M. M. Thomas and Raymon Panikkar

M M Thomas and Panikkar

Ecumenical Hermeneutics by Rudolf von Sinner

ecumenical hermeneutics is meant to serve the "specific task of focusing on how texts, symbols and practices in the various churches may be interpreted, communicated and mutually received as the churches engage in dialogue. In this sense it is a hermeneutics for the unity of the Church." (ibid.)7 It is ecumenical because of the space in which it is being applied, that is, where churches are in dialogue about the interpretation, communication and reception of texts, symbols and practices. At the same time, it alms at the unity of the Church, a unity which, however, is not being defined more precisely.

On the basis of this definition, the study paper expounds in three points what such an ecumenical hermeneutics should be able to produce. (1) It should "aim at greater coherence in the interpretation of the faith and in the community of all believers as their voices unite in common praise of God". (2) It should "make possible a mutually recognizable (re)appropriation of the sources of the Christian faith". (3) Finally, it should "prepare ways of common confession and prayer in spirit and truth" (para. 6). Therefore, it aims at being a hermeneutics of coherence. As the (One) Church is, in itself, a hermeneutical community, in which the churches are in dialogue with one another, each church has, at least, to suppose that the Spirit can also speak in the other church and, through her, speak to oneself. Thus, the study also mentions a hermeneutics of confidence, a term new to the published study text compared to its earlier versions, which presumes in the other a "right intention of faith" (para. 30). It is made clear, at the same time, that the study paper does not refer to a romantic notion of understanding and agreement without any criticism. It also implies a hermeneutics of suspicion "which perceives how self-interest, power, national or ethnic or class or gender perspectives can affect the reading of texts and the understanding of symbols and practices" (para. 28). I shall return to this threefold hermeneutics -- of coherence, confidence, suspicion -- in the concluding chapter of this article. ...> More

Raymon Panikkar by GERARD HALL

Australian Association for the Study of Religions

Annual Conference 4th - 6th July 2003

Multi-Faith Centre, Griffith University

Multi-Faith Dialogue in Conversation with Raimon Panikkar



GERARD HALL sm


Abstract

Raimon Panikkar (1918- ) has deliberated on principles and practices of multi-faith dialogue for over half a century. The presentation will focus on Panikkar’s experience of Christian-Hindu, Christian-Buddhist and Christian-Secularist dialogue. It will outline his “rules of the game” for interreligious dialogue and intercultural encounter. Attention will be drawn to his distinct levels of religious discourse identified as mythos, logos and symbol. Panikkar’s more adventurous proposal for the meeting of the world’s religious and cultural traditions will be introduced through elucidation of his “cosmotheandric vision” of reality—what he now calls “the radical trinity” of cosmic matter, human consciousness and divine freedom. The conversation will conclude with an overall assessment of Panikkar’s contribution to contemporary thinking on multi-faith dialogue and religious pluralism.


The Primacy of Experience: Introducing Panikkar

Born in Barcelona (1918) to a Catalan Catholic mother and an Indian Hindu father, Raimon Panikkar has dedicated his life to interfaith and intercultural dialogue. His approach is also interdisciplinary attested to by his three doctorates in philosophy, science (Madrid University) and theology (Lateran University). In the late forties, Panikkar was ordained a Catholic priest and in the early fifties first left for India where he undertook studies in Indian philosophy and religion (University of Mysore and Varanasi). For the next fifty years Panikkar's academic posts oscillated between professorships in European, Indian and North American universities. Panikkar is currently Emeritus Professor of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, but lives in Tavertet, outside Barcelona, where he continues to study, pray and write. He has also married (at seventy), continues to minister as a Catholic priest, but conceives of himself as a monk.

Panikkar has published some forty books and four hundred academic articles in a variety of fields and languages. Among these, his works on The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, The Trinity and Religious Experience, Worship and Secular Man, The Vedic Experience, Myth Faith and Hermeneutics, The Intra-religious Dialogue and The Cosmotheandric Experience mark him out as a significant religious scholar. Anthologies of important essays include The Invisible Harmony and A Dwelling Place for Wisdom. What he calls his final word, The Rhythm of Being, based on his 1989 Gifford Lectures, is still in process. ......> More

Thomas Forsyth Torrance: Self-Revealing God

Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God in the Thought of Thomas Forsyth Torrance
Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society, Sep 1999 by Flett, Eric G


Knowledge of the Self-Revealing God in the Thought of Thomas Forsyth Torrance. By John Douglas Morrison. Issues in Systematic Theology Vol. 2. New York: Peter Lang, 1997, 386 pp., n.p.

Titles are getting cumbersome of late, but don't let this one put you off. Morrison's work is a well-organized and clear exposition of Professor Torrance's theological epistemology.

Morrison's fundamental concern is that Torrance's efforts to eliminate dualist thought from his own theological project have fallen prey to an internal inconsistency. Torrance has his theological mentors (Kierkegaard and Barth) to blame for a transcendentalism which "has forced a schism within his theological thinking so that a gulf is found finally to exist between divine and human at the point of space-time relation in the world" (p. 319). As a result the only meeting point where divine and human knowing may coincide is through an "existential Word-event." This Wordevent is a timeless encounter where "the knowing subject's historical existence and very humanity [are] finally lost or reduced as one is lifted up to the Word transcendentally beyond the historical domain of the existing self" (p. 317). Kierkegaard, Barth and Torrance's conception of "the way, the place, the mode, and the nature of the Word of God in our history" (p. 317) is in need of re-thinking. Their conception carries with it an implicit imperative that God can only be known directly and personally via a supra-historical event-encounter with God.

Morrison finds this to be inconsistent with Torrance's stated objective to offer a unitary and realist theological paradigm and offers a corrective of his own, drawing on the thought of John Calvin and, to a lesser extent, Hans Frei.

Taking an important cue from the research of Ray S. Anderson, conducted twentythree years ago under Torrance's supervision, he draws in the idea of "historical transcendence" and ties it to Calvin's understanding of Scripture. Scripture is the 'inspired' interaction, response, witness and interpretation" of the eternal Word's incarnate reality (p. 330) and as such participates onotologically, through the ministry of the Spirit, in the movement of divine disclosure. Contra Torrance, whose position forces him to understand Scripture as a "disposable conduit," Morrison wants to expand the Barthian understanding of revelation as Being-Act and Act-Being to incorporate Scripture. The result would be Being-Act-Interpretation (Scripture). This upholds the transcendence of God while still providing a concrete point in human history for the divine-human relation. Like the Word made flesh, Scripture should be understood analogically and functionally as "kenotic" (p. 332). Torrance's tendency to downplay Scripture as the conduit of revelation is then drawn alongside Hans Frei's concern to pay close attention to the actual textuality of Scripture as a revelatory structure.

Morrison is fundamentally concerned that Torrance "arbitrarily limits the historical Word to the incarnation" (p. 337). This "limitation" is not as arbitrary as it might seem, if attention were turned to the theological personalism that underlies all of Torrance's thought (as well as Barth's) as opposed to the realist/objectivist category that is often employed. This would nudge interpreters of Torrance to look to his anthropological, ecclesiological and sacramental thought for the "historical transcendence" that Morrison grounds in Scripture. A consideration of what Torrance means when he comments that the church is "the earthly-historical form of [Christ's] presence" as well as being Christ's body would be especially helpful. These things cannot be said of Scripture (even though Scripture plays a vital role in the self-understanding of the Church) for reasons that substantiate Torrance's personalism and hence his thought regarding Scripture. The Church, not Scripture, is truly "kenotic," for without the Church Scripture would also have no historical context or contemporaniety.

Morrison's work does point out an important concern that needs attention, and his proposal here seeks to address it: the mediation of the Word in human history. Colin Gunton has taken up this theme as well in his book A Brief Theology of Revelation (T & T Clark, 1995), proposing that a "deficient pneumatology" is to blame for proposals that do not take historical mediation seriously. Much work needs to be done in this area and Morrison furthers the conversation by drawing the thought of Torrance into constructive use. Morrison's exposition of Torrance's thought is clear and cogent, and he has mastered a great deal of material from diverse fields of inquiry. This is a valuable gift to those who continue to draw upon the thought of Professor Torrance for their own theological work. Morrison has also pointed out a weakness in Torrance's epistemology that needs to be taken seriously, but it does not justify the claim that a restoration of the role of Scripture as a historical embodiment of God's eternal Word will heal the dualism he has pointed out.


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A Marxist critique of Postmodernism

Pomo; what the hell is it?
This is not an easy question to answer, a quick look at the Wikipedia article on postmodernism will show a graphic stating that the article is in need of an expert to come clean it up, and the article itself is of little help. Its not unreasonable that no one in Wikipedia’s volunteer community is a postmodernism expert, arguably there are few pomo ‘experts’ in existence. Even the well known linguist Noam Chomsky, a man who the New York Times has referred to as “One of the greatest intellectuals of our time” seems to have trouble getting his head around it; “There are lots of things I don’t understand — say, the latest debates over whether neutrinos have mass or the way that Fermat’s last theorem was (apparently) proven recently. But from 50 years in this game, I have learned two things