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INTERRELIGIOUS READING AND SELF-DEFINITION FOR RAIMON PANIKKAR AND FRANCIS CLOONEY

2009; Duquesne University Press; Volume: 44; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

2162-3937

Christopher D. Denny,

Indian and Buddhist Studies

What is the motivation for reading religious texts from a tradition other than one's own? Should one read another tradition's religious texts merely as a matter of opposition research? Must we seek an all-encompassing synthesis of varying religious traditions, in which each text is a partial epiphenomenon of a common religious experience? Or, should one read merely to deepen the understanding of one's own religious tradition? Answers to these questions should take cognizance of the shift in the scholarly encounter among world religions over the last generation. Through detailed attention to social, historical, and textual contexts, comparative theology has attempted to move beyond previous synthesizing tendencies in the theology of religions. As postmodernism continues to gather steam in an era suspicious of ontological claims to transcendence, religious syntheses and metanarratives have fallen on hard times. This shift toward a comparative theological enterprise raises questions about interreligious hermeneutics that can be organized into two groups. first group of questions relates to the role of religious texts and scriptures in comparative theology: Should interreligious dialogue be closely linked to texts, or should the relationship be a more flexible one where texts are peripheral to comparative theology? second group of questions concern the interpretative model a reader chooses when reading a text from outside one's own religious tradition. This essay will contrast how two influential comparative theologians have addressed these questions in selected writings over the past three decades. Raimon Panikkar is one of the pioneers of what is now called comparative theology, and his influence in interreligious dialogue spans more than half a century. Francis Clooney has made his mark in the last twenty years. portions of their writings focused on hermeneutics exemplify two different stances possible in reading texts across religious traditions. Neither of these authors immediately leaps into exegesis. Both approach interreligious hermeneutics with a preunderstanding of what a reader's proper stance should be in that encounter. Beginning with an examination of their respective proposals for defining an ideal stance from which a reader can read texts, this essay will then move into an exploration of their prescriptions for interreligious exegesis. Against the backdrop of George Lindbeck's typologies of religious experience, the essay tries to delineate the divergence between Panikkar's existential and experiential stance in hermeneutics and Clooney's more insistently textual and linguistic one. What results is a divergence regarding not merely exegesis but also a difference involving the very definitions of self and other in reading across traditions. In turn, these contrasting understandings of personal identity confront comparative theologians with two starkly different motivations for interreligious reading. I. Avoiding Preconceptions and Establishing Starting Points In Intrareligious Dialogue, Panikkar makes it clear that his starting point for the interreligious encounter is an anthropological one. This highlights the difficulty with theological attitudes of exclusivism and inclusivism for Panikkar. His differences with these stances are not doctrinal or logical. Rather, he is concerned with the effects such attitudes have on other persons and the barriers that are erected between persons in order to defend a logical and formal conception of truth. (1) In Panikkar's words: The aim of the intrareligious dialogue is understanding, and [t]he ideal is communication in order to bridge the gulfs of mutual ignorance and misunderstandings between the different cultures. (2) Panikkar's justification for interreligious encounter is not doctrinal, nor is his justification theological in the sense that a god or goddess--a theos or a thea--rationalizes the practice of dialogue. Rather, Panikkar proffers an anthropological foundation for interreligious sharing. …