The question of hermeneutics permeates the entire corpus of Panikkar’s writings. Because of his cross-cultural experience, he has been acutely aware of the limits of Western thought. Although trained in contemporary European hermeneutics, he has constantly warned against applying uncritically Western principles of interpretation to the diverse religious experience of mankind. He has urged scholars to penetrate to the depth of religious experience— in its diversity—before beginning to interpret, and he has cautioned against a superficial “translation” across cultural and experiential boundaries.
On the practical level, he has set guidelines for interreligious dialogue; on the theoretical level, he has attempted to develop a cross-cultural, interreligious hermeneutic.
Panikkar’s earlier book The Intrareligious Dialogue (New York:
Paulist Press, 1978) indicates that his hermeneutics operates in a cross-cultural context. This one shows that his hermeneutics is rooted deeper than logos. “Hermeneutics” is the third element in the title, coming after “myth” and “faith” —pointing out that his hermeneutics is not merely an intellectual analysis of intelligible content, but that it flows out of those deeper levels of experience that are the very wellsprings of religion. For Panikkar then, religious hermeneutics is valid and fully scientific only if it critically takes into account that primordial level of religious experience which he calls “myth” and which is grasped by faith. These two books-the first a brief statement setting the stage for dialogue, the second an extensive explication of the presuppositions of dialogue-present the basis of a new and more universal hermeneutics.