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WORLD:
Professor Schmidt-Leukel, have you seen followers of a non-Christian religion worship Jesus?
Perry Schmidt-Leukel:
Often!
He is revered in almost all religions.
WORLD:
An example?
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Schmidt-Leukel:
I once visited the Dharma Hall in the monastery of the famous Thai Buddhist Bhikkhu Buddhadasa.
Jesus is depicted on a large temple wall.
He is seen crying at the violence Christians commit in his name.
WORLD:
Jesus as a compassionate soul.
Schmidt-Leukel:
For Buddhadasa he was even a Buddha, a being who has achieved complete enlightenment and can lead other living beings to enlightenment.
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WORLD:
More is not possible.
Schmidt-Leukel:
That's how it is.
That Buddhists cultivate such a positive image of Jesus is not a matter of course.
Often his perception was and is negatively influenced by the Asian experiences with Christian colonialism.
WORLD:
What did Buddhadasa appreciate about Jesus?
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Schmidt-Leukel:
According to Buddhadasa, Jesus' Sermon on the Mount contains more than enough to become free and enlightened from the ego.
This corresponds to a Christian conviction that Luther brought to the concept.
He defined sin as “man's contortion within himself”.
Liberation from this egocentric warp through compassion and mercy is a goal that Buddhists and Christians share.
WORLD:
Christians are not only concerned with liberation from the self, but also with a relationship with God.
Schmidt-Leukel:
Buddhists usually have little to do with personal Christian images of God.
This is the reason why even very well-meaning Buddhists are often not sure whether Jesus was an enlightened Buddha or rather a Bodhisattva, i.e. a person motivated by compassion who is still on the way to enlightenment.
WORLD:
Even the Dalai Lama doubts that.
Schmidt-Leukel:
He once said that Jesus was either a Buddha, i.e. perfect, or a very well developed bodhisattva.
But he hesitates on this question, precisely because Jesus taught belief in a personal God.
WORLD:
Many Buddhists consider this belief to be an expression of delusion.
Schmidt-Leukel:
According to the Dalai Lama, Jesus could have used his personal image of God as a clever means: He may have worked with it in order to win his Jewish contemporaries over to the goal of overcoming the ego.
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WORLD:
Let's jump to the other great religion of India: It is known that Gandhi also worshiped Jesus.
Schmidt-Leukel:
Gandhi is representative of most of the reformers in Hinduism since the end of the 19th century.
Almost all of them regarded Jesus as an incarnate God.
WORLD:
Hindus already believe that God takes shape in people more often.
Schmidt-Leukel:
With Hindus, worshiping Jesus is not just a phenomenon of the intellectuals, but of the masses.
There are pictures of Jesus on many house altars.
And many bus and taxi drivers hang a picture of Christ next to that of other Hindu deities in order to be protected in traffic.
Which is understandable given the conditions on India's roads.
WORLD:
The high esteem of Jesus began in the colonial times?
Schmidt-Leukel:
And had an anti-colonial tip.
The educated Hindus worshiped Jesus whom they had met in British schools.
But they also emphasized that Hindus understood him better than the Christian British.
WORLD:
How did you understand him?
Schmidt-Leukel: You
considered it absurd that his death on the cross had redeemed all of humanity.
And they also rejected the fact that Jesus was the only incarnation of God.
But Jesus has a permanent place in the heart of India.
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WORLD:
Islam is also friendly to Jesus.
Schmidt-Leukel:
The Koran does not praise Jesus as the Son of God, but as a special prophet who brought the Gospel.
The Koran also calls Jesus “word” and “spirit” of God.
WORLD:
Still, Jesus' birth is hardly celebrated by Muslims.
Schmidt-Leukel:
Jesus' birth is not on any Islamic festival calendar.
I sometimes tell my Muslim doctoral students that they could actually celebrate Christmas, according to the Koran they have every reason to.
But Muslims don't do that.
WORLD:
Why not?
Schmidt-Leukel:
Probably because Christmas is associated too much with Christianity and the idea of a literal sonship of God.
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WORLD:
Hans Küng criticized that “the portrait of Jesus in the Koran” was “too contourless”, that it reduced Jesus to monotheism and miracles.
The radical willingness to forgive and criticism of the law of Jesus was missing.
Schmidt-Leukel:
The latest research does not quite see it that way.
The Koran also emphasizes the willingness to forgive.
The mercy of God is its core theme.
He regards Jesus as a sign of divine mercy.
And according to the Koran, God wrote compassion and mercy in the hearts of Jesus' followers.
In one of the prophets' words, the sentence of Jesus is repeated almost verbatim: Whatever you did to the least of us, you did it to me.
WORLD:
According to Küng, the Koranic Jesus is missing some things.
For example, the admonition of the biblical Jesus that the first stone should only be thrown by those who have never sinned.
Quite apart from the fact that, according to the current interpretation of the Koran, Jesus did not die on the cross.
Schmidt-Leukel:
The Koran passage that apparently denies Jesus' death on the cross is difficult.
It is now being partially reinterpreted by individual Muslim scholars.
WORLD:
How?
Schmidt-Leukel:
The statement in the Koran that Jesus was not crucified is therefore not a historical, but a theological claim.
According to the new interpretation, the passage does not dispute the historical fact of the crucifixion of Jesus, but rather the assertion of his opponents that they succeeded in destroying God's messenger.
According to the Koran, however, God saved him and “raised him to himself”.
WORLD:
The relationship of Judaism to Jesus is far more sensitive.
Schmidt-Leukel:
For Jews, Jesus has long been the epitome of all the suffering that has come over them.
After all, Europe's anti-Judaism was mostly based on Christianity.
WORLD:
Do today's Jews see him differently?
Schmidt-Leukel:
He's certainly appreciated.
In the past few years it has been given a huge boost.
In the Dabru Emet declaration from 2000, many Jewish scholars affirmed that Jesus is to Christians what the Torah is to Jews: the way to know God.
And since the 20th century there have been an increasing number of Jewish theologians who have recommended other Jews to come to terms with Jesus.
WORLD:
Why that?
Schmidt-Leukel:
Because you recognize one of your
own
in the historical Jesus.
A brother who suffered just like the Jewish people.
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