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Raimon Panikkar’s Contribution to Interfaith Dialogue
Abstract
In the visionary thought of Raimon Panikkar, the call for the actual praxis of dialogue among
traditions has become an existential imperative. This essay examines his contributions,
beginning with his call for depth-dialogue or what he calls dialogical dialogue. This invitation
is premised on his cosmotheandric vision, which postulates that the divine, human, and
earthly realities are interrelated and inter-independent. It also invites us to trust that a new
wholistic experience of reality is emerging in which every tradition can play its part in the
unfolding of a new experience (revelation) where all will live in harmony and peace.
Author
Gerard Hall is a Marist priest and Associate Professor of Theology at Australian Catholic
University. As a student of Raimon Panikkar, he was an invited member of the International
Spirit of Religion Project and has ongoing involvement in Panikkar studies and activities.
Contents
Raimon Panikkar’s Contribution to Interfaith Dialogue
Introduction * Trusting the Other * Dialogical Dialogue * Cosmotheandric Vision
* Cosmos/Kosmos * Anthropos * Theos * Theory and Praxis of Interfaith Dialogue
* Panikkar’s Legacy
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Raimon Panikkar’s Contribution to Interfaith Dialogue
Gerard Hall
Introduction
Raimon Panikkar (1918–2010) is a recognized pioneer of interfaith dialogue. This
essay investigates the “cosmotheandric vision” at the heart of Panikkar’s interreligious
hermeneutics with its emphasis on “trusting the other.” The importance he gives to
“dialogical dialogue”—as the meeting of persons rather than minds—sees interfaith dialogue
as a religious experience of faith, hope, and love aimed at the transformation of persons and
religious traditions. While the approach is variously critiqued as too mystical, too optimistic,
and too trusting of the other, Panikkar’s methodological procedures and dialogical strategies
are explored in their own right as paths to authentic dialogue. His emphasis on “diatopical
hermeneutics,” as well as the distinction between “mythic,” “symbolic,” and “rational” forms
of discourse, makes an important contribution to the theory and praxis of interfaith dialogue.
Trusting the Other
If there is to be constructive dialogue among adherents of diverse religious traditions,
which often enough represent “mutually exclusive and respectively contradictory ultimate
systems,”
1
Panikkar asks on what basis can such dialogue proceed? If the goal of such
dialogue is the comparison and contrast of doctrines, beliefs, and practices of different
traditions, we are effectively placing our trust in the rational powers of the intellect to analyze
and interpret diverse sets of data. This is a legitimate exercise, but it is not strictly speaking
3
interreligious dialogue. Rather, he suggests, one is engaged in the phenomenological study of
religions. In other words, Panikkar’s interest is not in the dialogue of theological exchange,
but in the depth-dialogue of religious or spiritual experience, what he calls “dialogical
dialogue.”
2
For Panikkar, then, this level of interreligious or interfaith dialogue has a different
purpose and a distinctive modus operandi. It is first and foremost a religious encounter in
faith, hope, and love.
3
Faith: while beliefs, ideologies, doctrines, and theologies divide people
and traditions, they are nonetheless united by “faith in the ever inexhaustible mystery beyond
the reach of objective knowledge.”
4
Such faith may or may not be overtly “religious” since,
for Panikkar, faith is coterminous with the human person. Hope: this is at once a truly human
and a profoundly religious attitude. Hope is also linked to the religious notion of sacrifice—
one’s eschatological hope for the world enters the heart of the dialogue overriding fear,
weakness, and prejudice. Love: love seeks truth, but it also impels us toward our fellow
human beings, leading us to discover in them what is lacking in us. In faith, hope, and love,
one yearns for the common recognition of truth that does not obliterate the differences or
mute the voices of any person or tradition. This type of dialogue is a meeting of persons
rather than minds and, as with all interpersonal encounters, can only proceed on the basis of
“real mutual trust between those involved in the encounter.”
5
Nonetheless, as an interreligious encounter, we do not place our ultimate faith or trust
in our human partner, but in reality itself. Panikkar calls this a “human cosmic trust” or
“cosmic confidence.”
6
The ultimate ground for our engagement in interfaith dialogue is the
same ground that tells us, despite all signs to the contrary, reality is intelligible, ordered,
trustworthy, true, beautiful, and good. According to most traditions, there is an ultimate,
divine reality that may go by many names. However, this divine reality is also at the center of
4
the cosmos and the heart of humanity. This leads Panikkar to speak of the ultimate reality in
which we trust as the cosmotheandric (cosmos/world; theos/God; aner/human) mystery.
Without being confined to the religious traditions, he considers the cosmotheandric intuition
to be “the original and primordial form of consciousness” and “the emerging religious
consciousness of our times.”
7
It also provides the foundational experience upon which
religious dialogue and even spiritual communion are possible across the traditions.
Dialogical Dialogue
Dialogical dialogue begins with the assumption that the other is also an original source
of human understanding and that persons who enter the dialogue have a capacity to
communicate their unique experiences and understandings to each other. In Panikkar’s terms,
“radical otherness” does not eradicate what he terms “radical relativity” or the primordial
interconnection of all human traditions.
8
Dialogical dialogue is necessarily a risk or adventure
in which participants seek to establish a common ground or circle of meaning in which this
primordial sense of human relatedness will be a catalyst for intersubjective communication.
As indicated, it can proceed only on the basis of a certain trust in the “other qua other”—and
even a kind of “cosmic confidence” in the unfolding of reality itself. But it should not—
indeed cannot—assume a single vantage point or higher view outside the traditions
themselves. The ground for understanding needs to be created in the space between the
traditions through the praxis of dialogue.
9
For Panikkar, the praxis of dialogical dialogue needs to proceed according to what he
terms the “imparative” method, “the effort at learning from the other and the attitude of
allowing our own convictions to be fecundated by the insights of the other.”
10
David Krieger
5
suggests that Panikkar’s notions of mythos, logos and symbol correspond to three modes or
“levels of discourse” which he terms “boundary” (or proclamative), “argumentative” (or
logical), and “disclosive” (or symbolic) discourses.
11
The imparative method of dialogical
dialogue highlights disclosive discourse because it seeks in some way to communicate—and
even extend—the power of each tradition’s symbols.
Although Panikkar develops the notion of dialogical dialogue with more particular
focus on interreligious encounter, the fundamental principles can be equally applied to
intercultural dialogue. I mention this because he conceives dialogical dialogue in terms of
seeking a “new revelatory experience,”
12
which may seem to imply an overtly religious
connotation. However, for Panikkar, revelation is the uncovering of any living symbol which
discloses the “whole,” connecting us to something “beyond,” to transcendence or to any
ultimate human horizon. As noted, Panikkar understands faith as a universal human activity
that expresses itself in particular beliefs. In turn, these may be explicated in religious or
cultural terms—with or without explicit reference to sacred or secular realities. The “new
revelatory experience” of which Panikkar speaks is the goal of diatopical hermeneutics
(interpreting across boundaries).
13
Dialogical dialogue is the suggested method for achieving
it. This kind of dialogue is first of all distinguished from the dialectical dialogue of
argumentative discourse. Panikkar explains:
Dialogue seeks truth by trusting the other, just as dialectics pursues truth by trusting the
order of things, the value of reason and weighty arguments. Dialectics is the optimism
of reason; dialogue is the optimism of the heart. Dialectics believes it can approach
truth by relying on the objective consistency of ideas. Dialogue believes it can advance
along the way to truth by relying on the subjective consistency of the dialogical
partners. Dialogue does not seek primarily to be duo-logue, a duet of two logoi, which
6
would still be dialectical; but a dia-logos, a piercing of the logos to attain a truth that
transcends it.
14
There are certain ground rules or indispensable prerequisites for dialogical dialogue.
These include, first, a deep human honesty, intellectual openness and a willingness to forego
prejudice in the search for truth while maintaining “profound loyalty towards one’s own
tradition.”
15
In fact, the starting point for dialogical dialogue is the internal or intra-personal
dialogue by which one consciously and critically appropriates one’s own tradition. Without
this deep understanding of and commitment to one’s own tradition, there are simply no
grounds for the dialogical dialogue to proceed. Second, one needs a deep commitment and
desire to understand another tradition which means being open to a new experience of truth
since “one cannot really understand the views of another if one does not share them.”
16
This
is not to assume an uncritical approach to the other tradition so much as a willingness to set
aside premature judgments which arise from prejudice and ignorance, the twin enemies of
truth and understanding.
The external or inter-personal dialogue will focus on the mutual testimonies of those
involved in the dialogue keeping in mind that “what the other bears is not a critique of my
ideas but witness to his own experience, which then enters our dialogue, flows with it and
awaits a new fecundation.”
17
These notions of testimony and witness highlight the fact that
dialogical dialogue is primarily the meeting of persons; the aim is “convergence of hearts, not
just coalescence of minds.”
18
Consequently, it is the experience of existential dialogue itself
which is all important. In the encounter, each participant attempts to think in and with the
symbols of both traditions so there is symbolic transformation of experiences. Both partners
are encouraged to “cross over” to the other tradition and then “cross back again” to their own.
In so doing, they mutually integrate their testimonies “within a larger horizon, a new myth.”
19
7
This is rightly called a conversion experience. Not only does each begin to understand the
other according to the other’s self-understanding, but there is growth and dynamism in the
manner that each tradition understands itself.
20
Dialogical dialogue challenges once and for
all the notion that religions or cultures are closed and unchanging systems.
Inter-personal encounter is always followed by intra-personal dialogue (or soliloquy) in
which the participants seek to integrate their new experiences and insights into previously
held beliefs. Dialogue with oneself is as important as dialogue with the other. This will also
require the search for a language capable of expressing the “new revelatory experience”
while remaining faithful to the truth of each tradition. In fact, Panikkar speaks of the need for
allowing a “primordial language” to emerge from the dialogue itself. Such a language is not a
“universal language”; nor can it be artificially created.
The primordial language is hidden in our respective languages not as a language, of
course, but as language. In the effort of communicating with one another—at the beginning
without proper understanding, then slowly by dispelling false imaginations and
misconceptions—we forge a common language, we reach a mutual comprehension, we cross
boundaries.
21
Of course, new understandings and interpretations, let alone a new language,
will need to be tested with respect to both traditions. Intra-personal dialogue again becomes
inter-personal encounter. The process is cyclical, ongoing, and dynamic. Even where
agreement is reached, it is important to be conscious of the finite and limited reality of all
interpretations which remain open and provisional especially in relation to further insights
which will emerge from ongoing dialogical dialogue.
22
Cosmotheandric Vision
8
Panikkar distills his cosmotheandric vision through reflection on the Christian Trinity,
Vedantic non-dualism (advaita), and Buddhist radical interdependence (pratῑtyasamutpᾱda).
He claims, nonetheless, that the threefold pattern—“the triadic myth” or “the
theanthropocosmic invariant”
23
—is “the almost universal trinitarian insight of humanity.”
24
In classical language, the divine, human, and earthly realities, though distinct, are interrelated
and inter-independent. This cosmotheandric intuition of the “threefold structure” and “triadic
oneness” of reality, according to Panikkar, is manifest at “all levels of consciousness and
reality.”
25
One formulation of the cosmotheandric intuition, vision, or experience is the
following:
The cosmotheandric principle could be stated by saying that the divine, the human and
the earthly—however we may prefer to call them—are the three irreducible dimensions
which constitute the real, i.e., any reality inasmuch as it is real . . . What this intuition
emphasizes is that the three dimensions of reality are neither three modes of a
monolithic undifferentiated reality, nor are they three elements of a pluralistic system.
There is rather one, though intrinsically threefold, relation which expresses the ultimate
constitution of reality. Everything that exists, any real being, presents this triune
constitution expressed in three dimensions. I am not only saying that everything is
directly or indirectly related to everything else: the radical relativity or
pratῑtyasamutpᾱda of the Buddhist tradition. I am also stressing that this relationship is
not only constitutive of the whole, but that it flashes forth, ever new and vital, in every
spark of the real.
26
In particular, Panikkar’s formulation of reality as cosmotheandric contests the
assumption that reality is reducible to Being: there is also Non-Being, the abyss, silence, and
mystery. Nor can consciousness be totally identified with reality: there is also matter and
9
spirit. As Panikkar expresses it: “reality is not mind alone, or cit, or consciousness, or spirit.
Reality is also sat and ananda, also matter and freedom, joy and being.”
27
In fact, this is for
Panikkar the fundamental religious experience: “Being or reality transcends thinking. It can
expand, jump, surprise itself. Freedom is the divine aspect of being. Being speaks to us; this
is a fundamental religious experience consecrated by many a tradition.”
28
Three assumptions lay behind Panikkar’s cosmotheandric vision. The first is that reality
is ultimately harmonious. It is neither a monolithic unity nor sheer diversity and multiplicity.
Second, reality is radically relational and inter-independent so that every reality is
constitutively connected to everything that is: “every being is nothing but relatedness”; every
“part” of reality “participates” in and “mirrors” the whole. This corresponds to the ancient
intuition that every reality is a microcosm of the universe; a contemporary version is the Gaia
principle. Third, reality is symbolic, both pointing to and participating in something beyond
itself. We do not have a God separate from the world, a world that is purely material, nor
humans who are reducible to their own thought-processes and cultural expressions. While it
is important to recognize the “symbolic difference” between God and the world, as between
one religion and another, for Panikkar, all cultures, religions and traditions are relationally
and symbolically entwined with each other, with the world in which we live, and with an
ultimate divine reality. The three “dimensions” of the cosmotheandric vision can be
summarized as follows:
Cosmos/Kosmos
29
This world of matter, energy, space, and time is, for better or worse, our home. These
realities are ultimate and irreducible. There is no thought, prayer, or action that is not
radically cosmic in its foundations, expressions, and effects. The earth is sacred, as many
10
traditions proclaim. More than this, there is no sacredness without the secularity of the world
(literally saeculum). Panikkar speaks of “sacred secularity”
30
as the particular way in which
the divine and conscious dimensions of reality are rooted in the world and its cosmic
processes.
He insists, for example, there is something more than pure materiality in a simple
stone.
31
Through its existence in space and time, the stone is connected to the entire universe
with which it shares its destiny. Notions of inert matter, amorphous space, and neutral time
are superseded with reference to the ancient wisdom of anima mundi: the universe is a living
organism constitutive of the Whole.
32
Moreover, science itself is on the way to recovering
something of this lost insight through its recognition of the indeterminacy of matter, the
open-endedness of space, and the indefinability of time. In Panikkar’s terms, there are “no
disembodied souls or disincarnated gods, just as there is no matter, no energy, no spatio-
temporal world without divine and conscious dimensions.”
33
Every concrete reality is
cosmotheandric, that is, a symbol of the “whole.” It is not only God who reveals; poets,
philosophers and mystics have much to teach; the earth has its own revelations, as indigenous
cultures have always known and modern cultures ignore at their peril.
Matter, space, time, and energy are then co-extensive with both human consciousness
and the divine mystery.
34
There is something unknowable, unthinkable, uncanny, or
inexhaustible which belongs to the world as world. This means that the final unknowability
of things is not only an epistemological problem (due to the limits of the intellect) but also an
ontological reality (integral to the very structure of beings). Other traditions will call this
dimension nothingness, emptiness, or even Non-being insofar as it is that which enables
beings to be, to grow, to change—and even to cease-to-be.
35
11
Anthropos
36
Consciousness, for Panikkar, is the human dimension of reality. However,
consciousness is not reducible to humanity: “Consciousness permeates every being.
Everything that is, is cit.”
37
In other words, consciousness relates not only to humans who
know but to everything else that is actually or potentially known—including a far galaxy on
the other side of the universe. In this sense, “the waters of human consciousness wash all the
shores of the real.”
38
From the other perspective, the human person is never reducible to
consciousness. Humans participate in the evolving cosmos of which they are a part; they also
participate in the divine mystery of freedom.
Panikkar presents human experience as a threefold reality: aesthetic, intellectual, and
mystical. The three eyes of sense, reason, and spirit (the “third eye”) are all necessary forms
of human knowing.
39
He critiques technocratic culture for reducing human life to two levels
(the sensible and the rational), forgetting if not despising the third realm (the mystical). This
third realm is not a rarefied psychological state nor an independently acquired knowledge. It
is the mystical or depth-dimension within all human awareness which comes to the fore in the
realization that a particular experience is unique, ineffable, and non-repeatable. Panikkar’s
intention is to show that genuine human experience involves the triad of senses, intellect, and
mystical awareness in correlation with matter, thought, and freedom. Each human act is an
enactment of the cosmotheandric mystery. This is how he explains it:
We cannot sense, think, experience, without matter, logos, and spirit. Thought and
mystical awareness are not possible without matter, indeed, without the body. All our
thoughts, words, states of consciousness and the like are also material, or have a
material basis. But our intellect as well would not have life, initiative, freedom and
12
indefinite scope (all metaphors) without the spirit lurking as it were, behind or above,
and matter hiding underneath.
40
This cosmotheandric insight stresses human identity with the worldly character and
temporal nature of the cosmos; it also manifests a human openness towards the infinite
mystery that ipso facto transcends human thought. The basis of such affirmations is human
experience itself which somehow refuses to sever itself from the totality of Being: we
experience ourselves to be something “more” than mere pawns of nature in the evolution of
matter, passing egos in the flow of time, or temporary insertions in the expansion of space.
This too, he maintains, has been the fundamental insight of every religious tradition.
Theos
41
For Panikkar, the divine dimension of reality is not an “object” of human knowledge,
but the depth-dimension to everything that is. The mistake of Western thought is in
identifying God as a separate if Supreme Being which resulted in that God being turned into a
human projection.
42
Panikkar therefore also speaks of the divine mystery in non-theistic
terms as emptiness, freedom, infinitude.
43
This essentially trinitarian inspiration takes as its
cue the notion that “the Trinity is not the privilege of the Godhead, but the character of reality
as a whole.”
44
As he states, he wants “to liberate the divine from the burden of being God.”
45
Panikkar’s concern is not to overthrow the central insights and experiences of the
theistic traditions but to acknowledge that “true religiousness is not bound to theisms,” not
even in the West.
46
He is especially sensitive to the modern secular critique of traditional
religions in their generation of various forms of alienation, pathology, and disbelief. The
suggestion is that we need to replace the monotheistic attitude with a new paradigm or a new
kosmology precisely in order to “rescue” the divine from an increasingly isolated, alienated,
13
and irrelevant existence. Sardonically expressed, the divine is not a “Deus ex machina with
whom we maintain formal relations.”
47
Rather, the mystery of the divine is the mystery of the
inherent inexhaustibility of all things, at once infinitely transcendent, utterly immanent,
totally irreducible, and absolutely ineffable.
48
Of course, this divine dimension is discernible within the depths of the human person.
Humanity is not a closed system and, despite whatever forms of manipulation and control are
exercised, the aspect of (divine) freedom remains. Nor is the world without its own
dimension of mystery since it too is a living organism with endless possibility as the astro-
physicists, among others, show us. Moreover, as indicated, the earth has its own truth and
wisdom even if this has largely been ignored in recent centuries by too many cultures and
religions.
Theory and Praxis of Interfaith Dialogue
Trusting the other seems to be a good starting point if we are to engage in interfaith
dialogue. Nonetheless, we are right to ask if Panikkar’s approach to the theory and praxis of
interfaith dialogue may be more appealing to the mystics than the theologians. It is also an
approach that is apt to be misunderstood if we assume he is presenting some new theory of
religions and religious pluralism. Panikkar, himself, always understood his contribution to be
one of communicating an experience which he understood to be emerging in many traditions.
He understood this not to be a theory, but a myth. The cosmotheandric vision holds that the
encounter of traditions through dialogical dialogue is crucial in the new situation of radical
pluralism that confronts our world since, in his assessment, no single religion, culture, or
tradition holds a universal solution for either our theoretical or practical human problems.
14
Moreover, Panikkar’s approach is appealing in the manner it develops a critical stance
towards all imperialistic and monistic modes of thinking and acting. No more will one
religion, culture, or tradition impose itself on peoples of diverse if less powerful traditions.
The cosmotheandric vision tells us that a new wholistic experience of reality is emerging in
which every tradition, religious or otherwise, can play its part in the unfolding of a new
experience (revelation) where all will live in harmony and peace.
As a foundational human reality, faith (as distinct from belief) provides the basis upon
which dialogical dialogue among the various traditions can aid in the purification of religions
and cultures. Panikkar’s solution is, of course, a mystical one. The age-old dilemma between
the one and the many is transcended through the Christian experience of the Trinity, the
Hindu concept of advaita and the Buddhist notion of “radical relativity.” Panikkar’s
cosmotheandric vision also includes the insights of the primal and humanistic traditions,
respectively emphasizing the sacredness of the earth and the value and autonomy of the
world. However, we need to ask to what extent his trinitarian inspiration is compatible with
other traditions? We may also ask to what extent it is compatible with the traditions from
which it claims its inspiration?
The primordial category for Panikkar is evidently the cosmotheandric experience
through which he interprets all religions and traditions which may, or may not, share his
enthusiasm for some form of “new revelation.” Apart from theological issues, we note that
Panikkar’s model for interfaith dialogue is grounded in a mythos which gives explicit trust in
the creative power of traditions to be self-correcting. It may be argued that Panikkar gives
insufficient attention to the irrational, pathological, and evil forces hidden within people’s
languages, myths, and symbols. Moreover, such forces will distort communication and
impact negatively on understanding. For all the emphasis on the radical difference between
15
self and other, not all traditions will concur with Panikkar’s confidence in the universal
connectedness of human history. At the very least, these critiques suggest the need to further
develop dialogical strategies that will aid the unmasking of forces that distort communication,
freedom, and rationality.
However, it would be a mistake to assume that Panikkar’s cosmotheandric proposal is
opposed to the demands of reason—which he states holds the “veto power”—or to any
method that will assist in mutual critique and overturn misunderstanding. Panikkar’s
discourse is directed towards another level of meaning without which human traditions are
certainly caught in the endless cycle of power relationships, ideological discord, and
inevitable misunderstandings. This is the level of meaning that reason alone cannot provide—
certainly not if we accept that there is a radical differentiation of human experience and
intelligibility across cultures and religions. His emphasis on the experience and praxis of
dialogical dialogue is important because it emphasizes the communicative possibilities of
symbols. Without some kind of trust in the other and some form of optimism in the human
spirit (or in God, Being, Truth, Non-being, Transcendence, or Life itself), the other must
forever remain the unknown stranger.
Panikkar’s Legacy
Nonetheless, the subtlety of Panikkar’s thought should not be underestimated. This is
evident, for example, in his notions of diatopical hermeneutics, dialogical dialogue, the
imparative method, and his distilling of various levels of discourse (according to mythos,
logos, and symbol). He is surely correct in stressing that it is only in the actual praxis of
dialogue among the traditions that similarities and differences can be explored at the deepest
16
level. The danger, which he highlights, is to assume the supremacy of the logos without first
entering into symbolic and mythic engagement—and without commitment to personal
transformation. The invitation to dialogical dialogue represents a radical departure from the
narrower focus of dialectical dialogue which too readily assumes there is such a thing as pure
truth located in the human intellect.
Panikkar’s dialogical dialogue and cosmotheandric vision do provide an original if
provocative solution to the postmodern challenge of uncovering “what is questionable and
what is genuine in self and other, while opening self to other and allowing other to remain
other.”
49
People and human traditions, whether religious or secular, are capable of growth and
change—especially through their mutual sharing with, receiving from, and critiquing of
themselves and the other in dialogue. This remains Panikkar’s primary insight and lasting
legacy.
1
Raimon Panikkar, “The Invisible Harmony: A Universal Theory of Religion or a Cosmic
Confidence in Reality?” in Toward a Universal Theology of Religion, ed. Leonard Swidler
(Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1987), 125.
2
See Raimon Panikkar, The Intra-Religious Dialogue, rev. ed. (New York: Paulist Press,
1999), 23–40.
3
See Panikkar, Intra-Religious Dialogue, 69ff.
4
Raimon Panikkar, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics (Mahwah, New Jersey: Paulist Press,
1979), 6.
5
Panikkar, Intra-Religious Dialogue, 70.
17
6
See, for example, Raimon Panikkar, Invisible Harmony (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995),
174–177. Panikkar also refers to this as “cosmotheandric confidence.”
7
Raimon Panikkar, The Cosmotheandric Experience (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books,
1993), 55, 77.
8
See, for example, Cosmotheandric Experience, 60.
9
Expanding on this notion, Panikkar states: “Dialogical dialogue, which differs from the
dialectical one, stands on the assumption that nobody has access to the universal horizon of
human experience, and that only by not postulating the rules of the encounter from a single
side can Man proceed towards a deeper and more universal understanding of himself and thus
come closer to his own realization.” See Panikkar, Intra-Religious Dialogue, 130.
10
Panikkar develops this notion of “imparative method,” elsewhere called “dialogical
philosophy,” in “Aporias in the Contemporary Philosophy of Religion,” in Man and World 13,
no. 3–4 (1980): 370–375; and “What is Comparative Philosophy Comparing?” in Interpreting
Across Religious Boundaries, eds. G. J. Larson and E. Deutsch (Princeton, New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1988), 130–135.
11
David Krieger, The New Universalism: Foundations for a Global Theology (Maryknoll,
New York: Orbis Books, 1991), 62–68.
12
Raimon Panikkar, “Some Words Instead of a Response,” Cross Currents (Summer 1979):
195.
13
Diatopical hermeneutics is Panikkar’s phrase for the art of coming to understanding
“across places” (dia-topoi) or traditions which do not share common patterns of
18
understanding and intelligiblity. See Raimon Panikkar, “Cross-cultural Studies: The Need for
a New Science of Interpretation," Monchanin 8, nos. 3–5 (1975): 12–15.
14
Panikkar, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics, 243.
15
Raimon Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 2nd rev. ed. (Maryknoll, New York:
Orbis Books, 1981), 35.
16
Raimon Panikkar, “Verstehen als Überzeugstein,” in Neue Anthropologie, eds. Hans-Georg
Gadamer and Paul Vogler, Philosophische Anthropologie 7 (Stuttgart: Thieme, 1975): 137.
The practical application of this principle is explained elsewhere by Panikkar with reference
to Hindu and Christian understandings of each other: “A Christian will never fully understand
Hinduism if he is not, in one way or another, converted to Hinduism. Nor will a Hindu ever
fully understand Christianity unless he, in one way or another, becomes a Christian.” See
Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 43.
17
Panikkar, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics, 244.
18
Panikkar, Invisible Harmony, 173ff. Panikkar adds that “there is always place for diversity of
opinions and multiplicity of mental schemes of intelligibility.”
19
Panikkar, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics, 244.
20
Growth is a primary category for Panikkar’s understanding of religions, cultures, and
reality itself: “The physical theory of an expanding universe may furnish a fair image of what
happens in the ontological realm as well.” This translates into the cosmotheandric vision: “In
a word, there is real growth in Man, in the World and, I would also add, in God, at least
19
inasmuch as neither immutability nor change are categories of the divine.” See Panikkar,
Intra-Religious Dialogue, 98–100.
21
Panikkar, “What is Comparative Philosophy Comparing?” 132. Panikkar says that he derives
his notion of “primordial language” from the apauruseya insight of the Vedas. The claim here
is that there is no (human) authorship. The language of the Vedas is, in this understanding, an
“ultimate language.” There is no need for authors or other interpreters. Elsewhere, and on a
more practical level, Panikkar says that “each encounter creates a new language.” See Panikkar,
Invisible Harmony, 172.
22
See “Aporias in the Comparative Philosophy of Religion,” 373–375; “What is Comparative
Philosophy Comparing?” 127–129.
23
See chapters by these titles in Raimon Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being: The Gifford
Lectures (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2010), 212–318.
24
Ibid., 212.
25
Raimon Panikkar, The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man (London: Darton,
Longman & Todd, 1973), ix. In Rhythm of Being, he argues that “reality is trinitarian because
the structure of the mind is trinitarian,” 213.
26
Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience, 74.
27
Panikkar, “Religious Pluralism: The Metaphysical Challenge” in Religious Pluralism, ed.
Leroy S. Rouner (South Bend, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 112.
28
Ibid., 114.
20
29
See especially, Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, 276–289.
30
See Raimon Panikkar, Worship and Secular Man (London: Darton, Longman & Todd,
1977), where he develops the notion of “sacred secularity.” See also Panikkar, Rhythm of
Being, 36, 276, 350, 370, 404.
31
See Panikkar’s reflection on stones and the cosmos. Rhythm of Being, 278ff.
32
Ibid., 269ff. On the theme of Anima Mundi—Vita Hominis—Spiritus Dei, see Panikkar,
Cosmotheandric Experience, 135–152.
33
Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience, 79.
34
Ibid., 79.
35
Ibid., 75.
36
See especially, Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, 289–304.
37
Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience, 63.
38
Ibid., 62.
39
Panikkar is critical of the dualist anthropological vision which recognizes the
epistemological importance of only “senses” and “reason” versus the threefold vision of the
tripartite anthropology of body, soul/mind, and spirit: “Man is a triad of senses, reason, and
spirit in correlation with matter, thought, and freedom.” See Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, 234–
244.
40
Ibid., 243.
21
41
Ibid., 304–318.
42
Panikkar defines the situation in the West today as floating somewhere between “qualified
monotheism and practical atheism.” In this regard, he explains his own effort as establishing
that “there is a further possibility, a madhyama or a tertium.” Ibid., 308.
43
Ibid., 318.
44
Ibid., 260.
45
Ibid., 345.
46
Ibid., 322.
47
Panikkar suggests that the divine would have more affinity with the “dancing God” of
Nietzsche. Spoken at The Gifford Lectures: Trinity and Atheism—The Housing of the Divine
in the Contemporary World (Edinburgh, 1989).
48
These four insights regarding the nature of the divine—transcendence, immanence,
irreducibility, ineffability—are evident in the respective attitudes of monotheism, pantheism,
polytheism, and atheism. Panikkar states: “these four traits are mutually incompatible only
within the framework of theism. (Hence) we need to understand them under a more
appropriate horizon.” See Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, 121–170.
49
David Klemm, “Toward a Rhetoric of Postmodern Theology,” Journal of the American
Academy of Religion 55, no. 3 (1987): 456.
