A summary based on Cousins, Ewert. “Trinity and World Reigions”. Journal of Ecumenical Studies.476-498.
Part I: New Phase of Ecumenism and Trinitarian Theology: Method and Insights of Raymond Panikkar
“Perhaps future
historians will designate the period from Nicaea to the twentieth century as an
early stage in the development of the doctrine of the Trinity, for a new phase is ushered in when the Logos
perspective of Christianity opens to encompass the apophatism of Buddhism and
the unifying spirituality of Hinduism” writes Ewert Cousins as he concludes his
work “Trinity and World Religions” after carefully analyzing the unique
contribution of Raymond Panikkar[1]
for Ecumenism through an all encompassing theology of the Trinity.
Every epoch has
its influence in the development of our understanding of the mystery of reality
(divine, human and cosmos). New shades of understanding emerge shedding new
light. There is no point where we could we have grasped everything of the
complex whole. The puzzle was unveiled by continental thought with hermeneutics
and post-modernity. Every thought thereafter was situated within its historical
setting (socio-political-cultural-religious setting in time and place). There
grew a greater awareness about the development of thought with the changing
times. Here we discuss the development of the Christian understanding of divine
in the past and the need to relearn it in our encounter with the East.
In its encounter
with Judaism, Greek thought, early Christianity gradually moved beyond
historical Jesus conceptualizing Jesus as eternal Logos who conceived the
universe and further sustains it through the Spirit. This resulted in the
composition of ‘cosmic hymns’ of the new testament see Johannine prologue (Jn
1.1-18) and Colossians (1.15-20). Thus they began to see Christ as more than mere
redeemer of the believers (Christians).
The line of
thought further developed with the rise of new scholars in similar context like
Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria. There evolved thus Logos Christology
attributing everything good, wise and beautiful in all cultures to Logos who is
fully manifested in the incarnate Christ. This served well even in our
encounter with Islam; they could not challenge us on this point. Later in the
Middle Ages and the Modern Period with the rise of scientific development
theologians like Bonaventure and Teilhard de Chardin extended this concept to
explain the development of the science and secularism. Teilhard would note,
“Christ is the Omega of evolution, drawing the entire universe to its ultimate
development, from the least particle of matter to be expanded consciousness of
the world community”.[2]
Logos Christology
has served well Christianity in the West. It was able to relate with Judaism
and Greek thought and differentiate itself from Islam founded on God’s word
revealed to human beings. Moreover, the
endeavor has succeeded because Graeco-Roman and Semitic cultures were based on
logos – as word and thought. But since its encounter with the East, Christianity
is limping as to come to terms with its major religions and cultures – Buddhism
and Advaidic Hinduism. Either we negate them to be false or we neglect them as
non-existent.
We feel helpless
because we are encountering religions and culture, which have no grounding in
logos and technically negate it. Buddhism for example has no idea of
revelation. It is silent about ultimate reality (God). If they ever explain it
they call it as ‘sunya’ – ‘emptiness
and void’. For the Buddhists, logos is irrelevant because words are harmful and
deceptive. They do not serve the purpose. Hence they enter into meditation.
Their ultimate goal of life is to realize the nothingness of existence - ‘Nirvana’ meaning ‘a blowing out’. Normally,
Christians are confused listening to them. For us they are somewhere between
atheists and moralists.
Advaidic
Hinduism on the other hand denies the duality of our relationship with God;
Hence the irrelevance of Logos to reveal the divine mystery. It contends
Brahman as the ultimate self and the world as not as real as Brahman. Thus it
poses a direct threat to the whole theology of incarnation. For us the theory
seems pantheistic jeopardizing the transcendence of God and the identity of the
self. The problem is intensified as these two doctrines form the core of their
entire spirituality.
Amidst mixed
opinions of theologians and scholars who attempted to dialogue with these
traditions, Panikkar meets the challenge squarely with a new approach. Of the
two possibilities either to change them or find a platform to dialogue Panikkar
chooses the latter. He explains our inability to enter into a dialogue with
these traditions by pointing finger at our platform ‘Christ as the eternal
Logos’. We stand on a platform that is irrelevant to these traditions. Hence he
signals the need to go beyond the universalizing logos Christology. He
discovers a common ground between us and these traditions in the doctrine of
the Trinity.
Panikkar
describes the three persons of the Trinity as three aspects of the divinity,
hence include three forms of spirituality. The Father represents the silent
dimension of the Buddhism. Since he expresses only through the son and of
himself is utterly silent. The Son represents the personalistic dimension of
Christianity, Judaism and Islam. He relates to the world, acts as a mediator.
We are created, sustained and redeemed in him. The Spirit stands for the
imminent dimension of Advaidic Hindusim. It helps us identify the unity in
difference between the Father and the Son. In the Son we realize our
non-duality with the Father and the whole cosmos. The three persons of the
trinity thus represent three different forms of spirituality, three different
approaches to the divine.
The novelty of
his approach is his dialogue founded on pluralism that retains the
individuality of the doctrines at the same time affirming a profound unity.
Unlike the past, he founded his dialogue on the spirituality of religions,
their rich experience of the divine, than on their doctrinal speculations. Besides
a ground breaking insight into a healthy dialogue between the major religious
of the world, he has given us a new insight into the Trinity one that is
founded on our experience of the divine. Yet, we may need to listen to others
to understand the fullness of the mystery as it involves dimensions that are
not prominent in our tradition. From the perspective of other traditions, it is
an awakening to the latent Trinitarian insight in their respective traditions not
so much referring to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit instead the attributes
that give us perspective into the divine/infinite and its non-dual presence in
the world.
[1] Ewert Cousins works on the article of Raymond Panikkar, “Towards an Ecumenical Theandric Spirituality”, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, V (1968) 507-534.
Part II - Examining Panikkar’s Proposal
Our aim is to
examine whether, (i) Panikkar’s attempt to extend the Trinitarian doctrine to
relate with world religions, (ii) and his new insights in our understanding of the
Trinity, are in conformity to the tradition and teaching of the Church.
In the history
of understanding the Trinity there has always been two tendencies one is to restrict it to the revelation in Christ
and Church; the other is to universalize it
to the entire universe – its creation, existence, and history. Panikkar would
fall into the latter category. There were three universalizing currents in the
history of Trinitarian theology: vestige doctrine of Augustinian tradition
(West), doctrine of creation of Greek fathers (East), and appropriation
doctrine of the western fathers and scholastics (medieval times).
Vestige tradition
is founded on the Platonic Augustinianism. It conceived if Trinity was the
first cause of all things as taught in scriptures then everything should have a
Trinitarian stamp. Hence the school began to discover the trace (vestige) of Trinity
in everything that exists from speck of dust, universe, to human being and his inter-personal
relationship. More than a mere academic reflection it was meditation founded on
philosophical and theological principles.
It got further affirmed in the Franciscan cosmic sense. Take for
instance, Robert Grosseteste (ca.
1168–1253),[1] could
trace Trinity in the speck of a dust: its existence represents the power which
brought it into being (father); its beauty/complexity, the shape and form
represent the wisdom (son) through which the dust was made by the power; and
its usefulness represent the good end (spirit)
for which it is made in this case it is useful to understand Trinity. So did
Bonaventure (1221 -1274)[2],
Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173)[3]
found the traces of Trinity in ‘nature and human psyche’ and ‘inter-personal
relationships’. A closer observation of vestige tradition makes plain how it
has traced the presence of Trinity from speck of dust to human inter-personal
growth in a logical progression. Hence what Pannikar does is further expanding
it to larger human community with its history, religion, philosophy and
culture. This again is an older trend but frozen to Greek thought and Semitic
religions (Mediterranean world).
The second universalizing outlook stemmed from Greek fathers
(Athanasius, Basil, Gregory of Nyssa) who understood everything – creation, sustenance,
redemption and sanctification - in terms of Trinitarian dynamic act. Hence they
were able to be aware of the action of the three persons in the universe and
history. Justin and Clement of Alexandria could attribute the wisdom of great
Greek philosophers to the inspiration of the Logos, which later fully
manifested in Jesus. Pannikar’s proposal within this trend would extend the
dynamic activity of Trinity from creation, Christian redemption and
sanctification to universal religious history. This would lead to an
understanding of Trinitarian activity in universal terms.
Doctrine of appropriation on the other hand was an attempt to
understand Trinity from its functions/attributes that distinguish one from the
other. For example, consider power, wisdom and goodness theory of Grosseteste.
It helped first to find the trace of Trinity in the universe, second to relate Trinity
to a non-Christian’s doctrine of divinity. Bonaventure for example speaking of
the Greek philosophers writes that they know the Trinity of appropriation and
not the Trinity of persons which forms part of Christian faith. So do we
surprisingly find Sankara and Ramanuja calling Brahman as sat/cit/ananda (being, consciousness and bliss), in a similar way,
familiar with the Trinity of appropriation than the persons. In method though
Panikkar is faithful to the medieval theologians, he is radically new by
carrying appropriation to a new level of universalization not lingering on
Trinitarian patterns in one or the other religion but discerns a Trinitarian
pattern in world religions as a whole.
Recollect he always speaks of three conceptions of Absolute,
three spiritual attitudes and three spiritualities evolving from them: Father,
the silent/apophatic dimension fully manifest in Buddhism; Son, the
personalistic dimension as one reveals the father appears in Judaism, Islam and
Christianity; and Spirit, the immanent dimension is present in advaidic
Hinduism. Thus he could sum all the religions in the Trinitarian insight of the
Christian tradition with openness and profound respect for their intuition.
Panikkar has yet another job to be done. His new insights
especially one that equates father to a profound silence/nothingness and
undifferentiated union to the spirit has to prove itself against the
traditional doctrine of Trinity: power to father and goodness to spirit. While
attributing unity to spirit is a minor problem however non-negligible as it
renders the advaitin insight to Spirit, the problem with the understanding of
Father as silence appears quite opposed to traditional doctrine of Trinity.
If we dig the history of the development of the doctrine of Trinity
within the church we find similar understanding in the writings of Ignatius of
Antioch who compares father to son as silence to word. The son therefore is the
word that emerges from the silence. Seen from another perspective, if we strip
son, the Word through whom the father manifests, what remains is profound
silence. This thinking did not however become part of the creeds or any other
formulation of classical Trinitarian theology. But by way of theological
reasoning in can be applied to other traditions of Trinitarian theology. In the
vestige tradition, take the case of dust, if we mentally strip the matter and
form from the dust what remains is silence. We at times have glimpse if through
meditation we tend to go beneath the form. Similarly can we analyse human
psyche where memory (the historicity and learning) is analogous to the father. Later
it is also attributed to the soul.
But can we associate apophatic dimension to the father who is
always viewed as a dynamic priniciple, the fountain/source/spring/root of
existence? Yes, because although these theologians emphasize the dynamic
fecundity/productivity of the father they hint at his silent depths from which
springs the power. This is more evident in the contradictory attribution of
paternity and unbeggotteness to the father. The apophatic/silent dimension is
rooted in the unbegotteness of the father. Such expressions are also found in
the mystical traditions of East like Pseudo-Dionysius.
Panikkar hence with his new approach has brought to light an
aspect of Trinity which has been elusive nonetheless every present since the
beginning. Moreover we note that he is rooted in Christian tradition but open
to other spiritual traditions. As a result we find originality in his response
to meet this new situation (encounter with world religions especially east). He
has helped us realize that ‘all spiritual traditions are dimensions of each
other and that at this point of history individuals throughout the world are
becoming heir to the spiritual heritage of mankind’.[4]
For us Christians this implies that we would not know the depths of our mystery
unless we take seriously our encounter with world religions, in this case,
Buddhism and Advaidic Hinduism.
[1]
More on Robert Grosseteste see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/grosseteste/
[2]
More on Bonaventure see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/02648c.htm
[3]
More on Richard of St. Victor see http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/13045c.htm
[4] Cousins, “Trinity and World
Religions”, 497.
