The Emptied Christ of Philippians: Mahāyāna Meditations by John P. Keenan
2017; Catholic Biblical Association; Volume: 79; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/cbq.2017.0146
ISSN2163-2529
Autores Tópico(s)Religion and Society Interactions
ResumoReviewed by: The Emptied Christ of Philippians: Mahāyāna Meditations by John P. Keenan Leo Lefebure john p. keenan, The Emptied Christ of Philippians: Mahāyāna Meditations ( Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015). Pp. 360. Paper $40. John P. Keenan offers three types of discussion in this commentary. He offers an interpretation of the Greek text of Philippians in dialogue with current NT scholarship, arguing that the letter is a composite of three different letters and that the meditation on the emptied Christ (2:5-11) was originally sent to Paul by the Philippians; alongside this K. offers a series of ecclesiological and autobiographical reflections, especially concerning the Catholic Church to which he belonged in his earlier years (for many years he has served as a priest in the Episcopal Church). Finally, and most interestingly, he offers a provocative interpretation of Paul's presentation of the meaning of Jesus Christ in light of the categories of the Mahāyāna Buddhist schools of Madhyamika and Yogacara. Where Thomas Aquinas employed Aristotle's philosophy and Rudolf Bultmann employed Heidegger's thought to interpret Paul, K. turns to Mahāyāna Buddhism as a "handmaiden" (p. 170). Madhyamika thought teaches that all is empty, but it warns that emptiness is not a concept that can be grasped, and so in one sense there is no philosophy at all in the usual Western understanding. K. takes the famous description of Christ as emptying himself (Phil 2:7) as an invitation for a Madhyamika hermeneutic, and he develops this into a wide-ranging and strongly apophatic view of Paul's empty mind and empty eschatology: "Being empty of self, how could we possibly pretend to know what a divine identity might be?" (p. 167). The name that Jesus receives is the "erasure of all naming" (p. 197). Keenan complements Madhyamika perspectives with the Yogacara tradition's affirmation of meaning, and so the negation of all identity and naming leads to the reappropriation of images and names without grasping at them: "Scripture and philosophy, whether inchoate or articulated, are then once again reaffirmed, but not with the unreal imagining that an objective truth is perceived by an objectively real subject" (p. 163). Madhyamika and Yogacara together provide K. with a framework for interpreting Paul as a mystic who recommends not a new ideology or political program but "a reorientation of the very pattern in which our minds function" (p. 309). Distrusting efforts to pin down any alleged Pauline doctrine, K. argues that the Madhyamika and Yogacara language of emptiness and negation is more appropriate to express Paul's mystical experience than Neoplatonic or Aristotelian philosophies based on stable essences. In contrast to the static categories of Greek thought focused on subject and object, K. praises Yogacara for overcoming the split between subject and object: "Overcoming the dichotomy between subject and object—a move that is basic to the Yogacara interpretation of emptiness—is the hallmark of mystical thinkers everywhere" (p. 308). Moving beyond Paul, K. believes that Yogacara offers a way to appropriate the entire Christian mystical tradition, especially Gregory of Nyssa's description of stretching out toward God, and also Bernard Lonergan's notion that the mystical experience being in love with God without limits is conscious without being known (p. 300 n. 124). The result is that K. presents Paul speaking the teachings of Mahāyāna Buddhism, acting as a bodhisattva (p. 94) and overcoming the split between samsara and nirvana (p. 104). At times K. attributes to Paul the traditional Mahāyāna Buddhist rejection of the Theravada Buddhist ideal of the arhat who seeks personal enlightenment: "I interpret this [Phil 1:24-25] as Paul's bodhisattva vow to remain within his world to carry out the deeds necessary for others, rather than to seek the arhat goal of final cessation with Christ" (p. 117 n. 217). K. interprets Paul's "stretching for what lies ahead" (Phil 3:13) in light of Mahāyāna [End Page 528] language: "In Mahayana philosophy, the truth of ultimate meaning is literally the truth of the final (Skt parama) end target (artha), that which draws one forth, and towards which one aims...
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