Presidential Address THEOLOGY on the OTHER SIDE of the BORDERS: RESPONDING to the SIGNS of the TIMES
• CTSA PROCEEDINGS 57 (2002): 87-120 • Presidential Address THEOLOGY ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE BORDERS: RESPONDING TO THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES This being a gathering of Christian theologians, it is proper, I presume, to begin with a prayer. Draw near in friendship. Save us and help us. Show yourself gracious, O Lord! Be present, O Lord, wonderful, adorned. Shower on us treasure most precious! Hear now our cry. Lend us your ear. Shield us from sins' contagion! To you, radiant God, we bring this prayer. Shine on our friends in blessing/' The fact that the prayer did not end with the usual invocation of the name of Jesus should have given the game away. You might have suspected that it is not a Christian prayer. Indeed, it is a Hindu prayer, taken from the Rg Veda, V, 24, the oldest and most important text of Vedic Hinduism, a collection of 1,028 hymns in ten books, composed in an oral tradition in ca. 1400-1200 BC in northwest India. But that you have responded to it with an enthusiastic Amen, and would have, I hope, no objection to my using it on this occasion, is indeed one of the most significant signs of the times with profound implications for our doing theology. For if all theology worthy of the name must sink its roots deep in prayer and worship—lex orandi, lex credendi, and lex credendi, lex theologandi—and if today we recognize that we can and should benefit from the worship and prayer of other religions for our own spiritual growth, then our way of doing theology, in response to this sign of our present times, must be different 'Raimundo Panikkar, The Vedic Experience: Mantramanjan.
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