Tag: Raimon Panikkar

Reflections on the Dynamics of Participating in the Trinity

Trinity as ultimate reality means reality is relational. Ultimate reality is not a monism or one thing in three modes, nor is it three substances within a single abstraction, but the Trinity is a relational dynamic. This has implications for nearly everything; for how we conceive human experience, the church, creation and relationship to God. As Nicholas Lash describes, Trinitarian doctrine is the grammar, the structure, of the Christian school of discipleship.[1] This Trinitarian grammar provides for a creative and generative dynamic, which the early church and the church today is continuing to realize.

The Unpredictable Nature of Trinity

The problem is, the Trinity has political, social, anthropological, and even economic implications, which are impossible to predict. As Raimon Panikkar notes, “The Trinity is an irritant to any monarchic ideology, be it religious (monotheism), political (imperialism and colonialism), economic (global market), academic (pensée unique), or even lifestyle (technocracy).”[2] The Trinity is a doctrine to be realized, and “the world” mitigates against this realization in its attachment to an ever collapsing dualism (an identity through difference that reduces to sameness). This collapse (the violence of the world) in its various political, ethnic, and psychological antagonisms is predictable, but the positive overcoming of the mechanism of violence (peace) cannot be predicted or captured in a theory. Paul describes it as passage from slavery to sin to freedom in the Trinity.

The Passage from Trinitarian absence into Trinitarian Realization

In Romans 7, Paul pictures the ego pitted against the law as controlled by death, which amounts to a Trinitarian absence, which becomes clear in Romans 8, with the Son displacing the isolated ego, and Abba displacing the law, and death being displaced by the Spirit. Human violence against the self and the world is working out its trinitarian absence, a struggle undone through entry into the Trinity: “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. . . For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God . . . (Rom, 8:2, 15-16). Slavery to sin is characterized by fear and death and the impenetrable law which split the ego. This is displaced by a relation to Abba, in the Son, which is life in the Spirit. The realization of this unity not only shows itself in a psychological reorientation but in bringing together categories which were seemingly beyond reconciliation. God and world, matter and Spirit, heaven and earth, typically pitted in a dualism, are harmonized in a Trinitarian synthesis. Quite simply, realization of the truth of the Trinity is entry into peace and reconciliation, which is salvation.[3]

The Organic Nature of Salvation

This is not so much a cultural project (Christendom) or an institution or religion (Christianity) but it is this realization, corporately and individually of the wholeness to be found in the Trinity. According to Jesus, “The kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or, ‘There it is!’ For behold, the kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:20-21). God does not indwell an organization or a civilization but people. The civilizational and religious project have tended to obscure the point of the faith, to enter into Trinity and to live out the implications of being the kingdom. Christendom is on its last legs and Christianity as an institutional religion is in sharp decline, but this opens up the opportunity to the reality of “being in Christ” as a personal realization.

Which is not to say the project is individualistic, but the point of the ecclesia is as an organism and not an organization.[4] This organic understanding means not just personal growth, but recognition that relation to this truth is not like that of a religion or organization but is entry into the full realization of relationship. We are realizing but have not yet realized the fullness of this truth, either as it relates to ourselves, to other religions, or to the world as a whole, but we can participate in this growth without full comprehension. We are growing into Christ who, through us, is growing in the world, but we can only follow the form from our present perspective. “But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good” (1 Co 12:7). The kingdom is in process and is not historically complete, and this unifying work, certainly involving knowledge (beyond full comprehension) is giving rise to an intelligibility.

The kingdom is in your midst for the common good, but no single mind or organization or hierarchy controls or has a handle on this kingdom. It is a process of discovery and realization, which cannot be predicted or conceptualized or reduced to a set of doctrines or propositions. It is an unfolding story, which involves who God is in Christ. As Rowan Williams describes, there is no single institutional project or clear course of engagement with other traditions, other than the concrete future of a Christlike humanity, that is a humanity “delivered from a slavish submission to an alien divine power and participating in the creative work of God.”[5] It is not our place to provide a universal theory or explanation of how this might work in particular places, cultures, and religions. Though we may not know the universal how, we do know that it is in and through specific human encounter with the ever-expanding story of Jesus Christ and the church.

Conclusion: The Process of Salvation as a Trinitarian Realization

The unfolding relational nature of Trinitarian theology could never assume to speak the last word. “To the extent that the relation of spirit to logos is still being realized in our history, we cannot ever, while history lasts, say precisely all that is to be said about logos . . .  We know that the unification of all things through Christ is not a matter of a single explanatory scheme being manifested to us, but of the variousness of human lives being drawn into creative and saving relation to the divine and to each other.”[6] We are in the midst of the purposeful groaning (Rom 8:26-27) working itself out in creation and the body of Christ. “Being Christian, if it means acting for these goals and for these reasons, is believing the doctrine of the Trinity to be true, and true in a way that converts and heals the human world.”[7]

[1] Nicholas Lash, “Considering the Trinity,” Modern Theology, vol. 2, no. 3 (1986), 183-96. Cited in Rowan Williams, “The Trinity and Pluralism,” in Christian Uniqueness Reconsidered: The Myth of a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, Edited by Gavin D’Costa (New York: Orbis Books, 1990), 13.

[2] Raimon Panikkar, The Rhythm of Being: The Unbroken Trinity, (New York: Orbis Books, 2013), 224-225.

[3] The experience of the synthesis of the Father and Son, time and eternity, Creator and creation, is through the Spirit. The Spirit is the realization of synthesis in an ever-abiding dynamic (Rom 8:26–27). Trinity as the structure of reality shows itself in being between (creation in process), and this relational betweenness constitutes not just a third, but is the truth of the whole. Time is not pitted against eternity, as if God is incapable of the temporal, but in Christ the Creator is groaning with creation (Rom 8:22). Just as the Father is through the Son, so too the eternal is in time. Panikkar calls it “tempiternal” in that just as the Father and Son cannot be separated neither can time and eternity be separated.Ibid, 226.

[4] Raimundo Panikkar, “The Jordan, the Tiber, and the Ganges: Three Kairological Moments of Christic Self-Consciousness,” in Hick and Knitter, The Myth of Christian Uniqueness: Toward a Pluralistic Theology of Religions, (New York: Orbis, 1995),  104

[5] Williams, 11.

[6] Ibid, 12.

[7] Ibid, 13.

Perspectives on Peace: An Inquiry and Invitation

This is a guest blog by PBI Professor Ethan Vanderleek

From April 8-May 27, I will be leading an 8-week module through Forging Ploughshares entitled “Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled”: Perspectives on Peace. Here I offer a few initial reflections on peace, as well as some guiding questions for the module, in the hope that others will join me in reading some excellent texts and asking some tough, relevant, and meaningful questions.

The question of peace involves every level of human, even cosmic, existence. Spiritual teachers often say to start with inner peace, in your own heart and life. Such inner peace will spill over into relationships with others. The reverse is also true: inner peace, peace with and within yourself, is impossible if you live in deep enmity with your neighbor. And peace in neighbourly relationships extends to include our communities, cities, churches, nations, and the human race as a whole. When we talk about peace, then, there is ultimately no human reality that is left out of the discussion: when we truly desire peace we desire it at every level. 

There is also a sense in which peace is primordial or foundational to human existence and experience. Many people, perhaps most, would say they desire peace. St. Augustine says that wars are fought not for their own sake but so that peace may be won. Violence is only engaged to bring about peace. No one could say they love violence for its own sake. The peace that is violently fought for may indeed be a false peace, but there is some connection to peace nonetheless. “What men want in war is that it should end in peace. Even while waging a war every man wants peace, whereas no one wants war while he is making peace” (Augustine, City of God, XIV.12).

What do we desire when we desire peace? First, it is a negative desire. It is the desire to be freed from certain forms of un-peace, of dis-ease, from violence and war. When a parent yearns for a moment of peace and quiet in a chaotic household, it is a desire that the noise, commotion, and inter-sibling conflict would cease. Peace from war and conflict, in our historical moment, often starts with a ceasefire, with something stopping, not so much something starting. This is negative peace: the cessation, even temporarily, of violence, conflict, and aggression.

But this negation of violence is only the barest condition for peace. Is there a positive sense of peace? First, peace is a positive, dynamic, energetic relationship between people or between things. There is peace when an infant slumbers on the breast; though there may be quiet, there is also excitement and anticipation at what this little life will hold, how the mother and father will encourage and behold the child’s growth and curiosity. Peace between friends involves conversation, exploration, pursuing common projects together: building a swing-set, perhaps, cooking a meal, or talking through some complex matter. Religiously, peace may involve the silence of prayer, listening for the voice of the creator; even here, in silence and stillness, there is an energy of relationship, of receiving life and love from beyond. So peace is not just an absence of violence: it is a positive set of relationships, sharing life and energy between differences.

To attempt a formula: peace is dynamic life-giving relationship between differences. Peace does not involve collapsing or eliminating all difference, where all that remains is an undifferentiated whole. Nor, though, does peace involve an absolute emphasis on difference, where individual people or communities isolate themselves from the unity that comes through relationships. Peace involves a delicate balance between unity and difference: an over-emphasis on either is the destruction of relationships, either collapsed into a whole or spread out so thinly and remotely that no relationship is possible. 

Starting April 8, I will be leading an 8-week module through Forging Ploughshares on the question of peace. Four key questions will guide our inquiry. I sketch out some preliminary thoughts here, but these are open questions that admit to ever further thought and prayer. They are: 

  1. What is true peace?
  2. What is false peace?
  3. Is peace possible or even desirable? Is peace more fundamental than war and violence? 
  4. What is the peace that Jesus gives?
  1. What is true peace? Peace is dynamic, energetic, ordered, exploratory, relational, and freeing. It operates at every level of existence: personal, relational, communal, political, and cultural. Peace at one level integrates with peace at other levels: I cannot have true personal peace if I am not at peace with my brother or sister. We cannot have true peace between nations without peace between cultures and civilizations.
  2. What is false peace? Peace masquerades in many forms. There is the false peace of withdrawal into the self, the self making peace with itself totally apart from relations with others. There is the false peace of uniformity, where everyone must fit into one expected way of being. There is the false peace of the common enemy, where peace is made in a community by finding an enemy that everyone agrees to despise and hate. There is the false peace of victory, where one person or group achieves peace by defeating, perhaps subjugating, another person or group. There is the false peace of indifference, where the effort of relating is too great, and we agree to ignore difficult aspects of a relationship. There is the false peace of distraction, where work or entertainment keep us from deeper relationships, questions, or human endeavors.
  3. Is peace possible or even desirable? Is peace more fundamental than war and violence? There is the further, troubling question of whether peace is a worthwhile question and whether it is a true or worthy object of desire at all. Is it possible that all peace is ultimately false? The early Greek philosopher Heraclitus said that “war [polemos] is father [pater] of all” (F23, The First Philosophers, trans. Robin Waterfield). Conflict seems constitutive of reality.And sometimes we crave the adventure of conflict, war, or aggression. Nietzsche writes in The Anti-Christ, “Not contentment, but more power; not peace at all, but war; not virtue, but proficiency” (New York: Penguin, 1990; 128; trans. R.J. Hollingdale). On the one hand, then, peace might simply be brief moments of rest within reality’s deeper constitutive violence. On the other hand, peace might cover over our fundamental humanity, which needs to express itself through conflict, power, and victory. Nietzsche warns us against desiring a lazy peace that squelches the endeavoring human spirit. Perhaps the pursuit of peace is one of Christianity’s lies, uncritically accepted, but needing a total revaluation when we return to the fundamental human drive to life, a drive which, far from fearing or shunning war and violence, seeks out and embraces them. This is a question that invites ever further inquiry, sometimes troubling inquiry, when we consider how deep seated the impulse to violence and war is in our world and in ourselves.
  4. What is the peace that Jesus gives? Christian faith teaches that peace is the truth of creation and redemption. “My peace I leave you,” Jesus says, yet “not as the world gives.” The peace of Jesus is set firmly against all forms of false peace. But false peace is endemic, and so his presence is not first pacifying but aggravating. He exposes false peace. He is identified not as a wise, serene sage but as a man of sorrows. He suffers all the effects of our forms of false peace, our insistence on making peace through violent means. Jesus’s peace cannot be secured through military violence, which would be to totally compromise it. He makes real and accessible the peace of the Triune God, that infinite relationship of source, response, and openness, of Father, Son, and Spirit. 

These questions and more will guide our inquiry in the “Perspectives on Peace Module.” We’ll examine historical sources with Augustine and Julian of Norwich. We’ll address critiques of peace from Heraclitus and Nietzsche. We’ll learn from Jewish and Muslim writers on peace. We’ll consider peace between nations, cultures, civilizations, and religions with Raimon Panikkar. Through it all we’ll strive to keep Jesus himself as the ultimate criteria and judge for what true peace is.