by Anthony Savari Raj, Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Manipal University Jaipur, India.
Paper presented at the International Seminar “The Role of Spirituality in Promoting Reconciliation,” jointly organized by the Council of Research in Values and Philosophy (RVP), Washington D.C., the Romanian Academy – Iaşi Branch and the Bretanion Institute, in Constanta, Romania, from 17th to 23rd August 2015).
Abstract
This paper presents and examines the interreligious philosopher-theologian Raimon Panikkar’s proposal of ‘Cosmic Confidence’ in interreligious spirituality and another dialogue theologian Paul Knitter’s critique on it. Their conversation is to be situated in a wider issue of the relation between pluralism and justice. The paper proceeds in three parts. The first part summarily presents the context and direction of Panikkar’s pluralistic vision, particularly with a focus on his central insight of cosmic confidence. The second part indicates a challenge to Panikkar’s cosmic confidence in terms of a preferential option for the poor—a spirit, of course, of liberation theology, but also that gets reflected in the challenge thrown by Knitter. And the final part deals with some implications of their mutual dialogue for the issue of pluralism, justice and reconciliation.
Introduction
Situating and reflecting on the need for cosmic confidence in interreligious spirituality, the seminal contribution of philosopher-theologian Raimon Panikkar comes immediately to our mind. Panikkar has been one of the greatest scholars of the 20th century in the areas of comparative philosophy/theology, cross-cultural philosophy of religion and interreligious dialogue and spirituality. Aptly styled, “the child of diverse cultures and the academic product of several disciplines,” “the finest fruit of the East-West fecundation process,” Panikkar, “one of the leading religious thinkers of our times,” “a mutational man in whom the thinking of the new century has already begun,” and “a pioneer and an apostle of interreligious dialogue,” had all through his life one overriding concern: cross-cultural communication.
The real challenge to Panikkar, however, is the crucial question: What is the response of his cross-cultural and interreligious vision to the burning issue of justice, especially in a social context like in India? Stated differently, in a wider frame work, the important issue for our analysis is: what is the relation between pluralism and justice?
Let me begin the analysis with the words of Kenneth Surin: To “proclaim peace amid diversity” when there is really “inequality and oppression amid diversity” is to turn pluralism or dialogue into an ideological weapon. Triggered indeed by this rather poignant statement, I propose to make a small reflection on the conversation that has taken place between two important dialogue theologians of our times: Raimon Panikkar and Paul Knitter, focusing of course on the issue of pluralism and justice.
In the first part, I summarily present the context and direction of Panikkar’s pluralistic vision, particularly with a focus on his central insight of Cosmic Confidence. In the second part, I shall indicate a challenge to Panikkar’s cosmic confidence in terms of a preferential option for the poor—a spirit, of course, of liberation theology, but also that gets reflected in the challenge thrown by Knitter. And in the final part, I shall show some implications of their mutual dialogue for the issue of pluralism, justice and reconciliation.
I. Panikkar’s Pluralism:
Choosing clearly pluralism over inclusivism, Panikkar appears to be a “radical pluralist,” and this is explicitly evident in his conviction, which he has repeated time and again, that in our contemporary cross-cultural human situation, no single culture, no single religion, no single tradition, and no single person can even face – let alone solve—any of our human predicaments single handedly. We need a mutual fecundation, a cross-cultural sharing or even healing.
The grounds for this pluralistic conviction of Panikkar, of course, are many and I now quickly indicate just two:
1. The first, a more immediate ground, is the prevalent context of Cultural Monomorphism.
Panikkar draws our attention to the western civilization’s thrust toward a monolithic unity and universalization since the Greeks up to our times, which he calls the “colonialistic cultural monomorphism” which attempts to bring everything into one fold, one form, one bag.
This monomorphizing tendency has taken many avatars or incarnations in history: one truth, one God, one religion, one church, one king, one empire, one science, one technology, one world economy, one world bank, one democracy, one development, one superpower, and now one world market and one net-work of everything. “Truth is one, and I alone have it” is its basic presupposition. “Outside the church, no salvation” is another expression of the same mentality.
2. The second, and we may say, the ultimate ground for Panikkar’s pluralistic proposal, is the very trinitarian nature and structure of reality, which he calls as the Radical Trinity.
Panikkar works out an entire theology of religion in terms of an “advaitic trinitarianism,” where the advaita inspires the trinity towards unity, and the trinity in turn inspires the advaita towards diversity.
This “Advaitic Trinitarianism” is only a pointer to, or to be viewed in the backdrop of, the “Radical Trinity” – the universal trinitarian structure of reality, which, Panikkar believes, to be an emerging religious consciousness of our times. What is more significant, however, is his extension of the Trinitarian understanding of God to the entire reality. The Trinity then is not merely a privilege of the Godhead or to do only with the life of God, but it is to do with the very character of the entire reality.
Every reality that we encounter, therefore, is trinitarian, or to use Panikkar’s neologism: “cosmotheandric” – cosmic, divine and human. Just to state this trinitarian or cosmotheandric vision very simply: “There is no matter without spirit and no spirit without matter, no world without Man, no God without the universe, etc. God, Man and World are three artificially substantivized forms of the three primordial adjectives which describe Reality.”
This means that reality is cosmotheandric: cosmic, divine and human at the same time. These three dimensions of reality are only three aspects of anything that is real. Distinctions could be and should be made between them, but no radical separation. We may say that there is a kind of dynamism of the three toward the one without ceasing to be different. This insight is also reflected in one of Panikkar’s inimitable statements: “I ‘left’ [Europe] as a Christian, I ‘found’ myself a Hindu and I ‘return’ a Buddhist, without having ceased to be a Christian.”
To indicate very quickly SOME IMPLICATONS of this trinitarian vision of reality for religions and religious dialogue…
1. Panikkar’s vision seems to echo the perichoresis – an insight of the Greek theologians of the early centuries, which stands for a mutual indwelling of the trinity. The immediate implication here for religions is: Each religion is only a dimension of the other. No religion can live in splendid isolation.
2. The religious traditions of the world can dance in dialogue with each other and so grow in both difference and togetherness. Harmony is not in spite of differences, but because of differences.
3. Religions are invited and expected to perform the festivity of incompleteness by the dynamics of universalization and also overcome their blind spots in mutual criticism and dialogue. (A dip in a cosmotheandric solution might help a religious tradition to develop its own picture of reality, which needs to be completed by the neighbor. After all, it’s only in receiving, conceiving will take place).
4. Religions cannot focus any longer only on the element of God or Divine. If they do so, it becomes a one-sided endeavor. The authentic religious task would include the integration of all dimensions of reality – the cosmic, divine and human, including the reconnecting of the spirit to the body. Panikkar’s insight of sacred secularity and cosmotheandric spirituality may be helpfully recalled here. In this regard, the commonality of problems can offer a good starting point for religions to rally together.
The Role of Cosmic Confidence:
For Panikkar, it is not only necessary that the religious traditions exist and interrelate to one another, but it is really possible so. We may ask, in this connection, how does Panikkar know and assume this possibility of dialogue? It is here Panikkar’s “cosmic confidence” inserts itself as an answer.
Panikkar really does not know how religions could radically be different and diverse in their perspectives and orientations, and, at the same time, feel the need and have the ability to be connected to one another. Yet, he only trusts that his is so. We find ourselves trusting that despite or because of our differences, we can and we must talk to, and learn from, and be changed by each other.
It is a trust that conversations between traditions are possible despite utter differences and that if we strive together in mutual trust, there is really a possibility of a mutual construction. In a word, it is a trust in the togetherness of reality and in our common endeavor in ever shaping it.
II. Cosmic Confidence or Preferential Option?
I now submit Panikkar’s cosmic confidence to a critique. As I’ve already mentioned, this critique come from persons like Knitter who prioritize preferential option for the poor and oppressed, over cosmic confidence, thus indeed calling for “globally responsible, soteriocentric correlated dialogue of religions.”
1. The Need for a Critical Stand
Paul Knitter surely acknowledges the validity of Panikkar’s warning and proposal that our conversation is possible only when there is a shared “cosmic trust” in the value of differences and the prospects of learning from and cooperating with each other.
Yet he offers a critique that, by itself, Panikkar’s image of cosmic trust is still too general or too mystical and that “Panikkar is either encouraging or permitting a bourgeois mystical understanding of religious pluralism and dialogue.” Therefore, he believes that Panikkar’s views tend to be only harmonizing and does not provide space for suffering and ruptures in human life – at least obviously. In other words, Panikkar is criticized for not taking seriously the power relations and their correct use within each religious tradition as between them.
For Knitter, unless in our interreligious conversations we are able to confront and pass judgement on intolerable realities such as starvation, oppression of some human beings by others, torture, and economic injustice and wars that destroy both human and planetary life, the dialogue itself would become immoral.
Panikkar is therefore criticized as not to have sufficiently laid out the criteria—or the procedure—by which we can confront and oppose what seem to be the intolerables.
To be sure, Panikkar, according to Knitter, does recognize the need for critical stances, but “he does not elaborate on how such stances are to be found, or what are the “positive and concrete reasons” for determining “evil” or intolerables.” In other words, a hermeneutic of confidence is not enough, what is needed is a hermeneutic of suspicion.
In a word, For Knitter, cosmic confidence, by itself, is insufficient in assisting one to enter in the difficult task of not only understanding but also of confronting and opposing each other.
2. The Kairos Confronting All Religions
Knitter further believes that the kairos confronting all religions is the necessity and opportunity to meet the priorities and needs of the poor of the world through dialogue and conversation. Such a preferential option to respond to the human and ecological suffering that crisscrosses our cultures and religions would form the starting point, the basis, the heuristic for interreligious cooperation and conversation.
Hence he calls for a “soteriocentric” approach to dialogue and global responsibility, centering on the human and ecological suffering that confronts all of us. It is for this reason, he suggests that Panikkar’s vision is grounded and inspired by a shared preferential option for the victims of this world. And he believes that this option for the suffering human of the suffering earth would give greater content and practicality to Panikkar’s vision, besides receiving a grounding and a direction that would integrate its mystical content with concrete prophetic concern.
III. A Panikkarian Response: From Option to Attitude
I shall now discern a Panikkarian response to Paul Knitter’s critique.
1. With Knitter
In fact, there seems to be no contradiction between the preferential option as suggested by Knitter and Panikkar’s proposal of cosmic confidence. Indeed Panikkar’s insight of sacred secularity which evokes the togetherness of heaven and earth, temporality and eternity, would really offer an authentic base and inspiration to all our liberative commitments and programmes.
Panikkar’s vision would only include the Divine plus the cosmic in the “human” welfare, and would encourage an element of joy in all our enterprise. This critique may also indicate how Panikkar goes beyond Knitter in his enterprise and orientation.
2. Beyond Knitter
As I’ve mentioned, Panikkar goes with Knitter as far as to recognize the intimate link between pluralism and justice and to direct all our energies in the direction of socio-economic and political justice. But he is tempted to reinforce Knitter’s position of a preferential option for the oppressed by stressing “cosmic confidence” as the basis.
In other words,
The concern for the poor presupposes precisely a cosmic confidence. In fact, why do we get so indignant at injustice, premature deaths, and sufferings if not because we assume a cosmic confidence in reality, in which somehow we trust and believe that life cannot be so senseless, unjust and cruel as to justify such manmade oppressions? It is that cosmic confidence which triggers the healthy decision of the “option.” It is the awareness of injustice, which leads to the “option.” It is the awareness of injustice which leads to the “option.” But this injustice is only detected because of our presupposition that there is a comic order which the injustice has precisely violated.
To be sure, cosmic confidence and option for the poor do not belong to the same universe of discourse. It looks therefore, both Panikkar and Knitter share the same pathos, the former is an ultimate attitude, the latter a moral option—though both required; only their logos seems to be somewhat different. Panikkar shows the direction of Knitter’s logos through some critiques. I just indicate two: one anthropological, the other cross-cultural.
a. Anthropological Comment
Through this comment Panikkar tries to show how attitude is deeper than option. Authentic actions spontaneously flow from a deeper attitude than a conscious option made in favour of the needy.
I wonder if Christ made an option to die on the Cross, if Francis of Assisi made an option to embrace poverty, if Luther made an option (“Here I stand and I can’t do otherwise!”), or even if a loving mother makes an option to kiss her child or to spend a sleepless night beside her ailing baby, or an artist paints a canvas, an author writes a poem or a composer creates music out of clear options of love, service, beauty or whatever. It is something stronger than options, more powerful than decisions.
He states further:
“I feel I have no option but to strive for justice. I have no option but to stand at the side of the oppressed. We have no option but to speak the truth. I have no alternative other than to set my life at stake for the sake of peace. My conscience has no other option.”
b. Cross-cultural Comment
Panikkar’s second comment, cross-cultural in nature, exposes the monocultural context and nature of the “option for the poor” and also relativizes the role of will. It reminds us that other cultures often do not start from those premises.
In his words:
Within the framework of dialectical materialism the so-called conscientization leads to despair. With merely historical conscientization the oppressed become conscious that for many of them there will be no liberation at all. In spite of all our most strenuous efforts to opt for the liberation of the oppressed, thousands of children are going to starve today, and millions of refugees and victims of wars are not going to be liberated in their lifetime. We may console ourselves with the view of a brighter future, but what is our answer for those people? Either there is a transhistorical reality (now or later) or there is no hope for them.
We may wonder, in this context, what is the meaning of life for that immense majority – the aboriginals, the slaves, the outcastes, the starving, the sick, the hungry, the oppressed, the women – who have not “made” it? Even in the hardest times and in face of greatest struggles, people could face life with joy and dignity precisely because they have been sustained by some kind of hope. This hope, however, is not merely of the future, but hope in the invisible dimension of life and reality.
Here is where traditional cultures speaking of heaven, karma, nirvana, God and brahman have something essential to contribute. To realize that our life has a meaning (sense) which is life, even if we have been invited to the banquet of Life just for a few moments, is the only saving hope for many and another exemplification of what I mean by cosmic confidence.