Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Adding another log to the fire of discussion on (the possibility of) postmodern and/or postmetaphysical theology, which started with Cameron's essay…


From Gerard Hall's Multi-Faith Dialogue - In Conversation with Raimon Panikkar

 

The Cosmotheandric Vision 

Panikkar develops his cosmotheandric vision of reality with reference to three major religious traditions to which he 'belongs': the Christian Trinity; the Vedanta Hindu advaita; the Buddhist pratityasamutpada. He claims, nonetheless, that the threefold pattern – traditionally Theos-anthropos-cosmos – are invariants of all religions and cultures. 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.” In Christian terms, ultimate reality, the Trinity, is one but also three; in Hindu terms the ultimate unity of all things is literally neither one (advaita) nor two (advitya); in Buddhist terms everything is radically related to everything else (pratityasamutpada).  

The cosmotheandric principle could be stated by saying that the divine, the human and the earthly – however we may prefer to call them – are the three irreducible dimensions which constitute the real, i.e., any reality inasmuch as it is real… What this intuition emphasizes is that the three dimensions of reality are neither three modes of a monolithic undifferentiated reality, nor are they three elements of a pluralistic system. There is rather one, though intrinsically threefold, relation which expresses the ultimate constitution of reality. Everything that exists, any real being, presents this triune constitution expressed in three dimensions. I am not only saying that everything is directly or indirectly related to everything else: the radical relativity or pratityasamutpada of the Buddhist tradition. I am also stressing that this relationship is not only constitutive of the whole, but that it flashes forth, ever new and vital, in every spark of the real.  

In particular, Panikkar's formulation of reality as cosmotheandric contests the assumption that reality is reducible to Being: there is also Non-Being, the abyss, silence and mystery. Nor can consciousness be totally identified with reality: there is also matter and spirit. As Panikkar expresses it: “reality is not mind alone, or cit, or consciousness, or spirit. Reality is also sat and ananda, also matter and freedom, joy and being.” In fact, this is for Panikkar the fundamental religious experience: “Being or reality transcends thinking. It can expand, jump, surprise itself. Freedom is the divine aspect of being. Being speaks to us; this is a fundamental religious experience consecrated by many a tradition.”

Three assumptions lay behind Panikkar's cosmotheandric vision. The first is that reality is ultimately harmonious. It is neither a monolithic unity nor sheer diversity and multiplicity. Second, reality is radically relational and interdependent so that every reality is constitutively connected to all other realities: “every being is nothing but relatedness.” There is, if you like, organic unity and dynamic process where every 'part' of the whole 'participates' in or 'mirrors' the whole. This corresponds to the ancient notion that every reality is a microcosm of the macro-universe. A contemporary version would be the Gaia principle. Third, reality is symbolic, both pointing to and participating in something beyond itself. We do not have a God separate from the world, a world that is purely material, nor humans that are reducible to their own thought-processes or cultural expressions. While it is important to recognise the “symbolic difference” between God and the world, as between one religion and another, for Panikkar, all cultures, religions and peoples are relationally and symbolically entwined with each other, with the world in which we live, and with an ultimate divine reality.  

THEOS
 

The divine dimension of reality is not an 'object' of human knowledge, but the depth-dimension to everything that is. The mistake of western thought was to begin with identifying God as the Supreme Being (monotheism) which resulted in God being turned into a human projection (atheism). Panikkar moves beyond God-talk to speak of the divine mystery now identified in non-theistic terms as infinitude, freedom and nothingness. This essentially trinitarian inspiration takes as its cue the notion that “the Trinity is not the privilege of the Godhead, but the character of the entire reality.”  As he states, he wants “to liberate the divine from the burden of being God.”

Panikkar's concern is not to overthrow the central insights and experiences of the theistic traditions but to acknowledge that “true religiousness is not bound to theisms, not even in the West.” He is especially sensitive to the modern secular critique of traditional religions in their generation of various forms of alienation, pathology and disbelief. The suggestion is that we need to replace the monotheistic attitude with a new paradigm or a new kosmology precisely in order to `rescue' the divine from an increasingly isolated, alienated and irrelevant existence. Sardonically expressed, the divine is not a ”Deus ex machina with whom we maintain formal relations.” Rather, the mystery of the divine is the mystery of the inherent inexhaustibility of all things, at once infinitely transcendent, utterly immanent, totally irreducible, absolutely ineffable.

Of course, this divine dimension is discernable within the depths of the human person. Humanity is not a closed system and, despite whatever forms of manipulation and control are exercised, the aspect of (divine) freedom remains. Nor is the world without its own dimension of mystery since it too is a living organism with endless possibility as the astro-physicists, among others, are showing us. Moreover, the earth has its own truth and wisdom even if this has largely been ignored in recent centuries by too many cultures and religions.  

ANTHROPOS  

Consciousness is, if you like, the human dimension of reality which is, however, not reducible to humanity: “Consciousness permeates every being. Eveything that is, is cit.” In other words, consciousness relates not only to humans who know but to everything else that is actually or potentially known–including a far galaxy on the other side of the universe. In this sense, “the waters of human consciousness wash all the shores of the real.” From the other perspective, the human person is never reducible to consciousness. It is evidently the case that humans participate in the evolving cosmos of which they are a part. They also participate in the divine mystery of freedom. 

Panikkar presents human experience as a threefold reality: aesthetic, intellectual and mystical. He critiques technocratic culture for reducing human life to two levels (the sensible and the rational), forgetting if not despising the `third' realm (the mystical). The `third' realm is not a rarified psychological state, but a `further' depth-dimension within all human awareness. This 'mystical' dimension which comes to the fore as a moment of realization that a certain experience is unique, ineffable, non-repeatable.  

Panikkar's intention is to show that genuine human experience involves the triad of senses, intellect and mystical awareness in correlation with matter, thought and freedom. Each act en-acts the cosmotheandric mystery: 

We cannot sense, think, experience, without matter, logos, and spirit. Thought and mystical awareness are not possible without matter, indeed, without the body. All our thoughts, words, states of consciousness and the like are also material, or have a material basis. But our intellect as well would not have life, initiative, freedom and indefinite scope (all metaphors) without the spirit lurking as it were, behind or above, and matter hiding underneath.

This cosmotheandric insight stresses human identity with the worldly character and temporal nature of the cosmos; it also manifests a human openness towards the infinite mystery that ipso facto transcends human thought. The basis of such affirmations is human experience itself which somehow refuses to sever itself from the totality of Being: we experience ourselves to be something `more' than mere pawns of nature in the evolution of matter, passing egos in the flow of time, or temporary insertions in the expansion of space. This too has been the fundamental insight of every religious tradition.  

COSMOS 

The world of matter, energy, space and time is, for better or worse, our home. These realities are ultimate and irreducible. There is no thought, prayer or action that is not radically cosmic in its foundations, expressions and effects. The earth is sacred, as many a tradition proclaims. More than this, there is no sacredness without the secularity of the world (literally saeculum). Panikkar speaks of “sacred secularity” as the particular way in which the divine and conscious dimensions of reality are rooted in the world and its cosmic processes.

He insists, for example, there is something more than pure materiality in a simple stone. Through its existence in space and time, the stone is connected to the entire universe with which it shares its destiny. Notions of inert matter, amorphous space and neutral time are superceded with reference to the ancient wisdom of anima mundi: the universe is a living organism constitutive of the Whole. Moreover, science itself is on the way to recovering something of this lost insight through its recognition of the indeterminacy of matter, the open-endedness of space, and the indefinability of time.  In Panikkar's terms, there are “no disembodied souls or disincarnated gods, just as there is no matter, no energy, no spatio-temporal world without divine and conscious dimensions.” Every concrete reality is cosmotheandric, that is, a symbol of the `whole'. It is not only God who reveals; the earth has its own revelations. 

Matter, space, time and energy are then co-extensive with both human consciousness and the divine mystery. There is something unknowable, unthinkable, uncanny or inexhaustible which  belongs to the world as world. This means that the final unknowability of things is not only an epistemological problem (due to the limits of the intellect) but also an ontological reality (integral to the very structure of beings). Other traditions will call this dimension nothingness, emptiness or even Non-being insofar as it is that which enables beings to be, to grow, to change–and even to cease-to-be.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

And in this CrossCurrents article, Panikkar enumerates Nine Ways Not to Talk about God, which is useful to read in light of the above.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Just a few thoughts.  Great vision.  The reporting could perhaps convey the vision more sensitively.  For instance:

He insists, for example, there is something more than pure materiality in a simple stone.

A little more thinking before reaching for the keyboard would bring the observation that “pure materiality” is what matter does, which is to differentiate, become conscious, etc. etc. etc.: anything one sees.  Stones aren't so simple.

Having allowed that observation to germinate, statements like:

Every concrete reality is … a symbol of the `whole'. It is not only God who reveals; the earth has its own revelations.

might be reformulated more creatively, as, say:

Everything is concrete, so the concrete is universal, mirrors and is the whole.  God was buried in the earth when he died.  I hear something grew in the place he was buried.

“Has its own revelations” … is a bar just around the corner from the hotel Descartes' Dualism.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

As always, thanks for this great Panikkar stew, Bruce. A fine (post)-Thanksgiving meal! Who knows …. someday I may become more than just an incompetent spy in the house of post-metaphysical theology …..  :-)

I remember that Cross Currents article from a few years back (a link you provided on the Integral Naked forum); I just love it. Every now and then I take the time to read it again because I feel that it expresses a “truth” I've “known” on subterranean levels for some time – something I have not had the words (nor the depths of brilliance) to articulate. After re-reading his words, I sense an opening and a widening in my heart and mind … divine freedom ever flowering.

Agape,

Mary

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Panikkar discusses in the following excerpts some of the themes we've touched on in several threads. He says in “The crisis of Maadhyamika and Indian Philosophy today”:

Is the Maadhyamika's claim tenable at all, i.e., without self-contradiction?

It should base itself on something outside that is even higher than reason. And, in fact, it does this (cf. p. 163). This is the dogma and the true tenet of the Maadhyamika, but as a real dogma it lies beyond the realm of a [formal] dialectical process.

The “higher level” does not belong to dialectics.

Now, how does the Maadhyamika account for its position? If it were nihilism, it could be somehow consistent, at least to the extent of pseudo-destroying itself. Since it is not pure nihilism it must transcend dialectic, and with that it must transcend its claim of no presupposition and its “anti-dogmatic” attitude.

In fact, Indian philosophy in its entirety rests on the tension and polarity between the aatman-view and the anaatman-view. The Maadhyamika is the ingenious attempt to transcend both views by denial, by suunya. Could not Indian philosophy in its present stage, after a full elaboration of its implications and a deeper contact with other philosophical traditions of mankind, be aware of another possible solution by eminence, by transcending both views equally, i.e., not by mere denial, but by a positive synthesis, which is not a simple mixture or a syncretistic compromise, but a third and yet qualified affirmation? Is there not that middle way which the Indian mind has always been passionately looking for as the path of salvation, the via media of a philosophical path that is aware of the itinerant character of being, the contingent feature of ourselves, including our philosophy? Is there not a middle way between the static being that cannot move and change and become, and the perennial flux that has no consistency, no identity, no being? But it must be a way and not a denial of all ways, because we are still pilgrims here on earth and our philosophizing is still itinerant. Could not Indian philosophy become aware of what the metaphysical tradition of the European Middle Ages called the analogy of being? There would be no need for India to copy it or to adopt it uncritically; but could she not discover something of this kind that would enable her to follow her best absolutist trends, without losing the sense of the relative?

What is the underlying presupposition common to both the aatman and the anaatman views? That change is not possible, that becoming is contradictory because Being is immutable. Either what “is” is and then cannot become, come to be, because it already is; or what “is” is not, because we can nowhere find such an “is.” The moment that we “imagine” we have caught it, it vanishes away – it “is” no more, there exists no such “is.” Ultimately aatman and nairaatmyavaada present the same structure: There is only one way of being a “being.” No “phenomenon,” no “thing” in this world fulfills its requirements. The “is” lies beyond this world, devoid of anything that might contaminate it. It is pure transcendence. And this is the aatman as well as the anaatman. It does not matter at all if pure unrelatedness is or is-not. It is not only that we have no way to prove it, or to speak about it, it also makes no difference. The “thing” – i.e., the cow, the house, my soul, my thoughts, this earth – is not. Either it is-not, for the aastikas, because it, the cow, etc., insofar as it is, is Brahman; or for the naastikas it is-not, because it, the “thing” is, neither as “thing,” nor as something else.

What “is” it, then? It “is” certainly not “being”; but it is not “not-being” either. In the analysis of that “thing” that changes lies the whole business of philosophy; and in finding a balanced answer consists the real “crisis” of Indian wisdom.

The dilemma is…[one of] identity and difference: in one word, relation. It is Brahman-aatman, or Absolute-relative, or Being and beings, or in Platonic terms the One and the manifold, or again reality and appearance, or eternity and time.

Quite rightly, the Maadhyamika puts all dialectic problems of philosophy on one side; all belong to the relative, to the contingent, to the sphere of reason, it will say. On the other hand, there is intuition, `suunyataa, nirvaa.na, the real, Being. It provides us also with the internal dialectics to recognize the inefficiency, the insufficiency of the first side. Moreover, it will never again allow us to “substantialize” the first side, as if it were something of its own. Naagaarjuna says quite forcefully that “Nirvaa.na is the reality of sa^msaara, or conversely, sa^msaara is the falsity (sa^mv.rti) of Nirvaa.na” (p. 162). Its only internal defect would be that it imagines that we can jump from the first shore to the second, out of the frustrations and contradictions which we find in the realm of the contingent. The jump is certainly possible; but it is, first of all, an existential pass-over, in which we really do not jump, but are taken over, by the other side. The grace of God, the gift of intuition, the higher knowledge of faith, and the like are here more or less adequate terms expressing this existential situation of ours. And this is quite a common opinion among the Indian systems, the Maadhyamika not excluded. It is not a dialectical maneuver that saves us, or that saves philosophy, but a descending redemption, the obedience to a higher “calling,” the realization of, or, rather, the being “realized” by, the real.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Mary, you are a most welcome spy in this house!  I am glad you appreciated this “side dish” this Thanksgiving!  I hope you had a lovely one…

Edward, thank you for finding this essay!  I had been looking around on the web for excerpts from The Silence of God or The Cosmotheandric Experience, but hadn't been able to locate them – or much else, in terms of Panikkar's original writing.  So, this is great… I've read your excerpts and about half of the actual essay.  It is quite relevant to what we've been discussing.  Panikkar is well positioned, really, to address some of the questions we've been considering, being steeped almost equally in postmodern, classical Indian, and Thomist thought, among other streams…

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Gerald Hall has another article called “Intercultural and interreligious hermeneutics.”  I've copied-and-pasted below from the section called “Diatopical hermeneutics.” Mythos precedes the subject-object duality (pre-rational), logos creates it (rational) and the symbol is what provides that “higher level” that relates them (post-rational). And for you aestheticians notice how the “poetic word” is an example of this symbolic relation: “It is rooted in the lifeworld of a particular people, place and culture while also being open to transformative, even transcendent, meaning.”

On a personal note: When I went “integral” and rejected my previous “religious” Order, I did so because I interpreted my prior experience as a retro-Romantic regression into mythic belief. What Panikkar is helping me to realize is that the symbolism we used via ritual performance (the “poetic word”) might not have been mythic or retro-Romantic at all but indeed a bridge to a postformal, postmetaphyical enactment of the nondual divine/human interaction through mythos and logos.

From the article:

Stated differently, diatopical hermeneutics arises in response to the challenge of interpreting across cultural and religious boundaries where the hermeneutic circle has yet to be created. In this sense, diatopical hermeneutics is thoroughly postmodern in its refusal to colonize the 'other' with one's own set of religious or cultural presuppositions. However, in contradistinction to some postmodern literature, Panikkar does assume that communication among radically different worldviews is possible–indeed, indispensable. For this to occur, he introduces what he calls the imparative method, “the effort at learning from the other and the attitude of allowing our own convictions to be fecundated by the insights of the other.”  As distinct from the comparative method, which privileges dialectics and argumentative discourse, the imparative method of diatopical hermeneutics focuses on the praxis of dialogue in the existential encounter. Panikkar is explicit on this point: “it is only in doing, the praxis, that diatopical hermeneutics functions.”

In order to appreciate the imparative method of diatopical hermeneutics, it is necessary to be aware of Panikkar's distinctions between mythos, logos and symbol. These foundational categories effectively operate as three distinct yet interrelated means of intersubjective communication and modes of discourse. To begin, he distinguishes mythos and interpretation (logos):

A living myth does not allow for interpretation because it needs no intermediary. The hermeneutic of a myth is no longer the myth, but its logos. Myth is precisely the horizon over against which any hermeneutic is possible. Myth is that which we take for granted, that which we do not question; and it is unquestioned because, de facto, it is not seen as questionable. The myth is transparent like the light, and the mythical story–mythologumenon–is only the form, the garment in which the myth happens to be expressed, enwrapped, illumined.

The most important mythical stories are those that tell of a particular tradition's origins. Mircea Eliade viewed cosmogonic myths–stories of tribal origins–as the most significant feature in the identity-formation of primal cultures. They are no less important for cultures and religions, ancient and modern, today. What Panikkar adds to this is the view that the very power of myth is founded in its unquestionableness. How then is the myth communicated? The myth may be narrated in story or parable, or otherwise transmitted through symbol and ritual, but the moment we begin to explain or interpret the myth we have already converted it into an object of thought (logos). Mythic discourse precedes this subject-object dichotomy and, in so doing, highlights the primacy of experience over interpretation. The pervasive power of myth is in its ability to capture the heart rather than the mind which it does by revealing itself from the transcendent horizon of mystery. Every culture and religion has a mythic foundation, a set of taken-for granted truths about reality, which constitutes that tradition's horizon or lifeworld. The meeting of religions and cultures is often an unsatisfactory experience precisely because there is a clash of myths, each with its own universalist claims.

When Panikkar speaks of the “myth of pluralism,” he is locating pluralism within this mythic realm. “Pluralism,” he states, “is indeed a myth in the most rigorous sense: an ever-elusive horizon in which we situate things in order to be conscious of them without ever converting the horizon into an object.” He is the first to agree that pluralism cannot be logically deduced from pure reasoning since, in the meeting of religions and cultures, we often find ourselves confronted with “mutually exclusive and respectively contradictory ultimate systems.” Because we are dealing with such radically different horizons, languages and worldviews, ordinary interpretative procedures of historical hermeneutics and dialectics are not equal to the task. In this situation, diatopical hermeneutics turns to the symbol as it primary category for truth, meaning and communication. Unlike the mythos, which stands behind a community's beliefs in an unquestioning manner, or the logos, which subjects its beliefs to the narrow rules of argumentative discourse, the symbol moves between these two worlds of meaning linking subject to object, mythos to logos, darkness to light, understanding to interpretation, and faith to belief. In Panikkar's words:

What expresses belief, what carries the dynamism of belief–that conscious passage from mythos to logos–is not the concept but the symbol. Symbol here does not mean an epistemic sign, but an ontomythical reality that is precisely in the symbolizing… . The symbol is neither a merely objective entity in the world (the thing 'over there'), nor is it a purely subjective entity in the mind (in us 'over here'). There is no symbol that is not in and for a subject, and there is equally no symbol without a specific content claiming objectivity. The symbol encompasses and constitutively links the two poles of the real: the object and the subject.

In his own definition of hermeneutics, Panikkar focuses on the communicative and redemptive power of symbols. The task of hermeneutics is one of “restoring symbols to life and eventually of letting new symbols emerge.” Symbols run the risk of becoming mere signs and, thereby, losing their ontomythical power. This occurs when, for example, a religion is reduced to a set of doctrinal beliefs; or when a language becomes, as we say, a “dead language” without a living relationship with a community of speakers. It can also occur when the power of the word is reduced to a mathematical formula or a technical term which is precise in meaning but unable to express a more primordial truth. The poetic word is, for Panikkar, an example of the symbol: it is rooted in the lifeworld of a particular people, place and culture while also being open to transformative, even transcendent, meaning. In this sense, the symbol always has more to tell us yet. Symbols are both bounded and open. Symbol systems are also at very heart or living cultures and religions.

We have seen that it is only in the praxis that diatopical hermeneutics functions. This is because diatopical hermeneutics is primarily concerned with symbols, and symbols do not exist in the abstract realm of ideas severed from the hearts and minds of those who experience their power for truth and meaning. However, unlike myths which refuse critique–since to critique the myth is to destroy it–, symbols are able to take on new and extended meanings in the context of communicative praxis and even ideological challenge. When this occurs, we have what the philosopher Susan Langer calls a “symbolic transformation of experiences” which, she adds, “may illumine questions of life and consciousness, instead of obscuring them as traditional 'scientific methods' have done.” Symbolic discourse moves between what the mind thinks (logos) and the heart believes (mythos) without being the prisoner of either.

In this context, Panikkar makes a seminal distinction between faith and belief. He has long maintained that faith is a “constitutive human dimension” coterminous with all people, cultures and religions. One does not have faith in doctrines, concepts or other 'things,' but in “the ever inexhaustible mystery, beyond the reach of objective knowledge.” Faith is that human dimension that corresponds to myth. In other words, faith is not the privilege of the few but the “primal anthropological act.” Not that there is such a thing as “pure faith,” since faith is always mediated through symbolic expressions and specific beliefs which embody faith in a particular tradition. However, authentic, human belief is not represented by the logos but by the symbol, that “vehicle by which human consciousness passes from mythos to logos.” At a third level, belief is mediated through doctrines, ideologies, rituals and practices. There can be no effective discourse at this third level unless there is a shared symbol system, a commonly held set of beliefs and values that unite believers within a tradition–or across traditions. It is this latter challenge which diatopical hermeneutics squarely faces through its focus on the necessity of symbolic discourse–or what Panikkar also calls “dialogical dialogue.”

What needs to be clear at this point is that diatopical hermeneutics, through its focus on the symbolic transformation of experiences, is the very antipathy of the kind of value-free neutrality that is the ideal of scientific and phenomenological methods of understanding associated with dialectical discourse. Nor can diatopical hermeneutics be based on prior rules of interpretation since this would be to assume an already-existing hermeneutic circle with its agreed criteria as to what constitutes truth, value and right judgment. Clearly, in cases of intercultural and interreligious understanding, no such hermeneutic circle can be presumed. In this sense, diatopical hermeneutics cannot be universal; its interpretative procedures and rules of engagement must emerge from the dialogue itself.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Hi, Edward, did you ever see my blog on Panikkar last year?  I referenced that article by Hall and also talked a bit about diatopical hermeneutics, the imparative method, etc – particularly in relation to what I view as problematic modes of (inter-religious, inter-vMemetic) discourse in both the current Integral and the New Atheist circles.

I also find Panikkar's particular use of the terms mythos, logos, and symbol helpful, especially when looking at spirituality enactively.

What I think has yet to emerge in some of the post-metaphysical/postmodern thoughts on spirituality that are circulating – prompting Steven to note the anemic or “wussy” quality of postmodern theology – is, simply, the fullness of a postmodern mythos, logos, and symbolism, such as you might find in Tantric contexts … a living mythos with flesh, lips, fangs, and blood that is neither simply “mythic” (pre-rational) nor retro-romantic.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

…a living mythos with flesh, lips, fangs, and blood that is neither simply “mythic” (pre-rational) nor retro-romantic.  –Balder

When you came in the air went out.
And every shadow filled up with doubt.

–Jace Everett, from “Bad Things”

Balder's comment reminds me of the new smash-hit HBO series, True Blood. The lyrics from Everett are from the theme song that plays at the beginning of each show. This show is truly creating a new pomo mythos using elements of vampire mythology and redneck culture within the broader (post)modern issues of how different worldviews relate to each other. And don't. And all within a funny, creative, quirky, symbolic artistry. 

I love this show. It's quickly becoming a cult classic after just completing its first season.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

That sounds like an interesting show, Edward.  I don't have HBO right now, but I may check it out if I can find some DVD releases.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

I don't agree that pomo does not have a well-defined mythos, logos or symbolism. Notice what Hall says above:

“When Panikkar speaks of the ‘myth of pluralism,' he is locating pluralism within this mythic realm. ‘Pluralism,' he states, ‘is indeed a myth in the most rigorous sense: an ever-elusive horizon in which we situate things in order to be conscious of them without ever converting the horizon into an object.'”

It is in fact this pomo mythos that Panikkar draws from heavily in formulating his diatopical hermeneutics. And this mythos indeed has to do with the “weakness” of God, but not because it's ill defined or lacking in force or fang.

Caputo, in the Introduction to his book The Weakness of God (IUP, 2006), defines God as an “event” rather than a thing with a name. Events, unlike names, are uncontainable and unconditional, open-ended. In that sense the open event is not “powerful” like a supreme being that forces specific things to happen for specific reasons. Rather it “is an irruption, an excess, an overflow…which tears open closed circles,” thereby “constituting an experience of the impossible” (4-5).

Hence the event can be rather fierce of fang in that it disrupts all of our expectations. It comes out of nowhere like a tornado and wreaks havoc in our lives. However it's weak in the sense that it isn't definitive, like God. It's more like the whisper of a voice just out of earshot, or an indistinct blur on the horizon at twilight.

“It is more like a ghost, the specter of possibility….a thin thing…of a call rather than a causality, of a provocation rather than of a presence or a determinate entity”(8).

Also recall Panikkar's comments on symbol and the “poetic word.” Here's more from Caputo in the chapter “The Poetics of the Impossible”:

“…a poetics is an evocative discourse that articulates the event, while a logic is a normative discourse governing entities….A poetics addresses the rule of the promise or of the call, the grammar of the weak force of the call, while a logic regulates the strong force of the world….a poetics describes the symbolic space that obtains in the kingdom, while a logic describes the ideal or normative rules that govern real or possible worlds” (103-4).

Caputo does a fine job in this book of elucidating a pomo mythos, logos and symbol. As did Derrida before him and from whom Caputo draws heavily.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

I agree there is an emerging postmodern spirituality, and yes, Panikkar recognizes and employs the postmodern “mythos” in his own spiritual vision, but as I have said before, I do not believe postmodern spirituality is really well developed yet.  The focus in postmodern thought has been elsewhere.  It is now providing new ways to read existing spiritual traditions (with already well developed symbol systems – and Judaism already recognizes God as a verb, not a noun – ), but it seems its role has largely been more parasitic than originary, for understandable reasons.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

A main part of the mythos of pomo is that there is no “originary” tradition. Even these so-called traditions are themselves derivative of and parasitic on those that came before. That is one of the main critiques of the “strong” religions by the “weak” ones like Caputo's.

As to Derrida being parasitic on Judaism, his is a “religion without religion” as the book title suggests. He does not use the symbolism of Judaism or any other religion, instead creating neologisms, neomythogisms and neosymbolisms.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

:-)  Yes, I was expecting that comment!  I understand and agree that pomo challenges the notion of anything originary.  Everything is contaminated by the trace, etc.  I just meant that much of what is being called “postmodern spirituality” appears, now, not to be so much a spiritual vision in itself, but rather the effects of an a-spiritual strategy applied to existing spiritual traditions (Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, etc).  Not that there's anything wrong with this, and not that a full-blown postmodern spirituality isn't feasible.  Just that it's not well developed yet, at least in terms of a unqiuely postmodern spiritual vision and praxis. 

As Panikkar points out, there may be a largely unrecognized “spiritual” dimension to secular postmodern philosophy – I think he's right to highlight this – but, at this point, it seems to me that it's still being worked out, still being digested by the culture (and even the pomo thinkers themselves).

Caputo, Freeman, and Panikkar are three examples of attempts to do this – to really sound out the “spiritual potential” or implications of the postmodern turn.  I respect and appreciate this (that's part of what this pod is about!).  But I have to say, I also understand where Steven is coming from; I understand why he balks at God-talk in this context, why he argues no-theology may be preferable to a weak, self-effacing theology.  (I haven't read Caputo's book, though; I expect I need to do so to have much of value to contribute to discussions of Derridean theology.)

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

I too have heretofore been atheist in my pomo meanderings. I would suggest that Derrida was as well. And per above I too question the need to try to fit pomo into any “god” or traditional religion, or even a transcendental. But Caputo, Freeman and Panikkar have given me pause to reconsider.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Yes, I hear you.  Panikkar has had that effect on me, giving me pause to reconsider, reinvigorating perspectives that had grown stale or unappealing.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Caputo asks, as we have asked, if the name of God can be bypassed or surpassed, even within a theology of the event. He doesn't think so because the name is the conditional side of the conditional/unconditional relationship, and without it the latter is meaningless. Granted he accepts that the name itself can and will change-it doesn't have to be God-but the underlying concept naming this mysterious event gives the latter a “body,” so to speak (p. 3).

By the way, you can see a limited preview of the book at this Google Books link. It's where I'm getting my quotes and info until I can get a copy from the library.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

I have to share this funny story from Caputo's book. He's discussing what if there really was one true name of God. Each religion would argue about in what language it would be spoken or written. However the negative theologians “would present a long, verbose, and particularly perplexing discourse on behalf of silence” (11).

Caputo then goes on to note that although he's using the term “weak” it does not mean that this is a theology without passion, without fire, without fang. He claims for it an “existential intensity” that “overtakes us and overturns us” (11), and entices us, as Star Trek has aptly put it, “to boldly go where no one has gone before.”

kela will be pleased to know that Caputo sees this as a “sacred anarchy” (13).

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Hey guys – I'm really enjoying this discussion; thanks!

Edward, you've got me really interested in this Caputo fellow!

Cheers,
Mary

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

sacred anarchy. yes.

caputo has written on the later heidegger and eckhart, as has reiner schurmann. the theme of anarchism is present in both.

all of which i relate to radical immanence.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Hey,

Some of the last few of Balder's posts have read like explicit openings for me to join this exchange. I have been keeping up with it more or less, but haven't gotten solidly involved yet because, 1. I have trouble getting a grip on Panikkar in a postmetaphysical sense–his stuff that I have read here seems metaphysical to the bone to me. 2. I have been busy with other things including trying to work out a blog essay about Integral Thought in the light of J.H. Van den Berg's Metabletic Phenomenology. (The other day I posted a link to the Janus Head on-line journal though I had not looked at it for about a year. So I went back to catch up and found this special issue re: Van den Berg and his fascinating phenomenology…all new to me. Van den Berg stretched the basic concept of phenomenology into a cultural enterprise and a basis for a cultural therapeutic which eclipses Wilber's premature abandonment of phenomenology in the First Person Interior…match point to Van den Berg for polymorphous imagination and rhetorical skill.) I focused on one article (it was illustrated by one of my all-time heroes, Albrecht Durer) in which Van den Berg's U.S. bulldog, Robert Romanyshyn, discusses the velo, the veil (of the given) through which all individuals and all coherently constituted cultures view phenomenon. Though I don't think the little art history lesson through which he presents this material is all that valid, his discussion of its effects are valuable to keep in mind.

In this instance, I think the pomo velo that constitutes both the genre's mythos and logos is evident in what–if we go back to Rorty–he would call the final (ultimate) vocabulary or in the pomo case what might be called the “perpetually penultimate vocabulary.”

Here I would have to argue that pomo's vocabulary is not one that can sustain a dynamic spirituality on one hand while it dynamically seeks to deconstruct all that it can on the other hand.  It makes for a fascinating dialectic. Ironically, the purely deconstructive, purely postmetaphysical, impulse of pomo will never be able to fight a last ditch battle with any kind of spirituality–particularly the weak god of pomo spirituality–because the weak god and its theology has a horizon at its back into which it can retreat forever.

For a simple example; if we go over to the conversation between Mary and I in the last few posts on the Postmetaphysical Theology thread I argue, based on the shadings of my personal velo, that paradigm shattering, life-altering kundalini experiences are solely material. Mary admits to a perception, perhaps provisional, that is focused through a cultural velo and says she sees this same phenomena as an emanation of spirit. I wait until there is a fine tuning of the technology to augment my “final vocabulary” on the matter and am able to say, “See, it was all material, blood chemistry, synapse strength and genetically pre-determined neural pathways.” And Mary could still say, “And all of those are emanations of Spirit.” While that argument does not have the strength to advance from that point, nonetheless it will never be backed into The Last Ditch especially if it can fight this infinite rear guard action close enough to pomo to stay within the pomo never-quite-closed vocabulary. Is that a weak theology or not? I can't be sure.

Through whatever velo one might view phenomena, the point to me is not whether that phenomenology produces truth or a viable sense of reality, but what are the actions one might take based on this perception. Can the God of The Retreating Horizon ever inspire Pomo Jihad? Or will it always just hang around Starbucks as a cute, lap god, conversation piece?

I guess to me the Weak God of pomo is a functionally transparent but still present velo; remove it and the fundamental perception of the phenomena will still be the same. It might be totally vestigial. But given all of that I will gladly say that if any name of God is saved within a vocabulary as a means to make one feel better about themselves and their situation, and the universe and its situation, I would do nothing to remove it.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Steven, you wrote:

I have trouble getting a grip on Panikkar in a postmetaphysical sense-his stuff that I have read here seems metaphysical to the bone to me.

I have a vague memory of someone's post here from months ago wondering: is what we're discussing really post-metaphysical spirituality? Isn't it really just a variant of metaphysics? Maybe a “pared-down,” less-encumbered metaphysics, but metaphysics nonetheless? This is a question I continue to hold – because it all still seems like metaphysics to me.

Ironically, the purely deconstructive, purely postmetaphysical, impulse of pomo will never be able to fight a last ditch battle with any kind of spirituality-particularly the weak god of pomo spirituality-because the weak god and its theology has a horizon at its back into which it can retreat forever.

Yes, this could be the case. For example: after my years of indifference about spirituality and rejection of religion and the G-word (which happened when I could no longer believe what I had been taught about a great God in the sky who had to have his own son killed to “save” humanity – or at least some humans), I had a mystical experience, which I won't detail here – but one of my initial responses, which actually embarrassed my reasoning mind, was: “Ah – so this is what is meant by Holy Spirit – not that hogwash I was taught early on!” One could say I was retreating to the horizon at my back, or finding the nearest neat and limited theological box, provided to me by my upbringing, in which to place my experience. OTOH, maybe my experience was starting to shed light on a deeply flawed yet still-evolving tradition (the horizon is not a fixed point, after all) as I began to touch the rich wisdom of past generations. Maybe I was starting to grok new depths and nuances in the some of the long-standing stories and parables and dramas. Maybe the death of my childhood sky-god had provided the soil in which fresh seeds could sprout. Sprouts which will someday themselves grow, live for a time, and die, creating nourishment for what may yet be born.

Through whatever velo one might view phenomena, the point to me is not whether that phenomenology produces truth or a viable sense of reality, but what are the actions one might take based on this perception.

I agree! Because I only just read it today (and because it blew me away!), I point to one of jikishin's (Kerry's) blog-posts, a profound reflection on the practical application of spirituality.

I will gladly say that if any name of God is saved within a vocabulary as a means to make one feel better about themselves and their situation, and the universe and its situation, I would do nothing to remove it.

Well, that's kind of you … 

I know that God vocabulary can be used to make people “feel better” about their situations. And sometimes that's a good thing. But a deeper walk (via contemplation or other spiritual practices) on the various sacred paths can make you “feel worse” as well: you might find yourself being stripped of self-satisfaction and complacency as you are introduced your own darkness, your own narcissism and egocentricity, your own clinging to security or power or esteem. And developing a capacity for love and compassion also tends to open one up to deeper pain and suffering …. for to “love one another” is, in part,  the grace of feeling another's joy and pain as one's own ….

I've been pondering this Cameron Freeman quote that Balder provided early in that postmetatheo thread. It more clearly elucidates the connections among uncertainty, darkness, suffering, and spiritual faith (or trust) that I tried to hint at one of my posts there –

“So rather than providing a pre-packaged program of rules and procedures for admission into the Kingdom, the paradoxical strategy of Jesus disrupts the quest for cognitive certainty and call for a free movements of faith in the face of an impossible situation, involving risk, uncertainty and an openness to the unexpected that is grounded in a confession of ultimate not-knowing.

In contrast to the logical calculus and pin point clarity of an Integral Post-Metaphysics, an authentic faith commitment is 'structurally blind' and takes root only when the road seems obscure and when the storm clouds of life buffet us, when we are overwhelmed, when we stumble, and fall, and yet still move forward in spite of all evidence to the contrary… ”

Okay, now I'm just rambling. All for now.

Mary

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Caputo has a delightful word for his theology of the event: hier(an)archy. He explains:

“Suppose we dare to think about God otherwise than metaphysics and metaphysical theology allow?…What then?” (23).

”Différance, we might say to Alice [in wonderland], is not so much the ‘foundation' as the agent provocateur for everything that follows in this wonderful upside-down land” (25).

“Damnable deconstructive trickery, sheer relativistic and nihilistic wordplay, thunders His (Right) Reverence [Wilber] from the pulpit!” (26).

“To be sure, by advocating différance Derrida does not advocate outright chaos. He does not favor a simple-minded street-corner anarchy (nothing is ever simple) that would let lawlessness sweep over the land, although that is just what his most simplistic and anxious critics take him to say. For that would amount to nothing more than a simple counter-kingdom, a reign of lawlessness….Just like a simple totalitarianism…the opposite way, a simple anarchy would break the tension between the arche and the an-arche, erasing the slash between power and powerlessness….in “Force of Law” Derrida made it plain that deconstruction is not a matter of leveling laws in order to produce a lawless society, but of deconstructing laws in order to produce a just society. To deconstruct the law means to ‘negotiate the difference' between law and justice, where the law is thought to be something finite, and ‘justice' calls up an uncontainable event, an infinite or unconditional or undeconstructable demand” (27).

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

or how about “her- archy?” ;-)

topsy turviness one of the themes in spiritual anarchism, in the pashupata literature, e.g. 

i was about to write a blog: “The Principles of Spiritual Anarchism” for a musician friend who had asked me what i meant by the term, and as i was about to start, the irony of writing about the principles of anarchism struck me. but there they are: as principles or themes that pulverize other principles and dissolve themselves in the process. one such principle is seeing all things as “equal.”  another is “letting be.” another is “letting go.” these are not moralistic categories, they are reflections of equinamity and detachment, but one can see how an ethos might develop from them.

yes, of course, there will always be the threat of “mere relativism,” “pure nilhilism,” “reductionism,” “flatlandfuckheadism,” and so on, which may be a source of fear for the faint of heart.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

I can see value in such an “equalizing” and (self-)erasing approach – it's not only a “Green” artifact, as you know, and exists in other contemplative traditions – but for me it would be problematic, relatively, if it formed the basis of an ethos that denied the validity of all “ranking” or developmental distinctions.

Speaking of which, you never got back to me on this post….

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

“…but for me it would be problematic, relatively, if it formed the basis of an ethos that denied the validity of all 'ranking' or developmental distinctions.”

So… some things are less empty than others? ;-) Chandrakriti explains that all things are sama, the “same,” or ekarasa, or of “one taste,” insofar as all things are empty. Perhaps samata and tulyata (equality) can be taken as referring to things seen from an ultimate point of view, i.e., gradations exist only from the point of view of a relative truth. The very point of tulyata seems to be to deconstruct all such hierarchies, or “onto-theologies,” like the medieval Great Chain of Being. Many of the themes of what I call spiritual anarchism appear in the ati-yoga teachings. Ati yoga, as I see it, appears to be an “institutionalized” version of the sahajayana teachings, analogous to the Pratyabhijna an-upaya teachings of Kashmiri Shaivism.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Yes, exactly, that's why I said “relatively.”  Ati teaches a great equalization, all empty, all immaculate, all of single taste.  All Vajrasattva's face. 

No problem with that!

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Buddhists say that particularity is illusion and samsara? Strawman indeed.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

This is a little cryptic!  What is it in response to? 

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

haha. that bad hair creature looks like a muppet. just reading your various posts for entertainment, bruce. hey, do you speak with a cool accent? :-)

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Some people used to think so, especially when I returned from Asia.  But not so much nowadays…

So you were responding to my post to Tom on Integral Archipelago?  What I was calling a strawman was the suggestion that Buddhists deny conventional reality to the self. 

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

that would be another straw man. yes, i know: i should address my parties directly. i don't have access to that pod as of yet.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

“God as event” = existential Crisis ?

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Nickeson:  I guess to me the Weak God of pomo is a functionally transparent but still present velo; remove it and the fundamental perception of the phenomena will still be the same. It might be totally vestigial.

Steven, can you clarify what you mean here?  Are you describing a particular type or range of phenomena?  And are you suggesting that all interpretive lenses or veils do not fundamentally affect the fundamental perception of phenomena, or just this particular pomo one?

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Postmetasalsa: a mythologeme to the core-a.

From Peter Heltzel's review of Caputo's book, in JCRT 7.2 (Spring/Summer 2006):

In a delicate dance with Catherine Keller's notion of creation ex profundis, Caputo imagines creation as a concert of fluid and free-floating forces that shape pre-existent elements into a new and good life. Like unto the Derridean khora, the pre-existent elements are “mythologemes” of uncertainty and undecidability (72). They bear prophetic testimony to the open-endedness and riskiness of material, human and divine life. Caputo is inspired by the “beautiful risk” of creation as the right way to think about the God-world relationship with the two partners functioning interdependently as the ebb and flow of two salsa dancers.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Balder
I wrote:  I guess to me the Weak God of pomo is a functionally transparent but still present velo; remove it and the fundamental perception of the phenomena will still be the same. It might be totally vestigial.

and then

You asked:  Steven, can you clarify what you mean here?  Are you describing a particular type or range of phenomena?  And are you suggesting that all interpretive lenses or veils do not fundamentally affect the fundamental perception of phenomena, or just this particular pomo one?

I'll back into this:

First I want to thank Edward for posting that Google Book link to Caputo's The Weakness of God. When I linked in I had an immediate deja vu and then remembered back in the day when Greg was holding forth on Derrida, I had searched Caputo and found the same site, scanned the material on a couple of pages, raised a question in the thread, but for some reason Caputo didn't spark any interest. But good things do come for those who wait…I'm sure in some subliminal mode John D. can sense we are abuzz about him here.

From now on out it is a phenomenological quasi-Sufi style-story:

I just read fairly closely several of Caputo's early pages and realized this was the version of God on which I was raised. My mother is a devout, relatively “high church” Episcopalian and my Father went along because there wasn't a Unitarian congregation within 200 miles of where we lived. The Episcopalians were a fair compromise to his particular sensibilities. (I think toward the end of his life he began to prefer the Native American Church to which he had a standing invitation despite the fact that heritage-wise he was just a plain old mongrel-American cowboy. But he was damned good with horses and the Arapaho Tribe, in whose midst we lived, were damned good with horses too; they own some of the finest herds in the U.S.A., and such was their fundamental connection to him.)

Early on my parents gently disabused me of any sky god illusions. And I think my father also corrected any illusions I might have of needing a god or a religion as the basis of either my ethos or my moral code. He once told me that his certainty as to the existence of God was the only thing that kept him from being a hard core communist and he was really thick with the radical left when he was younger. But on the other hand, he also told me that if you really need that horse, steal it, its a game. If you really feel that some man should die, kill him. Be reconciled to the consequences. God is a long way off. To him, god was not an event, but events were his god's only manifestation and I think my father was fairly well assured that he…along with everything else…was one of his god's events.

What more could a man of radical autonomy want? His logic was not of a singularly formal sort, but such was the way he lived his life. He was one of only two men (women aside for now) that I ever respected. (Rev. Will D. Campbell, a former neighbor and editor and a friend long ago, is the other.)

That's part of the subjective lens through which I view all phenomena, or at least that which relates to this particular thread.

I recall a time, maybe I was 8, and bored with a sermon one Sunday morning, I made a close reading of The General Confession in the Episcopalian Prayer Book along with (maybe a few months later) the Articles of Religion, as found in the Appendix, and rejected them both;  thus when I was “confirmed” at the age of 9, I had a true humorously ironic feeling of being a total hypocrite. I got the wine and the bread while repudiating the basic principles behind it all.  In other words by the time I was 9 I believed that Christianity was a total debasement of what I thought was the essence of the human race…with me as the standard, of course. (Later in life my mother assured me that this was totally okay–I could reject all the basic principles of Christianity and still be a good Episcopalian.) And from the same perspective, somewhere between the ages of 16 and 34, somewhat under the influence of Jung, I concluded that if the culturally generated dogma of a religion could so easily, so forgivably, go away, so could the culturally generated conception of the agent behind all dogmas be dismissed without changing in anyway whatsoever my absolutely delicious experience of this world. And so the god of my father died.

What I realized was that what my father called god was essentially what I called the authentic being of a mortal, fallible, outlaw, mongrel-American cowboy. He thought, for whatever reason–maybe it was a streak of mysticism–that god was somehow an agentic factor in his life, a middleman through the grace of whom he worked. To me the god was weak, the man as the standard, as the measure, was by far the strongest agent. My father looked at the world through this functionally transparent lens that he called god. I can throw that lens aside–it doesn't matter whether it was named after a strong god, or a weak one–and know that neither one of us would ever have changed a thing if he had done the same. I can say that because we knew each other very well. I was the only person alive to whom he would trust his ranch…the first time he put it into my care I was 13.

Vestigial? It goes without saying.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

I' ve been reading over prevous posts in various threads. We have amassed quite a bit of fascintating dialogue here. Here's a quote from Gregory Desilet that I find relevant to our discussion on God:

I recall Derrida saying in an interview that “all experience is experience of the other.” And I think Derrida strongly resists the possible tendency to think the “other” in terms of “God.” The word “God” has way too much baggage associated with it for it to stimulate the kind of “newness” or fresh approach to questions surrounding the meaning and quality of life that Derrida would like to initiate. In this respect the word “God” is similar to “Jesus.” Those who would like to initiate a profoundly new or nontraditional approach to understanding the teachings of the New Testament are burdoned with the history and the hermeneutics of interpetation of Jesus' words that work to derail any attempt to talk “differently” about what Jesus may have meant and how he should be understood. To separate himself from traditional theology Derrida speaks of himself as one who ” passes for an  atheist.” The “other” is not God for Derrida and it is possible, at times, that the “other” could be what in other contexts may be called the “devil.” The “other” is the future coming at us in all its potential beauty, terror, and strangeness. The impossibility in it is the impossibility to predict what it will bring-which is the operation of differance and the other as the impossible because the radical way in which these must be theorized precludes nothing in the way of events and experience.

Think of it this way: suppose someone says to you after you report a certain experience, “You cannot have that experience. That experience is impossible.” Will you trust the a priori or analytical dictate that such an experience is impossible and revise your assessment of your experience? Or will you favor an empirical approach and allow experience to inform your definition of what may count as experience? If we are in some broad way “open” to experience we will remain open to it even to the point of including what would seem impossible. This is the kind of opennnes to the other Derrida advocates. This kind of openness is also what he means by “justice”-which is an allowing of the other to be other (rather than forcing the other into some category of the same). And so justice, as the other, is also “undeconstructible” in Derrida's view because, like the other (and like differance) it remains beyond the register of particularity necessary for deconstruction (such as civil law and religious ritual, for example).

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Edward

I'll buy most of what Greg and Jacques were talking about. I would throw out the word “future” in favor of saying simply that potential is either more or less imminent or more or less latent, a small matter. I'd also throw out the words, “beauty, terror, and strangeness” as unfitting assumptions, a larger matter. And finally I would throw out the word “justice,” one of the biggest whore words of all time. Justice, to the winners, is that which has been served and justice, to the losers, is that which has been betrayed. No one will ever be able to put lipstick on that pig and make it any less of a whore; too bad for it sounds so good but it puts out service to all.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Yes, it is interesting that Greg criticizes the use of the word “God” as having too much baggage to describe what Derrida means by différance. Which is the point of making up a new word like the latter. And then he and D turn around and use the word “justice.” Even though Greg takes pains to recontexualize that as he and D use it it's not the same as the bastard justice of the world that leads to so much injustice. But why not, like in the case of God, just create a new word?

* * *

It was a cold day in the courtroom, as the heating system had broken down the night before during the worst blizzard those parts had seen in 20 years. It had been raining earlier that night before the freeze set in. The gale-force winds had loosened some of the roof tiles, causing a leak. Hence a few wet spots on the courtroom rug had frozen over.

Billy was sitting with his mother in the gallery, watching his father's trial for stealing a loaf of bread. The jury had passed its verdict ten minutes prior: Guilty. The judge announces the sentence: One month in jail. A well-tailored man sitting behind Billy yells out: “That's justice!” Billy, transfixed on one of the frozen ponds on the floor, says weakly: “No, it's just ice.”

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Here's Caputo on what I'd call the two-truths doctrine, from TWOG:

…rather than speaking of God's transcendence at all, it might be better to speak of God's in-scendence…or “insistence” in the world (45).

I steadfastly oppose a two-worlds theory, in which the kingdom of God is one thing and the world is entirely separate….The kingdom is the salt of the earth, the leaven of the world's bread…the outside that insists and insinuates itself inside the world and saves the world from itself (52).

The opening verses of Genesis make no use whatever of a metaphysical distinction between an eternal, infinite and supersensible being creating finite, temporal being, which is an un-Hebraic conception that is unconceivable outside of the two-worlds schema that Christianity inherited from Hellenistic metaphysics (62).

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Re: just say no to two worlds. This resonates with Eckhart.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Hi, Steven,

I actually had a vaguely similar upbringing to yours, at least in this area:  my parents were very loosely theistic Episcopalians (my father attended church more to play french horn in the brass section than to worship a deity), and once I was old enough to reflect on these things (7 or 8), they encouraged curiosity and inquiry rather than dogma, suggesting God might be a way of talking about the universe rather than a separate entity.  They never tried to encourage or enforce belief in a sky god.

Anyway, I enjoyed the way you “backed in” to a response – I really enjoy your artful recollections – but I'm doubtful that your conclusion can stand as a “generalizable truth” – that holding a “god concept” is entirely without consequence for perception or behavior.  It may have been the case with your father, since the term seemed to be largely transparent and undefined, as you said.  But I don't believe that's the case with everyone.

Best wishes,

B.

Re: Raimon Panikkar's Cosmotheandric Vision

Steven and Bruce –

Even though I mentioned previously that I was born “steeped in myth,”  my upbringing has some similarities to yours – born and raised Roman Catholic by parents who could pretty much take it or leave it, and educated in progressive Catholic schools with teachers (some of them non-Catholics or ex-Catholics) who often encouraged us to look beyond the literal level in the Bible and in the tradition. When I was the age that most kids go through their first holy communion, I was asked if this is what I wanted to do, and I said no – in part because even then I wasn't sure that God had died and become a wafer (and if by chance it was true, wouldn't He then be really mad at my hypocrisy in taking communion?) Besides, my mother no longer took communion, even though she took us to church sometimes. From her I got the sense that there are some things of value here, but don't take it too seriously. The world is much bigger than this. It was a pretty liberal religious upbringing, and for much of my youth the literal and the metaphorical and the symbolic co-existed – sometimes beautifully, sometimes uncomfortably – and I was allowed the freedom to question all of these things.

Just goes to show you in how many directions things can go ….

Mary