Theologian · Medieval
Shinran
1173–1263 · Jodo Shinshu (True Pure Land); founder
Founder of Jodo Shinshu, the largest Buddhist body in Japan; the Nanzan Institute and Catholic–Shin dialogue since the 1960s have treated his doctrine of grace as the nearest Buddhist analogue to Christian faith.
A Tendai monk who left Mount Hiei to follow Honen's nembutsu movement, was exiled with him in 1207, married, and lived “neither monk nor layman” among the farmers of the Kanto. His Kyogyoshinsho (The True Teaching, Practice and Realization of the Pure Land Way) teaches that in this degenerate age no one is saved by self-power (jiriki): birth in Amida Buddha's Pure Land comes wholly from Amida's Primal Vow (tariki, other-power), and the entrusting heart (shinjin) that receives it is itself Amida's gift, not the believer's achievement. The nembutsu, “Namu Amida Butsu,” is therefore not a meritorious act but thanksgiving, and the Tannisho records his saying that if even the good person attains birth in the Pure Land, how much more the evil person, for whom the Vow was made.
Why he matters: No non-Christian thinker speaks so directly to the Christian debates about grace: Shinran's other-power, his assurance that the believer remains a being of blind passion even while his birth is settled, and his refusal of works as a means of salvation have been compared with Luther since Karl Barth noticed the parallel in the Church Dogmatics. Catholic theologians in Japan such as Jan Van Bragt and the Nanzan Institute, and James Fredericks in the United States, have made Jodo Shinshu the Church's closest Buddhist conversation partner on grace.
Where to be careful
Amida is not a Creator and the Vow is not the act of a personal God who made and loves the sinner; the Pure Land is a stage toward Buddhahood, not communion with God; and the human being is for Shinran so wholly incapable of good that the Church's teaching on wounded but real freedom (Trent, Session 6, canon 5) and on cooperation with grace is denied. What remains is a real witness to the primacy of grace, to a salvation received rather than earned, and to the heart that trusts, which Dominus Iesus (2000) bids Catholics recognize without erasing the difference.
Reading
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Tannisho: A Record in Lament of DivergencesShinran (recorded by Yuien) · The shortest and most startling statement of other-power, including the saying about the evil person.
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Kyogyoshinsho: The True Teaching, Practice and Realization of the Pure Land WayShinran · His systematic anthology and commentary, for the full doctrine of shinjin as gift.
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Buddhists and Christians: Through Comparative Theology to SolidarityJames L. Fredericks · A Catholic theologian's reading of Shinran on grace alongside Augustine and Luther.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.