched by a dialogue with Buddhism, for Christ’s sake. I wonder if we might better understand how even God needs saving, so that the will of God can be done on earth as in heaven.
And what might Buddhism teach us? Well, so much. About the radical interconnectedness of things, about the value of listening without judgment, about the need not to create binaries in the mind between us and them, about how all living beings, not humans alone, are worthy of respect and care, about letting go of things when they pass away. I wonder if these values might help us better walk with our companion, brother Jesus, who suffered on a cross and was then resurrected, giving us a promise and a hope. John Cobb puts it this way:
The encounter with Buddhism may prove an essential step for the West to free itself from its attachment to individualized personal existence as a final good. The West is prepared for this encounter by its increasing recognition of the appalling price in human misery and risk to human survival that has been paid for our achievements in personal existence. We have become disillusioned with the view that these problems can be solved by appeals for justice and personal righteousness. We recognize that radical changes are required. But we are frightened by the prospects of change. Perhaps the encounter with the transpersonal existence of the Buddhist, the recognition of the serenity and strength it embodies, the experience of Buddhist meditation, and the study of Buddhist philosophy will give us the courage to venture into that kind of radical love which can carry us into a postpersonal form of Christian existence.
*
The empty space in God's heart is both a need and a promise. It represents God's need to be liberated from suffering and God's promise that God will never give up on us. It is also an activity on God's part: embodying empathy and luring, receptivity and generosity, feeling the feelings of each and all, and sharing divine emotions with everyone. We experience the feelings of God through a hope and a promise we feel deep inside, whether we are Buddhists or Christians or None-of-the-Above. Buddhists call it the Bodhisattva vow.
Beings are numberless, I vow to save them.
Illusions are numberless, I vow to end them.
Dharma Gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.
The Way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it.
*
The empty space in God's heart includes a promise. It promises never to enter final nirvana, final joy, until all living beings can come along. The empty space can be felt and addressed in personal terms: as Amma or Abba. Or as Christ the Bodhisattva. We can reach out in prayer and say "You" to the empty space, and something is listening.
Christ the Bodhisattva is not a puppeteer. She does not pull the strings. She is affected by all that happens and responds as a luring presence, a guiding yet noncontrolling spirit, who beckons the world into wholeness, refusing to be fully whole until the world responds. Every morning she takes a vow:
Beings are numberless, I vow to save them.
Illusions are numberless, I bow to end them.
Dharma Gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.
The Way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it.
*
I say every morning but I really mean all the time. The vow is continuous, perpetual. Whitehead calls it the primordial nature of God as informed by the consequent nature of God such that it becomes a perpetual invitation in each actual entity, changing from circumstance to circumstance, but always for richness of experience in relation to others, otherwise call the "initial aim" of each experience. But that's overly technical and beside the point. What is important is that we feel it as a calling presence. It is how Christ the Bodhisattva is in the world.
*
How to respond? Christ the Bodhisattva invites each of us and all of us to take the vow, too. It is a promise in which we can participate. A promise and a hope, as Tripp Fuller might put it. Here's how he puts it in his book on Christology: "Divine Self-Investment: An Open and Relational Constructive Christology."
This hope is a promise. This promise comes from the very nature of God. The promise of the God of love is that God will be ever faithful, that the God of love is ever shaped by God’s deep solidarity with the world, and that the God of love promises to bear each moment of history within God while offering greater beauty, healing, and goodness to each moment of the Creation’s becoming. The process of salvation is thus sustained by the constant dreaming and becoming of both God and the world.
*
Of all the theologians I know, Tripp Fuller has stated most succinctly that God needs salvation from broken-heartedness and pain. In his words: "God is not only the bringer of salvation but also in need of it."
His point is not simply that God needs human beings to be saved from their broken hearts; it is that God needs to be saved from God's own broken heart. Here he is influenced by the work of Korean American theologian Andrew Sung Park in "The Wounded Heart of God: The Asian Concept of Han and the Christian Doctrine of Sin." In Korean culture."
In Korean culture Han refers to a collective feeling of sorrow and injustice, a deep-seated grief that arises from severe oppression or injustice. In juxtaposing Han with the Christian doctrine of sin, Fuller (indebted to Park) examines how deep emotional and societal wounds intersect with theological concepts of sin and human brokenness. Fuller sees the crucifixion of Jesus as a place where Han and sin come together, and he sees the healing ministry of Jesus as an invitation to participate in the healing ministry of God. This is a ministry in which God, too, seeks healing, not healing from sin but healing from Han, from being brokenhearted. Fuller puts it this way:
The cross not only exposed and revealed God’s broken-heartedness and wounded-ness, but Godself was exposed on the cross, generating Han within the divine life itself. In this way, the risk turns into a binding in which God too is sin-injured and Han-suffering. For Park, God in God’s own self needs salvation and healing, and this cannot be done outside of relationship with Creation.
*
What has broken God's heart? Need I even ask? Look around. Look at the violence we humans inflict on one another, look at what we do to other animals and the earth. Read the newspaper. See the hatred, the envy, the injustices, the sin.
We could imagine God as a distant spectator, taking it all in but not being affected by it. However, this is not the approach of open and relational (process) theologians like Tripp Fuller. They—we—believe in a God of love, not a separate entity isolated by divine boundaries, but rather the living whole of the universe, albeit with a life of its own: a cosmic Thou. A divine Bodhisattva.
And we believe that this love is moved and affected by all that happens in the world. What happens in the world becomes part of God's very heart. The only salvation available to us is, as it were, a mutual salvation. Affected by all that happens, God acts as a cosmic lure, promoting healing and wholeness beyond and within us, and we, drawn by this lure, respond in ways that can heal both ourselves and God. We are saved together, if we are to be saved at all.
*
It is possible that we will never be saved: not us and not God. The future is not yet decided. But for Fuller and other Christians in the open and relational tradition, the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus embodies the hope and, in its own way, the promise that, with our cooperation, salvation is possible.
*
What would God's salvation look like? For my part, as a Christian influenced by Buddhism, I think it might have multiple dimensions. I believe in a continuing journey after death for all living beings. But here on Earth, it would look like what most of us really want, despite our violent implications to the contrary. We want to live together, in a spirit of love and justice, with one another, with other creatures, and the earth. This is God's dream for us; this harmony would be our salvation. To be sure, it would not be static. It would be an ongoing process. It would not have finality. But it would certainly be better, much better, than what we now have. We want beloved community that includes other animals, hills and rivers, trees and lakes, in which all are cared form, with no one left behind. This hope, this dream, is how we experience Christ the Bodhisattva.
*
I have a friend who is a Buddhist. She sees the God of open and relational theology as a cosmic Bodhisattva, not all-powerful but all-loving. Her name for this Bodhisattva is Amida. I told her about Fuller's idea, that even God is in need of salvation, and asked her what she thought.
I thought that she might say God (or Amida) is enlightened and therefore doesn't "need" salvation, but she didn't say this. She said that the promise of a Bodhisattva is never to enter final salvation (parinirvana) until all living beings can join him or her, and that the Bodhisattva will forever choose rebirth until this eventuality unfolds. "So, Amida needs saving too?" I asked her. "Yes," she said, "Amida postpones final salvation until we ourselves choose the enlightened way. Amida depends on us and cannot force us." "Does Amida's postponement mean that, in principle Amida could leave the world behind?" No, she says: "Amida's very nature is self-emptying love. She would never leave the world behind. She cannot not love."
I think of another theologian, Thomas Oord, who speaks of the self-emptying love of God and how this is God's very nature. I think Thomas Oord and my friend would get along well.
*
I was tempted here to tell her about John Cobb’s idea that a Buddhist likemight reco gnize Jesus of Nazareth as a revelation of Amida. He argues this in “Beyond Dialogue: A Mutual Transformation of Christianity and Buddhism.” But I didn’t do so. I didn’t want my inner evangelical to come out.
I also wondered what Tripp Fuller might say. Might he wonder if, as John Cobb believes, Buddhism might help Christians grow more deeply into a perfection of love? Cobb argues this in “Christ in a Pluralistic Age,” Chapter Thirteen. See "The Perfection of Love: What Christians Can Learn from Buddhism." But I didn’t ask Tripp Fuller, either. I didn't want my inner Buddhist to come out.
*
Still, I find myself wondering if a Christian understanding of the salvation of God, of which Fuller so beautifully speaks, might be enriched by a dialogue with Buddhism, for Christ’s sake. I wonder if we might better understand how even God needs saving, so that the will of God can be done on earth as in heaven.
And what might Buddhism teach us? Well, so much. About the radical interconnectedness of things, about the value of listening without judgment, about the need not to create binaries in the mind between us and them, about how all living beings, not humans alone, are worthy of respect and care, about letting go of things when they pass away. I wonder if these values might help us better walk with our companion, brother Jesus, who suffered on a cross and was then resurrected, giving us a promise and a hope. John Cobb puts it this way:
The encounter with Buddhism may prove an essential step for the West to free itself from its attachment to individualized personal existence as a final good. The West is prepared for this encounter by its increasing recognition of the appalling price in human misery and risk to human survival that has been paid for our achievements in personal existence. We have become disillusioned with the view that these problems can be solved by appeals for justice and personal righteousness. We recognize that radical changes are required. But we are frightened by the prospects of change. Perhaps the encounter with the transpersonal existence of the Buddhist, the recognition of the serenity and strength it embodies, the experience of Buddhist meditation, and the study of Buddhist philosophy will give us the courage to venture into that kind of radical love which can carry us into a postpersonal form of Christian existence.
*
The empty space in God's heart is both a need and a promise. It represents God's need to be liberated from suffering and God's promise that God will never give up on us. It is also an activity on God's part: embodying empathy and luring, receptivity and generosity, feeling the feelings of each and all, and sharing divine emotions with everyone. We experience the feelings of God through a hope and a promise we feel deep inside, whether we are Buddhists or Christians or None-of-the-Above. Buddhists call it the Bodhisattva vow.
Beings are numberless, I vow to save them.
Illusions are numberless, I vow to end them.
Dharma Gates are boundless, I vow to enter them.
The Way is unsurpassable, I vow to realize it.