REVIEWS 209

Russell H. BOWERS, Jr., Someone or ? Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness as a Foundation for Christian-Buddhist Dialogue. Asian Thought and Culture 27. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 1995. xi + 251 pp. $49.95 cloth, ISBN 0-8204-2832-9.

EVEN THE IRREPRESSIBLE Alan Watts, who has been called the Norman Vincent Peale of for his ebullient introductions of for Westerners, nearly despaired of marrying Eastern thought to Christianity. Describing Christianity as a “contentious faith” that requires an “all-or-nothing” commit- ment, he observed: “My previous discussions did not take proper account of that whole aspect of Christianity which is uncompromising, ornery, militant, rigorous, imperious, and invincibly self-righteous.” Bowers’s book presents Christian-Buddhist ecumenists with a blunt antithesis—”Someone” or “Nothing” (Christ or šðnyat„)—reminding us that the uncompromising, unassimilable aspect of Christianity noted by Watts is anything but dead, and should not be written off as a passing historical defor- mation of a religion otherwise amenable to the goals of “mutual transforma- tion” and “unity beyond differences.” A Ph.D. from Dallas Theological Seminary, Bowers writes from the evan- gelical Protestantism represented by authors like Norman Geisler, Carl Henry, John MacArthur, Alister McGrath, Ronald Nash, James Packer, Charles Ryrie, Francis Schaeffer, James Sire, John Stott, and Anthony Thiselton, and by publishing houses like Baker Book House, Eerdmans, Moody, InterVarsity, and Zondervan. This might tempt some readers to dismiss Bowers’s unbend- ing (anti-)thesis with a disdainful ad hominem yawn towards “American ,” but this would be premature for two reasons. First, the uncompromising stance towards non-Christian religions found in Bowers’s book characterizes not only Protestant Fundamentalism but, ulti- mately, the entire tradition of the Catholic magisterium down to our own day (one only has to recall the loudly protested remarks by Pope John Paul II on Buddhism in his recent book, Crossing the Threshold of Hope). Even when Catholicism acknowledges the possibility of salvation outside the Christian faith (as in its concept of “baptism of desire”), it insists that its only basis is Christ’s atonement. As such, this aspect of Christianity may well turn out to be an ineluctable part of its essential nature, and not a quirk that can, with effort, be removed. Second, this book, even if a bit plodding and pedantic at times (one chapter has 328 notes, and fully one-third of the book is devoted to endnotes, bibliography, and index), is a carefully researched study of Keiji Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness, the magnum opus of the late great dean of the school of Buddhistic phenomenology. As such, its perspective deserves seri- ous consideration. Bowers accurately grasps the seminal signi³cance of Nishitani’s work, and while interfaith ecumenists may ³nd his conclusions disappointing, his assessment of the implications of Nishitani’s thought for the Christian-Buddhist dialogue is sincere, forthright, and fair. It also pro- vides ecumenists with a clear sense of Christianity’s unyielding side, a side that continues to challenge and defy their work toward a higher Christian- 210 Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 23/1–2

Buddhist synthesis. Bowers devotes his ³rst two chapters to the nature of interreligious dia- logue in general, and to the history and goals of Christian-Buddhist dialogue in particular. He notes how the purpose of dialogue has evolved from mutual understanding (Dumoulin) to mutual transformation (Cobb) and the quest for unity (Ingram) under the inμuence of various nontraditional theologies and denaturing (kenotic) Christologies. He addresses the lamentable lack of conservative evangelical involvement in the Christian-Buddhist dialogue, the issues of religious pluralism, and the charges of exclusivism leveled against traditional Christianity. Chapter 3 offers an extensive expository summary of Nishitani’s Religion and Nothingness. The analysis is accurate, evenhanded, and reasonably clear, although it naturally mirrors the indirect circularity of Nishitani’s own logic. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether Bowers is slipping from exposition to commentary, especially when he takes up Nishitani’s view of Christianity. Technical terms like “circuminsessional” and “autotelic” are not de³ned for the reader. Chapter 4 is primarily spent showing why evangelical Christianity and Buddhism are incompatible. Admitting that Nishitani makes common cause with Christianity against scienti³c materialism, , and atheistic existen- tialism, the author hastens to show the super³ciality of these concerns. He suggests (using Francis Schaeffer’s phrase) that Nishitani’s own uncritical acquiescence in the modern ateleologic scienti³c worldview compromises his ability to accurately assess the traditional Christian view of a “personal-in³nite God.” Consequently, when Nishitani treats such Christian concepts as God’s “personal” nature and Christ’s compassion, selμess love, and kenotic (self- emptying) self-sacri³ce he denatures them and transmutes them into sublated Buddhistic concepts utterly foreign to their original signi³cations. Bowers notes that Nishitani, at this point, has more in common with deconstruction- ist hermeneutics and various “nonevangelical” thelogies—Mystical (Eckhart and Heidegger), Radical (Altizer), Liberal (Ritschl, Bultmann, etc.), and Process (Cobb). Meanwhile he continues to write as though “evangelical the- ology” were something self-evident and unconnected to Catholic tradition. Chapter 5 summarizes the author’s thesis, recapitulating his evangelical concerns. At times he seems to be writing here primarily for evangelicals, as when he suggests that the chief purpose of interfaith dialogue is to “con- tribute to understanding which will enhance effective proclamation,” or calls (in good “altar call” form) for “making a choice.” Yet he suggests several pro³table topics for Christian-Buddhist discussion, such as the relation between šðnyat„ in Buddhism and “meaninglessness” in Ecclesiastes, or the human experience of repugnance towards evil in relation to the benign indif- ference of šðnyat„ in Buddhism. For some readers a signi³cant obstacle to appreciating Bowers’s thesis will be the seeming harshness with which he states some of his conclusions, such as his description of Buddhist meditation as “a self-induced brainwashing.” A more serious dif³culty, not of Bowers’s general thesis but of the details of his analysis, is the disjunctive logic that he indiscriminately forces upon a whole REVIEWS 211 range of terms and concepts. If truth can be “propositional,” does this mean it can’t also be “existential”? If humanity’s basic problem is “sin,” does this mean it can’t also involve “ignorance”? If God is “personal,” does this mean his nature is no longer “incomprehensible” (contrary to what theologians from Aquinas to Cornelius Van Til have believed)? If some “” begins in mist and ends in schism, does this mean that the rich traditions of mysticism from St. Anthony of the Desert to St. John of the Cross and patris- tic mystagogia (for which the central acts of worship are sacred mysteries) have no place in Christianity? In spite of these and other shortcomings, Bowers’s study presents the Christian-Buddhist dialogue with a challenge that deserves to be carefully considered. Philip Blosser Lenoir-Rhyne College

ISOMAE Jun’ichi r2ˆs, Dogð to kamen: Jõmon shakai no shðkyõ kõzõ FXo6s3Åkçlu;îr‹. Tokyo: Azekura Shobõ, 1994. 236 pp. ¥8,240 (cloth), ISBN 4-7517-2420-7.

THOUGH STILL IN HIS early thirties, Isomae Jun’ichi has already made a reputa- tion for himself as a leading scholar of Jõmon ³gurines and masks. Dogð to kamen is a collection of eight papers written between 1985 and 1992; seven of the papers have been published previously, though the author has made some corrections and amendments. The ³rst chapter deals with masks and the rest with various aspects of clay ³gurines, with particular emphasis on the Tõhoku region in the Late and Final Jõmon phases. Isomae’s overall approach is perhaps best described as “contextual.” Criticizing overly simplistic “theoretical reductionism” that attempts to account for Jõmon ritual as a whole, he argues that each region needs to be seen on its own terms. A reference to medievalist Amino Yoshihiko on page 1 suggests that Isomae sees his work as part of a general trend towards the decentralization of Japanese history. While I agree that detailed studies of the context of ³gurine use and production are essential, I am less convinced by Isomae’s assumption (p. 1) that archaeological “types” are direct symbolic representations of past social groups, an idea that has received considerable criticism in Western archaeology over the past decade or so. Although Isomae’s ³eld is religious studies rather than archaeology, my most general criticism of the book is that he fails to transcend a very archaeological obses- sion with typology and classi³cation. The ³rst chapter deals with masks (and was published originally in Kõko- gaku zasshi 77/1, not 76/4 as stated on page 3). Apart from a couple of shell examples from Kumamoto, Jõmon masks are made of clay and are mostly rather small, with a diameter of between ten and twenty centimeters. Masks ³rst appeared in western in the early Late phase but then spread east; in the Final Jõmon they are known only in the eastern archipelago. Only some ³fty-eight masks have been discovered from thirty-six sites. Thus, although Jõmon masks have a wide distribution, they are numerically rare