SJT 64(2): 195–210 (2011) 

C Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2011

doi:10.1017/S0036930611000056

Barth and Buddhism in the theology of Katsume

Takizawa
John Parratt
Oakwood, Longtown, Carlisle, Cumbria CA6 5SZ, UK
mendoza1938@hotmail.com

Abstract
Katsume Takizawa (1909–1984) was one of the most innovative of twentieth-
century Japanese philosophical theologians. His study with Barth (1935) led
him to attempt to bring together aspects of Barth’s theology with concepts
derived from Jodo-shin and Zen. He found in both religions a basic relationship
between God and man which transcended both identity and distinction, which he
expressed in Nishida’s concept of the self-identity of the absolute contradiction.
This relationship he called ‘Emmanuel 1’. The fulfilment of the relationship is
‘Emmanuel 2’ and is reflected for Christians in Jesus.

In a letter written shortly before his death, and published posthumously in

the North East Journal for Theology, Karl Barth issued a remarkable challenge to
theologians in Asia to do their work contextually. There was, he wrote, no
need to be Europeans, still less Barthian, rather:

Say what you have to say as Christians for God’s sake, responsibly and
concretely with your own words and thoughts, concepts and ways . . .
You may feel free to be south east Asian Christians. Be it!1

Japan’s theological love affair with Barth had deep roots. German academic
theology began to have an impact in Japan from the beginning of the
twentieth century, displacing the earlier conservative dominance. Bultmann,
Brunner and Tillich were all read, but it was Barth who, from the 1930s,
became the major influence on Japanese theologians. Odagaki characterises
the whole period up to 1970 as one of ‘German captivity’ in which Barth’s

1
K. Barth, ‘No Boring Theology: A Letter from Karl Barth’, North East Journal of Theology
2 (1969), p. 5. This half-volume was dedicated to Barth, who had died a year before
its publication. Given the extent of Barth’s influence in Japan it is surprising that the
editor (K. Koyama, himself Japanese) seemed unaware of any Barthians among East
Asian theologians at the time.

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 scottish journal of theology

influence was predominant,2 while Sato3 sees the period between 1935 and
1945 as one when Barthianism almost became official Japanese orthodoxy. He
argues that it was the radicalism of Barth which attracted Japanese theologians
who were seeking something more intellectually satisfying than American
missionary theology. Katsume Takizawa was however unusual in that he
attempted to bring Barth into dialogue with Japanese Buddhism. Indeed
Odagaki4 describes him as the first person to compare Christianity and
Buddhism ‘on the level of the being of religion’. His point is that with
Takizawa we are not dealing with simple phenomenological parallels but
with a comparison of the deeper structures of the religions, the ontology
of religion (though Odagaki would prefer the term ‘me-ontology’, the
‘ontology of nothing, of the void’ used in Heidegger’s sense).
Takizawa was born in 1909, into a Zen Buddhist household near to
Tokyo, the son of a lacquer worker. After a brief period studying law, he
enrolled at Kyusu Imperial University in 1929 to study philosophy, and was
appointed to an academic post on graduation. During this period he came
under the influence of the leading Japanese philosopher of the period, Kataro
Nishida. He later claimed that after struggling to understand Nishida’s work
he experienced a sudden insight (characteristic of Zen) in which all became
clear. The result was the publication of a paper on Nishida’s philosophy
which deeply impressed the latter. On Nishida’s5 recommendation he went
to Berlin in 1935, on a Humboldt scholarship, to study under Barth. His
first experience of Barth was hearing him lecture on the virgin birth, which
profoundly affected the later development of his thought. After Barth came
into conflict with the Nazi authorities, Takizawa transferred to Marburg to
study with Bultmann. On his return to Japan Takizawa taught philosophy at
Kyusu. Despite his attraction to Christianity he was not baptised until 1958.
From the 1960s he returned several times to Germany to lecture at various
universities, and much of his work which is available to European readers

2
Masaya Odagaki, ‘Theology after 1970’, in Yasua Furuya (ed.), A History of Japanese
Theology (Grand Rapids, MI, and Cambridge: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 113. Kitamori, the
first Japanese theologian to have an impact on the West, on the other hand, had begun
to challenge Barth’s influence as early as 1947: see my ‘Kitamori’s Theology of the
Pain of Pain of God Revisited’, in D. Becker and A. Feldtkeller (eds), Mit dem Fremden
Leben, vol. 2 (Erlangen: Erlangen Verlag, 2000), p. 147.
3
Toshi Sato, ‘The Second Generation’, in Furuya, History of Japanese Theology, pp. 53, 56.
4
‘Theology after 1970’, p. 117.
5
Although Takizawa had never studied under Nishida he sought his advice. Nishida
(a Zen master) advised him to study theology since ‘there is something required for
truth, that is God’.

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 Barth and Buddhism in Takizawa

comes from this period. In 1984 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by

the University of Heidelberg, but he died of leukaemia in June of that year.
It is regrettable that Takizawa’s writings are not easily accessible to the non-
Japanese reader. His study in Germany before the Second World War and his
visits there afterwards, however, resulted in several of his shorter writings and
lectures being published in German, edited by German scholars.6 Some of
these papers are translations from the Japanese, but the majority were written
by Takizawa himself. Takizawa’s German style is somewhat idiosyncratic, and
fluctuates between the poetic and the pedantic. His use of words with double
meanings, his love of paradox, the complexity of some of his grammatical
constructions (of which Barth himself would surely have been proud),
and the almost complete absence of referencing, sometimes obscures his
intentions (I have noted some of his key German terms in brackets). And
since most these are short papers given over a couple of decades there is
inevitably some repetition as well as development of ideas. Added to this,
as Sundermeier7 has pointed out, is the fact that Japanese Buddhism is itself
quite unfamiliar terrain to most Western readers, as is the paradoxical nature
of Nishida’s philosophy which influenced Takizawa so profoundly. However,
Takizawa can only be understood within this Buddhist tradition, which was
for him the point of entry into Christian theology and the basis on which
he interpreted it. He therefore seems to me a classic example of what can
happen when a particular Western theological position (in this case that of
Barth) is understood from within an Eastern religion.
The influences which shaped Takizawa’s thought then are twofold:
Buddhism as received in the Japanese schools of Jodo-shin (Pure Land)
and Zen, and in the philosophy of Nishida, and Christian theology as set out
by Karl Barth.8 In the process he subjected both to his own quite substantial
modification. I shall look at these influences in turn and then examine how
they come together in Takizawa’s innovative synthesis.

6
K. Takizawa, Reflexionen über die universale Grundlage von Buddhismus und Christentum, ed. H. Hamer
(Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1980); Takizawa, Das Heil im Heute: Texte einer japanischen Theologie,
ed. Theo Sundermeier (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1987). For a recent
preliminary assessment of Takizawa’s relationship with Barth see Susanne Hennecke,
‘Speaking in Many Voices about the One God’, in B. McCormack and G. Neven (eds),
The Reality of Faith in Theology (Berne and Oxford: Lang, 2008), pp. 141–62.
7
‘Praesentische Theologie: Der Beitrag K. Takizawa’s in interkulturellen Gespraech’, in
Takizawa, Das Heil, p. 11.
8
As Sundermeier puts it, Takizawa wanted to relate the Christian thought which he
encountered from Barth to the Japanese Buddhism which remained very important
for him: ‘Vorwort’, in Das Heil, p. 7.

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 scottish journal of theology

Buddhism
The two manifestations of Buddhism which influenced Takizawa, Pure Land
(Jodo-shin) and Zen are both technically ‘exclusive’ sects. Both entered
Japan from China. Pure Land is essentially a saviour cult: there are many
buddhas who have obtained enlightenment, but who voluntarily renounce
their blessedness. They are boddhisatvas who rule over their own ‘pure
lands’ – other worlds than ours – and take a vow to save all intelligent
beings. The Pure Land is not a perfect heaven but a kind of intermediate
paradise. All those who call upon them in faith will be reborn in the Pure
Lands. The most famous of the boddhisatvas is Amitabha (Amida, in Japan
Amidabutsu) whose Pure Land is in the west and who is identified with the
historical Buddha, Sakyamuni.
The ‘initial vow’9 of the boddhisatva (a key concept in Takizawa’s
philosophy) is thus a means of channelling merit through successive
generations until the vow is fulfilled. Its essence depends on the saving
grace of the buddha figure, and merit is received as a gift by the repetition
of his name. Pure Land is a democratic and popular form of Mahayana
Buddhism in that it is not restricted to the religious elites who are able to
practise meditation and asceticism, but is freely available to all solely on the
basis of faith in the merit of the boddhisatva. The parallels with Christianity
have often been remarked, and Takizawa himself admits the possibility that
Pure Land may have been influenced by the Nestorian Christianity which
reached China in the fifth century. Pure Land became popular in Japan during
the eleventh and twelfth centuries, among the commoners and the elites,
especially through Honen (1133–1212) and his disciple Shinran (1173–
1262). The essence of their teaching, as Blacker10 puts it, is that there is
‘nothing we ourselves can do to escape the horrors of the ordinary human
state or from the horrors of rebirth somewhere worse. Our only hope of
salvation lies in the grace of Amida to save all those who call on his Name.’
Whereas for Pure Land salvation from incessant rebirth is only to be found
outside the individual in the grace of the boddhisatva, Zen focuses on the
inner nature of the person.11 For Zen the buddha-nature is within, it does
not have to be attained or even expected: it lies within each individual and

9
I adopt Conze’s rendering ‘initial vow’ in his trans. of the Diamond Sutra (E. Conze,
Buddhist Scriptures, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984, p.164). Takizawa’s terminology
might better be translated as ‘original vow’.
10
‘Religions of Japan’, in C. Bleeker and G. Widengren (eds), Historia Religionum, vol. 2
(Leiden: Brill, 1971), p. 525.
11
The term derives from the Sanskrit dhyana meaning meditation, through the Chinese
ch’an. Zen expanded in Japan around the eleventh century, but its appeal was more to
the military classes and the educated.

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 Barth and Buddhism in Takizawa

simply needs to be recognised. It brings to light what is already latent by

means of a sudden insight or awakening (satori). Such insight may come
through meditation or by intense concentration on paradoxical concepts or
sayings (koans) which raise the mind beyond normal levels. By such insight
the duality of subject and object is transcended and the true nature of reality
is perceived, characterised as void or nothingness (sunnyata).12
Takizawa experienced both Jodo-shin and Zen during his early life. His take
on them however is innovative, in that (in good Zen fashion) he attempted
to bring the two together by arguing that at root both were saying the same
thing. That Takazawa can do this with a fair degree of conviction is due to
his adoption of the philosophical approach of Nishida. In his paper ‘Die
Kraft des Anderen und die Kraft des Selbst im Buddhismus verglichen mit
dem Christentum’,13 Takizawa starts by pointing out the common view of
salvation in the two sects. For Jodo-shin, in the teaching of Shinran, salvation
is usually taken to be grounded in the power of the Other, that is, in Amitabha,
Amida Buddha. In Zen on the other hand, as taught by the ninth-century
master Dogen, it is regarded as grounded in the self. Takizawa questions
this simplistic reading. He believed that there was another dimension to
Shinran’s teaching, namely that for him the self cannot be envisaged without
at the same time understanding the initial vow of Amida as the only essential
source and underpinning of the being (Dasein) of the individual self. Thus
the relationship between Amida and the self is a ‘given’ which cannot be
shattered even by the individual’s worst sins. So faith, according to Shinran,
is nothing less than the awakening of the self to this fact as ‘the indestructible
truth which lies and lives in his own self’.14 Faith thus does not come from
the self immediately, but has its real source in the buddha-nature which lies
at the ground of being. In Takizawa’s view, for Shinran the wholly other is

12
A good illustration of this concept is the following stanzas from On Believing in Mind by
the Chinese Ch’an (Zen) master Seng-Ts’an (trans. in Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, p. 172):
‘Abide not with dualism, / Carefully avoid pursuing; / As soon as you have right
and wrong, / Confusion ensues and Mind is lost. // The object is an object for the
subject, / The subject is a subject for the object; / Know the relativity of the two /
Rests ultimately on one emptiness.’
13
Takizawa, Reflexionen, pp. 46–65; see also ‘Religion als Sache der Gegenwart’, pp. 28–39
in the same volume, and ‘Rechtfertigung im Buddhismus und im Christentum’, in
Das Heil, pp.181–96, where the issue is also discussed. In his book publ. in Japanese
in 1964, Buddhism and Christianity, he had already explored the relationship between the
two religions. In response to Hisamatsu’s defence of Buddhism as atheism, Takizawa
argued that there is a deep structural similarity in the ontology of human nature in
Buddhism and Christianity. See Kenzo Tagawa, ‘The Yagi–Takizawa Debate’, North East
Asia Journal of Theology (1969), pp. 41–60.
14
Takizawa, Reflexionen, p. 49.

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 scottish journal of theology

the boddhisatva, who through his initial vow has bound himself irrevocably
to all people. The relationship between Amida Buddha and the self lies in
the very being of human nature itself, irrespective of what we do, and is
manifested in the self calling upon the name of Amida (the cry ‘Nametsu’,
i.e. Namu-Amidha-Buddha).15
In Zen satori (enlightenment) is the awakening of the person to the truth
of his own self. Again Takizawa finds this too simplistic. He argues that
Dogen does not reject the wholly other (dharma). While the boundary point
between the other and the self is in fact uncrossable, dharma belongs to the
structure of being of the person himself. It is both a boundary and also a
unity, and the individual has to awaken to it. It is a paradox of separation and
identity. In Nishida’s phrase it is ‘the absolutely contradictory self-identity’
or better, ‘the self-identity of the absolute contradiction’. In Takizawa’s view
both religious leaders tended to absolutise their positions rather than seeing
them as contingent forms of absolute truth, and as complementary rather
than contradictory.
It is beyond my competence to comment on the validity of this
proposition. For our purposes we need only note the thrust of Takizawa’s
argument, namely that the buddha-nature lies at the ground of being of
the individual self. This relationship with the wholly other is fundamental,
original and ineradicable. ‘The initial vow of Amida’, writes Takizawa,
‘means for Shinran, the true salvation and underpinning (Stütze) of life which
precedes all human thinking and feeling.’ Similarly, Zen has nothing at all to
do with a Western individualism which isolates the self from its real ground.
It is rather that the self and the buddha-nature are fundamentally one whether
this is realised or not.16 Takizawa’s debt to Nishida17 is very clear here. Indeed
the whole thesis might be summed up in a poem by Kokusi Daito which
Nishida was apparently fond of quoting:
For ever divorced
Yet not for a moment separated,
The whole day together
Yet not for a moment one;
That Logos dwells in every person18

15
Ibid., p. 56.
16
Ibid., p. 29; he returns to this argument in ‘Jodo-Shin-Buddhismus verglichen mit
dem Christentum’, pp. 66–110 in the same volume.
17
See esp. ‘Der Überwindung des Modernismus: Kitaro Nishidas Philosophie und die
Theologies Karl Barths’, ibid., pp. 127–71.
18
In Takizawa’s German: ‘Für ewig gescheiden, / Jedoch keinen Augenblick getrennt; /
Den ganzen Tag zusammen, / Doch keinen Augenblick in eins; / Dieser Logos wohnt
in jedem Mensch.’

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 Barth and Buddhism in Takizawa

Takizawa is here, like Nishida, questioning the concept of the autonomous

self. To assume the autonomous subjectivity of the individual and define
ourselves only by it only leads to life becoming an incomprehensible
absurdity. The solution to this absurdity is found in Nishida’s ‘absolutely
contradictory self-identity’, which is not an academic construct but –
assuming one accepts that there is something ultimate that really exists – the
unavoidable basic structure of life and being. ‘All human life is dependent
upon being, separated from which man can neither live, speak, create, or
even die.’19 ‘The finite Ego (Ich-Selbst), which is simply a finite thing and not
a subject, is directly one with the absolute infinite Subject (but) without in
the least ceasing to be a finite thing.’20 This is the ‘self-identity in the absolute
contradiction’, the Ego (the individual) is one with the Absolute Self, yet in
a unity which at the same time embraces a division, a contradiction. While
the ‘Logos’ exists in all, this does not mean that all are identified with the
Logos. Unity and distinction exist paradoxically at the same time.
The reliance of this position on Zen seems fairly clear. Takizawa, though,
claimed that Nishida’s concept of unity in contradiction was not so much
strictly Buddhist as universal, and he sought to demonstrate that there was
a structural agreement with this concept in the anthropological ontology
found in religion as such, and specifically in Christian theology.

The influence of Barth

This leads us to the second major influence on his thought, Karl Barth. It
might indeed seem curious that one who had such an intimate commitment
to and understanding of two of the most experiential forms of Buddhism
should be attracted to the hard dogmatism of a theologian of Barth’s stature.
Takizawa’s understanding and interpretation of Karl Barth are certainly not
without their problems, and Takizawa is not averse to disagreeing with Barth.
None the less it is true, as Terazono commented, that in dealing with Christian
theology Takizawa always takes Barth as his point of departure.21
Takizawa’s acknowledgement of his debt to Barth is generous and
frequent22 and his use of the concept of Emmanuel is taken directly from
Barth.23 Takizawa’s main problem with Barth (as one might expect) is his
‘absolutising’ of the Christian faith. He devotes a whole paper to Barth’s note

19
Takizawa, Reflexionen, pp. 144–6.
20
Ibid., p. 160.
21
Yoshiki Terazono, ‘Das christliche Leben in Japan’, in K. Terazono and H. Hamer (eds),
Brennpunkte in Kirche und Theologie Japans (Neukirchen: Neukirchner Verlag, 1988), p. 12.
22
E.g. Takizawa, Reflexionen, pp. 170–1.
23
See esp. the paper ‘Jodo-Shin-Buddhismus verglichen mit dem Christentum’, ibid.,
pp. 66–110.

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 scottish journal of theology

on the similarity of Jodo-shin, as a salvation religion, to Christianity.24 This

volume of Church Dogmatics appeared in 1927 well before Takizawa met Barth,
and is one of few excursions by Barth into the field of comparative religion.
Barth’s grasp and appreciation of non-Christian religions was limited. His
much vaunted diatribe against religion as a form of unbelief should not be
seen in the context of what today would be called religious dialogue but
rather against the background of religion as understood by nineteenth-
century German liberalism. If his foray into Japanese Buddhism was
unfortunate, it did at least provide Takizawa with an Anknüpfungspunkt to latch
on to. Barth regards Jodo-shin as the nearest parallel to the Reformed concept
of grace in what he calls heathen (Heiden) religions. While he sees several
differences between Jodo-shin and Christianity, the main distinction – as
one would expect given the christocentric nature of his dogmatics – is the
fact that ‘the truth claim of Christianity is contained in the one name Jesus
Christ and nothing else’. Other religions may share the same structure and
the ‘symptoms’ of Christianity as a religion of grace but because they are not
grounded in Jesus Christ their adherents remain ‘poor quite lost heathens’.
In other words, the truth of Christianity is not found in its structures and
systems – even its way of salvation – but in the person and name Jesus
Christ.25 Takizawa, I think correctly, sees this as absolutising Christianity
to the exclusion of any other world-view. However, rather than dismissing
Barth he goes on to ask a deeper question: what exactly does Barth mean
by ‘the name Jesus Christ?’ In 1936 Takizawa had already commented that
whoever listens to Karl Barth’s preaching should not measure it by his own
picture of Christ, ‘to praise or condemn it’, but simply try to hear which Christ
Barth preaches in the whole correlation (Zusammenhang) of his preaching’.26
For Barth, argues Takizawa, the name Jesus Christ is something completely
independent of our thinking or actions, and absolutely different from the
‘religious’, whether Christian or not. This ‘something’ (Etwas), which Barth
calls the name Jesus Christ, ‘exists where the person really exists’ irrespective
of who or what that person is, whether he recognises it or not. It is something
that exists for each of us and from which we cannot for a moment be
separated. This fact (Faktum) is on an entirely different plane from all else in
human life and experience. It is an original primal relationship (ursprünglich

24
Engl. trans. Church Dogmatics I/2 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1952), pp. 372–7.
25
I find this type of argumentation unconvincing and circular: given the premise of the
essential centrality of Christ, any system which does not share this must of necessity
be false. This is hardly a helpful basis for fruitful interaction with other religions or
indeed with Christian theology that comes out of a non-Christian context.
26
Takizawa, Reflexionen, p. 72.

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 Barth and Buddhism in Takizawa

Beziehung), an undeserved gift of grace, a sure and indestructible foundation

(Stütze) of the individual life. This original relation between the ‘something’
and the existing person is a simple given, a fact. But we are unaware that this
fact lies at the basis of our human life until we are awakened to it.27 So, argues
Takizawa, what is important for Barth is not doctrine, church practice, or
even ethics but the primal relationship between God and man, ‘the absolutely
individual yet at the same time universal living word’ which is the name
Jesus Christ. Religion – whether Christianity or any other – is simply an
appearance (Erscheinung) which mirrors the truth of this relationship.28 False
religion is to take this appearance for reality.
In this way Takizawa can claim that in Barth ‘absolutism has nothing to
do with the general widespread Western absolutism’ or exclusivism (though
later Barthians, misunderstanding Barth, thought it did!). Rather the name
Jesus Christ turns out to be a kind of light which lightens every man, or rather
the ground structure of human being which Takizawa (taking his cue from
lectures he heard Barth give on the virgin birth) prefers to call ‘Emmanuel’,
which becomes a key term for him.29 Barth’s fault, according to Takizawa,
is that he did not make sufficiently clear the distinction in his use of the
phrase ‘the name Jesus Christ’ between the original fact (Urfakt) of human
being on the one hand, and the outward expression of that same fact in the
historical world in the life of Jesus on the other. In Takizawa’s terminology
these are respectively the ‘first Emmanuel’ and the ‘second Emmanuel’. The
latter is a symptom, a manifestation of the first. Consequently, despite Barth’s
emphatic denial of natural theology, ‘there still remains in him a platform
(Bodensatz) of theologia naturalis’.30
The convinced Barthian might be somewhat perplexed by this
interpretation. On the other hand one can see where Takizawa is coming
from. Given his immersion in both Jodo-shin and Zen and his interpretation
of these forms of Japanese Buddhism, it is perhaps not too surprising that
he should have read into the work of Barth, his second teacher, a similar
religious structure.
Leading themes
At this point I want to attempt to examine in more detail the leading themes
that determine Takizawa’s theology: the basic structure of religion, his view
of reality and anthropology and his understanding of Christ.

27
Ibid., pp. 73–4.
28
Ibid., p. 76.
29
It is hardly a key term for Barth himself and Barth’s use of the term is quite different
from the meaning Takizawa gives it.
30
Ibid., p. 85.

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 scottish journal of theology

In Takizawa’s view all religions, regardless of the form in which they are
manifested (Erscheinungsformen) have as their centre the unity of God and man.31
His use of the term Emmanuel provides a christological (in its broadest
sense) basis for his general theory of religion and of anthropology. This
theory is most clearly discussed in his lecture ‘Religionen als Sache der
Gegenwart’ in which he poses the question, ‘Where can one find the ultimate
underpinning (Stütze) in life?’ He suggests a definition wider than the usual
understanding of religion as the relation between God and man. For him,
the basic question is where man finds a basic grounding for his relationship
with other people and inanimate things. This for him is essentially a question
of religion as such, not simply of individual religions – whether Buddhism
or Christianity. It is something which concerns each person in his or her
inner being (Lebenskern), whether he or she is consciously aware of this or
not. Where does one find this ground (Stütze)? There are two possibilities:
either in the Ego (Ich-Selbst) or in something outside of it (we have met
this duality already in his interpretation of Jodo-shin and Zen). He rejects
the suggestion that the underpinning is to be found outside the self for,
he argues, ‘nothing that is not unconditionally one (eins) with our Ego and
which is separate from us can hold fast (fassen) our Ego and support (Stützen)
the whole life of the individual’.32 The other possibility, which assumes the
autonomy of the Ego, is likewise rejected since he believes no one can deny
that the Ego is like a yawning chasm of endless solitude that nothing can
completely satisfy. Is there then no alternative but for the individual to be torn
asunder between the two poles of autonomy and heteronomy? This tearing
apart is called in Buddhism ignorance and in Christian theology it is called
sin.
A way out of this dilemma exists, however, through which a person may
find a new existence. This comes not by logic, instinct, piety or mysticism,
but is nevertheless near to everyone. It stems from the basic structure of
human being (die Grundstruktur des menschlichen Seins) both in its origins and in
its existence (Entstehen und Bestehen – one of Takizawa’s favourite phrases). It
is a fundamental fact (Urfaktum) of man’s existence, whether he realises or
deserves it or not. It is the absolute contingency of human existence which
nothing can annul.33
There is, at the point of this world where a true Person arises and exists,
already and always a ‘something’ that is in no way his Ego, but exists

31
Ibid., p. 18.
32
Ibid., p. 6.
33
A point developed in his paper on Gen 2:23–4, ‘Die Einzelne und die Gemeindschaft’,
in Das Heil, p. 43.

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 Barth and Buddhism in Takizawa

and lives forever. The connection between this Something – which in

the beginning (and) here and now exists in the foundation (Grund) of
the arising and existing of the Ego – and the human Ego, is not a
relationship which it (the Ego) initially, after it has arisen as a human
subject, establishes with other things and people . . . It is the truly near and
inward relationship, which underpins him in the deepest foundation of his
life and thus enables him at once to rise up (aufzustehen). . . . This Something
which, despite and in absolute distinction (from the Ego) and just by
distinguishing itself from the Ego, is directly one (eins) with the Ego.34

This ‘something’ is called in the Bible Yahweh, God Almighty, and in

Buddhism is called the self. However this does not mean the identity of
the Ego with God in a pantheistic sense, for there is an absolute boundary
line (Grenzlinie) between God and man which cannot be obliterated. The
essence of religion is the recognition of this simple but decisive relationship –
that man is not identified with God but is none the less one with him
in a ‘living, indivisible, yet unconfused irreversible relationship’, a ‘self-
identity in absolute contradiction’, that man is one with God but at the same
time is not identified with God.35 For Takizawa this self-identification in
contradiction is universally valid and applies to all men and women (not
just to Jesus) whether each individually awakens to it or not. It lies at the
basis of the existence as such of the human subject and is the universal basic
structure of all religion.36
Takizawa derived the thesis of the ‘unity in difference’ between God and
man as the basic factor (Urfaktum) in human existence from Nishida. And
it was from this perspective that he came to hear Barth’s lectures on the
virgin birth.37 The concept of Emmanuel, God with us, seemed to him to
correspond to and confirm this basic theo-anthropology he had discerned
in Buddhism. Consequently Takizawa developed a kind of Christian form of
this thesis. The deep structure which underpins human existence is ‘God-
with-us, Emmanuel’. However (as in his interpretation of Buddhism) this
unity with God as a basic structure of human existence is as yet unconscious,
the Ego needs to be awakened to this fact. Takizawa calls this second stage
‘Emmanuel 2’. And it is in connection with this ‘second Emmanuel’ that he

34
Takizawa, Reflexionen, p. 10.
35
As Sundermeier remarks, this language is reminiscent of the Creed’s definition of the
dual natures in Christ as ‘without confusion, change, division and separation’, and
Takizawa is ready to apply this christological statement to all humanity (‘Praesentische
Theologie’, p. 10).
36
Takizawa, Reflexionen, p. 27.
37
Ibid., p. 34.

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 scottish journal of theology

explores christology. His interpretation of the human figure of Jesus is not

entirely consistent or systematic, nor is his use of the New Testament very
critical. This should not perhaps surprise since he approaches the figure of
Jesus from a religious tradition which is less concerned with history than
it is with tradition and religious experience.38 Nor should we expect sharp
metaphysical definitions such as characterise the creeds. Jesus, for Takazawa,
is (like the Buddha) the ‘enlightened one’ who is saviour-example. He is the
one who is conscious of being one (eins) with God. The Jesus of Nazareth
of the Gospels is for Takizawa one who ‘in his words and deeds is the
figure (Gestalt) in which God, who exists only in and for himself, has clearly
revealed himself in the midst of the world of men which stands against him,
and which is rushing into an empty abyss’.39 While Jesus claims authority
he does not wish to set himself up as the final foundation (Stütze) or source
of life.40 Rather he manifests what is (ideally) true of all of us. Takizawa
agrees that Jesus was from the beginning ‘one with God’, but this does not
mean that the boundary between God and man, between the mortal human
person and the omnipresent God, is transcended. On the contrary it means
that Jesus of Nazareth is not a self-sufficient individual (selbststaendiges Selbst)
but is a contingent being, whose ground of being lies outside his self. In so
far as he lived selflessly and faithfully, his life ‘is nothing other than the life in
which God himself has revealed his will over against men’.41 It is in this sense
that he can be called Christ, in that his human life is a manifestation of the
divine ground of being (God) which underpins us all. The confession ‘Jesus
is Christ’ then indicates for Takizawa the ‘double-sidedness’ of the visible
man Jesus. The figure Jesus is the exact expression of the boundary between
God and man, first as the self-expression of God through a human being, and
second (as the reverse side of this) as the reflection of God through a man
in Jesus’ words and deeds. Put another way: the word of God, the command
of God, sounds within us all, even when we do not hear it. The man Jesus,
however, precisely heard the word of command which dwelt within him,
the word which was the ground of his Being, and he then proclaimed it.
In Takizawa’s view the same word of God also dwells in and is the source
of being of all people, in the same concrete way as in Jesus. Thus a ‘clear
echo’ of this word of command should be evident even in those who never

38
The earliest traditions about the life of the Buddha Sakyamuni were not written down
until some six centuries later in the Buddhacarita of Ashvaghosha (first century CE) and
in language which was complex and rhetorical. By contrast the Synoptic Gospels, in
popular koine, were written within a half-century or so of the death of Jesus.
39
Takizawa, Reflexionen, p. 32.
40
Ibid., p. 59.
41
Ibid., p. 60.

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 Barth and Buddhism in Takizawa

saw nor have ever heard of the man Jesus. Jesus as a flesh and blood man of
history is thus to be distinguished from the ‘name Jesus’ (Mark 1:23; Luke
1:28–35). The name – Emmanuel 1 – signifies the true essence, the genesis
and ground of being (Entstehenspunkt) common to all but fully realised in Jesus
the man.42 The name is the original contact point between God and man,
the common ground of life of the whole human race.43 The earthly life of
Jesus is not the same thing as Emmanuel. What was affirmed from eternity
(Emmanuel as the Urfaktum) is in Jesus eternally present.44
Takizawa finds no ground for thinking that Jesus’ disciples ever believed
that the boundary point between God and man had been crossed in Jesus, that
is, in traditional terms, that he shared the two natures of God and man. His
relevance for us is quite different, it is as our example (Vorbild). In so far as he
was completely obedient to God he awakens us also to the awareness of God
as the ground of being which is within each one of us. This is possible only
because Jesus – our example and teacher of truth – and we share the same
common ground of being in God.45 Jesus is a ‘living symptom’, a reflection
(Widerschein) within this world which demonstrates the original and basic
relationship between God and man.46 The confession ‘Jesus is Christ’, which
has been transmitted through the Bible and the church, becomes for us
an existential experience which ‘breaks out within ourselves from the true
ground of our self’. This was the realisation of the disciples who, though they
had known him ‘after the flesh’ in his human life, only subsequently came
to see the truth through the Holy Spirit. For the disciples the resurrection
is not physical47 but rather the joy of the realisation that Jesus still lived
with and in them. The idea seems to be that the flesh and blood Jesus,
who taught and acted and on whom the disciples relied, is only a mirror
of Emmanuel, the Urfaktum ‘God with us’. By the cross Jesus put to death
his Ego and thereby revealed the Emmanuel, which is God as the ground of
being of all men. The disciples awakened to this fact of Emmanuel. ‘Through
the words and deeds, life and death of this concrete man Jesus, we are all
awakened to the same Christ . . . his Spirit commands each of us to hold fast
to the absolutely concrete, but at the same time universal, Christ, the Urfaktum
Emmanuel.’48

42
Ibid., p. 79.
43
Ibid., p. 102.
44
Das Heil, p. 53.
45
Ibid., p. 62.
46
Ibid., pp. 79, 91.
47
Ibid., p. 62.
48
Ibid., pp. 52–3, 67.

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 scottish journal of theology

Critique
In this concluding section I will try briefly to identify what seem to me
the most problematic issues in Takizawa’s approach. Primarily, Takizawa’s
treatment of religions, from which he derives his concept of the deep structures
of religion as such, is actually very limited. It is based only on Christianity (and
Christian theology as interpreted by Karl Barth) and Mahayana Buddhism
in two of its Japanese manifestations (as interpreted by himself). He does
not consider other approaches to Christian theology aside from Barth, still
less does he examine other world religions, or indeed the traditional primal
religion which lies behind many of them. Had he done so he might have
modified his conviction that there is a deep structure in religion as such.
His theory of religion is constructed on far too narrow and limited a base to
warrant his claim that this relationship is a universal religious fact. Religion is
understood by Takizawa largely in terms of the Buddhist idea of dharma. This is
a sanskritic, not a universal concept; moreover it is a concept which many will
find much too impersonal and lacking a sense of history. Furthermore, while
Takizawa rejects the drawing of superficial parallels of a phenomenological
nature between Buddhism and Christianity this, it seems to me, is exactly
what he does in his theory of structural similarities. The parallels between
the two religions are forced rather than obvious. Takizawa has to reinterpret
both Barth and Buddhism to make them fit into an epistemological and
ontological theory. Yagi claims that, for Takizawa, ‘Gottama Buddha was a
man who realised the secondary contact, so that Buddhism as a whole is
another form of true religion, parallel to Christianity.’49 I suggest it is more
than this. Takizawa seems rather to be trying to accommodate Christianity
into a religious theory arrived at through his own interpretation of Buddhism
(in a sense he might be accused of making us all anonymous Buddhists,
which is no doubt why he has attracted the attention of academics interested
in religious dialogue). In his interpretation of Barth also he is unconvincing.
Barth has been swallowed up into Zen and it is not surprising that that the
result is somewhat indigestible.
Behind this reinterpretation stands a particular type of epistemological
theory, characteristic of, though by no means confined to, Buddhism. This
is the rejection of the supposed ‘Western’ view of a dichotomy between the
perceiving subject and the perceived object, and the assertion that there is an
intimate unbreakable relationship between the one and the other. This is not
pantheism, the absorption of the subject into the object, nor is it separation;
it lies somewhere between the two, unity in duality (as expressed in Daito’s

49
Seiichi Yagi, ‘Christ and Buddha’, in R. S. Sugirtharajah (ed.), Asian Faces of Jesus (London:
SCM, 1993), p. 33.

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 Barth and Buddhism in Takizawa

poem).50 More relevant at this point though is the ‘Christ-mysticism’ of Paul.

Yagi51 cogently refers in this connection to Galatians 2:19–29. In v.19b Paul
identifies himself with Christ, but in the following verse there is a distinction
between himself and Christ. The same identification in distinction is found
in John’s Gospel with respect to Christ and God.52 Such expressions seem to
be a frequent feature of biblical language.
There is however a paradox here, which Takizawa does not address. If the
object–subject relationship is necessarily beyond ‘objective’ knowledge, how
then can we know and recognise it? In Paul it is by faith, in Zen satori. This
may be self-authenticating for the individual but it is difficult to see how it
can be a valid universal authentication, which Takizawa claims it is. But of
course this is problem that the Christian faith shares with Buddhism, that in
the final analysis faith or enlightenment lies beyond normal perception and
is therefore unprovable. Christian theology can address this problem only by
assuming the internal witness of the Holy Spirit.
There seems to me to be a fundamental difficulty with Taklizawa’s
christology. His ‘Emmanuel 1’ really has nothing at all to do with the
historical figure of Jesus. It is a principle which lies hidden or latent
in everyone. The incarnate Jesus is rather the symptom of awakening to
‘Emmanuel 1’ in the form of ‘Emmanuel 2’, just as Sakyamuni or Amida
Buddha is a symptom or reflection of the Buddha principle which lies in
everyone. In this respect Takizawa’s use of the term Emmanuel (which in
Matthew applies to the incarnate Jesus) to refer to the deep structures he
finds in all religions seems to me an unnecessary confusion (though perhaps
no more so than the patristic usage of Logos). Furthermore, as Yagi has
argued, ‘Emmanuel 1’ is theologically redundant. His point is that, since no
one realises the presence of ‘Emmanuel 1’ until it is awakened by ‘Emmanuel
2’, then ‘Emmanuel 1’ as only potentiality has no real theological function.53
Indeed how can one know it really exists at all? Is Takizawa saying any more
than that there is an innate potential for God in everyone which reaches
fulfilment if and when the Spirit awakens the individual to faith in Christ (or
in Takizawa’s Buddhist terminology, to its true self)? Takizawa’s treatment
of the earthly life of Jesus also seems to me seriously defective. Moltmann,
in a letter to Takizawa,54 suggested that his christology might be docetic, a

50
Such a position is not exclusively Eastern. The idea that there is no pure ‘subject’
uninfluenced by the perceived object is found in Western tradition too.
51
‘Christ and Buddha’, p. 37.
52
Yagi,‘“I” in the Words of Jesus’, in J. Hick (ed.), The Myth of Christian Uniqueness (London:
SCM, 1977), pp. 117–34.
53
‘Christ and Buddha’, pp. 33–4.
54
Reproduced in Das Heil, p. 197.

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 scottish journal of theology

charge which the latter rejected.55 But there is certainly a strong strand of
ahistoricism in it. Jesus, like Sakyamuni and Amida, is less an historical figure
than the embodiment of an eternal truth, a cosmic principle. Takizawa does of
course quote from the Gospels. The way he uses them however indicates that
he is not really interested in the Gospels as a historical record or in the tools of
historical criticism.56 Tagawa57 bluntly, but I think correctly, comments that
‘as far as biblical exegesis is concerned Takizawa does not understand after
all what historical study of the Bible means’. Similarly he fails to situate the
Gospels within their first-century Palestinian context, which seriously skews
his understanding of Jesus’ teaching.58 Nor is his Jesus the Christ of Paul. He
is a person who shares in sinful human nature, and is the mirror of what
we can all become if we would but awaken to our true selves, the primary
contact with God which lies within us all. In all this there remains a basic
dislocation of Jesus from history – perhaps a result as much of his study with
Bultmann as of his Buddhist background. The real flesh and blood Jesus, it
seems to me, has as little immediate and integral relationship to ‘Emmanuel
2’ as to ‘Emmanuel 1’. As the buddha-nature is manifested in many Buddhas,
so Emmanuel 2 could equally have been manifested in others besides Jesus.
There is nothing specifically unique about him except as a supreme example
of what lies potentially within all of us. It is significant that the nearest
Takizawa comes to discussing the ‘historical’ Jesus is in a comparison with
the hero of a work of fiction,59 and even there he is less interested in Jesus
as such than in his legacy to the disciples. But whatever Takizawa, or anyone
else, makes of Jesus, he was originally a historical figure. To distance him
from that history is to raise serious questions about authenticity.

55
He seems to me closer to the position of Paul of Samosata.
56
This is reflective of Zen in general which, as D. T. Suzuki points out, emphasises a
transmission outside the scriptures, i.e. through experience: Essays in Zen Buddhism (1st
series, New York: Grove Press, 1949), pp. 19–20.
57
Tagawa, ‘Yagi–Takizawa Debate’, p. 42.
58
As does his misunderstanding of Judaism: like Yagi, Takizawa seems to me to have
absorbed the anti-Judaism still characteristic of some Western scholars.
59
‘Der Tod des Lehrers: Natsumi Sosekis Roman “Kokoro” und die Evangelien’, in Das
Heil, pp. 128–80.

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