John P. Keenan is professor emeritus of religion at Middlebury College and a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont. His previous works includeThe Emptied Christ of Philippians: Mahâyâna Meditations; The Meaning of Christ: A Mahâyâna Theology; The Gospel of Mark: A Mahâyâna Reading; A Study of the Buddhabhûmyupadésa: The Doctrinal Development of the Notion of Wisdom in Yogâcâra Thought; and Grounding Our Faith in a Pluralist World--With a Little Help from Nâgârjuna.
""As contemporary astronomers use lenses to focus light that started its journey through the universe ages ago, John Keenan uses the lens of Buddhism to look at the faraway letter to the Ephesians, demonstrating that cosmology, first-century culture, and philosophy need not stand in the way of a practice 'efficaciously incarnate in an everyday Jesus.' Fascinating reading, even for those of us who aren't theologically inclined."" --Mary F. C. Pratt, poet and playwright ""Ephesians is a neglected text which John Keenan's impassioned meditation brings back into the limelight, placing it in today's pluralistic, interreligious, and scientific horizons just as boldly as its deutero-Pauline author brought Paul himself up to date. Drawing on the best exegetes and a host of daring thinkers, Keenan shows how Ephesians disrupts the social and cosmological horizons of its time and of ours."" --Joseph O'Leary, author of Conventional and Ultimate Truth: A Key for Fundamental Theology ""In 'earthing' Ephesians in an interfaith dialogue, one between Mahayana Buddhist Master Zhiyi's teaching of the threefold truth and the core Christian doctrine of the Trinity, John Keenan simultaneously grounds the text of Ephesians and sets it free to soar, freeing us, in turn, to embody not only a mature faith but, importantly, its practice--not in some otherworldly, cosmic life but this earthbound everyday one in common fellowship with one another. A boundary-breaking masterwork!"" --Thom Rock, author of Time, Twilight, and Eternity: Finding the Sacred in the Everyday