One of the world's foremost ecumenical theologians has died. Raimon Pannikar died August 26 at his home in Spain. He was 91.
Pannikar studied and wrote in India for most of his adult life. He did not go to India until he was 36 years old. Once there, he found a much different religious and cultural setting than in his more familiar Catholic Europe.
"I left Europe [for India] as a Christian, I discovered I was a Hindu and returned as a Buddhist without ever having ceased to be a Christian."
Pannikar's first major work was The Unknown Christ of Hinduism, a textual comparison between medieval theologian, Thomas Aquinas, and Sankara's interpretation of the Brahma-Sutras. Christ, said Pannikar, is not "the monopoly or exclusive property" of Christianity.
Rather, Christ is the universal symbol of divine-human unity, the human face of God. Christianity approaches Christ in a particular and unique way, informed by its own history and spiritual evolution. But Christ vastly transcends Christianity. Panikkar calls the name "Christ" the "Supername," in line with St. Paul's "name above every name" (Phil 2:9), because it is a name that can and must assume other names, like Rama or Krishna or Ishvara.
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