近三十年來，鈴木大拙的社會文化脈絡被西方學界逐漸揭露，其禪學泰斗的地位在西方已倍受質疑。隨之，深受鈴木影響的默頓也受到牽連，其晚期宗教對話著作的意義被視為陳舊不合時宜。然而，本文認為這種「因鈴木而默頓」的進路對評價默頓的宗教對話思想是不公平的。本文嘗試「從默頓到鈴木」的進路，將默頓置於二十世紀天主教神學發展史的脈絡中，通過重新閱讀其宗教對話的相關著作、書信和日記，發現其參與宗教對話背後的神學動機。本文指出，默頓借著對禪的澄清，反思和批評了梵二會議前後出現的新經院主義神學和現代主義神學，並在這兩種神學之外，給出了聖事本體論的神學進路。最後在此神學基礎上，默頓提出在形而上直覺層面開展宗教對話。默頓在此過程中所表現出的立場、進路與目的，表明了他的宗教對話思想對我們仍然具有啟發性。

Over the past three decades, as D. T. Suzuki's social and cultural contexts were exposed in Western academia, his authority of Zen has been questioned in the West. As a result, Merton's late works on inter-religious dialogue, which were deeply influenced by Suzuki, were regarded as outdated. However, it is unfair to evaluate Merton's religious dialogue by way of the “from Suzuki to Merton” approach. The paper attempts to take the approach “from Merton to Suzuki,” and puts Merton in the context of the development of Catholic theology in the 20th century. By re-discussing the works, letters, and diaries of Merton's inter-religious dialogue, it finds out Merton's theological motivation behind them. This paper argues that by clarifying and explaining Zen, Merton reflects and criticizes the theologies before and after Vatican II, that is Neo-Scholasticism and modernism. After that, he puts forward another approach, sacramental ontology, to understand theology, which offers the theological background to engage in inter-religious dialogue on the metaphysical intuition level. During the inter-religious dialogue, Merton's theological standpoint, approach, and purpose still sheds some light on us.