#Walking papers sunyata free#

There Paul would have been free 'to proclaim a spiritual religion in the homeland of spiritual religions.' (1) Instead the first Christian mission kept to the path of the Jewish diaspora, where it was to establish itself as Church and sink the cultural roots that nourish it to this day. The hindsight of history, as Jacques Ellul points out, makes the turn East seem the logical thing. At once Paul and his troop pulled up stakes and headed back to the Mediterranean basin (Acts 16:9-10). Then one night a Macedonian figure appeared to him in a vision and begged him to return to help the Christian community there. The scripture speaks of the inner inspiration urging him from place to place as a Spirit pushing from behind like a driving wind. In the course of his second missionary journey, Paul's plans to return west to Ephesus from Iconium were thwarted, and he was drawn instead to the verge of the East. General editor of the Nanzen Studies in Religion and Culture, he also edits Inter-Religio, a journal of East Asian Christian organizations engaged in religious dialogue.ĪCCORDING to the author of the Acts of the Apostles, what prevented Christianity from spreading to the East in the early years of its mission was a dream. James Heisig, S.V.D., teaches at Nanzen University, Nagoga, Japan, where he is a member of the Nanzen Institute of Religion and Cuture. Recent Christian-Buddhist dialogue in Japan reveals that the scandal of the Cross is less a stumbling block today for key representatives of the Kyoto School.įr. Heisig: East-West Dialogue: Sunyata and Kenosis

Walking papers sunyata