"Without Ceasing to be a Christian": A Catholic and Protestant Assess the Christological Contribution of Raimon Panikkar 1506418546, 9781506418544

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“Without Ceasing to Be a Christian”

“Without Ceasing to Be a Christian” A Catholic and Protestant Assess the Christological Contribution of Raimon Panikkar

ERIK RANSTROM AND BOB ROBINSON

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“WITHOUT CEASING TO BE A CHRISTIAN” A Catholic and Protestant Assess the Christological Contribution of Raimon Panikkar Copyright © 2017 Fortress Press. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [email protected] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209. Cover design: Lauren Williamson Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-1854-4 eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-1855-1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z329.48-1984. Manufactured in the U.S.A.

To my wife, Lindsey, who helped to see the long trajectory of this project through to successful completion, always with wise and loving companionship. To my wife, Heather (Robinson), for her loving support and patient companionship over the five years during which this book has been written.

Contents

1.

Acknowledgments

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Introduction Erik Ranstrom

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Unknown Jesus or Unknown Christ? The Diversity in Panikkar’s Early Christology

1

Erik Ranstrom

2.

The “Orthodox” Creativity of Panikkar’s Early Dialogue with Hinduism

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Erik Ranstrom

3.

A Critical Reading of Panikkar’s Cosmotheandric Christology

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Erik Ranstrom

4.

A Constructive Protestant Appreciation and Interaction

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Bob Robinson

5.

The Great Tradition Ruptured? A Constructive Interaction and Critique Bob Robinson

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6.

A Concluding Dialogue about Panikkar between the Authors

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Erik Ranstrom and Bob Robinson Bibliography

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Permissions List

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Acknowledgments

We each have many people to thank. Erik: I would like to express my thanks for those who helped to make this book possible. First, my co-author, Bob Robinson, who has been on this journey with me for several years, from AAR conferences at San Francisco to a meeting in Toronto, more AAR meetings from Chicago to Atlanta, as well as countless emails and phone calls. Through it all he has modeled for me a true example of a professional scholar and theologian. I have learned much from him in almost every area imaginable, and I hope to continue to do so moving forward. Next, I would like to thank the various individuals who offered their expertise and knowledge of Panikkar as I moved towards the completion of this book, especially Milena Carrara-Pavan, Joseph Prabhu, Young-Chan Ro, and Michiko Yusa. My connection with each of you, and through you, to Panikkar, is invaluable. My graduate students at Our Lady of the Elms College in Chicopee, MA, during the spring semester of 2015 provided lively and creative discussion on Panikkar that allowed for genuine growth in understanding. I would like to especially recognize Dr. Martin Pion of Elms College for introducing me to Panikkar close to fifteen years ago. Finally, a debt of gratitude is owed to Fr. Robert Imbelli, Francis X. Clooney, S.J., and Dr. Catherine Cornille for their many years of guidance and tutelage as I studied Panikkar for the better part of eight years as their M.A. and Ph.D. student at Boston College. Bob: I am grateful for that first encounter with Erik some five years ago when our paths met in San Francisco, and for how much

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I have learnt from your splendid research, Erik, especially into the early Panikkar years. My portion of the book was also helped in many and various other ways. Anne Aalbers, Bryden Black, Hugh Bowron, John Roxborogh, and Derek Tovey each read (or listened) and offered both encouragement and critical engagement with my content. Equally important in the evolution of my own engagement with Panikkar were lecture-room dialogue with classes at Laidlaw College, the responses and questions in Research Seminars on the Christchurch Campus of Laidlaw College, and by the stimulating range of reactions to conference presentations in the United States and here in Aotearoa, New Zealand. I’m also grateful for a senior research role at Laidlaw with its supportive provision of research and travel funding.

Introduction ERIK RANSTROM

Raimundo Alemany Panikkar (1918–2010)—or as he is more widely known today, Raimon Panikkar—lived, wrote, and taught on three continents over an astoundingly long period, stretching from roughly the close of World War I until the first decade of the twentyfirst century. During that span, he published over three hundred articles and sixty books on a wide range of scientific, philosophical, cultural, and theological topics as seismic shifts in global cultural life were occurring—a point of which he was keenly aware. This very considerable output dealt with the interface between various aspects of Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and modernity, often in novel and creative ways. Panikkar’s complexity of thought and wideranging experience is remarkable, and his influence extends far beyond the Catholic, and even broader Christian world. There has been a growing but selective interest in Panikkar since his death in 2010 at both the popular and scholarly levels, and that trend may well continue and even expand in the coming decades. In recent years there have been multiple symposia dedicated to Panikkar’s legacy at academic conferences and other special events in the US and abroad, the release of Panikkar’s Opera Omnia in several languages, the publication of wide-ranging biographies and prognostications of his influence and legacy, and innumerable uploads onto YouTube of audio-visual interviews conducted during Panikkar’s last years. To understand better the dynamics involved with this process, we may ask about the factors that have contributed to this renewed interest, and about the kinds of socio-cultural and

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theological trends that are providing support for this revival of interest in Panikkar. How might Christian theologians, like Bob and I, respond to this reality? It is instructive to consult the historical context of both Panikkar’s work and that of contemporary Panikkar scholarship. During the mid- to late-twentieth century, Panikkar was known as an emerging figure within the world of Catholic theology, appealing both to Western theologians pondering the possibilities of theological inquiry at the boundaries of interreligious and cross-disciplinary explorations, as well as to Indian and more broadly Asian theologians doing theology in the global South. However, a shift began to take place, though it is difficult to determine precisely when this happened, as Panikkar increasingly became a symbol and authenticator of a new religiosity tangentially related to his previous Christian context. As a result, he is, in the eyes of many, an exemplar of intercultural and interreligious life that goes beyond conventional belonging to a single tradition. Panikkar appears as an authoritative, yet gentle voice in an era when religious pluralism is nearly professed as a creedal norm and syncretism is increasingly endorsed and practiced at both the popular and intellectual levels, particularly with respect to non-Western thought and practices. Panikkar’s own writings seemingly herald a “new religious consciousness,” and a post-Christian “Christianness” that has emerged in a declining Christian ethos in the global North. Panikkar’s synthetic appropriation of diverse worldviews and religions, predicated upon experience rather than doctrine, is also attractive to “religious nones” and “spiritual but not religious” seekers, who may find Panikkar’s distinctive pluralism an agreeable, if needlessly complicated representative of their spiritual inclinations. In the highculture iterations of this orientation, there are ample scholars in theology, religious studies, and philosophy who find Panikkar’s path of interculturality a preferable alternative to traditional Christian doctrines and faith-contexts. To sum up, Panikkar was once championed by many as a Christian of the future, a pioneer whose time would perhaps come to pass in the mind of the Catholic Church, and beyond in the wider Christian world. It is quite possible that

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the religious future in question has arrived, with Panikkar as one of its most brilliant representatives. The sad irony in the arrival of this future, however, is that the Christian tradition is only faintly recognizable in this newly configured reality. It is also only faintly recognizable in the more recent interpretations of Panikkar. Panikkar’s words and ideas are to some degree at the origin of the movements that seek to follow his example with scant mention of his Christian identity and inspiration, except as a scaffolding for his future evolution. Though Panikkar draws upon various and diverse Hindu, Buddhist, Christian, and secular traditions in his works, it would be unwarranted to claim that he represents any of these traditions in an orthodox manner. Rather, he brings them together in a highly distinctive Panikkarian way, even as he respects tradition and insists upon the necessity of discovering truth inter-subjectively. Beyond his idiosyncratic and personal style, the present shape to Panikkar’s legacy is also partially a result of a dialectical relationship with his audience that, following his move to the United States and especially Santa Barbara in the 1970s, was largely post-Christian. Had Panikkar remained in the European context where he spent the majority of his life until middle-age teaching in Catholic universities, perhaps Panikkar’s intellectual history would have been written differently. It is quite possible that Panikkar, discerning the academic and spiritual contexts where he was living and working, decided that he must undergo a kenōsis into the traditions and life of peoples that were outside of the church, in order to keep pace with the cultural movement of global humanity. This was part of Panikkar’s genius and gift, and it is easy to appreciate the range of Panikkar’s mind and more importantly his heart, as well as his capacity to recognize and call forth from the most diverse human traditions and populations something of their inner depth and mystery. However, is there more to Panikkar than these audiences and contexts recognize? Is the post-Christian portraiture of the thinker and mystic something of a selective caricature? After all, the vast majority Panikkar’s articles and books introduce him as a thinker with deep ties to the Roman Catholic Church. Publisher commendations prominently mention that he was ordained as a Catholic priest, holding a doctorate in

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Sacred Theology from the Pontifical Lateran University in Rome. There is a concreteness in Panikkar’s ecclesial identity that stands in tension with the ethereal and intangible quality of the universalistic mysticism often celebrated. Does Panikkar scholarship acknowledge this tension adequately? There is a sense in which Panikkar devoted the entirety of his life to nourishing the sacramental bond which tied him to the Catholic Church. Perhaps ecclesial identity has been overlooked in recent times as an important factor in Panikkar studies. Panikkar went so far as to state in a Festschrift honoring the fiftieth anniversary of his Catholic priesthood that he is a Christian in a way that he is not Hindu, or Buddhist, or secularist. My “ekklesia is a Christian one” he wrote, professing his community to be the church, because “my belief tallies with what I believe to be the core of the christian belief and I recognize myself in communion with the christian church.”1 In an essay entitled, “On Christian Identity,” published when he was in his eighties, Panikkar wrestled with the nature of Christian identity by reflecting upon the relationship between the individual and the community. The individual, he wrote, has no prerogative to define what being Christian is in a private manner; the community discerns the meaning of Christian faith. The ekklesia, even at this late stage in his thinking, is linked in a special way with the “sociological Christian,” who belongs to a concrete ecclesial tradition, as well as and the “Catholic Christian,” for Panikkar “wishes to retain the scandal and concreteness of the geohistorical symbol of Rome.”2 Although the burden of a great part of this book will be to demonstrate that Panikkar’s particular Christology is in certain respects insufficiently stated, we are legitimated to engage Panikkar from this Christian perspective precisely because of texts like this. The ecclesial communities recognized as Christian, by Panikkar’s own admission, have the obligation and duty to discern the meaning of his thought. Bob and I are offering here a kind of ecumenical sensus fidelium. This sense of accountability to the Christian tradition receives fur1. Raimon Panikkar, “Self-Critical Dialogue” in The Intercultural Challenge of Raimon Panikkar, ed. Joseph Prabhu (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 264–65. 2. Raimon Panikkar, “On Christian Identity,” in Many Mansions: Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity, ed. Catherine Cornille (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 140.

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ther nuance by Panikkar himself in the English translation of his Opera Omnia recently published by Orbis Press. A significant appendix is found in vol. III, part II of “Christianity,” entitled, “To my Bishop.”3 Striking for its personal nature and for being included in the collection of his writings on Christianity that he himself chose, the editor prefaces the excerpts of Panikkar’s letters to his Bishop throughout the years as intending “to bear witness to his priestly commitment, as he himself expressed it in his personal, sacramental, and institutional relationship with the head of the diocese in which he was incardinated until the end of his life.”4 Indeed, throughout these letters, one is struck by the fraternal affection between Panikkar and the late Archbishop Patrick D’Souza of the Diocese of Varanasi (“my dear Bishop and Brother Patrick”5), his commitment to (indirect) collaboration with the Vatican through consultation with D’Souza (“the following are the points I believe are worthy of the attention of His Holiness, John Paul II, at request of the Vatican curia,”6), and his profound sense of the Christian mysteries as they take ecclesial form in the Catholic Church. For example, Panikkar muses upon the spiritual basis of the priest-bishop relationship with D’Souza. Obedience to episcopal authority, according to Panikkar, is much more than a juridical duty but the “fruit of an act of faith.”7 This act of faith in the office of the episcopacy is none other than the obedience of faith, a traditional Catholic instinct that Panikkar did not consider obsolete or irredeemably oppressive. On the contrary, Panikkar entrusted his faith, and his discernment of that faith and its directionality, to his Bishop. D’Souza, in turn, exercised his episcopal authority through his own faith in the Spirit’s movements in Panikkar’s life. Panikkar suggests to D’Souza that it is more his task “to contribute to building up of the Body by study, prayer, reflection, and life, than by organizing, directing, and committing myself to a particular project,” but adds that he “may be mistaken and is always willing to obey.”8 3. Raimon Panikkar, “Appendix: A Letter to My Bishop,” in Christianity: A Christophany. Opera Omnia, vol. III, part 2 (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2016), 285–89. 4. Ibid., 285. 5. Ibid. 6. Ibid., 287–88. 7. Ibid., 285. 8. Ibid., 286.

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D’Souza concurs, and offers his blessing to Panikkar’s particular vocation in the church: “I feel that you are in the right path, Raymond, insisting on your Mauna, searching for more and more time with the Lord. . . . So take all the solitude you can.”9 In a candid moment, Panikkar confided to D’Souza his desire for the meaning of his life, intimately tied to his destiny in the church: “I was thinking today that if I could have contributed to the opening of the church towards other religions—not only on the practical level—specifically suggesting new lines for a viable theology of religions, I would not have spent my life in vain.”10 It would seem that Panikkar’s bond with the church, and, therefore, the Christian tradition in its totality, is more than an accident of his birth, a sentimental attachment to the religion of his childhood, or a convenient ecclesial-political exigency. It is a constitutively unique dimension of his personhood closely linked with his self-definition, which is none other than that of being a partaker of the Logos made flesh, with a mission in the body of Christ. We may raise a question at this point. Would many who read of Panikkar today recognize, or actively endorse, this dimension of Panikkar’s identity? In addition to ecclesial identity, which exists on the social-sacramental level, Panikkar was also a theologian and a philosopher who made claims about the nature of reality. Recent scholarship has produced important works on Panikkar’s hermeneutics, philosophy of language, philosophical anthropology, and contribution to peace studies, but it should not be forgotten that such disciplines are ancillary to the realist theological metaphysic at the heart of Panikkar’s life and work. This realist theological metaphysic is none other than what Panikkar calls the mystery of Christ. In his intellectual quest to engage the christic mystery, Panikkar displayed a deep bond with the Catholic intellectual tradition, making ample mention of Augustine, Aquinas, liturgical prayers (often in Latin), and extensively citing papal teaching (very frequently from the first half of the 20th century), all of which animate his texts in generous and surprising ways. From his earliest publications to his last, regardless of the topic at hand, Panikkar expressed himself by drawing upon the Bible and 9. Ibid., 287. 10. Ibid.

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Christian theological categories, and whether theologians ultimately agree with his progressive thinking is irrelevant to the more basic datum of the omnipresence of Christian sources, and its significance for conceiving of Panikkar as, among other things, a Christian intellectual. The rejoinder may be offered, however: Was Panikkar’s continued use of Christian language simply a matter of what the Buddhist tradition calls upāya, or “skillful means?” Was Panikkar employing Christian terminology solely to communicate liberating post-Christian realities garbed in Christian language for the epistemic benefit of an audience predisposed to distrust a religious grammar alien to its own credo, a sort of missiological inculturation in reverse? This is an implausible suggestion, as it would imply an outsider stance to the Christian community and tradition, which, as we have seen, is alien to Panikkar’s professed fidelity to the historical and institutional church. Another objection may be that Panikkar’s use of Christian grammar is merely equivocal, expressing truths that can just as easily be rendered in other idioms, and perhaps more effectively. It is true that Panikkar insisted upon “homeomorphic equivalents” between traditions and the flexibility to communicate creatively in the religious language of others, but he was equally clear that he had not renounced his Christian identity, and did not recommend that it be conveniently dismissed with its insights replaced by those of other traditions. Notwithstanding his wish for “mutual fecundation” with religions and the appropriate amendments to Christian doctrine, the Christian spiritual and theological tradition remained for Panikkar, a privileged, if not absolutely unique, locus for the experience of God in the world. Yet, there is tension here that must be faced squarely and directly, with major implications for the future of Panikkar studies and the continuation of his legacy. Is Panikkar the herald of a new religious consciousness or the faithful son of the church, or both? Will Panikkar be interpreted, remembered, and imitated as a post-Christian spiritual sage, a brilliant spiritual intellectual of the pluralist epoch, or as a Christian theologian? What is lost when the significant Christian element of his work is not fully and vigorously engaged? We

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would like to propose that Panikkar was a Christian theologian, and notwithstanding his interest and explorations in other spheres, that he remained committed to reconciling his insights with those of the Great Tradition, even as this became ever more belabored.11 Coming to a greater awareness of Panikkar’s Christian identity has important ramifications for the future of Panikkar studies and research, and for Christian theology in general. From our different vantage points and experiences within Christianity, we both agree that the wave of enthusiasm for Panikkar in recent years has not translated into our respective ecclesial and theological contexts. The decline in interest in taking Panikkar seriously as a theologian is discernible in the dearth of references to him in large segments of Catholic and Protestant thought on Christianity and the religions. Panikkar’s work is rarely engaged at theological conferences, and outside of Asian theologians and some Western theologians, his influence is almost non-existent in Christian intellectual circles. These two dynamics, it seems to us, are occurring simultaneously, and reinforcing each other. The more post-Christian intellectuals and spiritual seekers adopt and advance Panikkar’s thought as an intercultural and pluralist alternative to traditional Christianity, the more theologians are likely to ignore him; the more theologians ignore him, the more passionately post-Christian intellectuals propose Panikkar as an eschatological prophet whose life and thought holds the key for a new religious future. The isolation between Panikkar studies and the traditions he lived is sadly ironic. Panikkar advocated the dialogue of religions, and wished for his life and work to be a conduit for that dialogue, rather than become the basis for a separate ideology itself. It makes good sense to include Christianity and Christian theologians into the circle of Panikkar studies, for it was Panikkar’s great desire that his thought would not only be a gateway into the religious dialogue, 11. Bob and I understand the Great Tradition as that broad and ever expansive stream of Christian tradition common to the oikumene and marked by the profession of the faith of the apostles through canon, creed, and council that Jesus Christ is Lord. We recognize and celebrate that the Great Tradition has taken shape across the centuries in various historical epochs, cultures, and ecclesial traditions. How we understand the Great Tradition will become clear in our respective chapters, and it is the lens through which we will assess Panikkar’s vast writings on Christology.

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but also leave a lasting impact on the church’s growth in relating to other religions. As Catholic and Protestant theologians, we hold that the Christian theological tradition not only has much to learn from Panikkar about the theology of religions, but also stands to profit from his work in the realms of Christology, Trinitarian theology, theological anthropology, theology of culture, eucharistic theology, and ecclesiology. Panikkar’s voice is an enriching one, with significant potential to contribute to theological discussions occurring in our time, particularly around Christology. Yet, even as Panikkar sought to remain faithful to the core of the Christian tradition and remain in communion with the ekklesia in the midst of intercultural and intrareligious encounter, we may ask if his appropriation of other religions calls for more careful reflection. According to the Panikkar narrative, the most diverse traditions found harmony within his very self. What would be impossible to hold together for many: the church, science, Buddhism, atheism, and so on, Panikkar brings together with a certain grace and even beauty, seemingly radiating indivisible wholeness. The “invisible harmony” that Panikkar writes about, in the first place, is one that he claims to have experienced in his life. He insisted that such an existential confession and personal discovery always lay at the root of his words and ideas. There is much to reflect upon in Panikkar’s peaceful and fruitful integration of currents of human traditions that have sometimes been at odds, or even in deep conflict, with each other. And yet, what if from the perspective of others in the ecclesial body, the Christian faith-community broadly pictured, there are disharmonies and discordant tones within his existential and liturgically enacted “invisible harmony?” It is clear that Panikkar saw himself, among other things, as belonging to a cosmic yet historical ecclesial tradition, the church, a tie that was important to him personally, communally, and intellectually. It is not unreasonable on these grounds for Christians to assess the meaning of his thought from an ecumenical perspective which is largely absent in Panikkar. As our ecclesial traditions, both Catholic and Protestant, reconsider their identities in this age of dialogue and pluralism, there is growing reason to consider both the merits and ambiguities of Panikkar’s legacy.

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Panikkar was a bold and daring thinker, who ventured into territory that many Christians would consider risky. Even as a young philosopher and theologian, Panikkar warned of a pseudo-Christian intellectual conservatism, and rejected it as a less than Christian “prudence of the flesh.”12 Later, after his travels to India and interreligious conversion, he would claim that “I ‘left’ as a christian, I ‘found’ myself a hindu, and I ‘return’ a buddhist, without having ceased to be a christian.”13 The last part of that quotation serves as part of the title for our book. We are not questioning whether Panikkar ceased to be Christian, which as we have shown above, is untrue. Yet, it would be surprising if Panikkar’s pioneering spirit did not yield both gift and ambiguity that calls for deeper reflection. What to do when a theologian is both an exemplar of christological revisionism as well as a resource for a fresh engagement with orthodoxy? What can we learn from Panikkar, and what could Panikkar perhaps have learned, or re-learned, from the wider Christian tradition? This volume aims for a balanced appraisal of Panikkar’s theological legacy, with a special focus on its relevance for the christological tradition. This christocentric focus is fitting for a number of reasons. First, it is Christ who is the center of Panikkar’s project, and consequently the christological tradition has the most to learn from such tantalizing notions as the “Unknown Christ” of other religions, but also the most to lose from following him too closely. We seek both an appreciation of Panikkar’s contribution to Christology in the context of interreligious and intercultural dialogue, as well as a critical discernment of some aspects of its appropriateness in light of the broader christological tradition. In the process, this inquiry will offer the field of Panikkar studies a distinctive interpretation and evaluation of Panikkar’s Christology and a sense of his multi-layered significance for Christian theology.14 12. Raimon Panikkar. “On the Christian Meaning of Life,” in Christianity: The Christian Tradition, Opera Omnia, vol. III, part 1 (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2015), 47. 13. Raimon Panikkar. “Faith and Belief: A Multireligious Experience,” in The Intrareligious Dialogue, rev. ed. (Mahwah: Paulist, 1999), 42; lack of capitals original. 14. There have been other surveys of Panikkar’s thought similar to the one that Bob and I are undertaking. We respect these works, and have learned from them, even as we have developed a unique study that is self-consciously ecumenical and wide-ranging with respect to Panikkar’s entire corpus, including his very early writings. We have also focused specifically on his Christology in a way that is neither simply laudatory nor simply critical. On the Protestant side,

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Our project was conceived shortly after the American Academy of Religion annual meeting in 2011, held in San Francisco. There, Bob and I met each other for the first time as fellow presenters on an international panel aptly titled “Raimundo Panikkar’s Christological Contribution.” I was presenting on Panikkar from the Catholic tradition, and offering an alternative interpretation of Panikkar’s Christology in the context of Dominus Iesus and then-untranslated texts from his early writings; Bob was presenting on Panikkar from the perspective of the Anglican-Evangelical tradition, and in relationship to Protestant missiologists and theologians of culture. We recognized in conversations afterwards that our papers had much in common: a fidelity to the Great Tradition, an unmistakable enthusiasm about Panikkar, mingled with reservations, a desire to deepen the study of Panikkar ecumenically with attention to Christology and theological method, and a conviction that we could remedy a lacuna in Panikkar studies. In the vein of recent ecumenical book projects, we decided to venture a bi-optic study in the spirit of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together”15 that would highlight points of common ground as well as reveal some intriguing ecumenical differences in our readings of Panikkar, which we will return to in the “Conclusion.” Over the last several years, our reflections have continued in conversations with each other, as well as with other interested scholars, Catholic and Protestant. We have reached several milestones, including the publication of articles related to this research, and for Erik, the completion of a doctoral dissertation on the early Christology of Panikkar see Kajsa Ahlstrand, Fundamental Openness: An Enquiry into Raimundo Panikkar's Theological Vision and its Presuppositions (Uppsala: The Swedish Institute for Missionary Research, 1993); Jyri Komulainen, An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion? Raimon Panikkar’s Pluralistic Theology of Religions (Studies in Christian Mission 30; Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2005). On the Catholic side, see Cheriyan Menacherry, Christ: The Mystery in History: A Critical Study on the Christology of Raimon Panikkar (Bern: Peter Lang, 1996); Camille Gangasingh Macpherson. 1996. A Critical Reading of the Development of Raimon Panikkar’s Thought on the Trinity (Lanham: University Press of America), and Dominic Veliath, Theological Approach and Understanding of Religions: Jean Danielou and Raimundo Panikkar: A Study in Contrast (Bangalore: Kristu Jyoti, 1988). 15. “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” was a 1994 document that covered areas of ecumenical common ground, common witness, and purposeful future directions between Evangelicals and Catholics. It was signed by leading Evangelical and Catholic scholars, minsters, and prelates in the U.S., relying on the tradition of scripture and the Nicene Creed. See also Evangelicals and Catholics Together at Twenty: Vital Statements on Contested Topics, ed. Timothy George and Thomas G. Guarino (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press), 2015.

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at Boston College. It is our hope that the ecumenical dimension of the book might enrich contemporary Christology in the context of interreligious dialogue across confessional differences and draw in a more ecumenical readership to the works of Panikkar. It should also be noted that our respective Catholic and Protestant perspectives are ecumenical in and of themselves, lending fittingness to the dialogical nature of the book. Our book will be divided into two parts featuring chapters by Ranstrom and Robinson, followed by a concluding dialogue between the authors. Each author will present a theological appreciation and critique of Panikkar’s works from the perspective of Christology and their respective ecclesial traditions, Catholic and Protestant. We both bring to the book distinctive backgrounds and preparations for this study. Bob is Senior Research Fellow in the School of Theology at Laidlaw College in New Zealand. His doctoral dissertation at the University of London was a christological assessment of Hindu-Christian dialogue, which has been since published as Christians Meeting Hindus: An Analysis and Critique of the Hindu-Christian Encounter.16 It was during this period that Bob first studied Panikkar, and he has continued that study throughout the years, while also publishing Jesus and the Religions: Retrieving a Neglected Example for a Multi-cultural World17 and a number of academic articles and chapters in various publications. Erik is Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies at Rosemont College in Bryn Mawr, PA, and successfully defended a doctoral dissertation at Boston College in 2014 entitled “The Unknown Body of Christ: Towards a Retrieval of the Early Panikkar’s Christology of Religions.”18 Our hope is that this combination of a senior Evangelical and junior Catholic scholar will provide a thought-provoking route of access to the fascinating and intimidating world of Panikkar’s thought. 16. Bob Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus: An Analysis and Theological Critique of the Hindu-Christian Encounter in India (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004, and Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2011). 17. Bob Robinson, Jesus and the Religions: Retrieving a Neglected Example for Multi-cultural World (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2012). 18. Erik John Ranstrom, “The Unknown Body of Christ: Towards a Retrieval of the Early Panikkar’s Christology of Religions” 2014; accessible at http://dlib.bc.edu/islandora/object/bcir:104183.

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Fundamental to Erik’s chapters is a chronological framework and analysis of Panikkar’s theological development. It has been noted that chronology is notoriously ambiguous in determining the genesis of Panikkar’s ideas. There have been multiple translations of his texts in different languages over the years, sometimes separated by a decade or more, with some of these (re)publications asynchronous with his contemporary thinking. This, in addition to an overall lack of systematic consistency and the experimental and experiential nature of his reflections, makes any attempt at systematization perilous. Nevertheless, Ranstrom’s chronology takes into account this nebulosity, as he argues for the presence of conceptual fluidity within the typological categories themselves. For instance, Ranstrom argues in chapter one for the recognition of a fundamental tension within Panikkar’s early theology of religions. There is, he argues, a fluctuation between christological inclusivism and an incipient pluralism, hinging on an inconsistent approach to the Incarnation. Consequently, Ranstrom argues that—contrary to such theologians as Dupuis and D’Costa —the 1964 edition of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism is not Panikkar’s worthiest contribution to the Great Tradition, which is rather a lesser known christological reflection on the Old Testament figure Melchizedek. Chapter two draws upon Panikkar’s fascination with Christian sacrifice and the Cross during his Opus Dei period, and follows that same theological interest into a later comparative work on Christian and Hindu worship where he suggests a fruitful Christian attempt to better understand the integration of life and worship through reflection upon various forms of Hindu life and thought. Taken together, chapters one and two reveal Panikkarian projects quite different from his later work, and retrieve the possibility that there exists within Panikkar’s corpus a Jesus-centered understanding of Christ and the religions that privileges the Incarnation, the Cross, and the Eucharist within his understanding of other religions. Chapter three is Ranstrom’s reading of the contextual and intellectual factors that led to the definitive breaking apart of this tension between inclusivist and pluralist approaches to Christ and the religions seen in his early work, resulting in the well-known cosmotheandric Christology of later publications. A key resource for

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Ranstrom’s assessment throughout is the Anglican theologian and missiologist George Sumner and his work on “final primacy.” Bob offers sequential appreciative and appropriately critical chapters on Panikkar’s Christology, framing his reflections within a number of wide-ranging theological and missiological debates in both the Protestant global North and South. Focusing on the Panikkar corpus from the late 1970s onwards, Bob carefully parses Panikkar’s thought for enduring elements worthy of consideration and even reception by Protestants, and for common ground between Protestants and Panikkar concerning issues of central importance to his more radical work. Given what he sees as Panikkar’s relentless christocentrism, Bob works to dispel the notion that Protestant (including Evangelical) readers and Panikkar are necessarily on opposite sides of the Christian theological spectrum on issues as challenging as science and modernity, theological contextualization, ecology, cosmology, and even multiple religious belonging—while noting where Protestants could learn from Panikkar. Bob’s critiques of Panikkar in chapter five are not oriented towards differences between Protestant and Catholic theologies, but—exemplifying the ecumenical dimension of the book—with what Protestant and Catholic theologians hold together in assenting to the historical and universal density of the Jesus-event. He points to the way in which the increasing disappearance from Panikkar’s summative works of the person of Jesus of Nazareth marks a divergence between Panikkar’s Christology and most Protestant christologies. He also carefully addresses Panikkar’s problems with history as a theological datum by drawing attention to carefully nuanced distinctions made by both contemporary Protestant (and Catholic) thinkers concerning the limitations and necessity of the historical foundations of Christian faith. Part of his critique is that Panikkar’s reduced (because de-historicized) Christology threatens key elements of Christian praxis, and actually impedes dialogue with other faiths because of the way it diminishes a defining and enabling component of Christian identity. He also asks why Panikkar did not engage with the many Indian Protestant theologians who had similar concerns to Panikkar’s but who reached different conclusions about the centrality of Jesus for Christian self-understanding.

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The contrary argument that may be offered to our respective approaches is that Panikkar transcended accountability to the Christian tradition through a unique epistemology and hermeneutics, but this would be to promote Panikkar into the realm of an esoteric gnosticism. It seems, though, that Panikkar did not desire such a break with the public life and theology of the church. We are aware, as well, of the radical pluralism that is the hallmark of the later Panikkar, and the special concern of much current Panikkar studies. Our lack of treatment of Panikkar’s radical pluralism is not an unwitting neglect or oversight but a principled hermeneutical stance. The possibility of reclaiming Panikkar for the Christian tradition, and playing a small part in ensuring that Panikkar is remembered (at least in part) as a committed and serious Christian thinker, is the intended hope of this book. We hope that it will lead to more studies of Panikkar in theological departments and seminaries, more exchanges among Christians and between Christians and other traditions regarding Panikkar’s continuing legacy, and a sharper discernment of the promise and problems associated with his work. In honor of Panikkar’s fascinating journey, I would like to close this introduction with a quotation that marvelously encapsulates the gifted risk of Panikkar’s life and work from his own words, taken from a little-known essay entitled “Etiquetas cristianas, realismo teológico en nuestra cultura”: A Christian must be careful not to fall into heresy—although it is not up to his neighbors to judge him—but he is entitled to imperfection, and I would add (please do not misunderstand me) that he has a right to make mistakes. Faith is boldness of life, according to a classic patristic expression, and this boldness leads to the most portentous vision of reality. ‘Why are you so frightened? Have you still no faith? (Mk 4:40). 19

In the pages that follow, Bob and I humbly offer our own Christian boldness having learned from the depths of Panikkar’s work, but also convinced of the “portentous vision of reality” revealed in the God of Jesus Christ. 19. Raimon Panikkar. “On the Christian Meaning of Life,” in Christianity: The Christian Tradition, 48. The essay’s original publication was in Arbor 64 (1951): 595–97.

1. Unknown Jesus or Unknown Christ? The Diversity in Panikkar’s Early Christology ERIK RANSTROM

This chapter exposits and evaluates Panikkar’s Christology of religions from the beginning of his publishing career until the first edition of the Unknown Christ of Hinduism in 1964.1 Unlike his later thought, which is more consistent on a host of philosophical and theological issues, a close look at his early christological writings reveals tension in terms of how to properly formulate the relationship between Christ and the religions.2 More specifically, the broad outlines of two distinct approaches to Christ and the religions are evident during this early period, one of which has immense implications for a retrieval of Panikkar’s work. The possible contribution to theol1. Raimundo Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1964). 2. Gerard Hall, Raimon Panikkar’s Hermeneutics of Religious Pluralism (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1994), 91, notes “a decisive change in the writings after 1965” but nevertheless endeavors to show “a fundamental consistency of principles, themes, and methods that override elements of discontinuity and divergence.” However, Hall’s dissertation does not take as its interpretive point of departure Panikkar’s Christology, but rather focuses on hermeneutical principles which in his view remain constant throughout his career. I agree with Hall that a major break in Panikkar’s thought occurred after 1965, and will devote chapter three below to this rupture, but I am also arguing that prior to 1965 there were significant tensions in Panikkar’s Christology that presaged this shift.

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ogy of religions, which I will unpack in this chapter, is that an especially early formulation of a lesser known christological approach in Panikkar’s writing stands as an innovative strand of christological reflection consistent with the Great Tradition, while nevertheless providing impetus for a creative and charitable dialogue with the religions. I will now turn to a closer examination of these two approaches, and how they manifest in key Panikkar texts. TWO APPROACHES TO CHRISTOLOGY AND THE RELIGIONS The first christological approach that Panikkar employs may be categorized as inclusivist and salvation-historical. According to this approach, Jesus Christ is the origin and terminus of God’s dealings with humanity in history, as well as the impetus for the church to enter into charitable relations with the religions. The person and work of Jesus is privileged as the key to the salvation of the religions, yet this same Christ also opens the church to a mutually discerning and charitable communion with the religions in his incarnate and ecclesial body. The universality of God’s gracious initiative and Jesus Christ’s particular redemptive mission on behalf of all people are creatively and simultaneously upheld. The early Panikkar’s important but little-known publication on Christ and Melchizedek3 is the privileged example of the inclusivist, salvation-historical christological model in this chapter, although examples may be found in many of his early works, including a review of Franz Konig’s Christus und die Religionen der Erde in which Panikkar writes that non-Christian religions are a “Christian novitiate.”4 The second christological approach that he employs in his early writings may be categorized as a cosmic Christology with pluralist tendencies. This approach stresses the universal and illuminative activitiy of Christ as the providential creator and sustainer of all religions. The cosmic Christ’s universal ontological mediation is the 3. Raimundo Panikkar, “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” Nuestro Tiempo IX, no. 102 (1962): 675–95. 4. Panikkar, “Review of Christus und die Religionen der Erde,” Arbor 24 (1953): 461–63.

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common ground between Christians and Hindus, but Panikkar avoids highlighting the salvific significance of Jesus as the Christ within this mediation. The beginnings of Panikkar’s later pluralist, cosmic christological approach are to be found within this first edition of the Unknown Christ, rather than being a much later development as others have argued. These two approaches are not merely perspectival but represent significantly different understandings of creation, salvation, Incarnation, ecclesiology, and eschatology. In this chapter, it will be argued that Panikkar’s salvation-historical Christology of religions in Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” contrary to the prevailing scholarly enthusiasm for the first edition of the Unknown Christ, is the way forward for a postpluralist retrieval of Panikkar’s Christology of religions. As we have seen in the Introduction, it was within a crucible of existential conflict and theological experimentation that Panikkar wrote on the relationship between Christ and the religions, emphasizing at once different approaches that sometimes contradicted with each other. The combination of evangelistic missionary fervor and deep roots in the European church, on the one hand, and a desire for reconciliation with his father and his father’s Hindu tradition, on the other, produced tensions which manifested in different theological outcomes. This is not to say that the two approaches are polar opposites. It is not accurate to say that one represents a harsh exclusivism, whereas the other represents an unbridled pluralism. Both are attempts at and experiments with inclusivism. What I term the Melchizedekian approach, as will be shown below, has a stronger sense of Christic fulfillment, but also aims to widen the contours of the church to include Hinduism and other religions. In the case of the Unknown Christ, while it does tend toward pluralism, it nevertheless contains some elements of christocentric inclusivism. However, taking into account the totality and integrity of these approaches, the judgment that this chapter will make is that the theological model most compatible with the unique, soteriological universality of Jesus Christ is the Christology of religions represented in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec.”

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PANIKKAR AND FULFILLMENT THEOLOGY Panikkar’s 1962 article in Nuestro Tiempo entitled “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” represents an approach to christological inclusivism, with its sacerdotal emphasis perhaps inspired by Panikkar’s own priesthood and increased exposure to brahminical Hinduism. Although the work is short, it offers important insight into the evolution of his thought and the priestly identity that played a significant role in his life. In this text, Panikkar envisions a wider scope for Catholic priesthood that goes beyond the church to encompass the “cosmic priesthood” of the religions of the world, symbolized by Melchizedek. This christocentric theology of religions is a creative inclusivist position that strongly accents the finality of Jesus Christ, but also the continuity and lineage of Christ’s priesthood in the priesthood of the religions. Panikkar’s “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” is best understood within the context of late-modern fulfillment theology, which Panikkar amends with his own distinctive nuances. Adam Sparks delineates three types of fulfillment theology: “phenomenologicalfulfillment,” “covenantal-fulfillment,” and “evolutionary fulfillment.”5 Phenomenological-fulfillment theology argues that Christianity meets the deepest need of homo religious defined in psychological and anthropological terms. Schleiermacher is the paradigmatic example of this type. Covenantal-fulfillment theology “is based on the principle that as Christ fulfilled the Old Covenant, he can also be seen as the fulfillment of other religious traditions.”6 It also has the advantage of being connected to scripture, covenant and salvation-history,,unlike the more psychologically based phenomenological-fulfillment model. Evolutionary-fulfillment theology understands Christ as the “omegapoint” and horizon of all religions, including Christianity. In this schema, lower religions are fulfilled by higher religions and lower forms of Christianity yield to higher forms of Christianity.7 Much of Panikkar’s early work fits within the second and third types of ful5. Adam Sparks, One of a Kind: The Relationship between Old and New Covenants as the Hermeneutical Key for Christian Theology of Religions (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2010), 10. 6. Ibid. 7. Ibid.

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fillment theology, albeit with varying levels of emphasis. Panikkar’s article, for example, features aspects of both covenantal-fulfillment and evolutionary-fulfillment in its emphasis on salvation-history and eschatology. Jean Daniélou, Romano Guardini, and Henri de Lubac were among Panikkar’s contemporaries who utilized the covenantal-fulfillment model to describe the relationship between Christianity and the religions in the mid-twentieth century. Panikkar, as a younger contemporary of Daniélou, Guardini, and de Lubac, evinces in his writings a frequent interaction with their thought. It is reasonable to suggest that the above figures were among Panikkar’s primary theological interlocutors as he was composing his own distinctive fulfillment theology in the 1950s and 1960s.8 Each also figured prominently in preparing the intellectual groundswell that would prove decisive for the theology of Vatican II. Catholic fulfillment theology itself was a product of the nouvelle théologie and its retrieval of patristic thought, particularly Irenaeus’s notion of divine pedagogy. Irenaeus’s context was marked by gnostic trends that separated the unified orders of creation and redemption into malevolent and beneficent realms, corresponding to the deities of Israel and Christ, respectively. In response, Irenaeus developed a theology of salvation history that carefully balanced continuity and discontinuity among God’s salvific acts. Late-modern Catholic covenantal-fulfillment theology appropriated this patristic understanding of divine pedagogy and the taxis of salvation history by outlining three related but distinct covenants which correspond to the religions, Israel, and the church, respectively, made with three individuals representative of a collective: Noah, Abraham, and Christ. The cosmic covenant, or Noahide covenant, concerns God’s loving, providential blessing of creation and his self-communication through the natural order. The religions, for Daniélou, belong to this primordial covenant, particularly naturebased religious experiences such as animism and polytheism, which both symbolize the cosmic covenant as well as evidence its distortion 8. For a comparison between Daniélou and Panikkar, see Dominic Veliath, Theological Approach and Understanding of Religions: Jean Daniélou and Raimundo Panikkar: A Study in Contrast (Bangalore: Kristu Jyoti College, 1988).

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by sin.9 The Abrahamic covenant, on the other hand, concerns God’s salvific plan for the world through the people of Israel, which is fulfilled through the New Covenant of Jesus Christ in the church. Covenantal-fulfillment theology paradoxically links universal salvation with an increasingly intensifying particularization: creation, Israel, Jesus Christ. Supersessionistic tendencies, however, mark the covenantal-fulfllment model, as each successive covenant fulfills the previous covenant and renders it obsolete. The cosmic religions are subordinate to Israel, and Israel is subordinate to the church. A consequence of this supersessionistic model is that for the religions and Israel to exist outside of the church, and hence outside of Christ, is to be in opposition to God’s plan of salvation. The “tragedy of the precursor,” according to mid-twentieth century Catholic theologian, Romano Guardini, “is to wish to persist once revelation has arrived.”10 The religious traditions of the cosmic covenant will fall under judgment if they refuse to efface themselves before the new movements of God in history. “There is a moment,” wrote Guardini, “when the precursor becomes the enemy.”11 For Guardini, the Buddha was a legitimate precursor to Christ. However, in light of the continued existence and even flourishing of Buddhism, the Buddha now stands as one of the church’s greatest rivals. Melchizedek, by contrast, models for Daniélou the proper response of a precursor to God’s plan of salvation. Melchizedek’s deference to the emerging plan of God is symbolically communicated through his blessing of Abraham.12 The role of the cosmic religions shifts to awaiting the resolution of the unfolding drama of salvation history and the redemption of the world. Panikkar amends the contours of this covenantal-fulfillment theology in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” by doing away with its asymmetricality and supersessionism, instead envisioning a reciprocal and mutual relationship. The gradualist salvation-historical approach of the covenantal-fulfillment model possesses various hierarchies that privilege not only the church over the religions, but also Israel over 9. Jean Daniélou, God and the Ways of Knowing, trans. William Roberts (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2003), 32. 10. Daniélou, Introduction to the Great Religions (Notre Dame: Fides, 1964), 22. 11. Ibid., 23. 12. Ibid., 55.

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the religions. Although the relationship between Christianity and Judaism is problematic within covenantal-fulfillment theology, the latter at least has the advantage of being the tree upon which the branches of the Gentiles are grafted. The soteriological status of the so-called cosmic religions, by comparison, is minimal even when placed alongside the Abrahamic covenant, and more so in relation to the New Covenant of Jesus Christ. In order to overcome these hierarchies, Panikkar sets out to reinterpret the very ancestral relationship utilized to demonstrate the hierarchical privileging of Israel over the religions: Abraham and his relationship to Melchizedek. Panikkar’s innovation consists in arguing that the church must not only graft itself onto Israel, but also onto the Melchizedekian religions in order to fully understand the meaning of Jesus Christ. Panikkar addresses the status problem of the cosmic religions and amplifies their soteriological value by re-thinking the contours of salvation history in such a way that the near ancestors of Christian faith, traditionally reserved for Abraham’s progeny, could be located among the religions as well.13 PANIKKAR AND PAUL Panikkar’s exegetical task in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisededc” is analogous to Paul’s project in Romans, where the latter had to respond to the utilization of Abraham by Jewish-Christians in claiming hierarchical privilege over Gentile-Christians. Due to their claim of descent from Abraham, Jewish-Christians considered themselves more honorable and privileged within the community than GentileChristians, who were descended from mere pagans. New Testament scholar Brendan Byrne points out that the source of Abraham’s honor ultimately was grounded in his obedience to the Torah. The honor which issues from his performance of the circumcision (Gen 17:8 and 24:7) and obedience to God’s command in the akedah episode (Gen 22:1–19) was extended to all the observant, including 13. My use of “near ancestor” is inspired by Rutishauser’s discussion of Judaism as the “near other” within Christian self-identity; see Christian Rutishauser, “Jewish-Christian Dialogue and the Theology of Religions,” Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations 1 (2005): 53–66.

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Jewish Christians.14 Paul, however, sought to demonstrate that Gentile-Christians are also descendants of Abraham, interpreting with a considerable degree of novelty scriptural motifs, traditions, and figures invoked in favor of the Israel-Abraham-Law-holiness/Gentile-idolater-depravity paradigm. Paul shifted Abraham’s importance away from his mythic role in founding and performing the Law, and toward the promise of God that he accepted in faith. As Byrne puts it, “by presenting Abraham as righteous through faith and receiver of the promise on that basis, he (Paul) has redrawn the boundaries of the eschatological people of God.”15 Paul is “using this figure from Israel’s past to recategorize the Judean and non-Judean subgroups of the Christ-movement in Rome into a new common ingroup identity.”16 Paul redraws the boundaries of the church by connecting a prototypical ancestor to a wider group of Christians, thus widening the circle of the ecclesial community. This is comparable with what Panikkar is doing with the relationship between Abraham and Melchizedek in Genesis 14. Scriptural figures that served as the prototypical justification of exclusion are transformed into an inclusive prototype, specifically through Christology and the dynamics of fulfillment. Paul and Panikkar, in their respective contexts, reinterpret scripture and the demarcations that qualitatively legitimate the boundaries of their communities by constructing a new understanding of the relationship between an ancestral prototype and Christ.17 The very instruments of exclusivity are given new meaning so as to create space for the outsider, transforming the symbolic universe that regulates identities and patterns of interaction within those identities.18 Panikkar addresses the status issue of the religions by christologically interpreting the meaning of Abraham and Melchizedek’s encounter in Genesis 14. The relationship between Abraham and Melchizedek is imagined anew so as to establish deep kinship ties 14. Brendan Byrne, Romans, Sacra Pagina Series (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2007), 142. 15. Ibid., 156. 16. Philip Esler, Conflict and Identity in Romans (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 178. 17. Byrne, Romans, 153. 18. Ibid., 6–7.

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between the church and the religions in Jesus Christ. Jesus, according to Hebrews 7:17, is a priest in the line of Melchizedek. Since Melchizedek’s ancient, sacerdotal lineage is taken up by Jesus Christ, the church and the religions are bound together in an intimate way. As opposed to the covenantal-fulfillment theology of Daniélou, Guardini, and de Lubac, divine election now favors the religions and their dignity in God’s plan of salvation precisely in and through Jesus Christ. The assumption of the Melchizedekian religions into Christ’s saving person and work gives the religions a dignity that Christians must honor and even learn from. Jesus Christ unites himself with the religions to ratify the value the religions already possess and to bestow more dignity upon them, analogous to the way in which the Incarnation lends an elevated dignity to the human person and confirms its fundamental goodness. The Word’s assumption of the Melchizedekian priesthood ratifies the creation of the religions in Christ and imbues them with the new value and dignity of being caught up in the Incarnation. The Incarnation gives to the religions a surplus value, an ontological mediation that the church is called to recognize in its contemplation of all things in Christ. The early Panikkar’s incarnational Christology therefore redefines salvation history, the status of the religions, and the church’s relationship to the religions. The event of Jesus Christ is inclusive of the histories and destinies of all people, particularly the Melchizedekian religions, in a deeply meaningful way for the church. PANIKKAR ON THE PHYSICAL CONTINUITY BETWEEN CHRIST AND THE RELIGIONS For the early Panikkar, Jesus Christ and the Melchizedekian religions are neither on an equal plane nor rivals for soteriological centrality. Panikkar underscores that Jesus Christ is the savior of all, and upholds the soteriological uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Christ possesses a unique function that no other religious figure possesses. By contrast, the graced existence of the Melchizedekian religions have “been disfigured” and stand in need of redemption.19 Panikkar writes that 19. Panikkar, “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” 691.

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“Melchizedek as a representative of the cosmic priestly order does not belong to the initial state of Adam, but rather to the fallen man, belonging to the existential state of humanity before being transformed by Christ.”20 Sin renders the human impotent to achieve its ultimate end without Christ as Savior. “The created order,” Panikkar writes, “suffers an incapacity for liberation if the Liberator does not do it.”21 Creation is not liberated outside of creation, but precisely in and through it: the Incarnation. Salvation history is in Panikkar’s words the “divine adventure” of restoring filial relationship with the Father through the Son.22 The church is the site of this process, which begins with the calling of the ancestors of Christian faith, including Abraham and Melchizedek. Jesus Christ perfectly fulfills creation’s filial vocation to be the Father’s beloved Son by assuming the priestly lineage of the religions within his self-offering to bring them into the new creation. Panikkar makes clear that Melchizedek’s priesthood does not compete with Christ’s priesthood, but was created for fulfillment in it. As Panikkar states, “the only priest in the New Covenant is Christ, but his priesthood, although being supreme and new, is the continuation and the fullness of the temporal order.”23 Jesus Christ’s assumption of Melchizedek’s non-Abrahamic sacerdotal office is the means by which salvation is achieved for the whole of humanity.24 Christ received his humanity from the Jews and from Melchizedek, his priesthood. Salvation would be limited to the Jews alone if it were not for Christ’s assumption of the Melchizedekian lineage. Although salvation is from the Jews it is not only for the Jews.25 The dignity of the religions is derived from their relatedness and assumption into Christ’s saving person through the Incarnation, which represents continuity between Christ and the religions. Panikkar further distinguishes this as a “physical continuity.” The physical continuity between Jesus and the Melchizedekian lineage is as integral to the hypostatic union and the work of redemption as the Word’s assumption of Israel’s history and destiny. The role of 20. Ibid., 692. 21. Ibid., 691. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., 684. 24. Ibid., 686. 25. Ibid., 692.

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Melchizedek and the religions within the Incarnation manifests the deep unity that exists between the orders of creation and redemption. Christ claimed that which was already “instituted and designated by the most High.”26 This is the case for ancient Israel’s priesthood, but Panikkar signals the special status of the religions by adding that it is “even more so in respect to the priesthood of the first covenant.”27 Panikkar closely follows Hebrews in asserting the special privilege of Melchizedek, and therefore the religions, in relation to Abraham and the Levitical priesthood. Panikkar interprets Melchizedek’s blessing of Abram in Genesis 14:17, following Hebrews 7:7 as “the greater blessing the lesser.”28 For Panikkar, Jesus Christ’s priesthood is better understood in reference to the religions than Israel, for Melchizedek’s priesthood is “a fruit of the Word and not the Jews.”29 Panikkar seems to suggest that there is more continuity between Jesus Christ and the religions than between Jesus Christ and Israel. This is a startling innovation when compared to Daniélou’s understanding of the taxis of salvation history where the roles of the religions and Israel are reversed. The question of whether the church may learn something about Jesus Christ on the basis of this physical continuity and relatedness with Melchizedek is significant. Gerald O’Collins’s exchange with Peter Phan and Francis X. Clooney regarding his work Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples30 briefly explores this topic. Peter Phan draws attention to O’Collins’s assertion that Melchizedek is an example of the possibility of the religions serving as priests and prophets for Christ in the world.31 Do Christians have something to learn from this witness? It is possible that non-Christians in Melchizedek’s line may be “said to be originated from God’s ‘covenant’ so that Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, etc., are God’s ‘other peoples’, just as, 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid., 681. 29. Ibid., 679, cit. Theodore of Mopsuestia. 30. Gerald O’Collins, Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). 31. Peter Phan, Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Catherine Cornille, and Paul Griffiths, “Four Perspectives: Salvation for All: God’s Other Peoples,” Review Symposium for Gerald O’Collins, Horizons 36, no. 1 (2009): 123–24.

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analogously, Jews and Christians are “the People of God.”32 Francis X. Clooney, for his part, makes mention of Pope Benedict XVI’s intriguing remark that through Melchizedek, “Christ is manifested in many ways.”33 This suggests for Clooney that “whatever else we might think, we can know Christ better by taking Melchizedek to heart.”34 Panikkar’s understanding of Christ’s physical continuity with the religions provides some resources for thinking about both of these perspectives. God enters into solidarity with the human condition through the Incarnation, and in so doing, communicates with existing created realities. This is particularly the case with those created realities that have been responsive to the Word since the dawn of creation. Panikkar reasons that the church “has existed in a certain sense from the beginning of the world,” since “everything has been created through Him.”35 While it is true that Jesus Christ enters into history representing “something new and unknown,” history itself never commences “newly and absolutely for the first time.”36 Instead it “is always marked by an intimate relatedness with what has gone on before.”37 According to Panikkar, historical realities, even the Incarnation, “adopt the ambience and form of knowing from which they came”38 This connaturality between Christ and the religions is what enables Jesus Christ to link with the religious history of humanity and participate redemptively within their narratives, even as these same narratives determine, to some extent, the meaning of Christ. Just as the early church was dependent upon the prophecy of the suffering servant to understand Christ’s passion, and dependent upon Davidic theology to understand the concept of God’s anointed, the church needs the Melchizedekian religions to more fully comprehend the meaning of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. This is because Christ did “not take up only the tradition that began with Abraham but also embraces the other great strand in universal redemp32. Phan, “Four Perspectives,” 123. 33. Joseph Ratzinger, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, trans. Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius, 2004), 96 as cited in “Four Perspectives,” 128. 34. “Four Perspectives,” 128. 35. “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” 679. 36. Ibid. 37. Ibid. 38. Ibid., 683.

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tive history . . . Melchizedek, priest and king, the man uncircumcised who stood above Abraham, whom he blessed but did not join or follow, a priest of the world religions.”39 Therefore, it is incumbent for Christian theologians to reflect upon the mystery of Jesus Christ with the religions, since “heretofore Christian theology has worked out only one, so to say, of Jesus’ ancestral lines, the Abrahamic.”40 This is a glaring omission as “Jesus was and worked before Abraham.”41 Panikkar calls upon theologians to more perfectly understand the integration of the orders of creation and redemption in Christ. The church must discover the meaning of the Jesus-event in relation to not only Israel but the religions, for Christ’s words and actions are both derivative of the religions and dialectically their fulfillment. PANIKKAR ON THE PASTORAL CONTINUITY BETWEEN CHRIST AND THE RELIGIONS The physical continuity between Christ and the religions implies and transitions into what Panikkar calls a “pastoral continuity.” Christ’s embrace of the religions through the assumption of Melchizedek’s lineage also implies a pastoral posture which Panikkar exhorts the church to imitate. Panikkar contrasts the largely negative ancient Israelite attitudes toward the “nations” and their religions with Jesus’s ministry toward outsiders.42 From the majority standpoint of the ancient Israelites, the “nations” and their religions do not have a place in the story of salvation and are severely condemned for their idolatry and godlessness. For Panikkar however, Jesus Christ’s person and work represents a different economy. The Incarnation reveals the fundamental goodness of the religions and effects a shift in the way that the people of God are to approach them. According to Panikkar, the church should imitate Christ by drawing near to the religions, rather than condemning them, for the disciple is not greater than his master. Panikkar cites Jesus’s under39. Raimundo Panikkar, “Christ, Abel, and Melchizedek: The Church and the Non-Abrahamic Religions,” Jeevadhara 1 (1971): 403. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid. 42. Panikkar, “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” 692.

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going Jewish initiation rituals and his baptism by John as examples of Christ’s embrace of the religions within his very person, in order to become the cause of their salvation. In articulating this position, Panikkar connects Jesus’s adoption of Jewish rituals in the gospels with the Christology of Hebrews, applying it to the relationship between Jesus and the religions. “The Son of God praying with tears, asks for the salvation of the world, and he makes himself obedient in suffering, realizing the perfection in his being until converting himself into the cause of eternal salvation.”43 Christianity is not simply another religion but is the religion, the fullness of all religions. Christ does not exclude everything else, rather he includes everything, embraces all. He did not come into the world to destroy it nor to call down the legions of angels upon the world but to realize the fullness of redemption.44

Since Christ gathers the religions into his incarnate body, the religions also belong to Christ’s ecclesial body. Christ’s embrace of Jew and Gentile alike during his ministry leads Panikkar to develop an understanding of christological praxis within Christ’s ecclesial body that emphasizes loving solidarity with the religions. Panikkar’s wider understanding of church is again rooted in Melchizedek’s priesthood. Just as in the “mystical body there remains a residue of the descendants of Aaron’s priesthood, such that all bonafide Jews are still priests of Yahweh,” so too “there are numerous pre-Christian priests” who truly “participate in the one, authentic priesthood.”45 The Eucharist for Panikkar is the rite that symbolizes this multi-dimensional understanding of Christ’s incarnate and ecclesial body. The Eucharistic Christ gathers in the ecclesial body that has been created out of his incarnate body. Panikkar discusses the eucharistic offering of the church as the continued opportunity to renew its bond with the religions. Christians are united to the descendants of Melchizedek in the offering of the Eucharist because in different ways they offer a sacrifice worthy and acceptable to the Lord. For the early Panikkar, there is a liturgical continuity between 43. Ibid., 690. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 694.

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the sacrifices of the religions and the church’s Eucharist in Jesus Christ. The sacrificial gifts and offerings of each are acceptable to God the Father, though in different ways. Panikkar lists with meticulous detail the portions of the Latin, Syriac, Gallican, and Andalusian-Arabic rites that include Melchizedek in the eucharistic canon.46 After the consecration, the priests again ask that God accepts the sacrifice of his Son, for it is not a repetition of the acceptable sacrifice, but it is also our real incorporation into the sacrifice, that is, every representation of the act of Christ really is, makes present in space and in time, this new act that requires a new acceptance by God so that this Mass shall be incorporated in the one oblation of His Son. This is precisely when the priest mentions remembering the continuity of Abel, Abraham, and Melchizedek, about those worthy ones: Lord, look upon us with your serene face, and accept them as you accepted the sacrifice of the just Abel, our patriarch Abraham, and those that were offered by your priest Melchizedek.47

The perfect oblation of Christ connects to the sacrifices of the religions, for Melchizedek’s offering “clamored to God for the restoration of creation,” evidencing an “ancient hope” which foretold of Christ “unknowingly.”48 This hope is fulfilled in Christ and offered through the church, who “unifies all the offerings, rites, sacrifices, and prayers of the entire world.”49 The church and the religions, in a mysterious and complex way, participate in the same altar and the same offering, a kind of ecclesiological communion. Panikkar uses kinship language to describe this reality, as there is a fraternal bond and relation that exists between Catholic priests and priests of the religions. Panikkar pleads with his fellow Catholic priests to consider the priests of other religions as brothers (hermanos sacerdotes). Considering the priesthood of Melchizedek, the Catholic priest does not look with disdain on good priests of the other “primitive” religions, but rather they should consider them brothers that participate in the one priesthood, as the predecessors of Christ, as guardians of an order of precedence that God the Father established, with Christ his Son as the 46. Ibid., 679. 47. Ibid., 680. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid., 695.

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head and fullness of that same order of priesthood. However, this does not imply a full sacred communion, canonically sanctioned, but neither does it justify an absolute rejection of the practices of these religions. 50

Panikar envisages, at some level, communion between the church and the religions in Jesus Christ. However, there are limits to this communion between the church and the religions. These limits do not justify an anathematization of the religions but are set against the backdrop of an expectant, eschatological communion. The day of full understanding looms, in which we receive the benediction of peace given to us by the priests that are not Christians, or by the same manner, the day in which these priests are to receive from us everything we have and possess, and when we find ourselves ready to receive their blessings, this same day paths will be opened, so that there will be one flock, one shepherd.51

For Panikkar, the church’s mission is to initiate its provisional but real communion with the religions in Jesus Christ. This provisional communion is actualized through practices of hospitality and charity, modeled upon the Incarnation. The triune God impresses a mode of existence onto the world in Jesus Christ, namely, self-emptying love, empowering the church to imitate him in the world of many religions. Panikkar’s Christology, ecclesiology and eschatology of religions cohere together; the church orients itself toward the religions within the graciousness of the “already,” in the peaceable hope that the “not yet” of full communion is on the horizon. Panikkar understands the church’s mission as an imitation of eschatological divine action in time, anticipating eschatological consummation at the end of time. The proper interreligious virtue for the former is charity, for the latter, hope. Michael Barnes articulates a similar view in his article “The Work of Discovery: Interreligious Dialogue as Lifelong Learning.”52 According to Barnes, “the renewal of missiology in recent decades 50. Ibid., 690. 51. Ibid., 689. 52. Michael Barnes, “The Work of Discovery: Interreligious Dialogue as Lifelong Learning,” Spiritus 11 (2011): 225.

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has shifted attention to what the church is—and to the inner dynamic which inspires missionary effort in the first place.”53 Barnes argues that mission and dialogue first and foremost concern “the ‘sort of person’ Christians called by the Spirit of Christ are to become.”54 The church for Panikkar is to be formed in the “divine condescension,” or the “kenotic” movement of Christ toward the religions in a movement of deep intimacy, solidarity, and friendship. Panikkar importantly discusses the church’s relationship with the religions in terms of a mutual exchange of gifts and thanksgiving for the other, themes that resonate with the reconciliatory tenor of the eucharistic gathering. The dispositions and virtues associated with this eschatological posture have important ramifications for the question of whether the dignity of the religions persists in its condition “apart” from the church. According to the covenantal-fulfillment theology of Guardini and Daniélou, the religions lose their “lawfulness” in the age of the church. Panikkar’s eschatology, on the other hand, maintains that since the church is not the privileged object of salvation but the practitioner of Christ’s salvation, the religions are to be blessed and honored, rather than anathematized. In sum, Panikkar’s christology, ecclesiology, and eschatology results in a vastly different stance toward the religions than Guardini’s depiction of the Buddha and Buddhists as legitimate precursors turned adversaries. THE CHRISTOLOGICAL AMBIGUITY OF THE UNKNOWN CHRIST (1964) The first edition of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism shares some similarities with the Christology of “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” and significantly, it received the nihil obstat and the imprimatur from Catholic bishops. Panikkar at various points in the text affirms the particularity of the church’s teaching on Jesus Christ as the savior of all. For example, he reminds the reader that the “divinity and cosmic action” of Christ cannot be severed from his “historical and concrete 53. Ibid., 227. 54. Ibid.

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dimension,” which is the unique christological faith of the church.55 This confession “can only be substantiated by Christian faith itself which believes that God, who has ‘spoken’ through the prophets and rishis (sages), has finally sent his living and personal word—one with him—to accomplish all justice, all dharmas.”56 A Christology of religions must account for both the particular uniqueness of Jesus as the Christ as well as the eternal and cosmic presence of that selfsame mystery. Panikkar compares this christological project with Paul’s task in negotiating between the “Judaizing” and “Hellenizing” factions of the early church. The “Judaizers” sought to make Christianity into merely another Jewish sect; this is the problem of christological provincialism and an undue exaggeration of particularity. The “Hellenizers,” on the other hand, “were inclined to absorb Christianity into a kind of gnosis.”57 This represents an a-historical Christology of religions. Panikkar sees in Paul’s position the proper balance between christological particularity and universality, and he concludes by aligning his own thinking to Paul’s. The reaction of Paul was to show how in Christ the hidden mystery of God had been revealed and how he, the ‘Pantocrator,’ the cosmic redeemer, the beginning and end, the only-begotten, the Logos, is at the same time the firstborn of creation, Jesus son of Mary, crucified by men and risen again to assume in him the whole of creation and lead it back to God the Father, gathering all the broken pieces of this pilgrim mankind still full of expectancy because the children of God are yet to be made known.58

The plenary nature of Christ’s fulfillment allows for “Christianity’s bold claim . . . that it provides the true contents, for the time being, during this earthly pilgrimage.”59 The church is the dharma-siddhi that fulfills the sanatāna-dharma, the universal religious intuition at the heart of Hinduism.60 It is important to note the above similarities between “Meditaciόn 55. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 17. 56. Ibid., 19. 57. Ibid., 138. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 19. 60. Ibid.

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sobre Melquisedec” and the 1964 Unknown Christ in order to avoid a facile and falsifying criticism of the book. However, a closer examination of the text’s argument reveals that Panikkar is sketching a different way forward in his thinking about the relationship between Christ and the religions, particularly Hinduism. The above statements referring to the centrality of Jesus suffer from being aberrations in the text, receiving little support from surrounding argumentation. Although the few references to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ keep Panikkar’s Christology in the realm of orthodoxy, his overall argument deviates from the priority of Jesus. There is a discernible movement toward a cosmic understanding of Christ’s activity only loosely tied to the particular uniqueness of Jesus Christ. Panikkar subtly privileges creation over redemption, ontological immanence over salvation-historical intervention, and the Logos asarkos over Logos ensnarkos as part of his overall christological project in the Unknown Christ. This nuanced reading of the first edition of the Unknown Christ has been overlooked by several commentators enthusiastic about the book’s Christology and its apparent harmony with the Great Tradition. Jacques Dupuis, for instance, offers a positive assessment of the first edition and suggests that for Panikkar the mystery of Jesus is present to some degree in Hinduism.61 “For Panikkar, the mystery of Jesus Christ,” Dupuis writes, “is therefore present in a hidden way, perceptible to Christian faith alone in the religious traditions and in Hinduism in particular.”62 He also claims that for the early Panikkar of this text, “Jesus Christ is in reality the way for all, even for those who remain unaware of the fact.”63 More strongly, Dupuis writes that “the Christ whose hidden presence is discovered in Hinduism seems clearly to be the Christ of faith understood by Christians to be identical with the pre-Easter Jesus.”64 Such positions only change, he claims, “with some of Panikkar’s more recent writings.”65 61. Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1997), 149–53; Christianity and the Religions: From Confrontation to Dialogue, trans. Phillip Berryman (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2002), 54–57. 62. Dupuis, Christianity and the Religions, 56. 63. Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, 150. 64. Dupuis, Christianity and the Religions, 57. 65. Ibid.

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Panikkar now revisits his ‘Unknown Christ’ in the light of the evolution of his own thought since the original edition. . . . How is the relationship to be conceived between the reality or Mystery, the Christ-symbol and the historical Jesus? This, it seems to me, is where Panikkar’s thought has registered a consequential shift.66

Gavin D’Costa in his Christianity and World Religions: Disputed Questions also criticizes Panikkar’s later writings by comparing them with the first edition of the Unknown Christ.67 D’Costa recommends the latter as an example of an apologetic and christocentric comparative theology that takes the normativity of Christian doctrine and its missiological import seriously, in contrast to Panikkar’s later “cosmotheandricism” and its Christian–Hindu–Buddhist “esperanto” religion.68 D’Costa views Panikkar’s 1964 edition of the Unknown Christ as an example of a missional and apologetic comparative theology that witnesses to Jesus Christ, while also making a serious attempt to understand the non-Christian religious tradition in line with its own self-understanding. According to D’Costa, Panikkar’s study is “able to really engage with the other, asking penetrating questions, putting challenges, engaging in mission at the very same time as really trying to understand the other in their own terms.”69 For D’Costa, Panikkar apologetically inserts the christological tradition into a Hindu commentarial debate, which D’Costa calls an “inter-textual” rather than “intra-textual” approach,”70 and thus offers a “Christological bhāsya.”71 Panikkar attempts to reconcile a Hindu philosophical dilemma in regard to metaphysical questions about the relationship between God and the world through the Christian christological tradition. This “inter-textual” methodology is appropriate for Panikkar because both Christianity and Hinduism have grappled with these problems 66. Jacques Dupuis, “Review of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Revised and Enlarged Edition,” Vidyajoti (May–June 1982), 257 as cited in Cheriyan Menacherry, Christ: The Mystery in History (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1995), 106. 67. Gavin D’Costa. Christianity and World Religions: Disputed Questions (Oxford: WileyBlackwell, 2009). 68. Ibid., 15. 69. Ibid., 43. 70. Ibid., 42–43. D’Costa discusses Panikkar “intervening within a Hindu debate regarding the question of the supremacy of Brahman and Isvara.” 71. The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 126. “Bhāsya” is “commentary.”

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throughout the course of their tradition’s intellectual history.72 D’Costa’s grasp of the early Panikkar’s comparative theological methodology is prescient here, and we will see other forms of it on display in my discussion of his Christian entry into Hindu debates on sacrifice and worship in chapter three. Panikkar notes that Sankara’s way of dealing with the theo-cosmological problem is to safeguard the absoluteness of nirguna Brahman by positing the existence of saguna Īśvara, or the Lord with attributes who is involved in the world.73 However, this is not a sufficient resolution, because although “the Īśvara of Śaṅkara can still be called God, he is no more the Absolute, the Ultimate, Brahman.”74 Since the Absolute cannot be involved with contingency and temporality, Brahman projects a provisional, ultimately illusory Īśvara. Ramanuja, on the other hand, overemphasizes the identity of Brahman and Īśvara, so that between them there is one Absolute. The error here, according to Panikkar, resides in not differentiating Brahman and Īśvara and their different functions within the Godhead.75 Panikkar’s Christian response to Sankara and Ramanuja is Trinitarian and christological; the dilemma is resolved through Christ, one with the Father, through whom the world is created. The Logos is in itself the full Word, the total manifestation of God the Father: it is really God from God, Light from Light. That is to say that even its proper ‘face’ imaging the Divinity is distinct from it, and yet there is no lack of substantial identity, for the Logos is (as receiver) the whole divine nature that the Father, source of the Divinity, has (as giver)....... The Īśvara of our commentary points toward what we would like to call the Mystery of Christ, as a being unique in his existence and essence and as such equal to God. He is really God, not simply ‘God’ but ‘equal to God’, ‘Son of God’, ‘God from God.’76 72. Panikkar’s scholastic method and use of Thomistic categories puts him in continuity with other Catholic theologians and indologists who proceeded in a similar manner, especially the Catholic convert Brahmabandab Upadhyay and the Indologist Pierre Johanns, S.J. 73. Although the chapter three in the Unknown Christ, entitled “God and the World,” sets out to examine Hindu commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, it should be noted that Panikkar does not closely follow the exegesis of Sankara’s or Ramanuja’s commentaries, but instead summarizes their arguments in a synthetic and broadly philosophical way. 74. Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 128. 75. Ibid., 129. 76. Ibid., 128–30 (original emphasis).

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Panikkar’s christological solution holds that God’s relationship with the world does not have to alter God’s nature, for the two natures of Christ are “‘without mixture’ and ‘without change’ and yet ‘inseparable’ and ‘indivisible’.”77 This is a response to Sankara’s concern that the Absolute cannot be involved in creation, lest its absoluteness become compromised.78 Panikkar goes on to qualify, however, that the four Chalcedonian adverbs do not refer to Jesus Christ but to the cosmos as Christ, that is, the cosmic Christ. Christ is “more than a mediator” but the “‘whole Christ’, the whole reality of the world as far as it is real, as it is.”79 The world itself is joined to the Son in hypostatic unity. Therefore, already in the first edition of the Unknown Christ, Panikkar is laying the foundations for his later christological cosmotheandrism. D’Costa’s enthusiastic recommendation of the first edition of the Unknown Christ rightly praises aspects of Panikkar’s approach, but upon closer analysis, misses some more problematical elements. D’Costa insists that Panikkar’s christological bhāsya has to do with “whether Hinduism in any way anticipates the God-man, Jesus Christ,” in the midst of Panikkar’s rather cosmicized Christology.80 Panikkar pursues the problem of “God and the World” without reference to the economic order of the Trinity, which invariably deals with the missio dei and Jesus Christ. Panikkar could have approached the problem of God and the world by comparing the Incarnate Word, Jesus Christ with Vishnu and the avatāra tradition, but decided instead upon the cosmological dimension of the metaphysical Son and its Vedantic counterpart, Īśvara.81 The omission of a strongly personalist, bhakti comparative example as a Hindu conversation partner is as illuminating as Panikkar’s selective foregrounding of the cosmological Son. Such interpretive choices are not random or indifferent. They convey a growing uneasiness with a Jesus-centered 77. Ibid., 129. 78. Ibid., 128. 79. Ibid., 129 (original emphasis). 80. D’Costa, Christianity and World Religions, 42. 81. D’Costa argued that Panikkar did compare Jesus with devotional deities such as “Krishna, Hari, Siva, and Rama,” in Panikkar’s “God and the World.” Such references, however, are not to be found in the chapter or anywhere in the book for that matter. Cf. D’Costa, Christianity and World Religions, 43.

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Christology in the context of theologizing about Christianity and the religions. Cheriyan Menacherry looks favorably upon Panikkar’s first edition of the Unknown Christ as well.82 Menacherry’s overall thesis is mainly interested in contesting the later Panikkar’s claim that the category of history is alien to the Hindu worldview, and therefore inappropriate as a way of understanding Christ in the context of HinduChristian dialogue. The category of history, Menacherry insists, is present in Hindu scriptures in the form of an anticipation of a savior, avatāra. According to Menacherry, this is an opening for the Christian proclamation of Jesus Christ.83 He draws upon avatāra theology to support his claim that there is a historical, “messianic expectation—the Savior intervening in the present life—in Hinduism.”84 Although he senses that Panikkar “had already distanced Christ from history”85 in the 1964 Unknown Christ, he argues that this was necessary in order to articulate a theology of implicit faith in Jesus. However, Menacherry’s larger goal in the study would have been better served in adopting Panikkar’s early Christology of religions in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” as it is a more suitable resource for the centrality of the Incarnation. It is also questionable whether Hinduism and its implicit faith in Jesus was the object of Panikkar’s study in the first edition. In sum, Dupuis, D’Costa, and Menacherry each evaluate Panikkar’s first edition of the Unknown Christ as a christological thesis rooted in the mystery of Jesus of Nazareth, positively comparing it to the pluralist Christology of the later, revised edition. This is, however, an inadequate reading of the relationship between the two editions, as it fails to take into account their more fundamental kinship in privileging the cosmic Christ over Jesus of Nazareth. The following analysis will touch upon three problematic themes that run throughout the text: Panikkar’s enlistment of the cosmic Christ as christological

82. Menacherry, Christ: The Mystery in History, 211–12. 83. Ibid., 211. 84. Ibid., 212–13. 85. Ibid.

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ommon ground,86 scriptural exegesis apart from Jesus Christ, and the inverted relationship between protology and eschatology. COSMIC CHRIST AS CHRISTOLOGICAL COMMON GROUND Panikkar begins the first edition of the Unknown Christ by stressing the need for the church to consider anew the universal significance of Christ in a way that does justice to the goodness and truth of the religions. Though the church has been privileged with the “Mystery that God has revealed for the entire world,” it must develop a “theory—in the classical sense of the word—that shows the reasonableness and justness of its claims.”87 Christianity should not renounce its claim to universality but understand it properly, as its danger resides in “becoming a fanatical, exclusive religion” which launches “unexpected and unlawful attacks upon other creeds” destroying “everything that is not of its ‘particular’ taste.”88 Panikkar attempts to avert these consequences by discussing God in Christ as the presence and reality which Christianity and the religions have in common without being exclusive to either. God in Christ is the origin of all beings, qua created. For Panikkar, the common condition of all religions as created and sustained in Christ is the proper meeting place for Christianity and Hinduism. We all meet in God. God is not only everywhere but everything is in him, and we, including all our strivings and actions, are of him, in him, from him, to him. (One could equally well have said ‘It’ in this context.) Now, there is only one link, one mediator between God and the rest. That is Christ, from whom everything has come, in whom everything subsists, to whom everything that shall endure the bite of time will come. It is Christ who leads every man to God; there is no other way but through him. It is Christ who inspires the prayer of man and ‘hears’ them. It is he who whispers to us any divine inspiration and who speaks to God, whatever form the ‘patient’ of the divine may believe in or think 86. For a brief presentation of this problem in Panikkar’s first edition of Unknown Christ of Hinduism, see Erik Ranstrom, “Christology after Dominus Iesus: the early Panikkar as a creative resource,” Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 25 (2012): 43–50. 87. Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 2. 88. Ibid.

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of. He is the Light that illumines every human being coming into the world.89

For Panikkar, Hinduism is in Christ by virtue of a basic theological axiom. Since God’s cosmic activity is always mediated through Christ, the mystery of Christ belongs to Hinduism as well as Christianity.90 Hence, for Christianity, Christ is already there in Hinduism insofar as Hinduism is a true religion; Christ is already at work in any Hindu prayer as long as it is really prayer; Christ is behind any form of worship, inasmuch as it is adoration made to God.91

This emphasis on the cosmic Christ as common ground represents a shift from the position of “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” where Panikkar elaborates upon the Incarnation as the ground of the interreligious encounter. Thus begins a trajectory in which the cosmic Christ at the core of the religions stands for the universality of Christ rather than Jesus Christ, the concrete universal. Panikkar moves away from an emphasis on the mystery of Jesus Christ as the universal, salvific mystery and falls short of uniting “in tensive and transcendent synthesis both the personal and the cosmic, the particular and the universal.”92 The christological point of encounter between Christianity and Hinduism in the first edition of the Unknown Christ is abstractly construed apart from the concreteness of Jesus Christ. Even though Panikkar writes of the need for Hinduism to accept the special status of Jesus, these statements are cryptic, sparse, and do not match the tenor of the rest of the work. God’s activity in Hinduism through Christ is cosmicized by Panikkar to such an extent that its relationship to Jesus Christ is affirmed in the text but only in localized and ambiguous ways, rather than being a significant thread of christological argumentation. It is significant that already in the first edition of the Unknown Christ, Panikkar uses the term Jesus Christ sparsely, with most of his references to Christ referring to the cosmic Christ. 89. Ibid., 16–17. 90. Ibid., 16. 91. Ibid., 17. 92. Robert Imbelli, “Re-affirmation of the Christic Center,” in Sic et Non: Encountering Dominus Iesus, ed. Stephen Pope and Charles Hefling (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2002), 102.

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PROBLEM OF MESSIANIC CHRISTOLOGY As a result of this maneuver, Panikkar shapes the christological sources of the tradition in irregular ways, with this dynamic particularly discernible in his biblical exegesis. One way to assess what Sumner calls final primacy in the Christology of the Unknown Christ is to examine Panikkar’s use of scripture.93 The shift between Panikkar’s biblical exegesis in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” and Unknown Christ is significant. In the former, he draws upon the Gospel of Matthew to illustrate how the Word’s union to the human condition is redemptive because Jesus assumed the religious rites of Judaism. Panikkar extends this soteriology beyond Judaism to non-Christian religions by arguing from the Incarnation and the assumption of Melchizedek’s priesthood in Hebrews that Jesus Christ united himself with all religions and religious rites. Panikkar’s Christology of religions in the Melchizedekian theological reflection, which includes the possibility of learning from the religions but within the context of creation’s nuptial union with God in Jesus Christ, fits comfortably with New Testament motifs. However, his “presence Christology” or “alpha Christology” in the Unknown Christ that exposits Christ’s immanence in Hinduism without constitutive reference to Jesus Christ is incompatible with scriptural motifs. He shapes texts in ways dissonant with the grammar of Christ in both scripture and tradition. Consistent with this approach, the Panikkar of the 1964 Unknown Christ takes issue with what he sees as a hypervaluation of messianic and futurist Christology, which is problematic because it “presupposes or implies already the Christian idea of Christ.”94 Theology for him has lapsed into an “exaggerated historicism,”95 understanding the meaning of Christ solely in terms of a singular messianism within history. “Our generation,” he writes, “is well acquainted with the idea that Christ comes at the end of time and that all religions may be pointing toward Him, who shall be the expectation of the peoples.”96 93. George Sumner. The First and the Last: The Claim of Jesus Christ and the Claims of Other Religious Traditions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004). 94. Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 133. 95. Ibid., viii. 96. Ibid., viii–ix.

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Yet, Panikkar argues, this over-emphasis on the messianic Christ obscures “the previous truth,” which is that “Christ is not only at the end but also at the beginning.”97 Christ-in-history, or Jesus Christ, becomes a problem for the universality and common ground he must seek elsewhere. The balance that is found in the prior approach is absent. The brief exegetical reflection in the first edition of the Unknown Christ on Hebrews reveals the great difference with his Melchizedekian reading of Hebrews, highlighting how Panikkar is not simply trying to balance the cosmic and historical aspects of the mystery of Christ, but rather accenting the unknown Christ at the expense of the known Christ. Missiologist and theologian Vinoth Ramachandra critiques Panikkar’s “preoccupation with the hidden mystery while overlooking the way in which Christ has disclosed that mystery.”98 As an example of this tendency, Panikkar suggests that the categorical content of the “true inspirer” of Hinduism is unqualifiedly unknown to Christians.99 [W]e do not know further what the Son himself is saying in that religion which, since millennia before Christ, has continued to lead and inspire hundreds of millions of people. The present study does not claim to unveil this mystery or dictate the language that Christ’s messenger has to use, since only the Holy Spirit inspires the words of his living witnesses, and He takes care to tell us not to premeditate what we are going to say.......100

This christological agnosticism in regard to what “the Son has inspired the ‘prophets’ of Hinduism to utter” is a reference to Hebrew 1:1–2, which reads: “In times past, God spoke in partial and various ways to our ancestors through the prophets.101 Significantly however, Panikkar does not cite the next line starting in v. 3, which states that “in these last days God is speaking to us through his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, by whom he also made the world.” 97. Ibid., ix. 98. Vinoth Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission: Beyond the Pluralist Paradigm (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2002), 103. 99. Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, ix. 100. Ibid., viii. 101. Ibid.

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(Heb 1:3) The letter to the Hebrews illuminates that God’s salvific plan for the world in Jesus Christ through the Spirit was the goal of prophecy from the beginning, and that Jesus was at the origin of not only salvation history but creation. There may be unknown aspects of the Christic mystery, as Panikkar alluded to in his reflection on Melchizedek, but they must be unknown aspects of Jesus Christ, the revelead Word of God. Panikkar’s exegesis indicates that the Spirit’s inspiration of Hinduism is unqualifiedly open-ended and unknown to Christians, perhaps manifesting something other than Jesus Christ. This marks a clear departure from “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” and its understanding of the relationship between Christ and the religions. PROTOLOGY AND ESCHATOLOGY The absence of messianic Christology compels Panikkar’s thought into a reverse thrust. It moves backward toward creation, rather than forward toward eschatology. The density of Christ’s presence is found in creation, as it allows for the intrinsic and unqualified abiding of the cosmos, and its religions, in Christ. Panikkar elaborates upon the “being-ness” of Hinduism in Christ rather than its need for redemption through the person and work of Jesus Christ. For example, Panikkar stresses a universal filiation through divine immanence in Acts 17, but does not exegete the wider christological context of the passage. Paul’s kerygmatic proclamation and challenge to the Athenians in v. 30 is omitted by Panikkar, for it shows not only that there is tension involved in accepting the eschatological Lordship of Christ, but that such an event is a necessary part of God’s plan of salvation. The christological drama of sin, reconciliation, and redemption through Jesus Christ, elements which are all present in Acts 17, is only cursorily accounted for in the 1964 Unknown Christ. As a result, Panikkar has difficulty accounting for the necessary particularity of Jesus Christ and his soteriological significance for the religions, including Hinduism. The historical-teleological dimension of Christian soteriology, which Panikkar moves away from, reveals the intrinsic poverty of the religions to accomplish their own

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salvation and therefore, the necessity of a savior. The christological final primacy present in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” falls away from the 1964 Unknown Christ. Panikkar has difficulty accounting for the necessary particularity of the Christic mystery in Jesus Christ and its significance for the religions, including Hinduism, because the drama of salvation and salvation history is largely absent from his cosmic Christology. Panikkar’s cosmic Christology thus weakens Jesus Christ’s action in salvation history and typifies what George Sumner calls “Christological inversion,” an abdication of the primacy of Jesus Christ and a prioritizing of the soteriological value of the religions.102 CHRISTOLOGICAL INVERSION Panikkar’s emphasis on the hidden nature of God and ironic reversals of discipleship is also pursued without reference to the person of Jesus Christ. In suggesting that Christ is enigmatically unknown to those who profess his name, yet present by faith among those who know nothing of him, Panikkar draws upon Romans 10:20, which reads: “I was found by them that did not seek me, I appeared openly to them that asked not after me.”103 In its context, Romans 10 features Paul’s inquiry into why the church is comprised of mostly Gentiles, and why they but not the majority of the Jews recognize the messianic significance of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Romans 10 refers, therefore, to the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and explicit faith in his messiahship on the part of the Gentiles. But Panikkar exegetes the text in such a way that it refers to the implicit faith of Hindus, rather than explicit faith in Jesus Christ. This, in itself, is not problematic, and may even be a creative exegesis in an interreligious context. The Word may infuse this implicit faith in a way that bears a connection to the mystery of Jesus Christ, and Panikkar’s Christology of Hinduism would be expected to discern how the person and work of Jesus Christ is to some degree present in Hinduism. It was only in light of Jesus Christ that the Hebrew Scriptures became illuminated and salvation history was comprehended for the early 102. Sumner, The First and the Last, 21. 103. Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 1.

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Christians. As an exegetical principle, this concept lies at the heart of the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures typical of the patristic era. Panikkar’s own Christology of Hinduism would be expected, therefore, in the same manner as “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” to evidence the mysterious ways in which the event of Jesus Christ was prefigured and anticipated in Hinduism. However, this is not the case, as Panikkar describes the cosmic Christ’s presence in Hinduism in strikingly non-descript and non-predicated ways apart from Jesus, shorn of concrete christological criteria. Dupuis’s challenge of the later Panikkar’s Christology is relevant as well for the 1964 Unknown Christ, especially when he asks “is not the content of faith reduced in turn to a neutral relationship to a transcendence, without a concrete object?”104 Within this ambiguity about the place of Jesus and the increasing prominence given to the cosmic Christ, Panikkar does retain some elements of the ecclesiology, eschatology and Christology present in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec.” These tantalizing suggestions however lose their overall power because of a trend toward christological dilution and an ambiguity about the meaning of the cross, the Eucharist, and salvation. For example, Panikkar seemingly refers back to his eucharistic ecclesiology in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” and the idea that the wider, interreligious body of Christ sacrifices itself for each other, offering all it has to the other in a missiological expression of love. Part of that mutual exchange of gift is the hospitable reception of the truth of the other in Christ. Since Christ does not belong to Christianity, but only to God, Christianity must seek out Christ and Christ’s dwelling even in the religious other. The ecclesiological intuition is formulated as follows: In supernatural Love . . . he actually meets Christ and communicates with him in the person of his brethren, the men on earth, without distinction of race, creed or condition. If he really loves, he discovers Christ already there. It is Christ himself who has awakened that love, and the Christian himself will not be able to possess it and be inflamed by it. Love unifies and makes one. The Christian encounter is really much more than the meeting of two friends, it is the Communion in being, in one Being which is much more intimate to both of them, than they 104. Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, 152.

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themselves are; it is the communion not only in Christ, but of Christ. Nothing of condescension, nothing of paternalism or of superiority is to be found in the supernatural love of a Christian encounter. . . . He who has a higher temperature or a richer knowledge will spontaneously contaminate as it were, will automatically share his lot with the other, his neighbor. Only when a man is completely empty of himself will Christ fully dwell in him. Only when he is totally stripped of himself, only when he is in the state of kenosis, of denial and annihilation, will Christ fulfill his incarnation in him. Only kenosis allows incarnation; and incarnation is the only factual way for redemption. . . .105

Panikkar develops the idea that within the body of Christ, the church and the religions are called to sacrifically offer themselves to each other in a missiological and dialogical expression of love. This seems to bear resemblance to “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” in which the interreligious, pastoral praxis of the church is rooted in Christ’s incarnational embrace of the religions into his body. Panikkar’s ecclesiological ethic is rooted in the kenosis of the Word dwelling in solidarity with the religions and giving to them his own body for their sanctification. When the church and the religions dwell in solidarity and mutual self-gift, they are imitating this Christic pattern of existence, foreshadowed in the meeting between Abram and Melchizedek where each receives blessings and spiritual gifts from the other. Jesus’s person and work, in other words, provides the concrete criterion for the church’s paschal relationship with the religions. Panikkar’s use of paschal language in the first edition of the Unknown Christ, by contrast, is unclear as to its reference to Jesus. Its imagery points to the existential significance of the cross for dialogue at the archetypal level, but not as an imitation of Christ’s cross in history. Although the paschal mystery retains its importance, it is cosmicized beyond Jesus. SUMMARY The contrast between “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisdedec” and the 1964 Unknown Christ of Hinduism, as discussed above, is not absolute. There are some areas of commonality and complementarity between the two christological models. Panikkar’s refusal to “anathematize” 105. Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 27–28 (original emphasis).

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the religions is a shared insight between the two works. The idea that Christianity and Hinduism are fellow pilgrims in Christ who may be transformed in their journey together is another shared insight. Furthermore, Panikkar’s emphasis on the intimacy of Christ with Hinduism as inspirer and guide in the Unknown Christ is a more convincing account of the way God is present to the religions than Gerald O’Collins’s “stranger on a train” analogy.106 However, ambiguities around the centrality of Jesus Christ greatly limit the possible convergences and complementarities. This chapter critiques the judgment that the 1964 Unknown Christ represents Panikkar’s distinctive contribution to approaches to the religions within traditional christological parameters rooted in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Instead, this chapter retrieves a little-known work within Panikkar’s corpus which evidences a deep congruency with the christological priorities of the unique and salvific mystery of the person of Christ. Panikkar’s salvation-historical Christology in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” demonstates that the Melchizedekian sub-narratives found in Genesis, the Psalms, and Hebrews are all oriented toward salvation in Jesus Christ. Although Panikkar holds that Melchizedekian religions, in a certain sense, have participated in the Christian mystery since the dawn of creation, they also belong to the corruptibility of Adam. Panikkar’s theological mode of argumentation in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” is therefore deeply in sync with the scripture, while also open to a genuine learning from the religions. Panikkar’s scriptural exegesis in the 1964 Unknown Christ, on the other hand, is frequently at odds with the New Testament texts he comments upon. The assumption operative in the Unknown Christ is that the universality and openness required for an adequate Christology of religions must distance itself from the soteriological and revelatory density of Jesus. The christological foundations for interreligious dialogue are therefore different between the two texts. Whereas in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” the encounter between the church and the religions is grounded in an incarnational Christology, 106. Gerald O’Collins, “John Paul II on Christ, the Holy Spirit, and World Religions,” Irish Theological Quarterly 72 (2007): 332.

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in the Unknown Christ Panikkar attempts to widen the christological mystery beyond Jesus for the sake of christological common ground. Panikkar’s unqualified christological agnosticism in regard to the activity of the Holy Spirit in Hinduism disrupts the Trinitarian grammar of God in Christ. It fails to correlate the presence of grace in the world with the revelation of Jesus Christ. In “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” on the other hand, creation and redemption, sin and grace, proclamation and dialogue, and the cosmic and historical dimensions of Christ are all kept in balance and harmony. The openness and charitable dialogue towards Hinduism that Panikkar pursues by distancing the cosmic Christ from the Jesusevent is already present in his earlier incarnational Christology of religions. Jesus’s assumption of Melchizedek’s priesthood incorporates the religions into the loving bond of the body of Christ, the church. This communion in Christ’s body, albeit imperfect, is actualized in the Eucharist and spurs the church forward to encounter the religions, so as to discern the meaning of Jesus’s paschal offering together. The incarnational and eucharistic Christology of religions present in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” is not a wholly isolated and peculiar anomaly within Panikkar’s corpus. If that were the case, perhaps it would not register as a significant dimension of his work that deserves careful study and retrieval. Its Christology of religions and emphasis upon the Eucharist, however, emerges again among a broad range of Panikkar’s early theological writings, and importantly, serves as the theological scaffolding of a longer study of Christian and Hindu worship to be explored in the next chapter.

2. The “Orthodox” Creativity of Panikkar’s Early Dialogue with Hinduism ERIK RANSTROM

This chapter will explore Panikkar’s little-known comparative theological study of Hindu and Christian worship, Le mystère du culte dans l’hindouisme et le christianisme. The basis of the work was first given as a presentation at the thirty-seventh World Eucharistic Congress in Munich, Germany, in 1960.1 The theme of the international theological conference which took place concurrently with the Congress was “Worship and Man Today.”2 Panikkar’s paper was “conceived as a contribution in the Indian sphere”3 and then re-written and expanded for a book. The first edition was written by Panikkar in German4 and later translated into French in 1970. The intended audience for the book was Western, as the text is fundamentally a plea for the Roman Catholic Church in the West to consider Hinduism as a resource for theological renewal. Le mystère du culte retains several of the christological motifs explored in Panikkar’s essay on Melchizedek, and may be read as a 1. Raimundo Panikkar, Le mystère du culte dans l’hindouisme et le christianisme, trans. B. Charriere (Paris: Les Editions du Cerf, 1970), 8. English translation by Jane Zanichkowsky. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Raimundo Panikkar, Kultmysterium in Hinduismus und Christentum: ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Religionstheologie (Freiburg: K. Alber, 1964).

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continuation of that work, bearing little resemblance to the cosmic christological model of the 1964 Unknown Christ of Hinduism. For instance, Panikkar’s Christology of religions in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” and Le mystère both emphasize the convergence of salvation history within the Incarnation. Both stress that Jesus’s relationship to the religions is worthy of christological reflection, for the Incarnate Christ has cultural and religious ancestries beyond the Abrahamic lineage. Both works also privilege sacrifice as the correlative principle which illuminates both Jesus’s person and work and Christ’s presence in the religions. In “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” Panikkar makes the point that Melchizedek’s prototypical eucharistic offering, symbolic of the sacrifices of the religions, is closely related to Jesus Christ’s sacrifice and the sacrifice of the church. Panikkar goes a step further in Le mystère du culte by applying this Christology of religions to actual comparative examples, concretely revealing what the church may learn about its own Savior and Eucharist from Hindu sacrifice. The Incarnate Word fulfills and purifies the rites and doctrines of Hinduism, but the church is also able to enrich its christological and eucharistic insights by studying Hindu texts and traditions. The fruit of this process is what Panikkar calls “re-mythicization,” or a mutual renewal of self-understanding that represents an “enriching and deepening for both religions.”5 “Re-mythiciziation” in the context of Le mystère shows that a genuine learning from the religions is possible within a doctrinally orthodox and mission-oriented faith in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of all. The bulk of this chapter will be devoted to exploring the interplay between Panikkar’s inclusivist theology of religions and his comparative theological examples in the aforementioned relatively unknown work, Le mystère du culte dans l’hindouisme et le christianisme. First, however, the Opus Dei context of Panikkar’s early theology of sacrifice will be outlined, showing the continuity between Panikkar’s theology of sacrifice during this more traditional phase and his early forays into Hindu–Christian dialogue. As discussed above in the Introduction, Panikkar’s work is profitably understood as that of a Christian thinker, and the strong links between his early work 5. Panikkar, Le mystère du culte, 201.

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and later dialogue with Hinduism demonstrate that a careful study of Panikkar’s Christian background shoud be taken into account when interpreting his later directions. PANIKKAR’S OPUS DEI THEOLOGY OF SACRIFICE Le mystère du culte may be situated in the context of Panikkar’s early Opus Dei theological writings, a period of his career that dates back before his formal study of Hinduism in India. The latter conditioned, to some extent, the types of comparisons Panikkar chose to pursue with Hinduism later on, and it is also fruitful to observe how the study of Hinduism deepened and expanded Panikkar’s prior theological reflections. Panikkar’s comparative theological interests in Le mystère du culte are in many ways continuous with the concerns and themes from his Opus Dei years. Toward these ends, it is first necessary to determine how Panikkar’s theological agenda was shaped by Opus Dei. Maciej Bielawski devotes much attention in his Panikkar biography to chronicling the Panikkar’s intense, if not always pacific, attachment and involvement with Opus Dei as numerary and priest, a journey that lasted from 1940 until 1966. Bielawski makes the bold but defensible claim that alongside the French Benedictine and mystic of Hindu–Christian dialogue, Henri le Saux (Swami Abhishiktananda) and the Italian philosopher Enrico Castelli, Jose Maria Escriva ranks as one of the three most formative influences in Panikkar’s life and thought.6 Given that Panikkar was numerary, priest, and theologian of Opus Dei for twenty-six years, it is reasonable to conclude that something of the movement and the influence of Escriva, its founder, would be reflected in Panikkar’s theology, particulary his early work. As Bielawski notes, “his membership was neither mere chance, nor accident, nor was it insignificant for his existence or his thought, even when he abandoned it later.”7 6. Maciej Bielawski, Panikkar: un uomo e il suo pensiero (Fazi Editore, 2013), 66. Parts of the text are translated into English on Bielawski’s personal website by Leonardo di Lisio. http://www.maciejbielawski.com/panikkar-the-man-and-his-thought.html. The rest of di Lisio’s as of yet unpublished manuscript was sent to me via electronic mail. 7. Ibid., 27.

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Opus Dei in the early years aimed to be at the forefront of an evangelical renewal within Spanish culture, which was disoriented by World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II. Opus Dei was at first a loosely organized movement and community that gathered around the person and teachings of Escriva. Panikkar joined within this nascent and charismatic context. In a later interview, Panikkar recalled that the Opus Dei of 1940’s Spain was a “countercultural movement” that sought to “overcome ‘routine’ Catholicism.”8 It attracted the disillusioned and idealistic youth of Spain who “wished to take the demands of the Gospel seriously.”9 Panikkar joined Opus Dei as a lay numerary shortly after being forced to end his university studies in Bonn, returning to Barcelona on account of the outbreak of World War II. After a few introductory meetings with Escriva, Panikkar was recognized for his intellectual precociousness and sent into priestly formation, later furthering his education in chemistry, philosophy, and theology. A special concern of Escriva’s Opus Dei in the early years was the rise of anti-clerical and anti-Catholic ideologies in Spain. Panikkar, among many others, was tasked to play a prominent role in combating the spread and influence of irreligion in Spanish society and culture. Panikkar later recollected that Opus Dei’s posture toward the modern world was one of conflict and suspicion. “Those like John XXIII who wanted to come to terms with the world,” he wrote, “could not understand our ‘espiritu de combate’.”10 Panikkar recalls the priests of the movement kneeling after Mass and saying prayers to St. Michael, asking for his intercession in their battle with the forces of evil.11 Opus Dei, according to Panikkar, was the “tiny flock of Israel,” made up of those Catholics who alone had the courage to follow the heroic demands of Christ.12 It was part of Escriva’s teachings on discipleship to emphasize spiritual heroism and combat.13 Panikkar’s early theological reflection, particularly in Spanish journals for reli8. Interview with Panikkar, as cited in Walsh, The Secret World of Opus Dei, 30. 9. Ibid. 10. Raimon Panikkar, Personal letter to Alberto Moncada: www.redescristianas.net/.../raimon-panikkar-y-el-opus. 11. Ibid. 12. Ibid. 13. Josemaria Escriva de Balageur, The Way (Doubleday: New York, 2003), 55.

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gion, culture and society like Arbor and Nuestro Tiempo sometimes reflects this “spirit of combat” and confirms that he was an active participant in Opus Dei’s mission to secular culture. Panikkar uses his writings in this period to challenge the ills and “sins” of Western, modern culture, particularly atheism, rationalism, and nationalism,14 believing that a newly invigorated witness to the Gospel could offer a decadent Western culture the means for transformation out of its intellectual, social, and spiritual malaise.15 The means for this transformation, according to Escriva, would be the devotion and commitment of ordinary Christians who would sanctify the world with their ordinary duties and work. Escriva wrote his Camino for souls who wished to develop an interior life in the midst of their “serious obligation” to work in the world.16 He desired his counsels for anyone “who recognized that God is calling them to the loving fulfillment of their daily duties in the world, not out of personal ambition, but rather as a way of offering glory to God and serving others.”17 According to Pedro Rodriguez, Escriva’s message was directed toward the whole of the baptized within their professional and secular duties and was fundamentally concerned with calling them to holiness in the world. For Rodriguez, Escriva provided an important gloss on the future Vatican II’s theology of the laity, for “the ‘universal’ call to holiness would be utopian (or illusory), if the wide range of human situations (all human life) could not be sanctified and absorbed into the redemption . . . this is a call to discover and act on the apostolic possibilities latent in all the various situations where secular Christians find themselves, especially in the wide world of work.”18 Panikkar later said that underlying this call for secular holiness was the movement’s vision of an authentically Christian society at all levels, especially in positions of socio-cultural power. “If there 14. See “De Deo Abscondito,” Arbor 25 (1948): 1–25; and “El Cristianismo no es un Humanismo,” Arbor 62 (1951): 165–86. 15. See Panikkar’s “El Sentido Cristiana De La Vida: Su Aspecto Paradigmatico En Los Primeros Cristianos,” Arbor 11 (1945): 261–82. 16. Escriva, The Way, 22. 17. Ibid. 18. Pedro Rodriguez, Fernando Ocariz, and Jose Luis Illanes, Opus Dei in the Church: An Ecclesiological Study of the Life and Apostolate of Opus Dei (Princeton: Scepter, 1993), 6–7.

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is no good in the world, it is because ‘we’ (the Catholic practitioners who follow the evangelical counsels) do not have power ..... therefore all social problems, work, war and peace, etc., are subject to the elite that rules the world.”19 Panikkar called this the Work’s “theology of second causes,” which held that as long as the “Caesar, Napoleon and Mussolini” ruled the world, the Kingdom would remain distant and opaque.20 According to Escriva, “in order that Christ might reign in the world, it is necessary to have people of prestige who, with their eyes fixed on Heaven, dedicate themselves to all human activities, and through these activities exercise quietly—and effectively—an apostolate of a professional character.”21 According to Panikkar, Opus Dei believed that the Kingdom of God would come about through ordinary, secular duties, enlivened by “prayer, penance, and other virtues such as perseverance, prudence and fortitude, all exercised in the arena of ordinary work aimed to conquer the top of society at all levels (political, economic, scientific, cultural) and from there to the Kingdom of love, justice and peace.”22 Therefore, the Work would encourage its numeraries working in the media, politics, and industry to strive for excellence and achievement, not for themselves, but for Christ. As Escriva wrote in The Way, “Christ died for you . . . what should you do for him?”23 Bielawski’s reconstruction of Escriva’s speech to potential numeraries at the Barcelona “New Year’s Eve” meeting in 1940 gives a sense of the context and priorities of Escriva and Opus Dei in the early years: cultural chaos and distress, the yearning for renewal, and a new model of evangelical work in the world. Opus Dei would go beyond the impotence of cultural Catholicism, as well as the ineffective contemptus mundi of cloistered monasticism, to represent the coming together of the sacred and the secular in one’s very existence and vocation.24

19. Panikkar, Personal Letter to Albert Moncada. 20. Ibid. 21. Escriva, The Way, 59. 22. Panikkar, Personal Letter to Albert Moncada. 23. Escriva, The Way, 22. 24. Bielawski, Panikkar, 28.

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“CRISTIANDAD Y CRUZ” Panikkar’s “Cristiandad y Cruz” strikingly articulates this Opus Dei vision.25 The text is an eloquent representative of early Opus Dei theology, particularly in terms of its critique of modernity, emphasis on the interpenetration of secular work and worship, the centrality of heroic sacrifice in the world, as well as the renewal of church and society through counter-cultural witness. Panikkar’s thesis in the article is that the divine generosity displayed in the cross ought to shape the lay church’s being-in-the-world, transforming secular duty and the worldly pursuit of power into cruciform gift-offering and sacrificial worship. I will now turn to a closer exposition of “Cristiandad y Cruz” to round out this portrait of Panikkar the Opus Dei theologian, showing how it is deeply rooted in Escriva’s classic spiritual manual, The Way, to be followed by a consideration of its relationship with his later Hindu-Christian comparative work, Le mystère du culte. Panikkar opens the article by discussing the conundrum Christians encounter in the world. How should Christians understand being in the world but not of the world? As discussed above, this is a classic Opus Dei concern that comes from the heart of Escriva’s vision. Panikkar argues that it cannot be a matter of belonging to one or the other in a mutually exclusive way. The Christian necessarily partakes in both the natural and supernatural orders.26 To neglect one or the other would be sinful. Christians “must not be apart from the world, or despise those who live in it, or leave to non-Christians the reins of society.”27 This is to be guilty of a “comfortable and criminal absenteeism.”28 Yet, the Christian must also remember that the “kingdom is not here,” and that the life of a Christian “is a constant mortification and negation of the age in which he lives.”29 Panikkar embarks to understand this “both-and” from the perspective of the cross, arguing that only the via crucis is able to avoid inordinately loving the world, on the one hand, and despising it in a flight 25. Raimundo Panikkar, “Cristiandad y Cruz: Una Investigacion Teologico-Historica,” Arbor 84 (1952): 337–67. 26. Panikkar, “Cristiandad y Cruz,” 338. 27. Ibid., 339. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid.

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toward God, on the other. The source of this insight is christological; Jesus embraced the world while offering it to the Father on the cross. The cross for Panikkar is the revelation of the true nature of the human, and the standard by which all history is to be judged. It is the “only perennial value among the comings and goings of culture and different human points of view.”30 Panikkar notes the difficulty of cruciform fidelity to the world and to God. The histories of Israel and the church amply bear this out, as the people of God throughout salvation history often opted for worldly power and privilege instead of sacrificial existence. Covenantal infidelity, at its core, is an avoidance of the full import of the cross. The church’s “thirst for grandeur” belies a secret desire that it should “dominate the world in its own way.”31 Though “rightwing” Christians “possess the indispensable faith to carry on the cross in their own personal lives,” the actualization of the cross in public life appears to them “like a violation that offends God.”32 Their hyper-investment in the machinations of the world is often driven by desire for a “spectacular reign” of Christian power.33 For “political Catholicism,” the defeat and humiliation of a social and political order is anathema and accursed, as success and power is the sign of a true blessing. Death is acceptable only if it results in a greater temporal and terrestrial triumph. Panikkar criticizes this cultural imagination for being inadequately cruciform and wedded to power. Fearing defeat and humiliation is a denial of the cross, Jesus’s Lordship, and a symptom of idolatrous affections. To be a Christian is to acknowledge Jesus Christ as King, and to be willing to suffer defeat here on earth in service of the Messiah.34 “Blessed are you when they persecute you,” Panikkar remarks, before adding, “for before the King there was the Priest and Victim.”35 To willingly subvert one’s natural powers in walking the way of the cross, however, requires a scandalous poverty of being and an openness to grace. Human strength is

30. Ibid., 366. 31. Ibid., 341. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid., 340. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid., 366.

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weakness and human weakness is strength in Christ.36 This is a true challenge to “political Catholicism.”37 Panikkar next challenges those who claim that this valorization of suffering is contrary to reason and the overall welfare of humanity. These critics are suspicious that Christian language about dying to self and preparing for the eschatological age paralyzes “the telluric capacities of the sons of men.”38 Christianity for them preaches that “the world is misery” and that it is best to await a new world rather than improve conditions on earth.39 In this line of thinking, the Christian “social ideal of resignation and detachment is the opium of the populace and the principal obstacle for the progress of civilization.”40 Does the negation inherent in the cross imply that Christianity is intrinsically contemptuous of the world? Panikkar agrees that there are world-denying attitudes within Christianity that resonate with the modern critique. Rather than dismiss the cross, however, Panikkar offers a paradoxical interpretation. While it is true that the cross seeks fidelity to the Kingdom which is above, it is only by serving the supernatural order that the natural order is perfected. In other words, the cross does not bear within itself contempt for the world but represents humanity’s liberation from “disordered attachment” to it.41 Creation should not be possessed and manipulated for self-aggrandizement. All human values and powers, such as culture, technology, and politics, should be placed before the altar and joined with Christ’s own sacrifice to the Father, or as he puts it, “integrated under the sign of the cross.”42 This resonates with Escriva’s teaching on culture and creation. “Creatures for you?,” Escriva queries, “no,” he writes, “creatures for God . . . if for you, let them be yours for God’s sake.”43 “Culture, culture, good!” Escriva said, before adding, “but remember that culture is a means, not an end.”44 This sacrifice of creation and created goods is what Panikkar calls 36. Ibid., 349. 37. Ibid., 345. 38. Ibid., 352–53. 39. Ibid., 353. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 364. 42. Ibid., 339. 43. Escriva, The Way, 45. 44. Ibid., 29.

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the “immolatory” dimension of Christianity.45 Contrary to the suspicions of modern critcs, civil society and culture are not destroyed in this sacrificial offering, for immolation is not murder.46 By sacrificially offering all earthly values and goods as praise, adoration, and gift to God, Christians recede from absolute preoccupation with the successes and failures of this world in order to make way for the eruption of the heavenly city.47 The immolation of individual and society that makes way for the heavenly city is not without pain and hardship. Christian baptism and discipleship transform at their very root the “laws of the city of man,” which because of a disordered nature makes an absolute value of comfort, security and acquisition.48 Conversion is “a pain that tears and severs,” and it is experienced as paradoxical and counter-intuitive.49 Loving the world without grasping or possessing it is to undergo the ascetical mortification of the cross. Panikkar points out that the temptation of the apostles was to create permanent dwelling places on Mount Tabor, which he sees as emblematic of the Christian struggle in all ages. All earthly goods and values are good and may lead to God, or in Panikkar’s words, are “steps or rungs toward God” so long as they are “truly roads and not stationary puddles, or egocentric and circular concerns,” in other words, permanent dwelling places.50 In sum, “Cristiandad y Cruz” represents a theological reflection on the integration of the secular and the worldly with the heavenly and spiritual, interpreted through the lens of Opus Dei theology. The early Panikkar’s understanding of sacrifice is shaped by the basic insights of Escriva’s teaching and Thomistic scholasticism with its categories of the natural and supernatural, means and ends. Panikkar will take up the Opus Dei theme of work as worship during the next phase of his theological career, but this time will also draw upon Hindu categories to deepen his understanding of this integration.

45. Panikkar, “Cristiandad y Cruz,” 352. 46. Ibid., 354. 47. Ibid., 362. 48. Ibid., 364. 49. Ibid., 366. 50. Panikkar, “Cristiandad y Cruz,” 364.

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A DECADE LATER: HINDU AND CHRISTIAN SACRIFICE The Panikkar of Le mystère du culte persists in his attention to a proper understanding of the integration of worship and action, although interestingly with a more apocalyptic tone. He laments that modernity’s influence is observable everywhere. Architects and builders of churches no longer fast and pray before their work, parents no longer bless their children, and treaties between nations are no longer solemnly ratified in the presence of God.51 The separation of action from worship reduces action to mere activism and utilitarianism. For Panikkar, the existential crises suffered by those who labor in a context devoid of meaning exposes as fraudulent the soteriological promises of modern ideologies such as Marxism and capitalism. This separation of action and worship also harms worship, as it becomes little more than a private, luxurious and escapist ideology. Such a theology of worship is unsuitable for Panikkar because it denies the human’s corporeal and material nature. What is required is “a loftier synthesis” between action and contemplation, between Martha and Mary.52 He writes that “action and contemplation complete each other, harmonize, and belong together . . . action without contemplation is empty, inconsistent, and sterile. Contemplation without action . . . ignores history, neglects man, scorns the creation of God.”53 This synthesis between action and contemplation, similar to “Cristiandad y Cruz,” is worshipful action. In Le mystère du culte, worshipful action is work performed in the world as worship. Worshipful action avoids the pitfalls of horizontalism, because it is active and constructive, and escapism, because it is contemplative and prayerful. It also respects the human’s corporeal and spiritual nature and for this reason is christological, fully human and fully divine. Panikkar further argues that liturgical worship is the privileged source of worshipful action. This emphasis upon liturgy was absent from “Cristiandad y Cruz,” perhaps because liturgical participation in Panikkar’s Spanish context was not perceived to be under threat at that time. However, at the writing of Le mystère du culte, Panikkar 51. Panikkar, Le mystère du culte, 23. 52. Ibid., 20. 53. Ibid.

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acknowledges that the centrality of worship is being called into question as modern Western culture, including Catholics, routinely query as to how salvation can depend upon, or have anything to do with, a mere rite.54 For the modern secular mentality, “salvation” has to do with the proper exercise of rational judgment rather than the performance of ritual worship. To address this cultural attitude toward worship, Panikkar sets out to re-establish the link between liturgy and life, worship and worshipful action. HINDUISM AS A CATALYST FOR MODERN CHRISTIAN LIFE To achieve these goals, Panikkar has recourse to Hindu as well as Christian sources and concepts, and employs a comparative methodology to enrich Western and Christian traditions. Among references to contemporary Catholic intellectuals and theologians of the time, such as Hans urs von Balthasar, Michael Schmaus, Louis Bouyer, Josef Pieper and Odo Casel, Panikkar cites the Vedic and Mimamsaka understandings of sacrifice to support his argument that liturgy is central and necessary for ontological transformation. Panikkar also introduces the Bhagavad-Gītā’s “rich concept of lokasamgraha” which states that the world is held together by works that are offered as yajna (sacrifices).55 Panikkar does not limit his employment of the Hindu tradition to classical sources, as Gandhi is cited as an exemplar of the integration of worship and work. Panikkar argues that Gandhi’s practice and promotion of domestic industry and hand-weaving in place of reliance on British trade and commodities was more than a political and economic strategy. It was a manifestation of karma-marga, the path to liberation through worshipful action. Gandhi was embodying the reconciliation of ritual and life and the binding of Hindu spirituality to the “quotidian,” so as to make the “offering that is at the heart of human existence.”56 The Opus Dei emphasis on the “unity of life,” in the words of Bishop Javier Echevarria, who uses this phrase when 54. Ibid., 11. 55. Ibid., 21. 56. Ibid., 25.

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commenting upon the vision of Escriva’s El Camino, is now being considered by Panikkar within the Hindu tradition. Why did Panikkar change his approach, from an exclusively Christian witness and apologetic, to a Christian witness and apologetic in dialogue with Hinduism? One possibility is that this shift reflects biographical events. Panikkar spent significant time in India during the 1950s and 1960s studying Hinduism. His theological conversation from that point forward was irreversibly widened. However, as important and crucial as the personal dimension was to Panikkar’s study of Hinduism, it is only by viewing the dialogue within a wider socio-cultural context that Panikkar’s comparative and interreligious turn becomes fully intelligible. The challenge of modernity and the accompanying crisis of liturgy had so negatively impacted Christian theology that it now requires, for Panikkar, the catalyst of ancient traditions like Hinduism to help it re-appropriate the fullness of its pre-modern heritage. “Even if Hinduism taught nothing new,” Panikkar writes, “it could help the Church adapt the treasures of its tradition to the Church of today, to help it rediscover them and develop them.”57 Panikkar wishes to renew the church, and through the church, Western culture, by way of an encounter with Hinduism. Catholic Christianity, with its doctrine of perfecting nature rather than destroying it, could also offer a way for Hinduism to stem the decline of traditional liturgical and spiritual values because of modern and Western influences, while transforming them into something new and vital in Christ. In the process, a new stage in India’s religious development will be provoked with the transformation of Hinduism into Christianity.58 The church should have “no other ambition than to bring together and coordinate that which already exists thanks to the divine governance over the whole earth, in order to bring humanity to its destiny, collectively and perfectly.”59 The conversion of Hinduism to Christianity in this sense was a 57. Ibid., 150. 58. Ibid., 199. “ . . . the revelation of Jesus of Nazareth directly regards Hinduism too . . . Christ demands to be born, so to speak, in the heart of Hinduism and to be made manifest in the same way that he has been secretly present in the philosophy of the ancient Greeks in sometimes distorted and imprecise traces. This birth is indispensable, however difficult it may be, in order that the revelation of the Lord may again put on all its brilliance.” 59. Ibid., 17.

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theme that already existed among some Christian theologians of Hinduism in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, especially in the writings of the Catholic convert, Brahmabandhab Upādhyāya, and the Protestant missionary theologian, J. N. Farquhar. Panikkar’s version, however, features more of a positive affirmation of the unique value of the India’s spiritual heritage and more of a mutuality than either Upādhyāya’s Thomistic “natural-supernatural” paradigm or Farquhar’s fulfillment theology would allow. For Panikkar, the transformation of Hinduism “in Christ” nevertheless preserves its “Hinduness” to such an extent that it remains deeply illuminating and even corrective of Western Christian theology within a traditional christocentric paradigm. As such, the conversion of Christianity to Hinduism is “less a conversion to traditional Hinduism per se than to the values of Christ, the Lord.”60 The christological “seeds of the Word” present in Hinduism have the potential to renew and reinvigorate the church; Hinduism for Panikkar has a “positive role to play in the economy of salvation.”61 This is the case for the Panikkar of Le mystère du culte, especially with respect to the crisis of modernity. In an argument reminiscent of the essay on Melchizedk, Panikkar argues that in order to reclaim the pre-modern truths at the heart of the christological mystery, the church needs to “reattach itself” to ancient religious and theological traditions that place in the foreground aspects of religious existence displaced by modernity.62 This interreligious engagement is traditional in the widest sense of the term as it connects Christianity to the unity of salvation history, “back to Adam, and in a certain sense, to the origin of the earth.”63 It is also christological tradition rooted in the Incarnation, for “the historicity of Christ involves, precisely as history, a past.”64 Panikkar cites a late nineteenth century text on comparative religion for illustrative purposes. If, according to H. Hubert and M. Mauss, the “Christian imagination is built on old plans,” theologians would do well to understand the significance 60. Ibid., 123. 61. Ibid. 62. Ibid., 10. 63. Ibid., 16. 64. Ibid., 17.

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of this ancestry in order to understand their own Christian identity.65 He quotes Psalm 138:14 that all of the Lord’s works are valuable and none should be superseded or left behind. This reasoning is similar to Panikkar’s plea for the church to understand the person and work of Jesus Christ and its own mystery by encountering Jesus’s Melchizedekian lineage. In this sense, interreligious dialogue and comparative learning do not represent a radical and innovative rupture within the tradition. It is more discovery than novelty.66 The church is called to gather together the religious ancestries of humanity that are taken up in the Incarnation, in order to understand and learn from them. The gathering of the engraced elements of creation, particularly the religions, into Christ’s incarnate, risen and ecclesial body provokes the church toward a deeper understanding of its own mysteries. In Le mystère du culte, Panikkar is participating in his own distinctive, cross-cultural way in the enthusiasm surrounding the possibility of a “New Middle Ages.”67 The “New Middle Ages” movement sought to imitate Thomas’s dynamic Christian engagement with Aristotle by engaging the intellectual traditions of its own time. For Panikkar, this included Hinduism. Specifically, Panikkar sees karman or transformative ritual action as a stimulus for Christian thought and life analogous to the way in which the Greek logos enriched Christian theology. For Panikkar, this revitalization and conversion happens in two ways, which he calls the “double theological function” of studying worship in the Hindu tradition.68 The first theological function of comparative study brings the church back to its own tradition in order to retrieve and remember what it has forgotten about. This is strikingly resonant to Francis X. Clooney’s school of comparative theology. According to Panikkar, the study of Hindu worship “helps us better understand the Christian idea and explore what is hidden and a little neglected within the tradition.”69 He writes that 65. H. Hubert and M. Mauss, “Essay on the Nature and Function of Sacrifice,” Sociological Annual 2 (1897): 131, as cited in ibid., 15. 66. Ibid., 15. 67. See Bielawski, Panikkar, 59. See also Evgenii Lampert, Nicolas Berdayev and the New Middle Ages (London: J. Clarke, 1913). 68. Panikkar, Le mystère, 13. 69. Ibid.

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studying Hindu worship and sacrifice “may shed light on a perhaps obscure aspect of Christian worship.”70 The study of a theological topic in Hinduism is therefore an occasion to look at one’s own tradition anew and re-discover what has been eroded by modernity and lost to theological amnesia. In keeping with the first theological function, much of Panikkar’s study of Hinduism in Le mystère du culte is purposefully not designed for theological innovation. It is precisely because an encounter with Hinduism can assist the church retrieve its own traditional doctrine and practices that it is valuable. Panikkar’s theological engagement with Hinduism was not designed to unsettle or breach traditional concerns such as the primacy of liturgy, the spiritual reading of scripture, but rather to further solidify and reinforce them in the face of modernity. For Panikkar, Hinduism was a more faithful and productive dialogue partner for Christian theology than Western modernity, and indeed, could act as a kind of bulwark against the latter’s encroachment. The second theological function consists in the study of Hinduism contributing something innovative to Christian theology. Panikkar explains that at times the “theology of Hindu worship . . . offers us innovations that, once elaborated and integrated into Christian doctrine, should serve to enliven Christianity and keep it receptive.”71 The Hindu tradition plays a more active and constructive role with this second theological function. Panikkar argues that Hindu religion and philosophy revitalizes Christian thought and action in new ways beyond the appropriation of Hellenistic philosophy and the Greek tradition.72 Panikkar makes it clear, however, that this clarion call for a dialogue with Hindu traditions is not produced from a polemical or antithetical spirit that seeks to undermine the contributions of earlier theological epochs, but instead “is borne of a confidence that looks toward the future” for “the history of Christianity is not finished.” 73 In sum, Panikkar sees the dialogue between Hinduism and Christianity as part of a larger interreligious witness to the importance of worship and liturgy, both to each other and to modernity. This 70. Ibid., 9. 71. Ibid., 13. 72. Ibid., 124. 73. Ibid., 13.

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witness would begin through the example of Christians like Panikkar who would undergo a vicarious, substitutionary incarnation into the heart of Hindu myths, rituals, and scriptures. The interreligious “martyr” would perform an existential double conversion within himself; the conversion of Hinduism to Jesus Christ, a witness to Hindus, and the conversion of Christianity to Jesus Christ in Hinduism, a witness to Christians, and through Christians, to the modern West. This witnessing of the church to Hinduism and Hinduism to the church would be costly and full of suffering because of the misunderstandings it would produce among both communities, but is necessary for both the spread of the gospel and the enrichment of the church. With this undeniably missiological component, Panikkar anticipates the Hindu critique that an “existential incarnation”74 is subtly reminiscent of colonialist strategies of co-optation and dominance. As a rebuttal, Panikkar makes an appeal to the very dynamics of Hinduism. Hinduism, he argues, bestows legitimacy upon plural manifestations and interpretations of its own essence. From Panikkar’s perspective, his Christian interpretation of the śruti is therefore compatible with one of the deeper qualities of the Hindu tradition and does it no violence or injustice. Hinduism does not possess a centralized creed or canon but is rather an “existence” that can express itself in any number of ways. This “existential character,” Panikkar explains, “leaves freedom to interpret its central truths, and by the same token authorizes me to advance a ‘Christian’ interpretation of its doctrine.”75 Overall, his position is that Hindu perspectives on karman, jnana and bhakti can be brought into a harmonious synthesis within Christian theology, offering a challenge to the disintegration of action, knowledge, and worship in the West, as well as a new possibility for the Hindu tradition. Panikkar’s commitment to transform Hinduism in light of Christianity and Christianity in light of Hinduism results in creative, alternating modes of contestation and apologetics alongside openness and mutuality. Panikkar’s Christian confidence in Hinduism resulted in openness to learning and being enriched by Hinduism, but at the same time, his commitment to the 74. Ibid., 121. 75. Ibid.

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ultimacy of Jesus Christ and the ontological priority of life in Christ led Panikkar toward a missiological stance. At times both movements take place in regard to a single element or strand of Hindu tradition, particularly in regard to advaita. Panikkar is able to execute in the course of Le mystère du culte what theologians often affirm as axiomatic: the holding together of fidelity and openness, mission and dialogue. Panikkar sometimes brings competitive strands of the Hindu tradition together and applies them to his Christian theological project, even as they are opposed to each other within their own intra-Hindu contexts. For example, Panikkar argues that theology has something to learn from the centrality of karman, as well as the transformative engagement with the scriptural texts of the non-dual Vedantin tradition, but without absorbing the entirety of their polemical apparatus which would preclude such a synthesis. The specific manner in which Panikkar allows the Hindu tradition to speak to Christian theology and cohere together is peculiar from a Hindu perspective, yet their Hindu context and meaning enriches his Christian theological presentation in various ways. It is difficult, however, as is the case with his later work as well, to parse out when Panikkar is simply expositing a Hindu text within its own textual world, and when he is constructing a cross-cultural or interreligious, Christian translation. The two are often enmeshed and not clearly distinguishable. Panikkar acknowledges that his interpretations of Hinduism can be described as a “bird’s eye view” of the tradition that examines the “forest” of Hinduism from a transcendent vantage point, that of Christian revelation.76 Panikkar’s survey of worship in the Hindu tradition is a theologically motivated survey permeated with Christian theological interests and commitments. “Recall,” he reminds the reader, “that our study is first of all of a philosophical and theological character rather than a historical study . . . this effort does not follow the classical history of religions so much as it develops a theology of this great tree of Indian religious wisdom, in order to see how their sap might revive the religious situation of our time.”77 76. Ibid., 101. 77. Ibid., 55.

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OVERCOMING FRAGMENTATION IN DIALOGUE WITH HINDUISM Panikkar categorizes the diverse perspectives within Hinduism on worship into three periods: the “Vedas-Brahmanas—karma-marga,” “Upanisads and ‘Modern’ Evolution—jnana-marga” and “Salvation and Devotion—bhakti-marga.” Panikkar’s hermeneutical approach to the various Hindu traditions is therefore highly synthetic. Panikkar fashions a Christian interpretation of the unity of karman, jnana, and bhakti in light of the crisis surrounding the separation of knowledge, action, and worship in the modern West, and utilizes similar debates within the history of Hinduism as background and analogy for his study. For example, Panikkar critiques jnana marga for separating salvific knowledge from ritual action, as the Brahma-Sūtra is devoted in part to “replacing sacrifice with knowledge.”78 Panikkar says simply that he wishes to “admit both perspectives” by affirming the importance of salvific knowledge, although his support of jnana’s critique of material sacrifice remains limited and qualified.79 Panikkar agrees with jnana’s claim that sacrifice should be purified of magical and utilitarian tendencies and also that spiritual transformation should take priority over the mundane “materially perceptible” benefits sometimes emphasized as the outcome of Vedic brahminical sacrifice.80 However, Panikkar is also critical of jnana for diminishing the soteriological, transformative power of karman. Panikkar partially links jnana-marga’s dismissal of karman as the Hindu analogue to the modern, Western turn to knowledge apart from action, interiority apart from worship, and salvation apart from ontological becoming. A certain interpretation of the Upaniṣads, for Panikkar, is the beginning of the modern evolution of Hindu spirituality, as modernity also has a “tendency toward dispersion” whereby “our religious life is characterized by a strange dichotomy” between knowing, acting, and worship.81 These dispersive tendencies of 78. Ibid., 61. 79. Ibid. 80. Ibid., 63. 81. Ibid., 202.

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modernity and jnana come together in the works of modern, Western-educated Hindu philosophers like Radhakrishnan. As with the later Vedic Experience, Panikkar is contesting Hindu theologies and offering his own, distinctive construction. In this case, jnana has melded with modernity and Enlightenment philosophy. It “is fashionable among this ‘modern’ Indian mentality to stigmatize the brahminical period as ‘meaningless ceremonialism.”82 Yet, for Panikkar, jnana-marga does not supersede karma-marga, just as rationality does not supersede liturgical worship or render it otiose. To privilege knowing apart from liturgy reduces theology to “a purely intellectual quest” and reduces worship to an anti-intellectual experience.83 Panikkar sees the Bhagavad-Gītā as a helpful synthesis of the three margas, as “action, knowledge and love go together.”84 Analogously, Panikkar wants to integrate these elements of religious existence in the Christian life, although he sets out a distinct map that is centered upon the Eucharist. TRANSFORMATIONAL LITURGY AS “PRIMA INTER PARES” Although there is a fundamental unity underlying doctrine, liturgy, and ethics, Panikkar argues that liturgy is a kind of prima inter pares. This does not negate either the ethical or doctrinal dimensions but transposes them within liturgy as an “onto-ethical experience and doctrine which is realizable only in worship.”85 Panikkar aims to show that knowledge and action are only efficacious when they originate in liturgy and partake in liturgical transformation. Liturgy is the font and source of Christian existence, for it is through liturgy that the human undergoes ontological transformation. Liturgical divinization or theōsis sharply distinguishes the meaning of Christian salvation from humanistic conceptions of “salvation,” as modernity reduces the very notion of salvation to a healthy psychological 82. Panikkar mentions in this respect R. D. Ranade, Survey of Upanisadic Philosophy (Poona: Oriental Book Agency, 1926), 6, as cited in Le mystère du culte, 110. 83. Ibid., 202. 84. Ibid., 71. 85. Ibid., 36.

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disposition or “subjective well-being.”86 This has become true as well for “partisans” of Christianity who argue for the validity of Christianity within modern categories, thereby inadvertently taking on the presuppositions of their “adversaries.”87 The irony for Panikkar is that salvation, an entirely religious concern, has become situated in a solely a-religious context. In a retreat given at Casa San Sergio in 1966 which was later re-worked into a book entitled La Presenza di Dio, Panikkar reminds his audience that the goal of Christian existence “is not . . . the humanistic concept of a man who is self-contained, impeccable, and beyond reproach.”88 Divinization is not possible through human capacity alone. While the “humanist does not accept the idea of having to be saved,” the Christian knows that without God’s salvific action, such ontological transformation is not possible. God’s power and grace through liturgy is “the only force with the power to work conversion, repentance, and the elevation of the soul to a higher sphere.”89 Central to Panikkar’s thesis in Le mystère du culte is that this divine salvific action exercises itself primarily through liturgy. “Religion, is in essence, worship,” Panikkar states, not in the sense of “lifeless and empty ritualism but as dynamic ontological commerce with the divine world.”90 Liturgy is more “work of God (opus Dei) than work of man (opus hominis) . . . or better it is, opus Christi, that is to say, theandric action, work that is at the same time divine and human.”91 Panikkar finds the comparison between Christian soteriology and brahminical Hinduism helpful in re-affirming the centrality of ontological transformation through liturgy. The soteriological efficacy of worship and rites is integral to what brahminical Hinduism means by karman. Panikkar points out that the etymology of karman reveals that it is traced to the root “kr” which “means to do, to execute, to accomplish, to achieve, to operate, to produce an effect.”92 Panikkar wishes 86. Ibid., 12. 87. Ibid. 88. Raimundo Panikkar, La Presenza di Dio (Vicenza: La Locusta, 1970). Translated into English by Prof. Gerald Carney, unpublished manuscript, 7. 89. Ibid., 12. 90. Ibid., 56. 91. Panikkar, Le mystère du culte, 22. 92. Ibid., 65.

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to retrieve this brahminical understanding of karman as the power of ritual action to effect transformation rather than the later, interiorized development of karman as moral action. It was only when sacrifice was thought to be no “longer capable of saving man, nor of delivering him from time,” that it was ascribed a role in perpetuating samsara, or the transmigration of souls.93 Panikkar defends karman and its soteriologically efficacious power, affirming that transformation happens “by the grace of ritual.”94 Karman as ritual or sacrificial action is part of the very order of transformation in the cosmos. Karman as yajna is the “vehicle” that transports the self in an ontological sense beyond the mundane plane, allowing access to a higher sphere. This ontological transformation does not impact the individual alone. Panikkar criticizes the Reformation-modern lineage of soteriology because it privileges the salvation of the individual. “The premier preoccupation of India,” on the other hand, “is, without doubt, salvation, but it is not a concern with individual salvation but rather a breaking free of all egotistical limitations to realize the Whole.”95 Panikkar brings this insight back to the Christian tradition and asserts that salvation is never just for the individual but for the cosmos as well.96 Salvation concerns the entire cosmos, but the human plays a unique role, precisely because what sets the human apart from the other elements of creation is its priestly capacity to offer sacrifice on behalf of the world. For the Vedas, sacrifice is the distinguishing characteristic of the human, the basis for its anthropological uniqueness. Created reality is therefore “founded on the law of sacrifice, of the offering of the self and the gift of the self,”97 which belongs to the very essence of God, as God is fundamentally sacrifice. This movement of exitus and reditus, which Panikkar in a Christian way calls the mutual gift of self between God and creation, is continually enacted and re-enacted in Vedic sacrificial liturgy. The puruṣasūkta hymn describes the act of creation through sacrifice, which Vedic sacrifice re-enacts. 93. Ibid., 56. 94. Ibid., 59. 95. Ibid., 36. 96. Ibid., 102–3. 97. Ibid., 94.

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Similarly, the Catholic liturgy is for Panikkar the re-enactment of salvation history, or the perfect and complete return of the world to God in the sacrificial gift offering of Jesus’s life and death. According to Panikkar, “the history of the world unfolds in the liturgy in a definitive way . . . the Father creates the world and shows us his Son, the Son sends us his Spirit, who assembles us into a Church, and the Church . . . by means of material but divinized images and its sacraments in Christ, leads us back to God.”98 Jesus is the priest par excellence who as pre-existent Logos offers his intra-trinitarian sacrifice in the flesh, on behalf of the entirety of creation, in order to restore it back to God.99 TRANSFORMATIONAL LITURGY AND ACTION Panikkar’s priestly and sacrificial theological anthropology also focuses upon mediating and bestowing the fruits of this transformative sacrifice in the world. The church participates in Christ’s mediation not only by offering Jesus’s sacrifice but also by consuming it and mediating this divine life within the world. Liturgy, Panikkar explains, is not exclusively concerned with sanctification within the “temple” but extends out into “the work that keeps the world together, something that is finally possible because Jesus Christ is the unique liturgist and priest.”100 The active, mediatory life of the human, such as tasks, projects and activities, even as seemingly insignificant as “an appointment I have tomorrow,”101 are offered to God and then received back through the Triune God’s action of sanctifying, vivifying, blessing and bestowing grace on us in Christ (“per quem . . . creas, sanctificas, vivificas, benedicis et praestas nobis”).102 The priest exclaims “ite, missa est!” to the body of Christ in order to go into the world to do the work of Christ, but only after “the sacrifice of the head has been shared by all its members.”103 The 98. Ibid., 198. 99. Ibid., 192. 100. Ibid. 101. Panikkar, The Presence of God, 10. 102. Panikkar, Le mystère du culte, 162. 103. Ibid., 170.

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liturgical transit and transformation of all things in Christ does not take the Christian out of the world in the gnostic sense. Rather, the liturgical transformation of the ontology of the fractured imago Dei into the imago Christi exists to empower worshipful action, just as for the Gita, sacrifice is not a “fleeting ritualism but a human action transfigured in sacrifice.”104 Panikkar develops a Christian interpretation of advaita to lend further meaning to transformation in Christ, wherein our lives and actions participate in Christ’s own life and actions. According to Panikkar, the modern Western problem of autonomy requires correction from the Hindu understanding of non-duality, which leads to a deeper understanding of the fundamental non-competitiveness of God and creation in the life of Christ and the life of grace. An autonomous mentality thinks of the presence of God as “increasing” our being in the sense of adding something extraneous to our identity and action.105 If that were the case, Panikkar reasons, God would be purely external, oppressive and would distract from our daily activities. Panikkar asks himself rhetorically, “how can I have the presence of God, if I must give my attention to driving the car, doing an algebraic equation or an experiment in physics, or if I have to cook?”106 Panikkar counters that “the presence of God is ad-vaita, not a dual experience.”107 The presence of God does not distract and take the person away from their tasks “whether it be teaching, reading or cooking.”108 The presence of God is rather operans in me Deus, God working in and through humanity.109 Operans in me Deus is the expression of Christ’s own life in us, a theandric dynamic wherein our “actions are given a new meaning, a noble and more elevated signification, and a more profound reality that enriches our actions, filling them with the ‘divine contents’ of God’s will.”110 Worshipful 104. Ibid., 71. 105. Panikkar, The Presence of God, 8. 106. Ibid. 107. Ibid. 108. Ibid. 109. Panikkar is drawing upon St. Benedict’s concept of opus Dei, interpreted as operans in me Deus in I. Hausherr, “Melanges G. de Jesphanion,” Orientalia christiana period 13 (1943): 210, cit., Le mystère du culte, 84. 110. Panikkar, The Presence of God, 18.

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action unifies and harmonizes our activities and relationships and lovingly offers them to God within the “plan of the Holy Spirit, who as the spirit of love is life-giving, sweeping us along with the Son toward the Father.”111 Even though the “osmosis between our life of work and our self-offering remains rather poor,” through liturgy “the Lord penetrates within us bit by bit, transforming and divinizing our body and its work.”112 The divinization of work, or the church’s worshipful action, fulfills for Panikkar the eschatological and christological telos of Genesis 2:15, where God “took the man and settled him in the Garden of Eden, to cultivate and care for it.”113 Displaying the inner unity of creation and redemption, Panikkar comments that the “ut operaretur of Genesis 2:15 does not refer to only agriculture, or the polis, but to the self-offering of the entire cosmos in Christ until it is realized in perfect form; the fullness of the age for the children of God (see Eph 4:13).”114 Paul’s exhortation to pray unceasingly, later taken up by the Heyschasm tradition of Eastern Orthodoxy, is interpreted by Panikkar in this way. Panikkar argues that it would be impossible to pray unceasingly if prayer were merely mental prayer arising from consciousness, and summons Origen, who said that “prayer is sacrifice, and sacrifice is an act, action.”115 Continuous prayer is only possible when prayer is embodied in one’s actions in the world. “We are only able to pray without interruption,” according to Panikkar, “on the condition that our prayer is intimately blended with our being, and that our life becomes true worship.”116 Later in his priestly life, Panikkar was more bold in his expressions at the conclusion of liturgy, sharing with the congregation that the “Mass never ends.” This is precisely because for Panikkar the liturgy continues through the actions of one’s life.

111. Ibid., 16. 112. Ibid., 19. 113. Panikkar, Le mystère du culte, 21. 114. Ibid. 115. Ibid., 166–67. 116. Ibid.

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TRANSFORMATIONAL LITURGY AND KNOWLEDGE Panikkar continues to develop his argument for the centrality of liturgical transformation by articulating the relationship between liturgy and knowledge. Panikkar is drawn to the Hindu understanding of orthopraxy, karman, because it expresses the primacy of being over knowing, or in Christian terms, the primacy of the Logos existing for the Father rather than the Logos as the “mind” of the Father.117 Although it is true that Christianity “contains a teaching,” Panikkar rejects the notion that Christianity is, in the first place, a doctrine, and that its primary role consists in communicating this doctrine.118 Christianity privileges doing over teaching, with teaching fulfilled in doing.119 Panikkar points out that each salvific event in biblical history is enacted through a unity of word and deed; the teaching of Christ is meaningless without reference to the work of Christ. “What Jesus came to do above all,” Panikkar notes, “was the good pleasure of the Father . . . he received for his mission a work to accomplish, an Easter to celebrate, a task to complete.”120 Jesus’s teaching ministry was also concerned with inaugurating a community marked by his particular pattern of life. “The parable,” Panikkar writes, “wants to be not only understood (‘who has ears for hearing, let him hear,’) but also completed, realized (‘go and do likewise’).”121 Christianity is therefore an “imitatio Christi,” an orthopraxy. This can also be gleaned through the Lord’s prayer, where the church prays for “divine life on earth.”122 Theology and doctrine are not equivocated, but their importance lies in being connected to an orthopraxy inaugurated in liturgy and encounter with the living Christ. However, the modern dogmas of empiricism and rationalism have led to an incessant preoccupation with the rationality of the Christian worldview and whether it is epistemologically possible to believe in the modern age. “For some,” Panikkar writes, “Christianity is no 117. Ibid. 118. Ibid., 158. 119. Ibid., 175. 120. Ibid., 158. 121. Ibid., 182. 122. Ibid., 167.

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more than an outlook on life (Weltanschauung).”123 The privileging of rationality “betrays from the beginning a weak point . . . that is, the tacit supposition that it is possible to present the message in a purely intellectual way or, to be more prudent, to present and publish this message as one would a lesson, in proportion to the intellectual aptitude of man.”124 For Panikkar, it is a reductionism to understand Christ as a more or less acceptable idea according to the norms of modernity. Amidst all of the contributions that the West has made to knowledge, “there is still one thing that the world has not learned, perhaps because the West turned him aside: Christ himself, who alone gives Christian ideas.”125 A disproportionate concern with intellectual coherence and the epistemological status of doctrinal truth-claims has distracted theology from its connectedness to encounter with the mystery of Christ through the liturgy. Yet the Bible itself, Panikkar suggests, is neither science nor metaphysics but is deeply rooted in the liturgy. “Go and teach,” Panikkar writes, citing Matthew 28, “is tightly bound to the command to baptize.”126 Theology conceived in this way fulfills its sole purpose, which is “to aid in realizing salvation.”127 Salvific encounter is bound to “a meal . . . an action, to a sacrament instead of a doctrine.”128 The kerygma is therefore insufficient for salvation unless it is oriented toward participation in the Eucharist. “The living word of the Good News,” Panikkar points out, “is the word that leads us to the Christ of the Eucharist who as Son leads us to the Father.”129 Panikkar does not deny that “assent to the Word naturally has its indispensable role”130 in the Christian life, but resituates it within the liturgy as the liturgical keryma. The liturgical kerygma is necessary for sacramental participation in Christ, since the transformation into divine life “is not automatic—to be efficacious it requires the participation of our spirit, which takes place precisely during the liturgy of the word.”131 123. Ibid., 159. 124. Ibid., 155. 125. Ibid., 159. 126. Ibid., 157. 127. Ibid. 128. Ibid., 189. 129. Ibid. 130. Ibid., 155. 131. Ibid., 157.

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“Pre-monastic theology,” Panikkar adds in this vein, “was more a discipline of life than of thought,” similar to “the Christian philosophers of the first centuries for whom to philosophize was to lead an ascetic life, exchanging human existence for divine life.”132 Theology is fecund only to the degree in which it utters an amen to eucharistic encounter. Consequently, Panikkar changes the landscape of what is deemed acceptable theology. Rational erudition is not the primary category. Panikkar notes that the Andalusian-Iberian holy week canticles, or saetas, possess a “profound theology” but appear “superstitious” and “primitive” to modern sensibilities.133 Yet their profundity lies in the way in which their words help to mediate the transformation of the entire person in and through liturgical performance. “Orthodoxy is not authentic until it is born of orthopraxy and nourished by it.”134 Liturgy has primacy for as we “participate in Christ’s life, in his being, he also makes us participants in his light, his knowledge.”135 Panikkar distinguishes between a rationalistic interpretation of scripture and a liturgical enactment of scripture “brought to fruition in the breast of the Church and in accordance with its mission.”136 The New Testament is a sui generis text, for it gives “the living life of water eternal.”137 Secular literature can help the reader to “understand, prepare, and interpret” but only the liturgical enactment of scripture leads to eternal life. Panikkar cites John 20:31 to display the soteriological uniqueness of Scripture: “these things are put into writing (gegraptai) so that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that in believing you will have life in his name.”138 Scripture as a 132. Ibid., 166. 133. Ibid., 15. 134. Ibid., 161. 135. Ibid., 167. 136. Ibid., 165. 137. Ibid., 183. 138. Ibid., 183. Panikkar remarks that “de-mythicizing” currents in modern biblical scholarship have reversed the priorities of John’s Gospel as expressed in 20:31 and 21:25. Instead of encountering the text that gives life, modern historical-critical scholarship has undertaken the task of making the living word a dead letter by becoming preoccupied over its historical genesis. Panikkar may be referring to the many “quests for the historical Jesus” when he writes, “the world could not carry nor even the bear weight of such a literature” (ibid.). “Myth,” on the other hand, “does not tolerate being confined or classified, it only wants to be heard and believed . . . on the outside, one hears only fables; one has eyes to see, ears to hear, but the heart is hardened and the spirit does not comprehend” (ibid., 200–201).

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living word is therefore ontically bound to the Word of God, Christ. To sever the link between the scriptural word and the Word, as modern biblical criticism is prone to do, is to “founder in intellectualism, indeed in rationalism” and to see in scripture only its “theoretical contents.”139 Importantly for Panikkar in a comparative key, the Hindu tradition of advaita has not severed the ontic link between the scriptural word and the soteriological Word that brings about transformation.140 For example, the māhā-vākya or “great sayings” of the śruti are not mere products of the intellect but “sacraments” or “symbols” of Brahman that bear within themselves this self-same reality.141 The words of the śruti “have salvific power because they can lead to contemplation of Brahman.”142 The śruti is not “another” reality but Brahman itself, analogous to how the Word of God is present in the scriptural word. When the scriptural word is experienced as the Divine Word, scripture is Logos in the true sense; not primarily intelligibility or even mental word (verbum mentis) but the word of being, the revelation of being (verbum entis), the expression of the Father in the Son.143 The Logos “is none other than God himself, God revealed, God as he is for us.”144 The Logos “has a meaning, sense, intelligibility but it is an epiphany, communication, revelation that creates relationship.”145 METAPHYSICAL BASIS OF LITURGICAL TRANSFORMATION Panikkar’s comparison between the presence of Brahman in the māhāvākya and the presence of Christ in scripture as transformative and empowering realities becomes part of a wider comparative reflection upon symbol and sacramentality in the Christian tradition. It is with this topic that Panikkar develops the second theological function of 139. Ibid., 178. 140. Ibid., 176. 141. Ibid. 142. Ibid. 143. Ibid., 174. 144. Ibid., 176. 145. Ibid., 174.

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studying Hinduism . . . ; Panikkar argues that an appropriation of Hinduism can offer not only a recollection of forgotten theological insights but a genuinely new theological development. In his words, “the Indian conception of symbolism could constitute for traditional doctrine a valuable enhancement to its theology, capable of presenting the Christian mystery in a more satisfying way.”146 Panikkar lays out a sophisticated argument for why the metaphysics of advaita are better suited than Aristotelian and Platonic metaphysics for the symbolic and sacramental insights of Catholic theology, namely, that God communicates God’s self through creation. Panikkar draws upon Karl Rahner’s theology of symbol to emphasize the centrality of this topic in contemporary theology and the metaphysical clarity it demands. Panikkar points out that “the mystery of the Trinity” forms the basis of Rahner’s theology of symbol.147 The Logos is the symbol or expression of the Father, the Logos made flesh is the symbol or expression of God in the world, and “the humanity of Christ is the real symbol of the Logos, image of the Father, in the sense that we have spoken of.”148 The sacraments and especially the Eucharist are the symbols of the Incarnation and also the gateway to the divine life of the Trinity in the flesh.149 Panikkar argues that Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics are incompatible with Rahner’s theology of symbol, particularly as it pertains to the Incarnation and the Eucharist. Platonic metaphysics is limited in its compatibility with the sacramental and symbolic vision. For Plato, things are copies of an invisible reality, which reveal the poverty of the thing in relation to the higher, invisible reality.150 The world of forms is not fully expressed in the copy. Since the earthly symbol is only an imitation and pale reflection, Christ cannot be “God from God, light from light” in his very humanity, nor can the sacraments communicate the fullness of God’s life. As Panikkar points out, the sacrifice of the Mass is not a pale imitation of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice as dictated by Platonic metaphysics for 146. Ibid., 128. 147. Ibid., 147. 148. Ibid. 149. Ibid. 150. Ibid., 128.

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“the Eucharistic sacrifice and symbol is Christ himself.”151 The Logos is not a pale reflection of the Father, and neither is the Eucharist a pale reflection of the Logos. Furthermore, Platonism will come to the conclusion that in the eschatological age to come the Eucharist will disappear, as the sign gives way to the reality. Yet, this is not the case, for even if “our symbol, the one that sustains us on earth, no longer exists, the primordial symbol itself remains: the Son, the sacrificed lamb that continues to live . . . all this remains eternal.”152 In other words, God’s life ad intra is intrinsically and indissolubly symbolic. Other theologians, particularly Thoman Aquinas, opt for Aristotle. Aristotle was understood to be more compatible with the Christian doctrine of creation since he sought to correct Plato’s idealism, restoring full reality to the world through the category of substance.153 However, according to Panikkar, by comprehending the “thingness” of a “thing” in terms of substance, Aristotle severed the cord that linked “heaven” and “earth” even more than the Platonic relegation of the world to a penultimate imitation of the world of Ideas. Panikkar implies that the Aristotelian emphasis on substance creates problems for the possibility of transcendental participation. Furthermore, he argues that the sacrifice of the Mass in the key of an Aristotelian substance is not a representation of the one, unique sacrifice but a second substance and second sacrifice. This model does not work within the contours of the Catholic theology of the Mass since the sacrifice of the Mass is not a new sacrifice, but the one, unique, non-repeatable redemptive sacrifice “hic et nunc (here and now).”154 Panikkar also critiques the doctrine of transubstantiation. If it is insisted that the substance is transformed but the accidents remain the same, then the Eucharist becomes a mere “apparition” of Christ’s sacrifice.155 It only appears to be the same sacrifice and loses its connection to “the value of the original act.”156 In conclusion, Panikkar assesses that Platonic

151. Ibid., 143. 152. Ibid., 145. 153. Ibid., 129. 154. Ibid., 144. 155. Ibid. 156. Ibid.

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and Aristotelian metaphysics do not fit the criteria for the theology of symbol required by the Mass.157 In Hindu philosophy, a thing is Brahman, or in Panikkar’s terms, a symbol of Brahman. Panikkar embarks upon what he calls “a translation” to learn from this metaphysical insight with all of the necessary distinctions and qualifications required for sacramental theology. He concludes that advaitic metaphysics is helpful insofar as it can illuminate the meaning of creation a Deo in a way that Hellenistic philosophy could not. Platonic metaphysics sees “creation” as a pale reflection of a higher, intellectual realm. Aristotelian metaphysics with its emphasis on substance is prone to a rigid realism in which the world exists so solidly in itself that it breeds autonomy. What both approaches have in common for Panikkar is “a fundamental trait of Western culture, the separation between the heavenly world and the earthly world.”158 According to Panikkar, the distinction between Creator and creature, which the Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysics reinforces within Christian theology, has been over-emphasized. Neither is adequate for the robust incarnationalism and sacramentality of Catholic theology required for Rahner’s trinitarian theology of symbol. Panikkar instead wishes to underscore, in conversation with advaita, “the constitutive relation, the bond that exists between God and the world, which is not sufficiently and equally valorized in the West.”159 Advaitic metaphysics offers resources for understanding the world as a sacramental symbol of the Triune God by reminding theologians that “creation a Deo and creation ex nihilo should be studied together.”160 Panikkar does acknowledge that insights from Hinduism require transformation in Christ, similar to how Plato and Aristotle were “baptized” in the patristic and medieval periods. It seems however that for Panikkar, advaita translates more adequately to Rahner’s understanding of symbol than Hellenistic philosophical traditions.

157. Ibid., 143. 158. Ibid., 129. 159. Ibid., 131. 160. Ibid., 131–32.

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Panikkar begins his exposition of advaitic metaphysics by reflecting upon a jar. What is a jar? In what sense is the jar real? Highlighting the differences between advaita and Platonism and Aristotelianism, Panikkar states that the real jar for advaita is “neither the idea of the jar nor the material of the jar as such” but the jar as identical with the Absolute, Brahman.161 Separate from Brahman, the jar is unreal. It is only when the jar as unreal is broken and sacrificed that it attains the reality of Brahman. Mental sacrifice leads to this identity, for it is the mistaken and illusory idea of a jar as separate that is immolated. In the Christian context, there is also a sacrificial movement from unreality to reality. The bread of the Eucharist is “saved and transformed” into a new creation.162 It is precisely this divinization in the Eucharist which gives the bread, and those who partake of the bread, their full reality, for creation is nothing (nihilo) apart from God; “things are not for themselves (pour-soi),” but for God.163 Creation is in the first place an “of-something” and “to-something” rather than a solidly substantial “something.”164 Every created thing exists to be a “real symbol,” that is, the possibility of God’s self-expression. Creation apart from God in Christ is not yet itself, not yet real, for the identity of things are known only to God and in God.165 Evoking Rahner’s trinitarian theology of symbol in which being comes to expression in another, Panikkar suggests that “we can dare say that things are real only insofar as God knows himself in them.”166 The eucharistic bread qua bread is Christ, for God expresses himself, knows himself, in the bread as Son. This is different from thinking of Christ as present only under the “appearance” of bread as in an Aristotelian-inspired sacramental theology. With Panikkar’s appropriation of advaita, there is identity between Christ’s sacrifice and the bread. The eucharistic bread in an advaitic key is neither ontologically competitive with God, as in the case of Aristotelian substance metaphysics, nor imbued with God but

161. Ibid., 139. 162. Ibid., 138. 163. Ibid., 139–40. 164. Ibid., 140. 165. Ibid. 166. Ibid.

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relegated to a shadow, as in Platonic metaphysics. This is because creation exists solely to become a real symbol of God in Jesus Christ. JESUS CHRIST AS PERFECT SYMBOL OF GOD This comparative exploration of symbol in Christianity and Hinduism has implications for Panikkar’s theology of religions, which he develops in a later section. God symbolically expresses God’s self through the world, which is constitutively open to symbolic selfexpression. Panikkar uses this theology of symbol to explain how Christ manifested himself in the early history of Israel as the rock of the Sinai desert. Similarly, Christ is present to Hindus as Rama and Krishna.167 The rock and Krishna, to use the two examples Panikkar furnishes, are christological and eucharistic symbols because they take the people of Israel and India, respectively, into the Logos’s offering to the Father. The religions are partially transformed into the Logos’s sacrificial self-expression. However, this soteriological work is accomplished only incompletely, on account of the interplay between human sinfulness and the gradual, unfolding messianic plan of God in history. Panikkar engages this partial and incomplete symbolization of God in the world with an eye toward establishing the soteriological centrality of Jesus Christ and Christian worship. Only Jesus Christ is God’s perfect self-expression and symbol, and the world’s perfect symbolization of God is possible only in Him. Panikkar recognizes that the Christian narrative is at odds with advaita on this point. The Christian notion that creation is distinct from God and damaged by sin, but redeemed in Christ, is different from the advaitic understanding that the world is already Brahman. Since for advaita the world is by essence Brahman, the soteriological goal of advaita is not “the pilgrim who arrives,” but proper contemplation of the finished and complete state of what Panikkar calls the “Whole,” or Brahman.168 Panikkar writes that for advaita “the end is

167. Ibid., 199. 168. Ibid., 31–34.

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not considered as an achievement or transformation but simply as being, reality, perhaps even world and man.”169 Panikkar argues as a Christian theologian that this worldview is incompatible with the reality of sin and the necessity for real transformation. Panikkar’s Christian interpretation of advaita holds that all beings qua beings are potentially symbols of Brahman, God. Christ is within all things to the extent that the world has been created a Deo and a Christo, but the refulgence of the world in Christ has been darkened by sin. The Hindu vision of the “Whole” is akin to the vision of the eschatological totus Christus, when God in Christ will be all in all. However, the totus Christus is the eschatological fruit of the christological transformation of creation which has begun in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and is not the essential condition of the world accessible by piercing an epistemological obscuration or illusion. The unity of God and the world was fractured after the fall and reestablished by Christ in the Redemption.170 The imago Dei, as symbol of God, is damaged; the image of God truly exists in Hinduism but only in “imprecise and distorted traces.”171 The redemption of the world and its capacity for truly symbolizing God is dependent upon the world being refashioned through the perfect, beautiful image of the Father, the Logos, who is “eikon of the Father.”172 The Logos is the “sole and unique light from light; it is the ex-pression, indeed the image ad intra of the original, in other words, Son.”173 The preexistent Logos who from all eternity offers himself to the Father becomes flesh and incorporates creation into this offering through Jesus Christ’s oblation. The self-offering of Jesus Christ inaugurates the sacrifice that was intended from the beginning, “a perfect return of the cosmos to God.”174 Christ’s sacrifice ushers “in a new heavens and a new earth.”175 The fractured symbols of God participate in this Sonship through the Eucharist, and thus become Christ. “One only 169. Ibid., 30. 170. Ibid., 202. 171. Ibid., 199. 172. Ibid., 12. 173. Ibid. 174. Ibid., 126. 175. Ibid., 162.

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enters into the dynamism of the symbol by becoming the symbol,” Panikkar writes, and it is through the symbol of the Eucharist that we become Christ. Therefore, Hinduism cannot have access to the fullness of divine life without Christ’s incarnated historicity and sacramental participation in the eucharistic offering of his life. This fulfillment is the completion of the work begun in Hinduism by the eternal and providential Christ in which Hindu sacrificial myths like Prajapati “will find in Christian remythicization their full meaning.”176 Accordingly, there is an evangelical element to Panikkar’s treatment of Hindu and Christian worship in Le mystère du culte. Panikkar seeks to bring Hindus to Jesus Christ through the Eucharist, even as Hinduism has much to offer the church in its reflection on Christ and the Eucharist. Panikkar re-creates the scene of the healing of the paralytic at Capernaum and employs it as a metaphor that imaginatively portrays the dynamic of his dual witness. The crowded house, full of apostles, may signify that the church is not open to Hindus and Hindu wisdom, even as it needs it for its own renewal. On the other hand, the desire of Hinduism for Christ Jesus and the Eucharist has “haunted and plagued the Indian soul for millennia.”177 Panikkar places himself within the scene, attending to both needs, that is, bringing Hindus to the Eucharist and the church to Hinduism. Significantly, this “composition of place” concludes Panikkar’s entire study in Le mystère du culte: The house is full. Even the apostles are crowded around Christ, so that no one else can enter. It is then that some men open the roof and let themselves glide down to Jesus. They bring a paralytic with them. Now, it is the Sabbath; the prescriptions of the synagogue are unbreakable. And yet, without these men who procure for him a physical and corporal contact with the Master, he will remain infirm. In such a way Hindu worship is bound to the desire that has haunted and plagued the Indian soul for millennia: to have a real experience of the Eucharist. . . . Then what to do? How about letting Hinduism pass through the roof of the Church and help it find a place at the feet of the Master? . . . We simply wished to show that we carry the aspirations of the Hindu people in our 176. Ibid., 198. 177. Ibid.

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heart and—why not?—on our shoulders. Let us leave it to the Master to do the rest.178

SUMMARY Panikkar’s early Opus Dei understanding of Christian sacrifice was discernibly enhanced and deepened by his study of Hinduism in Le mystère du culte. The study proved that Panikkar’s exhortation for the church to learn from other religions was not something he recommended in a general way for others, but was a task that he took upon himself with visible results. The Hindu emphasis on sacrificial orthopraxy brought Panikkar back into his own Christian tradition and helped him to understand more fully that the mystery of Christ and the church is primarily a mystery of sacrifice. Sympathetically studying the pre-modern wisdom of Hinduism, which for Panikkar belongs to the family tree of the church in Christ, helps the church re-appropriate for itself the great pre-modern wisdom at the heart of its own tradition. Karman returns a church puzzling over ritual back to the centrality of the Eucharist for transformation and jnana reminds a church preoccupied with historical reconstruction of the texts that Scripture primarily mediates a spiritual and liturgical engagement with Jesus, the Word of God. Panikkar’s efforts to understand more deeply the christological and sacramental tradition alongside Hinduism is a noteworthy contribution in his corpus. Panikkar’s later writings, on the other hand, move in a syncretistic direction. The next chapter will explore the reasons for Panikkar’s departure from “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” and Le mystère du culte, and will exposit the basic outlines of his later, pluralist, cosmotheandric Christology.

178. Ibid., 203.

3. A Critical Reading of Panikkar’s Cosmotheandric Christology ERIK RANSTROM

This chapter features a systematization of Panikkar’s later Christology, which is characterized by an escalation of the incipient pluralist trends found in the first edition of the Unknown Christ of Hinduism. It is also marked by an utter departure from the conviction that Jesus’s person and work is constitutively key to the relationship between God and the world. The chapter will also evaluate Panikkar’s later christological development based upon priorities and principles earlier drawn from “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” and Le mystère du culte, as well as various systematic theologians. I will also set Panikkar’s later theology within a wider personal and socio-historical context, important for understanding the biographical factors that may have contributed to Panikkar’s pluralist turn. RECONSTRUCTING PANIKKAR’S LATER BIOGRAPHICAL CONTEXT What were the personal events and experiences occurring behind Panikkar’s later texts that can help to explain his new christological positions? What was he reading, who was he conversing with, and in terms of his relationship to the church, what was his relationship

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to Opus Dei and the episcopal hierarchy? It is important to note that such a reconstruction of Panikkar’s biography and personal context is not voyeuristic in nature, but aids the quest to understand his diverse and voluminous literary corpus more deeply. If literary reconstruction is difficult when it comes to Panikkar, biographical reconstruction is an even more complicated task for the Panikkar scholar. Panikkar motioned toward events and experiences that altered his sense of religious identity and intellectual career, but in a very cautious and cryptic manner. There is also a quasi-hagiographical, legendary morass that sometimes obscures a reliable chronicling and interpretation of Panikkar’s biographical history. This hagiography deliberately conceals the presence of controversy, conflict, and change in his life and career. Both of these factors represent a challenge to the Panikkar biographer seeking to reconstruct his life and its connection to his thought, but each also reveals something important. I will first consider Panikkar’s cryptic autobiographical statements, followed by an examination of the hagiographical account of Panikkar’s life, and draw some tentative conclusions. One prime example of crypticism in Panikkar’s autobiographical musings is the well-known preface to the revised and enlarged edition of the Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Toward an Ecumenical Christophany, published in 1981. In the preface, Panikkar gestures toward a disorienting and difficult transition that impacted his selfidentity and moved him away from prior commitments. The preface’s location in a revised edition of a previously published book leads to the conclusion that the experiences recounted are intimately related to the ensuing, revised contents.1 Panikkar highlights the disappearance of a companion, which Menacherry speculates to be Jesus,2 as well as an identity crisis, the loss of community, and the pain of being misunderstood. In the midst of transition and its attendant suffering, Panikkar hints at the birth of a new religious identity. Panikkar may have lost his previous connection to Christ and the 1. Raimundo Panikkar, The Unknown Christ of Hinduism: Toward an Ecumenical Christophany (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1981), ix. 2. Ibid., x.

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church, but rediscovered them in a different way, making him subject to misunderstanding and rejection. There are other hints in Panikkar’s published works of a significant transition. A collection of Panikkar’s journal entries was published in 1972, consisting of personal meditations, reflections and prayers that Panikkar wrote between 1946 and 1954 while a priest-numerary of Opus Dei.3 In the preface to this book, Panikkar looks back on the events and experiences that inspired his journal entries and relates that while he does not regret this period in his life, he also does not regret moving beyond it. This appears to be a cryptic reference to departing Opus Dei, but may also refer to a more fundamental conversion that has taken place in his life and thought. Though expressed more laconically than the dramatic preface of the revised Unknown Christ, the preface of Cometas nevertheless points to a new ecclesial and spiritual context for Panikkar. Another clue comes in the preface to a book on the theory and practice of interreligious dialogue. Panikkar initially describes, in a detached tone, the pluralistic sociological and ecclesiological context of the late twentieth century, and the challenge it represents to Christian self-consciousness. But then he reflects back upon himself in the midst of this “struggle of the ecclesial self-reflection” and talks of a “long way, painful but at the same time purifying, that is leading contemporary Christian self-consciousness from a self-understanding as being a historically privileged people, bearing an exclusive or inclusive message of salvation for the entire world, to an awareness of self-identity that without weakening the strength of a conviction about uniqueness and fidelity to its calling does make room for different ultimate and salvific human experiences.”4 Significantly, Panikkar signals to the reader that he has moved, along with others in the Western pluralist context, beyond the belief that the church has been entrusted with an exclusive or inclusive message of salvation for all of humanity. This represents an innovation within Panikkar’s thought. Panikkar’s early Christology of religions from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s was at times strongly inclusivist, and even the first edition of the Unknown Christ 3. Panikkar, Cometas: Fragmentos de una diario espiritual de la postguerra (Madrid: Euramérica, 1972). 4. Panikkar, The Intrareligious Dialogue (New York: Paulist, 1978), ix.

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of Hinduism possessed characteristics of inclusivsm. Taken together, Panikkar’s prefaces in his later writings point to a newfound pluralistic view of religious truth and a departure from traditional Christian doctrine, both of which emerged out of considerable suffering and misunderstanding. There is, however, a vagueness to these allusions which leaves the Panikkar scholar uncertain as to what exactly happened and how it impacted his thought. In the above examples, Panikkar simultaneously reveals and conceals important but painful moments of existential conversion. But at other times he narrates his life without any reference to ruptures and changes, and in a more celebratory tone.5 According to Bielwaski, this is the narration of a romanticized and enchanted “Panikkarmyth.”6 The “Panikkar-myth” is composed of the following elements that harmoniously cohere together: birth to a Spanish Catholic mother and Hindu Indian father, immersion and formation in classical Catholic culture, theological studies in Rome during the Second Vatican Council, “mystical” experiences in India and a Hindu “conversion,” and a retirement period as a philosopher-sage contemplating life and death in the place of his birth, Catalonia. In this account, the tensions evident in Panikkar’s cryptic reflections are conspicuously absent. If the first set of autobiographical allusions frustrate biographical reconstruction by concealing tantalizing self-disclosure with indirectness and a paucity of biographical data, the second set of autobiographical statements moves toward the other extreme by being overrun with the dubitable excesses of hagiography and an overall atmosphere of indifference to biographical and intellectual conversion. It is even suggested by Panikkar scholars and at times by Panikkar himself that his writings should be approached ahistorically and atemporally, as ultimately only the transhistorical and transtemporal reality matters.7 These dynamics are evident in “Philosophy as Life-Style,” where Panikkar writes that he “is not aware of any sort 5. Panikkar, “Foreword: The Ongoing Dialogue,” in Hindu-Christian Dialogue: Perspectives and Encounters, ed. Harold Coward (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1989), x–xi, cit., Jyri Komulainen, “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism—Theologizing at the Meeting Point of Hinduism and Christianity,” Exchange 35 (2006): 280. 6. Bielawski, Panikkar, 6–7. 7. See for example Dennis Coday, “Panikkar’s Marriage,” in National Catholic Reporter, September 10, 2010: http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/panikkars-marriage.

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of traumatic experience, positive or negative,” and that “he cannot remember a conversion experience or an abrupt turning point in my life.”8 Yet a few lines down in the same article, he writes that he is “still quite self-conscious and uncomfortable about recounting personal experience” and that his “reticence resembles that of a person who has endured torture and is now unable to describe her feelings and the details of that suffering.”9 Panikkar’s Vivarium foundation contains a brief biographical sketch that tends in this direction. For example, the website mentions Josemaria Escriva and Panikkar as “friends,” with no mention of the friction that obtained between them during Panikkar’s twenty-five years in the Work.10 In the section entitled “several Panikkars or a continuity within diversity?,” the website admits that there is “an evolution in Panikkar from a traditionally Catholic and neo-Thomist position to the very broad perspective” of his later work, but continues to insists on an even greater continuity.11 It is true that certain systematic concerns remained constant in Panikkar’s writings, such as a metaphysical theology and the primacy of Being in relation to thinking. The latter, for example, is a pervasive theme throughout Panikkar’s corpus from as early as his very first theological publication, a meditative prologue to Jean Gutiton’s La Virgen Maria,12 right up to his last major publication, The Rhythm of Being.13 However, Panikkar interprets the hermeneutical key to the meaning of being, the mystery of Christ, differently and divergently throughout his corpus. Is Jesus Christ the unique measure and model of what it means to be human? If so, in what way? Is the destiny of being, tied to an encounter, implicitly or explicitly, with Jesus Christ? Or is Christ simply a human experience of transcendence that other religions, even atheism, manifest in different ways? The “Panikkar myth” and the purported uniqueness of his personal 8. Panikkar, A Dwelling Place for Wisdom, trans. Annemarie Kidder (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993), 82. 9. Ibid. 10. Vivarium Foundation: http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/biography-2.html. 11. Ibid. 12. See Panikkar’s prologue to Jean Guitton, La Virgen Maria (Madrid: Rialp, 1952), 3–44. 13. Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being: The Unbroken Trinity. The Gifford Lectures (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2010), 207–8.

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narrative also functions as a kind of apologetic to defend his later positions against criticism. There is a kind of “messianism” around Panikkar and his writings that precludes the possibility of critical reception; his personal uniqueness legitimates the radical positions he takes regarding controversial issues such as multiple religious identity.14 For Ewert Cousins, Panikkar is a “mutational man” of the twenty-first century,15 for Italian journalist Rafael Luisse, he is the “prophet of the day after tomorrow.”16 The interview Panikkar gave for the Parisian newspaper Le Monde in 1999 is an example of this phenomenon. He answered the question, “how is it possible to combine a heritage that is both Christian and Hindu?” with the following: I was brought up in the Catholic religion by my Spanish mother, but I never stopped trying to be united with the tolerant and generous religion of my father and of my Hindu ancestors. This does not make me a cultural or religious “half-caste,” however. Christ was not half man and half God, but fully man and fully God. In the same way, I consider myself 100 percent Hindu and Indian, and 100 percent Catholic and Spanish. How is that possible? By living religion as an experience rather than as an ideology.17

The uniqueness of Panikkar’s ancestry and upbringing allows him to be religious in a way that others find difficult to comprehend; in this particular example he likens his own personal uniqueness to that of the hypostatic union. Panikkar biographer Bielawski became suspicious of this hagiographical narrative of Panikkar’s life and its appropriateness for understanding his thought. In particular, Bielwaski inquired about Panikkar’s relationship with Opus Dei, and how their split impacted his worldview. He was convinced that it was important to understand the correlation between Panikkar’s later thought and his juridical relationship with Opus Dei during the 1960s. Bielawski was drawn 14. See, for example, Scott Eastham’s introductory remarks in Panikkar, The Cosmotheandric Experience (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1993), v. 15. Ewert Cousins, “Christian Systematic Theology of the Future,” Cross Currents 29 (1979): 141–55. 16. Raffale Luise, Profeta del dopodomani (Cinsell Basalmo: San Paolo Edizioni: 2011). 17. The interview was translated by Joseph Cunneen, founding editor of Cross Currents and published in The Christian Century, August 16–23, 2000: http://www.religion-online.org/ showarticle.asp?title=2015.

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to this aspect of Panikkar’s personal history because of the intriguing simultaneity between his new, radical, pluralistic vision of religious truth and his departure from Opus Dei. Bielawski remarks that there is irony in this defensive posture towards Panikkar’s biography, since Panikkar himself confessed that what he said and did is more crucial for understanding him than what he had written. By his own admission then, an understanding of Panikkar’s life trajectory is necessary to more fully comprehend his writings. Bielawski sums it up by stating that “only an honest account of his life can offer the interpretive key to his work.”18 TROUBLE WITH OPUS DEI AND A NEW FOUNDATION It is my contention that Panikkar’s break with Opus Dei in 1966 was a key transition, among others, that led to a pivotal turning point in his intellectual history and inaugurated an entirely distinct theological worldview. Panikkar’s departure from Opus Dei did not merely allow him to write more freely, but created a new existential situation that resulted in theological mutation. Panikkar’s departure from an inclusivist Christology of religions and consequent turn toward pluralism began to take on more definite contours during this changed personal context, which includes a dramatic “exile” back to India and a newfound appropriation of Hindu identity. Panikkar returned from his research trip to India in 1958 and resettled in Rome to complete his doctoral degree in Sacred Theology at the Pontifical Lateran University. He stayed on in Rome after defending his thesis Religion and the Religions: Christianity and Hinduism in 1961, serving in a wide range of pastoral functions as a member of Opus Dei’s Priestly Society of the Holy Cross.19 As mentioned earlier, Josemaria Escriva initially saw promise in the young Panikkar’s capacity to represent Opus Dei among intellectual circles and expand the interests of the apostolate in these contexts, but he was also frequently reassigned into University ministry. This continued in Rome. Panikkar was assigned as a chaplain to the Catholic students at 18. Bielawski, Panikkar, 8. 19. Ibid., 71.

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Opus Dei’s first college in Rome (RUI).20 He also celebrated liturgies and gave retreats and conferences throughout the city. His liturgies at Casa Internazionale dello Studente and the University Chapel of La Sapienza were popular because of his distinctive style of celebrating, in particular “the brief homilies in which he commented on some words from the Latin missal such as sanctus, agnus, gloria hosanna.”21 Panikkar also reunited with Enrico Castelli in Rome, an Italian philosopher whom he met while organizing an international philosophy conference a decade and a half earlier in Spain. Castelli’s diaries, which have been preserved and archived, are a major source of biographical information for Panikkar’s Roman years. Through them, we know that Castelli arranged for Panikkar to lecture as an adjunct at the University of La Sapienza, where he taught a course on “sat and a-sat, being and non-being in Vedic philosophy.”22 Castelli also helped to introduce Panikkar to a wide network of scholars who were either residing in Rome or visiting during the years of the Second Vatican Council. According to Bielawski, “Enrico Castelli was not only a philosopher, a professor and a writer, but also an organizer . . . he knew how to move well between state, university, and ecclesiastical institutions . . . because of the Council, the great men of the epoch were already arriving.”23 These luminaries gathered at “Enrico Castelli Meetings,” which “occurred always in January and were extraordinary events that in some way coincided with the Council.”24 Panikkar participated in study groups and colloquia that included such renowned Catholic intellectuals as “Giuseppe Dossetti, Carlo Colombo, Johannes Baptist Lotz, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, Karl Rahner, Hans Urs von Balthasar” and other theologians, scholars of religion, and philosophers such as Oscar Cullmann, Mircea Eliae, and Paul Ricoeur.25 Castelli relates that Panikkar brought an Indian flair and exoticism to the gatherings, speaking of

20. Ibid., 72. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. Ibid., 67. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid.

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Brahman and karman at a propitious time in the church’s history, as bishops from all over the world were gathering for the Council. 26 This anecdote is emblematic of the wide-ranging exposure Panikkar enjoyed in Roman and Vatican circles during the early 1960s. According to Bielawski, Panikkar was perfectly content in Rome and wished to make a career there. The first trip to India in 1954 was supposed to be only “a parenthesis in his development” and not a permanent destination for his career. His return to Rome “was seen and lived from its very inception as something permanent. . . . Before 1963 he had not thought of settling in India . . . on the contrary, it seems that he truly wanted to live in Rome.”27 With his Opus Dei affiliation, growing popularity, and the momentum of the Second Vatican Council, Panikkar seemed well situated to do just that. Yet it did not happen. Bielawski sums it up in a tragi-poetic way: “His personal talents combined with the winds of history had made him fly high on the hills of the Eternal City, but this would be—as we will see—only the flight of Icarus.”28 Bielawski associates the demise of Panikkar in Rome with the “Council and ecclesiastical politics.”29 Panikkar’s Opus Dei affiliation, which placed him under the juridical authority of a more conservative element, clashed with his increasingly “liberal” views and partnerships. Panikkar was “at a crossroads between belonging to Opus Dei or other, more open-minded trends in the Church.”30 Again, Panikkar’s relationship with Castelli played a role. Panikkar was ensconced in “Castelli’s circle, in close relationship with that of Dossetti who had introduced him to a group that included Cardinal Lercaro and his collaborators.”31 Cardinal Lercaro was one of four moderators appointed by Pope Paul VI to guide the general congregations of the Council. Panikkar’s association with this circle upset his superiors, who punitively relocated him to Milan with no contacts, no pastoral duties, and no teaching.32 Castelli wanted Panikkar 26. Ibid., 68. 27. Ibid., 60. 28. Ibid. 29. Ibid., 75. 30. Ibid., 77. 31. Ibid., 76. 32. Ibid., 75.

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to break away from Opus Dei for good and continue to collaborate with Dossetti and Lercaro, and was frustrated by his apparent passivity. Panikkar’s obedience to Opus Dei however was “rooted very deeply” and sustained by “dynamics that play a role not comprehensible to ‘outsiders’.”33 Yet, the direction of his ministry and scholarly output was moving toward elements of the church ideologically at odds with Opus Dei. Panikkar was unable to break the stalemate and allowed his superiors to make the first move. Escriva decided that Panikkar should return to India. He would not be allowed to return to Europe without his express permission. It must be kept in mind that Panikkar’s leave from Rome was extremely hasty and not part of his plans at that time. The romantic notion of Panikkar “choosing” India, perhaps nourished by the romanticized biography propagated by his followers, is too simplistic. This was a punitive transfer, akin to an exile, as Rafael Luisse reports and Panikkar confirms in his interview with him.34 When Panikkar arrived in India, he was not yet incardinated into a diocese, and did not have a place to stay.35 Nor was there an academic appointment waiting for him. Panikkar, who was thriving in Rome, “suddenly had a mysterious collapse and failure, and was now alienated, hidden.”36 This dramatic turn of events, which was followed soon thereafter with his outright dismissal from Opus Dei, was a difficult adjustment for Panikkar. Bielawski interprets it as a time of new beginnings, but not without the requisite hardships: “it was for him a time of birthing—painful, revealing, and decisive.”37 Bielawski holds “that in the beginning he lived within the myth of Opus Dei, then he passed through the period of de-mythification and now, in order to live, given that he cannot live without a myth, the time of re-mythification was waiting for him.”38 Panikkar needed “to re-create, re-define his very vision of the world and of God and identity itself.”39 The loss of ecclesial particularity during his exile in India contributed to 33. Ibid., 76. 34. Luisse, Profeta del dopodomani, 27. 35. Panikkar was later incardinated into what would later become the Diocese of Varanasi until his death in 2010. See Bielawski, Panikkar, 102. 36. Ibid., 146. 37. Ibid., 75. 38. Ibid., 102. 39. Ibid.

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an embrace of his father’s Hindu identity and a radical christological pluralism. Commenting on Panikkar’s La Trinità, Bielawski is struck by the change in theological discourse in the text and reflects upon the importance of reading it in light of the major transitions he was experiencing.40 Panikkar was adrift from the institutional church and in need of a new foundation that would allow him to remain Catholic but in a more universal, boundless way that accommodated his itinerancy. And, as he would later interpret his new vocation, he sought a new foundation that would accommodate the itinerancy of many adrift from the church (secularists) or existing outside of it in other religious traditions (non-Christians). Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism was in part his response to this personal and intellectual exigency, with great ramifications for his Christology. PANIKKAR’S PLURALIST COSMOTHEANDRIC CHRISTOLOGY Before La Trinità, Bielawski observes that Panikkar’s theology during the 1950s and early 1960s was “theocentric” and focused on the “life, death and resurrection of Jesus.”41 We have seen in chapter two that this is not unqualifiedly the case with all of his early writings, and yet, when compared to his later writings, there existed a spectrum at that time which did not yet include the daring formulations of his later period. Indeed, just a few years before the momentous changes that would usher in a new era for Panikkar’s theology, he delivered a series of lectures during the Easter season at the La Sapienza chapel that would become the basis for an Italian publication, La Gioia Pasquale.42 The epigraph to the book is taken from 1 John 1:3–4, which reads: “So that you also might be in union with us, and our union is with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ. And we write these things so that our joy may be perfect.”43 40. Ibid., 92. Bielawski’s reference is to Trinità ed esperienza religiosa dell'uomo (Assisi: Cittadella, 1989); from the Spanish: La Trinidad y la experiencia religiosa (Barcelona: Obelisco, 1989). 41. See chapter 1. 42. Raimundo Panikkar, La Gioia Pasquale (Vicenza: Edizioni La Locusta, 1968). This text was translated into an English manuscript thanks to the kind efforts of Professor Gerald Carney. 43. Ibid., 1.

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The christological robustness of this epigraph is significant given Panikkar’s later penchant for citing New Testament texts while omitting the name of Jesus to make it appear more universally applicable to other religions. Later on in the Pasquale text, this robust christocentricity is evident again. According to Panikkar, “man has a thirst, thirst for happiness, thirst for fullness, thirst to arrive at something, become something ..... but at the core of all this is Jesus who says—and this is the Gospel reading for today—whoever has thirst, come to me!”44 It is “his joy, his Word, his revelation, his prayer, his obedience and his liturgy that is the cause of our joy” because through them he gives us the privilege of sharing in “his Trinitarian joy as Son of God.”45 In Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, on the other hand, Panikkar holds that the Christian understanding of God is just one approach to the trinitarian mystery among others, and Jesus’s passion is just an “image” of a transcendental and cosmic sacrifice.46 Rather than being the unique revelation of the Triune God that discloses the fullness of the divine plan of salvation for all peoples, Christianity witnesses to an aspect of the trinitarian experience, just as Hinduism and Buddhism experience other aspects of the Mystery.47 This turn to a subjective, experiential and pluralistic model of revelation is typical of Panikkar’s later stance on Christian truth-claims.48 Yet in texts like “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” and Le mystère 44. Ibid., 25. 45. It is clear in La Gioia Pasquale that Panikkar did not mean that Jesus is the mediator of divine life for only Christians. Further on in the text he writes that Jesus “does not wish to limit himself to his friends, and so he repeats the same idea with a different accent: ‘these things I say to the world but now I come to you—to the Father—and this I say to the world so that they may have the fullness of joy in them’” (ibid.). 46. Panikkar, The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1973). 47. Ibid., see especially 41–69. 48. The emphasis on subjectivity and the cultural limitations of religious language, and particularly Christian language is a hallmark feature of the later Panikkar’s thought. Examples abound in nearly all of his later published works. As just one example: “This ‘divine revelation’ of course has to fall on human grounds in order to be a belief for humans . . . it is a human experience, humanly interpreted, and humanly received into the collective consciousness of a given culture at a given time.” (Rhythm of Being, 134.) Although in and of itself this emphasis seems benign and typical of Catholic theology in the era of historical consciousness, it functions as a way to equivocate the doctrine in question and to replace, rather than reinterpret it. In the section just quoted, Panikkar goes on to argue that since monotheism was conceived in a given imperial Near-Eastern culture and solidified in a monarchical Western culture, the “theophanic experience” should be formulated “more convincingly for our times” in a way that goes beyond even a “reformed monotheism” (Rhythm of Being, 135).

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du culte, Panikkar stresses the objective, divinely revealed nature of the Bible and its trustworthiness in describing the whole of reality, including the religions, while remaining open and dynamic to how biblical revelation can be illuminated anew by the very religions themselves. The loss of this Christian meta-narrative as an explanatory account of the existence and telos of the religions in Panikkar’s later thought impacts nearly every theological category he employs in the future, and is a consequence of his move toward a pluralist understanding of Christ. Panikkar’s later theological worldview is encapsulated by what he terms cosmotheandrism, or the relational unity between God, cosmos, and the human that many religious traditions embody in their own ways. Cosmotheandrism transcends the particularity of Christianity, even though Panikkar continues to utilize its particular language in order to articulate cosmotheandrism. Panikkar departs from his earlier incarnational Christology, but remained in many ways christocentric. The later Panikkar seemingly assents to the centrality of Christ in all theological reflection, except that his understanding of Christ shifts from that of a unique person to a metaphysical symbol and experience. Christ is “that centre of reality, that crystallisation point around which the divine, human and material can grow.”49 Christ is no longer uniquely tied to the person and work of Jesus, but instead to the interplay of divine, human, and cosmic that is the true nature of being as such, and of which Jesus Christ is paradigmatic. It is for this reason that Panikkar scholar Jyri Komulainen has “doubts whether many Christians would be familiar with Christianity as transformed according to Panikkar’s standards.”50 Panikkar’s Christology in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” and Le mystère du culte widened the scope of Christ’s presence and saving action to the religions, but his later cosmotheandric Christology burst the “wineskins”51 of the Christian christological tradition. Panikkar transforms the symbol of Christ into the metaphysical facticity of divine, human, and cosmic interplay, which is the “christic principle” inherent in all religions and indeed being as such. 49. Panikkar, Unknown Christ: Toward an Ecumenical Christophany, 27. 50. Komulainen, “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism,” 299. 51. Panikkar, Unknown Christ: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany, 10.

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Jesus is an exemplary and powerful realization of this christophanic or cosmotheandric experience but by nature no different than any other christic realization, or for that matter, any other human being. Panikkar employs the language of actualization rather than Incarnation when discussing the “christic epiphany” in Jesus, as Jesus “actualized the union”52 of divine and human within himself, which Panikkar carefully distinguishes from the orthodox understanding of Christ as “a divine spiritual being (who) took on flesh at a particular point of history.”53 Rather, the union between divine and human that “the early councils defined” should be reinterpreted as “the divine aspect of the human condition that is common to all of us, and which included, naturally, Jesus Christ.”54 Panikkar distinguishes between three different levels of “christic awareness:” the “ontic christian,” for all beings are christophanic by nature “in as much as any being is more than a material entity and Man more than a merely developed ape;” the “ontological christian,” “in whom there is a certain consciousness of the immanent-transcendent mystery that enlivens one’s life” even if they “do not use a christian vocabulary, not even a theistic one;” and the “catholic christian,” “who embodies in a very particular way that mysterious consciousness” and whose “spiritual pedigree passes through those two millennia of roman history.”55 Panikkar is aware that this means that “everyone is a christian,” to which “he has little to object.”56 He reasons that if “Christians are able to liberate this christic principle, from their religion, christianity, then this principle can be experienced as a dimension that is potentially present in every other human being.”57 It is in this respect that Panikkar continues to speak of the presence of Christ in the religions in his later writings but not clearly connecting this presence to, as will be explained below, the presence of Jesus. 58 52. Raimon Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man, trans. Alfred diLascia (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004), 138. 53. Ibid., 185. 54. Ibid., 138. 55. Raimon Panikkar, “On Christian Identity,” Many Mansions: Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity, ed. Catherine Cornille (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2002), 140–41. 56. Ibid., 141. 57. Panikkar, Dwelling Place for Wisdom, 151. 58. Here I disagree with Christopher McMahon, who sees in Panikkar’s more expansive Christ-symbol an adaptation of avatāra theology. For the later Panikkar, it is not there are many

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COSMOTHEANDRISM AND THE TRANSCENDENCE OF RELIGIOUS PARTICULARITY While it is true that Panikkar’s work, even from the beginning of his intellectual career, had a definite cosmological, or better, theo-cosmological provenance, incipient forms of panentheistic Catholic theology became transformed in his later cosmotheandrism. Panikkar’s cosmotheandric understanding of Christ is neither generated from the particular, narratival structure of the New Testament, nor, for that matter, any other particularist religious narrative. Panikkar’s idiosyncratic application of Hindu and Christian sources and concepts within cosmotheandric Christology departs from the interpretations of particular lineages, darśanas, or sampradāyas, and also from the solidly rooted position of a Catholic inclusivism. As such, Panikkar’s explication of cosmotheandrism tends to be abstract and syncretistic, its reflections united by a general admonition to overcome the ego in realizing the cosmotheandric experience, or what he calls the “All.” Panikkar recognizes that the word “Christ” itself is not necessary, but argues that it has the advantage of being a symbol for the “totality of reality” in a way that other words such as “God, Matter, or Consciousness” are not, since they denote only one pole of this cosmotheandric mystery. Yet, Panikkar concedes that other names are also appropriate, such as “Rama . . . , or Krishna, or (as I maintain) Isvara,” and that each name “teaches or expresses as it were, the undivided mystery.”59 It matters not what the mystery is called for Panikkar, only “that this cosmotheandric, trinitarian, purushic or isvaric principle exists.”60 The equivocation of Christ-nomenclature in denoting the cosmotheandric experience is implied when Panikkar writes that the mystery “indicates anything endowed with the richness of that reality for which Christians have no other name than Christ.”61 Panikkar’s discussion of cosmotheandrism as an “emerging reliincarnations, but each being is an “incarnation.” Christopher McMahon, Understanding Jesus: Christology from Emmaus to Today (Winona: Anselm Academic, 2013), 202. 59. Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, 29. 60. Panikkar, Unknown Christ: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany, 29. 61. Ibid., 5.

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gious consciousness” also reflects this syncretism and departure from traditional religious insights. Panikkar seems to acknowledge that cosmotheandrism is tantamount to a new religiosity that seeks to overcome “the diehard imperialistic habit of presenting something that is believed to be really universal and for the benefit of all humanity.”62 It is “the undimmed hope of an ever-growing number of people,” who suspect that “traditional convictions may be only partial.”63 That Panikkar was pointing beyond Christianity as a religion is evident not only from phrases like “emerging religious consciousness” but also in his distinction between “Christendom,” “Christianity,” and “Christianness.” “Christendom” is the Christian reality expressed as a socio-political order, “Christianity” is the Christian reality expressed as a religion, distinguishable from other religions, and “Christianness” is the mystical presence of Christ in every person and religion, or the “christic principle.”64 Panikkar argues that just as “Christianity” in recent history freed itself from the ideal and pursuit of “Christendom,” so too “Christianness” is in the process of being liberated from “Christianity.” While he underlines that “Christianness should not be described merely in its negative relationship to christianity,” it is the case that it is the “fruit more of internal experience than historical and doctrinal insistence”65 and seeks to create an ecclesiological reality that is “governed neither by the historical burden of the past nor by the doctrinal awareness of tradition.”66 “Christianness” affirms the christic principle in all peoples and religions and “offers a platform by which one might solve the dilemma of exclusivism and inclusivism in favor of a healthy pluralism of religions.”67 COSMOTHEANDRISM AND HINDUISM Significantly, Panikkar links “Christianness” with the symbol of the Ganges and what he perceives as the tolerance and pluralism of the 62. Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience, 13. 63. Ibid., 57. 64. Panikkar, Dwelling Place for Wisdom, 136. 65. Ibid., 138. 66. Ibid., 139. 67. Ibid.

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Hindu stance on religions and religious truth.68 Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism was indeed defined by what he calls the “East” or “Hinduism” in a determinative way, although it is important to distinguish it from classical Hinduism. Panikkar appropriated his Indian and Hindu heritage with intensity during the latter part of his career, perhaps as a reaction against the disappointments in Rome and as a way of reconciling with his exile to India. According to Bielawski, “it was precisely at that time that Panikkar began to realize more and more his being Indian, a son of that land, and to repress his Catalan, European and Western side.”69 It could also be added that Panikkar began to develop a “Panikkarian” Hindu–Christian theology, as opposed to the Christian theology of Hinduism that he developed in Le mystère du culte. According to Schweitzer, Panikkar interprets the meaning of Christ “with a cosmology more of Hindu origin” and replaces “the deep thought structure underlying most of the New Testament with a more mystical vision drawn from advaitic Hinduism.”70 Panikkar hints toward a Hinduized Christian theology when he writes that his understanding of Christ may be “a very ‘hindu’ idea of what it means to be a christian,” but he “feels no need to apologize, nor does this fact prove that it is a wrong notion or even an unchristian one.” 71 What were the particular events within Panikkar’s exile and resettlement in India that led him toward this Hindu conversion, and what were the intellectual contours of this Hinduized understanding of Christ? I conclude that there were two events that inspired and gave shape to Panikkar’s Hindu interpretation of Christianity after his re-settlement. First, a deepening of Panikkar’s friendship with Abhishiktananda, who strongly influenced Panikkar and catalyzed his thought in terms of the contemplative dimension, the dialogue between advaita and the Trinity, and the quest for Hindu–Christian synthesis. According to Bielawski, “Panikkar’s Indian side finally resounds in full voice, to which his friend Henri Le Saux/Abhishik68. Panikkar, Unknown Christ: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany, 51–53. 69. Bielawski, Panikkar, 84. 70. Don Schweitzer, Contemporary Christologies (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2010), 122. For the Hinduization of Panikkar’s symbolic universe, see Peter Slater, “Hindu and Christian Symbols in the Work of R. Panikkar,” Cross Currents 29, no. 2 (1979): 169–82. 71. Panikkar, “Self-Critical Dialogue,” in The Intercultural Challenge of Raimon Panikkar, ed. Joseph Prabhu (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 264.

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tānanda contributed a great deal.”72 Panikkar and Abhishiktananda shared a theological lexicon and conceptuality that would become crucial for Panikkar’s later cosmotheandric Christology. Second, the Hinduization of Panikkar’s theology was further solidified by the collaborative effort undertaken by Panikkar and a group of Western associates, collecting and commenting on Hindu texts that would later be published as The Vedic Experience. It should be pointed out that although Abhishiktananda’s influence on Panikkar’s self-concept and intellectual framework shaped the Vedic Experience, the task in its own right symbolized a shift in Panikkar’s theological self-identity. PANIKKAR AND ABHISHIKTANANDA Panikkar’s friendship with Henri le Saux, O.S.B., who later took the name Abhishiktananda, provides some of the raw materials out of which he constructs his cosmotheandric Christology.73 Panikkar admired Abhishiktananda from his first visit to India but had only limited encounters with him as part of Jacques Cuttat’s study circle in the middle to late 1950s. The contrast between the two, at first, was profound. Whereas Panikkar was the Opus Dei scholar and the cosmopolitan traveler, shuttling between India, Spain, and Rome as a man of action, Abhishiktananda, as a Benedictine, remained stable in India, deepening his interior life amidst the sannyasins of India. Panikkar admired this stability and the space it gave for contemplation, and saw his “exile” in India as an opportunity to participate in Abhishiktananda’s existential quest for Hindu–Christian synthesis. Panikkar’s fascination with Abhishiktananda’s contemplative depth had a lasting impact on his theological vision overall and the way he approached the Hindu–Christian dialogue in particular. Panikkar’s later prominent use of advaita in relation to the Trinity and mysticism was clearly shaped by his deepening solidarity with Abhishiktananda. Abhishiktanada’s sense of religious identity also had repercussions for Panikkar, especially since they followed similar trajectories 72. Bielawski, Panikkar, 126. 73. See Komulainen, “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism,” 281, and Edward T. Ulrich, “Convergences and Divergences: The Lives of Swami Abhishiktananda and Raimundo Panikkar,” Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 24 (2011): 1–10.

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in their encounter with Hinduism. In 1948, the then-Henri Le Saux was given permission to leave his monastery in Brittany for India. Le Saux’s initial plan was to establish an authentically IndianChristian ashram founded on the Benedictine Rule with the scholastically inclined Fr. Jules Monanchin, who was a more technical theologian than Abhishiktananda. Their goal was “to Christianize India along Benedictine lines.”74 Abhishiktananda however would soon reject the path of mission and “indigenization” after encountering the guru Ramana Maharshi. The depth of the non-dual experience communicated by Maharshi complicated things for Abhishiktananda, and he later abandoned the idea that the Hindu tradition is “incomplete” and “partial” in its mediation of truth.75 Abhishiktananda discerned that God was present in both traditions in equally profound ways. Through the names of both Jesus and Arunachala, Abhishiktananda writes that he enters into the “heart” of the mystery of God the Father. This led him to eschew the preoccupation with distinctions between religions and attempt a synthesis of advaitic and trinitarian experience.76 Abhishiktananda was motivated to realize an interreligious synthesis within himself between advaita and Christianity, and to become a Hindu-Christian. Panikkar also shared this trajectory, as he himself was moving beyond inclusivism toward a more pluralistic stance. Abhishiktananda’s quest for a Hindu-Christian synthesis through advaita showed Panikkar a new and attractive way of being and thinking, and together they embarked upon a series of pilgrimages to consecrate their new identities, although still somewhat traditionally framed. Their pilgrimage to Gangotri was an especially profound experience in this regard. Panikkar and Abhishiktananda shared a renewal of their baptism in the Ganges, consummating their new identities. The latter described it as “a kind of cosmic rite of return to the original womb, the source of being . . . a re-evocation of the baptismal rite which . . . symbolizes with so much efficacy the mys74. See Abhishiktananda, The Eyes of Light (Denville: Dimension, 1983), 13. 75. Du Boulay writes that “meeting Ramana Maharshi was perhaps the most important part of his life,” in Shirley Du Boulay, Swami Abhishiktananda: Essential Writings (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2007), 23. 76. Abhishiktananda, Diary, as cited in Du Boulay, Swami Abhishiktananda: Essential Writings, 78.

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tery of our regeneration.”77 These pilgrimages deepened their quest to become Hindu-Christians, which over the next few years allowed both to transcend their previous identities as inclusivist Christians learning from, but also missionizing Hindus. This merging of advaita and Christianity was bitterly conflicting for Abhishiktananda. Despite finding common ground and mutual illumination between the two traditions, Abhishiktananda despaired of the incompatibilities between Catholic Christianity and advaita. He suffered the “interior tension between Christianity and Hinduism, Trinity and advaita, between belonging to the institution and the desire to go ‘beyond’—tensions that caused him many sufferings.”78 Part of the reason for this tension lies in that Abhishiktananda’s advaitic experience was what Panikkar called “a-cosmic.”79 It was a mysticism into the depths of divinity beyond all name and form, beyond all material limitation. Abhishiktananda moved contemplation outside of the world into the depths of the Absolute, “swept away into a ‘beyond’ . . . the unique experience of kevala, of the Absolute, of Alone-ness.”80 “The monk,” writes Abhishiktananda, “passes beyond and bursts open all manifestations, murtis, expressions of the divine which are essentially relative.”81 For Abhishiktananda, the incarnational and sacramental dimensions of Catholicism were dissonant against the “a-cosmic” backdrop. He observes that “from a Vedantic point of view neither Hindu scriptures and worship nor Christian sacraments have ultimate value.”82 Sacramentality sometimes appeared to Abhishiktananda as mere nāma rūpa that is only provisionally useful. Yet Abhishiktananda also experienced intense guilt about abiding in contemplative meditation while neglecting the celebration of Mass and devotions to the person of Jesus. Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism was worked out in light of Abhishiktananda’s conflict and represents his perspective on their shared pursuit of the Hindu-Christian synthesis. For Panikkar, Abhishik77. Abhishiktananda, The Mountain of the Lord, 173, as cited in Bielawsi, Panikkar, 89. 78. Ibid., 88. 79. Panikkar, Le mystère du culte, 123. 80. Abhishiktananda, Guhantara, as cited in Du Boulay, Essential Writings, 149. 81. Abhishiktananda, The Mountain of the Lord, 177, as cited in Du Boulay, 141. 82. Abhishiktananda, Saccidananda, 43, as cited in Du Boulay, 76.

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tananda’s “a-cosmic” mysticism is untenable given the irreducibility of our humanness and the mystery of Christ, God in the flesh. In the Mountain of the Lord, Abhishiktananda recounts a disagreement that he had with Panikkar during their pilgrimage to Gangotri over precisely this issue. For Panikkar, advaita is not the experience of merging with the Absolute beyond all name and form. Rather, it is the experience of non-dual divine filiation as embodied and material beings. Panikkar attempts to overcome Abhishiktananda’s tension between a mystical flight to the Absolute, beyond all name and form, and the world’s irreducible embodiment and materiality, with cosmotheandrism. According to Bettina Baumer, “if there was one important point of divergence . . . it was that Abhishiktananda time and again stressed the acosmic ideal, as embodied in a radical sannyāsa, whereas Panikkar emphasized the cosmic dimension, ultimately integrating it in his cosmotheandric vision.”83 The cosmotheandric vision posits the non-duality of God and the world, modeled on a synthesis between advaita and the Trinity. Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism holds that the cosmos will never transcend its embodiment and materiality to become the Source, which Panikkar equates with the Father. Nor will the Father as the Source ever become the embodied and material cosmos. Yet “if the Father begets the Son, (and this is a total generation since the Father gives himself fully to the Son) that means that what the Son is, is the Father,” and conversely, “to know the Son qua Son is to realise the Father also . . . since nothing can be said of the Father ‘in himself’ . . . outside of any reference to the generation of the Son . . . one goes to the Father only through the Son.”84 Christ for Panikkar is the symbol of this advaitic and trinitarian unity, for the christic mystery “reduces to zero the distance between heaven and earth, God and man, transcendent and immanent, without sacrificing either pole—which is precisely the principle of advaita.”85 Panikkar’s trinitarian cosmotheandrism is also a response to Abhishiktananda’s guilt over abandoning the christological and 83. Bettina Baumer, Fullness of Life (Mumbai: Somaiya Publications, 2008), 185–86, as cited in Ulrich, “Convergences and Divergences,” 10. 84. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 46–47. 85. Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man, 181.

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ecclesiological “scandal of particularity.” By widening the meaning of Christ to encompass the totality of embodied being, Panikkar understands himself to be moving beyond what he calls a “microdoxical” Christology, that is, the reduction of Christ to Jesus. He writes that “unless we overcome this microdoxic conception, only with difficulty can one strike up a conversation with the followers of other religions without betraying one’s faith or burdening the encounter with guilt.”86 If the entire cosmos is Christ and the entire cosmos is church, the problem of having to “choose” between Jesus and other religious paths becomes merely a “pseudo-problem.”87 As an example, Panikkar interprets the ecclesial expression “body of Christ” beyond the church to “the community of all Men. . . . It does not mean just a small group of humans . . . it extends to the ‘breadth’ of the universe in its proper status.”88 This cosmological conception of church is distinct from even his wider notion of the body of Christ in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec.” Against the argument that the cosmos as the body of Christ is an eschatological reality, Panikkar retorts that this perspective implies “a certain cosmology, namely that which understands the eschaton in historical terms, and the ‘end’ of time as the fullness of time” which he rejects in favor of “a tempiternal understanding of this fullness . . . which would allow the presence of the whole to fill our lives—precisely in the present.”89 This opens up Christology to a radical universality wherein the church and the religions are not seen as mutually irreconcilable, but as abiding within the one cosmotheandric reality. Panikkar reinterprets Abhishiktananda’s insights beyond the many impasses he experienced and converts them into a theological system encompassing all religions. Panikkar’s cosmotheandric advaitic trinitarianism, as well an emphasis on the centrality of experience which Abhishiktananda himself drew from Ramana Maharshi, becomes normative for Panikkar’s later Christology. However, as Bielawski points out, Abhishiktananda did not live long enough to evaluate Panikkar’s 86. Panikkar, Los Dioses y el Senor (Buenos Aires: Colomba, 1967), as cited in Vivarium Foundation: http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-microdoxy.html. 87. Panikkar, “Self-Critical Dialogue,” 263. 88. Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience, 69. 89. Ibid.

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contribution to their quest and offer his own vision in response that certainly would have differed to some degree. Additionally, it is unclear whether Panikkar’s “metatheology,”90 which is ostensibly a “valid theology for both Christians and Hindus,”91 resolves the irreducible levels of alterity that Abhishiktananda struggled with between advaita and Catholic Christianity, especially in terms of the uniqueness of Jesus and the sacraments. PANIKKAR AND THE VEDIC EXPERIENCE Panikkar’s compilation, translation and commentary of Vedic texts that would later become the majestic tome entitled the Vedic Experience92 displays this appropriation of Hinduism into his later synthetic, cosmotheandric Christology. The project was a collaborative effort between Panikkar and various Western colleagues who were experts in the study of Hinduism, including Bettina Baumer. Panikkar was the inspiration behind the project, its director, and sole commentator. Baumer and others prepared the translations and Panikkar wrote meditative introductions to each section. During the course of this project, Panikkar was no longer living in a rectory or residence for Catholic priests as he did a decade earlier in India, but in a Saivite temple on the banks of the Ganges. “At one time in India,” Panikkar related three decades later in his Tavertet home, “I was living in a small room that was barely half the size of this studio—a Śiva temple with a large terrace on the banks of the Ganges. I thought about remaining there all my life. I was content living there in simplicity. I studied, meditated, wrote.”93 Panikkar’s residence in Varanasi was “in a rather picturesque location on Gularia Ghat.”94 The room that Panikkar rented “belonged to the religious order of Mahanirvani Akhada, and nearby was located its imposing 90. Raimundo Panikkar, “Rtatavva: A Preface to a Hindu-Christian Dialogue,” Jeevadhara IX, no. 49 (1979): 23. 91. Ibid., 8. 92. Raimundo Panikkar, The Vedic Experience. Mantramanjari: An anthology of the Vedas for Modern Man and Contemporary Celebration (Delhi: Banarsidass, 1987). 93. Bielawski, Panikkar, 102. 94. Ibid.

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ashram with a Temple.”95 This change in residence reflects something of Panikkar’s changed approach to the Hindu-Christian encounter, post-Opus Dei departure and post-Abhishiktananda: his exterior living circumstances were in sync with what this project represented to his new identity. From his residence in a Saivite temple, Panikkar fittingly neither identifies himself as a Christian in the book, nor does his method of interpreting Hindu texts consist of an inclusivist Christian theological hermeneutic, as it did in Le mystère du culte. Although there is an unmistakeable Christian coloration in the Vedic Experience, coloration is not confession, and a comparison of the two works may prove illuminating. This change in tone, self-identification, and even invocation is jarring when read in light of his earlier work. For instance, Panikkar writes in the preface that he is compelled “to thank the Vedic Gods and all other spirits who have blessed this venture,” going on to ask forgiveness from these same Gods for the errors to be found in the book.96 Panikkar also refers to the Vedas as “one of the most stupendous manifestations of the Spirit”97 and describes it as both the “Vedic Epiphany”98 and “Vedic Revelation.”99 John Saliba in a review of the book observes that “to begin with, there is an obvious acceptance of the Vedas as divine revelation.”100 Saliba, however, questions Panikkar’s lack of explanation around this direct and blunt affirmation of the Vedas as “revelation,” particularly in light of the Western and at least nominally Christian audience he has in mind, and I would add, Panikkar’s own Christian identity.101 This reticence to make claims about revelation from a Christian perspective and Panikkar’s unqualified embrace of the Vedas as “revelation” without christological qualification marks a difference with his earlier work. Another difference between the texts is that Panikkar performed a triple dialogue between modernity, Christianity and Hinduism in 95. Ibid., 103. 96. Panikkar, Vedic Experience, xxxvii. 97. Ibid., 3. 98. Ibid. 99. Ibid., 6, 9. 100. John A. Saliba, “Review of The Vedic Experience. Mantramanjari: An Anthology of the Vedas for Modern Man and Contemporary Celebration,” Horizons 4 (1977): 285. 101. Ibid.

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Le mystère du culte, with Christianity and Hinduism offering a revitalized witness to the spiritual plight of secular modernity. Panikkar in his later writings does not abandon this missiological concern, and indeed remains in some sense a missionary, with one major exception. Panikkar increasingly betrays that the East uniquely has the answers to meet the crisis and confusion of modern Western culture.102 For example, Panikkar writes that he sets out to offer “modern Man” the wisdom of “Vedic revelation,” clarifying that “modern Man” is also “secular Man.”103 He aims to “present, insofar as possible, the total experience of Vedic Man against the present-day human horizon, in order to make the former intelligible and to enrich, challenge, and perhaps eventually transform the latter.”104 His book is a “bouquet” of Vedic texts offered to modern Man, the meaning of which he tries to convey with the Sanskrit term manjari. This bouquet is a “sacrificial offering” that is “presented to somebody as a gift symbolizing service, admiration, dedication, and ultimately, love . . . offered to the world at large, to those who have no contact whatsoever with the world of the Veda.”105 The missiological dimension is further established when Panikkar distinguishes the Vedic Experience from secular religious studies, which operate with the “inauthentic hermeneutical device of interpretation by proxy.”106 Several reviewers of the book made note of the uniqueness of Panikkar’s theological approach to the Vedic text. According to Mary Carroll Smith, Panikkar engages in methodological “fencing” with “historians of religion”107 and seeks to remind scholars of religion that the Vedas are “works of art and sources of inspiration and edification.”108 His book is not solely about the “Vedic 102. It is also possible that this change in perspective mirrors Panikkar’s later experience teaching in non-Catholic, and possibly post-Christian, contexts in the US from 1967 to 1983, first at Harvard Divinity School, and second, at the University of California-Santa Barbara. 103. Panikkar, Vedic Experience, 18. 104. Ibid., 21. 105. Ibid., 6. 106. Ibid., 21. 107. Mary Carroll Smith, “Review of The Vedic Experience. Mantramanjari: An Anthology of the Vedas for Modern Man and Contemporary Celebration,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 16, no. 2 (1979): 345. 108. J. Gonda, “Review of The Vedic Experience Mantramanjari: An Anthology of the Vedas for Modern Man and Contemporary Celebration,” Numen 25, no. 2 (1978): 189.

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experience” of Vedic culture or even “Vedic man,” but is primarily concerned with “modern Man . . . reenacting the Vedic experience for himself” in order to “enter into communion with mankind . . . and with the universe.”109 Panikkar seeks to lay out “an account of the Vedic Revelation, understood as an unveiling of depths that still resound in the heart of modern Man, so that he may become more conscious of his own human heritage and thus of the springs of his personal being.”110 Such a methodology not only distinguishes Panikkar’s book from religious studies, but, along with his deliberate omission of references to later Hindu traditions that claim continuity with the Vedas, places it outside of the preoccupations of classical Hinduism. But while Panikkar’s theological methodology distances the Vedic Experience from classical Hinduism, it is quite close to neo-Hinduism in terms of its non-commentarial style, outreach to a western audience, and implicit Christian conceptualization. In regard to the latter point, Smith comments that Panikkar “blends Christian and Hindu concepts in his discussion of Vedic experience,” making particular mention of his language about “rebirth and resurrection.”111 Although “there is no specific mention of Christian theology in the book, the traces of it are visible.”112 This Christian aspect of the Vedic Experience is aptly summed up by Smith as consisting of “blends” and “traces,” as in for instance, the sections Panikkar entitled “sin and mercy,” along with the overall prominence of the “Word” as a theme, and frequent use of terms like “liturgy.” Yet, while some Indologists or even Hindus may critique this evidence of Panikkar’s Christian background, from a properly Christian theological perspective, it is rather opaque and sparse. Panikkar’s unqualified affirmation of “Vedic revelation” lacks any reference to the primacy and priority of Jesus Christ. Consequently the origin, meaning and destiny of Vedic religion is sundered and untethered from the christological telos. Panikkar’s loss of christological particularity also ironically results in the estrangement of the Christian tradition from any substantive learning before 109. Panikkar, Vedic Experience, 20. 110. Ibid., 9. 111. Smith, Review of Vedic Experience, 345. 112. Ibid.

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the Vedas and “Vedic revelation.” Panikkar’s syncretism negates the very value of openness he was trying to establish. The “undetermined determinacy” or “bounded openness”113 of Panikkar’s earlier incarnational Christology would have allowed for a more dynamic dialogue within the Christian tradition. This is especially the case since Panikkar went deeper into his study of Vedic sacrifice in the Vedic Experience than in previous works. Such mature study may have stimulated new christological insights into Hinduism and Christianity had the previous comparative theological framework remained operative. Panikkar’s commentary of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa text “sacrifice is Man” is one such example of a text that was given increased attention in the Vedic Experience. In Le mystère du culte, Panikkar mentions “sacrifice is man” in the context of a general discussion about the uniqueness of the human as an agent of sacrifice. Panikkar’s treatment of the same text within the Vedic Experience however features a much fuller exegesis of its meaning within the context of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa [SB]. Panikkar first links “sacrifice is man” in SB I with SB XI, which discusses how man is born three times: from his parents, from the sacrifice, and from the burning of his corpse on the pyre. The second birth from sacrifice is the gateway to immortality, as the sacrificer presents his mortal body “to the Gods and receives in return an immortal body.”114 Panikkar presents another perspective on the text “man is sacrifice” by linking it with the Brahminical notion in SB I that life is constitutively a fourfold debt to be repaid: to the gods, with sacrifice; to the sages, with the recitation of the Vedas; to the ancestors, with progeny; and to men, with hospitality. Panikkar examines the etymology of ṛṇa, which is translated as duty or debt. Ṛṇa connotes omission as well as transgression and guilt. Panikkar interprets ṛṇa in line with omission; the human by his naked, un-determined existence is sundered from the whole of reality and must re-attach himself by means of the fourfold sacrifice through which he “partakes in the totality of 113. The phrase “bounded openness” is borrowed from D. Schweitzer, who used it to describe the contemporary Christologies that relate Jesus to other religions (Contemporary Christologies, 100). 114. Panikkar, Vedic Experience, 389.

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the universe.”115 This fourfold sacrifice allows for the “unhampered circulation of being” which is the only way man “can be said to possess real life.”116 Panikkar may have enhanced his earlier christological reflections in Le mystère du culte by putting them in conversation with this more developed commentary of the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa. Panikkar’s early theological anthropology emphasized the mutual gift of self that characterizes the divine-human relationship; it is in this sense that “sacrifice is man.” Panikkar’s inclusivist theology of religions in both “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” and Le mystère du culte features the idea that only in Jesus Christ does the human offer a perfect, sacrificial gift of self to God the Father. It is through Jesus’s life, death and resurrection that the human can participate fully in what Panikkar later calls the “unhampered circulation of being.” Referring back to SB XI and the Brahminical notion of the acquisition of a heavenly body through sacrifice, participation in the Eucharist may be said to join the Christian to Christ’s glorified and risen body, so as to allow the believer to partake in Christ’s risen existence here on earth. The capacity of the human to mediate the fruits of the eucharistic sacrifice in the world may be dependent upon receiving a new body, that is, becoming incorporated into the body of Christ through partaking in Christ’s eucharistic gift of self. Another possibility for comparative learning may be found in Panikkar’s notion that the fourfold sacrifice in SB I reintegrates the self with reality. Panikkar in Le mystère du culte discusses modernity and its role in the disintegration of the self as knower, actor, and worshipper. Panikkar’s interpretation of the fourfold Vedic sacrifice as the reintegration of different aspects of the self into reality perhaps sheds light upon how the intellectual, ethical and cultic dimensions of the self are integrated and enhanced when joined to Christ’s paschal offering in the liturgy. Interestingly, Panikkar elsewhere discusses the need for the church to “re-attach” itself to the religions in order to encounter and understand Christ’s paschal offering more perfectly. What we have with the Vedic Experience are christological notes 115. Ibid., 390. 116. Ibid., 389.

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and accents submerged and syncretized into Panikkar’s commentarial interpretation of Hindu texts and rites. The uniqueness of Jesus’s revelation and salvific work is projected into Vedic revelation and sacrifice. There are implicit comparisons present in this syncretism, or better, comparison seems to be only the first “moment” prior to the successive “moment” of synthesis. For example, at the very outset of the compilation, Panikkar invokes Agni as “the mediator par excellence, the sacrificial Fire, who transforms all material and human gifts into spiritual and divine realities.”117 Agni “has a priestly role and a threefold composition, his nature being theanthropocosmic (i.e., divine, human and earthly at the same time) . . . or in traditional Vedic terms, Agni has a threefold aspect: adhidaivaka, adhyatmika, and adhibhautika.”118 Panikkar’s soteriological description of Agni as the “mediator par excellence” and his ontological descripton of Agni as a kind of “hypostatic union” has clear christological resonances. For another example, Panikkar’s reflections on Vac strikingly borrow from the Logos Christology of John’s prologue as well as other biblical themes. Vac, or the Word, is pre-existent and the “image, the icon” of the Cosmic Person, “ultimately important as Brahman and, in a way that has to be properly understood, it is Brahman itself.”119 The Word is “not just a man-made invention or a tool of communication” and neither is it a divine tool of communication, or the bearer of “certain spiritual truths.”120 Vac as the Word “does not contain revelation; she is revelation. . . . She was at the beginning. . . . She is the whole of the sruti. The sruti is vac.”121 Vac is also the creative and immanent agency producing and underlying all things, for “everything that is participates in vac; through her everything has come into being and her imprint has been left everywhere.”122 Panikkar comments on Rig Veda X, 71, v. 1 and evokes Genesis 2 in the process when he states that “the function of name-giving is in the last analysis a divine function and men can do more than share in it, perform117. Ibid., 36. 118. Ibid., 36–37. 119. Ibid., 88–89. 120. Ibid., 89. 121. Ibid. 122. Ibid.

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ing this creative activity on behalf of God.”123 The seers of the Rig Veda text accomplish this by discerning and mediating the Word, which Panikkar sees as a kind of nuptial union, undoubtedly evoking Ephesians and the Christ-Church marital metaphor. “The communication of the Word,” Panikkar writes, “is like the union of man and woman, for the Word comes and offers herself as a bride to her husband, to the one who is worthy to receive her.”124 Panikkar also implicitly draws upon the venerable “exitus-reditus” paradigm which structures Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae. The Word’s mediation, when effective, “unites heaven and earth” and “once the Word has become Cosmos, the Word cannot go back to her Source without the Cosmos accompanying her—as the later myths of Yudhisthira and Hariscandra so beautifully symbolize.”125 Panikkar’s further commentary on verse 4 of Rig Veda X, 71 again resonates with scriptural language and the theme of the persistent lack of perception among Israel, and perhaps the crowds and Pharisees during Jesus’s ministry, to God’s Word. “Others have eyes, indeed, but they have not beheld the Word; they have ears but they have not heard her.”126 Panikkar assumes these christological themes into the narratival and metaphysical framework of a Christian-inspired but ultimately syncretistic cosmotheandrism, which serves as the theological framework of Panikkar’s commentary in the Vedic Experience. In other words, Jesus Christ and the Christian tradition are not the hermeneutical keys which unlock the inner meaning of Hinduism, but the meaning of Jesus Christ and the Christian tradition are themselves interpreted according to the norm of Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism. Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism is the master interpretive context for scriptural and christological language in his later writings, rather than vice versa. The many biblical echoes and resonances in The Vedic Experience are not the sign of a Christianization of the Vedas with some degree of openness to insights from the Vedic tradition, but rather the Panikkarian Vedicization of Christianity with some degree of openness to insights from the Christian tradition. 123. Ibid., 93. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid., 92–93. 126. Ibid.

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COSMOTHEANDRISM AND SUMNER’S “THEOLOGICAL EXTERNALISM” Panikkar’s assumption of the classical Christian narrative into a Hinduized cosmotheandrism evidence the dynamics of what Sumner calls “theological externalism,” or the utilization of norms from outside the tradition as the foundational principles of Christian theological discourse.127 It is not that Sumner disallows the enrichment of the scriptural narrative by other religions. The scriptural narrative, according to Sumner, may assimilate other religious narratives and insights, becoming enhanced in the process, but itself cannot be fully assimilated into another narrative. There is a solidity and an irreducible alterity to the Christian scriptural narrative and christological tradition which must be preserved, and furthermore, employed as a governing discourse in any interreligious or comparative learning. Interpreting Jesus as an advaitin absorbs Jesus into a Hindu worldview without attention to the scriptural and christological distinctives that by definition do not exist within the Hindu tradition. Sumner points out that Indian Christian christologies, or christologies produced by Europeans preoccupied with Vedanta and yogic traditions, often bypass elements that fit awkwardly with Hindu norms, that is, the uniqueness of the hypostatic union and the atonement.128 Panikkar’s normative cosmotheandrism, similar to this tendency, stipulates that the christologcal realities conveyed in “Vedic Revelation” are not the fruit of a self-disclosure and self-communication of a personal God in history, but rather the “authorless” manifestation of the order of reality, “in reality as it is.”129 Panikkar links this with the Mimamsaka understanding of “authorless” revelation, apuruṣa. Revelation and the order of all things is “discovered” by the rishis through jnana or liberative knowledge; it is not divinely authored in history.130 Such an understanding of “divine revelation” implies a radically different conception of God and the world than that of scripture and Christian tradition. 127. Sumner, The First and the Last, 44. 128. Ibid., 170–71. 129. Ibid., 283. 130. Ibid., 92.

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In his later works, Panikkar explicitly adopts a methodology akin to “theological externalism.” Panikkar argues against the utilization of other religious beliefs to explicate and deepen the Christian tradition, as well as the interpretation of the sensus plenior of the religions in light of the fullness of Christian revelation. Panikkar appeals to a Harnackian-reading of the history of the early church; the early Fathers did not utilize Hellenistic philosophy to make sense of the faith and “transform the culture,” but rather, the Fathers of the church and their theology were utilized and transformed by Hellenistic philosophy.131 Panikkar rhetorically asks, “Were Plato’s ideas Christianized, or was Christianity ‘Platonized?”132 Panikkar makes the case for the latter, as he tries to point out that the doctrinal development of the Trinity was not the result of “willful, calculated utilization” of Greek metaphysics but rather was the process of being “utilized, used by those very concepts . . . carried away by the very concepts they used.”133 Panikkar does not see this is as a negative value, but instead as a positive one. Christianity is not a “system” but a “leaven” or a “yeast” whose task it is to disappear and “vanish within the fermenting mass,” or the culture it finds itself in.134 This is what he calls the “dekerygmatization” of the faith, which frees Christianity from “a past colonialistic attitude. . . . [T]he spolia aegyptiorum mentality today is no longer possible nor in any way justifiable.”135 For Panikkar, the cultures, or rivers, within which Christianity expressed itself have outlived their usefulness and are no longer relevant in a secular and pluralistic context. Panikkar emphasizes instead the need for Christianity to immerse itself and “vanish” within the context of the religious traditions of India and the “East” in order to survive. As Bielawski deftly observes, Panikkar in the latter part of his career understands Christianity as a religion “that does not save, but needs to be saved.”136 Panikkar offers cosmotheandrism as the more relevant and appropriate Christian response to the contexts of modernity and pluralism. 131. Panikkar, Intrareligious Dialogue, 58. 132. Ibid., 58–59. 133. Ibid., 59–60. 134. Ibid., 58. See also Raimon Panikkar, “Chosenness and Universality: Can Christians Claim Both?,” Cross Currents 309 (1988): 324. 135. Ibid., 61. 136. Bielawski, Panikkar, 68.

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Sumner contrasts the methodology of “theological externalism” with its opposite, “theological internalism.”137 This “theological internalism” locates the norm of doctrinal truth within the scriptural tradition itself, particularly in reference to christocentrism. The early Panikkar subscribes to “theological internalism” but later rejected it; Panikkar’s relationship to the narratival framework of Scripture and his missiological conviction about its ultimate significance changes between “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” Le mystère du culte and later texts like the Vedic Experience. The early Panikkar’s Christology of religions employs scriptural motifs that affirm the unique revelatory and soteriological role of Jesus, as well as the Word’s anticipatory presence and activity in the religious existences of both Israel and India. For example, Panikkar draws upon Jesus, Melchizedek, and Abraham to explicate the origin, nature, and goal of the religions in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec.” In Le mystère du culte, the rock of Horeb in Exodus and its christological interpretation in 1 Corinthians are likened to the Christ’s anticipatory work among the Hindu people through Lord Rama. In the above examples, the pre-Incarnate Word initiates divine activity in the religions and fulfills that selfsame activity through Jesus Christ. To borrow Sumner’s expression, “Christ is the one toward whom the narratives run and from whom their truth (to the extent that they are true) derives.”138 Panikkar’s early Christology of religions is therefore in sync with the scriptural tradition, but Panikkar’s revision of biblical and creedal norms within the context of cosmotheandrism further distanced his later Christology from the christocentric “inner shape” of the scriptural narrative. CRITIQUE OF MONOTHEISM AND SALVATION HISTORY Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism also distinguishes itself from the scriptural narrative with its criticism of the limitations that a monotheistic and salvation-historical worldview place on christological universality. Panikkar’s quarreling with these aspects of tradition contests to 137. Sumner, The First and the Last, 44. 138. Ibid., 16–17.

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some degree Robert Neville’s reading of him as a “highly selective” thinker who “does not deal readily with the many forms of Christianity . . . that do not fit into this synthesis.”139 On the contrary, Panikkar is very much aware of the aspects of the Christian tradition in conflict with his later christological project. In particular, Panikkar argues that the personal God of biblical revelation is no longer plausible in a secular and pluralistic context. Not only does this God allow “human hell on earth for most of the people,” in the form of suffering, poverty and disease, but the next life is a “hell for the immense majority of humans” who are not counted among the “chosen people.”140 Panikkar’s conviction that monotheism is fundamentally incapable of dealing with the problem of suffering and evil is a prominent theme in his later writings, but here I will be focusing on his critique of monotheism as exclusivist. According to Panikkar, the assumptions of chosenness and uniqueness for Christianity are no longer valid. They “are being challenged or substantially modified today under the general banner of a universal un-hierarchical human dignity” that finds “privileged-minded and hierarchical views on humanity hard to swallow.”141 Such a cultural shift requires “theological and cosmological quantum-leaps” and a “mutation in self-understanding.”142 Unlike his earlier Opus Dei writings through Le mystère du culte which contest modernity, Panikkar adopts modernity’s qualms with the Christian tradition later in his career, and seeks to accommodate them by offering a fresh vision of God and the world from outside the biblical tradition, borrowing largely from Hindu and Buddhist ideas.143 Panikkar’s rhetorical call for a “Second Council of Jerusalem” symbolizes this liberation of the church from scriptural categories judged irrelevant for the vast majority of peoples. The “Second Council of Jerusalem,” for Panikkar, will set out to accomplish what the “First Council of Jerusalem” attempted to do with only limited success; it will free Christianity from the “umbilical cord which tied it to the Synagogue” and pave the way toward a genuinely universal vision of 139. Cited in Clooney, Comparative Theology, 46. 140. Panikkar, “Chosenness and Universality,” 312. 141. Ibid. 142. Ibid., 310. 143. Fred Dallmayr, “A Secular Age? Reflections on Taylor and Panikkar,” International Journal of Philosophy and Religion 71 (2012): 189–204.

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reality.144 The Jewish identity of Christianity binds it to a parochial particularism and prevents it from realizing its proper universality. The church must meet “the appeal for universalism that is now directed towards it from all sides” by transcending its rootedness in the story of Israel.145 Although Panikkar does not “wish to imply even a semblance of disrespect for the Old Testament,” he asks whether an “attachment” to the “semitic socio-historical context” is “at the root of the very misunderstanding between christian faith and the various world religions that is still very much alive.”146 For Panikkar, the particularity of God’s elections, which formed the “people of God,” are insufficient for explaining the universality of the mystery of Christ and its relationship to non-Abrahamic religions.147 Panikkar reasons that if the church wishes to realize its universality, it must transcend the idea of a singularly unique, elective God choosing a particular people in history and embrace the trans-historical, mystic facticity of the immanent, cosmological Christ. In this vein, Panikkar reinterprets Christ and Christ’s universality through the lens of advaita, focusing in particular on the so-called advaitc principle of identity. According to Panikkar, this principle maintains that apparent diversities and dualities, such as God and the world, Christian and non-Christian, are mistakenly perceived as such, and are inherently non-dual. Panikkar argues that “christic selfconsciousness,” or the church’s christological tradition, should move beyond the Semitic and Greco-Roman cultures that have informed Christian theology. The Ganges, symbolic for a mystical Christology associated with the advaitic principle of identity, represents a new step forward in “christic self-consciousness.” Specifically, Panikkar contrasts the advaitic principle of identity with the Semitic and GrecoRoman principles of “difference and non-contradiction,” which define identity through difference rather than a common non-duality. “Abrahamic” monotheistic religions, for Panikkar, embody the principles of difference and non-contradiction: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam understand themselves primarily as a chosen people 144. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 25. 145. Ibid. 146. Ibid., 26. 147. Panikkar, “Chosenness and Universality,” 318.

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through the categories of separateness and difference, which also implies superiority. Holiness, or being set apart for righteousness, signifies qualitative difference from something else unrighteous. To be an observant Jew and a faithful Christian is to be unlike the “nations,” the “gentiles,” and the “pagans,” for example. The principle of difference is closely related to the “Abrahamic” principle of holiness, which maintains that to be set apart from others is the highest value. This principle originates and comes to its deepest rationalization in the Abrahamic concept of God. The valuation and valorization of difference finds its apex in the Wholly Other God: Perhaps the classic example is the very concept of God in these three so-called monotheistic religions. In order to know what this God is or is not, these traditions put Him outside all possible categories. Because God is the highest Being, He has to be the most different, the most special, the most set-apart, transcendent—outside all things, totally Other, absolutely Holy. The concept of God in these three Abrahamic religions is of God the Different, the Other, the Holy, the set-apart. 148

Yahweh for Panikkar is “seen in light of its incommensurability with any other being . . . unique because it is transcendent, beyond any possible measure with others.”149 Yahweh’s uniqueness means that Yahweh is unlike any other being. Worshipping other deities outside of this unique Yahwistic God is idolatry of the highest degree. Panikkar contrasts this Abrahamic theology and theological anthropology with what he understands as the Hindu worldview in which the real is not that which is transcendent and other, but that which is identical and common to all reality, Brahman. The centrality of Brahman is “not because it is different, but because it is the absolute selfidentity indistinguishable from anything else, and thus abides with perfect immanence inside every being.”150 [W]hen classical India is struggling to say what ‘ultimate reality’ is, she is not saying it is something which is apart, different. She does the opposite: she tries to discover that which is most common, most present everywhere, most immanent, most identical to itself and identical 148. Ibid., 316–17. 149. Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, 138. 150. Ibid.

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to everything to which any identity can be applied and affirmed: brahman. What the three monotheisms call holy, classical India calls basic; ‘ultimate reality’ is not so much transcendent as it is immanent. 151

This identity, which Panikkar identifies as Brahman, is common and immanent to all religions and indeed, to all beings. Rather than understanding reality in terms of an exclusivist differentiation from the Yahwhistic God before whom there can be no other gods, to Jesus as the unique Son of God and savior of the world, to the chosen people at odds with the “pagans,” Panikkar points toward a “more kaleidoscopic” view of reality in which God is everywhere and all things.152 From this perspective, inspired by advaita, “the differing manifestations of reality are without individual consistency ..... in such a universe everything is part of everything else, so that any attempt to isolate things is methodologically flawed.”153 Panikkar finds the contemporary anxiety and fear over losing the “particularity” of Christian identity a symptom of this erroneous mentality, brought about by defining the self and God in terms of difference. Panikkar sees this as an endemic problem in Abrahamic anthropology, cosmology, and theology. For Panikkar, the advaitic principle of identity moves beyond the “in-dwelling” motif of monotheistic conceptions of immanence. Panikkar’s concept of God is a constitutive aspect of the reality of all things, rather than a unique “Other” who reveals, chooses, saves and judges. The God of monotheism favors only a segment of humanity and does not provide a true basis for universality. “Revelational monotheisms” are oriented around a “God who speaks Something to Somebody, Sometime.”154 Divine messages given to a particular persons or people at a particular time “become elevated to the level of God” in the sense that all peoples must enter into contact with them in order to experience the Real.155 Panikkar concludes that the personal, monotheistic God of Abrahamic traditions is ultimately an

151. Ibid., 317. 152. Ibid., 138. 153. Ibid. 154. Ibid., 140. 155. Ibid.

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alienating conception of the divine for most of the peoples of the world. Panikkar argues that if Christianity wishes to retain its claim to universality, it must transcend an understanding of God as elective and acting in a salvation history comprised of privileged events, moments, and people, and instead adopt the Hindu principles of identity and immanence. Christ in an advaitic key is an inherent, cosmic reality awaiting realization, “a symbol of the mystery transcendentally present in any religion, people and ideology.”156 The Christian claim to universality must be different from both “the Jewish one which implies identity by differentiation and the Muslim one which entails a specific Muslim culture.”157 Otherwise, the dual emphases of Christian uniqueness and universality become a dangerous combination. When uniqueness is universalized, Panikkar argues, it becomes colonialistic and ceases to lay claim to any authentic universality. Panikkar disputes the “standard answer that the Church can accept any culture and adopt any way of life because she belongs to a supernatural order higher than any created structure.”158 The very contents of the church’s tradition, even “the allegedly universal language of God,” are conditioned by a cultural matrix foreign to other cultures which will not recognize categories like “God,” “revelation” and “sacraments” as universal.159 Panikkar also rejects inclusivism as a way of resolving this dilemma, since it too privileges just one religio-cultural matrix. Panikkar describes the inclusivist attitude as a confidence that other religions belong to “our water,” even though “the canoes going up and down the river may not be aware of it.”160 If it is posited that beneath all experience and language is a primordial Christian orientation, inclusivism is a sound position at the purely transcendental level. But the problem, Panikkar argues, is that humanity does not exist solely on a transcendental plane. For Panikkar, inclusivism breaks down as soon as there is an awareness of the gulf separating the particular Christian confession from 156. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 29. 157. Panikkar, “Chosenness and Universality,” 324. 158. Ibid., 323. 159. Ibid. 160. Panikkar, Dwelling Place for Wisdom, 127.

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the categorical worldviews of other religions and cultures. The selfdefinition of a being is integral to that being. Perhaps referring to Rahner, Panikkar remarks that we could name a stone irrespective of how the stone would identity itself, but if the stone could identity itself, it would be illegitimate to ignore that self-definition.161 Athough Christians “have wanted to have it both ways, to be chosen and yet universal,” it is not possible and legitimate within these parameters.162 Ultimately, the only legitimate response to the dilemma between chosenness and universality for Panikkar is a renunciation of chosenness and “of any claim to be a particular religion.”163 The Christian challenge will be “to go beyond christian concepts into the void opening up behind them.”164 Panikkar negates the particular salvific missions of Israel, Jesus Christ, and later the church within this framework, a de-kerygmatization of Christianity. This is a departure from his previous view enumerated in some early writings that the particular, historical election of Israel, of Christ, and of the church, exists to be in the service of the universal salvific destiny of all peoples. “The mission of the people of Israel is not limited to the people of Israel but overflows to all of humanity,” Panikkar wrote in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec.”165 “Salvation proceeds from the Jews, but is not only for the Jews.”166 In the later Panikkar, however, the part is no longer instrumental to the destiny of the whole. The universalization of the particular is tantamount to Christian neo-imperialism and colonialism. It is unsurprising that within this context the person and work of Jesus has no constitutive relationship to universal salvation, and neither does the church’s mission of evangelization in Christ. For Panikkar, the Christ of Christian tradition is merely “Jesus as the God of the christians,” an undue parochialization of the christic mystery that leads to the missionary colonization of other cultures and religions.167 But if the

161. Panikkar, “On Christian Identity,” 132. 162. Panikkar, “Chosenness and Universality,” 323. 163. Ibid. 164. Panikkar, Dwelling Place for Wisdom, 157. 165. Panikkar, “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec,” 583. 166. Ibid. 167. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 21.

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categories of divine personhood, election, and chosenness are transcended, how does God act in Christ? COSMOTHEANDRISM AND TRINITARIAN THEOLOGY Panikkar’s trinitarian theology, and in particular his qualification of the relationship between Father and Son, is important in this regard. According to the later Panikkar’s trinitarian theology, the Father is not a trinitarian “actor” with a will and with whom one can have a personal relationship. The Father fundamentally “is not” for “he has no ex-sistence, not even that of Being . . . in the generation of the Son he has, so to speak, given everything . . . in the Father, the apophatism (the kenosis or emptying) of Being is real and total.”168 The Father “is” only in the Son; the Son “is the is of the Father.”169 This means that for Panikkar “only the Son is Person, if we use the word in its eminent sense and analogically to human persons.”170 Although “what the Father knows is the Son,” this expression is “ambiguous and as commonly understood, false, since the Son is not the accusative, the object of the Father’s knowledge.”171 The Father does not “know” and also does not “act,” but rather is the pure act of “Fathering” which generates the Son into existence. “The term itself, ‘Father,’ is a function, not a substance: the father procreates . . . my Father is not a being, who among many other activities, also generates me . . . he engages in no other activity than this: generating.”172 The Father strictly speaking does not have a self-consciousness but rather “awakens” to itself in the Son, “which is the atman realized.”173 Panikkar makes a comparison here with Brahman and Īśvara: In other words, God does not have the experience of myself. . . . Brahman does not know that he is Brahman, the Vedanta says. But Isvara knows it; he knows himself as Brahman. And it is this consciousness of Isvara that makes Isvara equal to Brahman.174 168. Ibid., 46. 169. Ibid. 170. Ibid., 52. 171. Ibid., 47. 172. Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man, 101. 173. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 47. 174. Panikkar, Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery, 98.

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Panikkar’s non-personal Father is part of his later cosmotheandric worldview, inspired by advaita. There is no goal or intentionality behind the Father’s “fathering” and therefore no elective sanctification of the created order but only a harmony or wisdom to discover within a cosmos which has inexplicably burst into existence. According to Schweitzer, Panikkar embraces “a vision of reality inspired by advaitic Hinduism, in which history is not oriented to any goal.”175 Panikkar also seems to have been inspired by the Vedas, in which “the universe has meaning and harmony, order, rta, without having to accept a (mono)theistic worldview.”176 This understanding of the Father as purely apophatic and beyond analogy was criticized by MacPherson. She writes that “it must be considered a flaw in Panikkar’s treatment of the Father to have so emphasized the apophatic dimension of the Father as to rule out any expression in terms of Person or Creator.”177 The Father, as Marianne Meye Thompson has pointed out, is an authorizing and willing agent in the New Testament.178 For the later Panikkar, however, the Father cannot be said to send the Son to fulfill his soteriological will and intentionality for the world. What also makes Panikkar’s understanding of the perichoresis between Father and Son distinctive is his striking claim that the Son “is not” except as cosmos. Panikkar’s later trinitarian theology excludes the classical understanding of the immanent Trinity, wherein the pre-existent Son is the phaneros of the Father’s will and intentionality. For Panikkar, the cosmos itself is the Son, the beloved “thou;” it is the begotten, not made, of the Father—the cosmic Christ.179 Panikkar wrote to Castelli in 1966 that among “the myths and objectifications” he had overcome was that of conceiving “God as a separate ‘substance’.”180 The divine, human, and cosmic are “artificially substantivized” by metaphysical philosophy, 175. Schweitzer, Contemporary Christologies, 106. 176. Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, 121. 177. MacPherson, Critical Reading, 101. 178. Marianne Meye Thompson, The Promise of the Father: Jesus and God in the New Testament (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000). 179. Raimon Panikkar, “The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross,” in Jordan Savall, Les Concerts Des Nations (Seville: Alia Vox, 2007). 180. Bielawski, Panikkar, 95.

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which mistakes them for autonomous separate realities.181 In line with trinitarian logic, Panikkar advises that “persons” can only be understood in a non-substantial way and not “in themselves’ . . . a person is never in himself, but by the very fact that he is a person he is always a constitutive relation, a pros ti.”182 For Panikkar, each pole of reality, the divine, the human and the cosmic, is an equally constitutive dimension of the perichoretic rhythm of being. “The cosmotheandric vision does not gravitate around a single point, neither God, Man, nor World, and in this sense it has no center.”183 God is part of the perichoresis between the three but not at the center: Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism is not “theocentric.” I repeat, the whole of reality could be called, in Christian language, Father, Son, Holy Spirit—the font of all reality, reality in its act of being (that is, its becoming, the existing reality which is the whole Christ, totus Christus), and the Spirit (the wind, the divine energy that maintains the perichoresis in movement).184

The experience of God in Christ is a matter of discovery, unveiling, and becoming aware of one’s true nature as a trinitarian mystery, precisely as saeculum. The soteriological metaphors that he employs are predominantly advaitic. The experience of Christ, for the later Panikkar, is an awakening from ignorance into a saving insight about the mystery of one’s being. Panikkar writes of Christ as the experience of infinity in the midst of contingency, the experience of being “in the interior of something that includes everything . . . cosmos, God, and humans.”185 Panikkar also calls this deep mystical awareness of christic realization, “Christianness.”186 “Christianness” exists “as a fact and is something we discover.”187 Panikkar explicitly links “Christianness” to neo-Hindu interpretations of Christ, as he comments that “it is not without a deep and prophetic intuition that

181. Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience, 61. 182. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 52. 183. Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience, 77. 184. Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man, 149. 185. Panikkar, Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery, 41. 186. Panikkar, Dwelling Place for Wisdom, 136. 187. Ibid.

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much of neo-Hindu spirituality speaks in this way of ‘christic awareness.’”188 Panikkar suggests that with a turn toward the universality of the neo-Hindu mystical awareness, founded upon the advaitic principle of identity, there may be a genuine christic “self-consciousness” that is able to move beyond exclusivism. Since the christic principle is already “transcendentally present in any religion, people and ideology,”189 the mediation of Jesus is not constitutively necessary for salvation. COSMOTHEANDRISM AND JESUS What role, then, does Jesus play in a world where Christ is the revelation of every being’s identity and not the Second Person of the Trinity irrupting into space, time, and history as the unique savior? Panikkar seems to move between three perspectives which have in common Jesus as an exceptionally realized cosmotheandric christophanic figure, and therefore, a particularly efficacious way toward realizing the christic awareness inherent in our nature. Jesus’s sonship is exhaustive but not exclusive,190 for all beings are Christ, the cosmotheandric mystery, and only need to awaken to that identity. First, Jesus reveals who we are and enlightens those ignorant of their true identity. Jesus does not bring anything new into time and space but paradigmatically and emblematically reveals who we are in a striking way. He is a revealer who is a door to the reality he reveals, the christic nature of humanity. According to Schweitzer, “for Panikkar, Jesus saves not so much by doing as by enlightening.”191 Secondly, and related to the first perspective, Jesus is referred to as the way to this cosmotheandric experience for Christians, which is Christ. Panikkar distinguishes between Christ and Jesus. “It is in and through Jesus that Christians have come to believe in the reality they call Christ, but this Christ is the decisive reality.”192 The 188. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 54. 189. Panikkar, “Chosenness and Universality,” 324. 190. Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man, 113. 191. Schweitzer, Contemporary Christologies, 104. 192. Panikkar, Unknown Christ: Towards an Ecumenical Christophany, 29.

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confession “Jesus is the Christ” is therefore an existential and limited confession; Jesus is truly the Christ but only for the person who has encountered Christ through Jesus. This personal confession does not imply universalization, or the conviction that Jesus is Christ for all. A striking implication of this Christology is Panikkar’s assertion that an encounter with Christ is not an encounter of Jesus. In an address to the Parliament of World Religions, Panikkar stated this explicitly: “this Christ . . . is obviously not a sort of hidden Jesus lurking underneath Hinduism or elsewhere in order to ‘get Hindus over,’ but simply truth.”193 However, it is only through Jesus that Christians may recognize the reality of Christ in the religions. “At this summit,” he writes, “you discover Christ in all those who have reached the Mystery, even if their ways have not been Christian ones.”194 Panikkar in this vein calls Jesus his iṣṭa-devatā or that “form of the divine that corresponds most closely to our culture, idiosyncracy, and personal circumstances.”195 For Panikkar, it is a matter of both religio-cultural and personal karma that determines the particular name and form under which one seeks out this Christ. Personal discernment is the way to determine which iṣṭa-devatā applies most suitably to our cultural patrimony and individual preferences. Yet, Panikkar must also account for the centrality and significance of Jesus, not only within the Christian tradition but also in the world at large. Panikkar does this by acknowledging that Jesus is a sui generis manifestation of the cosmotheandric mystery, who holds a kind of central and privileged place among other christophanies. Jesus is the Christ for many, within and outside the Christian tradition, because Jesus’s consciousness of divine filiation was more intense than others. Panikkar’s contention that Jesus is a sui generis manifestation of the common christic mystery is an example of a “Christology of degree.”196 Jesus’s uniqueness consists in possessing something shared by all of humanity, but in an exceptional way. In Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery, Panikkar talks about Jesus’s christic nature as an epiphenomenon, 193. Panikkar, “Religious Identity and Pluralism,” 45. 194. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, 25. 195. Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man, 81. 196. See the brief but cogent discussion of degree Christology in Vernon L. Purdy, The Christology of John Macquarrie (Bern: Peter Lang, 2009), 246.

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which implies that Jesus’s intense filiation is secondary to the primary cause of his christophany, the christic nature of the cosmos. “The historic phenomenon of Jesus is thus an epiphenomenon of the mystery of Christ, which does not mean that he is neither real nor central.” 197 The use of “epiphenomenon” precludes an intentional sending from the Father, as well as the uniqueness of Jesus’s identity, but is consistent with Panikkar’s cosmotheandric metaphysics. Christ is neither unique in person and work nor committed to the world at a certain time and place for the salvation of the world. The Christic epiphenomenon of Jesus is simply a peculiarly powerful and especially influential manifestation of the mystery common to all humanity. This is how Panikkar interprets Galatians 4:4 and the “fullness of times”: “When the ‘fullness of times’ arrived, there occurred in space (and also in time) what we call the incarnation, so that the manifestation (phanerōsis) of Jesus constitutes a revelation of reality—of what we are.”198 The cosmotheandric experience of Jesus rather than the unique revelatory and salvific mediation of Jesus as the unique Christ becomes Panikkar’s final christological word. Jesus experiences Christ and is the way toward Christ for Christians, but is not solely the Christ for others who may approach the shared mystery of christic identity by another way. Panikkar answers his critics who emphasize instead the unique and constitutively normative concentration of christic revelation in Jesus by returning to a critique of the principles of difference and noncontradiction. Christology, he argues, has predominantly understood Christ through the principles of difference and non-contradiction and their corollary, the principle of individual singularity. These principles emphasize “that which a thing is, is something exclusive and ‘individualizing’,” which is to “assume that what makes Jesus, Jesus, is something which is his ‘own,’ his exclusivity,’ his private individuality.”199 Panikkar disagrees with what he perceives as the prevailing norm that personal identity needs to be found through 197. Panikkar, Experience of God: Icons of the Mystery, 29. 198. Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man, 186. 199. Raimundo Panikkar, Salvation in Christ: Concreteness and Universality, the Supername, Inaugural Lecture at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Theology (Jerusalem: Tantur, 1972), 27.

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the principle of individual singularity, where “the identity of a given being (in se indistinctum), is sought through individuality, and its difference from all others is emphasized (ab aliis distinctum).”200 This is to reduce, for the later Panikkar, the identity of Christ to its individual identification in Jesus. To reduce the mystery of Christ to the individual Jesus is to determine that where Jesus is not present, Christ is also not present, or at least cannot be present in any significant way. Panikkar observes that the 1964 edition of the Unknown Christ of Hinduism was not favorably received by some Christian theologians because they understood “Christ” in terms of identification and were unable to accept the presence of Christ in Hinduism, having identified the mystery of Christ exclusively with the historical individual Jesus. According to these theologians, Panikkar “violated the ‘sacred’ Western canons used to identify Christ, since Christ is seen only in terms of differentiated identification rather than identifying identity.”201 He remarks that the difficulty in admitting a presence of Christ in Hinduism or any other religion for that matter, is due to the “unqualified identification and ‘substantialisation’ of Christ with Jesus of Nazareth.”202 To limit the reality of Christ to the individual Jesus is emblematic of a “tribal christology” and an imperialistic understanding of incarnation.203 The Christian christological tradition, which for Panikkar is not a tautology, should be transcended in favor of the cosmotheandric vision. SUMMARY This chapter has examined the shift in Panikkar’s personal and ecclesial context, particularly his exile to India from Rome and dismissal from Opus Dei, and its impact on his later Christology. Panikkar’s cosmotheandric Christology was also inspired by Abhishiktananda’s quest for Hindu–Christian synthesis, particularly through a dialogue between advaita and the Trinity. Panikkar’s cosomotheandrism, rooted in advaitic principles, is best described as a cosmological 200. Ibid. 201. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, 15. 202. Panikkar, “Self-Critical Dialogue,” 271. 203. Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man, 161–64, 171–75.

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theology which holds that Christ is the very identity of the cosmos, borrowing heavily from neo-Hindu principles and understanding of Christ. Cosmotheandrism is also a departure point for a wider synthesis of religions beyond Hinduism and Christianity, since all beings and cultures manifest the cosmotheandric experience in diverse ways. Panikkar draws upon the advaitic principles operative in cosmotheandrism to contest and critique key aspects of classical Christian theology, particularly Abrahamic monotheism and salvation history. According to Panikkar’s critique, monotheism, and salvation history are aspects of the biblical tradition insufficient for explaining the universality of the christic mystery, particularly as it pertains to cultures and religions outside the Abrahamic sphere. Yet, Panikkar awkwardly continues to utilize normative Christian categories in his theological explication of cosmotheandrism, and argues for the normativity of its interpretation within Christian tradition. The latter half of the chapter covered the later Panikkar’s modification of trinitarian theology, Christology, and ecclesiology within this cosmotheandric worldview. Panikkar critiques the Christian christological tradition for its supposed limitation and substantialization of the mystery of Christ to Jesus. However, the confession of Jesus as the unique Christ within the Christian tradition does not refer to the limitation of the christological mystery to Jesus alone, but rather is a celebration of the release of christic salvation into the whole of humanity.204 The mystery of Christ Jesus is personal and particular, as well as cosmic and universal; without one or the other elements, Jesus could not be “for us and our salvation.” Jesus’s destiny becomes the possibility, as well as the very substance, of salvation for all, challenging the later Panikkar’s notion of the limitation and undue substanialization of Christ in Jesus. The early Panikkar’s incarnational Christology of religions may be said to respond to the later Panikkar’s critique from a similar position. Jesus’s assumption of the Abrahamic and Melchizedekian lines ushers in the completion of God’s plan of salvation for all of humanity. The early Panikkar’s christological contribution is to bestow dignity upon the religions through a balance between the particularity and universal204. I am indebted here to Fr. Robert Imbelli who used the phrase “the release of the Word” during a visit by Archbishop Rowan Williams to Boston College.

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ity of Jesus’s unique person and work. There is continuity between Christ and the religions, but also an element of otherness within this relatedness which makes of Christ’s humanity the redemptive event for the whole of creation. The later Panikkar’s problems with the Christian christological tradition are effectively addressed by his earlier inclusivist Christology of religions, where he upholds a creatively open but traditional understanding of Jesus Christ as the unique savior of all.

4. A Constructive Protestant Appreciation and Interaction BOB ROBINSON

Raimon Panikkar presents many non-Catholic readers with a set of challenging theological and inter-religious options. What follows in this chapter intends to affirm, to interact with and, in places, to complement and even expand aspects of Panikkar’s thought.1 Apart from occasional hints, critical comment is reserved for the next chapter. There are, of course, Protestants who are wholly sympathetic with, for example, the radical pluralism advocated by Panikkar. But, on the whole, even academic Protestants who are concerned about interreligious issues are likely either to be unacquainted with his writings or unappreciative of his thought—despite his very considerable reputation beyond their several worlds.2 There are some in the global Protestant communities (including Lutheran, Anglican, Evangelical, and Pentecostal) who have attempted to interact with his thought, though the number is small.3 Nonetheless, this chapter will argue that 1. An earlier version of this chapter was read as a paper to the Annual Meeting of the Society for Hindu-Christian Studies, San Francisco, November 2011. I am grateful for comments made there about its contents. 2. There is not space even to begin to outline a taxonomy of the varieties of Protestantism. But one intention of this chapter is to indicate the unexpected appreciation of one Protestant (and his students)—most of whom are located at the conservative end of the Protestant spectrum—while acknowledging that other Protestants are not at all surprised by Panikkar. 3. For example: Robin Boyd, Keith Johnson, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Jyri Komulainen,

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there are dimensions of Panikkar’s vision that possess a certain and perhaps unexpected appeal—even for those at the more conservative end of the Protestant spectrum. PANIKKAR AS RADICALLY CHRISTOCENTRIC Apart from his undoubted stature in the Christian world beyond Protestantism,4 why else might Protestants take notice of Panikkar’s thought? One immediate reason is that, especially in more traditional Protestant circles they are, or want to be, Christ-centered in their beliefs and practices and general orientation. This is because, as one south Asian theologian puts it, the “normativeness and ultimacy of Jesus Christ in God’s salvific dealings with his world . . . is intrinsic to Christian praxis and self-understanding, then and now.”5 It is apparent from the volume that introduced Panikkar to the English-speaking world—the first edition of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism6—that he starts his own theologizing with Christ.7 He concludes his revised and enlarged edition of the same work with the summary statement, “I have taken the risk of speaking of Christ all the time.”8 It is also true and equally significant that—as we shall see—his definition of Vinoth Ramachandra, Bob Robinson, George Sumner, Amos Yong—references to whose works will be found in this and the next chapter. 4. For example, an emeritus professor of theology at Fordham University, Ewert Cousins, can write that “Raimon Panikkar, is, I believe, the greatest global theologian of the 20th century and into the 21st century.” (“Uniting Human, Cosmic and Divine: The Vision of Raimon Panikkar,” America [January 1–8, 2007]: 22.) 5. Ramachandra, Recovery of Mission, 216 (original emphasis). 6. The two chapters contributed by Bob Robinson to this present volume will mainly refer to the much-revised second edition of Unknown Christ of Hinduism, with the subtitle Towards an Ecumenical Christophany, published in 1981 and identified as: Unknown Christ, revised edition (although some references to the original will be made). The first edition has received considerable analysis in chapter 1 above written by Erik Ranstrom. 7. Along with both editions of Unknown Christ of Hinduism, the best source for Panikkar’s developed Christology is his Christophany: The Fullness of Man. For a comprehensive description and evaluation of Panikkar’s Christology—beyond the analysis by Ranstrom above—see Komulainen, An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion? especially chapter 4 in which Komulainen describes and discusses Panikkar’s Christology in the context of Panikkar’s “cosmotheandric vision” (to be discussed below). 8. Panikkar, The Unknown Christ, revised edition, 163. Christianity and Hinduism meet each other in Christ; see the sub-chapter called “Christ, the Point of Encounter,” in both The Unknown Christ, 5–6, and revised edition, 36–38, although he also concedes there that “not all Christologies would adopt the stand of this book.” (Ibid., 38.)

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“Christ” is rather larger than that embraced by most Protestants, even in their own versions of cosmic Christology but, at least on the face of it, Panikkar is resolutely and consistently christocentric. In his The Unknown Christ, and in many other writings, Christology is a significant topic of discussion. Panikkar’s intentions include the quest for what he calls “an authentically universal Christology . . . which would make room not only for different theologies but also for different religions.”9 This attention to Christology provides a first and most obvious reason for potential Protestant interest in Panikkar10 given his belief that in a pluralist world “it is not Christianity as a religion but Christ as symbol that becomes central.”11 Panikkar’s subject matter in his revised Gifford lectures, is the created order “of which Christ is the head following christian Scripture.” Christ, he writes, is not the direct concern of the lectures, but “may be a hermeneutical key to it. The entire destiny of reality is a christic adventure.”12 In other words, Christ is central for the understanding of reality and, presumably, his own philosophy as well. Discussion will return to the rather expansive meaning that Panikkar attaches to the words Christ and christic as this “hermeneutical key.” Panikkar also draws a sharp distinction between Christ and Jesus; the usual assumption of continuity is, he states, a “major obstacle when Christianity . . . identifies, with the necessary qualifications, Christ with Jesus, the Son of Mary,” even though this identity does characterize Christianity.13 This radical disjunction between Christ and the Jesus of history is obviously another issue to which attention will need to return.14 Moreover, for Evangelical Protestants, Panikkar’s Christology is an obvious starting point for an appreciation of his thought. To describe Panikkar’s theology as radically christocentric is to forge an immediate link with the many species of evangelicalism. 9. Raimon Panikkar, “The Category of Growth in Comparative Religion,” Harvard Theological Review 66 (1973): 128 (113–40). 10. Some Protestants will note with appreciation that that his theology is not to be included among the low and even reductionist Christologies of other twentieth-century advocates of religious pluralism. 11. Raimon Panikkar, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1979), 453. 12. Raimon Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being: The Unbroken Trinity. The Gifford Lectures (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2010), 260. 13. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, revised edition, 56–57. 14. See below, chapter 5.

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The adjective “christocentric” could be one descriptor of a centered set of Evangelical beliefs and practices in which Christ is the determining principle.15 What is meant by christocentrism can be summarized along the following lines by the British Anglican, Alister McGrath: Christ operates as a historical point of departure for Christianity, Christ reveals God, is the bearer of salvation, and defines the redeemed life.16 McGrath allows the legitimacy of some forms of natural theology that enable a limited knowledge of God, but Christ offers a much deeper revelation of the Divine.17 And in his later and summative Christophany: the Fullness of Man, Panikkar argues that in order to know Christ, it is not more theories about him that are needed, but an experience of Christ for which he employs his neologism “christophany.”18 Such an experiential epistemic foundation, and its contrast with an abstract Christology, is not unknown to evangelicalism; for many Evangelicals it is a congenial starting point and summary of theological authority. SOME CONSEQUENCES OF PANIKKAR’S RADICAL CHRISTOCENTRISM While it must be conceded that—as we shall see—Panikkar’s christocentrism is by no means identical to that of most Protestants, both kinds of christocentrism have beneficial consequences in a religiously plural setting (such as India); discussion will return to this point in the next chapter. Firstly, there are distinct advantages to be gained from a concrete christological focus rather than from appeals to “God” or “Spirit.” These advantages are especially apparent in discourse with, 15. This might be contrasted with other definitions of evangelicalism in which, for example, an adjective like “exclusive” might be employed to describe a bounded set where the organizing principle is soteriological or severely Biblicist. 16. Alister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology: Reality (London and Grand Rapids: T&T Clark and Eerdmans, 2002), 298. McGrath appeals to notable twentieth century Protestant theologians including Karl Barth, T. F. Torrance, H. Richard Niebuhr and others for this understanding of the adjective “christocentric.” 17. Ibid., 311. Nonetheless, McGrath also offers a qualified assertion that non-Christian traditions are valid, and capable of mediating the saving grace of God (85). 18. See Panikkar, Christophany, 9–13. More precisely: “Christophany stands for a manifestation of Christ to human consciousness and includes both an experience of Christ and a critical reflection on that experience.” Ibid., 10.

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for example, most Hindus and with some Buddhists and with some followers of the “new spirituality” in the West—for whom the categories of “God” or “Spirit” can be construed in all manner of ways.19 Christianity has always drawn attention to the unique and irreplaceable position occupied by Christ in its self-understanding; the primary focal or beginning point of any theology (or summary of Christianity) based on an appeal to the New Testament is the message of Jesus as presented in the Gospels.20 Secondly, Panikkar’s radical christocentrism facilitates an emphasis on Christ’s role as mediator. For Panikkar, Christ is the mediatorial bridge between the one and the many, between the infinite and the finite. In The Unknown Christ, and elsewhere, Panikkar makes an extended attempt to illustrate this continuity between Christianity and Hinduism by arguing that many Hindus assign some of the functions and “place” that Christians assign to Christ to Īśvara, the personal aspect and self‑revelation of Brahman. Panikkar does this not only in an attempt to show parallels with Christology but also in an attempt to illustrate how his approach might facilitate the resolution of the longstanding problem of understanding Brahman as either saguṇa or nirguṇa (with or without attributes), and to help explain the problematical relationship between the Absolute and the world.21 Although Panikkar does not intend a precise identification of Christ and Īśvara,22 he does suggest that the attributes of Īśvara are those that find a true fulfillment in Christ; the Sūtra he discusses “seems to indicate a way to what the Christian tradition calls God the Father through God the Son.”23 The Irish Protestant, Robin Boyd, calls Panikkar’s exegesis of the Sūtra “an impressive demonstration” and “very illuminating” as Panikkar grapples with what Boyd calls “one of the major problems of Hindu philosophy—the bridging of 19. This is not to overlook the ways in which an appeal to Christ can be similarly misused but, generally speaking, it is more difficult to do this. 20. The point is well made by, for example, Heikki Räisänen, Beyond New Testament Theology: A Story and a Program (second edition, London: SCM, 2000), 182, and Frank J. Matera, “New Testament Theology: History, Method, and Identity,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 67 (2005): 20. 21. Unknown Christ, revised edition, 152–55. 22. Ibid., 155, 164. 23. Ibid., 159.

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the gap between Brahman and the world.”24 In the words of Gerard Hall’s summary, “Christian belief in Christ and the Vedanta Hindu understanding of Īśvara are notably distinct, we might say incomparable. Nonetheless, certain correlations emerge once both Christ and Īśvara are interpreted according to their respective functions within their own traditions.”25 A third issue might also be noted. There is one other example of what has also often been seen as a kind of homeomorphic equivalent, the concept of avatāra26 as found in some forms of theistic Hinduism, which Panikkar notably does not employ. The appeal to avatāra is fairly widespread in Indian theological discussion—both Catholic and Protestant—but it is more often rejected because of its docetic and ahistorical features.27 Panikkar certainly knows of its importance but rejects the terminology for two reasons. Firstly, because it is liable to reduce Christ to one of many saviors or incarnations or avatāras28 and for this reason, he argues, Christ must be described as trans-historical in status—and a cosmic dimension might well establish this. Secondly, because of its hegemonic implications: “if Christ were an avatāra why should one avatāra consume all the others?”29 Most Protestants are likely to agree with Panikkar’s rejection of this supposed example of a homeomorphic equivalent to Christ (seeing it as docetic, as Panikkar does), although some in India have employed the language of avatāra for theological, apologetic and missional purposes. A fourth possible consequence of Panikkar’s christocentrism is that it might help to lessen the force of some of the criticisms that have been made against many other versions of christocentrism. Critics of christocentrism have, at times, seen it as morally inadequate (because it can encourage triumphalism, intolerance and authoritarianism), 24. Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology, second edition (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1975) 223, 225 (see his discussion 222–25). 25. Hall, “Intercultural and Interreligious Hermeneutics: Raimon Panikkar” [n. p.]. 26. Literally “descent” and sometimes seen as equivalent to Christian belief in incarnation. 27. See the analysis and discussion in Bob Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus: an Analysis and Theological Critique of the Hindu-Christian Encounter in India (Oxford: Regnum, 2004), 273–84. 28. Panikkar writes, for example, that “the Christian will not be satisfied with a partial view that Christ is just one avatāra among many, and be content with it as the Christian’s lot.” Panikkar, Invisible Harmony (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995), 171. 29. Unknown Christ, revised edition, 153, and quote from 28.

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epistemologically naive (in its foundationalist view of religious truth), theologically deficient (in its high Christology) and as culturally unacceptable (because of its narrow-minded rejection of the pluralist paradigms of religious truth, interreligious relations and multiculturalism). These are charges that cannot easily or convincingly be leveled at Panikkar or his version of christocentrism. This might, in turn, enable others to formulate or refine a christocentric understanding of the religions along related lines, and thereby to be less susceptible to the negative appraisals that continue to be heard about it. In other words, Panikkar’s christocentrism might—with some qualifications—contribute to the distinctly positive reasons for the framing of a Christian approach to (and description of) the encounter with people of other faiths in christological rather than in pluralist or theocentric or other theological categories. PANIKKAR’S COSMIC AND IMMANENTALIST CHRISTOLOGY Panikkar’s Christology is of a particular kind: a cosmic Christology that includes the traditional assertion that “Christ is the Lord” and that Christ is much more than the person Jesus,30 even if Panikkar can also assert, perhaps inconsistently, that “Jesus is the ikon for the whole of reality.”31 Such a Christology certainly has a cosmic element that at least some Protestants can appreciate and affirm. Traditional Protestant theology has laid stress upon the transcendence of Christ, from which transcendence Christ is brought by missionary or similar Christian endeavor and offered to those who otherwise could not know him or be able to respond to him. The presuppositions of such an approach usually offer little by way of a positive evaluation of what might thereby be called the “non‑Christian” religions; assertions of discontinuity, the necessity of mission and even divine judgment can follow. Panikkar, however, explores another approach to Christology as he appeals not merely to a universalized cosmic and 30. Ibid., 14, 27. Here and elsewhere Panikkar appeals to a number of biblical passages (for example, Eph 1:21, Rev 2:17, John 17:6, 26) and his appeal to the Logos refers to Rev 19:13 as well as to the prologue to the Fourth Gospel. 31. Panikkar, Christophany, 72 (emphasis added).

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Logos Christology (many others have also done that) but expresses it in a radically immanent form. For Panikkar, the eucharistic presence of Christ is one example of the trans-historical and yet immanent presence of Christ.32 It is unlikely that many Protestants will appeal to such eucharistic presence (though some Lutherans and others do), but they typically maintain a biblically- and experientially-derived belief in the real presence of the risen Christ, not least his presence when “two or three are gathered in [his] name” (Matt 18:20). The way in which, from the earliest days of the Christian community, worship has been directed to the risen Jesus, is an increasingly common appeal in some Protestant theology and apologetics.33 Most Protestants, in particular, will also resonate with any Christology that reminds them of the Lordship of Christ. The imperial overtones would doubtless be resisted by Panikkar but his cosmic Christology, in itself, seems to point to a shared appreciation of the presence of the risen Christ.34 Panikkar’s is, then, an immanentalist cosmic Christology that can be seen as a complement to Protestant thought; or, it might be argued, the more transcendent Protestant dimension could strengthen Panikkar’s Christology (even though he would probably have seen it as unacceptably hegemonic in tone). At the same time, neither Protestant nor Catholic will underestimate how carefully the meaning and justification of any Christology in cosmic (or any other kind of trans-historical) categories would need to be framed, if it is to be seen as plausible in the contemporary world.

32. See, for example, Unknown Christ, revised edition, 2, 15–16, 90. In the words of Jacob Parappally’s summary, “The Christ of the believer’s existential and personal experience transcends the historical constraints and limitations. Panikkar uses the example of Eucharistic Presence of Christ which is the real living Christ one encounters in communion. Here the real presence of Christ is not identified with the historical existence of Jesus.” (Parappally, Emerging Trends in Indian Christology, 138–39.) 33. Some of this has been triggered by Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); and his How on Earth Did Jesus Become a God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). 34. It is rather puzzling to read that cosmic Christology (and, specifically, Panikkar’s) is a “modest” not an “absolutist” Christology. Wesley J. Wildman, “Basic Christological Distinctions,” Theology Today, 64 (2007): 300 (285–304). Wildman does, in fact, assert that, in Panikkar, “advantage has been taken of the grand historical visions of India” (ibid., 292), which sounds rather like a less-than-modest claim.

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COSMIC CHRISTOLOGY AND THE (RE‑)EVALUATION OF OTHER FAITHS Panikkar advocates a view of Christ as universally present in the world, and present in the world’s religious aspirations. For example, the first chapter of both editions of The Unknown Christ offers a description of the Christian—Hindu encounter “with the intention of showing that there is in Hinduism a living Presence of . . . Christ.” From Hebrews 1:1–3, Panikkar concludes both that “the Son” is the inspirer of the sages of Hinduism and that “the Logos himself is speaking” within Hinduism.35 For Panikkar, Christ is “not only the ontological goal of Hinduism but also its true inspirer. . . .”36 It certainly follows from this cosmic principle that Christ is present in the religions and may be proclaimed as such given that whatever God does ab extra happens through Christ because in him (Christ) “all things subsist” with Panikkar citing Colossians 1:17.37 The considerable volume of discussion generated by the publication of The Unknown Christ included questions about this attempted deployment of Christology in the search for a more comprehensive theological understanding of the Christian encounter with other faiths. The significance of Panikkar’s ahistorical Christology becomes more apparent when set in the context of his approach to Hinduism.38 Because Christ is the “reality” that is the origin, sustenance and destiny of all things, and because the Hindu scriptures speak of the same reality, therefore “from the point of view of Christianity, Christ is already present in Hinduism.”39 Panikkar’s claim does seem rather more substantial than the usual assertions of the long tradition that links the 35. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, viii; revised edition, 1–2; see also Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 53–54. 36. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, ix; revised edition, 2–3. 37. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, 138; revised edition, 169. 38. It is this aspect of Panikkar’s Christology that seems to have changed significantly between the first and the revised editions of Unknown Christ. In the original edition of Unknown Christ, there is both continuity and discontinuity between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith,” but in the revised edition, the continuity is very difficult to discern. The shift to discontinuity is well brought out in Ranstrom (chapter one, above) and in studies such as that of Cheriyn Menacherry, Christ: The Mystery in History. A Critical Study on the Christology of Raymond Panikkar (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1996). 39. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, revised edition, 49, 40; see also 165, 169.

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Logos/Word with goodness, truth, and beauty wherever they are found. For Panikkar, the “Christian fact cannot be confined to a given religion; it must be recognized as that leaven at work in every religion until it has brought them all to a higher fullness.”40 In other words, the parallels between Christianity and Hinduism are to be found not in terms of occasional and surface similarities, but at a deep and profoundly experiential level. That which Christians experience as Christ, is an experience that can be called by other names, such as Rāma, Krishna, Īśvara, or Puruṣa for Hindus, and even simply as “Humanity.”41 For this reason, Panikkar believes that, in true dialogue, “the other is seen as an authentic source of understanding, even as ‘revelatory experience’.”42 This follows because Christ is actively present in all authentic religious traditions.43 One further feature of Panikkar’s cosmic Christology also deserves attention. This is the presence of its parallels among some Protestant writers in the 1960s, not least in India, during the search for a christological justification of (and even incentive for) dialogue with others.44 In the early 1960s, in part triggered by the impact of an address by Joseph Sitter to the third assembly of the World Council of Churches in New Delhi in 1961, cosmic Christology began to attract increasing attention, especially in global Protestant theology. The contributions and interventions in the New Delhi assembly of M. M. Thomas and P. D. Devanandan of India, and D. T. Niles of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), linked this cosmic Christology with the reality of the extra‑Christian faiths. Indian Christian thought during the 1960s began to appeal to cosmic aspects of Christology in its growing concern for a re-evaluation of inter‑religious relations. In many ways, some of which overlapped, both Catholic and Protestant theologians in India began to elaborate such possible implications of a cosmic Christology. In fact, in 1965, an ecumenical study-center leader (Richard Taylor) could write that the belief that Christ acts 40. Panikkar, “Faith and Belief: A Multireligious Experience,” Anglican Theological Review 53 (1971): 236. 41. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, revised edition, 27. 42. Komulainen, An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion?, 67. 43. Discussion will return in chapter five below to this notion of “authentic.” 44. For further documented discussion of these complementary perspectives, see the discussion in Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus, 216–24.

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beyond the Christian community “is at the heart of some of the most stimulating theological thinking being done in India today.”45 Contrasting Catholic and Protestant Christologies are apparent in this discussion; contrasts that were visible during an ecumenical Colloquium on “The Cosmic Christ,” held in 1965. Some of the papers read to the meeting were subsequently published,46 revealing that the Protestant contributions were decidedly tentative (by comparison with Catholic approaches) in their application of the doctrine to a theological appraisal of other faiths. Nonetheless, the two approaches do display what can be described as complementary eschatological and fulfillment dimensions. For Protestants, these are mainly framed in future and transcendent categories; within Catholic discussion, the perspective tends to be both present and immanental. It is not difficult to conclude that Panikkar’s Christology could be refined or even considerably strengthened if he had taken account of these somewhat complementary Protestant approaches. Panikkar’s Logos-cosmic Christology has, then, some continuing appeal for biblically-orientated Protestants interested in Logos Christologies because of their Scriptural foundations, especially the prologue to the Fourth Gospel. In other words, it should not be difficult for them to affirm the presence of Christ where Jesus is not known; they are able to embrace a Logos Christology given its status for them as a dimension of the cosmic Christology of the New Testament.47 A contemporary conservative Protestant summary and evaluation of cosmic Christology—appealing especially to Colossians 1:15–20 and Ephesians 1:9–10—can even conclude that: “[p]rior to any religious confession, people exist ‘in Christ.’ While they are alive, everyone exists in Christ. And the goal of the whole world is unity in Christ. Past, present and future, therefore, are unified by Christ.”48 In other words, Panikkar provides a means of evaluating the religions, and a rationale for intentional dialogue, by means of his immanental cosmic Christology, some of the contours of which helpfully 45. For details and some parallel examples, see ibid., 216n32. 46. In two issues of Indian Journal of Theology in 1966: 15.3 and 15.4. 47. Not to mention the Alexandrian and other forms of Logos Christology with the scattered “seed” of the Word, as elaborated by Justin Martyr, Origen, Cyril of Alexandria, and others. 48. J. Levison and P. Pope-Levison, “Christology,” eds., Dyrness and Kärkkäinen, in Global Dictionary of Theology (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2008), 185.

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and fruitfully complement Protestant justifications that are usually couched in transcendental or exemplarist categories. PANIKKAR’S HOLISTIC COSMOTHEANDRISM IN A POSTMODERN WORLD One of Panikkar’s most stimulating contributions to recent theology is the holistic cosmotheandrism that he elaborates in his Cosmotheandric Experience49 and elsewhere. He argues that there is a radical and holistic connectedness and harmony between the material world, the divine, and humanity.50 Reality is cosmotheandric: it is a threefold dynamic of the cosmic, the divine, the human (or, appealing to the order of divine, human, cosmic, what he calls the unity of the “I,” the “you,” the “it”51). Panikkar explains that “the divine, the human and the earthly—however we may prefer to call them—are the three irreducible dimensions which constitute the real.”52 This is the joining of heaven and earth, and every authentic experience is cosmotheandric because authenticity has to do with the wholeness of reality.53 Gerard Hall points to three assumptions that undergird Panikkar’s cosmotheandric vision: The first is that reality is ultimately harmonious. It is neither a monolithic unity nor sheer diversity and multiplicity. Secondly, reality is radically relational and interdependent so that every reality is constitutively connected to all other realities: “every being is nothing but relatedness.” . . . Thirdly, 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 that are reducible to their own thought-processes or cultural expressions. . . . [F]or Panikkar, all cultures, religions and peoples 49. Raimon Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience: Emerging Religious Consciousness (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1993). 50. It is from the Greek words for these three (kosmos, theos, andros) that he coins the adjective “cosmotheandric,” even though anthrōpos (a human) would be preferable to andros (a male human). The resulting neologism would, however, be the somewhat awkward “cosmotheanthropic”—and there are amusing anecdotal accounts in Panikkar circles of his preference not to have to speak about the “cosmotheanthropic”! 51. Panikkar, The Invisible Harmony, 75. 52. Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience, 60. 53. As already noted, discussion will return to the notion of authentic.

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are relationally and symbolically entwined with each other, with the world in which we live, and with an ultimate divine reality.54 There are two platforms upon which Panikkar’s assertions about this cosmotheandric reality are built. The first is experiential: cosmotheandrism is neither simply a logical nor even a theological claim. The very title of the book (The Cosmotheandric Experience) makes the point that the epistemic foundations are experiential. The second foundation is christological, although it is important to note that Panikkar’s emphasis is not so much upon Christology in traditional categories but upon what he calls a “Christophany” (the subtitle of the revised edition of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism is Towards an Ecumenical Christophany). A number of possibly fruitful implications do flow from Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism. It might be said to fit nicely within a postmodern understanding of humanity. Within this framework, historical consciousness (with its religious particularities) yields to what Panikkar calls “the increasingly collective or societal aspect of trans-historical consciousness” in the contemporary world.55 Cosmotheandrism certainly points to a radical interdependence and interconnectedness—as might be expected in a created universe. The universe is a living organism constitutive of the Whole,56 and points, in the words of Amos Yong’s summary, to “nature, religion, and culture . . . bound indissolubly even while they remain irreducible dimensions or aspects of any reality.”57 Panikkar insists that there is something more than pure materiality in, for example, a simple stone.58 This certainly includes ecological responsibility for the earth as the home that enables and nurtures cultures and religions. What might Protestants make of Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism? 54. Hall, “Multi Faith Dialogue in Conversation with Raimon Panikkar,” http:// www.shc.edu/theolibrary/dialogue.htm [n.p.]. 55. Panikkar, The Invisible Harmony, 142. 56. Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being, chapter 6. 57. Yong, Hospitality and the Other: Pentecost, Christian Practices, and the Neighbor (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2008), 91. He adds that “the irreducibility of these domains cannot be underestimated.” Ibid. 58. See Panikkar’s analytical reflection on stones and the cosmos in “The Cosmotheandric Invariant” in Rhythm of Being, chapter 6. His argument is that the whole created and interconnected and interdependent order exists in space and time and a stone is a part of a greater whole; for that reason the stone is not really neutral or inert.

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Some progressive Protestants will heart welcome echoes of process theology (and the panentheism to be mentioned below). Others will warm to this implied appeal to a holistic and interdependent shalōm—to use the Hebrew term that seems strangely absent from Panikkar’s principal writings.59 Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism might well be what Komulainen calls “an idiosyncratic metaphysical model,”60 but Panikkar himself, and others, clearly believe in its potential for transformation of the world. This potential offers the possibility of a positive response by Protestants, given the holistic vision captured by the concept.61 Panikkar offers a non-reductionist view of humanity and the human individual (because of the necessary connections with the divine in a cosmotheandric understanding of reality). He can speak of humanity as the unique divine icon and mounts a strong critique of naturalistic and evolutionary views of humanity: what he calls “evolutionistic thought”.62 There is a related appeal to an “anthropic principle,” in both God and the cosmos (of the kind found in some forms of contemporary Protestant apologetics), “which is expressed in the depth of each human life and in true communion among men and women. . . .”63 It would not be difficult to strengthen this appeal to interconnectedness, interdependence, and a relational universe, from recent writings in the sciencefaith encounter (for example, the writings of John Polkinghorne, Paul Davies and many others).64 Much of the appeal of cosmotheandrism, therefore, resides in its offer of an attractive holistic alternative to truncated (often essentially 59. They might well agree with the kind of summary of cosmotheandrism offered by Francis D’Sa: “Our age has problems with all three centers of reality: God, World, and Man. Science ignores God; Man does not care for the world; and now the world is fighting back.” Foreword to Panikkar, Christophany, xvii. 60. Komulainen, “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism”: 293. 61. As Komulainen puts it, “The cosmotheandric vision sees reality as consisting irrevocably of relations: according to Panikkar, everything that exists ‘is wrapped in that radical relativity.’ The radical relativity of being is the reason why cosmotheandrism entails criticism of the idea of the Absolute: everything being in relation with each other, there is nothing that is isolated from this communion.” Ibid., 295; the (unreferenced) quote appears to be from Panikkar, Blessed Simplicity, 128. 62. Panikkar, Christophany, 119 (original emphasis); elsewhere he seems content to speak positively of what humanity receives “from an evolutionary past.” Ibid., 79. 63. Xavier Pikaza, “Raimon Panikkar (1918–2010),” Concilium, 5 (2010): 120 (117–20). 64. See the detailed and valuable discussion of this issue in chapter two of Gerard Hall, Raimon Panikkar’s Hermeneutics of Religious Pluralism (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1994).

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dualistic) religious worldviews. His cosmotheandrism enables Panikkar, as Komulainen puts it, “to attain the holistic vision of reality with pluralism for which he has yearned. Relational ontology allows room for both unity in reality and differentiation. Hence it provides him with such philosophical underpinnings that render a radically pluralistic theology of religions plausible without challenging the fundamental unity of humanity.”65 The cosmotheandric vision is open to a number of criticisms and its supposed advantages are purchased at a cost; Panikkar’s claim, for example, that a ubiquitous triadic structure undergirds reality (cosmotheandrism functioning as a form of Trinitarian or triadic metaphysics) is rather speculative.66 Nonetheless, it is not difficult to acknowledge that the holistic vision it embraces has a number of appealing aspects, even if this does not amount to agreement with all that Panikkar asserts about the cosmotheandric vision. Recent interest in panentheism is another possible means by which Protestants might appropriate at least some of what Panikkar means by cosmotheandrism. Panentheism asserts that the universe is closely related to God even though the Creator exists apart from and is transcendent over it in some way. The belief is asserted in a variety of ways, not all of them congenial to the thought of most Protestants—though that hesitation may be changing.67 Panikkar’s view of God is unclear (he is wary of “monotheism”); nonetheless, a version of panentheism could be supported that emphasizes the way in which the living God is present to every part of the created order while remaining not only distinct from the creation, transcendent over it, and able—at least in part—to be described in personal categories.68 Panikkar acknowledges panentheism as a reaction against certain 65. Komulainen, “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism”: 296 (with helpful references). 66. For a Protestant critique of cosmotheandrism, see, for example, Jyri Komulainen, An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion?, and “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism.” 67. Among Protestants: Jonathan Edwards, Jürgen Moltmann, Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, Thomas Jay Oord, Philip Clayton, John Polkinghorne and, perhaps, Wolfhart Pannenberg each seem to offer qualified support for versions of panentheism. 68. I should also add that I would want my preferred version of panentheism to be undergirded by a robustly biblical and realist view of creation such as that found in the three volumes of Alister E. McGrath, A Scientific Theology, especially vol. 1, Nature (London and Grand Rapids: T&T Clark and Eerdmans, 2001). I am grateful to Bryden Black for the reminder of McGrath’s trilogy.

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formulations of monotheism “but not against its main thrust”; it is the affirmation that all things are in God, “which is a qualified monotheism.”69 FURTHER APPRECIATION OF PANIKKAR’S THOUGHT AND PRACTICE I have used Panikkar as a case study in my Protestant College classroom in New Zealand. The starting point for this deployment has been Panikkar’s christocentrism as outlined above before moving to his cosmotheandrism—especially its holistic aspects—and then the exploration and discovery of points of affirmation elsewhere in his thought and praxis. Generally, students have shown an appreciation of Panikkar, but not universal agreement. Nonetheless, the relatively positive reception and stimulating discussions, suggest that the reason Panikkar is not appreciated by Protestants has more to do with lack of acquaintance with his writings than with any wholesale incompatibility with their basic convictions. The following nine areas are ways in which Panikkar’s thought has either enriched the classroom, or has, in some other way, been relevant to the thought of contemporary theological students in New Zealand. CREATIVITY AND PEDAGOGICAL STIMULATION To read Panikkar is to understand his appeal as both writer and speaker. As a polyglot he exhibits zeal in the analysis of the etymology of words and the invention of neologisms. His thought is “rich in allusion and hard to simplify”70 and his writing is “allusive, thick with ideas and linguistic echoes of the many traditions he has studied.”71 His works contain stimulating and memorable visual imagery:

69. He concedes that some forms of panentheism are closer to pantheism “whereas in Bulgakov and many other Christian thinkers the word may be closer to monotheism” (Rhythm of Being, 161–62). 70. S. Mark Heim, Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995), 167. 71. S. Mark Heim, The Depths of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 148.

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rivers,72 peaks and paths, rainbows.73 The content and style of an essay, written when in his eighties, “On Christian Identity: Who is a Christian?”74 both interests and even inspires students (while simultaneously puzzling them in some ways). Panikkar frequently asserts the importance of drawing only modest conclusions from all epistemological claims; his reminder that one does not place ultimate faith in doctrines, concepts or other “things,” but in “the ever inexhaustible mystery, beyond the reach of objective knowledge”75 resonates for students and others who accept both a post-foundationalist epistemology and a personal, experiential component in divine revelation. Panikkar’s discussion of God as Trinity in The Trinity and the Religious Experience of Mankind is described by Rowan Williams as “one of the best and least read meditations on the Trinity” in the twentieth century.76 His creativity often surprises, even when it does not completely convince. For example, I have repeatedly taught the Fourth Gospel and have found constant stimulation and even illumination from Panikkar’s comments on the Gospel of John—especially his reflections on the Upper Room discourse (in John 13–17).77 Jyri Komulainen correctly recognizes that the widely-known threefold paradigm within a Christian theology of religion (inclusivism, exclusivism and pluralism, often attributed to Alan Race), was first formulated by Panikkar in 197878 and repeated by him (latterly in expanded form) many times.79 Ursula King also points to a contribution to scholarship that deserves acknowledgement: her discovery that the distinction between the different elements of a phenomenological account of religion, usually connected with (or even attributed

72. See also the Table of Contents in Panikkar, Intrareligious Dialogue. 73. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, revised edition, 24, 29–30. 74. In Many Mansions? Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity, ed. Catherine Cornille, 127–47. (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010). Panikkar suggests that there are many answers to the question of Christian identity but that they all derive from the experience of actual individuals answering from within their own communal embeddedness. 75. Panikkar, Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics, 6. 76. Williams, “Trinity and Pluralism,” in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered, ed. Gavin D’Costa (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1990), 3. 77. See the opening forty or so pages of Panikkar, Christophany. 78. See Komulainen, Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion?, 14. 79. See, for example, Panikkar, Intrareligious Dialogue, 5–10.

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to) the work of Ninian Smart,80 was first made by Panikkar.81 Moreover, in many of these examples, Panikkar provides a synthesis of theoria and praxis that has considerable pedagogical appeal and models a cultural liberation for students and other postmoderns in the global north. At the same time, Panikkar is the heir of a long western philosophical and analytical tradition that, despite what he sees as its overdependence upon the category of logos, often enables a welcome and helpful degree of precision in his writings. Such appreciation is not to overlook flaws in Panikkar’s style. His allusions to (and occasionally actual quotations from) a very wide range of writers, are not always documented. Francis Clooney points out that brief citations by Panikkar may appear more authoritative than warranted, and that Panikkar’s enlistment of the writings of others at times aligns them with views they might only partially accept.82 At other times, conclusions are asserted from sources that are acknowledged but without indication of how the conclusions are derived. These flaws are forgivable when Panikkar’s genre is intentionally that of meditative reflection or casual address but at other times the lack of sources is an unfortunate departure from the usual norms of intellectual accountability. These faults may, however, be related to one further dimension of Panikkar’s persona: his often independent and non-conformist spirit as seen in two rather different examples. He was married, in a Spanish civil ceremony, at about seventy years of age and remained a Catholic priest under the (distant) jurisdiction of the bishop of Varanasi, India. His marriage was, it seems, both a protest against what he saw as ecclesial legalism, and an assertion of the cosmic role enjoyed by all humans as 80. Presumably King has in mind a source such as Smart’s The World’s Religions, second edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 11–22, in which Smart elaborates religion in terms of ritual, explanatory, doctrinal, ethical, social/institutional, experiential and material dimensions. 81. “It was introduced,” King states, “in an earlier book by Panikkar published in 1964 in Italian and in 1965 in German, but never translated into English”; King, review of Komulainen, An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion? in Implicit Religion, 11 (2008): 205. (The current publication of Panikkar’s Opera Omnia may now provide the source in English.) King’s review adds that Panikkar confirmed in a letter to her that Smart had personally acknowledged this to him even though it is never mentioned in Smart’s published writings. 82. Francis X. Clooney, “Review of Panikkar, The Experience of God,” Journal of Religion 87 (2007): 454.

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priests.83 A similar independence (but one that might be described as non-progressive) is seen in his rather skeptical stance towards liberation theology; for some Catholics, and probably some Protestants as well, there are doubts about his commitment to the usually prescribed agenda of this form of theology.84 A CONTEXTUALIZED AND CULTURALLY-LIBERATED THEOLOGY Panikkar certainly models an attempt to present a contextualized expression of Christian faith. Protestants, especially because of their missional and activist inclinations, have long advocated the importance of an appropriate contextualization. At their reflective best they have argued for cultural latitude over against mono-cultural (especially western) expressions of faith and praxis. This concern for culturally-liberated theology is central for much of Panikkar’s thought as well. At times, Panikkar’s is a somewhat cautious contextualization; aspects of his writings might be seen as not much more than an expression of the newer perspectives of Nostra Aetate and other Catholic statements from the second half of the twentieth century. But at other times he models a more radical approach; for example, as he reminds readers that “[t]o cross the boundaries of one’s cul83. Scott Eastham, to whom Panikkar dedicates what is perhaps his magnum opus (the Gifford Lectures published as The Rhythm of Being, and in which Panikkar pays fulsome credit to Eastham), has written in some detail about the three months he spent in 1990 with Panikkar in Tavertet, working on getting the Gifford Lectures into book form. Eastham clearly implies that Maria was Panikkar’s wife for some time. Eastham mentions, in passing and among many other appreciative details that, as well as daily discussion and editing, “we had two one-day getaways with Panikkar and his wife, Maria, . . . who had also accompanied him to the [Gifford] lectures in Edinburgh.” (“Rhythm in the Making: Panikkar’s Unfinished Masterpiece,” CIRPIT Review, No. 3 – Supplement (2012): 19–30, here 24.) This is a source that is clearly close to Panikkar and much less second-hand than Dennis Coday, “Panikkar’s marriage,” (National Catholic Reporter, 10 September 2010: http://ncronline.org/blogs/ncr-today/panikkars-marriage). Coday’s article cites an explanation offered by Michael von Brück: “The unity of the divine with humanity was reflected for him [Panikkar] in the unity of priesthood and married life.” Erik Ranstrom comments that “perhaps the issue of the marriage highlights, or is a microcosm of, the tension between Panikkar's Christianity and his more personal approaches to spirituality and mysticism.” (Personal communication.) However, access to factual and archival material about many biographical issues related to Panikkar is now severely restricted by the “Vivarium Foundation” he established and this includes comment on his marital status. 84. See the brief but well-documented analysis in Komulainen, “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism”: 288–89. Discussion will return to this issue the next chapter.

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ture without realizing that the other may have a radically different approach to reality is today no longer admissible. If still consciously done, it would be philosophically naïve, politically outrageous and religiously sinful.”85 Contextually-alert Protestants might well agree with that last statement; some will agree because of the missional impediments such a refusal generates, whereas Panikkar’s reasons derive from his ontological pluralism. Nonetheless, most Protestants share Panikkar’s convictions about the importance of what he calls “diatopical hermeneutics”—the need to understand that others actually do stand in different places,86 even if some are unlikely to agree with all that Panikkar implies by his explanatory assertion that “the ultimate human horizon, and not only differing contexts, is at stake here.”87 In India, Protestants have long been persuaded of the need for Christianity to rid itself of excessively western forms of the expression of the faith—forms that are inappropriate and even alien when used in south Asia. Robin Boyd, for example, entitled his discussion of the topic India and the Latin Captivity of the Church and appeals instead to a range of Indian examples of those who have combined a deeply christocentric faith with a selective deployment of Indian and Hindu imagery and terminology.88 Moreover, to the extent that Panikkar wrote out of an Indian (or non-western) context, he is a reminder to western Christians of all kinds that issues of cosmology and anthropology are of continuing importance to Christian faith and practice; his are a “high” cosmology and anthropology (over against all reductionist alternatives). The importance attached by majority-world Christians to cosmology and anthropology offers a 85. Panikkar, Myth, Faith, and Hermeneutics, 9. 86. In fact, even Evangelical Protestant missiologists might well give complete assent to Panikkar’s neologism and its definition: “I call it diatopical hermeneutics because the distance to be overcome is not merely temporal, within one broad tradition, but the gap existing between two human topoi, ‘places’ of understanding and self-understanding, between two—or more—cultures that have not developed their patterns of intelligibility . . . . Diatopical hermeneutics stands for the thematic consideration of understanding the other without assuming that the other has the same basic self-understanding.” http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/ gloss-diatopic.html (original emphases). 87. Panikkar, Myth, Faith, and Hermeneutics, 9. 88. Robin H. S. Boyd, India and the Latin Captivity of the Church: the Cultural Context of the Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974). See the elaboration of this point in Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus, 118–25.

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reminder to the church in the West that its concerns are not ubiquitous and can follow from a prior cultural accommodation (or even capitulation) of a kind that Panikkar is unwilling to embrace. HYBRIDITY AND MULTIPLE-BELONGING? The kind of attempts at contextualization and inculturation modeled by Panikkar are not uncontested. In some Indian Catholic circles there is resistance from those who see them as the “Hinduization” of the Christian faith and, in conservative Protestant circles, there are related concerns about contextualization as a possible route to (or even a form of) syncretism. In the case of Panikkar, an even more radical dynamic appears to be present if it is reasonable to describe him as “a ‘mutational man,’ one in whom the global mutation has already occurred and in whom the new forms of consciousness have been concretized.”89 To see him in such terms is to raise the issues of hybridity and multiple-belonging. In a globalized world, the evidence for hybridity in nation, race, ethnicity, culture or even religion is ubiquitous. Panikkar’s well-known statement, written after his return to Europe from years in India—“I ‘left’ as a christian, I ‘found’ myself a hindu, and I ‘return’ a buddhist, without having ceased to be a christian”—seems to suggest his embrace of a form of hybridity or multiple-belonging (even if in its original context the statement is somewhat qualified).90 There are biblical precedents that might well enable Protestants to grasp at least some of Panikkar’s meaning91 and although most are unlikely to endorse any call to intentional multiple religious belonging, they constantly observe examples of its reality in their postmodern western settings. These dynamics are by no means absent among younger Protestants as their hybrid ecclesial styles and highly porous denominational 89. Thus Ewert H. Cousins, “Raimundo Panikkar and the Christian Systematic Theology of the Future,” Cross Currents 29.2 (1979): 143. Cousins derives his use of mutational language from the writings of Jean Leclercq. 90. Panikkar, The Intrareligious Dialogue, revised edition (Mahweh: Paulist, 1999), 42 (lower case nouns in original). The statement is, however, prefaced by the words “Although my human pilgrimage was not yet finished, I used to give a straightforward—obviously incomplete—answer.” 91. Cf. “I have become all things to all people so that I might by all means save some” (1 Cor 9:22b).

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boundaries illustrate. Marriage across religious boundaries can be seen as an example of “double-belonging” and marriages across once fairly carefully maintained denominational boundaries are now probably the norm among Protestants; and unions across major religious lines are not unknown. This is hardly endorsement of intentional religious double-belonging among Protestants but it certainly points to the changing context—exemplified in numerous ways by Panikkar—in which their theological reflection and missional activity take place.92 UNIVERSAL DIMENSIONS OF CHRISTIAN FAITH, INCLUDING CHRISTOLOGY Panikkar argues that traditional Christology is culturally embedded in a western worldview to an unacceptable degree: Christians talking to other Christians about the meaning of Christ within the constraints of their western cultural and theological reference points. He wishes to challenge all such Christologies93 and to argue that the Christian task is the “conversion . . . of a tribal Christology into a christophany less bound to a single cultural current.”94 Panikkar sees himself as “at the confluence . . . of the four rivers: Hindu, Christian, Buddhist and Secular traditions.”95 Later, he uses the analogy of rivers in a different way when he writes about the Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges.96 These represent, respectively, Christian exclusivism, imperial expansion into inclusivism, and an emerging pluralism, and he employs the image of the three rivers to describe what he calls “Christianity,” “Christendom,” and “Christianness.” What has come to be called Christianity “is a cultural construct, inescapably bound to Western 92. As Amos Yong points out, “hybridized or multiple religious identity will no doubt become more prevalent in our increasingly shrinking global village.” Yong, Hospitality and the Other, 93. 93. See Panikkar, Christophany, 3–5. 94. Panikkar, Christophany, 162. By “tribal” he means “the tribal Christology that has prevailed for the past two thousand years of Christian history, and that has been almost exclusively centered on its own interests, accompanied by a sad indifference to other human experiences.” Ibid., 161; chapter 5 of Christophany is entitled “Christophany Transcends Tribal and Historical Christology.” 95. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, revised edition, x. 96. Panikkar, “The Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-consciousness,” in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, ed. John Hick and Paul Knitter, 89–116 (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987).

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history and culture;”97 hence his belief that the dominant Christologies of Christianity have become tribal. Only the universal category “Christianness” is appropriate for the present pluralist world.98 Most Protestants, when presented with such an argument, would at least understand it and even concede its presence in their theologies. But they would hesitate to employ a phrase such as “tribal Christology,” not because they wish to remain mono-cultural but because of missional and universalizing aspirations to move beyond tribal confines, even when their own history betrays them at this point.99 Panikkar also appeals to the example of Paul at Athens (in Acts 17) where Paul draws on Hellenistic philosophy; this leads to the assertion that “the ‘discovery’ of a Śaṅkara or a Rāmānuja is just as important for Christian theology today as the assimilation of Plato and Aristotle was in ages past.”100 Panikkar can be heard here to assert the universal validity of the central Christian claims once they have been shorn of distracting or distorting western influences. Once again, most Protestants and even the Evangelicals among them—with their concern to frame Christian beliefs in an appropriately contextualized manner—would comprehend and approve of Panikkar’s intentions, even if they would not necessarily express it in quite the same way.101 Nonetheless, it is also important to note that “universal” need not mean the post-Enlightenment desire to universalize prescriptively, from supposedly secure epistemic foundations; Panikkar

97. Panikkar, Christophany, 173. This relates to and follows from Panikkar’s differentiation of “identity” from “identification”; identity is found or asserted at an ontological level whereas identification is found or asserted at the levels of language and logic. Identity is much more than identification. (See ibid., 153–55.) 98. See Panikkar’s “The Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges,” 113. He defines “Christianness” as “experience of the life of Christ within ourselves,” an experience “that I and the Father are One.” Discussion will return to this experiential dimension. 99. The title and content of Robin Boyd’s India and the Latin Captivity of the Church: The Cultural Context of the Gospel exemplify this point. 100. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, revised edition, 167. 101. Given that, for example, most have never knowingly employed Platonic or Aristotelian categories and are unlikely to appeal to Śaṅkara or Rāmānuja. But many Protestants seem hardly ever to have been aware of the influence of the ideological content of modernist and postmodernist conceits either.

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strongly rejects such a dynamic102 and postmodern Protestantism, especially in its more recent forms, increasingly does so as well.103 At the same time, however, we might also ask whether there is what might be called a “universal experience of God.” The Presbyterian theologian, James Wilson, takes up Panikkar’s point that the Christian religion is distinct from others by virtue of its articulation of theology in the category of Logos. One consequence of this, however, is that Panikkar avers that Christian faith may not be reduced to what he calls “Christianity,” given the presence of an ensemble of what for him are authentic experiences that transcend language and culture. “[P]eople do not live . . . on logos alone; they live also in the Spirit, which breathes into humanity and the universe where, when, and how it wills.”104 Wilson adds that he finds “Panikkar’s efforts to account for the universal activity of God provocative and compelling.”105 Panikkar’s advocacy of universality is not a view that, for example, Īśvara, Allah, Christ and Yahweh are ontological equivalents, but neither are they mere names. They are functional equivalents in the sense that each is the name given by a particular religion for the Mystery that is at work in all religions.106 Nonetheless, Panikkar’s struggles with the meaning of universality do present continuing problems for at least some Protestants and discussion will return to this issue.

102. See, for example, Panikkar, “The Invisible Harmony: A Universal Theory of Religion or a Cosmic Confidence in Reality?” in Toward a Universal Theology of Religions, ed. L. Swidler, 118–53 (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987). 103. In fact, there is a growing consensus, even in conservative Protestant circles, that theology must be built upon a chastened or modest form of foundationalism, as the next chapter will make clear. 104. Panikkar, The Experience of God, 74. 105. James R. Wilson, “Review of Panikkar, The Experience of God,” Interpretation 61 (2007): 96. And I have, a number of times, heard Evangelical missionaries, for example, acknowledge—sometimes to the discomfort of their theologically conservative audiences—that the devotion or sincerity found in believers of other faiths can, and sometimes does, enable them not only to reconsider and re-embrace their own faith, but to do so in deeper ways because of what they have encountered in the “other.” Such reminders are not unlike Panikkar’s point that “very often we only discover the profound meaning of our own world after we have tasted something exotically different.” (Panikkar, Intrareligious Dialogue, xviii.) 106. See, for example, Panikkar, Christophany, 156–60.

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DIALOGICAL DIALOGUE It is clear that Panikkar not only advocates dialogue but prefers its profoundest forms (what he came to call “dialogical dialogue”) over the implied presumptions of superiority exemplified by communication as monologue or superficial or condescending dialogue. Panikkar’s many writings, especially The Intrareligious Dialogue, make the preference very clear. There is, for example, his call for all interpretation to adhere to the golden rule of hermeneutics: that “the interpreted thing can recognize itself in the interpretation.”107 The ground for understanding needs to be created in the space between the traditions through the praxis of dialogue.108 As well, Panikkar is very critical of calls to suspend belief by participants in dialogue and he rejects the possibility of some kind of value-free neutrality in religious dialogue.109 Dialogue should not—indeed cannot—assume a single vantage point or higher view outside the religious traditions themselves. And, for Panikkar, the encounter must include “profound loyalty towards one’s own tradition.”110 There are many aspects of Panikkar’s call for “dialogical dialogue” with which mainstream Protestantism is likely to be in full agreement.111 While it is unlikely that Evangelical Protestants are, as a group, about to become whole-hearted proponents of the kind of dialogue advocated by Panikkar, there are changes in their attitudes112 (including an increasingly positive attitude towards engagement with 107. Panikkar, The Intrareligious Dialogue, 65. 108. Expanding 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 we proceed towards a deeper and more universal understanding of ourselves and thus come closer to our own realization.” Ibid., 130. 109. Panikkar argues that when it comes to interreligious and intercultural understanding, the phenomenological epoché procedure is “psychologically impractical, phenomenologically inappropriate, philosophically defective, theologically weak and religiously barren” (ibid., 43), although he also acknowledges the role of the epoché in helping to prevent bias or prejudice. 110. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, revised edition, 35. 111. The whole-hearted commitment to inter-faith dialogue and practical cooperation by the World Council of Churches, and many other ecumenical bodies, denominations, theological seminaries and congregations is evidence of this. 112. These continuing changes are described and documented in Bob Robinson, “Evangelical Christians at the Inter-faith Dialogue Table? How?,” Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue 10 (2012): 40–48; and “Inter-faith Evangelicals? Oxymoron or Opportunity? A Model to Assist Theologically Conservative Christians towards Intentional Dialogue and a Wider Ecumenism”

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the world of Islam113) even if, for them, such loyalty is more likely to be expressed in terms of doctrinal conformity. They may hesitate at Panikkar’s call for a kind of “conversion” in the dialogical process114 but comprehend his meaning and might even share his general aspiration that the aim of dialogue is the “convergence of hearts, not just coalescence of minds”115 because of their familiarity with the Pauline example of having “become all things to all people” (1 Cor 9:22b). THE LOVING AFFIRMATION OF “OTHERNESS” Although, as we have seen, Panikkar’s is an ontological pluralism, this does not eliminate or even diminish his insistence on the genuine “otherness” that is found among religions. This is an important and often-stressed dimension in Panikkar’s writings and certainly reflects his own experience of moving from theological reflection in a monocultural Eurocentric setting to that of India. He came to the conclusion that, at the level of logic (“logos”) there is radical incommensurability between the religions, even if this is resolved at the levels of wisdom and myth in the cosmotheandric harmony of all things. Generic humanity “is a pluralistic being . . . not reducible to an unqualified unity.”116 To be aware of the other is to begin a kind of interior dialogue.117 Commentators on Panikkar help clarify his meaning here. For example, Gerard Hall considers that Panikkar “raises to new heights the importance of the other and the other’s self-understanding in the human quest for truth, meaning and In Den Blick weiten: Wenn Ökumene den Religionen begegnet, Andrew Pierce, Oliver Schurgraf (eds), 253–67. Leipzig: Evangelische Verlagsanstalt, 2014. 113. See the examples cited by Robinson, Jesus and the Religions, 208–27. 114. Panikkar writes, with reference to Hindu and Christian understandings of each other, that “[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.” Unknown Christ, revised edition, 43. 115. Panikkar, Invisible Harmony, 173–74. 116. Ibid., 74. This understanding of pluralism is brought out in a review of Panikkar’s Christophany by John Lounibos: “Reading Panikkar is like rotating a beautiful diamond of languages to see and hear all the facets and refracted colors. . . . When one reads Panikkar, one hears the languages of many world religions in chords that create a world symphony of meaning.” Review in http://catholicbooksreview.org/2005/panikkar.html. 117. On the notion of “interior dialogue” see Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus, 66–68, 84–85, 89.

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communicative praxis.”118 Anselm Min believes that “the greatest contribution of Panikkar’s ontological pluralism [is] in making it possible for us to love one another without necessarily loving the same thing or understanding one another. . . . Panikkar is inviting us to appreciate the irreducible uniqueness of each person, each culture, each religion, and indeed each being itself.”119 And although Panikkar is a pluralist, his pluralism is—as Rowan Williams points out—not limitless; Panikkar “is committed to an ontology. And the heart of this ontology could be summarized by saying that differences matter.”120 Panikkar resists the homogenization of humanity; his is a pluralism that offers cultural and political resistance to all reductionisms.121 These summaries are helpful and most Protestants are likely to find themselves in agreement with them. Tensions remain, nonetheless, in Panikkar’s elaboration of the religions. He maintains that his affirmation of “radical otherness” does not eradicate the “radical relativity” that derives from the primordial interconnectedness of all human traditions, and from which—as we have seen—his cosmotheandric vision derives. When Anselm Min avers that “Panikkar’s ontological pluralism makes a crucial contribution to peace and dialogue among religions and cultures,”122 Protestants and many Catholics may well want to add a literalistic gloss to his comment: the crucial dimension of reconciliation made through the one in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” and through whom “God was pleased to reconcile all things . . . by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19–20). That, of course, does not exclude or demean human effort in dialogue, reconciliation and the pursuit of world peace, but it does add what they believe to be an irreplaceable aspect of it: redemption through the cross of Christ. There is also an eschatological dimension within Panikkar’s thought at this point. For him, authentic dialogue 118. Hall, “Intercultural and Interreligious Hermeneutics: Raimon Panikkar” [n. p.]. 119. Min, “Loving without Understanding: Raimon Panikkar’s Ontological Pluralism,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 68 (2010): 70 (59–75). 120. Williams, “Trinity and Pluralism,” 4 (original emphases). In recent years, the importance of religious differences is tellingly affirmed in Stephen Prothero: God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World—and Why Their Differences Matter (New York: HarperOne, 2010). 121. Ibid., 9. 122. Min, “Loving without Understanding,” 70–71.

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can proceed not only on the basis of a trust in the other but also on the basis of a kind of “cosmic confidence” in the unfolding of reality itself.123 While noting that Panikkar may simply be asserting his wishes at this point, some Protestants will welcome such an eschatological perspective (given its absence from many Protestant discussions of inter-religious relations). For example, they might want to advocate one version of it: what Miroslav Volf calls “provisional certitude as an authentic Christian way” this side of the eschaton.124 PROPHETIC AND OTHER PRAXIS Panikkar’s discussion of topics as varied as globalization, global conflict and even evolution and science125 reveal an appealing prophetic stance as he attempts to offer a radical critique of their presuppositions. His volume, Cultural Disarmament, while containing the generalizations and other stylistic infelicities already mentioned, is a stimulating example of this prophetic element. Panikkar clearly expects his ideals to have beneficial consequences for humanity and the planet as a whole. Mention has already been made of his apparent ambivalence towards liberation theology. On the one hand, in his Cultural Disarmament, he does acknowledge and endorse the importance of justice and does so in generally liberationist categories.126 However, the volume as a whole does read as something of an alternative to most theologies of liberation. In it, Panikkar argues that humanity is not only interdependent but also incapable of achieving sustainable global peace. His response includes a call for a new holistic spirituality and for this to happen the key political strategy must 123. Panikkar came to refer to this as “human cosmic trust” or “cosmotheandric confidence”; see his Invisible Harmony, 174–78. One of Panikkar’s concerns is to remind readers that, in dialogue, “the ultimate human horizon, and not only differing contexts, is at stake. . . .” (Panikkar, Myth, Faith, and Hermeneutics, 9). 124. Miroslav Volf, “The Unique Christ in the Challenge of Modernity,” in The Unique Christ in Our Pluralist World, ed., Bruce J. Nicholls, 101–4. Carlisle and Grand Rapids: Paternoster and Baker Books, 1995. See also the discussion of the appeal to an eschatological resolution of inter-faith tension in Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus, 217–19, 222–24. 125. See, for example, his critique of “the scientific myth” in The Rhythm of Being, 398–400. 126. Raimon Panikkar, Cultural Disarmament: The Way to Peace (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995), 53–55. He considers justice as one of the constitutive dimensions of peace, together with harmony and freedom; in fact, “without justice there is no peace.” Ibid., 69.

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be the disarming of the current global technocratic culture, which “threatens to become a monoculture capable of engulfing all other cultures and finally drowning along with them.” Panikkar hopes that what he calls this “monoculturalism” and “economico-technological ideology” (and an ideology of “evolutionism”), will increasingly give way to the harmony of his cosmotheandric vision.127 A further example is found in Panikkar’s assertion that the concept of human rights as expressed in the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights is a western construct. He sees the quest for human rights as an example of how the failure to seek and employ homeomorphic equivalents imposes western cultural values on minority or less powerful cultures because of the assumption that such values are universally acknowledged.128 Protestant reactions to such assertions take a variety of forms; nonetheless, progressive and younger Protestant voices increasingly assert that a distinctly Christian and prophetic cultural and political stance is necessary and they will welcome the kind of analysis, found in Cultural Disarmament: that humanity’s central problems are not merely socio-political but are anthropological, cosmological and basically religious in nature. At the same time—and sounding a quite different note—Amos Yong also sees Panikkar’s writings as “an invitation to a multiplicity of contemplative practices.” Over against mere syncretism, “cosmotheandrism is a much deeper blend of diverse religious practices, sensibilities, and commitments” which Yong proposes “we can adopt to a certain extent . . . without adopting the more controversial theological ideas.”129 (He specifies the love of wisdom, the unity of humanity, and environmental concern.) There is also the ecological listening that Panikkar calls “ecosophy”—listening to the wisdom of the earth that is the human dwelling place.130 This listening is linked with the silence and openness that enable access to a depth-dimension

127. Panikkar, Cultural Disarmament, 62 (quote), 83–91. 128. Panikkar, “Is the Notion of Human Rights a Western Concept?” in Invisible Harmony, 109–33. 129. Yong, Hospitality and the Other, 93–94; presumably the “we” in Yong’s sentence refers to Pentecostal and other theologically conservative Christians. 130. See Panikkar’s essay “Words of Silence. Non-dualistic polarities,” in Invisible Harmony, 40–51.

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of reality that is beyond reason131 and that disclose further elements of the radical dialogue already discussed. Echoes of this “ecosophy” are widely heard in Protestant concerns about the compromised integrity of the created order. CHRIST AS ADVAITIN? One distinctive feature of Panikkar’s turn to “Indianness” is his extensive and carefully nuanced elaboration and advocacy of Christ in advaitic (non-dualistic) categories. His Christology is, at this point, linked with his aspirations towards a spirituality that enables a realization of (some kind of) human non-duality with the Father, in the Spirit, following what he sees as the precedent set by Jesus himself.132 Such discussion begins (albeit rather tentatively) in Panikkar’s earlier writings. For example, in The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, he proposes what he calls “both the traditional Advaitic solution and the equally traditional Christian answer” which he goes on to explain as: “religious truth is existential and non-objectifiable.” He wishes, he says, to argue his thesis about both the particularity and universality of Christ “without having to adopt either the advaitic metaphysical or the Christian stance.”133 The most complete advocacy of Christ as advaitin is found in the long central section of Panikkar’s Christophany and in it he discusses what he sees as key statements by Jesus that describe Jesus’s own experience of his relationship with God—a discussion that Panikkar attempts to frame in Trinitarian categories.134 He begins with an examination of Jesus’s “Abba, Father” address as reported in the Synoptic Gospels. Panikkar sees this as the expression of a deep sense of sonship, but quickly assures readers that this “filiation” is inclusive and not the supposedly unique and exclusive category of usual theological explanations in which Jesus’s exclusive status is both affirmed and contrasted with the lesser “children by 131. See Panikkar’s essay “Faith and Belief: A Multireligious Experience,” in Intrareligious Dialogue, 42. 132. See the lengthy discussion in Panikkar’s Christophany, 90–106. 133. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, rev. ed., 21. 134. Panikkar, Christophany, 89–120. The Trinitarian framework is found is statements such as: “Nothing exists outside the Trinity, nor is the Trinity subordinated to Unity.” (Ibid., 111.)

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adoption” status assigned to the rest of humanity. The contrast generates a not unexpected gloss in which claims about Jesus’s supposedly exclusive sonship are explained by Panikkar as examples of Christianity’s unfortunate location within a Roman, legalistic culture—by way of contrast with humanity’s primordial solidarity with Christ—in the common human experience of being children of the divine. Panikkar sees the contrast as yet another example of the inability of western monotheism to comprehend Jesus’s meaning given that “[w]ithin a monotheistic context we cannot be God’s real children.”135 Panikkar then goes on to consider Jesus’s affirmations that imply some kind of profound unity between Father and Son: “The Father and I are One. . . . The Father is in me and I in the Father” (John 10:36, 38); “He who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Although Panikkar’s application of these Johannine verses, together with the “Abba” and filiation passages of the Synoptic Gospels, appears to contain a significant measure of logical confusion and even theological disorder, there are aspects of his discussion that have some parallels with traditional Christian faith and praxis, and that also have the potential to enhance some inter-religious encounter. Jesus’s own sense of unity with the Father may constitute a potentially significant example of common ground accessible to both Hindu and Christian; the experience seems to be the experience of Jesus’s realization (as a Hindu might put it) and it could be construed in Christian experiential terms rather than as a claim about his ontological status.136 In other words, the religious consciousness of Jesus, especially as seen in his reported practice of prayer and filial dependence, implies a relationship with God in which there is consciousness both of distinction from and yet unity with God as Father. Jesus’s address of God as “Abba” could be seen as a kind of equivalent of the advaitic experience expressed in Jewish terminology. This religious consciousness and dependence could even be regarded as the central and normative religious experience within the Christian tradition, given the subsequent importance within Christian history of the experience and acknowledgement of God as Father by those who are “in Christ.” 135. Panikkar, Christophany, 98. 136. See further in Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus, 291–301.

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For understandable reasons, some Indian Protestant Christians have drawn upon or appealed to the theistic or personalist currents of Hindu thought—as exemplified by the mainly experiential “way to the Divine” of bhaktimarga rather than the non-theistic, non-personalist elements within Hinduism. Such currents, they think, emphasize human personality, personal relationship with God, and even the importance of history. A. J. Appasamy, for example, considered the imperative of Jesus’s “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4) to be the mahāvākya [“great utterance”]137 of all Christian spirituality. The Brahmin convert Mark Sunder Rao claims that the whole of the Fourth Gospel, but especially John 15:1–7 (cf John 15:9b also) with its union of vine and branches, contains the kind of yoga (poorna yoga) found in Hindu mysticism.138 Mention might also be made of Sunder Rao’s attempt to incorporate the experience and language of advaita into the experience and theology of what he calls ananyatva, a Christian non‑duality: the experience of mutuality that “cancels the ultimate dualism of the divine and the human on the one hand, and on the other creates a oneness of the two.”139 These writers (and a number of others) find considerable appeal in the imperatives of Jesus to “come and see” and to “remain/abide” in God. Mention might also be made of the volume Khristadvaita—written by an Irish Protestant theologian—that, as the title indicates, strongly asserts the union between Christ and the Christian believer.140 And another Indian Protestant, Stanley Samartha, also offered a nuanced appeal to advaitin (non-dualistic) thinking because of, its proven flexibility and adaptability to issues central—in Samartha’s estimate—to 137. “Great utterance” or “key-text”—precisely what Panikkar also calls the verses during his lengthy discussion of them. Panikkar, Christophany, chapter 2. See the analysis and discussion of Appasamy (who draws quite extensively on the thought of Rāmānuja) in Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology, 118–43. 138. See the analysis and discussion in Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology, 214–16. All of this could be further expanded in terms of the Pauline notion of being “in Christ.” 139. Mark Sunder Rao, Ananyatva: Realisation of Christian Nonduality (Bangalore: Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, 1964), 25. It is because all life is held together in Christ that all “otherness” is abolished. (Ibid., 5.) He sees such non‑duality at the heart of Patristic discussions of the notions of the Trinity and Incarnation. (Ibid., 21–26.) 140. Robin H. S. Boyd, Khristadvaita (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1977). Boyd writes that the title was suggested by an Indian academic colleague and “is a title which seems to me to sum up the central message of Paul—faith-union with Christ . . .” (Ibid., viii).

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responsible Christian participation in nation-building. These issues include the meaning of history (the subject-matter of Samartha’s doctoral research141) and the related issue of individual responsibility in societal life.142 Samartha’s is a not uncritical employment of advaita; he is—like Panikkar—wary of the advaitin inclination to confine Jesus to his own historical particularity, and thus ignore the cosmic dimension of Christ. But he does note that some aspects of advaita philosophy are pertinent to the Hindu—Christian encounter; there is, for example, the vedantic understanding of Christ as a jivanmukta (realised soul) or even as an advaitin, a true yogi. Such understandings may, he adds, constitute an “attempt to universalise Jesus Christ, to lift him out of his Jewish particularity and western cultural involvement, in order to make him at home in the religious climate of India.”143 In India, the view that Christ might be understood in advaitic categories and so function as a possible christological basis of dialogue, has been advanced mainly by Catholic theologians (for example, Swami Abhishiktananda).144 However, any suggestion that Christ fundamentally thought, or taught in, or otherwise endorsed, the wider advaitin and non-theistic categories advocated by Panikkar, remains difficult for most Indian Christian and global Protestant opinion to accept. Nonetheless, in the discussion above, we have been able to suggest some parallels between Panikkar’s Christology and wider beliefs and some not insignificant emphases among Indian and other Protestants. Given recent Protestant interest in salvation understood as theōsis (until rather recently liable to be dismissed by some as a threat to justification by faith), even the notion of salvation as union with God is now not ruled out in advance.145 Mention might also be made of the attractiveness to some Protestants of advaitin 141. The Hindu View of History According to Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and published under that title (New York: Union Theological Seminary, 1950); cf. his The Hindu View of History: Classical and Modern (Bangalore: United Theological College, 1959). 142. See especially his The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1974), 164–66, 191–200. This appeal is described and discussed in some detail in E. Klootwijk, Commitment and Openness: The Interreligous Dialogue and Theology of Religions in the Work of Stanley J. Samartha (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 1992), 188–95. 143. Samartha, The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ, 120 (original emphasis). 144. Further on Panikkar’s relationship with Abhishiktananda, see above, chapter three. 145. See, for example, the surveys by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One With God (Collegeville: Liturgical, 2004); and Michael J. Christensen and Jeffery A. Wittung, eds, Partakers of the Divine

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principles of inter-personal fellowship (understood in the Johannine categories already alluded to); it can be seen, for example, as the basis for ashram life.146 In other words, it does seem possible to advocate and defend a viewpoint that seeks to maintain both the distinctiveness and also the similarity of received Christology to some aspects of advaitic experience.147 A DISTINCTIVE EPISTEMOLOGY WITH EXPERIENTIAL, MYSTICAL, AND WISDOM DIMENSIONS Even a small acquaintance with Panikkar’s writings (especially his work subsequent to the initial publication of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism), reveals these elements in his approach to religion. For example, Panikkar himself describes one of his theological works as “[f]ar more of a meditation than an erudite study, far more a mystical and ‘praying’ theology than an analytical and cognitive philosophy.”148 Panikkar is convinced of the necessity of mysticism: “in this crucible of the modern world, only the mystic will survive.”149 He describes the cosmotheandric principle as an “intuition of the threefold structure of all reality, the triadic oneness existing on all levels of consciousness and reality.”150 The discussion in the previous section of Christ’s supposed advaitic experience illustrates an important starting point and theme for Panikkar: the experiential (and even mystical) aspects of his thought to which, in Komulainen’s Nature: The History and Development of Deification in the Christian Traditions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008). 146. See P. T. Thomas, “The Inspiration of St. John’s Gospel for the Life of an Indian Ashram,” in, eds, India’s Search for Reality, ed., Christopher Duraisingh and Cecil Hargreaves, 139–41 (New Delhi: ISPCK, 1975). 147. It is also possible that an appeal to the panentheism discussed earlier in the chapter might also offer insight into how salvation might be understood in advaitic terms. 148. Panikkar, Trinity and World Religions, 66. It is not uncommon to hear an emphasis on this mystical and experiential aspect of his persona in discussion about Panikkar with those who knew him well. 149. Panikkar, Cosmotheandric Experience, 122. Cf. his comment that “I know of no ex-mystic. Once the transformation due to an authentic mystical experience has happened, it is irreversible” (Unknown Christ of Hinduism, revised edition, 22). The mystical dimension is discussed in some detail in chapter IV, “The Dwelling of the Divine,” in his Rhythm of Being. 150. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1973), ix (emphasis added).

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opinion, Panikkar “attaches crucial importance,” even if “nowhere does Panikkar describe his own experiences, although he gives the reader to understand that such experiences exist.”151 In his Christophany (a significant and in many ways summative work), he attaches considerable importance to the epigraph that precedes the opening part and initial chapters of the volume: “Teacher, where do you live? Come and you will see,” and “You remain in me, and I in you” (John 1:38–39; 15:4). These texts lead to an extended discussion of the verb “to remain / abide / dwell”.152 In fact, the heart of Panikkar’s Christophany is an appeal to the mystical experience of Jesus himself.153 Well before the appearance of Christophany, Robin Boyd could characterize Panikkar’s theology as “leaning . . . in the direction of bhakti” (the somewhat personalist and experiential form of Hindu theism).154 However, it does seem as if the later Panikkar intentionally took some distance from such inclinations; his discussion of “personalism” as a means of approaching the Divine (in The Rhythm of Being) is much qualified.155 Nonetheless, according to Komulainen, writing was for Panikkar a form of meditation. Writing was, “in his own words, ‘intellectual life’, which is in turn ‘spiritual existence’ and as such participation in the life of the universe;” it was “a religious 151. Komulainen, “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism,” 287. Komulainen cites Panikkar, Silence of God, xiii, and Panikkar, Dwelling Place, 84, as evidence for his assertion. 152. Panikkar, Christophany, 1; the epigraph is said to “summarize all that I am about to say” (ibid., 16), though it is not clear how far the “all” extends into the rest of the volume; it is certainly central to his discussion of “The World of Interiority” (ibid., 20–25). 153. See Panikkar, Christophany, 135–40. In particular, this experiential dimension is what contemporary disciples must embrace if they wish to experience the reality of the Christ that Jesus experienced. Ibid., 74. 154. Boyd, Introduction to Indian Christian Theology, 156. 155. In his Rhythm of Being, the shortest discussion in his treatment of the three approaches to the Divine (in the chapter “The Divine Dimension”) is that of “Personalism” (359–67) and, in it, Panikkar employs a reinterpreted traditional Hindu symbol: “the idea of iṣṭadevatā (“chosen deity”). Not only is the discussion brief, Panikkar is clearly uneasy with personalism, despite—as he concedes—its long history in both Christian faith and praxis and in Hinduism (as bhakti). His discussion begins with a lengthy series of qualifiers: a personalist approach to the divine is “permissible,” “perhaps easier, and for many also more humane (and more anthropomorphic).” It functions by “projecting” a “primordial sense of existence . . . onto the Beloved, the God.” (359–60) And, as a further decisive qualifier, there is the reminder that a “symbol is only a symbol of the Mystery that manifests itself precisely in the symbol itself. A symbol is not a sign” (360); moreover, personalism is beset by a series of further problems (methodological, philosophical and historical) that corrode its intelligibility and usefulness in attempting to comprehend the divine (360–62).

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undertaking,” and Panikkar’s understanding of “his intellectual vocation is ultimately mystic and is to be seen in intimate connection with his understanding of words and the Holy Scriptures.”156 In introducing Panikkar’s thought, an Australian authority on Panikkar uses the summary heading “The Primacy of Experience.”157 And, writing in India, Jacob Parappally’s lengthy study summarizes Panikkar’s approach to Christology as derived from a “mystical insight into not only his own Christian religious tradition but also the lived experience of Hinduism and intuition. . . .”158 Once again, parallels can be found in at least some Protestant circles. Homiletical commentaries on the Fourth Gospel sometimes include similar application as Panikkar makes to the “come and see” and “remain in me” invitations of Jesus. The spirituality of Anglicans has long been nourished by a Prayer Book tradition whose eucharistic theology includes union with, and “dwelling in,” Christ. Given the Reformed currents that contributed to the sixteenth and seventeenth century editions of the Anglican Prayer Book, it is interesting to note contemporary Reformed interest in the same experiential dimension of participation, even if not understood as “union with God.”159 The pietistic features of some Evangelicalism Protestantism are a further example of an experiential dimension that is, perhaps, increasingly visible as the movement continues to recover from the temptations to rationalism to which its long (and continuing) flirtation with modernism has led. Charismatic and Pentecostal theologies have their own versions of affective epistemology.160 Mention of such conservative Protestant epistemologies is not to imply a large measure of overlap between them and Panikkar’s own distinctive practices; such Protestants are most unlikely to employ the categories of mythos, logos, and symbol in the way that Panikkar does, as the key modes of discourse for constructing a hermeneutical framework in which one’s 156. Komulainen, An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion?, 29. 157. Hall, “Multi-Faith Dialogue in Conversation with Raimon Panikkar,” [n.p.]. 158. Parappally, Emerging Trends, 166. 159. See, for example, the extensive discussion in Julie Canlis, Calvin’s Ladder: A Spiritual Theology of Ascent and Ascension (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010). 160. For a summary and discussion of Pentecostal experience and its distinctive affective epistemology, see James K. A. Smith, Thinking in Tongues: Pentecostal Contributions to Christian Philosophy, Pentecostal Manifestos (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 71–80, 110–15.

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own truth and the truth of the other may be brought under a mutual horizon of understanding.161 But if Panikkar’s epistemology can adequately be summarized as highlighting “the importance of testimony, participative knowledge, symbolic discourse and the power of tradition on human consciousness and identity,”162 then a further degree of overlap between Panikkar’s thought and some forms of Protestantism does seem to be present. CONCLUSION: THREE AREAS OF COMMONALITY BETWEEN PROTESTANT AND CATHOLIC ASSESSMENTS OF PANIKKAR Given what appears to be a measure of continuity between Panikkar and some Protestant understandings of Christian faith and practice, it is disappointing to realize how little known he is in Indian and global Protestant circles. Like all readings, my grasp of Panikkar is undoubtedly an incomplete understanding and even a distorted translation in places. Nonetheless, Panikkar’s radical christocentrism, his holistic cosmotheandrism, his reminders of otherness, and even some aspects of the advaitic understanding he advocates, are all translatable into an expression of the Christian tradition that at least some Protestants can and do understand, appreciate, and often affirm. Panikkar can, then, provoke interest, stimulation, and even a measure of agreement and re-thinking among them. The next chapter in this volume will make it clear that there is also much in the thought of this often appealing writer that requires dissent, including key aspects of his Christology, especially its ahistorical foundations, and the very limited attention he gives to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Even if there has been a degree of more positive engagement in recent decades, many of the characteristics of Panikkar’s thought (especially his radical if somewhat selective pluralism, his christological revisionism and his apparent lack of an articulated ecumenical sympathy towards non-Catholic Christians),163 might seem to be obvious impediments to more 161. One of Panikkar’s intentions in his Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics. 162. Hall, “Multi Faith Dialogue in Conversation with Raimon Panikkar,” [n.p.]. 163. This suggested lack of ecumenical openness is seen, for example, in the absence of non-

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widespread Protestant interest in and appreciation of his writings. Nor can discussion easily escape the history of Protestant—Catholic engagement that might more typically be described in terms of the disagreement and suspicion that still linger in some places. But this present chapter has outlined areas of affirmation as well, and has also noted Panikkar’s own dissent from some aspects of the Great Tradition of Christian faith. Some of the dissent has specifically to do with his own Roman Catholicism but other aspects of it relate to reasons that Protestants not only comprehend but also sometimes share. The question of Panikkar’s possible appeal to a widened circle of readers might be summarized in terms of three areas of potential commonality. Firstly, there is the notion—commonplace among Protestants—of theologia reformata et semper reformanda: theology as always reforming and never static. There is no reason why, in principle, Protestants ought not to approach Panikkar’s thought with the possibility in mind that Protestantism’s growing interest in developing a theology of religion, for example, might benefit from a sympathetic (even if eventually selective) reading of Panikkar. The publications of “Evangelicals and Catholics Together” show that a surprising measure of commonality exists between two traditions once thought to exemplify a large measure of incommensurability.164 (Having said that, even the attempt to outline a theology of religions from a rigorously christocentric starting point might quickly uncover considerable divergence of opinions.) Secondly, a further point of engagement for Protestants is Panikkar’s attention to context. In his helpful survey of twentieth century theology, David Ford offers a guide to its very considerable complexity and finds that theologians are typically located along a number of intersecting points between the content of theology and Catholic sources in the bibliographies in his publications; or if such sources are listed, there seems to be little or no evidence of engagement with them. 164. See, for example, the ecumenical document from 1994 “Evangelicals and Catholics Together: The Christian Mission in the Third Millennium” (First Things, May 1994) signed by prominent Evangelical and Roman Catholic leaders and scholars in the United States and the basis of a number of subsequent theological discussion of topics important to both groups and whose conclusions demonstrate considerable (but usually not complete) agreement. See the helpful historical survey in Evangelicals and Catholics Together at Twenty: Vital Statements on Contested Topics, eds., Timothy George and Thomas G. Guarino (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2015).

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its elaboration in terms of context.165 The first intersection point, “repetition” cares little for context and repeats past formulations; both Panikkar and almost all Protestants eschew this stance. The second and third (of five) positions are those of “engagement” and “correlation” and are well represented in both Panikkar and Protestantism. Positions four and five might be simplified as “accommodation with” and “capitulation to” the worldviews of others and, to the extent that those rather tendentious latter two labels are adequate descriptions of some central aspects of Panikkar’s thought, they do point to dissonance between him and the theological method of many Protestants. A third area of commonality between Panikkar and a number of Protestants concerns the theological assessment of religion and faith beyond the boundaries of Christianity. This point can even be illustrated by examples found at the conservative end of the Protestant spectrum. It might once have been said, especially by those not among their number, that Evangelical Protestants rarely display two of the notable features found in Panikkar: well-informed understanding of the religions and a willingness for dialogue and even cooperation with them. However, over the last few decades, that has begun to change. When an (American) Evangelical can write a volume that offers a nuanced but positive answer to the question, “Can Evangelicals learn from world religions?”166 and when Fuller Theological Seminary can sponsor a journal to promote inter-faith dialogue,167 then attitudes are changing in some circles. Mention should also be made of a number of volumes written over the past twenty or so years by well-informed Evangelical authors, across the spectrum of theologically conservative Christian views. They display a mix of factually accurate and fair-minded assessment of the views of others, and neither ignore nor fixate negatively upon undoubted 165. David F. Ford, “Introduction to Modern Christian Theology” in The Modern Theologians: An Introduction to Christian Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. David F. Ford, second edition, 1–3 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). (Ford is following the typology of Hans Frei, Types of Christian Theology.) 166. See Gerald McDermott, Can Evangelicals Learn from World Religions? Jesus, Revelation and Religious Traditions (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2000). 167. The online journal, Evangelical Interfaith Dialogue, was launched in 2010; its mission statement describes the intention “to create space for Evangelical scholars and practitioners to dialogue about the dynamics, challenges, practices, and theology surrounding interfaith work, while remaining faithful to the gospel of Jesus and his mission for his Church.”

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differences.168 To note this shift in attitudes is not to suggest that Evangelicals are likely to endorse the kind of radical pluralism advocated by Panikkar. Nor is it to overlook or underestimate the suspicion, and even negativity, towards other faiths that remain in some conservative Protestant circles. But there are, nonetheless, surprising elements of some continuity between Panikkar and many Protestants, even if they might also want to pose the question of this volume’s co-author, Erik Ranstrom: “What to do, then, when one theologian is both an exemplar of christological revisionism as well as a resource for a fresh engagement with orthodoxy?”169 As also noted by Ranstrom, it is possible to “reclaim Panikkar” for traditional theology; the earlier Panikkar displays what Ranstrom (rightly) calls Panikkar’s “creative fidelity to the Christian tradition,” especially in his christological reflections.170 Perhaps this very ambivalence indicates that an assessment of Panikkar lies beyond the reach of easy or assured conclusions.171

168. A representative sample of such writings is given in Robinson, “Evangelical Christians at the Inter-faith Dialogue Table? How?” 47–48, notes 8, 9, 10. 169. Erik Ranstrom, “Christology after Dominus Iesus: the Early Panikkar as a Creative Resource,” Journal of Hindu-Christian Studies 25 (2012): 43. 170. Ibid. 171. As Francis Clooney writes of Panikkar, “while he is present in his turns of phrase, insights, and erudite allusions in multiple languages, he is also thereby concealed, as if “Panikkar” too cannot be objectified. Perhaps finding the author does not matter, and we are to find him only by his word. Fair enough, but in an era when autobiography matters—because it is compellingly local, because it offers resistance to aggressive theorizing, because confession uncovers bias—Panikkar’s erasure of the personal does not satisfy; we expect more of contemporary mystics than of the ancients. Indeed, our interest in Panikkar himself also has to do with his own story, a life incarnating the encounter/s of India and the West.” Francis X. Clooney, review of Panikkar, The Experience of God, in Journal of Religion 87 (2007): 454. Clooney goes on helpfully to add: “we can also, perhaps not too impertinently, ask whether The Experience of God is all about his own experience of God—perhaps rooted in his realization that everything he knows and writes has failed to capture his encounter with God? Knowing more of that experience would aid us in deciphering our own journeys—with more or less faith, wonder, silence, perhaps even with more concrete experiences of a Divine Person who does become visible in particular words, forms, places, persons.”

5. The Great Tradition Ruptured? A Constructive Interaction and Critique BOB ROBINSON

Before further engagement with Panikkar’s thought, it is important to note one problem presented by the reality that Panikkar’s large body of writing spans a period in excess of fifty years: any attempted summary or survey is difficult, given the evolving nature of his thought. The difficulty is compounded by one of the logically prior challenges of making sense of Panikkar: the idiosyncratic relationship between the publishing dates of Panikkar’s books and other writings and the actual genesis of their content. At times, this makes it difficult to understand the development of Panikkar’s thought, even about a single issue. Nonetheless, the discussion that follows does attempt to take note of chronological development within Panikkar’s thought where it is discernible—but often it is not. Moreover, as Ursula King notes, there are often difficulties in comprehending Panikkar’s intended meaning “since Panikkar’s way of thinking is notoriously elusive, hybrid and multi-religious.”1 Despite such potential impediments, there is a rich vein of christological reflection that offers a revealing entry into much of Panikkar’s wider thought as well. The intent of this chapter is to examine his Christology, and 1. King, “Review of Komulainen, An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion?,” Implicit Religion, 205.

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to measure it against an ecumenically-framed understanding of the Great Tradition (somewhat loosely defined as the theological consensus of the early creeds and councils—what Erik also calls the “scriptural and conciliar tradition”)2 while allowing for a critically appropriate contextualization that does not confine the Great Tradition to its doctrinal formulations in the global North. PANIKKAR’S CHRISTOLOGY: BEYOND THE JORDAN, BEYOND THE TIBER, BEYOND JESUS? As the previous chapter has made clear, there is much to commend in Panikkar’s Christology (his christocentrism, for example) and the challenges and even corrections that it offers. Moreover, a prima facie case can be made for the fact that, at least in his Christology, Panikkar is not to be included with the “low” and even reductionist Christologies of a number of other twentieth-century theologians. Nonetheless, of the many aspects of his Christology, five issues seem to warrant extended attention: the human particularity of Jesus—some implications of this particularity that are sidelined in Panikkar,3 the related issue of the nuanced dependence of Christian faith upon historical foundations, whether and in what way uniqueness can be ascribed to Christ—and then there is the way in which each of these three issues is influenced by what we will call “a prescribed shift in discourse to certain forms of Indianness.” In other words, central aspects of Panikkar’s Christology seem to present substantial challenges to those, both Catholic and Protestant, who esteem and affirm continuity with the Great Tradition.4 These issues are not new to Christian and other reflection; they are complex and interconnected in delicate ways. But their significance is nicely illustrated by a few 2. Most Protestants are content to employ the kind of distinction between Tradition (the gospel as a whole, including Scripture) and traditions (authoritative formulations by ecclesial bodies) made at the 1963 Montreal Conference of the Faith and Order division of the World Council of Churches, while acknowledging that, this side of the Reformation, the consensus is less secure when it comes to doctrinal formulations of ecclesial praxis. 3. The subheading for this section (“Beyond . . .”) borrows the perceptive question asked by my colleague, Erik Ranstrom, in his “Christology after Dominus Iesus,” 3. 4. Discussion will return later in this chapter to this point about continuity with the “Great Tradition” and “tradition.”

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sentences in which Panikkar asserts that “we have to begin by stripping Christ of all the Western garments we have clothed him with. We will then be able to bring about a change analogous to that which the Apostles dared to enact when they did away with circumcision at the first council of Jerusalem. It’s time to prepare for Jerusalem II.”5 If “the Western garments” obscure or distort Christ, or require the embrace of Western culture (parallel to circumcision in some way) in order to follow him, then Panikkar’s point is well made. But, as we shall see as this chapter unfolds, Panikkar’s reaction is to suggest that Christ must be “re-clothed” from a neo-Hindu wardrobe—and this element of Panikkar’s complex and evolving thought requires careful examination. DIMINISHED HISTORICAL PARTICULARITY There is a significant shift in Panikkar’s thought towards a greatly diminished dependence of Christian faith and praxis upon the historical particularity of Jesus. There is a discernible move away from his earlier Christology; his later writings embrace a principled dislocation of Christology from the historical particularity of Jesus of Nazareth. It is helpful at this point to trace the evolution of Panikkar’s thinking about this dislocation before responding to it in some detail. In both editions of The Unknown Christ, for example, Panikkar can write about “the historical fact of Christ” or “the historicity of Christ” but even here he qualifies the appeal by linking it with “the Christian concept of history” that the revised editions adds is “somewhat alien to the Indian mind.”6 The first edition of The Unknown Christ contains a paragraph about “the specific character of Christianity,” that is described as “the historical and concrete dimension of Christ which is yet ‘inseparable’ . . . from his divinity and his cosmic action.”7 However, although the paragraph calls the linkage between the historical and the cosmic “a very important point,” and although much of the section in which this statement is found (“The Christian ground 5. Raimon Panikkar, “Some Observations on Interreligious Dialogue,” Monastic Interreligious Dialogue Bulletin, 74 (April 2005): n.p. (original emphasis). 6. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, first edition, 133; rev. ed., 164. 7. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 17.

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of the encounter”) is repeated in a section with the same name in the revised edition, this statement about the historical and concrete dimension of Jesus the Christ is removed.8 Occasionally, Panikkar does offer a more balanced appraisal. For example, in his Christophany he offers the followed appropriately balanced caution: If we separate Jesus Christ from the Trinity, his figure loses all credibility. He would then be a new Socrates or any other great prophet. If we separate Jesus Christ from humanity, he becomes a Platonic ideal of perfection—and frequently an instrument for dominating and exploiting others by becoming a God. If we separate his humanity from his actual historical journey on this earth and his historical roots, we turn him into a mere Gnostic figure who does not share our concrete and limited human condition. The conjunction of these three elements constitutes the task of christophany for our age.9

It is important to recall that this appraisal is found in one of Panikkar’s later works that is rightly identified as summative in many ways; the balanced set of christological emphases is not unlike the earlier Panikkar as described above by Ranstrom. In fact, the paragraph may count as evidence for one aspect of Erik’s conclusion that although the “later Panikkar wandered quite far from mainstream Christian theology . . . [he] remained in many ways christocentric. Intuitively he seemed to understand the central role of Christology in all theological reflection. . . .”10 Nonetheless, a number of significant qualifiers are added by Panikkar. He argues that Christ may not be particularized by reference to his humanity11 because the human particularity of Jesus is a theophany of value only to those in the immediate world of Jesus.12 Christ cannot be limited to an historical figure; this would also imply “denying his divinity”;13 his view is that a 8. Compare Unknown Christ of Hinduism, first edition, 17, with the rev. ed., 48–50. The shift is not simply between the two editions of Unknown Christ. As Erik has already noted in chapter one above, the movement away from the historical particularity of Jesus Christ is already discernible between “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec” and the first edition of Unknown Christ. 9. Christophany, 183–84. 10. Ranstrom, “Christology after Dominus Iesus”: 4. 11. “Inter‑Religious Dialogue: Some Principles”: 409. 12. Salvation in Christ, 44. 13. “Christians and So‑Called ‘Non‑Christians’,” Cross Currents 22 (1972): 295.

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Christian cannot say that Christ is only Jesus,14—an opinion that is in line with the Great Tradition. A further example of the shift away from the Jesus of history is found in the Gifford Lectures of 1989 and 1990 (published in 2010 as The Rhythm of Being). In them, the name of Jesus has all but disappeared from Panikkar’s account of the Divine. In one brief discussion, Panikkar writes that the word Jesus has two basically different meanings: one as historical category and another as personal category. The former is reached by means of historical identification, which permits us to speak about Jesus and about the belief Christians have in and through him. The latter is reached by means of personal identity and allows us to discover him as a ‘part’ or rather pole of our personal being, as one of the many traits that make our person.15

Later, in the same lectures, readers are told that “Jesus is a historical figure, but not Christ. We cannot identify the two and yet we cannot separate them either.”16 But virtually nothing else is said about Jesus in this four-hundred-page volume. As elaborated in the previous chapter, Panikkar’s is predominantly a cosmic Christology and at least a form of his christocentrism remains even in his later writing; for example, in The Rhythm of Being he can still affirm that the “entire destiny of reality is a christic adventure.”17 Nonetheless, his elaboration of Logos and cosmic Christologies almost completely separates them from history as does Panikkar’s embrace of cosmotheandrism. 18 Moreover, according to Panikkar, the Logos principle provides a better metaphysical starting-point of contact with the Indian world than the Jesus of history.19 This Logos was certainly at work, for 14. For example, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 13–15. 15. Rhythm of Being, 212. 16. Rhythm of Being, 262; cf: “It is meaningless to speak about Christ without Jesus. There is no sense in speaking about Jesus without Christ” (ibid., 253). It is also significant that the fairly comprehensive and detailed Index has only one reference under “Jesus.” There is an earlier discussion of the same point in Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 14. 17. Rhythm of Being, 260. 18. See the clear tracing of this link in two sections of Erik’s chapter three above: “Cosmotheandrism and the Transcendence of Religious Particularity,” and “Cosmotheandrism and Jesus” (52–56). 19. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, first edition, 134; rev. ed., 165–67.

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example, as the ancient Indian Scriptures were composed.20 The theological issue at this point is not that christological claims and beliefs do not stretch well beyond those discernible in the life and teaching of the historical Jesus but that Panikkar seems largely—though not completely—to eliminate the Jesus of the Gospels from his christological discussion. There is a larger dynamic at work here; as Komulainen puts it, in Panikkar’s later theology, “Christ is understood as one symbol of cosmotheandric reality with a loose relationship with Jesus of Nazareth.”21 Discussion will return below to this and other related currents in Panikkar’s Christology. CHRISTOLOGY DISLOCATED FROM JESUS OF NAZARETH: LOGOS AND COSMIC CHRISTOLOGY SEPARATED FROM HISTORY The epistemic tension between “Jesus” and “Christ” is increased by Panikkar’s appeal to Johannine Logos Christology and Pauline cosmic Christology, including repeated mention of what he calls the “Supername” of Christ: the “name above every name” of Philippians 2:9.22 The kenōsis [“emptying”] of the christological hymn in Philippians 2 is important to Panikkar; in it, the bearer of the “name” empties himself not only morally but ontologically and thus transcends the non-ultimate world of mere form, including mere historical form and name—(nāma rūpa [“name and form” in both Sanskrit and Pali]). So, explains Panikkar, Christ “is not the nameless, not the apophatic reality, not the sheer transcendence, not the unapproachable Godhead, not the discarnated principle of the eternal archetype; he is the spoken mystery, the revealed epiphany.”23 Panikkar then argues that this Supername requires the avoidance of two untenable 20. Ibid., 165. 21. Komulainen, “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism”: 299. 22. See, for example, Salvation in Christ: Concreteness and Universality, the Supername, Inaugural Lecture at the Institute for Advanced Studies of Theology (Jerusalem: Tantur, 1972), 51–62; Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 53. 23. Rhythm of Being, 216 (for which numerous Pauline and Gospel Eucharistic texts are cited). Panikkar continues: “He is the Logos having made flesh, yet not remaining in a body of death, but converting it into life, for he has overcome death and has taken a spiritual body.” Given what we shall see is Panikkar’s reluctance to affirm—or even mention—the resurrection of Jesus, might the statement appear to be an endorsement of Docetism by Panikkar?

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extremes: “On the one hand the view of an individual as universal Saviour and on the other hand the diluting of Jesus as a mere abstract or conventional sign for salvation.”24 The avoidance of abstraction is commendable, but Panikkar’s wariness of historical particularity is problematical, even when he goes on to explain that because Christ’s mediatorial role is not primarily epistemological but ontological so that it is not necessary to see Christ but only to see “through him.”25 The problem with this appeal is that the apostle explicitly states that it is, in fact, the name of Jesus that God has exalted “above every name.”26 And, while Panikkar rightly appeals to the prologue of the Fourth Gospel for his discussion of Logos, that very source—as one South Asian theologian puts it—makes clear both that this Logos enters the world “in a radically new way (namely, ‘in flesh’)” (John 1:14) even if the world fails to recognize and even to reject this light that shines on all.27 Ramachandra goes on both to point out that Panikkar’s Christology empties the notion of incarnation of almost all of its meaning, and also to defend traditional Christology on the grounds that the “normativeness and ultimacy of Jesus Christ in God’s salvific dealings with his world . . . is intrinsic to Christian praxis and self-understanding, then and now.”28 Although there is, in Panikkar, a separation of the ontic Christ from the historical Jesus, some Indian commentators defend the separation. Jacob Parappally believes that Panikkar does not deny or obscure the historical Jesus but is simply attempting to develop a Christology that “is determined by a context of dialogue which considers history as only one dimension of reality.” Panikkar’s encounter with Hinduism shows that an emphasis on the historical Jesus “cannot take us very far in dialogue nor can it explain his real significance to the hearers.”29 On the other hand, as M. M. Thomas points out, to assert that “‘Jesus is Christ’ need not mean ‘Christ is only Jesus’s 24. Rhythm of Being, 216. 25. Ibid. 26. Ranstrom comments on “Panikkar’s later penchant for citing New Testament texts while omitting the name of Jesus to make it appear more universally applicable to other religions” (ch. 3 above). 27. Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission, 86. 28. Ibid., 216 (original emphasis). 29. Parappally, Emerging Trends in Indian Christology (Bangalore: IIS Publications, 1995), 174–75. Discussion will return to this assertion by Parappally.

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but Christ anywhere manifested should be like Jesus and continuous with Jesus in some way.”30 The underlying issue is that of the continuity between “Jesus” and “Christ,” especially “Christ” as understood in cosmic terms. One potential remedy for Panikkar’s Christology at this point is further and carefully nuanced discussion of the development of New Testament Christology and a defense of the continuity between the portrait of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels and the supposedly high Christology of the later New Testament, including cosmic Christology.31 IMPLICATIONS FOR REDEMPTION, SIN, AND CHRISTIAN PRAXIS In chapter two above, Erik has very helpfully discussed Panikkar’s Le mystère du culte dans l’Hindouisme et le Christianisme (an unrevised translation of his Kultmysterium in Hinduismus und Christentum: ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Religionstheologie published in 1964). Neither work has been available to me but it seems clear from Erik’s extensive analysis of it that the volume has both a somewhat traditional Christology, and (possibly) an even more traditional account of sin and salvation-history, which is in-keeping with its quite early appearance in the Panikkar canon. But even so, it was followed by quite significant shifts in Panikkar’s discussion of (more precisely, his failure to discuss) sin and redemption in later works—as this section will attempt to make clear. In the eyes of a number of commentators, the attention given by Panikkar to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus is particularly meagre; it leads to what Rowan Williams calls Panikkar’s neglect of “the resurrection of a condemned man” and “the rather sketchy treatment of the reasons for Jesus’s death.”32 Ranstrom points out 30. “Christology and Pluralistic Consciousness,” International Bulletin of Missionary Research 10 (1986): 107. 31. Discussion will return below to this aspect of Panikkar’s Christology, and to one further dimension, the relationship between the particular and the universal. 32. Rowan Williams, “Trinity and Pluralism,” in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered, 9–10 (3–15). Williams’s comments are set in the context of his complaint that “the church is monumentally forgetful” that “its basic story . . . is about the conflict between God and a particular form of corrupt politicization of faith by the religiously powerful” even though it continues “to

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that “Panikkar describes the cosmic Christ’s presence in Hinduism in strikingly non-descript and non-predicated ways apart from Jesus, shorn of concrete christological criteria.”33 Panikkar’s emphasis on Christ as universal and cosmic mediator means that Panikkar has largely “dispensed with Christian commitment to the historical figure of Jesus and eschews history.”34 Panikkar himself acknowledges his critics at this point when, in responding to the reception of the first edition of The Unknown Christ, he writes that “most of the negative criticisms . . . came from a narrow, partial, merely historical point of view.”35 Nonetheless, Ramachandra is not alone in expressing his disappointment at “the almost total absence” of attention to the ministry, teaching, death and resurrection of Jesus.36 The regret relates to an apparent severance of the link between the Christ-event and the usual set of Christian beliefs about the supposed redemption of humanity in the death of Christ. To raise this soteriological question, and to point to Panikkar’s rather slender answer (or even absence of an answer), is not to overlook the complex and contested nature of how the life, death and resurrection of Christ might accomplish human redemption. It seems clear that Panikkar’s earlier views (as traced by Erik in chapters one and two above) retained elements of the received view: salvation-history understood in christological categories and the Eucharist as “a mystery of sacrifice” that clearly links the death of Jesus with human redemption. (And Panikkar’s discussion exhibits an openness to corresponding elements in the religions.37) But the later Panikkar draws away from this earlier christological dimension celebrate the resurrection of a condemned man.” His comments about the reasons for Jesus’s death (ibid., 15 no. 14) refer to Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 20. 33. See above, ch. 1. Jacques Dupuis offers a critique of the Christology both of Unknown Christ and of Panikkar’s later Christology and asks “is not the content of faith reduced in turn to a neutral relationship to a transcendence, without a concrete object?” (Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1997), 152. 34. Komulainen, An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion?, 137. 35. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 20. 36. Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission, 103. 37. In his dissertation, Erik nicely summarizes: “For the early Panikkar, the self-offering of Christ is the very substance of the mystery of salvation extended to all humanity as an offer of grace. The religions manifest a relationship with the sacrificial self-offering of Jesus Christ, as well as the Church’s participation in this self-offering through the eucharist.” (“The Unknown Body of Christ: Towards a Retrieval of the Early Panikkar’s Christology of Religions.” Dissertation, Boston College, 2014, 15.)

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and even seems to prefer a view of redemption that appears to be little more than human self-discovery: “[i]t is our human nature that beckons to discover within ourselves the whole human world and also the entire reality. We are constitutively open—not only because the whole universe can penetrate us, but also because we can permeate all of reality.”38 Thus a given religion, while being faithful “to its own calling does make room for different ultimate and salvific human experiences.”39 In other words, all authentic religions (or, at least, each that is faithful “to its own calling”) are salvific. When Anselm Min avers that “Panikkar’s ontological pluralism makes a crucial contribution to peace and dialogue among religions and cultures”40 many Protestants will want to add a literalistic gloss to his comment: the crucial contribution to reconciliation, world peace (and even dialogue) was, in fact, made through the one in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” and through whom “God was pleased to reconcile all things . . . by making peace through the blood of his cross” (Col 1:19–20). That, of course, does not exclude or demean human effort in dialogue and reconciliation—but it does add an irreplaceable dimension to it that is at odds with, for example, Paul Knitter’s assertion that Panikkar’s distinction between the universal Christ and the particular Jesus is his “distinctive contribution to the theocentric model.”41 At the same time, however, it remains unclear whether Panikkar’s (prior?) commitment to ontological pluralism is the reason for the puzzling omission of historical particularity, or the result of it; it seems more likely to be the former. A related issue is the near-complete absence in Panikkar of any attention to those realities of sin, evil, and guilt that the Great Tradition has understood the message, lived example and death of Jesus to be dealing with in some way—as the church’s ethical teaching and its visual and liturgical attention to cross and Eucharist have made 38. Panikkar, The Intrareligious Dialogue, xviii. There are, in this statement, echoes both of the well-known Hindu understanding of mokṣa (“salvation”) as found within the guhā (“cave”) of the human heart and of Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism with its assertion of the radical interconnectedness of all things. 39. Panikkar, The Intrareligious Dialogue, xx. There are parallels here with the position of S. Mark Heim in his Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1995). 40. Min, “Loving without Understanding,” 70–71. 41. Paul F. Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Study of Christian Attitudes toward Other Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1985), 154.

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apparent over the centuries. There is, in Panikkar, a distinct tendency towards idealism and away from praxis. He repeatedly criticizes rationalistic and ideological habits but fails to address the crippling dimensions of the human condition that, for example, actively impede inter-religious harmony. Complaints are also heard about a perceived Brahminical bias in his writing about Hindu matters and his apparent lack of overt sympathy for (or even mention of) dalits and other oppressed Indians.42 Both dalit religious thought, and most other forms of Indian liberation theology, assert themselves as strongly anti-Brahminical in ethos; their rejection of the Sanskrit language as a tool that legitimates and thus perpetuates Brahminical domination is hardly compatible with Panikkar’s sympathies.43 There are occasional mentions by Panikkar of issues of injustice; for example, when he agrees with the liberationist portrayal of “the Jesus of the oppressed making us aware of the institutionalized violence of this our new world.”44 But such references are decidedly limited in number and intensity.45 This opens the way for the critique of, for example, David Brockman who considers that Panikkar fails to offer “a fuller exploration of the question of power relations in christophany. . . . How might power relations distort the christophanic experience?”46 Anselm Min is even more critical: Panikkar “is not fully aware that a world often violently divided . . . makes love and dialogue between them extremely difficult if not simply impossible. Social contradictions . . . do not arise because we think dualistically in terms of rich and poor. We think dualistically because of the reality of social contradictions.”47 Gerald Hall, another fellow 42. See, for example, J. Jayakiran Sebastian, “Fragmented Selves, Fragments of the New Story: Panikkar and Dalit Christology,” Exchange 41 (2012): 245–53. 43. On the relationship of Dalit and traditional Hinduism see, for example, A. M. Abraham Ayrookuzhiel, “The Dalits, Religions and Interfaith Dialogue,” Hindu-Christian Study Bulletin 7 (1994): 13–19; S. K. Chatterji, “Some Aspects of Dalit Ideology,” in Towards a Dalit Theology, 6–9 See also the comments of Timothy C. Tennent, “Ethnicity and the Sanskritic Tradition,” Vidyajyoti 61 (1997): 179–86; and his “Contextualizing the Sanskritic Tradition to Serve Dalit Theology,” Missiology 25 (1997): 343–49. 44. Christophany, 174–75. 45. See the well-documented analysis in Komulainen, “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism,” 288–89. 46. David R. Brockman, No Longer the Same: Religious Others and the Liberation of Christian Theology (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 140. 47. Min, “Loving without Understanding,” 73.

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Catholic, is critical of Panikkar’s “explicit trust in the creative power of human traditions to be self-correcting.” He argues 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.” The realities of such dynamics “may point to Panikkar’s need to further develop dialogical strategies that will aid the unmasking of forces that distort communication, freedom and rationality.”48 And Anselm Min makes a similar point in the face of Panikkar’s uncritical acceptance of religious diversity. Given the complicity of religion in assorted evils and oppressions, he concludes that “not all religious differences are acceptable.”49 This part of our discussion also connects with Panikkar’s neglect of the life and death of Christ because such neglect contrasts markedly with the rich vein of Indian theology that does actively engage with the oppressed in India and their struggles—an engagement based on a reading of Jesus in the Gospels.50 If dalit theology is to project an image of Jesus that exemplifies “worth, dignity and freedom,”51 then it must rely on the concrete example of the Jesus of the gospels. A christological response to dalit concerns has begun to emerge in various ways but a repeatedly found methodology—greatly neglected in Panikkar—is a close reading of the text of the gospels. The death of Christ is also a prominent theme in dalit theology. 48. Gerard Hall, “Multi-Faith Dialogue in Conversation with Raimon Panikkar,” n.p. 49. “Loving without Understanding,” 75. 50. To illustrate from one strand of that engagement (identification by both Catholics and Protestants with the so-called “outcaste” dalits, see (among many examples): ed. M. E. Prabhakar, Towards a Dalit Theology (Delhi: ISPCK, 1988); ed., Xavier Irudayaraj, Emerging Dalit Theology (Madurai: Tamilnadu Theological Seminary, 1990); ed. Nirmal Minz, Toward a Common Dalit Theology (Madras: Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, 1990); ed. A. P. Nirmal, A Reader in Dalit Theology (Madras: Gurukul Lutheran Theological College and Research Institute, 1991); ed. James Massey, Indigenous People: Dalits. Dalit Issues in Today’s Theological Debate (Delhi: ISPCK, 1995); ed. James Massey, Roots of Dalit History, Christianity, Theology and Spirituality (Delhi: ISPCK, 1996); ed. V. Devasahayam, Frontiers of Dalit Theology (Delhi: ISPCK, 1997); eds. Sebastian C. H. Kim and K. C. Marak, Good News for the Poor: the Challenge to the Church (Delhi: ISPCK, 1997); Sathianathan Clarke, Dalits and Christianity: Subaltern Religion and Liberation Theology in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998); Samuel Jayakumar, Dalit Consciousness and Christian Conversion. Historical Resources for a Contemporary Debate (Oxford and Delhi: Regnum International and ISPCK, 1999); L. Stanislaus, The Liberative Mission of the Church among Dalit Christians (Delhi: ISPCK, 1999). 51. Franklyn J. Balasundaram, “The Contemporary Dalit Issues,” in Liberating Witness, 419.

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The notable Protestant theologian M. M. Thomas relates the life and death of Christ to the continuing struggle for liberation and justice in contemporary India.52 The theme of the common suffering of both Jesus and dalits is quite prominent in dalit Christology and it is linked with the participation of God in human pain as seen in the cross of Christ. This is Jesus as satyagrahi: one who is firmly rooted in the truth and whose insistence on it leads to redemptive suffering. In this context Jesus might also be invoked as jivanmukti, the one who is truly liberated and so is able to liberate others.53 According to M. M. Thomas, it is “the crucified Jesus as the pattern of a new humanness and the symbol of a cosmic ultimate reality of suffering love that has attracted religious reform‑leaders and secular thinkers and the artistic world in India.”54 Thomas even argues that wherever ‘Love’ identifies itself with the struggle of the oppressed for “liberation toward a community of justice and love, and does not let the means betray the end, there is acknowledgement of the ultimacy of the Way of the Cross for the life of the world transcending all religious . . . distinctions.”55 Thomas Thangaraj takes up the same theme in his The Crucified Guru.56 He points out that, in the New Testament and the Christian tradition, the dominant place is not given to a picture of a teacher-guru “but the victim-guru, the dying guru, the crucified guru who appears as the guru par excellence.”57 These very themes, closely related to the death of Jesus, are largely absent from Panikkar, especially in his later and summative writings.

52. See, for example, his comments in “A Christ-Centered Humanist Approach,” 52–55. 53. M. E. Prabhakar, “Dalit Theology,” 412 (see also 420–24); see also his “Christology in Dalit Perspective,” in Frontiers in Dalit Theology, ed. V. Devasahayam, (Delhi: ISPCK, 1997), 414–17. 54. Thomas, “Christology and Pluralistic Consciousness,” 106. 55. Ibid., 108. For further discussion of M. M. Thomas’s theology and its development of this topic see Hielke I. Wolters, Theology of Prophetic Participation: M. M. Thomas’ Concept of Salvation and the Collective Struggle for Fuller Humanity in India (Bangalore and Delhi: United Theological College and ISPCK, 1996). 56. Subtitled, An Experiment in Cross-cultural Christology (Nashville: Abingdon, 1994). 57. The Crucified Guru, 101. Thangaraj goes on to acknowledge the considerable difficulty of speaking, in an Indian context, of a person with divine power being crucified by ignorant humans and asks whether a Hindu can comprehend a crucified Guru any more than a Jew can comprehend a crucified Messiah.

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A SHIFT FROM “LINK” TO “SYMBOL” CHRISTOLOGY One reason for the diminishing affirmation of (some kind of) redemption centered on Christ is the shift in Panikkar’s Christology from both a link and symbol Christology to one that seems to drop the link element almost completely. After the two editions of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, the best sources of Panikkar’s developed Christology are found in his Christophany and his The Experience of God. It is in these latter two volumes that a shift is found from a predominantly link to a predominantly symbol Christology (although in a work58 from about the same period as the first edition of The Unknown Christ the christological employment of symbol language is found—even though it is largely absent from the first edition of The Unknown Christ). The adjectives “link” and “symbol” are Panikkar’s own descriptors. In The Unknown Christ, both terms are used. Panikkar can write that “there is only one link, one mediator between God and the rest. . . . It is Christ who leads every man to God; there is no other way but through him.”59 And he also asserts that “Christ has been and still is one of the most powerful symbols of humankind, though ambivalent and much-discussed. . . . Christ is still a living symbol for the totality of reality: human, divine, and cosmic.”60 However, in the later Christophany, the (traditional) notion of “link” has disappeared as he now asserts that “Jesus is the symbol of Christ. . . . Jesus is Christ, but Christ cannot be identified completely with Jesus of Nazareth.”61 In other words, Panikkar draws an important distinction between Christophany (a kind of symbol Christology) which he comes to prefer over the somewhat traditional Christology (with its intentions to forge the ontological link 58. In Panikkar’s Le mystère du culte (first published in 1964); see the summary and analysis in “Jesus Christ as Perfect Symbol of God” in Erik’s ch. two above. 59. Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, first edition, 16; rev. ed., 48–49 (emphasis added). Two other changes at this place in Unknown Christ are noteworthy. In the revised edition, two additional paragraphs are added between the two sentences: Christ is called “the embodiment of Divine Grace” (with its echoes of avatāra discourse) and the latter sentence is annotated not by referral to Christian scripture but with an appeal to no less than nine Upaniṣadic verses, and six from the Bhagavad Gītā (49 and no. 14). 60. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 26–27. 61. Panikkar, Christophany: The Fullness of Man, 150–51 (emphasis added).

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between human and divine) of The Unknown Christ. He understands the uniqueness of Christ as a lived experience that human existence is simultaneously both finite and infinite. There is continuity between the two and the Christian name for the link (but only for Christians) is the mediator who is Christ.62 In other words, there is a disjunction between Jesus and Christ: “It is in and through Jesus that Christians come to believe in the reality that they call Christ, but this Christ is the decisive reality.”63 This is a long-established distinction. But Panikkar clarifies and reinforces the distinction in a way that is problematical: he shifts his view of Christ from a link Christology (with its implication that Christ decisively links human and divine) to a symbol Christology (which is a relativized, analogical and much reduced claim). Moreover, a symbol Christology is in keeping with Panikkar’s reticence about, but not complete avoidance of, the historical particularity of Jesus although that connection seems decidedly weaker by the time of his Gifford lectures in which Panikkar takes care to point out that, as noted in the last chapter, a “symbol is only a symbol of the Mystery that manifests itself precisely in the symbol itself. A symbol is not a sign.”64 And, of significance for Panikkar’s developing Christology in the context of his growing advocacy of a radical religious pluralism, his symbol Christology enables multiple and legitimate epiphanies of the cosmic Christ across diverse religious traditions; for example, such as Rāma, Krishna, Īśvara, or Puruṣa for Hindus, and even simply as “Humanity.”65 Symbolic Christology may also function as an example of Panikkar’s longstanding determination to separate form from essence in religion; any supposedly necessary particularity is simply a matter of form. So, as Jacques Dupuis asks about this symbolic language, “How is the relationship to be conceived between the reality or Mystery, the Christ-symbol and the historical Jesus?”66 It is a ques62. Raimon Panikkar, “Whose Uniqueness?,” in The Uniqueness of Jesus: A Dialogue with Paul F. Knitter, ed. by Leonard Swidler and Paul Mojzes (Maryknoll: Orbis), 1997, 115 (111–15). 63. Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 29. 64. Rhythm of Being, 360. 65. Panikkar, Unknown Christ, rev. ed., 27. A broader survey of Panikkar’s thought would, at this point, return to the cosmotheandrism discussed in chapter four above. This is because, for Panikkar, Christ is the symbol of the cosmotheandric nature of all reality—but constraints of space prevent its development here. 66. Dupuis, “Review of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed.,” Vidyajyoti 46 (1982): 257.

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tion to which Panikkar’s evolving Christology gives an increasingly hesitant answer. PANIKKAR AND THE DEPENDENCE OF CHRISTIAN FAITH UPON HISTORY The necessary but complex relationship between Christian faith and its nuanced dependence upon history may be discussed under four headings: Panikkar’s view of history in Indian and Hindu settings; the conjunction of history, historiography and Christian faith; biblical foundations; a theological response. PANIKKAR’S VIEW OF HISTORICAL PARTICULARITY IN INDIAN AND HINDU SETTINGS The absence of attention to the death and resurrection of Jesus in Panikkar’s writings raises a number of related issues. According to Panikkar, Christ may not be particularized by reference to his humanity, nor even by reference to his role as savior and only mediator,67 because there are many saviors, each embodying that power to save “which Christians believe to be the spirit of Jesus.”68 The sympathetic Jacob Parappally concedes that in Panikkar, there is “no discussion on soteriology as traditionally understood. Themes like sin, incarnation, cross and suffering are not systematically developed and if they are mentioned, the attempt is to see the ultimate meaning of them in the context of dialogue with Hinduism.”69 Panikkar “has not developed the theme of the death and resurrection of Jesus. . . . The attempt of Panikkar is . . . to consider the meaning of the cross and redemption in the transhistorical plane as in the historical plane.”70 Despite Parappally’s attempted explanations, Panikkar’s Christology does challenge a central tenet of the Great Tradition because of the 67. “Inter‑Religious Dialogue: Some Principles,” 409. 68. Salvation in Christ, 50. 69. Jacob Parappally, Emerging Trends in Indian Christology (Bangalore: IIS Publications, 1995), 177. 70. Ibid., 160–61.

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way in which his view of redemption is largely bereft of any historical dimension. Given the way that Indian and Hindu contexts assume prominence in Panikkar’s thought, these contexts offer questions and challenges that attract comment. Concerning the role of history in Panikkar’s thought, Jacob Parappally offers the defense that “Panikkar’s attempt at developing a relevant Christology is determined by a context of dialogue which considers history as only one dimension of reality. Panikkar’s encounter with Hinduism has showed that . . . starting with the historical Jesus cannot take us very far in dialogue nor can it explain his real significance to [Indian] hearers.”71 This is the reason why the later Panikkar begins with “the ontic or cosmic or cosmotheandric Christ” which, Parappally concedes, does give Panikkar’s Christology “this one-sided emphasis, but it is open-ended, to be completed by the understanding of [the] historical Jesus and his significance.” In fact, “it is precisely this emphasis on the trans-historical dimension of Christ which makes Panikkar’s approach worth considering in the Indian context of dialogue with traditional Hinduism.”72 This is because, according to Parappally, Hinduism “sees history in its transitory or impermanent character and asserts that the historical dimension is not everything that belongs to reality.”73 He also points out that Panikkar’s cosmotheandrism asserts both historical and trans-historical dimensions of Christ: “the trans-historical dimension of Christ implies the historical dimension.”74 Nonetheless, other theologians writing with the same Indian context in mind argue that Panikkar has not got the balance right and that his under-valuing history is as problematical as any over-emphasis upon it. The liberal Protestant, Stanley Samartha, points to difficulties that flow from Panikkar’s separation of cosmic Christology from its historical foundations in Jesus. He argues that this down71. Ibid., 175. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid., 137. 74. Ibid., 167; similarly: 175n249. Parappally seems to get the balance a little wrong here; Ranstrom’s summary of the christological implications of cosmotheandrism is more factually accurate: “[Panikkar’s] understanding of Christ shifts from that of a unique person to a metaphysical symbol and experience. . . . Christ is no longer uniquely tied to the person and work of Jesus, but instead to the interplay of divine, human, and cosmic that is the true nature of being as such, and of which Jesus Christ is paradigmatic” (ch. 3 above, 15).

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playing of the historical dimension of Christ has potentially harmful consequences given the way in which, according to him, the Indian tradition over-emphasizes the ‘spiritual’ dimension of the human person (a kind of anthropological Docetism, in effect).75 The critique by Vinoth Ramachandra is also emphatic at this point; in his discussion of common ground between Panikkar (and two other South Asian theologians—Aloysius Pieris and Samartha) and ahistorical emphases by some Western theologians, Ramachandra makes the point that “the Christian message is radically historical in its orientation. The doctrine of creation states that we are not godlike, timeless beings but profoundly contingent creatures. . . . To empty the faith of this pivotal historical content, or to marginalize it in favor of timeless ‘religious values’ or ‘principles’, is to turn it into something other than Christianity.”76 Samartha claims that the elaboration of the importance of human historical existence because of the entry of Christ into history “will be one of the most significant services which Christology can render to India today.”77 (A second aspect of Panikkar’s discussion of particularity is what might be called “a prescriptive shift to Indianness” across a wide range of his thought, and discussion returns to this topic below.) Panikkar is, of course, aware of the place of the Jesus of history in the Great Tradition; his reluctance to emphasize it seems to relate both to his own misgivings about the importance of the historical,78 and his related determination to assert his Christology in an Indian 75. See his The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ, 140–41. 76. The Recovery of Mission, 128–29; these statements are found as part of a wider discussion in a section entitled “The Flight from History” (126–30). 77. The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ, 151; however, it should also be noted that this apologetic edge to Samartha’s discussion of Christology is absent from his later writings. And Hans Küng is also implicitly critical of Panikkar’s downplaying of the historical. After expressing “a good deal of respect for Panikkar’s bold theological effort” he goes on discuss the positive consequences of the understanding of history in the prophetic religions (but not in India) as “of the greatest significance for the problems facing the individual and society—including the problems of exploitation and oppression” including consequences for “responsibility, guilt, conscience, and forgiveness” (Küng, Christianity and the World Religions [New York: Doubleday, 1986; London: Collins, 1987], 275–76). 78. When outlining his understanding of reality near the beginning of the summative Rhythm of Being, Panikkar seems to imply that the historical dimension of reality is merely “the whole . . . as it appears to us” and suggests that it is to be contrasted with “getting past the appearances to reach the core.” (18) This seems to be a clear echo of the advaitic understanding of the visible and material world as essentially māyā (illusion).

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(especially advaitic) key as noted above. The attitude of the advaitic tradition towards history and its consequences for Christology, have far-reaching implications.79 In India, both Christian and Hindu apologists have tended to draw a strong contrast between the supposed dependence or independence of their religious traditions upon history. For example, it is not difficult for an advaitin to conclude that the tying of Christianity to events in history (especially to the person of Jesus) significantly weakens or even negates its claim to possess universal significance. According to the notable Indian philosopher, Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the reality conveyed by history seems narrow, relative and contingent whereas one “who has seen the real is lifted above all narrowness, relativities, and contingencies.”80 As Aurobindo asks (with the clear implication of an affirmative answer), “is it . . . because the historical Christ has been made too much the foundation-stone of the Faith that Christianity is failing?”81 Panikkar’s reply to the charge that his view of Christ is an evasion of “the scandal of the incarnation and the process of redemption” is that “I am not ignoring these historical facts. It is simply that I do not worship history. . . . Every being is a christophany.”82 He is persuaded that the “Western world is, by and large, influenced by an exaggerated historicism, as though historicity were the sole component of reality.”83 In turn, however, Indian Christian thought (both Protestant and Catholic) has expressed misgivings about Hindu attitudes to history and these concerns could equally well apply to Panikkar. Most Hindu assessments of Christ are found wanting by Christian commentators and often because of a failure to deal adequately (or at all) with his

79. Some of what now follows has been adapted from Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus, 279–84. 80. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, Eastern Religions and Western Thought, 2nd ed. (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 317. 81. Aurobindo, “The Purpose of Avatarhood,” in his Letters on Yoga (Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Publication Department, 1970), 430. 82. “The Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges,” in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, 114 (original emphasis). 83. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 2. His forceful comments are presumably provoked by reactions to the first edition of Unknown Christ.

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link to history.84 When Samartha concludes that “hardly any Hindu thinker has given serious attention to the question of historicity in understanding the life and work of Jesus Christ,”85 he argues that the central problem is the Hindu apprehension of the status of history itself,86 and the belief that the absolute not only is not, but cannot be, tied to history in the way that most traditional Christology requires. Such claims might be contrasted with the usual Hindu attitude towards the historicity of incarnation and avatāra. For Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, the incarnation of Christ “is not an historical event which occurred two thousand years ago. It is an event which is renewed in the life of everyone who is on the way to the fulfilment of his destiny.”87 Vinoba Bhave, in his commentary on the Bhagavad Gītā, issues an appeal: “Let us not say ‘Arjuna had Krishna. Where are we to find our Krishna?’ Let us not get caught in the fallacy of historicity, that there was an individual called ‘Krishna’. Krishna shines in the heart of each one of us, the Inner Ruler.”88 That is, Bhave elevates the person and place of Krishna to a supra‑personal level, and for that very reason Krishna is seen to be non‑ (or perhaps trans‑) historical—and it is not difficult to hear echoes of Panikkar’s ubiquitous cosmological framework in such a view. The usual Hindu notion of divine pan-immanence, with its embrace of a multiplicity of time-space worlds, means that “the avatāra is historically more contingent than it would be under a more comprehensive, integrated perspective of history as in the Christian.”89 At the same time, some commentators do question the alleged absence or unimportance of a sense of history in India’s religious traditions. Julius Lipner, for example, points out the way in which 84. See, for example: Balwant Paradkar, “Hindu Interpretation of Christ from Vivekananda to Radhakrishnan,” Indian Journal of Theology 18 (1969): 65–87. 85. Stanley J. Samartha, The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ, 156. 86. Ibid., 157; and, in greater detail, his The Hindu View of History: Classical and Modern (Bangalore: CISRS, 1959). 87. The Recovery of Faith (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1956), 126. 88. Talks on the Gita (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1960), 23; in similar vein, S. Ramasamy, “Christ Value is ineffably more important than Christ‑fact,” book review in Hindu‑Christian Studies Bulletin 2 (1989): 5. 89. Julius J. Lipner, “Avatāra and Incarnation?” in Re-visioning India’s Religious Traditions: Essays in Honour of Eric Lott , eds., Eric J. Lott, David Carlyle Scott, (Bangalore: United Theological College, 1996), 137 (emphasis added).

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the Hindu view of history does allow for the notion of genuine progress.90 Samuel Rayan discusses such a view of history with particular reference to the Bhagavad Gītā and concludes that the historical dimensions of the Gītā are “remarkably profound”; he considers that the author of the Gītā “shows a keen awareness of holy history” with remarkable parallels to the biblical view of history.91 Nonetheless, as Michael Amaladoss argues from the New Testament but with the Indian context in mind, only as the mystery of Christ is set free from the limitations of its historical particularity—without severing the link—can its universality be realized.92 It is this necessary link between the universal and the historical particular that is largely absent in Panikkar. THE CONJUNCTION OF HISTORY, HISTORIOGRAPHY AND NUANCED CHRISTIAN CLAIMS There is no easy avoidance of the dependence of Christian faith on history. Writing after several decades of close contact with Indian culture, Jacques Dupuis re-affirms that the Christian tradition does “presuppose a density of the historical, not found as such in other traditions, without which it cannot be fully understood.”93 However, there is also good reason for the Christian proponent of engagement with Hinduism to acknowledge that Christ is called both the revelation and the mystery of the God who remains essentially trans-historical. If it is true that “Jesus Christ ushers us into the presence of God’s mystery, before which Hindus and Christians stand together in humility to acknowledge, to affirm, and even to celebrate the ultimate mystery of God, the Satyasya Satyam (the truth of the truth)”,94 then there will be an appropriately restrained and non-tri90. See Julius J. Lipner, Hindus: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London: Routledge, 1994), chapter 10, “Modes of Reckoning Time and ‘Progress’.” 91. Samuel Rayan, “Indian Theology and the Problem of History,” in Society and Religion, Essays in Honour of M. M. Thomas, ed., Richard W. Taylor (Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1976), 179–80; see also 173–78. 92. Michael Amaladoss, “Dialogue and Mission,” Vidyajyoti 50 (1986): 74. 93. Jacques Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, 384; see also 212–15. 94. Stanley J. Samartha, “Indian Realities and the Wholeness of Christ,” Missiology 10 (1982): 315.

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umphalistic nuance to Christian discourse about historical particularity. If the implications of a Christian view of history are acknowledged, they could also lead to a positive appraisal of Hinduism on the grounds that, because God has become part of history in the human person of Jesus, God in some way thereby affirms and values all human existence with its manifold cultures and traditions—including the Hindu. After all, the most notable affirmation of incarnation for the Christian is found in the prologue to the Fourth Gospel; and that prologue also contains the explicit affirmation that, in some way, the true light that is Christ “gives light to all people” (John 1:9a). On the other hand, Christians may well be reminded that, as Dupuis puts it, history and interiority are two equally valid channels for experience of the Divine: “he who acts in history according to the JudeoChristian tradition is he who is experienced in the ‘cave of the heart’ according to the Hindu. The God of history is also the ‘ground of being’.”95 Given Hindu (especially advaitin) misgivings about history, how might the importance of the historical foundations of Christian faith—in the person of Jesus of Nazareth—be re-stated over against Panikkar’s concerns? The relationship of a plausible retrieval of Jesus to history is made unnecessarily difficult by both the positivist assumptions of some twentieth-century historicism and the rigid dogmatism of more recent modernist historiography (and perhaps Panikkar’s already-noted protest that he does not “worship history” includes a reaction to variants of such attitudes). The writing of history (at least in academic circles in the global north) has changed over the sixty or so years since Panikkar’s writings first appeared, and in ways that potentially ameliorate at least some of Panikkar’s concerns. For example, in a survey of changing emphases in historiography during the second half of the twentieth century, the British historian Keith Thomas notes a heightened respect for “insider” views (the shift from the “etic” to the “emic”), and a widened range of approaches and attitudes as seen in the embrace of more modest methodologies such “critical realism” (as an epistemological alternative to the temptations

95. Dupuis, Toward a Christian Theology of Religious Pluralism, 384.

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to naïve realism and any kind of idealism)96 and related approaches to the retrieval of the past. In their volume, Telling the Truth about History, three historians describe and advocate the newer historiography that avoids both naïve claims to historical objectivity, and the radical relativism of postmodern approaches. Instead, they argue for the acceptance of a “practical realism” and a “qualified objectivity” that “must come to terms with the undeniable elements of subjectivity, artificiality, and language dependence in historical writing.”97 These more modest approaches to history can or should qualify Christian understanding of the historical particularity of Jesus; they mean that there is no epistemic immunity from potential criticism of Christianity’s radical dependence upon the historical foundations of its central christological claims; any historical enquiry to which it appeals, can and should be set in “a self-consciously Christian form of chastened realism.”98 At the same time, the Christian tradition has always emphasized the theological and critical inadequacy of a merely historical revelation over against an assent of faith, existential commitment (in terms of works, and love, not simply belief) are all components of the Scriptural foundations of faith and warranted belief. As Søren Kierkegaard and others have repeatedly pointed out, the biblical witness itself concedes that no amount of historical data can compel faith (cf. Matt 28:17); faith remains more than the acceptance of supposedly orthodox beliefs (James 2:17, 26; John 14:21a; Luke 6:46). THE JESUS OF THE GOSPELS: AN UNAVOIDABLE COMBINATION OF HISTORY AND THEOLOGY There are no unmediated accounts of the life and identity of Jesus; the Gospels are ‘filtered’ accounts and not plain or ordinary or “simply factual” history. The only access to Jesus is through the faith and theology of the memory and Gospel records of the early church. The Gospels contains a mixture of fact and faith, history and hermeneutic, authenticity and artistry—recognition of which 96. Thomas, “History revisited,” Times Online, October 11, 2006: n.p. 97. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History (New York and London: Norton, 1994), 259. 98. Mark A. Noll, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011), 84.

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might accommodate at least some of Panikkar’s concerns. Among the Canonical Gospels, John receives by far the most attention in Panikkar’s writings (for example in his Christophany). This preference seems to center on the Fourth Gospel’s experiential and theological components and Panikkar’s approval of the high and cosmic Johannine Christology that he himself embraces (and that might provide further reason for his neglect of the Synoptics). But if so, two further points need now to be made. Firstly, it is increasingly realized that the Synoptic Gospels themselves embrace an elevated Christology, even if this differs from that found in the Gospel of John. The Synoptics are preoccupied with the person of Jesus and do seem consistently to point to one who asserted some kind of identity with God, some kind of filial relationship, and even claimed some kind of divine authority. There is no definitive or uncontested Christian approach to history; the relationship between the Jesus of history and the traditional christological claims has proved difficult and problematical for Christian comprehension and elaboration.99 Nonetheless, a response might helpfully begin with two instructive examples of tracing a plausible trajectory from the Gospels to a mediated but defensible portrait of Jesus—with both formulated and visibly indebted to the Indian context: Robin Boyd in his volume Khristadvaita: A Theology for India100 and Jacques Dupuis in his Who Do You Say I Am? Introduction to Christology.101 Some recent Gospel scholarship (for example that of N. T. Wright) has begun to re-emphasize these traditional conclusions.102 Wright 99. A recent survey (even when drawn from a small sample of Protestant academic historians) shows remarkable diversity; see: Jay D. Green, Christian Historiography: Five Rival Versions (Baylor: Baylor University Press, 2015). The diversity is seen in, for example, a wider sampling such as: John Fea, Jay Green, and Eric Miller, eds., Confessing History: Explorations in Christian Faith and the Historian’s Vocation (Notre Dame: Notre Dame, 2010); Robert Eric Frykenberg, History and Belief: The Foundations of Historical Understanding (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996); Mark Allan Powell, Jesus as a Figure in History: How Modern Historians View the Man from Galilee (2nd ed.; Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2013); Terrence W. Tilley, History, Theology, and Faith: Dissolving the Modern Problematic (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2004); Ronald Wells, ed., History and the Christian Historian (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998). 100. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1977, chapter VII. 101. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1994, chapter 3. 102. “We should see Jesus “as the reality to which Temple, sabbath, and creation itself were pointing. . . . [I]n terms of the ‘God’ of first-century Jews, Jesus understood himself to be embodying this God, doing things whose best explanation was that this was what God was doing, and so on.” (N. T. Wright, Simply Jesus: Who He Was, What He Did, Why It Matters

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concludes that the death and resurrection of this Jesus—topics that are more-or-less neglected by Panikkar—then come very quickly to be seen by the earliest Christians “as the decisive climax to his public career of kingdom-inauguration . . . [and] the victory of YHWH over the last enemies, sin and death.”103 The consequent worship of Jesus in early Jewish Christianity became “the beginning of Christian thinking about Jesus. But that worship was simply discerning, in the Jewish categories that he himself had made thematic, what lay at the heart of the vocation and self-understanding of Jesus himself.”104 It should also be noted that the mainly exegetical approaches of Wright, Bauckham and Hurtado (and others who argue in this way) in effect sidestep the speculative metaphysics of Nicene, Chalcedonian and other Patristic and later controversies—a metaphysical mix about which Panikkar displays skepticism either because these are “Mediterranean” or because he is anxious to move to his prescribed embrace of other (that is, mainly Indian and Hindu) metaphysical categories. Secondly, some recent Johannine scholarship has revived interest in the historical dimensions of the fourth Gospel; for example, Paul Anderson argues that “the conjunction of history and theology must be maintained, rather than allowing disjunctive inclinations—history or theology—to distort critical inquiry.”105 In fact, the Fourth Gospel [London and New York: SPCK and HarperOne, 2011], 148.) This self-understanding of Jesus is elaborated in considerable detail by Wright in ch 13 of his Jesus and the Victory of God. 103. N. T. Wright, “Jesus’ Self-Understanding,” in The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, ed. Davis, Kendall and O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 60 (47–61). 104. “Jesus’ Self-Understanding,” 61. The trajectory from the Gospels, via this early worship, to the (early) response in terms of a “high” Christology is also traced and discussed in considerable detail in other fairly recent works: Sigurd Grindheim, God’s Equal: What Can We Know about Jesus’ Self-Understanding in the Synoptic Gospels? (Library of New Testament Studies, 446. London: T&T Clark, 2011); Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Larry W. Hurtado, How on Earth Did Jesus Become God? Historical Questions about Earliest Devotion to Jesus (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005). The relationship of this trajectory to monotheism and the emergence of a Christology of divine identity is discussed in Richard Bauckham, God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Carlisle: Paternoster, 1998; and Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999) and Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008). 105. Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just and Tom Thatcher, eds., John, Jesus, and History, Volume 1: Critical Appraisals of Critical Views (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 286, original

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seems to contain what Anderson calls “a great deal of primitive tradition and material” (for example, geography, names, history, often incidental) that, prima facie, could only come from an eye-witness Jewish, but not later Hellenistic source106—a claim that might also have pressed the reality of historical particularity upon Panikkar. But at the same time there are also some currents that have a more modest appraisal in mind: Stephen Fowl, for example, draws on the work of Luke Timothy Johnson (in which Johnson questions the priority of history over theology) to argue that “it is no longer self-evident that ‘history’ should be treated as an autonomous realm with a privileged place when it comes to ordering and accounting for reality.”107 And a New Zealand colleague, Derek Tovey, describes the scriptural view as “theologized history.”108 It is not difficult to imagine understanding and even agreement from Panikkar about this point. And such a position brings the discipline of theology into view—as we will now see. A THEOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE CONNECTION WITH HISTORY Discussion now turns to a theological assessment of the dependence of Christian faith upon the contingencies of particularity and history. The substance of Anderson’s comment above, that “the conjunction emphasis. Both volumes of this publication derive from and in a number of ways summarize the deliberations of the “John, Jesus, and History” project of the Society of Biblical Literature. 106. Anderson elaborates these details over a number of pages: John, Jesus, and History, Volume 1, 48–54. Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006) has also revived interest in John as some kind of historical source independent of the Synoptics. Contributors to John, Jesus, and History call for the development of critical methodologies that will help understand the fourth Gospel’s distinctive approach to history, memory and witness in its own right—and not merely as the impoverished or tendentious relative of the Synoptics; a consensus seems to be emerging that this fourth Gospel is an autonomous tradition with its own sources and its own perspective; see, for example, James Charlesworth, “The Historical Jesus in the Fourth Gospel: A Paradigm Shift?,” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, 8 (2010): 3–46. 107. “The Gospels and ‘the Historical Jesus’,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Gospels, ed., Stephen Barton, (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 92 (76–96). 108. Personal communication; Tovey illustrates this view of history in his “On Not Unbinding the Lazarus Story: The Nexus of History and Theology in John 11:1–44,” in John, Jesus, and History, Volume 2: Aspects of Historicity in the Fourth Gospel, eds., Paul N. Anderson, Felix Just, S.J., and Tom Thatcher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 213–24.

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of history and theology must be maintained, rather than allowing disjunctive inclinations—history or theology—to distort critical inquiry,” goes some way towards meeting Panikkar’s concerns about the elevation of contingent historical events into a position of unwarranted epistemic authority.109 At the same time, the historical particularity of Jesus does remain central to the christological foundations of Christian faith. A number of theologians confidently affirm this centrality. In an essay on “The Dogmatic Significance of the Question of the Historical Jesus,” the theologian Eberhard Jüngel, both affirms the christocentrism associated with his name and elaborates it in terms of the proclamation by the pre-Easter Jesus of the Reign of God, and from which Jüngel develops a theological definition of the historic Jesus. His intention is disclosed near the beginning of his essay: “The question of the dogmatic significance of the historical Jesus leads to the centre of Christian theology,” and his conclusion is that “the dogmatic significance of the historical Jesus consists in the fact that he is the human person in correspondence to God and as such is the Son of God.”110 Despite what sometimes appears to be Protestant attempts to immunize faith from secular historiographical critiques, one of those suspected of the wish, Hans Frei, does in fact frame his appeal to history in critically modest terms: “The providential action of God over and in his creation is not that of a mechanical fate to be read off of one occasion. God’s work is mysteriously, abidingly mysteriously, coexistent with the contingency of events.”111 Or, as Mike Higton puts it, alongside his christocentrism Frei believed that “truth is given to us in such a way as to confirm and proclaim the true creatureliness, finitude, contingency, and particularity of history, and to call us not to the explanation or avoidance of history.”112 Karl Rahner covers similar ground across a range of his writings. 109. The continuing religious significance of Christ cannot be stated in categories that purport to limit his significance to history-without-theology or theology-without-history. Knowledge of Christ might be epistemologically basic, but it is not unwarranted. For a defense and elaboration of this kind of argument, see C. Stephen Evans, The Historical Christ and the Jesus of Faith: The Incarnational Narrative as History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 110. “The Dogmatic Significance of the Question of the Historical Jesus,” in Theological Essays II (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 83, 119 (original emphasis). 111. Hans W. Frei, The Identity of Jesus Christ: The Hermeneutical Bases of Dogmatic Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 163. 112. Higton, Christ, Providence, and History: Hans W. Frei’s Public Theology (London and New

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His essays “The Historical Jesus as a Dogmatic Problem,” “Remarks on the Importance of the History of Jesus for Catholic Dogmatics,”113 and his “Dogmatic Reflections on the Knowledge and SelfConsciousness of Christ”114 are concerned with pre-Easter Jesus’s selfunderstanding and traces the same kind of trajectory this chapter argues for, especially given that the final stage of the development of Rahner’s Christology shifts towards a “Christology from below.”115 As well, a number of appropriately critical defenses of an incarnational Christology that defend a trajectory from the historical Jesus of the Synoptics to (some kind of) incarnational or high Christology have also appeared in recent decades.116 Many readers of Panikkar, both Protestant and Catholic, might sympathize with Ramachandra’s conclusion that Panikkar has drained the word Christ of its historic significance and its continuing personal significance for Christian believers. He holds it aloft as a mere cipher, hoping that it can still evoke the same emotive response and, perhaps, the same ethical commitments, even though its very content has been transformed.117

Panikkar makes not infrequent appeal to “authenticity.”118 However, York: T&T Clark, 2004), 13. For Higton, this insight constitutes “the central achievement of Frei’s theology” (13). 113. Rahner, Theological Investigations, Vol. 13: Theology, Anthropology, Christology (New York: Seabury, 1975), 201–12. 114. Rahner, Theological Investigations, Vol. 5: Later Writings (New York: Crossroad, 1970), 207–8. These dimensions of his Christology include considerable emphasis on the humanity of Jesus; see the discussion and documentation in Roman A. Siebenrock, “Christology,” in The Cambridge Companion to Karl Rahner, eds., Declan Marmion and Mary E. Hines (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 119–20 (112–27). 115. In Rahner’s summary volume, Foundations of Christian Faith, by far the longest chapter is entitled “Jesus Christ” (Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity [New York and London: Seabury Press and Darton, Longman & Todd, 1978], chap 6). This very long chapter (176–321) also includes a section “On the Theological Understanding of the History of the Life and Death of Jesus of Nazareth” (228–63). The chapter begins with the affirmation that what is “most specifically [and] decisively Christian in Christianity” is Jesus Christ. He goes on to emphasize that “what happened in Jesus, in his death and resurrection, . . . [in] its unique, irreducible and historic concreteness” is foundational for Christianity. As a result, “what is most historical is what is most essential” (177). 116. See, for example, The Incarnation: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Incarnation of the Son of God, ed. Stephen T. Davis, Daniel Kendall, and Gerald O’Collins (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002); Edward T. Oakes, Infinity Dwindled to Infancy: a Catholic and Evangelical Christology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2011). 117. Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission, 83. 118. For example: “Hinduism is ready to absorb any authentic religious truth; Christianity is

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as Ramachandra comments, “If history no longer remains central to the identity and definition of Christ, how else would we recognize the ‘authentic’ . . . and how do we distinguish between the authentic and the inauthentic spiritualities of humankind. Panikkar proposes no criteria.”119 We have noted Panikkar’s valid protest about historicist reductionism (the assertion of “historicity [as] the sole component of reality”). Ramachandra agrees that with Panikkar’s reminder that Christians do not worship history, but adds that “Christians do worship what history became the vehicle of—and with deep awe that it could have been enabled to do so.”120 PARTICULARITY AND UNIVERSALITY A further consequence of Panikkar’s Christology relates to the dynamics and implications of particularity and universality. In the history of Christian thought it has seemed self-evident that claims of universal relevance and universal mission flow inevitably from the historical particularity of Christ and associated assertions of christological uniqueness and redemptive finality—however generous or eschatologically optimistic the appraisal of other faiths. PANIKKAR’S MISGIVINGS ABOUT UNIVERSALITY It seems self-evident to most Hindus and post-modern people (in both the global south and global north) that Christian claims of uniready to embrace any authentic religious value” (Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 4) and he affirms “authentic mystical experience” as “irreversible” (ibid., 22). Authentic religious belief is the “vehicle by which human consciousness passes from mythos to logos” (Myth, Faith and Hermeneutics, 5); an “authentic spirituality” is one in which “God is not a ‘thou’ for man nor his commandment the ‘ultimate’ of all perfection” (Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 290); “authentic advaita experience . . . like all true experience, cannot be communicated or expressed by words, concepts, or thoughts” (ibid., 370); it is only in the epoch of dialogue (rather than other Christian epochs) in which Christians have begun to recognize the authenticity of other religions (A Dwelling Place for Wisdom [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1993], 115–18); Christ may rightly be called Savior and “the only mediator” but he is, nonetheless, “efficient and present in any authentic religion, regardless of name or form” (“Inter‑Religious Dialogue: Some Principles,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 12 [1975]: 409). 119. Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission, 83. 120. Ibid. Ramachandra goes on (84–86) to point out some close parallels with Hegel’s idealist reconstruction of the traditional Christian understanding of incarnation.

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versality do not follow from assertions of particularity. Panikkar seems not wholly aware of the tension; he is quite willing to claim a certain kind of universal dimension for his Christology while strongly rejecting the usual set of traditional Christian reasons for it. For Panikkar, the traditional assertions of particularity are highly problematical. They either imply a notion of divine election and salvation history, understood by Panikkar as the privileging or “chosenness” of certain historical events and people, as in “the Jewish [claim to universality] which implies identity by differentiation and the Muslim one which entails a specific Muslim culture.”121 Or the claims reveal a compromising link with imperial culture: “the uniqueness has been transferred to an entire cultural set. And this, in fact, was a common belief during many centuries. It is the very nature of colonialism: Cultural monism.”122 However, Panikkar’s view of universality is reduced to a matter of existential impact. His discussion of a universal dimension of Christology centers on his assumption that the link between Jesus as understood in traditional historical categories will mean that “Jesus will appear as a historically relevant figure of the past, with a still uncommon influence on the present, but the only point of reference will be his historical coordinates and his impact on the lives of other men.”123 His assertion that “every being is a Christophany”124 also seems to imply this kind of universality. In a later discussion of the uniqueness of Christ, Panikkar offers alternatives: “Either we defend the universality of Christ above, behind, or through all cultures, or we bestow universal and absolute value to one single culture 121. Panikkar, “Chosenness and Universality: Can Christians Claim Both?,” Cross Currents 38 (1988): 324 (309–24, 339). 122. Panikkar, “Whose Uniqueness?” 113. These critical comments on election are a hardening of a more tentative and position published some 15 years earlier. In his Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, he is “by no means seeking to minimize the privilege of the chosen people [Israel]” (25). “It was without doubt Israel’s election . . . that constituted her unique glory” (26), though “this attachment, even limitation in practice, to a semitic socio-cultural context” is “at the very root of the tragic misunderstanding between Christian faith and the various world religions” (26). 123. Rhythm of Being, 212. He summarizes the heart of his Unknown Christ of Hinduism as follows: “the concreteness of Christ (over against his particularity) does not destroy his universality . . . because the reality of Christ is revealed in the personal experience of his uniqueness.” (Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 21.) 124. “The Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges,” in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, 114.

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or group of cultures, namely, that doctrinal world for which the statement makes sense. In the first case we should fall into utter silence and cannot speak of uniqueness, because the moment we utter a word we do it within a particular culture.”125 And the second option amounts to the privileging of one cultural tradition. This, for Panikkar, is self-evidently wrong; and for many Hindus as well, perhaps most famously—even if tendentiously126—in the Bhagavad Gītā where Krishna states that “whatever path they may travel, it leads to me in the end.” (4.11).127 How, then, might the Ärgernis der Einmaligkeit (scandal of particularity) of traditional Christology be addressed? Might it plausibly be linked with an appeal to universality? Protestants, including conservative Protestants, have long been acquainted with the dilemmas concerning universality as posed by Panikkar but have generally concluded that historical particularity does not negate the universal implications of the Christian faith. It does not necessarily require or even imply the hegemonic monopoly of which Panikkar is rightly critical. As Ramachandra points out, a “Christ who is only ‘for Christians’ would not be the Christ of the New Testament gospel with its eschatological promise of human and cosmic reconciliation.”128 Kärkkäinen points out that the particularity is derived from the his125. Panikkar, “Whose Uniqueness?” 113. 126. Qualified as “tendentiously” because, as Klostermaier points out, the Gītā’s “teaching is solidly Kṛṣṇaitic and would not admit that any other religion would yield the same results.” (Klaus K. Klostermaier, A Survey of Hinduism [Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989], 449n18.) 127. The verse is explained by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan: “The same God is worshipped by all. The differences of conception and approach are determined by local colouring and social adaptations. All manifestations belong to the same Supreme” (The Bhagavad Gita: With an Introductory Essay, Sanskrit Text, English Translation and Notes [New York: Harper Colophon, 1973], 159). For an academic discussion of the heuristic significance of perspectivism in functional and pragmatic terms in Hinduism, see Julius Lipner, “Ancient Banyan: An Inquiry into the Meaning of 'Hinduism’,” Religious Studies 32 (1996): 109–26. A further and helpful analysis is found in Tinu Ruparell, “The Politics of Perspectivalism: Anekāntavāda as a Counter-anthropologising Strategy” in Pashaura Singh and Michael Hawley, eds., Re-imagining South Asian Religions: Essays in Honour of Professors Harold G. Coward and Ronald W. Neufeldt (Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions, volume 141; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), 49–66, in which, after a restatement the usual rejoinders to the Orientalist critique of “Hinduism,” Ruparell’s own suggestion is “to develop and explicate [anekāntavāda [the perspectivalist Jaina doctrine of ‘no one view’] to show how it can be used as a hermeneutic of suspicion of typically western standpoints and the epistemological and political commitments with which they are imbricated. (50) 128. Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission, 87.

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torical, cultural and ethnic distinctiveness of creaturely human life, “a particularity that God takes seriously in his dealings with his creatures.” And yet it is a particularity that exists for a wider and universal reason.129 In other words, as Lesslie Newbigin—writing out of an Indian context—asks, in effect, How better can universal implications be revealed but through a concrete and visible particular?130 We have already seen that Panikkar downplays or even ignores central events associated with the life of Jesus (such as the cross and resurrection). But this omission by Panikkar is at odds with traditional Christian belief that it is “in the concrete life, death and resurrection of Jesus that the universal is disclosed . . . in such a way that it becomes the universal point of reference for distinguishing between true and false visions of human flourishing. So in relativizing the person of Jesus, Panikkar ends up with a false ‘christic’ universalism.”131 A much stronger case can be made for the thesis that history is the fitting and apt vehicle for divine disclosure. As Martien Brinkman puts it—in an appropriately interrogative genre (and thus with a degree of tentativeness), and with Panikkar’s reluctance to endorse the historical in mind: one could ask if the identification of the divine (the Father) with the concrete life of Jesus of Nazareth is not so strong that the medium (his life, humanity) is in fact the most authentic expression of the message (divine nearness). And one could ask if it is not precisely that identification that also challenges us to become aware of the divine presence within the limits of the conditions for our historical existence. In other 129. Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions, 340. See also Ramachandra’s development of this theme as “Election and Mission” and “Incarnation and Universality” in his The Recovery of Mission, 229–40. 130. J. E. Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (London and Grand Rapids: SPCK and Eerdmans, 1989), 86–87. More specifically, he writes that—speaking of the cross of Christ—“the universal and unbounded grace of God could only be made known through this historic deed wrought out at one place in the world and at one point in history.” This action, he continues, has “the concreteness, the particularity, and therefore the limitedness of one particular happening.” (86) The logic of the Christian message “is not that we should be taken out of history and related to him in some way which bypasses the specificities and particularities of history. His purpose is that in and through history there should be brought into being that which is symbolized in the vision with which the Bible ends—the Holy City into which all the glory of the nations will finally be gathered [in the eschaton].” (87) 131. Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission, 83–84, original emphasis; Ramachandra discusses Panikkar in chapter 3 and parts of chapter 4 of The Recovery of Mission. See also the somewhat critical comments about Panikkar in Kärkkäinem, The Trinity and Religious Pluralism, 128–33.

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words, is human confidence in that which is historically concrete not precisely the characteristic of the human answer to God’s desire to make his “dwelling among us” (John 1:14).132

Christian faith, even in its historical particularity, has always claimed a universal dimension. This is not the same as Panikkar’s claim that Christians are called to recognize that Christ is “that selfsame Mystery that attracts all other human beings who are seeking to overcome their own present condition”133; this attempt to re-locate universality to the domain of ubiquitous identity formation is as unpersuasive as the existential reductionism criticized above.134 The imperative encountered in the Gospels’ accounts of Jesus is a spirituality that, in Thomas Grenham’s summary of it, “informs, challenges, invites, influences, cajoles” and so becomes “a vision meaningful and inclusive for all. . . . The specificity of the Christian life and message has universal implications for the world.”135 Grenham also points to the way that the message of Jesus also “transforms in a life-giving way people’s lives.” It is this concrete example of Jesus, his compassionate life, death and resurrection, that both undergird the appeal of Jesus to the oppressed dalit minority in India, for example, and function as a catalyst for the liberative theology that is almost completely absent from Panikkar.

132. Martien E. Brinkman, The Non-Western Jesus: Jesus as Bodhisattva, Avatara, Guru, Prophet, Ancestor, or Healer? (London: Equinox, 2009), 153 (original emphasis). Cf. Ramachandra: “Far from history being opposed to universality, in the perspective of the gospel, it is the very historicity of the cross and resurrection that furnishes the basis for a universal hope.” He concludes this part of his critique with the comment that “Panikkar would be hard pressed to extract anything that would be Good News for the world from his universal ‘christic principle’. For news that is simply entailed in what has always been so (and has been known already) can hardly be news.” (The Recovery of Mission, 87.) 133. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 23. 134. As Komulainen puts it, by “locating Christ’s significance in the field of personal identity, [Panikkar] constructs a theoretical model that bestows on Jesus of Nazareth as a historical personality only marginal significance” (An Emerging Cosmotheandric Religion?, 141). 135. Abstract of Thomas G. Grenham, “Discovering the Universal in the Particular: A Vision for Christian Mission Spirituality,” Missiology: An International Review XL (2012): 49 (49–61). For other examples of elaborations of the universal dimensions of the particularity of Jesus Christ see two discussions—the first Protestant, the second Catholic: Richard Bauckham, “The Future of Jesus Christ” in The Cambridge Companion to Jesus ed., Markus Bockmuehl, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 268, 276–80, and Teresa Okure, “The Global Jesus,” in ibid., ch. 15.

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THE SIGNIFICANCE OF RELATIVISM AND PERSPECTIVISM FOR PANIKKAR One further consequence of Panikkar’s understanding of religious particularity should be considered: his methodological preference for the dynamics of relativism and perspectivism. Panikkar writes about a “twofold awareness” of both relativity and “perspectivism.”136 This is the assertion that there are radically different but valid perspectives analogous to viewing reality through different windows that each provide a real view of the one reality but seen from different perspectives. “We see all that we can see. The other may see equally the totum through another window, and thus describe it differently, but both see the totum, although not in toto, but per partem.”137 Because of these principles of relativity and perspectivism, “we do not need a universal theory as if we could enjoy a global perspective—which is a contradiction in terms.”138 One consequence of this perspectivism is a reconfiguring of Christology. As early as 1981, Panikkar appeals to such a perspectivist position when explaining (and appearing to defend) a much-qualified and partial version of the uniqueness of Christ. Although “to see Christ is to reach the Mystery,” that Mystery cannot be wholly identified with Christ “even though he is the Way when we are on that way....... Only for Christians is the Mystery indissolubly connected with Christ.”139 It is not difficult to conclude that Panikkar’s misgivings derive from two sources. The first is his prescriptive shift to (a selective) Indianness that embraces the longstanding Hindu doubts—already discussed—about the implausibility of tethering religious truth to the contingencies of history. (Panikkar suggests this when he rejects some criticisms of The Unknown Christ as derived from “a merely historical point of view—from, precisely, the prevailing microdox con-

136. Raimon Panikkar, Invisible Harmony, 172. 137. “Self-Critical Dialogue” in The Intercultural Challenge of Raimon Panikkar, ed., Joseph Prabhu (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996), 253. 138. Panikkar, Invisible Harmony, 172. 139. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 24–25 (original emphasis).

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ceptions of that Mystery [Christ].”140) The second is the generally sympathetic Hindu (especially advaitin) endorsement of the kind of perspectivism advocated by Panikkar. Although he does not employ it, his appeal is to the kind of apparent perspectivist plausibility found in the well-known story of the King of Varanasi, the blind men and the elephant. However, as Lesslie Newbigin (and many others) point out, the intention of the story is often missed. “The story is constantly told to neutralise the affirmations of the great religions . . . but the real point of the story is exactly the opposite. If the king were also blind there would be no story. The king tells the story, and it is the immensely arrogant claim of one who sees the full truth that all the world’s religions are only groping after. It embodies the claim to know the full reality which relativises all the claims of the religions.”141 Even a liberal Protestant such as Alan Race protests: if perspectivism is true, it becomes impossible to undertake any form of mutual evaluation. Notions of a given tradition as good or bad, profound or harmful, “are rendered arbitrary or meaningless. Stated starkly, it could mean that if all faiths are equally true, then all faiths are equally false.”142 IDENTITY AND DIFFERENCE: ADVAITA AND CHRIST AS BRIDGE BETWEEN THE WORLD AND THE ABSOLUTE A further dimension of Panikkar’s Christology is its employment in his discussion of a long-standing Hindu debate: the relationship between the Absolute and the world. He affirms a cosmic Christ as bridge between the world and the dominant Hindu philosophical understanding of the Absolute. Panikkar’s solution is to pursue a distinction between Brahman, the Absolute, and Īśvara, defined by him as “the Lord, the Creator, the personal God,”143 and named by 140. Ibid., 20. “Microdoxy” is a pejorative term coined by Panikkar; it means “the desire to enclose orthodoxy in small truths, narrow concepts, refusing to open oneself to deeper interpretations” (http://www.raimon-panikkar.org/english/gloss-microdoxy.html). 141. Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society, 9–10. 142. Alan Race, Christians and Religious Pluralism: Patterns in the Christian Theology of Religions (London: SCM, 1993), 78. 143. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 148–55 (here 148); the first edition, 119–26 is similar.

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Christians as the Logos, the cosmic Christ, so that “that from which this World comes forth and to which it returns and by which it is sustained, that is Īśvara, the Christ.”144 The notion that a cosmic Christ might be seen as a bridge between the world and the Absolute is not new to Panikkar (as we shall see), and Panikkar is not unaware of the complexity of his solution.145 In brief, he argues that Christian revelation (he means that of Christ as second person of the Trinity) shows how the Īśvara need not be seen as belonging to the inferior world of māyā (illusion) only. Christ is the example of how the saguṇa Brahman (the Absolute endowed with attributes as if ‘facing the world’) might be understood to possess a supreme value that does not compromise the absolute transcendence of the nirguṇa Brahman (the Absolute without attributes). This means, in summary form, that “the role of Īśvara in Vedānta—which is postulated in order to explain the connection between God and the World without compromising the absoluteness of the former or the relativity of the latter—corresponds functionally to the role of Christ in Christian thought.”146 Panikkar affirms an equivalence between Christ and Īśvara in which the equivalence is functional but not ontological. It is what Panikkar later comes to call a “homeomorphic equivalence.”147 His argument depends not only upon the logic of analogy, or the suggestive force of the symbolic, for he believes that Christ is the actual fulfilment and resolution of those desires and tensions which the very concept of Īśvara strives to express. However, there are at least two objections that Panikkar’s suggestion does not adequately deal with. On the one hand, Īśvara is the word used in many Indian languages by members of the Christian community for God in the full trinitarian sense—despite the fact 144. Ibid., 162 (original emphasis); the first edition has the same conclusion but “Īśvara” is omitted (131). 145. At the beginning of his best-known discussion of the issue, he begins with the subheading “The Problem of Īśvara” (Unknown Christ of Hinduism, first edition, 119; rev. ed., 148). 146. Raimon Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, first edition, 126–31, 133–34; rev. ed., 155–162, 164–65; quote from rev. ed., 164. See also his Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 51–58, 64. 147. “Homeomorphic” has a literal meaning of “similar form.” The word is used in mathematics and chemistry to describe equivalence; Panikkar’s use of it in religious discussion is novel.

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that those Hindus who are familiar with the concept of Īśvara usually regard it as pointing only to an aspect of the Absolute—one that exists at the level of māyā and therefore decidedly below the level of the reality inherent in Brahman.148 Panikkar remains silent about this impediment to his appeal to Īśvara. Nor would all Hindus agree with the distinction that Panikkar draws between “God” in the later Upaniṣads (called Īśvara by him) and Brahman.149 Panikkar’s solution remains implausible, especially in an Indian setting; it is, in effect, an argument that “mixes up terminology from the various ‘strands’ [of Hinduism].”150 Stanley Samartha sees Panikkar’s interpretation of Hindu scripture as a displacement of Brahman and an intended replacement by Christ; in effect, the indefensible reading of an entirely different meaning into the sacred text of another religion.151 This may be a misunderstanding or over-reaction on Samartha’s part; Panikkar is almost certainly only asserting that a Hindu understanding of the function of Īśvara in key Hindu texts is comparable to Christian understanding of the place and Christ (his appeal to homeomorphic equivalence). Nonetheless, Panikkar’s attempt to facilitate dialogue will require considerable clarification if several important terms (Christ, Īśvara, Brahman) are not themselves to add ambiguity and even misunderstanding to discussion between Christians and Hindus. One might use the kind of language often used by Protestants (including some Evangelicals): there is continuity in terms of functional claims but an important qualifier comes to mind, that there is also discontinuity in terms of ontological assertions. Panikkar attempts to demonstrate something close to this kind of equivalence in the lengthy third and final chapter of The Unknown Christ. Although the name of Brahmabandhab Upādhyāya (1861–1907) is—astonishingly to this writer—absent from Panikkar’s major works, 148. As Boyd points out, Panikkar “tends to neglect the fact that a great many Hindus today think of Īśvara as being in fact ontologically inferior to Brahman” (Robin H. S. Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology, second edition [Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1975], 224). 149. Unknown Christ of Hinduism, first edition, 107; rev. ed., 137. 150. Boyd, An Introduction to Indian Christian Theology, 308. 151. Samartha, The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ, 140–41.

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it was his much earlier discussion of the Absolute-world relationship that has proved far more persuasive in Indian Christian thought than Panikkar’s suggestion in terms of Īśvara. Brahmabandhab employed the ancient Sanskrit category of Cit (consciousness or intelligence) to explain Christ in the way intended by Logos terminology. Brahmabandhab was a Bengali nationalist and “Hindu-Catholic” saṁnyāsī who sought to follow Hinduism as his samaj dharma (set of social obligations) but Christianity as his sadhana dharma (way of salvation and religious life). His extensive use of advaitin Hindu categories, especially those of Śaṅkara, and the strongly anti‑ecclesiastical sentiments of his later years, brought him into sharp and even bitter conflict with the hierarchy of the Indian Catholic Church. Nonetheless, among Indian Christian theologians, his creative attempt to develop the advaitin description of Brahman as Saccidānanda (and hence a description of the Trinity) has attracted considerable attention.152 PANIKKAR’S CHRISTOLOGICAL “MUTATION” A number of consequences flow from Panikkar’s de-historicized and evolving Christology. SOME CONSEQUENCES OF PANIKKAR’S PERSPECTIVISM AND REVISED UNDERSTANDING OF CHRISTOLOGICAL UNIQUENESS For example, his re-assessment of the uniqueness or ultimacy of 152. His significance in Indian theology—even among Protestants, from “progressive” to evangelical—can be gauged from a partial bibliography of their interaction with Brahmabandhab: K. P. Aleaz, “The Theological Writings of Brahmabandhav Upadyaya Re-examined,” Indian Journal of Theology 28 (1979): 55–77, The Gospel of Indian Culture (Calcutta: Punthi Pustak, 1994), 214–56, and Christian Thought through Advaita Vedanta (Delhi: ISPCK, 1996), 9–38; M. M. Thomas, The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance, 99–110; Timothy C. Tennent, Building Christianity on Indian Foundations: The Legacy of Brahmabandhav Upadhyay (Delhi: ISPCK, 2000). Among Catholics, see, for example: Antonia Fonseca, “A Prophet Disowned. Swami Upadhyaya Brahmabandhav,” Vidyajyoti 44 (1980): 177–94; Jose Vetticatil, “Brahmabandhav Upadhyaya,” Jeevadhara 17 (1987): 322–43; Julius J. Lipner, “A Case Study in ‘Hindu Catholicism’: Brahmabandhab Upadhyay (1861–1907),” Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft 72 (1988): 33–54, and Brahmabandhab Upadhyay: The Life and Thought of a Revolutionary (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).

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Christ concludes that it should be understood as a uniqueness of personal experience rather than in terms of any logical concept of uniqueness.153 Christ may rightly be called “Savior” and “the only mediator” but he is, nonetheless, “efficient and present in any authentic religion, regardless of name or form.”154 Panikkar’s clearest discussion of the uniqueness of Christ is found in his brief chapter entitled “Whose Uniqueness?” in the 1997 volume The Uniqueness of Jesus. Both here and in his earlier writings he rightly draws attention to unhelpful (especially imperial—even if unintended) dimensions of particularity or singularity; for him, “distinctiveness” is a better term than “uniqueness.”155 The result of Panikkar’s thought at this point is what Ranstrom calls a “significant and central paradigm shift” in Panikkar’s understanding of “the uniqueness and centrality of Jesus.”156 However, it must also be added that Panikkar has by no means exhausted the semantic range of “uniqueness.”157 One further reason for Panikkar’s perspectivism is his reaction to claims to uniqueness that appear to him to be absolutist, imperial and thus indefensible in a pluralist world. A number of Protestants (and Catholics) agree and offer nuanced and sympathetic agreement in terms of a move away from the supposed certainties of foundationalist epistemologies (with their hegemonistic consequences—an important part of Panikkar’s critique of uniqueness) and towards qualified and more modest restatements of central Christian claims. At the risk of over-simplifying their qualifications, it is helpful simply to list the phrases from a number of authors (most, in fact, conservative

153. Raimon Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 21. 154. Panikkar, “Inter‑Religious Dialogue: Some Principles,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 12 (1975): 409 (407–9). 155. “Whose Uniqueness?,” 112. 156. Ranstrom, “Christology after Dominus Iesus,” 2. 157. For a somewhat different elaboration of the notion of uniqueness that, like Panikkar’s discussion, is also critical of its associations with foundationalism, idealism, absoluteness and temptations to triumphalism—but without the range of diminished christological consequences found in Panikkar—see Bob Robinson, “What Exactly is Meant by the ‘Uniqueness of Christ’?—An Examination of the Phrase and Other Suggested Alternatives in the Context of Religious Pluralism,” Part one: Evangelical Review of Theology 25 (2001): 362–71; Part two: Evangelical Review of Theology 26 (2002): 76–90.

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Protestant): “critical realism”158; “modest foundationalism” (Wood)159; “proper confidence” as the only way that reality can be rightly understood (Newbigin)160; “provisional certitude” rather than the possession of supposed incontrovertible or absolute truth as an authentic Christian way (Volf)161; “bold humility” (Bosch)162; “qualified objectivity” (for example, Appleby, Hunt and Jacob)163; and “chastened realism” (Noll).164 Nonetheless, problems remain with the perspectivism advocated by Panikkar. Anselm Min asks whether Panikkar’s radical ontological pluralism (one important reason for his perspectivism so that each religion is no more than a necessarily partial, concrete and particular embodiment of the universal) “can truly preserve the uniqueness of each religion precisely in its uniqueness.” He answers that what Panikkar “fails to consider is whether some religions may be more effective as such a universal than some other religions, whether in fact some religion may be a limited yet definitive embodiment of the universal, definitive and therefore significant for all humanity in a way different from all other religions.” This is what Min calls a “third option” between the relativizing of the Christian claim to uniqueness, and the absolute force of the claim to totality (“which is the 158. Concerning critical realism, the New Testament scholar, N. T. Wright, proposes a form of critical realism that he describes as “the process of ‘knowing’ that acknowledges the reality of the thing known, as something other than the knower (hence ‘realism’), while fully acknowledging that the only access we have to this reality lies along the spiralling path of appropriate dialogue or conversation between the knower and the thing known (hence ‘critical’)” (The New Testament and the People of God, 35; original emphasis). 159. See, for example, W. Jay Wood, Epistemology: Becoming Intellectually Virtuous (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1998), 88–98. 160. J. E. Lesslie Newbigin, Proper Confidence: Faith, Doubt and Certainty in Christian Discipleship (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995). By “proper confidence” Newbigin means not Cartesian certainty and the possession of indubitable knowledge, but the confidence provided by the hearing and answering of the call of God. 161. “The Unique Christ in the Challenge of Modernity,” in The Unique Christ in Our Pluralist World, ed. Bruce J. Nicholls (Carlisle and Grand Rapids: Paternoster and Baker, 1995), 101-04. A similar position is found in Wolfhart Pannenberg in his appeal to the eschatological nature of truth whose certainty is provisional and contestable until the eschaton (Systematic Theology, vol. 1 [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991], 54). 162. As recognized in the title, Mission in Bold Humility: David Bosch’s Work Considered, eds., David Jacobus Bosch, Klippies Kritzinger, Willem Saayman, J.J. Kritzinger, (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1996). 163. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth about History, 259. 164. Noll, Jesus Christ and the Life of the Mind, 84.

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prerogative of the divine”): “a partial yet definitive view of the whole, partial because historically limited but definitive because personally united with the divine Word and therefore endowed with the universal or ‘absolute’ significance of the divine itself.”165 This, along with the kind of modest epistemic claims just mentioned, can be defended as a balanced re-statement of traditional Christology over against Panikkar’s revisions. Two further consequences (and implied critiques of Panikkar) relate to Christian praxis and inter-religious dialogue. The first of these is the claim by Ramachandra that it is the Christian assignation of ultimacy to Jesus that “safeguards some of the legitimate concerns of contemporary Asian theologians.”166 In a rather pointed elaboration by Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen of one of these concerns, he writes that “[u]nlike the major Asian religions, Christianity . . . takes seriously the cause of the poor, fully endorses the equality of all persons created in the image of God, and celebrates humility and self-sacrificial life and service, among other things.”167 On the one hand we note a shared concern with Panikkar’s misgivings about “Christianity” and “Christendom” (as historically and still potentially oppressive, exploitative and hegemonistic). But we have also noted Panikkar’s failure to affirm the critical and prophetic dimensions of the Jesus of the gospels as the inspiration for Christian social analysis, critique and praxis. The need of such a critique, and its absence in Panikkar, is implied in the appeal of Hans Küng—significantly, after a mostly sympathetic appraisal of Panikkar—to “the concrete Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount and the Way of the Cross, whom many Hindus greatly respect as a revelation of perfect inwardness and unique closeness to God.”168 These inadequacies are compounded by what we have seen to be Panikkar’s transition from a link to a symbol Christology: a progression from an earlier tangible Christology and inclusivism to a later and more abstract Christophany and radical pluralism. 165. Min, “Loving without Understanding”: 72–73 (original emphasis). 166. Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission, 216. 167. Kärkkäinen, An Introduction to the Theology of Religions, 340. 168. Küng, Christianity and the World Religions, 280; and see the wider discussion of the point in 280–82.

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Moreover, despite Parappally’s assertion (already noted above) that an emphasis on the historical Jesus “cannot take us very far in dialogue nor can it explain his real significance to the hearers,” Panikkar’s revised Christology can actually be seen as an impediment to inter-faith communication. This is because there are distinct advantages to be gained from a concrete christological focus in the inter-religious encounter rather than from appeals to “God” or “Spirit.” These advantages are especially apparent in discourse with, for example, most Hindus and with some Buddhists and with some followers of the “new spirituality” in the West, for whom the categories of “God” or “Spirit” can be construed in a multitude of convenient ways.169 It can also be argued that it is the person of Jesus that, more effectively than any other aspect of Christianity, enables the Christian “word” to be understood. It is the person and message of Jesus as remembered in the Gospels—including its critical and prophetic components—then that ought to play the central role in communicating the Christian message across cultural boundaries. This is because (to use a helpful metaphor deployed by Mark Heim) “people cross the membranes between different cultures more effectively than ideas or concepts do,”170 and so to focus upon Jesus is to help enable a determining measure of Christian belief and praxis to take an appropriately central place in the discussion. It is interesting to note that Panikkar makes a related appeal: “[m]ost of the apparently more neutral symbols such as God, Spirit, Truth and the like truncate reality and limit the centre of life to a disincarnate principle, a non-historical epiphany, and often an abstraction,”171 which makes the diminishing place of Jesus in Panikkar’s evolving Christology all the more disappointing given that it is the gospels’ witness to Jesus that could most effectively allay the concern he expresses. Re-engagement with apostolicity is a further strategy that has received some recent attention in Protestant circles and could also be 169. This is not to overlook the ways in which an appeal to Christ—especially an abstract Christ discontinuous with Jesus—can be similarly misused; but that is further reason to affirm the concrete example of the person of Jesus. 170. S. Mark Heim, “The Pilgrim Christ: Some Reflections on Theocentric Christology and Enculturation,” in Christian Faith and Multiform Culture in India, ed., Somen Das, (Bangalore: UTC Publications, 1987), 119; see also 123. 171. Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 27.

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employed to engage the disquiet of Panikkar and others about the hegemonic dynamics of some theology from the global north. The most recent example is provided by a New Zealand theologian, John Flett, in his Apostolicity: The Ecumenical Question in World Christian Perspective.172 He acknowledges that this fourth classic mark of the Catholic Church has an appropriate intention: the desire to facilitate ecclesial unity by means of a discernible continuity in doctrinal terms. Nonetheless, a problem can and does arise when the supposed substance of apostolicity is conceived as a doctrinal continuity to be expressed (and judged acceptable or not) in terms of the historicalcultural-linguistic expressions of the Great Tradition as formulated in the global north. The solution, Flett argues, is to understand apostolicity in christological terms: the intention to conform to Christ rather than to replicate doctrine expressed in cultural and structural forms inherited from the global north. In other words, apostolicity is an irruptive process of faithfulness toward Jesus Christ within one part of the church Catholic—a movement that might or might not express itself in terms of the theological, missional and ecclesial culture that brought the gospel to that place. Panikkar’s call for a second Jerusalem Council was greeted rather coolly at the beginning of this chapter. But, given the encounter between the Jerusalem and the gentile churches in Acts 15 in which the Gentiles were not expected to become Jewish first, but allowed to remain Gentiles, Flett concludes that apostolicity as a culturally pluriform rather than uniform dynamic expresses a more fully christological notion of unity that meets the intentions of apostolic fidelity. And, of course, such an understanding goes some way towards meeting Panikkar’s concerns about euro-centric expressions of faith and praxis becoming the de facto norms for catholicity. Moreover, the kind of apostolicity suggested by Flett expresses and maintains the considered and settled conviction of many Protestants and Catholics that, as already noted, the “normativeness and ultimacy of Jesus Christ in God’s salvific dealings with his world . . . is intrinsic to Christian praxis and selfunderstanding.”173 172. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2016, as part of its “Missiological Engagement” series. 173. Vinoth Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission, 216 (original emphasis).

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PANIKKAR’S CLAIMS: UNRECOGNIZABLE BY ADHERENTS? A METHODOLOGICAL INCONSISTENCY? Panikkar’s methodology may also risk alienating the adherents of other faiths. Panikkar’s starting point in part III of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism—when he comes to offer a concrete example of the encounter of Christianity with Hinduism—is a detailed analysis and commentary upon a complex philosophical text (Brahma-Sūtra I, 1, 2). It is an example far‑removed from his own repeated emphasis upon the centrality of the existential component of a fruitful meeting over against the use of philosophical categories to express the concepts of God and the Absolute that do differ widely between and even within both the Hindu and Christian traditions.174 Panikkar believes the cosmotheandric Mystery is common to all the religions even if beliefs are tradition-specific though he has advocated “cross-fertilization” between these beliefs.175 He calls for dialogue leading beyond static doctrines to deeper self-understanding;176 and, as already noted, common ground (actual or potential) is much more likely to be found in shared “religious” experience.177 Nonetheless, a question can still be asked about whether adherents of the religions would recognize their own beliefs and practices in what Panikkar is advocating as the cosmotheandric vision? (Some aspects of what Panikkar describes as their present beliefs would be unrecognized by them—not to mention those religions, including Judaism and Islam, that are barely mentioned at all.) Despite the range of agreement with aspects of Panikkar’s cosmotheandric vision disclosed in the previous chapter, much of it also might be described as unrecognizable by actual adherents of the religions. (His claims about a ubiquitous triadic structure to reality—cosmotheandrism functioning as a form of Trinitarian or triadic metaphysics—are 174. For example, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, first edition, 5; rev. ed., 36, where he contrasts the “deeper” existential level at which Hinduism and Christianity actually do meet with the merely doctrinal or intellectual. 175. See his The Intrareligious Dialogue. 176. See his “Foreword: The Ongoing Dialogue,” in Hindu-Christian Dialogue, ix–xviii. 177. The previous chapter noted the experiential component of Panikkar’s distinctive epistemology and its centrality in, for example, his Trinity and the Religious Experience of Mankind, Christophany: the Fullness of Man, and The Cosmotheandic Experience.

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an example of such speculation.178) This is Komulainen’s conclusion as well; he has “doubts whether many Christians would be familiar with Christianity as transformed according to Panikkar’s standards.”179 Although George Sumner does not have Panikkar precisely in mind, his critique also has some relevance as he concludes that pluralists “do not take seriously what practitioners of religions say they believe and think they are doing. . . . When a pluralist claims to see behind the mere phenomena of religion to the universal object of the transcendent, one detects a whiff of paternalism.”180 If Panikkar’s theories about religion and the religions are unrecognizable to adherents of the religions, this does seem to point to a serious methodological flaw in his analysis of the phenomena of religion. SOME CONCLUSIONS ABOUT PANIKKAR’S CHRISTOLOGY As we have seen, there are some shared reasons for Protestant agreement with aspects of Panikkar’s determination to move the framing of christological understanding beyond the Jordan and beyond the Tiber. However, it is Panikkar’s apparent resolve also to move Christology beyond the person of Jesus that remains highly problematical for many Protestants and other Christians; attention now turns to what appears to be a key motivation for Panikkar. A PRESCRIPTIVE SHIFT TO CERTAIN FORMS OF INDIANNESS As noted in the previous chapter, Panikkar’s goal is “to move from a tribal Christology into a Christophany less bound to a single cultural current.”181 For Protestants, that desire, in itself, is not a problem. Nor need there be an issue in Panikkar’s wish to contextualize the Christian tradition within India; this is, of course, a long-advocated means 178. See the summary and analysis by Erik in his chapter three above. 179. Komulainen, “Raimon Panikkar’s Cosmotheandrism”: 299. 180. Sumner, The First and the Last: The Claim of Jesus Christ and the Claims of Other Religious Traditions (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 2–3. 181. Raimon Panikkar, Christophany, 162.

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of universalizing Christian faith and praxis. However, the issues run much deeper for him because he sees himself as “at the confluence . . . of the four rivers: Hindu, Christian, Buddhist and Secular traditions.”182 He changes the analogy somewhat when he names the rivers as the Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges and he broadly links them with Christian exclusivism, imperial expansion into inclusivism, and an emerging pluralism, respectively. He also names the three positions—“Christianity,” “Christendom,” and “Christianness”—and by this third term he intends, in his later writings, a deep mystical awareness of what he calls “christic self-consciousness.”183 What has come to be labelled Christianity “is a cultural construct, inescapably bound to Western history and culture.”184 In Panikkar’s opinion, only the category “Christianness” is appropriate for a pluralist world.185 Moreover, he explicitly links this “Christianness” with a preference for neo-Hindu spirituality when he observes that “it is not without a deep and prophetic intuition that much of neo-Hindu spirituality speaks in this way of ‘christic awareness’.”186 Such christophany redeems Christ from the limitations of time and space and the particularizations of dogmas, including any appeal to a divinely-initiated “salvation history” and, it seems, the supposedly severe limitations of dependence upon the person and the place of Jesus. Panikkar’s appeal to Indian categories of expression might amount to no more than a defensible appeal for an appropriate contextualization of Christian faith in India while acknowledging the constant 182. Raimon Panikkar, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., x. 183. Panikkar, Christophany, 175. 184. Ibid., 173. Or, as Erik puts it, Panikkar is highly critical of “‘Mediterranean’ influences that have had a deleterious and pathological influence on Christian spirituality and theology.” (Ranstrom, “Christology after Dominus Iesus,” 4–5.) 185. Panikkar appeals to the example of Paul at Athens (in Acts 17) where Paul draws on Hellenistic philosophy and then asks whether the discovery of Śaṅkara and Rāmānuja as least as important for Christian theology today as was the assimilation of Plato and Aristotle in the past (Unknown Christ of Hinduism, 137; rev. ed., 167; cf. Christophany, 85). The same kind of point is made, and often, in most of his major works. 186. Panikkar, Trinity and the Religious Experience of Man, 54; see also Unknown Christ, rev. ed., 47, 52. In another context he concedes that his pluralism may be traced to Hinduism (Panikkar, Intercultural Challenge, 264). This seems, in turn, to relate to his belief that because “Christ” is present in all things, everything is a manifestation of the Logos; “every being is a Christophany” (“The Jordan, the Tiber and the Ganges,” in The Myth of Christian Uniqueness, 114, original emphasis). But it is also important to note Panikkar’s reference to neo-Hinduism; Erik spells out some of the ways in which Panikkar’s is not classical Hinduism in his ch. three above: “Cosmotheandrism and Hinduism.”

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possibility of the unintended “surplus meaning” (to use Paul Ricoeur’s well-known caution) that seems always liable to accompany faith and praxis imported from another context. Nor is Panikkar’s appeal to Hindu categories an uncritical one187 (though it is, in places, factually doubtful188. And even entirely prescriptive; for example in his statement that “Hinduism is the starting-point of a religion that culminates in Christianity.”189). Moreover, the prescriptive shift to Indianness might be the reason why Panikkar almost always seems intentionally to omit, or dismiss, reference to either Judaism or Islam in his discussion of issues from an inter-religious perspective (as seen, for example, in Panikkar’s rejection of “elective” foundations for supposed universality noted above).190 These comments about Indianness are not intended to reinforce the long and audible history of suspicion—formal and informal, Christian and even (nationalist) Hindu—of liturgical and theological attempts at contextualization and inculturation in the Indian church (including occasional Vatican disapproval)191 even though there can be no doubt about official Catholic commitment to an appropriate level of inculturation.192 187. For example, concerning the supposedly foundational role of the Vedas for “orthodox” Hinduism. Panikkar argues that it is not only modern Hinduism that has suffered from a lack of exposure to the Vedas but also the classical tradition which has neglected them: “It is simply a pious exaggeration to say that Hinduism and Indian philosophy are directly nurtured by the Vedas and are a continuation of the Vedic spirit. In hardly any other culture in the world has the fountainhead been paid more lip service but received less real attention. It is a well-known fact, long recognized and now confirmed by recent studies, that Indian philosophical systems, not only the nastikas, that is the so-called heterodox ones, but also the most orthodox ones, have drawn very few of their reflections from the Vedas.” (Panikkar, The Vedic Experience. Mantramanjari: An Anthology of the Vedas for Modern Man and Contemporary Celebration [Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1987], 14.) 188. Klaus Klostermaier points out a rather large number of factual errors in Unknown Christ, ranging from “many minor but sometimes disturbing mistakes in Sanskrit quotations” (“Raymond Panikkar’s The Unknown Christ of Hinduism,” 72) and what appear to be rather substantial misunderstandings of philological aspects of Vedic and later Hinduism upon which key elements of Panikkar’s christological argumentation depends (73). 189. Raimon Panikkar, Unknown Christ, first edition, 58. 190. Does the near-complete and puzzling omission of any mention of Judaism in Panikkar’s many publications constitute a form of supersessionism: Judaism, and even Christianity and Islam, as superseded by advaitin Vedanta? A rather rare engagement with Judaism—the material associated with n. 122 above—seems to display a critical and even dismissive edge in its tone. 191. Documentation may be found in the section “Towards an Indian theology and inculturated church,” in chap. 3 of Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus. 192. See the balanced summary of progress in Jacob Kavunkal, “Mission as Inculturation,” Vidyajyoti 63 (1999): 860–69.

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ECUMENICAL ATTENTION TO OTHER SOUTH ASIAN THEOLOGIANS A further response to some of the problematical aspects of Panikkar’s Christology might potentially be found in the thought of south Asian Protestant theologians, some of whom were writing at the same time that Panikkar was most profoundly engaged with Hinduism. Our response to Panikkar has already mentioned a number of Protestant discussions in India that traversed some of the same issues explored by Panikkar, and I cannot avoid asking whether Panikkar’s thought would have been enriched or challenged if he had interacted with them in some way. The first edition of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism begins its lengthy twenty-six-part bibliography with a section entitled “Ecumenism” but its twelve items (including one listing ecumenical journals) do not include a single Indian source and it is disappointing to notice how little Panikkar seems aware of or interacts with the thought of non-Catholic theologians in India at a time (especially during the 1960s and 1970s) when Indian Protestant scholars were formulating a christological evaluation of the religions (including Panikkar’s writings). Mention has already been made of, for example, Paul Devanandan (1901–1962),193 Stanley Samartha (1920–2001) and M. M. Thomas (1916–1996), who were well-established as academic writers and deeply engaged with many of the issues about which Panikkar wrote.194 Reference to their thought is almost completely absent from Panikkar’s writings, perhaps because he was pre-occupied with his own creative advocacy of the “wider ecumenism.” Of course, the reverse absence is also found (although there is some Protestant attention paid to Catholic

193. See, for example, his The Gospel and Renascent Hinduism. IMC Research Pamphlets (London: SCM, 1959); Christian Concern in Hinduism (Bangalore: Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society, 1961); Christian Issues in Southern Asia (New York: Friendship Press, 1963). 194. Apart from one entry (citing Devanandan’s The Concept of Maya), their names are absent from the 24 page bibliography that accompanies the first edition of Unknown Christ of Hinduism and from the names index and shorter bibliography in the revised edition where three works of Robin Boyd are mentioned, though without any discernible interaction with them in Panikkar’s text.

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discussion) and both sides reflect the distinctly under-developed state of ecumenical relations in India in the 1960s. Much of Panikkar’s thought in the 1980s and 1990s (and beyond) moves well beyond the Indian and Hindu contexts of The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, but it remains a pity that the opportunity for a mutually complementary (or even corrective) engagement and dialogue is missed. Although two of the better-known and more substantial Protestant works—Samartha’s The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ195 and Thomas’s The Acknowledged Christ of the Indian Renaissance196—were published after the time of Panikkar’s years in India (into the 1960s), Samartha and Thomas were active in Indian theological circles and their two volumes each contain an interactive critique of Panikkar’s The Unknown Christ.197 These Indian theologians attend to two of Panikkar’s concerns: Samartha discusses the role and status of history in Indian and Hindu contexts; M. M. Thomas writes about long-standing Indian interest in Christ and also the significance of the “secular.” Both in their own ways react to excessive deference to the notion of the “spiritual” Indian persona—and in a manner that could be seen as a critique of the kinds of spirituality embraced by Panikkar and his followers. Samartha became well-known, globally, for his advocacy of inter-faith dialogue in a pluralist world;198 given Panikkar’s own interest in both radical pluralism and dialogue, a fruitful comparison of their approaches is possible. Samartha is critical of aspects of Panikkar’s thought; his preference is to speak of the “unbound” Christ and to describe the ways in which this Christ is not exclusively bound to “Christianity” even though there is an indissoluble link between 195. Madras: Christian Literature Society, 1974. 196. London: SCM, 1969. 197. Although Thomas does seem to distance himself from such a suggestion; he only describes his book as “a parallel” to Panikkar’s Unknown Christ (x) and that Panikkar’s volume “has gained wide acceptance among scholars,” (327) even if Thomas does not seem to include himself among them. 198. See, for example, his Courage for Dialogue: Ecumenical Issues in Interreligious Relationships (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1982); One Christ—Many Religions (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1991)—each formulated and refined during Samartha’s years from 1968 with the World Council of Churches, especially from 1971–1980 as (first) Director of the subunit “Dialogue with People of Living Faiths and Ideologies,” with his preceding years in India visible in the content of these and other writings.

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them—over against what Samartha considers to be the rather condescending way in which Panikkar speaks of an “unknown” encounter with Christ.199 And, quite apart from the specific contributions of Devanandan, Samartha and Thomas, there were other significant developments in Indian Protestant thought during the 1970s that offer potentially fruitful areas of engagement with Panikkar’s writings.200 RUPTURE WITH THE SCRIPTURAL AND CONCILIAR TRADITIONS—OR NECESSARY MUTATION? Panikkar’s writings offer considerable evidence of a break with the Great Tradition of Christianity.201 How might a Protestant respond? One reaction might be to claim that the Great Tradition is not to be construed as immune to criticism or refinement.202 It has become something of a Protestant mantra to insist that ecclesia reformata et semper reformanda—the reformed church is always reforming; so, theologia reformata et semper reformanda—reformed theology is always reforming, and to see the principle as applying to the Catholic Church. And Panikkar himself perhaps offers explicit evidence of his own concern with the issue with the very opening sub-headings of 199. Stanley J. Samartha, The Hindu Response to the Unbound Christ, 10, 139–42; see also his “The Unknown Christ Made Better Known: A Review Article,” Religion and Society 30, no. 1 (March 1983): 52–61. 200. For example: interest in cosmic Christology that emphasized its transcendent starting point over against Panikkar’s emphasis on the immanent and interior; a well-informed series of initiatives intended to rework the whole of Christology in distinctly Indian categories; a determined interest in the “Little Traditions” of Hinduism (that offers a marked contrast with Panikkar’s preoccupation with the “Great” (brahminical / Sanskritic) tradition. For an outline and analysis of these Protestant initiatives, see Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus, chapter 1. 201. As Ranstrom puts it, “Panikkar’s rupture with the scriptural and conciliar tradition is quite transparent” and is the result of “a selective and distortive scriptural hermeneutic that extracted or diluted the impact of Jesus from key New Testament texts” (“Christology after Dominus Iesus,” 6). 202. For Protestants used to the axiom “scripture or tradition,” reassurance can be found in Edith M. Humphrey, Scripture and Tradition: What the Bible Really Says (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2013). Relatively recent Protestant (and other) interest in Wirkungsgeschichte, reception history [of Scripture], is another indication of a determination not to privilege individualistic reading of Scripture and one example of its application (by a Professor of Reformed Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary) is found in John L. Thompson, Reading the Bible with the Dead: What You Can Learn from the History of Exegesis That You Can't Learn from Exegesis Alone (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007).

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The Unknown Christ of Hinduism written as “Traditum: The Burden of the Past”—followed by “Tradendum: The Challenge of the Future.”203 Much, then, depends upon an assessment of the Great Tradition. Even its more conservative defenders are rarely found denying that some adjustments of language, style and even content are called for from time to time. But when does refinement become rupture? Although Panikkar does not explicitly reject the Great Tradition, he does argue that one reason for the dialogue that flows from his radical pluralism is the need to escape from rigidly monocultural expressions of religion: “only by cross-fertilization and mutual fecundation may the present state of affairs be overcome; only by stepping over present cultural and philosophical boundaries can Christian life again become creative and dynamic.”204 Panikkar attaches considerable importance to the possibility of the “mutations” that result; he sees these as part of the authentic process of religious growth.205 In 1979, for example, he could write that “we are on the brink of a mutation in human civilization that no religious tradition is any longer capable of sustaining the burden of the present-day human predicament and guiding Man in the ‘sea of life’.”206 The advocacy of a cooperative attitude across religious boundaries, especially towards issues of “Justice, Peace and the Integrity of Creation” (to use a World Council of Churches formulation from the 1990s), is one that—apart from some fundamentalist suspicion and dissent—is not a problem for Protestants. And when Panikkar writes that “[n]ew dogmas, renewed formulations of old ones, real evolution and progress are constant features of Christianity” this might well be heard as the advocacy of a contextualized faith and praxis that, for example, most Indian Protestantd are entirely comfortable with.207 But when, in the same context, he goes on to add that “nobody knows how Christianity will look should the present Christian waters unite with those of other religions where 203. Jacques Dupuis, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 1: the headings are for 1–20 and 20–30 with the meanings “that which has been delivered” and “that which needs to be delivered.” The latter heading implies a certain discontinuity with the past. 204. Panikkar, The Intra-Religious Dialogue, 61. 205. Ibid., 70–72. 206. “Introduction” (portion dated 1979) to Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 25. 207. See, for example, the relevant sections of Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus, chapters two and three.

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the peoples of the future will quench their thirst for truth, for goodness, for salvation,”208 or when he writes that a major reason for the “dialogical dialogue” he advocates is that for “a truly crosscultural religious understanding we need a new revelatory experience,”209 then there is likely to be dissent from many Protestants about such wording. Panikkar’s apparent determination to move Christology beyond both “the Jordan” and the person of Jesus does seem to explain the near-complete absence of Jesus of Nazareth from the later additions to or revisions of Panikkar’s huge body of writing. Part of the problem in any assessment and critique of Panikkar is the ambiguity in his writing because of the evolving nature of his thought (as we have repeatedly noted). For example, in his summative Christophany, he indicates that, for his understanding of Christ, his “point of departure lies in traditional Christology.” But he then goes on to claim that his christophany “traces itself to those profound intuitions of traditional Christology which it does not replace but, on the contrary, prolongs and deepens in fields hitherto unexplored and proposes new perspectives.”210 From the spatial images of this method, it remains unclear whether he intends continuity with the Great Tradition or some kind of decisive discontinuity; how decisive and final is the “departure” of which he writes? Or is there a temporary or interim departure from the traditional past—as he also seems to suggest?211 As well, our discussion has also noted the fairly widespread criticism of the meagre attention given by Panikkar to the cross of Christ as a decisive moment in world history. Ramachandra, writing as a south Asian theologian, responds to the role of history in Panikkar’s work by affirming that it is through the death and resurrection of Jesus that “we are not only led to affirm the value of all human history but brought into a radically new relationship with the ground 208. Jacques Dupuis, Unknown Christ of Hinduism, rev. ed., 55. 209. Panikkar, “Some Words Instead of a Response,” in Cross-Currents 29:2 (Summer, 1979): 195. 210. Raimon Panikkar, Christophany, 5, 10. 211. For example when he writes that the future meeting point for “cross-fertilization and mutual fecundation” necessary to overcome present religious impasses is “neither my house nor the mansion of my neighbour, but the crossroads outside the walls, where we may eventually decide to put up a tent—for the time being.” (The Intra-Religious Dialogue, 61.)

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and goal of that history.”212 Some of Panikkar’s misgivings about traditional affirmations of particularity and uniqueness are warranted—especially when they derive from or generate hegemonistic attitudes (ecclesial, colonial and other) and assumptions about epistemic absolutism. But we have also found his own preference—a reductionist Christology deployed in existential and perspectivist categories—to be inadequate. Several solutions have been suggested in this chapter, including a more modest and balanced set of affirmations about faith and history, and the transparent acknowledgement of the unavoidable entanglements of history and theology in discourse about the Jesus of the gospels. Some of Panikkar’s anxieties about traditional Christian affirmations of universality are warranted but a response to this “scandal of particularity” that also includes a decisive place for Jesus is also available. Our brief discussion of apostolicity has indicated a further way in which Panikkar’s concerns about Western cultural hegemony might be met. And our analysis has also sounded a note of regret that Panikkar, for whatever reason, was not able to enter into an ecumenical dialogue, especially with notable south Asian Protestants whose academic and inter-faith interests somewhat overlapped with his. In the words of my co-author’s summary, “The later Panikkar wandered quite far from mainstream Christian theology but remained in many ways christocentric. Intuitively he seemed to understand the central role of Christology in all theological re-flection but would eventually conclude that the venerable Christian christological tradition should be transcended.”213 I agree with that conclusion.

212. Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission, 84. 213. Ranstrom, “Christology after Dominus Iesus,” 4. Erik also mentions the frequent tendency on Panikkar’s part “to equivocate the doctrine in question and to replace, rather than reinterpret it.” (chapter 3 above.)

6. A Concluding Dialogue about Panikkar between the Authors ERIK RANSTROM AND BOB ROBINSON

GENERAL RESPONSE FROM ERIK There were more than several instances in the preceding chapters of recognizing in the style and sensibility of a colleague from the Protestant tradition an echo of my own perspective, although I will save ecumenical insights for the next sections. Bob’s well-formulated summary of the objections against christocentrism as a theological method neatly encapsulates what I, and others, see as a widespread cultural aversion to the living heart of the Great Tradition. It is incumbent upon theologians whose task comes forth from the corporate identity of the church to theologize in such a way as to draw others towards the Person who is the “joy of every human heart,”1 and whose joy Paul was referring to when he preached to the Lystrans that God had “not left himself without witness” among the diverse peoples of the Earth (Acts 14:17). Panikkar, at his best, was such a figure; he boldly, yet gently and convincingly, shared with others his seeing Christ in all things, especially in the phenomena of religious plurality. Panikkar is a model for honoring the intelligent 1. Gaudium et Spes 45, http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_const_19651207_gaudium-et-spes_en.html.

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and just objections against christocentrism that you describe above, upholding the positive values (such as a healthy respect for diversity) those objections seek to protect, while at the same time witnessing to the super-abundance of the Christ-event in Jesus and in the world. Quite helpfully, in my view, he also transcends the socio-political connotations that frequently entangle the theological project mindful of these concerns. Panikkar’s generous christocentrism flows above all from a contemplative experience of the christic mystery throughout a broad range of religious manifestations. That Panikkar could do this, as we both agree, with an astonishingly high Christology, is a remarkable achievement and an indispensable resource for future theology. Clearly, Panikkar should not be counted among those theologians who dilute the Tradition’s maximalist claims about Christ for the sake of a rapprochement with modernity and religious pluralism. What further distinguishes Panikkar from others like Paul Knitter and John Hick besides a high Christology is theological method, where he is strikingly premodern. Prayer and contemplation often seems to be the source of his theology. In my estimation, Panikkar’s enduring value for Western theology resides not only in his theological commitment to Christ, but also in the way that this commitment is interwoven with his contemplative approach to global religious and cultural experience. Besides moving beyond a fideism to scripture and tradition, Panikkar avoids the dangers and pitfalls of other species of christocentrism on account of his suspicion of the use of the modern logos, and the sophianic, prayerful atmosphere of his work. As he writes in The Rhythm of Being, “the theological method, therefore is not demonstration . . . but ‘monstration’ to show the splendor of the ‘truth’ by polishing both the view and the viewer.”2 This links certain elements of Panikkar’s work with the Great Tradition, from its patristic mystagogical theologies to the monastic traditions, of whose texts Panikkar made ample use. Of course, there are critical remarks to offer as well, and I find myself in agreement with Bob’s contention that Panikkar’s Christology tends towards idealism and abstraction. This is one of 2. Panikkar, Rhythm of Being, 207.

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many tensions in Panikkar’s thought; on the one hand, aspects of his vision of Christ are deeply contemplative and praxis-based, but on the other hand, his Christology often suffers from a reliance on metaphysics and abstruse mystical speculation, at times nearly disconnected from the faith of the public church. The Christ-Jesus distinction is emblematic of the latter. It is unclear what this christological qualification means to Panikkar. He writes about it with a presumed air of familiarity as if he is reminding the Great Tradition of a classical distinction in the lineage of “person” and “nature,” when, in reality that is not the case. A survey of the ecumenical councils and creeds, in fact, reveals that it was precisely to defend and uphold the apostolic faith that Jesus alone is Lord that philosophical categories and christological distinctions were placed into service. On the contrary, Panikkar’s distinction between Christ and Jesus muddles the christological soteriological grammar and subtly undermines the apostolic faith found in Scripture, where, as Bob maintained, “the apostle explicitly states that it is, in fact, the name of Jesus that God has exalted ‘above every name’.” Soteriology may be a key to this entire problematic. Except for some brief, but cryptic, allusions to Jesus of Nazareth in the first edition of the Unknown Christ of Hinduism, Panikkar’s Christology of Hinduism is rooted in the cosmic Christ present in and through creation, and is almost completely shorn of soteriology. The chapter “God and the World” is concerned with the christological contribution to the metaphysical problem of the Infinite and its relation to the contingent. This philosophical lens, again, is employed with a near absence of soteriology, and only cryptic mentions of redemption. Panikkar glosses several lines from the Nicene Creed from an abstract, philosophical perspective, even as the creedal language Panikkar glosses (“true God of true God”) was quite explicitly concerned with salvation in Jesus. This narrowly scholastic approach to theology, somewhat isolated from the soteriological narrative of the kerygmatic proclamation, is not unique to Panikkar but reflects the pre-Vatican II intellectual climate of his early formation (he was ordained in 1946). Ironically, it appears to me that Panikkar’s thought is more consistent with this highly metaphysical pre-conciliar

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theological context than that of the Second Vatican Council, whose texts were marked by a turn away from Thomistic metaphysical categories towards a phenomenology of ecclesial faith-encounter with the Triune God. As conciliar and post-conciliar theology was emphasizing the centrality of the economic Trinity in salvationhistory at the expense of preoccupation with the metaphysics of de deo uno and de deo triuno, Panikkar remained in many ways preconciliar in his preference for abstract, philosophical theology. This, combined with his syncretistic advaita leanings, created an ironic situation in which Panikkar was often enlisted as an interreligious pioneer in the spirit of Vatican II, but with a Christology oddly denuded of important strands of conciliar teaching. This lack in soteriology may also be connected to a further issue Bob raised: the scant attention given by Panikkar, beyond general warnings about the lack of a contemplative approach to life in the West, to what David Brockman, Anselm Min, and Gerard Hall each identified as the insidious elements of religion. Perhaps this can be attributed, directly or indirectly, to another issue Bob raises: Panikkar’s insufficient consideration to the Jesus of the synoptic tradition, whose ministry included, among many other things—exorcisms. Finally, I would like to return to Bob’s stated preference for a Jesuscentered approach to a Christian theology and praxis of inter-religious dialogue. He recommends Mark Heim’s assertion that “people cross the membranes of cultures more effectively than ideas or concepts do,” and with this quotation, I am reminded of Bob’s own important work Jesus and the Religions: Retrieving a Neglected Example for a Multi-Cultural World. My question is, is there a certain weakness in the later Panikkar’s idealistic and abstract approach to religious identity and dialogue when contrasted with the deeply incarnational approach of the Gospels that you highlight in your book? You may also recall from chapter one that the early Panikkar made use of the synoptics and Jesus’s ministry, particularly his submission to baptism by John, as a key for understanding how the church is to live interreligiously. By thinning out a Jesus-centered Christology of dialogue, does the later Panikkar lose a valuable resource in reflecting upon the ministry of Jesus as the point of departure for Christians

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in dialogue? Does the example of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth better flesh out what Panikkar is hinting at through more speculative processes? Or, more pointedly: how human is the Christ of cosmotheandrism? GENERAL RESPONSE FROM BOB Let me offer a few introductory remarks and then comment on Erik’s dialogue with my chapters. I have been reading Panikkar for the past thirty or so years but always in an occasional and piecemeal way with reflection on Panikkar as a small part of larger doctoral and then other teaching and writing projects. So, to be guided expertly by Erik across somewhat familiar terrain, and to have that familiarity deepened by his research into the early Panikkar—accessible only in his Spanish (and German) corpus—has been deeply satisfying. I’m sure that this will be the experience of other readers of Panikkar as well. Several issues seem especially significant in Erik’s chapters. There is the way in which, as he puts it, Panikkar’s early writing (especially in “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisedec”) “evidences a deep congruency with the christological priorities of the unique and salvific mystery of the person of Christ.” I warmed to the way in which Panikkar displays what appears to be a pleasing dialectical balance and harmony between creation and redemption, sin and grace, proclamation and dialogue, and the cosmic and historical dimensions of Christology. These are on display in the first edition of The Unknown Christ and triggered my interest in Panikkar. Erik also provides a much clearer picture of the evolution of Panikkar’s thought than I could articulate. For example, in Erik’s third chapter with its description and analysis of “the shift in Panikkar’s personal and ecclesial context, particularly his ‘exile’ to India from Rome and dismissal from Opus Dei, and its impact on his later Christology,” he both outlines and analyzes this shift with a well-documented clarity that I’ve not seen elsewhere in the slowly growing body of Panikkar studies. Readers of Panikkar everywhere are in Erik’s debt because of this, especially if it helps to counter the tendency among some devoted followers of Panikkar (that I imagine you have also noticed) to adopt syn-

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chronic readings that flatten the contours of Panikkar’s often convoluted thought processes and obscure the changes in his thought. I also share Erik’s concern about where the evolution of Panikkar’s thought leaves his Christology (and other dimensions of his theology) when measured against what Erik nicely calls “the living heart” of the Great Tradition (and I return to the Tradition below). While my appreciative chapter warmed to the mystical and experiential currents in Panikkar’s epistemology in general, Erik’s work has made clear the origins of these streams. Students in my part of the world grasp this dimension of Panikkar because they are postmodern rather than as heirs of the rich mystical tradition of Christianity. And Erik’s closer familiarity with the evolution of Panikkar enables a more precise and deeper critique of the near absence of soteriology from, say, the middle and later Panikkar. I certainly note the absence but he is more precise and detailed and better documented because of his diachronic account of Panikkar’s thought (even though, as we have noted, it is not always easy to discern the origin of a given shift of thought given the mix of translation—into and out of a variety of languages—and publication dates). Erik kindly refers to my Jesus and the Religions and asks several questions from it about Panikkar. (In fact, an early draft of my contribution to our volume had me suggesting my volume as something of a corrective to Panikkar’s de-historicized Jesus but then modesty intruded, and I decided against mentioning it.) What Erik implies is correct; his description of “Panikkar’s idealistic and abstract approach to religious identity and dialogue” does markedly contrast with my method. Although he summarizes my perspective in the book as “deeply incarnational,” I’m actually appealing to the full, kenotic humanity of an exemplary Christology (yes, the pre-Easter Jesus with all the associated issues deriving from the ‘theologized history’ of the Gospels) to make the point that the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth meets much of what Panikkar seems to desire in terms of inter-religious meeting shorn of the imperial and hegemonistic dynamics often attached to later Christology and mission across religious boundaries. What I argue is that the encounters of the Jesus of the Gospels with the Gentiles and Samaritans of his day (and

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their place in his teaching) are surprisingly instructive with a rich range of implications for dialogue that enhance and do not diminish a christocentric worldview. My (tediously long!) defense of historical method as a decisively important component of a balanced Christology is an attempt to point followers of any kind of Panikkarian de-historicized Christology back to the christological starting points found in Jesus of Nazareth. ECUMENICAL RESPONSE FROM ERIK There has existed the stereotype that Protestant theology on the conservative side of the spectrum is constrained merely to polemicize the kind of pluralist-Catholic thinking that Panikkar represents. With Bob’s appreciable engagement of Panikkar’s ideas, however, he has demonstrated that this is tacitly untrue. Furthermore, Bob and his students at Laidlaw College have drawn connections between Panikkar and Evangelical theology, and with recent trends in Protestant and Evangelical theology, we may see even more interest in figures like Panikkar in the future. What appeals to you, Bob, as a Protestant in Panikkar’s commentary on the Upper Room discourse in John’s Gospel? How does it inform your Protestant christological understanding of John’s Gospel? Following the work of the Anglican-Evangelical George Sumner, such intra-Christian diversity in the theology of religions repositions my Catholic optics on the diverse, pliable forms the Christian narrative can take in assimilating the meaning of religious plurality. Bob’s critical analysis of Panikkar’s rhetorical plea for a Jerusalem Council II is also in line with Sumner’s critique of christological narrative disfigurement. From my perspective, I wonder if Panikkar’s plea for Jerusalem II is akin to the proclamation of a new Christ, and a new Spirit? If we follow Panikkar’s phraseology closely, we find that he speaks of an “emerging religious consciousness,” new forms of “Christianness,” and the like, which tend in the direction of this thesis, and obscure the clarity of the Great Tradition’s proclamation of the New Adam. The early Panikkar, on the other hand, meets Sumner’s standard for narratival coherency with creative fidelity. One

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could make an argument that the early Panikkar was respondent to the logic and themes of the New Testament as a beacon for his work, even patterning and mimicking the rhetorical movements of Paul. In agreement with Bob’s recommendation that the cross of Christ—rather than a theory of universal religious experience—is the proper Christian ground of reconciliation between Christianity and the religions, we find in Panikkar’s meditation on Melchizedek a rich theological reflection on precisely this theme. The Incarnation of the Word, the paschal mystery of Christ crucified, and the sacramental gift of these realities actualized in the Eucharist are brought forward in the multi-faceted yet unitary event of reconciliation between the church and the religions. Jacques Dupuis was in many ways the heir of Panikkar’s later thinking and its finest translator into mainstream Catholic theology with his understanding of the inter-related but distinct economies of the Logos and Jesus. Yet, even as he reconciled with subtle precision not only Logos, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit, but also regnocentric and ecclesiocentric theologies of religions, he nevertheless was unable to situate the gift at the center of the church’s life, the Eucharist, in the midst of his inter-religious theologizing in the manner of the early Panikkar. The deeply particular realities of the Incarnation and the sacramental life of the church, oft-revised, or at the very least, heavily qualified, for their supposed impediments to a Christology of dialogue, become for the early Panikkar a site of fascinating fidelity and creativity. These deeply biblical and ecclesial themes also become the prime matter for his comparative theologizing with Hinduism in Le mystère du culte dans l’hindouisme et le christianisme. The early Panikkar constructs his theology from inside of the mystery of Christ Jesus, rather than enfolding Jesus within a christic circle whose center is outside of him. I also appreciate Bob’s critique of the all-or-nothing dynamic that looms over Panikkar’s thought. He suggests that Panikkar often draws steep conclusions to theological problems that can be responsibly addressed by less drastic solutions, perhaps ironically moving the Christian tradition even further away from other religions in the process. While it is true that Panikkar often courageously reaches beyond superficial symptoms to penetrate insightfully a deeper issue,

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there is also a lack of balance in his responses that drives his thought into untenable and isolated positions. For instance, does the alleged Western preoccupation with history as a norm for truth call for an almost exclusively trans-historical conception of reality? Does the close identity between Western culture and Christian mission in India during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries necessitate a reverse supersessionism whereby other cultural forms of the Great Tradition, including the Israelite heritage of the church, are supplanted and replaced? One possible criticism of our shared book may be that we are imposing a homogenous and tightly controlled Christian structure and overlay onto a delightfully elastic mystic, philosopher, and theologian. Yet, based upon my experience of reading Panikkar’s writings, it seems to me that in a rather ironic way, Panikkar’s thought becomes more rigid the deeper one goes into his canon. Religions and cultures, Christian and Hindu, West and East, are labeled and given fixed essences; the creative interplay and mutual flow between religions and cultures prominent in his early work is stunted and blocked by generalized polemics and romanticized encomia on the superiority of Asian culture and religion; the interreligious imagination becomes impoverished of nuance and surprise as reflections follow along predictably settled categories. Panikkar’s Christian inclusivism during his early period, as I argued, was not prohibitive of mutuality and interior conversion in the dialogue between the church and the religions but, on the contrary, a major catalyst and a just witness to the complexities of the encounter. The Catholic International Theological Commission’s 2012 document Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles, and Criteria lauded the emergence of contextualized theologies, but warned against a “certain fragmentation of theology” that compromises the unity of the church.3 In agreement with Bob’s contention that apostolicity does not necessarily equate to cultural homogeneity, the document goes on to say that “unity here needs to be carefully understood, so as not to be confused with uniformity or a single style.”4 Ultimately, the 3. International Theological Commission. Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles, and Criteria 1, http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/congregations/cfaith/cti_documents/rc_cti_doc_201111 29_teologia-oggi_en.html. 4. Ibid., 2.

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unity and catholicity of the church derives from “Christ himself who is the Saviour of the whole world and all of humanity (cf. Eph 1:3–10; 1 Tim 2:3–6), as there is “one plan of salvation centered on the one Jesus Christ,” meaning that “plurality must manifest family traits.”5 It is revealing that for the ITC it is the oneness of the Lord Jesus Christ that guarantees the unity of the church in all of its cultural manifestations. Panikkar would seek to qualify and nuance christocentric unity beyond Jesus to a trans-historical plane as a cipher for transcendence within various cultures, with the weakness that perhaps, following Bob’s critique of the uses of “God” and “Spirit” in dialogue, “Christ” “could be construed in all manner of ways.” By placing Panikkar within the catholicity and unity of the wider Great Tradition, in this case represented by the Indian Protestant Christian context, Bob shows that Panikkar was not the only theologian acknowledging these problems and that there were other responses available. Perhaps the distinctive christocentricity of Protestant theology, marked as it is by the uncompromising solas, may have been the kind of corrective necessary for Panikkar at that time. Finally, I would like to share and expound upon an intriguing gloss of Panikkar’s regarding his (in)famous dictum that “Jesus is the Christ,” but “Christ is not only Jesus.” Panikkar will write on more than one occasion that it is the risen Jesus who is the Christ, rather than the historical individual Jesus.6 This risen Christ, he maintains is the Christ present in Hinduism and the religions of the world. Such an understanding, to my mind, is entirely orthodox and consistent with the Great Tradition. The raised Jesus in his glorified body is neither limited to the coordinates of space and time, nor the limitations of a mortal body, as individuals would be, but through the Spirit, shares his inner life with all. What seems to be unclear is whether this raised Jesus in Panikkar’s later Christology is the Galilean Jew raised to Lordship, a drop in the ocean of Being, or a return to a state of non-dual immanence with all that is?7 The latter two 5. Ibid. 6. Raimon Panikkar, “The Invisible Harmony: A Universal Theory of Religion or Cosmic Confidence in Reality?,” in Towards a Universal Theology of Religions, ed. Leonard Swidler (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1987), 132–33. 7. For more on Panikkar’s eschatology, see Peter Phan, “Raimon Panikkar’s ‘Eschatology’: The unpublished chapter,” in CIRPIT Review, no. 6, 2015, 23–38.

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are notions that he hints towards in his infrequent eschatological ruminations. If, however, there is a selective retrieval of Panikkar’s thought in this regard, might there be the possibility of a Christology of religions oriented around the omnipresence of the risen Jesus among the diverse religious traditions? An emphasis on the risen Jesus, as opposed to the historical Jesus, may provide a resource for the Panikkarian emphasis which privileges faith, spiritual communication, and pliability of form and expression, including an everexpanding sense of the mystery of Christ, over exclusive attention to empirical history. If the risen Christ must be somewhat distanced from the historical Jesus or the historicity of Jesus because the latter is an impediment to the universality of the Christ-mystery, perhaps it is because Panikkar did not appropriate a sufficiently paschal imagination that presses and bursts a limited understanding of body and bodiliness, history and historicity. Is it possible that theology of religions as a whole has not allowed the un-imaginable mystery of the raised and glorified body to penetrate a sense of the mystery by which Jesus of Nazareth may be the very Christ who is the living heart of the most varied cultural and religious traditions?8 ECUMENICAL RESPONSE FROM BOB Thank you, Erik, for your kind opening words about filling a gap in Panikkar studies with the provision of some Protestant comment. There has been some engagement with Panikkar but Protestant reactions—both inside India and beyond—have been rather unenthusiastic to date. The response from the Protestant (mainly Evangelical) students that I teach is best described as one of surprise, and part of the surprise is generated by the novelty of a new encounter given how little prior acquaintance they have with contemporary Catholic theology. But I gladly press home the positive dimensions affirmed in the first of my two chapters. As well as that, our readers need to know that the ethos of Evangelicalism found down here in the south Pacific is rather more generous (and less modernist, biblicist and ideologi8. Two books which have broadly influenced me in this regard are: James Allison, Raising Abel: The Recovery of the Eschatological Imagination, (New York: Crossroad, 1996) and Anthony Kelly, The Resurrection Effect: Transforming Christian Life and Thought, (Maryknoll: Orbis, 2008).

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cally compromised) than most of the north American kind. Erik has deepened my understanding of Panikkar through his research into the specifically ecclesial components of the early formative years of his life. None of that will surprise Catholic readers (though I imagine they will appreciate his untangling of the Opus Dei connections) but it has been very helpful to this Protestant reader. As an Anglican, I do grasp some of Panikkar’s Catholic heritage and theology but particular aspects of it are now much clearer to me; in particular, I could single out the following: Melchizedek. My partial acquaintance with Panikkar’s writings would not have led me to grasp the central role that Melchizedek played in Panikkar’s thought if I had not been able to read your extensive discussion of “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisdedec” and Panikkar’s conclusion that, as you put it, “Jesus’s assumption of Melchizedek’s priesthood incorporates the religions into the loving bond of the body of Christ, the Church”; though I am not yet fully persuaded by Panikkar’s discussion of Melchizedek’s role in the theology of religions (see below). The role of sacrifice in Panikkar’s thought would also have eluded me without Erik’s analysis of another text that I briefly encountered some twenty-five years ago: his study of Hinduism in Le mystère du culte (though its Opus Dei influences eluded me) and his conclusion that the “Hindu emphasis on sacrificial orthopraxy brought Panikkar back into his own Christian tradition and helped him to understand more fully that the mystery of Christ and the church is primarily a mystery of sacrifice.” As an ordained Anglican, I understand Panikkar’s own priestly vocation—albeit an understanding tempered by aspects of my mildly anti-clericalist inclinations; so to have Erik confirm with both detail and warmth the seriousness with which Panikkar took his priestly calling is helpful. (Though I do like, and carefully repeat on occasions, an account of his “marriage” that attempted to challenge aspects of priesthood with which he was uncomfortable.) Finally, soteriology: despite Panikkar’s emphasis on sacrifice, liturgy and Eucharist, what I would see as their necessary grounding in salvation-history is muted or absent in Panikkar. One thing that Erik’s analysis does is to explain this dimension of Panikkar in terms of his theological formation and to

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place it on a continuum from pre- to post-Vatican II theology and its metaphysical foundations. Erik’s eloquent defense of the soteriological primacy of Christ and the summary and endorsement of the ITC 2012 document “Theology Today” is warmly reassuring. So, Erik, you have prompted an ecumenical dialogue and reflection on my part about these central dimensions of Panikkar’s theology and praxis. In fact, these fruitful consequences reminded me of a remark of Panikkar himself: “Dialogue serves the useful purpose of laying bare our own assumptions and those of others, thereby giving us a more critically grounded conviction of what we hold true.”9 Erik asks about the appeal of Panikkar’s commentary, in his Christophany, on the Upper Room discourse. What I like is the mystical-experiential warmth it displays; its tone is not cerebral or scholastic and it seems close to bhakti and appropriate for discussion of a poignant farewell discourse. It has the feel of an authentic bhāsya (commentary) in the Indian tradition with a more-or-less seamless flow between explanation and religious observation. When he also enquires about how Panikkar’s comments might inform what he calls my “Protestant christological understanding of John’s Gospel in new ways” I don’t think I want to specify any supposed Protestant dimension. Theologically, I do resonate with the functional trinitarianism it embraces and I do not mind Panikkar’s advaitin spin that at least takes seriously both the deep filial consciousness and the sense of unity with the Father that all four gospels recount as highly significant for Jesus. But there’s nothing specifically Protestant about that; the affirmation comes my own lived experience and from what resonates in the classroom. Erik then moves on to two further issues: Panikkar’s over-reaction to religious foundations embedded in both history and Israel, and the necessity and limits of contextualization—and in both of these areas it seems that we are in agreement with one another. But what did set me thinking was the query about whether there might be a Christology of religions oriented around the omnipresence of the risen Jesus that might potentially enrich the Great Tradition. On the one hand, Panikkar’s immanent Logos and cosmic Christology—at 9. The Intrareligious Dialogue, 48.

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least in his early corpus—attempts to provide something along these lines and is one reason why I was initially attracted to Panikkar. For me, he nicely complements the transcendent versions of the cosmic Christology of my Protestant theological formation with their suspicions of natural theology and usually ungenerous appraisals of otherthan-Christian faiths. But what then increasingly disappears from Panikkar’s Christology is the necessary continuity between what is claimed for this risen Jesus and the contours of the gospel accounts of Jesus (in all their diversity). In other words, while the risen Christ is more than the Jesus of history, he should not be less—and he is less for Panikkar. Nonetheless, the Great Tradition does affirm, as you nicely put it, that Christ still lives and no longer is distanced from humanity by space, time, or even religious tradition. As for how contemporary Hindus might meet this Christ, I might start by introducing them to the extraordinary Hindu itinerant groups around Chennai (and elsewhere in south India) who see extraordinary healing in the name of Christ; or to any of the large number of their fellow religionists who say that they worship and pray only to Christ as their chosen God; or any number of the Indian Muslims to whom Prophet ʿĪsā ibn Maryām has appeared in dreams and visions. To have affirmed the large measure of overlap between our assessments of Panikkar is not to say that we each understand and assess him in precisely the same way. I don’t think, for example, that I could echo what I think is Erik’s endorsement of Panikkar’s affirmation of “a contemplative experience of the christic mystery throughout a broad range of religious manifestation.” I agree with the way he shares Panikkar’s refusal to “anathematize” the religions; but hesitate to go on—as I think he does—to describe Christians and Hindus as “fellow pilgrims in Christ who may be transformed in their journey together.” Some of that hesitation is probably an indication that I share a number of Protestant questions about the categories “religion” and “natural theology” in general (the residues of Barthian suspicion have not yet fully evaporated). With Lesslie Newbigin—who knew India very well—I’m suspicious of the moralizing tendency that discerns the divine in the self-consciously “good” religious person when Jesus seemed to display a bias towards the self-consciously “not-

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good.” And, along with some of the Protestant critics of Panikkar in India, I much prefer the firmer ground of the “acknowledged” rather than the speculative “unknown” dimension of Christ in Hinduism. But this preference of mine for a vaguely transcendent-only rather than an immanent cosmic/Logos Christology may merely indicate how little attention I have given to the question of exactly what might properly be meant by belief in the ubiquitous presence of the living Christ. Having said all that, I’m encouraged to see something of a turn to natural theology in usually suspicious conservative Protestant circles (in Alister McGrath, Richard Mouw, and others)—though this has not yet extended widely into a theology of religion and the religions. But to return to Panikkar, I find myself stimulated to reflect further on Erik’s interpretation of Melchizidek in Panikkar’s “Meditaciόn sobre Melquisdedec.” I’m challenged to consider Erik’s conclusion that this “prominent feature” in Panikkar’s early writings “deserves careful study and retrieval.” My students, and their teacher, are open to new insights from Scripture and perhaps Panikkar’s creative reconsideration of Melchizedek is one of them. Melchizidek is prominent among non-Israelite believers in God in the Old Testament (alongside Jethro, Naaman, Ruth, the Ninevites, Job and others) and he does share “the corruptibility of Adam” (as Erik puts it). I would have to be persuaded that, as Erik summarizes Panikkar, “Melchizedekian religions, in a certain sense, have participated in the Christian mystery since the dawn of creation” and that “the Melchizedekian sub-narratives found in Genesis, the Psalms, and Hebrews are all oriented toward salvation in Jesus Christ.” I must concede that I’ve only given cursory attention to the role of Melchizedek in salvation history.10 Nonetheless, this topic is a fine example of Panikkar’s ability to suggest new approaches and, given my position in Jesus and the Religions (that the coming of Christ introduces a hermeneutic in which previously marginal issues such as the

10. N. T. Wright, in chapter 13 of his Jesus and the Victory of God, articulates what I suspect is the usual conclusion of New Testament scholars that “the figure of Melchizedek [has no more than] an occasional or tangential relationship to New Testament christology” (“Jesus’ Self-Understanding,” 54).

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significance of Gentiles now become central), Erik’s channeling of Panikkar makes me re-consider. Our occasional quibbles with one another are partly to do with the inevitability of two scholars looking at a massive corpus of work through different eyes, different personality types and different ecclesial formation. This latter difference cannot be undone and, of course, is not the intention of our volume; for one thing I simply defer to Erik when he implicitly and explicitly takes for granted the importance of eucharistic sacrifice that underlies the very considerable attention given by Panikkar to the Eucharist in his formative Le mystère du culte. Or, to express my struggle with Panikkar at this point in a self-centered way, could I ever say of myself what Erik affirms of Panikkar in Le mystère, that “the Hindu emphasis on sacrificial orthopraxy brought Panikkar back into his own Christian tradition and helped him to understand more fully that the mystery of Christ and the church is primarily a mystery of sacrifice”? For me as an Anglican brought up on The Book of Common Prayer with the Holy Communion described as pointing only backwards in time to “the full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction” of the death of Christ, the answer is “no.” So the Catholic eucharistic assumptions that undergirded Le mystère, gain little traction in my doubtless impoverished theological formation; and these assumptions may have changed somewhat since Vatican II; and both Erik and I seem to be engaged by Panikkar for reasons other than his eucharistic theology. And, although we both want to measure our own and Panikkar’s theology against the Great Tradition, we are also hesitant to define that Tradition too sharply; not least because of the warnings from Panikkar himself (and many others) of the temptations to a variety of coercive behaviors that seem so often to attach themselves to such confident defining. In one of my chapters I noted that what you call Protestantism’s “uncompromising solas” is increasingly qualified by, for example, the increasingly heard Protestant acknowledgement that no person has what might be called unmediated access to Scripture, but only hears and reads through ears and eyes that have been tuned and filtered, as it were, through the ears and eyes of many others; and that is “tradition” of some kind whether summarized in Con-

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ciliar statements or the orthodoxy that goes on attempting to clarify what Christians ought to believe. This is why we stand together and are motivated by what Erik nicely calls “the living heart” of the Great Tradition. There are yet other topics discussed by both Panikkar and Erik about which I confess myself interested but seemingly more agnostic. The meaning of religious pluralism is a key example where my best guess is to deal the cards that are marked as general revelation, and as humanity made in God’s image and the beneficiary of divine love and faithfulness. I point to the rather generous patriarchal assessment of fellow worshipers of El, the acknowledgement of supposed “outsiders” from Melchizedek, Jethro, Naaman, Ruth, the Ninevites, Job through to Jesus’s attitude to the Samaritan woman, the Roman centurion and the Syro-Phoenician mother of the gospels—along with scriptural assistance ranging from Deuteronomy 4:19 through to John 1:9a, Acts 10:34f, 14:17, and Acts 17:26-27—and let my hearers begin to draw their own conclusions. (Melchizedek as an exemplar of what I advocate as a cosmic, universal and inclusive stream that flows through Scripture—alongside the particularities of a somewhat traditionally understood salvation-history stream.) But neither Erik nor Panikkar seem to be as agnostic as I am; Panikkar seems sure of the universality of the christic mystery beyond the Abrahamic meaning that, as Erik explains Panikkar, “Jesus’ assumption of the Abrahamic and Melchizedekian lines ushers in the completion of God’s plan of salvation for all of humanity.” And I think Erik is comfortable with “celebration of the ‘release’ of christic salvation into the whole of humanity.” This is not to re-open a discussion of religious pluralism; in fact, my own journey of thinking and teaching is well astern of Erik’s and it occurs to me that I speak more of “plurality” than “pluralism.” Our assessment of Panikkar, and even of one another’s Christology, is not without some points of divergence, even if what remains utterly central for both of us (and with overlap into Panikkar’s thought as well) is a Christology that starts with the person of Jesus of Nazareth and never devalues or ignores that starting

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point—even when it adds a cosmic dimension, either “immanent” or “transcendent,” as well.11 I also wonder whether we should mention to our readers that there are a number of other issues that both Panikkar and we have debated but that we have not had space or time to discuss in any detail. Erik has written elsewhere about Marian dimensions to Panikkar’s thought.12 Both of us have given attention to the Trinity and to the cosmotheandrism that each of us sees as distorting the Great Tradition’s affirmations about trinitarian theology, Christology, and ecclesiology, especially Erik in his dissertation and chapters in this volume.13 I agree with his summary that “Panikkar’s unqualified christological agnosticism in regard to the activity of the Holy Spirit in Hinduism disrupts the trinitarian grammar of God in Christ.” I can also commend a somewhat rare American Evangelical interaction with Panikkar and his discussion of trinitarianism by Keith Johnson.14 FURTHER RESPONSE FROM ERIK There may be a further connection between Bob’s examples displaying actual relationships between Jesus and those of other religions and our emergent discussion on the intersection between the raised Jesus and the religions. Gavin D’Costa is an example of a theologian who has written on the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the religions, and has raised the question of the distinction (if any) between

11. To add such a dimension to the exemplary and human dimensions of Christology requires careful theological navigation; for an attempt, in the context of the Christian-Hindu encounter, see Robinson, Christians Meeting Hindus, 211–40. 12. Erik Ranstrom, “Searching for Mary, Searching for Panikkar: A Meditation.” Publication pending. 13. My chapter of appreciation above does offer a partial defense of something like cosmotheandrism based on what I suggest can be a biblically-derived version of panentheism. I might also mention that I have a chapter on Panikkar’s view of the Trinity entitled “Has Raimundo Panikkar written “one of the best and least read meditations on the Trinity” in the twentieth century (Rowan Williams)? An appraisal” in a symposium due to be published in 2017 in Auckland, New Zealand. 14. See the discussion of Panikkar in the chapter “Vestiges of the Trinity in the Theology of Religions” in his Rethinking the Trinity and Religious Pluralism: An Augustinian Assessment (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2011) in which the central criticism of Panikkar is what Johnson sees as his misappropriation of the “vestiges” tradition to demonstrate trinitarian action by God in the world religions as part of their salvific efficacy.

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a pre-Incarnation and a post-Resurrection pneumatic encounter.15 It would seem to me that one area for discernment in this regard may be the kinds of encounters that have been taking place between members of other religions and the figure of Jesus, and how the person of Jesus is from one standpoint clearly influencing and impacting the shape of spirituality across religions and cultures (and also being discovered anew for the church). Perhaps Panikkar did not take into account enough the attraction that Jesus has exerted and continues to exert not only on well-known personages like Gandhi and Thich Nhat Hanh, but also on innumerable anonymous and unknown believers of other traditions. If they are not merely historical encounters, and even less “Caiaphas” encounters, then they must have a Spirit-based origination, and therefore, Resurrection origination. Panikkar’s later emphasis upon the inexhaustibility of the Spirit and its correlate in ever-changing forms of religious manifestations among and between traditions may find a context in this discussion of the raised Jesus and his ongoing, ever-new, self-communication in the Spirit among and between Christianity and other religions. I was also struck by Bob’s claim that Panikkar’s meditative reading of the Upper Room Discourse in John’s Gospel is a bhakti style bhāsya. I was able to see this text anew, and it sparked my thinking differently. It is indeed the case that Panikkar’s literary imagining of the scene movingly, and emotionally, captures the gravity of the moment as Jesus addresses his friends for the last time. The evocation of Panikkar’s re-telling points towards the intimacy of the bhakti– devotee relationship, and throughout Christophany: The Fullness of Man, it is quite clear that Panikkar shares an affection and affinity for the person of Jesus. Perhaps here Bob has discovered the elusive bhakti element in Panikkar’s thought. There may even be a way in which a close reading of Panikkar’s creative reflections on the Upper Room, Jesus’s departure, and the coming of the Spirit speaks to the imaginative, devotional, and unitive mysticism of the Christian tradition. This is important to note, for even as we criticize Panikkar’s negotiation of doing Christology in an interreligious and intercultural con15. Gavin D’Costa, “The Holy Spirit and World Religions,” Louvain Studies 34, no. 4 (Winter 2009–2010): 279–311.

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text, Panikkar nonetheless had a profound intimacy with Jesus that appears with great impacts in his writings, however fleetingly. However, I have two questions which bring us to the heart of whether, in this example as well, Panikkar’s Christology has more in common with Hindu interpretations of Christ, a point that we have raised and that Panikkar himself approved (if rather obliquely).16 If there is an element of bhakti or Christian devotionalism here, is this an example of the Iṣṭa-devatā (“chosen deity”) Christology that Panikkar in other places recommends? Furthermore, does this bhakti relationship fade away for Panikkar once a properly advaitic realization has taken place? All of this may also be a restatement of Panikkar’s assertion that Jesus is the way to Christ for Christians, but not the way to Christ for those of other religions. Phenomenologically, Panikkar is correct, but metaphysically, the Great Tradition would call for a theological commitment to Jesus as somehow the Way for all, permanently and eternally, and of Jesus’s death and resurrection as unleashing the Spirit for all, however we may articulate that. Bob’s principled hesitancy about Panikkar’s theology of religions, even in his early stage as I have reconstructed it, is a source of insight for me about my own theological commitments, as well as the originating instinct behind my doctoral research. It is useful to note that from the first time I read Panikkar for an undergraduate term paper, I was taken by his deep sense of Christ on the one hand, and on the other, his bold confidence in Christ’s saving, and living, relationship to the religions of the world. In fact, the two came together in a particularly powerful way for me with Panikkar, and from that point forward, I was convinced that Panikkar’s Christology of religions had connected with something of the extravagantly munificent love of God in Christ. Panikkar would come to articulate this in a later key as “cosmic confidence” in reality, a kind of theo-cosmological optimism, but in his earlier work—specifically in the 1964 Unknown Christ of Hinduism, despite its shortcomings—he articulates this in a theological way, with respect to the universal love of God for creation and the church’s interreligious practice, 16. Panikkar writes that his understanding of Christian identity “may or may not” be a Hindu understanding, but that he does “not feel the need to apologize, nor does this fact prove that it is a wrong notion or even an unchristian one,” in “A Self Critical Dialogue,” 264.

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formed by faith, hope, and charity. In the years prior to my doctoral research, however, I noticed that Panikkar’s increasingly inadequate reading of the significance of Jesus in salvation history was insufficient to enable a more substantial recommendation of his Christology for the church. Given the current reading at that time of Panikkar’s 1964 Unknown Christ of Hinduism given by Dupuis and D’Costa, among others, and surveying a tantalizingly vast corpus of works that had only received scant attention in Panikkar studies, I formulated a hunch. Perhaps, in the early period of Panikkar’s work, there existed a moment where Panikkar’s commitment to theologize in medio ecclesiae was met by his commitment to understand the theological value of the religions of the world, thus bringing together a synthesis and harmony between faithfulness to Christian tradition and creative theologizing. It is my contention that with the essay on Melchizedek, and significant aspects of his study on Hindu and Christian worship there existed, at one point, a Panikkarian Christology of religions that could accomplish more convincingly what initially lured me towards Panikkar’s later thought. That is, a deep and abiding sense of Christ’s presence in the world and a radical openness to other religions, but within a theological framework deeply obedient to the Christo-logic of the church. Whether he did, in fact, accomplish this—even with those essays—is a matter of debate, but I have staked my argument that he has, and look forward to more dialogue on that point in the future with yourself and others as I seek to bring a retrieval of Panikkar’s reconstructed early Christology into the contemporary theology of religions. Still, it is important for me to pay heed to Bob’s caution about Panikkar’s characteristic theological boldness during even this early period, as I articulate the significance of his early works in my own theological vision. There may be another ecumenical dynamic at work in our respective differing readings of Panikkar and theology of religions, and it follows upon Bob’s mention of Barth and Newbigin, along with his observation that he prefers to avoid “the moralizing tendency that discerns the divine in the self-consciously ‘good’ religious person when Jesus seemed to display a bias towards the self-consciously ‘not-good’.” What I am hearing is a concern that the theology of

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religions, at points, develops its understanding of the religions by praising general religious virtues or spiritual acumen, which brings to mind various sorts of uncritical liberal Protestant or “works” oriented Catholic theological frameworks that I am as uncomfortable with as he is. As I explained above, I am in agreement with Bob that Panikkar’s soteriology lacks an engagement with sin and evil, although there may be resources in his early work that address this concern. I would mention, too, that Panikkar’s later thought is perhaps excessively focused on theōsis, although as I have argued elsewhere, Panikkar’s humanum seems to be a Marian humanum,17 thus alleviating my concern that Panikkar’s anthropology is uncritically self-aggrandizing. Nonetheless, it is also my view that a significant ecumenical tension in theology of religions reflects a classic and perennial difference between Protestant and Catholic readings of grace, holiness, and Christ. It has long been my suspicion, although I would want to pursue this in more robust form in dialogue with you and others, that the governing Protestant norm for theology of religions is justification, while for Catholic theology of religions it is sanctification. Panikkar himself seems to agree, as he encouraged Bishop D’Souza to pass along the following theological musing to Pope John Paul II during what appears to have been an impending ad limina visit: “Holiness is a trans-religious phenomenon, and ultimately what counts.”18 There is not space here to develop this point in greater detail, including the necessary nuances and qualifications to this age-old ecumenical distinction that clearly does not do justice to the diversity in Protestant and Catholic theology, nor to ecumenical advances in ecclesiastical relations and theology. Yet, it is an instinct that I perceive as operative in the works of Protestant theologians like Carl Braaten, George Sumner, and Lesslie Newbigin, when compared with the theology of religions of Catholic thinkers like Jacques Dupuis, Peter Phan, and even Panikkar. Still, here as elsewhere, as Bob mentioned there is much greater common ground even amidst these inevitable divergences. The “righteous Gentile” is a component 17. I presented a conference paper on Panikkar’s Mariology in Girona, Spain in May 2015, entitled “The Role of Mary and Mariology in Panikkar’s Vision.” (Publication of proceedings forthcoming.) 18. Panikkar, “A Letter to my Bishop,” 288.

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of Bob’s theology of religions, as it was for Panikkar, and myself as well. As Bob mentioned, we have different ways of interpreting Panikkar, given our respective theological backgrounds and formations, in addition to our ecclesial locations, and yet, as I am sure Bob would agree too, I experienced this difference to be quite enriching. I appreciated Bob’s wisdom in surveying and carefully weighing both Panikkar’s thought and contemporary Evangelical theology for areas of common ground and divergence, and I also appreciated the insights that he opened for me as a Catholic interpreter of Panikkar. His questions allowed me further insight into my own theological positionality, and how I may want to approach further avenues of research on Panikkar.

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Permissions List

Raimon Panikkar. Christophany. Orbis: 2004. Raimon Panikkar. The Rhythm of Being. Orbis: 2009. Raimundo Panikkar. Le Mystere du Culte. Les Editions du Cerf. 1970. Raimundo Panikkar. The Unknown Christ of Hinduism. Darton, Longman, and Todd: 1964. Vinoth Ramachandra, The Recovery of Mission. Paternoster: 1996.

“This is a work of remarkable scholarship that investigates the ever-elusive interreligious writings of Raimon Panikkar from Catholic and Protestant perspectives. Distinctive features include attention to little-known earlier works and development of ideas in relation to his Opus Dei beginnings, Indic-Hindu odyssey, and beyond. This sometimes controversial but always insightful book is essential reading for all future Panikkar studies.” Gerard Hall, SM | Australian Catholic University

“Read this book if you want to better understand one of the most significant thinkers of recent times, if you want to dive deeper into some of the most important christological debates of the present global era of encounter between religions, if you want to appreciate heretofore relatively unheard-of Roman Catholic and evangelical Protestant dialogue and interaction at a substantive level. ‘Without Ceasing to Be a Christian’ is truly a theological feast!” Amos Yong | Fuller Theological Seminary

“This book offers a rich ecumenical conversation on the continued relevance of the work of Raimon Panikkar, one of the most creative Christian theologians of the twentieth cen­ tury. It engages Panikkar’s work in both critical and constructive ways in order to affirm and preserve its important and enduring contribution to Christian thought.” Catherine Cornille | Boston College

“In this important and timely book, Ranstrom and Robinson provide an ecumenical reading of an outstanding intellectual in the theology of religions. In doing so, they appraise Raimon Panikkar’s interfaith theology intriguingly and creatively in the light of Christian tradition. More than this, the authors track down major shifts in Panikkar’s thinking and thus locate the evolution of the ideas in their historical context. ‘Without Ceasing to Be a Christian’ expounds Panikkar’s thinking with proficiency and is therefore highly commendable for all those interested in the theology of religions.” Jyri Komulainen | University of Helsinki

ERIK RANSTROM is assistant professor of theology and religious studies at Rosemont Col-

lege in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania.

BOB ROBINSON is senior research fellow in the School of Theology at Laidlaw College in

New Zealand.

WOR L D CHR IS T I A N I T Y

“WITHOUT CEASING to BE A CHRISTIAN”

Praise for “Without Ceasing to Be a Christian”

Ranstrom Robinson

Since his death in 2010, there has been continuing and growing interest in the life, vision, and thought of the late Spanish-Indian mystical theologian Raimon Panikkar. As well as offering both a personal affirmation and critique of Panikkar’s thought from a Catholic and Protestant perspective, this work compares and contrasts him with a range of Western and Indian theologians, both Catholic and Protestant, and outlines the possibilities of learning from Panikkar in an ecumenical context.

and

A Global Witness

“ WITHOUT CEASING to BE A CHRISTIAN” A Catholic and Protestant Assess the Christological Contribution of Raimon Panikkar

Erik Ranstrom and Bob Robinson