book reviews 151 Amos Yong Pneumatology and the Christian-Buddhist Dialogue: Does the Spirit Blow through the Middle Way? (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2012). xvii + 301 pp. $182 hardback. The purpose of Amos Yong’s new book “is to explore what Christian theology might look like amidst and after intensive dialogue with Buddhist traditions” (1). To accomplish this, Yong develops foundational considerations for theolog- ical learning across religious boundaries in the pluralistic world of the twenty- first century. Yong’s standpoint for Christian learning in dialogue with Buddhism is Spirit based and Trinitarian. “… we discern the Spirit in part dogmatically in light of the person and work of Christ, and … we also discern Christ through the Spirit (7).” New insights into Christ, therefore, could arise by discerning the activity of the Spirit that may be operative in aspects of other religions. Yong’s theology of religions thus supports the possibility of new Christian learning through inter-religious dialogue, understood as fresh learning through the Spirit of Christ. To insure that possibility, Yong carefully attends to Buddhists in their own terms, seeking to avoid reducing them to a Christian pre-understanding that, ironically, would prevent the Spirit of Christ from showing Christians new things through the religious other. Yong’s pneumatologically derived categories for comparison are divine pres- ence, divine activity, and divine absence. At first glance, such categories may seem too theistic to map onto Buddhism. But Yong explores so many potential threads of learning among Buddhist concepts and practices that he finds more than enough there to support rich comparison within such categories. Indeed, a strength of the book is that Yong’s pneumatological approach focuses on such a wide range of religious sensibilities, spiritual practices and realities that have been largely ignored in prior treatises of comparative theology (22). In part I, Yong explores divine presence in creation as a pneumatological reality, involving the Spirit as the giver of life to sentient beings, as the con- ditioning field that enables the emergence of complexity from chaos, and as the relational matrix of systemic interconnections that bind orders of creation. Yongbrings this into fruitful comparison and contrast with Mahayana Buddhist teaching of reality as ultimately shunyata (emptiness), where creation may be understood in terms of processes, empty of self-subsistence, that enable the interdependent origination of beings and phenomena (103). These Christian and Buddhist understandings are informed and tested in relation to neurosci- entific discussions of mind and body. In part II, Yongrelates this ontological and anthropological background to issues of divine activity and soteriology, how salvation (or enlightenment) unfolds and is experienced. Theosis (deification) © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2014 | doi: 10.1163/15700747-03601026 152 book reviews in Eastern Orthodox Christianity is compared and contrasted with the renun- ciant soteriology of the Theravada tradition of Buddhaghosa. In part III, Yong explores symbols of divine absence—in Christian terms, that which resists God’s salvific intention for the world; in Buddhist terms, that which impedes or prevents enlightenment. Pentecostal-charismatic understandings of, and practices to avert, the demonic are compared and contrasted with analogues in Theravada and Tibetan Buddhist theory and practice, helping to illumi- nate “divine presence and activity in the world from the standpoint of what is destructive, resistant, and oppositional (24).” What sorts of theological payoff emerge for Christians from such compara- tive work? There are too many suggestive lines of inquiry for Christians (and Buddhists) to summarize adequately here, but to mention a few: In part I, Yong shows how a kenotic-Spirit-christology, informed by Buddhist deconstruction of autonomous selfhood, makes more vivid the possibility of authentic human personhood, modeled by Christ, as both self-emptying and Spirit-filled (94). In part II, by comparing Orthodox and Theravada paths, Yong clarifies what is distinctive about Christian soteriology and evokes wonder at commonalities discerned across so much difference. In part III, Yong explores how a Pente- costal understanding of the demonic may be informed by Buddhist notions of nihilism and hedonism. But the biggest theological payoff of Yong’s book may be the richness of the questions he raises from out of his comparative work. Does the Spirit of God blow through aspects of Buddhism? This question gives new life to the broader question of how to distinguish the Holy Spirit from other spirits, which draws Yong into comparative study of demonology in both traditions. Yong also asks, “Can a Christian theological standpoint do full justice to Buddhism, or does the Christian encounter with Buddhism result in the reduction of Buddhism to Christian categories? (240)” In responding to these questions, Yong shines new light on implications of divine revelation, the role of Christ, and soteriology. On the effects of comparative theological study, Yong writes, “Interfaith encounter, interaction and dialogue changes us. … How far this transforma- tion extends … cannot be foretold in advance—except to say that, from the standpoint of faith in the Spirit of Christ who leads us into all truth, our self- understanding will not contradict but will expand in unpredictable directions the Christian commitments we have embraced (250).” Such dialogical learning does not erase the centrality of witness and mission for Christians (or Bud- dhists), but newly contextualizes their meaning. Yong argues not for dialogue as a preparation for mission, but rather that mission and dialogue must now be seen as non-dual, a position that I think makes equal sense from a Buddhist perspective. Finally, as Yong writes, “sharing our witness involves the ethical PNEUMA 36 (2014) 109–177.