ABSTRACT
Anyone at all familiar with the tenets of Buddhism will undoubtedly find it strange that a group of specialists in the field, after many years of attempting to purge the study of Buddhism of Western theistic terminology and presuppositions, should now be claiming that the time is ripe for the emergence of Buddhist theology as a discipline. Theology connotes, at least etymologically, the study of the nature of God. Given that this is the most common sense of the word, it might be useful to begin by explaining why, in my usage, "Buddhist theology" is not an oxymoron. I will discuss in more detail below what I take theology to be: roughly, a form of normative discourse, selfavowedly rooted in tradition, with certain formal properties. But for now, suffice it to say that I take theology not to be restricted to discourse on God, nor to presuppose the notion of an omnipotent, creator God. I take "theology" not to be restricted to its etymological meaning. In that latter sense Buddhism is of course atheological, rejecting as it does the notion of God. Understood rhetorically, however, as a kind of discourse with certain formal properties, and functionally, as having certain applications and purposes in the context of culture, "theology" can be meaningfully modified by the adjective "Buddhist."2
