Saturday, November 22, 2008

(Tina)Theresa Hannah-Munns
RLST 380AA - 001
Apr. 2/04




Raimon Panikkar

On Truth in Religious Dialogue

When, during his trial, Jesus is asked “What is truth?” he does not answer. Or he leaves the answer in silence. In fact, truth does not allow itself to be conceptualized. It is never purely objective, absolute. To talk about absolute truth is really a contradiction in terms. Truth is always relational, and the Absolute (absolutus, untied) is that which has no relation.

I am not such a relativist as to believe that the truth is cut up in slices like a cake. But I am convinced that each of us participates in the truth. Inevitably, my truth is the truth that I perceive from my window. And the value of dialogue between the various religions is precisely to help me perceive that there are other windows, other perspectives. Therefore I need the other in order to know and verify my own perspective of the truth. Truth is a genuine and authentic participation in the dynamism of reality. When Jesus says "I am the truth," he is not asking me to absolutize my doctrinal system but to enter upon the way that leads to life.

Raimon Panikkar

***

I believe in the incarnation, and I think that after the misadventures of the past 2,000 years Christianity should stop being the religion of the Book and become the religion of the Word -- a word that Christians should hear from a Christ who lives, as Paul says, yesterday, today and always. Then their faith can become more of a personal experience. To present the faith to men and women today doesn’t mean trying to introduce a little Thomism here, a little Judaism there, and so forth, but to reach them at their deepest existential, humble and mystical level.

The Christian truth is not the monopoly of a sect, a treatise imposed by a kind of colonization, but an eruption that has existed since the dawn of time, which St. Paul defined very well as "a mystery that has existed since the beginning," and of which we Christians know only a very small part. [1]

Raimon Panikkar’s Position on Religious Pluralism

Raimon Panikkar is a retired Roman Catholic priest who is author to over 40 books, numerous articles, and has been very active in dialogue concerning religious pluralism. With work spanning decades, Panikkar has moved from an inclusivist,[2] fulfillment view of other religions, to a theocentric-acceptance model of pluralism. Because of his tremendous contribution to religious pluralism, I will only be touching the surface of some of his concepts that are found within his theories. His central standpoint comes from having a Catholic mother and a Hindu father. Panikkar is fond of saying, “’I ‘left’ as a Christian, I ‘found’ myself as a Hindu and I ‘return’ a Buddhist, without having ceased to be a Christian.”[3]

Panikkar embodies his pluralism and it has formed a strong momentum that shows in his open and heartfelt explanations, his theoretical structures, and his desire to share what he knows.[4] One of his most monumentous contributions is the outlook on inter-religious dialogue becoming intra-religious dialogue.

Intra-religious Dialogue

The dialogue route that I propose is existential, intimate and concrete. Its purpose is not to establish some universal religion, to end up with a kind of United Nations of religions. Reread Genesis: God destroyed the tower of Babel...[5]

Panikkar is very specific about the kind of dialogue that is necessary to address the problem of relating with other religions outside of Christianity. Rejecting superficial collages that “destroy the respective identities,” he insists that each of the religions retain their distinctive identities. This position identifies the differences as valuable and can contribute into a reciprocally deeper self-understanding, with this “cross-fertilization” occurring on the level of beliefs, while retaining the “cosmotheandric mystery” that is the common faith object between them all.[6]

Panikkar’s term ‘cosmotheandric mystery’ is defined as the “totality of reality” and is a faith object that Panikkar sees as the common thread in which all religions, whether theistic or non-theistic, have. Panikkar “distinguishes between faith and belief... the former denoting the basic religious experience which is, ultimately one, the latter is plural and describes a particular way of believing.”[7] Given different names, labels and designations (beliefs), all religious peoples are searching for a relationship with (faith in) cosmotheandric mystery. This desire to experience this common core is acknowledged by Newbigin as “the idea (of) a pure mysticism... as the real heart of religion is widespread. Newbigin also states that this claim is of faith, and as such, its truth is beyond demonstration.[8]

Yet mystical experience is a personal one. One of Panikkar’s core requirements in having an open dialogue is through having personal religious experience. This allows all, as Knitter put it, to “come to the conversation from a position of richness, not impoverishment...The object of dialogue is approached through a meeting of subjects.”[9]

“By living religion as an experience rather than as an ideology,”[10] intrareligious dialogue begins. This form of dialogue is the “exchange of religious experiences rather than ideologies of doctrines.”[11] Grounded in personal experience, no one in the dialogue is afraid of losing anything, especially the identity of their religion or their place in it. Experience provides the anchoring of identity rather than establishing it through me/you differences that come out in the words one chooses in dialogue. Panikkar quotes Thomas Aquinas about truth: “You do not possess the truth; it is truth that possesses you.” Panikkar goes on: “Yes, we are possessed by truth. That is what makes me live; but the other (non-Christian) lives, too, by virtue of her truth. I do not engage myself first of all to defend my truth, but to live it. And the dialogue between religions is not a strategy for making one truth triumphant, but a process of looking for it and deepening it along with others.”[12]

If one is living one’s truth, one lives with integrity. Integrity gives an openness where differences can meet, allowing an entering into “the experience of the other, in an effort to grasp that experience from within.” This mystical core is above theology or any forms of ideology and from that vantage point may be seen as flawed or in need of adjustment. The experience is of ’com-prehension’ and inner ‘sym-pathy.’[13] Dialogue can now be used as a spiritual technique, turning interreligious dialogue into intrareligious dialogue, allowing everyone to become ‘learned,’ meaning “an increase of knowledge...a deepening of one’s own faith...one’s faith life as well as of one’s perception of the triune God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. From there, a real dialogue can be constructed that can contribute to the clarification, questioning and changing of both one’s own and the other’s position.”[14]

As John Hicks emphasizes, Christians living in a pluralistic world “have to come to accept the need to re-understand their own faith, not as the one and only, but as one of several.” This has to become part of a more “global conception of the relationship between the religious traditions.”[15] D’Costa includes the secular life behind each of these religions in conceptualizing “the transcendent Reality which the great faiths all in their different ways affirm.”[16]

Christianity is having a hard time doing this. Even within their own ecumenical movement within the Church, Christianity is dealing with controversies that are not going away. Sinner’s study “deals with three aspects of an ecumenical hermeneutics: the quest for the One Tradition in the many traditions; the quest for the One Gospel in the many contexts; and the Church as hermeneutical community in matters of discernment, the exercise of authority and reception. Knitter points out that Panikkar’s form of dialogue is “an overarching forum where all religions meet” to both proclaim (witness) and listen, thus meeting the ecumenical requirements while giving the other religions the same consideration. Witness is not about conversion but of affirmation of each other’s truth, which allows the differences to meet in the course of simply listening.[17] This process has been received with good results as D’Costa mentions: “Christians from many countries have offered testimony to the new-found depths within their own traditions and faith which had been, up to the time of their meeting with people from other religions, hidden or obscured.”[18] The concept of Panikkar’s interculturation, which is “a meeting between traditions and cultures, and not the implantation (inculturation) of one culture in another,[19] has helped in breaking down the barriers within interreligious dialogue. By giving room for other positions to be heard openly, the other religions are willing to give more to the dialogue as well as embrace a more authentic Christianity.

A method that helps other religions understand Christians within dialogue, as well as Christian self-understanding, is Panikkar’s distinction between Christianity’s uses of three positions. Knitter gives an excellent summary of the three different instructions that the church has given on relating to other cultures: the supercultural, with its one specific cultural form that is a concrete and civilizing way where converts of other cultures had to evolve into Christians (this is still a dominant belief); the supracultural, where imperialism is rejected and multicultural Christianity and gospel is accepted, as long as the notion that the Christian message is above all cultures and their ways – Christianity is distinct in revelation whereas others are just religions (this is the majority stand currently); and the crosscultural, where there is a relationship of unity that includes distinction that exists between culture and religious experience. Here the gospel is found within culture and not in any disembodied way. Gospel is embodied through cultural worldview and, as the cultures meet, a new understanding of, or embodiment of Christianity can occur. Therefore, understanding the approach to mission (which gives them their intent towards dialogue) is important to understand their form of Christianity in order to converse effectively.[20]

Panikkar points out that the first two positions are still operating overall. The Christian dilemma that Jesus is easily affirmed as the Christ is central to the reluctance to evolve into the acceptance of a more beneficial model that allows for difference. He emphasizes that it is a true claim that Jesus is the Christ, but that affirmation is not as air-tight in affirming the claim of the Christ as Jesus. Knitter affirms Panikkar’s point with the addition of showing how the Christ event can be affirmed without having to claim that “it happened only here.”[21]

Panikkar points out that historically, theologians seen how earlier notions of God were labeled as “tribal deity” and foresees that today’s concepts of Christ as one and only will be thus labeled as “tribal Christology” once Christians open to a more expanded awareness of Christ working in different forms.[22] He has done many comparative analogies using the framework of the Trinity as a typology, especially with the “three margas (‘ways’ to salvation) of the Bhagavadgita.”[23]

The cosmotheandric reality “has become the central trinitarian term... he expands the term ‘theandrism’ coming from the Early Church’s christological debate, to include the cosmos and holds that the triad God-Man-World is the basic experience that lies at the heart of any religion.”[24] For Christianity, this “qualitative dimension of faith and theology point(s) to identity and coherence in...view of the triune God who has joined Himself to the world in creation, in the assuming of humanity by Jesus Christ and in the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit.”[25] The triune God cannot be unified as each is an element of God at work in the cosmos, an ontological support for the “foundation of pluralism... reality itself is pluralistic.” Knitter adds that God cannot be unified without reducing the differences that exist between the distinct, divine personages of the Trinity, and this is the same truth behind the diversity that exists among God manifesting in different religions.[26]

Panikkar has shown “parallels between Father-Son and Brahman-Ishvara, with the relationship between Absolute and the lesser divine; between Holy Spirit and Atman as immanent deities.” Research can be conducted within other religions to find similar parallels that move towards the “purpose of realizing communion with the ‘ground of being’ that is both immanent and transcendent.”[27] To Panikkar, this goal must be extricated from being identified with the different means that lead to accomplishing it. For Christians, “Christ is the Mystery in the sense that to see Christ is to reach the Mystery.” Yet this still can not be fully identified within Christ alone, as this is only one aspect of cosmotheandric reality. For a Christian on this certain way he is “the way,” but this must be recognized as only one aspect of a bigger whole.[28]

For Panikkar, Christ stands as “the most powerful symbol – but not one limited to the historical Jesus – of the full human, divine, and cosmic reality which he calls the mystery.” Other names have been assigned to this symbol for other religious peoples, such as Purusha, Krishna, and Rama. These are the “Unknown Christ” living and expressing itself within other traditions as aspects of “the indivisible mystery.”[29] For Panikkar, Christ is the symbol that acts in “every mediation between God and the World,” yet intently emphasizing that Christians cannot claim an absolute right to him. He believes in a more global theology of God’s purpose of the Christ event, where “All being is a Christophany, an appearance of Christ, the centre of the universe.”[30]

Panikkar asserts this is supported by separating the historical Jesus from the Christ of faith that arrived within the Christ event. The Christ of faith is praised by the first Christians, and thus written about in the bible – raised by God through “historical concretion.” They saw Jesus as the inseparable Christ, whereas Panikkar shows these as two separate realities of existence, one as “the Jesus-myth” and the other as “the mystery.” Again, these are each categorized as both objects - one of belief in the historical Jesus, and the other as an object of faith.[31] Dupuis criticizes this as reductionism, “both the Christ event into the Jesus-myth and faith into a neutral relationship.”[32]

Yet Dupuis then explains why this is not so. Within Panikkar’s “evolved thinking,” this distinction between Christ mystery as a faith object, with the faith claim “as an innate element of the human’s religious experience”- a living relationship - is different from the truth claim of historical Jesus as a belief, an “attitude expressed through adopted traditional manifestation within a religion.” The living relationship of experience transcends into the cosmotheandric reality, while the “concrete expressions” is a diverse assortment of beliefs that are all equally valuable – myths of “faith in concrete expression.”[33]

Panikkar believes that Jesus is “the prototype” of what we strive to be in relationship with God. We live our lives in “pale imitation” compared with the self-awareness “Jesus had of himself as Son.” Panikkar emphasizes that we are destined to realize as fully as Jesus did, as “his was the pure human experience.”[34]

This is one aspect of Panikkar’s theory of “the presence of Christ” or the “Unknown Christ.” This living presence is within an individual subjectively, as well as objectively in the religion of the individual’s “social religious phenomenon.” Panikkar wrote this in regard to Hinduism, but states it is applicable to all religious phenomenon.[35] He sees this as the “ontological meeting-point” of the various religions. He emphasized that all belonged to Christ in different levels.[36]

Dr. Kaj Baago wrote:

Christ is not the founder of Christianity; He did not wish to set up a new religion different from that of his people...but He rejected all attempts by men to come to terms with God by the way of the law...neither the Bible nor the teachings of the Church are the truth...The Christian religion is not the truth; He is the truth...Here we have to remind ourselves that none of the religions, Christianity included, is the truth.”[37]

Many of the theologians of interreligious dialogue are calling for a new form of thought that will produce cooperation among nations. Knitter uses Panikkar’s “’theanthropocosmic’ Mystery – the vital, sustaining, interdependent, growing unity between the Divine (theos), the Human (anthropos) and the World (cosmos)” in a call for Christians to feel a “cosmological faith as God’s call to and God’s need for cooperation.” This “awareness or faith both calls people to interreligious dialogue and makes them critical of it.” This Knitter sees as the basic criterion for people to recognize authentic religion.[38] This is not a criterion based on differing truth-claims, but of the trans-experiential aspects of recognizing and living as fully human beings, following the exemplified examples of our most prominent religious examples, whether that be Jesus Christ, the Unknown Christ, or of the Christ presence of cosmotheandric reality. This call is for cooperation into a more dynamic and trying period of dialogue, where each participant must muster constant self-awareness and discipline to avoid the errors of the past. In closing, Dupuis gives a fine example on the importance of being ever-mindful, with Panikkar’s disagreeing with W. C. Smith’s quest for a universal theology:

As religious faiths differ substantially, so will theologies. What is called for is not a common theological enterprise which levels the differences in a search for a common denominator, but the frank admission of the plurality and diversity of beliefs and the mutual acceptance of the others in their very otherness...The model that needs to be developed then is not that of mutual assimilation through a reduction of faith-content but that of interpenetration and cross-fertilization of the various traditions in their diversities; not a leveling of religious identities but a dialogical openness and mutual enrichment through conversation. Personal commitment to one’s own faith and openness to the faith of others need not be mutually exclusive; rather they ought to grow in direct proportion.[39]

These calls from various theologians are asking for us to transcend the objective mindsets of our cultures, our education, and our ideologies and move towards an open arena of experience, where diversity can empower our individual lives with a fullness of meaning that drives the religious to seek expression within all our relationships.



[1] Excerpts from Panikkar, Raimon. ‘Eruption of Truth: An Interview with Raimon Panikkar,’ The Christian Century Foundation, August 16-23, 2000, pp.834-836. Reprinted by permission on www.religion-online.org .Search using article title. Last viewed March 27, 2004.

[2] Dupuis, Jacques. (1997). Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism. New York: Orbis Books. (382).

[3] Von Sinner, Rudolph. ‘Ecumenical Hermeneutics for a Plural Christianity: Reflections on Contextuality and Catholicity,’ Bangalore Theological Forum, 34 (2), December 2002, p89-115. Reprinted by permission on www.religion-online.org .Search using article title. Last viewed March 27, 2004. (Endnote 42).

[4] D’Costa speaks of Panikkar as having “fused together fulfilment theology and the urgency for an enriching indigenous theology” (17). D’Costa, Gavin. (1986) Theology and Religious Pluralism: The Challenge of Other Religions. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

[5] Panikkar: Eruption of Truth.

[6] Dupuis, Jacques. (1997). Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism. New York: Orbis Books. (382).

[7] Von Sinner, Rudolph. ‘Ecumenical Hermeneutics for a Plural Christianity: Reflections on Contextuality and Catholicity,’ Bangalore Theological Forum, 34 (2), December 2002, p89-115. Reprinted by permission on www.religion-online.org .Search using article title. Last viewed March 27, 2004. (Endnote 43).

[8] Hick, John. & Brian Hebblethwaite, eds. (2001). Christianity and Other Religions: Selected Readings. Oxford: Oneworld. (100).

[9] Knitter, Paul F. (1996). Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility. New York: Orbis Books. (143).

[10] Panikkar: Eruption of Truth.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Dupuis, Jacques. (1997). Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism. New York: Orbis Books. (380).

[14] Sinner.

[15] Hick, John. (1982). God Has Many Names. Philadelphia: Westminster Press. (7).

[16] D’Costa (8-9).

[17] Knitter, 1996. (143).

[18] D’Costa. (122).

[19] Panikkar. Eruption of Truth.

[20] Knitter. 1996. (148-153).

[21] Knitter. 1996. (42).

[22] Knitter, 1996. (62-63).

[23] Sinner, (endnote 38).

[24] Ibid. cosmotheandric reality is also expressed throughout Panikkar’s writings as C. Experience, C. Intuition, C. Revelation.

[25] Sinner.

[26] Knitter 1996. (38).

[27] Dupuis. (266).

[28] Ibid. (152).

[29] Ibid. (151).

[30] Sinner. Endnote 49.

[31] Dupuis. (152).

[32] Ibid. (151).

[33] Ibid.

[34] Ibid. (189).

[35] Ibid. (149-150). Panikkar even includes the secular in religious phenomenon as being a byproduct of Christianity.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Jorgensen, Jonas. (2001). ‘Among the Ruins – Dr. Kaj Baago’s Theological Challenge Revisited,’ Bangalore Theological Forum, Vol.XXXIII, No. 1. Untied Theological College. www.religion-online.org Search using article title. Last viewed March 27, 2004. (Footnote 14).

[38] Knitter, 1996. (35).

[39] Dupuis. (7).


Bibliography

D’Costa, Gavin. (1986). Theology and Religious Pluralism: The Challenge of Other Religions. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Dupuis, Jacques. (1997). Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism. New York: Orbis Books.

Hick, John. (1982). God Has Many Names. Philadelphia: Westminster Press.

& Brian Hebblethwaite, eds. (2001). Christianity and Other Religions: Selected Readings. Oxford: Oneworld.

Knitter, Paul F. (2002). No Other Name?: A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions. New York: Orbis Books.

(1996). Jesus and the Other Names: Christian Mission and Global Responsibility. New York: Orbis Books.

(1990). Pluralism and Oppression: The Theology in World Perspective. Maryland: University Press of America.

Panikkar, Raimon. ‘Eruption of Truth: An Interview with Raimon Panikkar,’ The Christian Century Foundation, August 16-23, 2000, p.834-836. Reprinted by permission on www.religion-online.org . Search using article title. Last viewed March 27, 2004.

Von Sinner, Rudolph. ‘Ecumenical Hermeneutics for a Plural Christianity: Reflections on Contextuality and Catholicity,’ Bangalore Theological Forum, 34 (2), December 2002, p89-115. Reprinted by permission on www.religion-online.org . Search using article title. Last viewed March 27, 2004.