Trinity and Asian Religions

—Why does it seem like corresponding modes of spiritual belonging must supercede previous ones?¹ If this notion is true for Panikkar, how is this type of historical supercessionism compatible with an intra-religious cosmotheandrism? It would seem prima facie that cosmotheandrism should weigh equally the spiritual belonging of past persons and contemporary persons (even future ones however this must be done) equally. —One way to get at the metanarratival question that can be asked of Panikkar as well as Denny and Theology without Walls is: given the Trinity is an "archetypal structure for world religions" and an "ideal locus for inter-religious and intra-religious dialogue," what are the stakes that delimit the framework and grounds upon which these claims are posited?² —Panikkar's unpacking of the development of personalism in Christian spirituality (and Denny's explanation of it) is significant in interpreting the diversity of spiritual belonging. However, its hard to overstate how Renaissance through Modern thought has reshaped our understanding of "person." So, to imply (as at least Denny's interpretation of Panikkar seems to do) that "the person" has been used within the locus of Christendom and understood (even somewhat) similarly in the past 300 years to the first 300 years post-incarnation seems reductionistic. For example, Denny's tongue in cheek use of "a personal relationship with God" refers to an American evangelical phenomenon which is troubling for sure. But in my opinion, its not troubling because of the emphasis on the reality of spiritual orientation in personal relationship, but because it intimates a deep misunderstanding of both the "person" and therefore the "relation" and therefore the "personal relation."³

One could pose the question in a different way: is what Panikkar refers to as "personalism" actually referring to on orientation of thought toward some essential quality of the person and the elevation of that defining aspect of the "the person"—e.g. independence of spirit, freewill, individualism, self-determination—to a level of highest priority in anthropological thought? Could we argue that the three genres of religious belonging to which Panikkar refers—iconolatry, "personalism" (or maybe the essential quality to which Panikkar refers), and non-dualism— are actually three proper modes of a (more) complete anthropology and understanding of whatever impenetrable quality/classification of existence we refer to as "personness" and therefore, map onto our understanding of God? Is it only the Christian personalism that correlates its spirituality with its anthropology? Even in Fredericks discussion of his inability to dialogue using terms like "original personhood" with his Buddhist teacher—do not all of these paths in their diverse expressions of "God" and spiritual belonging consist of and therefore connote their own implicit anthropology even if it is deeply incompatible with traditional concepts of the quality of "personness?"⁴ This is not to say that "God" can only be understood anthropomorphically but to ask, is the most proper anthropology, in a sense, theology? Rather is it possible for us to not anthropomorphize God in attempts to theologize oneself?⁵

—Kim writes about the reliance of western paradigms on the "either/or" in contrast to the Confucian relational ontology of the "both/and." This interprets for us the nearly 200 year reliance on the concept of the "dialectic." What are the implications? Is the dialectic an answer to the problem of the either/or or is it the epitome of a broken either/or system of knowing and being?⁶ To ask the question in another way: is dialectical thought necessarily dualistic? Is is necessarily monistic?⁷ —How then on the other hand, does a system of fundamental and complementary harmony of opposites account for the quality of oppositeness? If this system is a system of both/and-ness, then can it also confirm a quality of either/or-ness? Is not either/or-ness a complementary opposite of both/and-ness?⁸ The conceptual implication here is embodied in the mystical reality of Trinity—what is the interface between an utterly distinct substantialist ontology and a complementary relational ontology? Maybe this can be expressed by a tautology: a thing must be both both/and and either/or in order that it can be either both/and or either/or. —Is Frederick's interpretation/reformulation of Rahner's grundaxiom explicitally rejecting any type of panentheism in favor of pantheism?⁹