In today's transnational and global world, as peoples of diverse religious backgrounds increasingly live, work, and pray alongside each other, they have to confront the question, “what is the significance of understanding my neighbor's faith tradition for appreciating my own faith tradition?” Similarly, within the Christian theological tradition, the complexities of religious diversity and pluralism in today's world have raised the overarching question of how theological reflections can be articulated by Christian theologians, not by excluding other religious traditions, but rather by engaging and interacting with those traditions.

In Jesus and Buddha: Friends in Conversation, Paul Knitter and Roger Haight seek to show us one way such interactions might take place by engaging in a conversation about Buddhism and Christianity, and how Christians can learn from Buddhists to deepen their faith and spiritual practice. Each chapter consists of Haight presenting the Christian perspective and Knitter speaking on the Buddhist perspective, followed by mutual reflections on each other's presentations, and concluding with a joint summary. It must be pointed out that both Knitter and Haight are working from a post–Vatican II perspective that is shaped by the council's declaration on the relations with other religious traditions, Nostra Aetate, which paves the way for openness to interfaith conversations and learning from across religious traditions. On the one hand, Haight speaks definitively as a Catholic systematic theologian in his response to Knitter and in his interpretation of the Buddhist tradition. On the other hand, although Knitter typically presents the Buddhist perspective, there are times when he also discusses the Christian perspective, acknowledging his double-belonging as a Christian and a Buddhist. In this respect, he suggests, using the Chalcedonian analogy that the Christian and Buddhist religious practices remain truly different, that they become one in him as a double-belonger.

While Haight and Knitter are convinced that there are commonalities between Buddhist and Christian positions that could enrich Christian spirituality on a variety of theological topics, including spirituality and spiritual practice, interreligious dialogue, soteriology, ultimate reality, human nature, and peace and justice, drawing a correlation between Buddhist and Christian perspectives is not as easy as it appears, because they are radically different. For example, Haight appears to be overeager to find commonalities between Buddhist and Christian perspectives when he puts forward, among other things, that the Spirit of God could be the “Christian Buddha-nature” or when he says that “the Buddhist idea of a reciprocal relationship between Emptiness and form” reminds him of the “traditional Christian concept of cooperative grace first fashioned by Augustine” (109–10). Likewise, in the spirit of his double-belonging, Knitter moves back and forth between Buddhist and Christian positions, raising the question of whether he could truly articulate the perspective of a “single-belonging” Buddhist. However, this academic question does not matter, as this book is not intended to be a treatise on Buddhist doctrines and positions, but rather a guidebook aimed at Christians who are interested in exploring and engaging with an interreligious spirituality. In this respect, Knitter's double-belonging does serve the role of articulating that interreligious spirituality more clearly through his ease in moving back and forth between the two religious practices and in explaining Buddhist ideas in terms that Christians can grasp with ease.

Haight and Knitter do not engage so much in a discussion of theoretical theological questions as in a conversation about spiritual practices, meditation, and practices that are oriented toward social transformation and the promotion of justice and peace. The focus of this book is not so much systematic analysis, but an exchange of ideas enabling Christians to learn from Buddhists and to develop a spirituality for addressing the challenges of injustice and inequity in today's world that transcends a narrow Christian parochial framework in favor of an openness to spiritual insights from other religious traditions. Readers who are looking for a substantive academic discussion of the subtleties and nuances of comparative Buddhist and Christian theologies will be disappointed by this book. Those who are interested in discovering how the insights of Jesus and the Buddha can be applied in contemporary society, with its economic, environmental, and other problems, will find this book most helpful and insightful.