紀要論文

野々村直太郎によるキリスト教理解 : 近代日本仏教者における宗教哲学の諸相

Nonomura Naotarō’s Understanding of Christianity : Aspects of Religious Philosophy as Seen by a Modern Japanese Buddhist

jpn

18838596

https://doi.org/10.15002/00022246

法政大学国際日本学研究所

13

209

227

2015-12-22

Version of Record

This paper discussed the understanding of Christianity expressed by the religious philosopher Nonomura Naotarō (野々村直太郎, 1871–1946), who attempted to reinterpret Buddhism and Christianity in a modern way from the standpoint of demythologization. The paper reaches the following conclusions: (1) He is a priest of the Jōdo Shinshū Hongwanji School (浄土真宗本願寺派), and his greatest interest is in the revival of Pure Land Buddhism (浄土教) into a form that is suitable for modern sensibilities. Therefore, the forms of constructs and practical theories that he uses to define Christianity are based in Buddhism and do not adequately explain Christianity. (2) He regards “contradiction that destroys logic” as the essence of religion. Religious completion is not attained by resolving these contradictions but by destroying logic through these contradictions. (3) The concept of God that was preached in the Bible seemed to depict God as having two contradictory aspects of justice and love; similarly, the religious experiences of Christian mystics contradict each other, and in pantheism, God’s contradictory aspects are philosophically emphasized. He claims that in each of these cases, the religious essence is a “contradiction that destroys logic.” (4) He also does not recognize the religious value of mythological expressions in the Bible, such as miracles, and advocates in favor of eliminating them. One characteristic of his understanding is that he finds no interrelationship between mythological and religious components. This kind of understanding is entirely different from that of David Strauß (1807–1874), who tried to derive historical inferences from mythological expression in the Bible, or Rudolf Karl Bultmann (1884–1976), who tried to extract the true meaning of the Bible through demythologization (existentialist interpretation). With its origin in the Enlightenment, Christian modernization has placed its trust in some form of rationality and has tried to establish the historical authenticity of the Bible based on logical thinking. He purports to be part of the continuation of such modernization, but he does not pay any interest to the historical authenticity of the Bible, and his emphasis on making “contradiction that destroys logic” the essence of religion is entirely different from Western currents.

Article

AA11914954