 Soga not only counters criticisms that Amida is merely mythical and that Pure Land Buddhism lacks historical foundations, but also strongly affirms in doctrinal terms the immediacy of personal religious experience in Shin. Christian concepts related to kenosis, incarnation in historical time, and trinity may have stimulated Soga’s rethinking of the relationship between the practitioner and Amida. There is also the matter of the temporal dimension in this relationship. Previously the Japanese Pure Land tradition had articulated the Mahayana logic of the nonduality of the temporal and the uncreated (or transtemporal). That said, the Christian critique and Augustinian concepts of time and eternity may also have inspired Soga’s interpretation of the vast time spans in the narrative of Dharmakara’s vows and practice. As Soga explains: