Dialogue with Nature and Interreligious Encounter:
Toward a Comparative Theology of the Sense of Wonder

Connie Lasher

Introduction: A Surprising Convergence?

I

N a lovely essay entitled “Restoring Our Connections with theWorld,” Daisaku Ikeda offers a reflection which concisely expresses
the heart of the present study’s subject matter and our rather ambitious
title. Ikeda writes:
Immersed in material concerns, clamor and bustle, contemporary
humanity has been cut off from the vastness of the universe, from theeternal flow of time. We struggle against feelings of isolation andalienation. We seek to slake the heart’s thirst by pursuing pleasures,
only to find that our cravings have grown that much more fierce. This
separation and estrangement is, in my view, the underlying tragedy ofcontemporary civilization. Divorced from the cosmos, from nature,from society and from each other, we have become fractured andfragmented. Science and technology have given humanity undreamedof power, bringing invaluable benefits to our lives and health. But thishas been paralleled by a tendency to distance ourselves from life, toobjectify and reduce everything around us to numbers and things. . . .
The eyes of a poet discover in each person a unique and irreplaceable
humanity. While arrogant intellect seeks to control and manipulate theworld, the poetic spirit bows with reverence before its mysteries.1

Here we find that relational view of reality which is integral to Ikeda’s
Buddhist social analysis, and which also characterizes the many expressions of religious humanism which have emerged during the twentiethcentury, and which today continue to develop.2 We also find in Ikeda’s
essay a simple affirmation of the human relation to the natural world(which he often calls the “dialogue with nature”), and the irreplaceablerole this plays in the restoration of human wholeness in an age of alienation and fragmentation.
Throughout the course of modernity’s unfolding, awareness of a profoundly detrimental change in the human relation to nature began to be
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recognized. This was given seminal expression by the “father” of the
Romantic movement, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1842). In thewritings of the many great poets who emerged from the context ofRomanticism, continuing in the poets of late modernity and into our present time, there is often a twin theme which Ikeda’s essay conveys: alament over the growing sense of human estrangement (from self, others, and nature), this sense of the fragmentation of experience;3 but also,
the poet’s enduring intuition of the wholeness of reality, the spiritual
dimension of nature as this finds expression in the human response tobeauty, the response of reverence in this encounter with the Mystery of
existence.
The sense of reverence and wonder was also a central theme in thelife of that quiet woman who became the catalyst of the modern environmental movement, Rachel Carson. She once described, in a letter to afriend, her “shock” at the unprecedented destructive power which the
new “atomic science” had conferred upon humans: “I have now opened
my eyes and my mind. So it seems time someone wrote of Life in lightof the truth as it now appears to us. And I think that may be the book I
am to write. . . . I still feel there is a case to be made for my old belief
that as man approaches the [new era of technological power], he must
do so with humility rather than arrogance. And along with humility I
think there is still a place for wonder.”4 The book that Carson would
eventually write was Silent Spring,5 and as one commentator has
observed, “a few thousand words from her, and the world took a new
direction.”6
The “dialogue with nature,” the sense of wonder and a relational viewof reality are examples of human experience which many have sought torecover in the wake of modernity, and in the midst of post-modernity’s
ambiguous unfolding. In fact, these terms represent precisely the opposite of the typical list of modernity’s pathologies: dualism, subjectivism,
anthropocentrism, technocratic mastery aimed at human domination ofnature, reductionism. “Abstraction” is a term which many twentieth century thinkers have used to summarize these pathologies: abstraction as
the absence or distortion of the concrete relations which constitute thefullness and truth of reality, including the truth of the human person. In
fact, in his social analysis, Daisaku Ikeda also has often referred to a“spirit of abstraction” which is devastating in its consequences for theflourishing of both humans and nature.7 Ikeda’s use of this term derives
from his own reading of the French Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel(1889–1973), whose analysis was just one of many examples of intellectual and spiritual renewal initiated in Roman Catholicism during the firstDIALOGUE WITH NATURE AND INTERRELIGIOUS ENCOUNTER

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half of the twentieth century.
This is an interesting and perhaps surprising convergence—the Buddhist Ikeda and the Catholic Marcel. After all, is it not Christianity thathas been indicted as the source of the anthropocentrism and dualism
which emerged in such menacing magnitude in the modern period?8What was it that Ikeda found so compelling in the philosophy of Marcel?

The Aim of this Study: Exploring An Unexpected Path to
Wholeness
We have become accustomed to recognizing the formative role ofRomanticism in the historical development of contemporary environmentalism. Furthermore, the West’s encounter with varieties of Buddhist
thought reflects the search for a relational worldview which many could
not find in the modern expressions of Christianity and Judaism.9 Interreligious dialogue between Buddhism and Christianity has flourished for
decades, as Christianity critically engaged its own role in the twentiethcentury’s crisis of humanism, society, and nature.10 The overarchingtheme in all of these interactions has been to call into question the fundamental characteristic of the Judeo-Christian religious heritage which
has been associated with a dualistic approach to reality, namely, belief inthe transcendence of God. “Transcendence” expresses a sense of “difference” or “otherness” (and not sameness or identity) in the JudeoChristian understanding of the relation between the world and its Source(the Absolute, “God”). Indeed, ecologically-oriented reformulations ofall varieties of Christianity seek to de-emphasize or even to eliminatetranscendence, and to emphasize instead its opposite—an equally essential characteristic of the God-world relation—the concept of immanence.
Immanence expresses the sense of God as intimately present within thecreated world; as Saint Augustine is often paraphrased, “God is moredeeply present to me than I am to myself” (interior intimo meo).11 In
fact, classical, doctrinally “orthodox” Christianity has always maintained both transcendence and immanence (difference and identity) in
its understanding of the relation of God to all that exists.12
The aim of this essay is to point out a common interreligious,humanistic sensibility—our recognition of the problem of fragmented
relationality, a sense of “wholeness lost,” but also the summons to
overcome our “estrangement” through a recovery of “the poetic spirit,”
what we shall henceforth call “the sense of wonder.” Just as the Buddhist thinker Daisaku Ikeda found in the Catholic philosopher Gabriel

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Marcel an inspiring convergence of worldviews, this essay seeks toelaborate aspects of that very same East-West encounter, in hopes ofcelebrating a meeting of traditions at the heart of the mystery of ourshared experience in life. Whenever enriching encounters occur, we
discover also further grounds for common action in interreligious collaboration in service to the flourishing of all life.
However, in order to recognize the significance of this paradigmaticconvergence between Ikeda and Marcel, we must augment interreligious
understanding by showing how this common sensibility is actuallyfound at a point which marks the greatest contrast, and which therefore
should be the most difficult for Buddhist-Christian encounter: this is theconcept of transcendence (difference, otherness) in the Christian understanding of the nature of ultimate reality. In this regard, our purpose is toshed light upon a path toward the recovery of human wholeness which
too often is inadequately understood by both Christians and non-Christians alike. In the pages of this journal, authors S. Yamamoto and V.
Kuwahara have suggested that, in an age in which the distortions of religion are often most prominent, “it would be more inspirational if we
could emphasize the social contribution of a religious philosophy rather
than the negative aspects.”13 In presenting this exploration of a religious
understanding of “difference” (in contrast to “identity”) as a path toward
wholeness and the flourishing of all life, we seek to open a conversation
with the Buddhism of the Lotus Sutra and Nichiren, as this is interpreted
in the intellectual tradition of the Soka Gakkai. As Ikeda’s convergencewith Marcel exemplifies, the founders of the Soka Gakkai (T.
Makiguchi, J. Toda, Ikeda) were avid readers of the philosophicalrenewals in Europe and the United States, and their thought epitomizes
the fruitfulness of these encounters. It is hoped that this essay willencourage continued comparative exploration of other Christian appropriations of those same philosophical movements which were of suchsignificance to the Soka Gakkai intellectual tradition.
Specifically, this essay seeks to expand interreligious understanding
between faithful practitioners and scholars of the Buddhist philosophyof the Soka Gakkai and those of Roman Catholicism, via the method ofcomparative theology,14 toward a deeper mutual understanding which
enhances the religious humanism that each tradition embodies. In thisregard, the faith-tradition of the Soka Gakkai and the faith-tradition of
Catholic theology encounter each other as lived religious experience,committed to their own distinct practices while yet seeking communionand genuine transformative learning from one another, as “faith-seekingunderstanding” (that common definition of “theology”) in the midst of

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both interreligious difference and commonality. We offer herein a preliminary study, a mere beginning, toward a comparative theology of thesense of wonder.

The Poetic Spirit and the Renewal of Metaphysics**
The reader familiar with the philosophical works of Gabriel Marcel caneasily see why Daisaku Ikeda could find in him a thinker of convergent
sensibilities, for Marcel was concerned to return philosophical inquiry to
the concrete experience of life in the midst of modern alienation.15 His
was a philosophical reflection on the modern loss of awareness of themystery of existence (the sense of the Mystery of Being). In his Christian humanism, he insisted that humans have a need for, and an innateorientation toward, the transcendent Mystery of Being. It is not an exaggeration to say that, for Marcel, when humans become so self-enclosedthat they are no longer even aware of this need for the greater cosmic
Mystery in which they exist, they have then become tragic victims of akind of modern dehumanization.16 The “spirit of abstraction” (in its
many expressions) functions to separate persons from this first and mostfundamental of relations—the relation to Ultimate Mystery, Being,
Life—which forms the context and source of all other relations. Thus,
this philosopher of the concrete experience of life “battled”17 against theabstracting spirit which in a basic way summarizes the dualism andanthropocentrism of modernity.
Marcel’s convergence with Ikeda brings us to the first of many ironies
in this study: Both thinkers recognized that a recovery of the concept of“transcendence” was necessary to restore a truly relational worldview.
More precisely, it is better to say that in a recovery of the human experience of transcendence we awaken again to the Mystery of Being, which
is identical with our own life yet also not limited to our individual existence; for this Mystery of Being is encountered in each entity that exists,even as it encompasses all that exists. Transcendence, then, is an experience of the Ultimate Mystery of Being which is fundamentally “other”
in the sense that we do not control it, it always exceeds our individuallife. Only through a “spirit of abstraction” can we deny this “evergreater” Mystery of Being; only through some form of denial can we
presume to exercise “power over” the very Source of our own existence.
Yet even as this Mystery of Being exceeds us, we are aware that Beingis that which is most intimate, most interior to us—indeed, it is our verylife itself, immanent within us.
This ontological dialectic of identity and difference, sameness and194

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otherness, is familiar and much-rehearsed conceptual ground in the Buddhist-Christian encounter. If we remain at a descriptive level, the experience of the Mystery of Being is so similar to Mahayana terms such as
Universal Life, Life Force, Ultimate Reality, Buddha Nature. Furthermore, the nature of the ontological dialectic would seem to be especiallycompatible with the Buddhism of the Lotus Sutra, in which Myohorenge-kyo designates the name of Ultimate Reality, and myoho the
dynamic of Ultimate Reality and its manifestation in phenomena. Yet as
we know, “the single word myoho reflects the essential oneness of the
Ultimate Reality and the world as it actually appears,” and renge “thesimultaneity of cause and effect.”18 And as we know, the Buddhist practitioner strives for continual awareness of this oneness, identity, simultaneity. This is the very basis of the Buddhist relational worldview, thesense of the unity of reality and of its wholeness.
Yet Marcel was not a Buddhist, and he was in fact one among many
Catholic philosophers, theologians and literary figures of the twentiethcentury who engaged the crisis of modernity through a worldview inwhich the dialectic of Ultimate Reality and its manifestation in phenomena was apprehended with an intentional retention of the aspect of difference, distinction, transcendence as a path to—indeed the ultimate
expression of—the unity of Reality. Again we confront an irony: These
Catholic thinkers sought to overcome the dualism and anthropocentrismof modernity through a renewal of the basic mode of philosophicalreflection in Catholic history, namely, metaphysics. Yet, do we not thinkof metaphysics as that most “abstract” of all modes of inquiry? In fact, it
is a testament to the unfolding of modernity’s contradictions (andpathos) that much of modern philosophy took shape as a reaction
against a “defective” era of Christian philosophy, expressions of metaphysics that had fallen away from the holistic synthesis (a synthesis ofhellenistic philosophical heritage and Christian faith) that marked theachievement of Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Although the twentieth century became the era in which the “destruction” and “overcoming” of metaphysics was demanded, the renewal in
Catholic metaphysics sought to recover the holistic experiential inquiry
which metaphysics had originally been: the wonder-filled encounter ofthe human with the Mystery of Being. It was precisely “the poetic spirit” which this renewal sought to revive—first, to challenge a Christianity
which had forgotten its own heritage of wonder, but also, as a remedy tothe experience of alienation and fragmentation of late-modern society,and therefore as a contribution of Christian humanism at its finest. These
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ed over the course of four decades in the first half of the twentieth century, and prepared the way for the great, formal renewal within the
Catholic Church which was the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965).
In that Council, the Catholic Church undertook not only internal reformand renewal, but as a kind of universal humanism, sought to “offer service to mankind” out of its own religious worldview, seeking “to speak
to all men in order to unfold the mystery that is man and cooperate intackling the main problems facing the world today.”19 The profound
impact of these renewals in metaphysics remains evident in the social
teachings of the current Pope, Benedict XVI, whose most recent social
encyclical (Caritas in veritate) explicitly calls for ongoing developmentin universal ethics based on the relational understanding of the person
and all reality, and the application of this radically relational worldview
to the market economy, government, and civil society.20
In order to provide an overview of the significance of this renewal in
metaphysics, this relational view of reality whose accent is on difference, transcendence, distinction, and which as such represents an unexpected path to wholeness, we turn to two Catholic philosophers of note.
Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) was a Swiss Catholic philosophertheologian who wrote before, during and after the Second Vatican Council. He was much loved by Pope John Paul II and was also a longtime
friend and collaborator with Joseph Ratzinger, who became the current
Pope Benedict XVI. His efforts in the renewal of a metaphysics ofwholeness and the sense of wonder have thus had tremendous impact on
the shape of these popes’ teachings. The second philosopher is Dr. Kenneth L. Schmitz, whose distinguished career in Catholic philosophy
spans the decades after the Council, and whose recent book, The Recovery of Wonder, offers a concise introduction and profound analysis ofprecisely our study’s topic.21

The “Fourfold Distinction” and the Recovery of Wonder
Virtually all of the major renewers of metaphysics in the Catholic
reforms took seriously the groundbreaking critique of Martin Heidegger(1889–1976), whose searing reassertion of metaphysics as “onto-theology” indicted perhaps one of the worst failures in the history of Christian
thought (which resulted in a caricature of the incomprehensibility ofGod, reducing God to a Being among other beings).22 Much of Heidegger’s genealogy of the “forgetfulness of Being” in Western philosophy
could be accepted in its basic terms, as could his critique of technology;
in fact, Heidegger’s challenge can be read as a challenge to recover the

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poetic spirit.23 Yet to the Catholic sensibility, Heidegger’s philosophicalrecovery of Being seemed ultimately nihilistic (in spite of his warnings
about the nihilism of technocratic society), and this became the point ofengagement for a thinker like von Balthasar. But Balthasar’s purpose
was not to “defend” Christianity against Heidegger’s critique, but rather,to insist that Heidegger’s “project” was the most promising contemporary effort for the recovery of metaphysical wonder, and thus a philosophical effort that Catholic metaphysics must incorporate into its own
renewal.24
In his multi-volume analysis of the history of metaphysics in theWest,25 Balthasar asks: What became of the classical experience of theradiance of Being over the course of the centuries—from pre-Christian
Antiquity’s posture of wonder before the metaphysical depth of Being
and a theophanous cosmos, through the development of Christian philosophy, the advent of modernity and its ‘anthropological turn’, and into
the postmodern age? His answer can be summarized in simple andfamiliar terms: “the realm of Western metaphysics” bears witness to thehistory of a loss—forgetfulness of Being, forgetfulness of God. According to Balthasar’s analysis, receptive openness and wonder before thedialogical structure of reality is overtaken by modernity’s “anthropological reduction,”26 an anthropocentrism that is inherently and progressively
monological. Balthasar insists that Heidegger is correct in returning us
to the first and fundamental question of human experience, the “authentic metaphysical question: ‘Why is there anything at all and not simply
nothing?’”27 In the primal response of wonder expressed by this question, the human confronts the inexorable mystery of finitude and contingency. And this wonder places the human before an equally inexorable
choice, to remain receptively open to genuine transcendence, to the dialogical structure of reality, or alternately, the perennial temptation to
impose a “solution” to the “problem” of finitude, to assert human control over the Mystery of Being. Here we find the trajectory toward what
Marcel called “the spirit of abstraction.”
But how is it that such a concept as “the dialogical structure of reality” is defended? Is this not simply another metaphysical abstraction, amerely fanciful notion? In fact, the dialogical structure of reality—
which means the relational structure of reality—is the most concrete ofexperiences. Here Balthasar makes a startling turn toward simplicity:
The dialogical structure of reality is the most fundamental experience ofhuman life, and it begins not with the sophisticated language of a scholar, but instead, with the precious and universal experience of childhood.
And thus, the renewal of metaphysics, the recovery of wonder, must

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reflect an experience that is accessible to everyone, and that is faithful tohuman experience. Let us see how Balthasar describes this fundamental
experience of relationality as the structure of reality:
The fact that I find myself within the realm of a world and in the boundless community of other existent beings is astonishing beyond measure
and cannot be exhaustively explained by any cause which derives fromwithin the world.... [The child’s] “I” awakens in the experience of a“Thou”: in its mother’s smile through which it learns that it is contained, affirmed and loved in a relationship which is incomprehensively
encompassing, already actual, sheltering and nourishing. The bodywhich it snuggles into, a soft, warm and nourishing kiss, is a kiss oflove in which it can take shelter because it has been sheltered there apriori. The awakening of its consciousness is a late occurrence, in comparison with this basic mystery of unfathomable depth. It finally sees
only what always has been, and can therefore only confirm it. A lightwhich has been perpetually asleep awakens at some point into an alertand self-knowing light. But it awakens at the love of a Thou, as it has
always slept in the womb and on the bosom of the Thou. The experience of being granted entry into a sheltering and encompassing world is
one which for all incipient, developing and mature consciousness cannot be superseded....The fact that [the child] experiences Being (Sein)and human existence (Dasein) ... as the incomprehensible light of grace,is the reason why it engages in play.... It gives itself to play because theexperience of being admitted [receiving the gift of existence] is the very
first thing which it knows in the realm of Being. It is, in so far as it isallowed to take part as an object of love.28

This first experience, awakened through the smile of the mother, “contains what cannot be surpassed,” the primal awareness of “the graciously-opened whole in which every space is granted to tumble around as
one wills: existence as play.”29 This primal experience of origins, and ofcommunion in the relations of our existence, is nothing less than a disclosure of the dialogical, relational structure of Ultimate Reality, a disclosure of the nature of that-from-which Being derives—God.
This basic dialectic of otherness and relationality in the experience ofchildhood forms the starting point for metaphysical reflection and therecovery of the poetic spirit. To articulate this, Balthasar incorporates
the legacy of a thinker whose influence upon Daisaku Ikeda marks
another profound convergence-this is the figure of Goethe. In fact, in a
famous interview in which Balthasar was asked to describe his own

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approach to theology and philosophy, he summarized the essence of his
method in one single name: Goethe.30 In a term reminiscent of Goethe’s
own language, Balthasar describes the child’s awakening to self-consciousness in terms of a “fourfold distinction.” For both Goethe andBalthasar, the Mystery of Being, our concrete experience of existence,
unfolds as a dynamic of polarity, otherness-in-relation: Balthasar develops four fundamental “distinctions” which comprise the structure of
Being: (1) the distinction between self and other existents, (2) the distinction between Being and all existents, (3) the distinction between
essence (essentia) and existence (esse), and (4) the distinction between
God and world. Let us examine again the awakening of the child,
explained now in terms of these metaphysical distinctions:If, as Balthasar has it, “in the beginning was the word with which aloving ‘Thou’ summons forth the ‘I’,” then the subjective correlate tothis summoning is the primal experience of wonder in the discovery of
the other, and the world, in which and through which the self awakens toawareness. Metaphysical reflection on this wonder opens the possibilityof discovering the first stage of the fourfold distinction, recognition of
the difference-in-relation which pertains between the self and the other,paradigmatically for Balthasar, the child awakened by the loving smileof the mother. But the discovery of the self in relation to other existents
permits the realization that all other finite existents stand in the same
relation to Being, that all participate in Being but do not exhaust it. In
this second stage, in which the distinction between Being and existents
is recognized, it becomes evident that, even as the existent is dependent
upon Being for its actuality, Being itself attains actuality only in theexistent—pointing to the non-subsistence, dependence, and contingencyof each. This non-subsistence, the mutual dependence of Being andexistent, leads to a third stage, in which the distinction between essence
and existence is recognized. The essential forms and entities of theworld, in all their abundance, complexity, beauty, cannot be attributed intheir origin to Being in its non-subsistence.
This wonder before the mystery of “Why anything exists?” opens out
upon a fourth, final, and definitive distinction: an intuition of an infinite,subsistent Source of Being in which non-subsistent Being and existents
participate, a Source whose presence (immanence) and reality is“reflected” (imago Dei) in the mystery, beauty, goodness of Being andexistents; yet this Source, as infinite, remains ever greater, Absolute
Mystery (transcendence). The fundamental relation of otherness points
to the dialogical, relational structure of all existence, a relation which isexperienced as our Origin in Love, the Christian understanding of God

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as Trinity. As Balthasar summarizes it: “In trinitarian dogma, God isone, good, true, and beautiful because God is essentially Love, and Love
presupposes the one, the other, and their unity. [If God’s essence isunity-in-difference] then the otherness of [the world] is not a fall, but animage of God, even as it is not God.”31 In all this, we find Balthasar’s
renewal of the ‘Catholic thought form’ of analogy (analogia entis) inwhich the distinctions in our experience of the structure of Being convey
and uphold the integrity of real relationality, the positivity of difference(ultimately, in the God-world relation), otherness and not identity as thecondition of possibility for love as the authentic meaning of Being.

The Dialogue with Nature and Human WholenessIn the “fourfold distinction,” Balthasar expresses Goethe’s fundamental
understanding of the relational structure of reality, a dynamic of polarity,
which Goethe called “morphology.” This was Goethe’s way of ‘seeing
the whole’, of reverently approaching the mystery of existence, especially as encountered in the living forms of nature. Georg Simmel describes
Goethe’s approach to the relational structure of reality as “[seeking] theunity of the subjective and objective principle, of nature and the spirit,
within the appearance itself.”32 Goethe famously rejected the mechanistic and reductionist features of modern scientific method, and equally
rejected the fundamentally anthropocentric “systems” of the idealists(Hegel, Fichte—whose thought, according to Balthasar, reduced the cosmos to the “anthropophanous”33). Another commentator describes
Goethe’s understanding of the fundamental dynamic of difference, relationality, distinction: “At the foundation of his morphology, Goethe
posits a certain polarity, a unity-in-distinction of two poles: the pole ofan inner core of being which expresses itself externally, and the pole ofan external medium which is united by this expression: expression andform (Gestalt).”
It is Goethe’s “morphology” which Balthasar appreciates as expressing (in a non-Christian way) the profound meaning of “difference”
which was given its classical Catholic metaphysical formulation byThomas Aquinas in his articulation of the “real distinction” between
essence and existence. This intersection between Goethe and Aquinas
carries crucial importance for the recovery of the poetic spirit and the
Catholic understanding of the dialogue with nature. As Kenneth Schmitz
describes its significance:
In Thomas Aquinas’s thought, the most radical and original distinction

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is that between essentia and esse...between the way a thing is and thefact that it exists at all [essence and existence].... It raises the question to
the level of absolute being and non-being....Why being at all? The distinction arises from the conviction and experience of the radical contingency of things....[The entities of the world] contain within themselvesbasic and essential otherness, as form is other than matter ...and existence [is distinct from] essence.34

It is this dynamic of “inner” spirit and “outer” matter that confers uponeverything (animate and inanimate) the composite wholeness andintegrity of a subject. For they are “subjects of being” (suppositum entis)
within a living cosmos, whose very structure reflects “the received generosity inherent in them.”35 This is the Christian perception of existence
as Gift. All that exists does so as “members of the community of
beings,” not as objects “standing over against human consciousness
which [in modernity] is now the sole subject.”36 In the unfolding ofmodernity, the turn toward anthropocentrism demanded objectification,
abstraction from this living depth in nature. It was in this sense that
Goethe’s “reverent” attention to the manifesting forms of nature
expressed his desire “to do justice to existence.” Indeed, Schmitz insiststhat the recovery of wonder is (for him as a philosopher) “a work ofintellectual justice.” “Wonder,” Schmitz tells us, “is the middle term thatjoins our freedom to the dignity of things [the entities of nature].”37
Returning now to the Goethean dimension of Balthasar’s metaphysics
and theology, we are not surprised to find that in the “fourfold distinction,” the entities of non-human nature are not simply a kind of background scenery—rather, the forms witness to the beauty, mystery, radiance of existence-as-gift. In virtually every analysis of this topic,
Balthasar includes the role of non-human nature in the human awakening to self-awareness. Balthasar insists that non-human nature “remains
a singularly illuminating touchstone” and source of wonder before theglory and abundance of Being, not comprehended abstractly, but “precisely in beetles and butterflies”38 and the miraculous variety of nature’s
forms. He insists that the “truth of the human” is only to be comprehended within the relations which constitute the wholeness of the “truthof the world.” Indeed, in Balthasar’s “fourfold distinction,” in which thechild awakens to self and world through the smile of the mother, thereceptivity which characterizes this primal inter-subjectivity is a modelfor the human relation to non-human nature:
If he can only become truly himself when awakened by the love of

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someone else, then he will become a knowing, self-comprehending andreflecting spirit insofar as he gives himself, in love and trust, i.e., infaith, to the other person. And the more profoundly he learns throughthis act of surrender what existence and Being itself are, then the more
can understanding create a new surrender, which is now a venturing forward in trust on the basis of experiential knowledge....Whoever grasps
this can also open himself receptively to non-human nature and, thus,
learn things from natural beings—from landscapes, plants, animals,stars—which a purely cognitive (‘scientific’) attitude never discovers.
The depths of the significant shapes of nature, the meaning of its language, the extent of its words of revelation can only reveal themselves
to one who has opened himself up receptively to them.39

This analogous inter-subjectivity between the human and non-humantakes on profound, even startling dimensions of reciprocity. For example, the human subject is “configured” receptively to the non-humanentity of nature, and these in turn are “receptive” to their “idea” in God
which at once is immanent in them yet transcends them. Again, throughout his analysis the influence of Goethe is explicit, as Balthasar presents
concrete examples of plants and animals, landscapes, ecosystems, andnot solely human inter-subjectivity. This attitude of reciprocity and welcoming receptivity reflects the dialogical structure of reality and calls
the human to ‘reverence’ before the manifesting, non-human other.
The freedom of the human subject is configured to the freedom of the
non-human entities of nature, the inherent nobility of their self-manifestation, for “there is no being that does not enjoy an interiority, however
liminal and rudimentary it may be.”40 Again, recalling Goethe, Balthasar
explores levels or ‘degrees of interiority’ in the ascending complexity ofnature’s entities: “Even on the lowest level of life,” before the living
entity’s self-manifestation, “we should fall back, blinded” before themystery of this living totality.41 A ‘scientific’ exactitude which purports
to explain away the mystery “touches the sacred core of life with profane fingers.” In the animal world, the intimate character of Being, thisinner space, “begins to grow light, to become luminous and accessible toitself.” The animal “represents a completely new fact that radicallychanges the situation of epistemology: the object is now itself asubject.”42 To classify animals as “reflex mechanisms” Balthasar deems“unworthy of serious natural science.”
Thus, in terms of the natural world, every entity, “is laden with meaning;” “every flower, every mountain, every [person]” bespeaks the freedom of the Source of Being Who bestows existence as Gift:

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You are never finished with any being, be it the tiniest gnat or the mostinconspicuous stone. It has a secret [geheime] opening, through which
never-failing replenishments of sense and significance ceaselessly flowfrom eternity.43 The whole world of images that surrounds us is a single
field of significations. Every flower we see is an expression, every landscape has its significance, every human or animal face speaks its wordless language. It would be utterly futile to attempt a transposition of thislanguage into concepts. Though we might try to circumscribe, even todescribe, the content these things express, we would never succeed inrendering it adequately. This expressive language is addressed primarily, not to conceptual thought, but to the kind of intelligence that perceptively reads the gestalt of things. [Conceptual thought] enters upon its
task only when [this kind of intelligence] has fulfilled its function.44

This relational metaphysics makes the human dialogue with nature amatter of human wholeness, a crucial developmental dimension of ourpersonhood. The characterization of Balthasar’s relational anthropology
by a recent commentator applies analogously to the human relation to
non-human nature: “In Balthasar’s Trinitarian theological anthropology,
personhood is not defined in terms of a quality possessed, but as a gifted
event. One is a person only in kenotic relations of freedom as love....A
self who enters relations is not the same as a relational notion of self.”45
Therefore, it is not a “choice,” a preference of temperament or taste
which enjoins attentiveness toward non-human nature—it is a matter ofthe objective “truth of the world,” and thus of human wholeness. And
the attitude of the human subject in this regard must remain that of service, self-gift, the attitude of a lover to a beloved other. In this “service
to the object” [entity of nature] the subject is formed, in the sense of formation, becoming as Balthasar says, “cosmoform” because more andmore informed by the truth of the world.46 The subject in a sense earns
the right of creative action only in direct proportion to its receptivity andservice to these other subjects of Being. Thus Balthasar states, “the first
lesson that existence teaches the [human] subject is the lesson of selfabandonment, not domination in the pursuit of [self-]interest”47—here,
as so often, echoing Goethe who has said, “he who seeks to understandthe world should begin not by constructing but by observing.”48

Conclusion: Toward a Comparative Theology of the Sense of
WonderIn this essay, we have attempted to demonstrate in great detail (but stillDIALOGUE WITH NATURE AND INTERRELIGIOUS ENCOUNTER

203

only at a descriptive level) the manner in which a renewal in Western
metaphysics as undertaken by Catholic thinkers reveals a surprising path
to wholeness through an emphasis on “difference.” In this recovery of
wonder, we see how it is that Catholic social teaching asserts that thehuman relation with the world of nature is “constitutive” of a person’s
identity.49 Yet the fundamental contrast between the Buddhist worldview(emphasis on identity) and the Catholic (emphasis on transcendence,difference) remains in the midst of these convergences.
In an award-winning book on interreligious dialogue, Catherine
Cornille describes a sense of “interconnection” between religious
faiths as a necessary condition for dialogue. “Interreligious dialogue
thus presupposes a conviction that, in spite of important and ineradicable differences of belief and practices, religions may find one another in a common ground.”50 She describes three areas of interconnection
which we can readily observe as present already on the basis of ourstudy: (1) a common concern with social challenges such as world
peace or the environmental crisis; (2) a perception of some profounddimension of shared religious experience which invites dialogue andencounter—for example, our exploration of the sense of wonder, thepoetic spirit; and, (3) a common desire to further understand eachother’s conception of Ultimate Reality, its convergences and contrasts
for each religious practice—as in our fundamental contrast between
transcendence (difference) and identity. It remains for us to consider
the implications of these “interconnections,” and there are three areas
which invite further comparative exploration.
First, as Cornille suggests, accurate interreligious understanding isnecessary for the development of opportunities for engaging together thechallenges which society faces, and which are the concern of each religious tradition in its humanistic orientation. On the question of the environmental crisis, it is necessary to understand the variety of expressionsof Christian ecological ethics, of which the Catholic twentieth century
renewal in metaphysics represents one little known but very importantstrand. This metaphysical renewal forms the basis of the orientation of
the past three decades of papal social teaching, and has been accorded
even more authority through the recent social encyclical of Benedict
XVI, Caritas in veritate.51
Our second implication is tied to this dimension of social teaching
and the metaphysical basis of Catholic doctrine, for these are the centralprinciples by which Catholic universities orient their missions—that is
to say, their understanding of humanistic education and its role not onlyin the formation of the person, but in the integral development of society

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and the flourishing of all life. It is here that the need for deepened comparative theological study becomes evident. The historical emergence of
the Soka Gakkai from the context not only of the Buddhism of the Lotus
Sutra, but also of humanistic educational philosophies of the twentiethcentury makes this convergence of religious humanism and humanistic
educational traditions a remarkably fruitful area of encounter. In this we
find the two inseparable dimensions which each religious tradition
understands deeply: the integral spiritual formation of the human person, which extends from the developmental and familial context into theformation which is the domain of education. In this regard, the principles found in Makiguchi’s The Geography of Human Life, which“examined the two-way relationship between humans and their naturalenvironment as an educational means of developing student’s social,moral and academic capabilities” invites comparative study.52 Of course,
the vast corpus of writings by Daisaku Ikeda which articulates the inseparability of the concept of “human revolution” and the educational mission of the Soka Gakkai is so fertile an area for comparative study that it
defies summary.53 But the reader familiar with the Soka Gakkai and
Ikeda’s thought will surely recognize—and it is hoped, offer welcome—to the Catholic sensibility presented herein, as did Ikeda himself in his
reading of Marcel. If, indeed, interreligious encounter is a factor in educating for peace, then surely the convergent missions of the Soka
Gakkai’s educational programs and Soka University can appreciate thecommon sensibilities expressed in the Catholic renewal of metaphysics
of wonder as this shapes the mission of Catholic universities as a context of interreligious dialogue and educational collaboration.
Finally, Ikeda’s writings demonstrate the need for deepened interreligious scholarly encounter, for the “descriptive” study presented herein isbased upon a body of Catholic doctrine and scholarship that matches thescope of the Mahayana Buddhist context which the Soka Gakkai represents. These specific theological and philosophical elements of each tradition are precisely the domain of comparative theology. For it is thisstudy’s contention that Buddhist-Christian dialogue and comparative
scholarship have yet to recognize and appreciate the unique heritage of
the Soka Gakkai in its convergences with the religious recoveries ofwonder, the poetic spirit, and a Catholic version of the dialogue withnature begun more than eight decades ago. While the more familiar
Buddhist concepts such as esho funi and Dependent Origination (engi)
may seem to have been amply explored in other Buddhist-Christianscholarship and popular interpretation, there are important new comparative dimensions yet to be developed. This is demonstrated by the prolif-

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205

ic scholarship of Shuichi Yamamoto in this journal, whose considerationof, for example, the Consciousness-Only Doctrine (in particular, thealaya consciousness) offers compelling possibilities for interreligious
consideration.54
By way of conclusion, perhaps the fundamental elements expressedby Daisaku Ikeda in his dialogue with nature and the recovery of wonder represented in Catholic metaphysics converge in two terms: Value
Creation and (the metaphysical apprehension of) Existence as Gift. Bothevince a celebration of the mystery of existence in its goodness andbeauty, even in the midst of the tragedies which no one escapes in life. It
is here that the poetic spirit in a sense “recreates the world” by reviving
and conserving the sense of wonder in every age. Returning to the opening essay by Ikeda, we read:
The poetic spirit can be found in any human endeavor. It may bevibrantly active in the heart of a scientist engaged in research in the
awed pursuit of truth. When the spirit of poetry lives within us, evenobjects do not appear as mere things; our eyes are trained on an innerspiritual reality. A flower is not just a flower. The moon is no mere
clump of matter floating in the skies. Our gaze fixed on a flower or the
moon, we intuitively perceive the unfathomable bonds that link us to theworld. In this sense, children are poets by nature, by birth. Treasuring
and nurturing their poetic hearts, enabling them to grow, will also lead
adults into realms of fresh discovery....A poet is one who offers people
words of courage and hope, seeking the perspective—one step deeper,
one step higher—that makes tangible the enduring spiritual realities of
our lives.55

This convergence of poetry, wonder, childhood, and a life of value creation recalls the words of Rachel Carson, who once said: “If there ispoetry in my books about the sea, it is not because I deliberately put it
there, but because no one could write truthfully about the sea and leaveout the poetry.”56 Balthasar was an appreciative reader of Rachel Carson
until her untimely death from cancer in 1964. More than anything, she
had wanted to complete the manuscript for a book devoted to the fostering of wonder in children and its meaning for the wholeness of human
life. “The wonder book” as she called it, was published posthumously as
The Sense of Wonder.57 In its original manuscript, she wrote:
A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder andexcitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed

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vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, isdimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influencewith the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of
all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be asense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as
an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later
years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength. If a child is to keep alive his
inborn sense of wonder without any such gift from the fairies, he needs
the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscoveringwith him the joy, excitement, and mystery of the world we live
in....What is the value of preserving and strengthening this sense of awe
and wonder, this recognition of something beyond the boundaries ofhuman existence? I am sure there is something lasting and significant.
Those who dwell, as scientists or laymen, among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life....Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure aslong as life lasts.58

In interreligious encounter and comparative studies, we share the mystery of our “original encounter” with nature, and “we recover in an intellectual mode [and in a humanistic mode] the wonder that is the poetry of
the world.”59 The Catholic dialogue partner thus can rejoice with the
Buddhist partner, and honor the wisdom of the Lotus Sutra’s many profound dimensions of “wonder” conveyed in Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. In
our mutual devotion to this wonder, we together honor the legacy of all
those who have sought to live a life of value creation, in the service ofwonder, including the legacy of Daisaku Ikeda in his passionate belief
that “we must all be poets.”60
Notes**Use of upper-case letters in terms such as Being, Mystery, Ultimate Reality, Life
Force, God, Source, etc. intends to highlight for the reader the sense of ultimacy or transcendence these terms carry in their respective religious usages.
1
Daisaku Ikeda, Embracing the Future (Tokyo: The Japan Times, Ltd., 2008) 50–56,
at 50–51.
2
See, for example, Don S. Browning, Reviving Christian Humanism: The New Conversation on Spirituality, Theology, and Psychology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2010); and Ronald Modras, Ignatian Humanism: A Dynamic Spirituality for the 21stCentury (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2004).
3
For a comparable discussion, see Thomas McFarland, Romanticism and the Forms

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207

of Ruin: Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Modalities of Fragmentation (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1981).
4
Always Rachel: The Letters of Rachel Carson and Dorothy Freeman, 1952–1964,
ed. Martha Freeman (Boston: Beacon Press, 1995) 249.
5
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1962). Available in Japanese translation.
6
Paul Brooks, Speaking for Nature: How Literary Naturalists from Henry Thoreau to
Rachel Carson Have Shaped America (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1980) xvi.
7
Jason Goulah, “Daisaku Ikeda’s Environmental Ethics of Humanitarian Competition: A Review of His United Nations Peace and Education Proposals,” Peace Studies
Journal 3.1 (April 2010) 1–23, at 3.
8
Shuichi Yamamoto pointed to the significance of Lynn White’s famous 1967 essay,“The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis,” Science 155 (March 10, 1967) 1203–
1207; see Yamamoto, “Contribution of Buddhism to Environmental Thoughts,” The
Journal of Oriental Studies 8 (1998) 144–173, at 144.
9
For a critical but important overview of the encounter between Buddhist thought
and the post-Enlightenment West, including the legacy of Romanticism and the development of ecologically-oriented philosophies and spiritualities, see David L. McMahan,
The Making of Buddhist Modernism (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, Inc.,
2008), chapters 5 and 6.
10
Perhaps the finest example of this early interreligious encounter as an expression oftwentieth century Christian renewal and social analysis is found in the writings of theCatholic-Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.
11
Confessions, III, 6, 11.
12This dynamic of transcendence-immanence (the relation of the world to God) is acentral theme in the writings of the Christian mystics, prominent among them Meister
Eckhart. For a fine exploration of this, see for example, Tatsuya Yamazaki, “Die transzendentale Struktur des göttlichen Seins und die Seligkeit bei Meister Eckhart,” in
Wahrheit auf dem Weg, Festschrift für Ludwig Hödl zu seinem fünfundachzigsten
Geburtstag, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters,
Neue Folge, Band 72, ed. Manfred Gerwing & Heinrich J.F. Reinhardt (Münster:
Aschendorff Verlag, 2009) 273–287.
13
Shuichi Yamamoto and Victor S. Kuwahara, “Symbiosis with the Global Environment: Buddhist Perspective of Environmental Education,” The Journal of Oriental Studies 16 (2006) 176–185, at 176.
14
“Comparative theology is a reflection on faith that, while emanating from a particular religious tradition, recognizes and advances interreligious exchange so that every
aspect of its theological constructions are affected and transformed, whether in doctrine,
polemics, spiritual exercise, ritual, or ethical commitment. Like other forms of theology,
comparative theology is an academic discipline, but may also be about or for the sake ofthe experience of God or, more naturalistically, the ultimate mystery toward which life
points. In comparative theology then, faith and practice are explored and transformed byattention to parallel theological dimensions or construals of other religious traditions,
examined historically or in contemporary context.” This description is excerpted fromthe American Academy of Religion’s Comparative Theology Group (available at Religious Studies News Online, 2011 Annual Meeting Call for Proposals http://rsnonline.
org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=383&Itemid=461
For a fuller presentation, see Reid B. Locklin and Hugh Nicholson, “The Return of208

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Comparative Theology,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 78.2 (June 2010)
477–514.
15
See, for example, Gabriel Marcel, The Mystery of Being, vol. 1, Reflection and Mystery, trans. G. S. Fraser (London: The Harvill Press, 1951) 41.
16
The French title of his famous work, Man Against Mass Society, trans. G.S. Fraser(Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1962) indicates better this dehumanizing element:
Les hommes contre l’humain.
17
Ibid. 1.
18
Daisaku Ikeda, Unlocking the Mysteries of Birth and Death (Santa Monica: Middleway Press, 2003) 171, 179.
19
Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, 10
20
Drew Christiansen, SJ, “Metaphysics and Society: A Commentary on Caritas inveritate,” Theological Studies 71 (2010) 3–27.
21
Kenneth L. Schmitz, The Recovery of Wonder: The New Freedom and the Asceticism of Power (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2005).
22
See, for example, Martin Heidegger, Identität und Differenz, in which Heidegger
condemns the very “distinctions and difference” which this essay describes as a path towholeness. English translation by Joan Stambaugh: Identity and Difference (New York:
Harper & Row, 1969).
23
Michael Zimmerman, Contesting Earth’s Future: Radical Ecology and Postmodernity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994).
24
Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 5,
The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1991):
449–450.
25
Ibid. and The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, vol. 4, The Realm ofMetaphysics in Antiquity (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1989).
26
Balthasar, Love Alone (London: Sheed & Ward, 1968), 25.
27
The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age 613
28
The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age 616
29
The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age 617
30“Geist und Feuer: Ein Gesprach mit Hans Urs von Balthasar,” Herder Korrespondenz 30 (1976) 72–82, at 76.
31
Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Retrospective: 1988,” in My Work: In Retrospect (SanFrancisco: Ignatius Press, 1993) 115.
32
Georg Simmel, Kant und Goethe: Zur Geschichte der Modernen Weltanschauung(Leipzig: Kurt Wolff Verlag, n.d.) 20–21.
33
The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age 587
34
Schmitz, 54–56.
35
Ibid. 31.
36
Ibid. 64.
37
Ibid. 11.
38
The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age 620–621.
39
Balthasar, Man in History: A Theological Study (London: Sheed & Ward, 1968)
93–94.
40
Balthasar, Theo-logic: Theological Logical Theory, vol. 1, Truth of the World (SanFrancisco: Ignatius Press, 2000) 84.
41
Truth of the World 85–86.
42
Ibid. 89.

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209

Ibid. 102.
Ibid. 140.
45
Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Person, Kenosis and Abuse: Hans Urs von Balthasar andFeminist Theologies in Conversation,” Modern Theology 19: 1 (January 2003): 41–65,
at 52 and 58.
46
Ibid. 70–71.
47
Ibid.
48
The Realm of Metaphysics in the Modern Age 371–372.
49
Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the
Church, “Chapter 10: Safeguarding the Environment,” no. 452 (Washington, DC:
USCCB Publishing, 2004) 198.
50
Catherine Cornille, The Im-Possibility of Interreligious Dialogue (New York:
Crossroad Publishing Company, 2008) 95.
51
For an overview of Pope Benedict XVI and John Paul II on the environment, see
Connie Lasher and Msgr. Charles Murphy, “With Generous Courage: Promise &Poignance in the Legacies of Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI,” in Confronting
the Climate Crisis: Catholic Theological Perspectives, ed. Jame Schaefer (forthcoming,
Marquette University Press, December 2011).
52
Goulah, 5.
53
The convergence is admirably conveyed in Goulah’s fine essay, but it is readily
apparent in virtually every text of Ikeda, so integrated are these elements in his thought
and the identity of the Soka Gakkai.
54
Shuichi Yamamoto, “Mahayana Buddhism and Environmental Ethics: From the
Perspective of Consciousness—Only Doctrine,” The Journal of Oriental Studies 11(December 2001) 167–180.
55
Ikeda, Embracing the Future 53–54.
56
Rachel Carson, in her acceptance speech at the National Book Award, presented toher for The Sea Around Us, as quoted by Frank Stewart, “Small Winged Forms Above
the Sea: The Life of Rachel Carson,” Orion 14 (Winter 1995) 14–18, at 16.
57
Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder (New York: Harper & Row, 1965). Also
available in Japanese translation.
58
Rachel Carson, “Help Your Child to Wonder,” Woman’s Home Companion (July
1957) 25–27, 26–48, at 28 and 48.
59
Schmitz 127.
60
Ikeda, Embracing the Future 55.
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