The Buddha Discovered God
“There is, monks, an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned. If, monks there were not that unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, you could not know an escape here from the born, become, made, and conditioned. But because there is an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned, therefore you do know an escape from the born, become, made, and conditioned.” (Udana 8.3 Ānandajoti Bhikkhu).
I studied Buddhism in depth for over a decade. I can tell you that the Buddha discovered God. Not as a supreme being, but as the unconditioned Ground of Being.
I believe that the reason the Buddha did not identify this Ground of Being as God, is because in his culture gods were supreme beings, limited in their ability, and situated in heaven. None of the gods he knew from his culture fit the reality that he discovered.
Now compare his understanding of the ground of being with the best Christian definition of God by David Bentley Hart:
God “is the infinite fullness of being, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient, from whom all things come and upon whom all things depend for every moment of their existence, without whom nothing at all could exist.”
See how well this matches the Buddhas definition of “an unborn, unbecome, unmade, unconditioned.” You can see from this the Buddha did in fact discover God.
We must understand that the Buddha did not have revelation. He discovered God through meditation. He therefore was limited in his understanding of God. He did not understand all that is revealed in Scripture, in Christ, and through the church.