The Interpretation of Chalcedon Creed and the Sinful Nature of Christ: A Review on Recent Christianity-Buddhism Dialogues

The Interpretation of Chalcedon Creed and the Sinful Nature of Christ: A Review on Recent Christianity-Buddhism Dialogues

Xue-fu ZHANG

Recently, the dialogue between Christianity and Buddhism becomes hot under the promotion of Drs. Lai Pan-chiu (莹平超) and Tang Siu-kwong (丁素光). The exchanging between them are important since their discussion by focusing on the Christology of Chalcedon Creed is not something superficial. This article tries to analyze their ways of interpreting Chalcedon Creed and the theology such as Christology, the doctrine of Trinity and Christian Anthropology implied, and the complicated relationship between these and the employment of Buddhist resources for understanding the Christology of Chalcedon Creed . Lai interprets the modernity of theology from the perspective of the Christian tradition while Tang interprets Chalcedon Creed from the framework of the Postmodernity. Furthermore, these two different ways of interpretation have to do with different theological contexts. Lai inclines to adopt the theological norms of Eastern Orthodoxy and the theological methodology of Paul Tillich's whereas Tang employs contemporary theologies such as Jürgen Moltmann's to reconstruct the Christology of Chalcedon Creed first and then to identify the corresponding schema of the Chinese Buddhism for further interpretation. Lai understands Chalcedon Creed within the framework of the immanent Trinity by focusing on “the interpenetration” and “the perichoresis of events” among various persons. Tang takes up the economic Trinity as the horizon within which the “God for us” is situated at the center and then interprets the subjectivity of Christ in terms of the Ab-grund (non-ground, unoriginal) of the two natures of Christ. This article finally points out the uniqueness of Chalcedon Creed that the “four-nots” is not merely for the sake of overcoming one-sidedness of speaking of Christ. Rather it is going to “speak the positive in terms of negative” so as to express the balance between the humanity and divinity of the person of Christ. Since Chalcedon Creed does not give any positive account of the union of the two natures of Christ, it is worth considering the interpretation of the four-nots in terms of “the interpenetration”. However, this is quite different from the interpretation of the one of the three persons since the three persons share the same nature while the humanity and divinity of Christ do not.