Paul F. Knitter > Quotes

“If Mystery is the goal and content of all religious experience, then Silence is a necessary means of letting Mystery speak.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“Loving others, therefore, is not a question so much of “doing God’s will” but, rather, of “living God’s life.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“As some theologians have commented, if we’re convinced that the starting point for our individual lives, or for the human project in general, is marked “original sin” rather than “original blessing,” it’s going to be all the more difficult to move on.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“for Jesus the Spirit-filled prophet, the focus of his life and relationships was the Reign of God. That meant that he was not—as his followers have often been—church-centered. His primary concern was not to increase membership of his own movement or community. Rather, it was to transform people's hearts so as to transform their society.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions

“And yet, and yet, if my belief in Jesus as the only Son of God requires me, explicitly or implicitly, to denigrate or subordinate other religious figures and religions, then such a belief becomes a clot in the free and life-giving flow of my faith’s circulatory system. I’m sorry. It just does.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“Salvation, therefore, is not a transaction that takes place outside us, but rather an empowering awareness that explodes within and then pervades our entire being.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“In their heart of hearts, religions deal with a Reality they recognize to be indefinable, incomprehensible, unspeakable.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“If Christians insist that “if you want peace, work for justice,” the Buddhists would counter-insist, “if you want peace, be peace.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“To put it bluntly but also imploringly: we Christians need more silence in our services and liturgies. Just how this might be realized, just how we”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“Christian prayer is generally too worshipful and therefore dualistic. And it is too wordy.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“Buddhism also throws new, and I believe fuller, light on an oft-quoted passage from John’s Gospel: “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). In this passage, Jesus, in looking ahead to his own death, speaks about death for all of us. Death means that as “single grains” we really die. The “singleness” of our identities is no longer to be found. The “fruit” that comes forth is very, very different from the single, little seed. Again, we’re dealing here with symbols, with pointing fingers. But they seem to point to a life after death that is no longer life lived as individuals.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“My own simplistic definition would be: dualism results when we make necessary distinctions, and then take those distinctions too seriously. We turn those distinctions into dividing lines rather than connecting lines; we use them as no-trespassing signs. We not only distinguish, we separate. And the separation usually leads to ranking: one side is superior to and dominant over the other. Thus, we have the dualism of matter and spirit, East and West, nature and history, male and female, God and the world.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“Or more directly and uncomfortably, it feels like we Christians have to claim that “my Savior is bigger or stronger than yours.” That leads to “my church/religion is bigger than your church/religion” (which is precisely what the architects of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome tried to prove when they clearly marked the spots in the main aisle where all the other major churches of the world would fit!) Such claims that “mine is bigger than yours” may be important for patriarchs and teenage boys.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“Christ is not merely expressive of a divine salvation equally available in the plurality of religions; salvation is constituted by the coming of God in the concrete history of Jesus of Nazareth.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions

“No where” means “now here.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and Buddha: Friends in Conversation

“If this is so, if religion and religious experience deal with a Mystery that is as real as it is incomprehensible, if each religion knows something of the Truth but never the whole Truth, then in order to learn more of this Truth they all must learn more from one another.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Jesus and Buddha: Friends in Conversation

“And this power in their teaching had to do, first of all, with the content of what they taught – that is, with the way “what they said” made clear “what really is.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“To experience what is called the Emptiness of all individuality, or the reality of InterBeing, is to experience your constitutive connections with others. Whatever natural or biological concern you have for yourself, that same concern you will also feel toward others. If biology naturally leads you to be concerned about or love yourself, Enlightenment will naturally lead you to be concerned about and love others. You will, in Christian terms, love your neighbor as yourself. If Christians call this a “commandment,” for Buddhists it’s something that comes naturally, as part of the Enlightened experience of Nirvana or InterBeing.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“God’s will.” It’s a rubric, I fear, that can be, and is, so easily misunderstood and then misused, and so it ends up a greater source of harm than of help in people’s lives, usually without them realizing that this is the case. This can happen in a variety of ways.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“But how to “take the side” of the oppressed without “taking sides” against the oppressors? How to oppose without denouncing? How to “be with” without “being against?” No neat answers are possible. But I have found help from Gandhi’s example of ahimsa and from the ongoing practice of mindfulness-meditation. Gandhi’s program for non-violence was, I believe, precisely what we are talking about: he stood firmly with the colonized people of India, but he never hated, or humiliated, or spoke ill of the British colonizers. Thus, he never broke off his connections with them. They knew he opposed them, but they did not feel he was against them. Indeed, they knew he respected and cared for them. Gandhi opposed, but he also embraced. To do that, one must be acting from a well-nurtured spiritual center. This is another reason why all our liberating action must arise out of our uniting contemplation – why, as Roshi Bernie Glassman told me, I’ll never stop the death squads unless I realize my oneness with them.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“We act not to gain the fruits of our actions but because this is how the Christ-Spirit or our Buddha-nature acts, though we rejoice when our actions do bear fruit. The well-worn dictum applies: “We are not called to be successful, but to be faithful” to what we are, though we also know that if ever there is to be success, it will come out of such fidelity.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“The facts seem to be that “a fully systematized theology of non-Christian religions is not possible today.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions

“It’s the most basic, and the simplest, thing we can say about ourselves and about God: we exist through relationships of knowing and loving and giving because that’s how God exists.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“I can imagine that some of my Buddhist friends, having read the above description of my struggles with a God-as-You, might scratch their heads and ask: “What’s the problem? For us, no God, therefore no person, therefore no problem.” I admire their immunity and freedom from such difficulties. But I am, or I want to be, a Christian.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“Evangelicals will insist that the Bible is always primary for Christians. And they are right. But primary doesn't have to mean absolute.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions

“what I have found helpful for myself and for my students is the reminder that to call something a symbol or a myth is not to deny its truth. Just because it “didn’t happen,” or it may not have happened in precisely the way that is reported, doesn’t mean that it isn’t packing a powerful truth. On the contrary, as we just said, its truth may be more wrenching and exciting.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“if a Christian no longer places Jesus Christ at the heart of what God is up to in all of history, she's no longer really a Christian.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Introducing Theologies of Religions

“We can understand our traditional doctrines of original sin and our “fallen state” more coherently and deeply by bringing these beliefs into conversation with Buddha’s second Noble Truth. That Truth tells us that we cause suffering for ourselves and others because we are selfish, and that we are selfish not because we are innately so, but because we are ignorant. So from this perspective, we can say that evil does not exist in itself. It doesn’t have its own reality or identity since it is always the product of something else – that is, ignorance. What we’re saying here is not just an interesting philosophical insight. It has very practical consequences for how we understand and deal with our messy world. If “evil” is real – that is, a given element in the human condition – we have an incurable disease that can’t really be fixed until we move on to the next life where it will either finally be removed or punished. If evil is not real in itself but the unhappy by-product of ignorance, call the doctor – there’s hope.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian

“By love alone is hatred dispelled.” Jesus would add: a love that must be ready to die rather than hate. Out of such love, and out of such death that this love can require, will hatred be dispelled. Hearts will be changed. And so will our world.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could not be a Christian

“when, in our contemporary idiom, “talking” about compassion becomes more important than “walking” in compassion – then words show their ever-lurking danger.”
― Paul F. Knitter, Without Buddha I Could Not be a Christian