ABSTRACT
Schmidt-Leukel argues, and Williams denies, that the Christian God can be identified with Buddhist nirvana, as being the transcendent ground and goal of salvation. Meanwhile the understanding of creation to be found in Aquinas and Christian mainstream tradition affirms God as the final rather than the efficient cause of the world, so answering the Buddhist critique. Regarding the traditional Christian understanding of creation, Williams is surely right to argue against Schmidt-Leukel that God is both alpha and omega, the originating as well as the final cause of the universe. A metacause is a cause of causality, an explanation of explicability itself. The threefold model helps overcome the widespread misconception of the religions as impermeable parallel universes, offering a framework for a robust dialogue which could both reaffirm and challenge traditional understandings. Most dual belongers seem to find it impossible to enter imaginatively into both Buddhist and Christian perspectives at once; they describe themselves as undergoing perspective shifts between the two.
