Metaphorically we could say that the cosmos the body of God, but that God is much bigger. More we d

The American Jack Kornfield tells of a time when he visited a Buddhist monastery on an island spar in the Mekong Delta. It was during the Vietnam War and the Viet Cong as well as the Americans spar used the Mekong river as a transport route. His visit was not without danger. spar
The relevant monastery spar on an island is constructed by a legendary monk who was known in the walk as the Coconut Monk. On arrival, the monks spread their message of peace and non-violence, while war planes fly over their heads. Then they took him to the highest point of the island, where a fifty-foot-high statue of Buddha stood ... and next to him is even great image of Jesus with his arm around Buddha's shoulders - a picture of Jesus and Buddha as Brothers.
Only a few years ago would a man not daring spar to Jesus and Buddha's names to call together. It would simply shocking and even profane have been as many people might still be considered. But since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi writings in 1945, when we for the first time the voice of ordinary Christians from the earliest centuries of Christianity could hear again from their own mouths, the interest in Buddhism among researchers became larger . For the voices of early Christians who sound from it is in many ways closer to Buddhism as to orthodox Christianity that developed after the fourth century.
Lately, we have increasingly become aware of how Christianity and Buddhism meet on the Great Silk Road to China and reciprocally influence. In some places, Christian and Buddhist texts even kept together.
Last year, a well-known American theologian Paul Knitter wrote a book entitled Without Buddha I Could Not Be a Christian, in which he tells how his relationship with Buddhism helped spar him aspects of Christianity, which is unacceptable to start him to understand otherwise. The famous Marcus Borg, even published a book in which he spoke the words of Jesus and Buddha placed parallel to each other.
We live in a era where great revolutions within Christianity occur. Worldwide walking mainline blank and founded new churches. Some gigantic, some not much more than house churches. Within this new churches can discern a man between two groups: the largest group is undoubtedly the "orthodox and fundamentalist" group, with of course a growing and perhaps more intellectual group who call themselves Christians Progressive. Also they found a man, a growing interest in Buddhism.
The progressive Christians feel they are no longer spar at home in the creeds of the fourth century. They may not be the "fundamental" doctrines such as the virgin birth, Jesus' divinity and the bodily resurrection and ascension to accept it, and looking for new ways to express their spirituality.
The problem is that the "orthodox" spirituality is linked to the ancient three-storey worldview, according to which the earth was the center of creation. Above the earth, the sky and above the firmament of heaven, where God and the angels lived. Under the earth, Hades, the underworld. This in turn had a basement, tartaros, where the really bad guys after their death were tortured. This notion has developed in Christian mythology to hell.
God himself was an anthropomorphic being, a being with human traits, such as anger and forgiveness, who see everything that happens on earth, and all bookkeeping. But as astrophysics three floors worldview has been turned on its head, by teaching us that the earth is not the center of creation, but a minor planet orbiting one of the millions of suns in the galaxy; that besides the galaxy also many other galaxies besides spar our universe and probably parallel universes.
It has led to the realization that the theistic view of God is much too small and limited in any way to do justice to the greatness of creation. Gradually came about a panenteïstiese God's image, according to which God is in everything and everything spar in God, but everything is not God. Much like an unborn baby in her mother's and her mother in her, but the baby is not her mother.
Metaphorically we could say that the cosmos the body of God, but that God is much bigger. More we dare not say because the concept spar deity is beyond time and space, and it we can not verifiable to say. Buddha also struggled with this issue, and his disciples advised rather not talk about God, because one should spar be silent about things you can not know.
Jesus also spoke about God in metaphors. The metaphor that he used for God was a word that for many of its ty