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For example, influential critical theologian John A.T. Robinson uncritically repeated a
Buddhist story and claim of apotheosis, where a holy man in Tibet died in 1953. The man’s
body was later missing from a blanket in which it was wrapped and kept inside a house.
Sometime afterwards, a rainbow over the house was interpreted by the local Tibetan villagers to
mean that the holy man had been taken up to “heaven”! 2
In another of his volumes, while being fairly positive towards Jesus’ empty tomb (but not
in the same context towards his virgin birth), Robinson still raised questions concerning the
Christian accounts. 3
Yet, no criticisms were raised regarding the details concerning the Tibetan
holy man, such as the assurance of the man’s death in the first place, or the possibility of a
naturally removed body that was only kept inside a private home, or the extent to which the story
may have changed over the years before Robinson heard about it. Perhaps most of all, how in
the world does a rainbow indicate that the man was spiritually “absorbed into the Light” 4
especially when the Tibetan climate is often quite rainy and rainbows would seem to be both
common as well as extraordinarily difficult to trace to a single house anyway? The levels of
skepticism and critical interaction are simply not the same in these cases.
In another instance, leading critical philosopher Charles Hartshorne implied in his
comments regarding a public debate on Jesus’ resurrection that he felt bound not to accept Jesus’
resurrection because it might also confront him with the miraculous events that Buddha was
supposed to have performed! 5
Yet, while once again raising some standard questions concerning
2 John A.T. Robinson, The Human Face of God (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1973), 139.
3 John A.T. Robinson, Exploration into God (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1967), 112-114.
4 Robinson, The Human Face of God, 139, note 157.
5 Charles Hartshorne, “Response to the Debate,” in Gary R. Habermas and Antony G.N. Flew, Did Jesus Rise from
the Dead? The Resurrection Debate, ed. by Terry L. Miethe (New York, N.Y.: Harper and Row, 1987), 137, 141-
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