In his effort to develop a new theology, Raimon Panikkar innovates the traditional theological language, with which he is so familiar. His basic assumption is the radical inadequacy of all language relating to God. With his capacity to create new forms of language, Panikkar speaks of an oxymoric language: sharp, keen, acute-obtuse, inert, mad … “penetrating madness”. He regards the profound experience by which humanity has come to call God by many names more as a symbol than as a concept. “God certainly has a face”, he says; “it is that which is manifested in our own faces and shines through taborically when we choose not to supplant him with our own physiognomies” (“Los rostros de Dios” [Epílogo], Los Rostros de Dios, Facies Deitatis, Compostela, 2000).
When reading Panikkar, in order to sufficiently grasp his philosophy-theology on God we must constantly bear in mind this preference for a language that is paradoxical, oxymoric and, ultimately, revitalizing of itself and the very limited concepts it employs. Panikkar speaks of a God who is a non-objectifiable symbol, irreducible to a subject or a concrete object, thus eluding all objectification, who both reveals and conceals himself.