Narratives of Faith: Comparing the Gospel of Thomas and the Zen Kōans

Abstract

People’s own spiritual and religious stories, which we call ‘the narratives of faith’ in this paper, have influenced human history both positively and negatively. Today, as conflicts between religions are escalating all over the world and consequently restrictions on religions are on the increase, we are forced to rediscover the role of the narratives of faith, focusing more on their similarities. This paper is an attempt to discover the common elements that lie beneath the superficial differences between two types of narratives of faith: The Gospel of Thomas, a non-canonical gospel of sayings, and the Zen Kōans. Given both the limitations of space and the preliminary nature of the research on this topic, I have not made a comprehensive investigation of these two genres of literature. The focus will be on discovering the possible similarities in two areas: style and purpose.