In this presentation, I would like first to discuss the Buddhist view of human salvation as I understand it--in comparison with the Christian view of salvation and, on that basis, to clarify Shin'ichi Hisamatsu's notion of FAS as an example of a contemporary Japanese Buddhist view of the issue.
Any religion, if it is authentic, is concerned not only with the salvation of the individual person, but also with the salvation of all humankind. Needless to say, these two aspects are inseparable. When, however, religion is concerned with the salvation of the individual, it opens up a most fundamental dimension which is beyond time and space, because religious salvation of the individual person is not possible in a merely humanistic, secular, and relative dimension which is limited by time and space, but only in a trans-human, sacred, noncreative eternal dimension. In this regard, religion is concerned with a "vertical" dimension which elucidates the height and depth or transcendence and ultimate ground of human existence. On the other hand, when religion is concerned with the salvation of all humankind it is involved, even while deeply rooted in a vertical dimension of human existence, in a "horizontal" dimension of breadth and chronological length or world and history. In its breadth and length dimension, then, religion is involved in social transformation and the development of history.
Although these two aspects, individual salvation and the collective emancipation of humankind, are, as already mentioned, inseparably from one another, and are included equally by all higher religions, the relation between transcendent individual salvation and social liberation, between vertical and horizontal, differs among the various religions, some religions placing stronger emphasis on transcendent ultimate ground, some giving greater priority to liberation in history. Buddhism, for instance, which emphasizes self-awakening through meditation, may be said to lay less stress on the horizontal socio-historical dimension than does Christianity, which places much weight in God's rule of the universe and the divine plan for creation. The issues involved in this regard, however, need further detailed clarification. For the apparent difference in degree in stressing the horizontal dimension in contrast to the vertical is deeply related to the difference in the understanding of the vertical dimension itself, that is the understanding of the nature of the transhuman divine reality and the ultimate ground of human existence.
In Christianity, the transhuman divine reality is the One God who is creator, judge, and redeemer and who is believed to be the ruler of the world and history. Although Jesus as the Christ or savior takes human form as the incarnation of God, the Christian understanding of the transhuman divine reality (God) is fundamentally transcendent and supernatural, and is essentially different from man. Human beings are not creator but creature, not judge but the judged, not redeemer but the redeemed because human beings are finite and originally sinful, and can be saved not by their own acts, but only through pure faith in the self-sacrificial love of God. Although God is believed to be the ruler of the whole universe, God is also believed to express himself through Logos (Word) to human beings, while nonhuman creatures, especially in Protestantism, have no direct connection with God's Word but are dominated by human beings and participate in the divine administration through them. This is the reason in Christianity human history rather than nature is understood to be the stage of God's work. Furthermore, the
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