TRITOCANONICA?

By: Fransiskus Borgias M (EFBE@fransisbm)

What is the so-called Tritocanonica? Is it possible for us to talk about the Tritocanonica? Yes, historically and traditionally it is, but maybe not theologically and dogmatically? I am not quite sure of it by now. Well, I will abandon the discussion and exploration on it for a while and I will pay attention more on the other topic, which in one way or another, related also to this topic.

Traditionally speaking, we know the so-called proto-canonica. But for sure in the beginning, there was no canon. But then in the long course of history, we have a canon of the bible. It must be admitted also that it is triggered by the emergence of the Gnostic movements in the history of Christianity. The Christians have their own canon of the bible. The Jews also have their own canon of their sacred writings. The differences remain throughout the history. And in the 16^th century there appear the movement of Protestant Reformation. They proclaimed their own canon; their canon is different from the canon of the Catholics, in the total amount of the holy books. Since then we came to know the attribute of deuterocanonica, meaning the second canon. We have deutero-canonica because we have in the other hand, the so-called proto-canonica, meaning the first canon. The deuterocanonica includes all books which were not in the Jewish Canon. But the Catholics still consider those books worthy of reading. They appreciate their spiritual content and heritage. They appreciate their contribution to the life of the Church, especially in the realm of morality.

Then what I mean when I begin to talk about the so-called tritocanonica? Is it only an eccentric neologism? Or am I want to open a new discourse in the realm of biblical hermeneutics? To be honest, I still do not know yet exactly what I am going to do with such a terminology. But I fell that I have to put forward it in the public domain (through this blogspot of mine), in order to be discussed and criticized by other writer or thinker.

In the meanwhile I have read so many books written from the perspectives of the East. Eastern experience is now becoming more and more important in the realm of philosophy and also theology.

In the eighties there appeared the book of a certain theologian and writer from Hong Kong, with a name Kwok Pui Lan. The title of her book was very important: Discovering the Bible in the Non-biblical World. It is already written in English. With the Bible she means the bible of the Judeo-Christian-and-Western heritage. And with non-biblical world, she means the world of East, in so far as it is differ from the West. Concretely speaking, the East for her means, the worldview of the Chinese people, of Japanese people, the Indian people, and also Indonesian (being the biggest archipelago of the world). It is the world which is universally acknowledged to be a world of a non-biblical in the sense of the Christian meaning of the word. They have their own sacred books: Veda, Tao Te Ching, Mahabarata, Ramayana, Qu’ran, etc. And those sacred books have also during the whole course of a long history transformed and influenced their life, their life-philosophy, their mode of existence, their world view.

Let me go back to Kwok Pui Lan’s book. The main concern of her book is to put the process of reading and interpreting the Christian Bible within the framework and context of the non-biblical world views. It means to take seriously the religious heritage of the Eastern people, because the East is Yeast for others.

A few weeks ago I have a certain talk with Robert Setio from UKDW, Yogyakarta. He encourages me to make a biblical study or research in an Asian style, meaning taking seriously our own local context, wisdom, etc. And he encourages me as well to propose such an analyzing or research to ICRS in Gadjah Mada Yogyakarta. Let me call it, “An Asian interpretation of the Bible.” Its main concern is to interpret the Bible using the Asian paradigm. This Asian-paradigm becomes for me a third canon. That is why I start to talk about the so-called Trito-canonica.

At February 2005 I visited the international Congress of Catholic Biblical Federation in Tagaytay City in the Philippines. One of the speakers at that very moment was Sister Mary Ko Ha Wong from Hong Kong. She proposed a topic on reading Dei Verbum in Asian Context or Background. It was in that context I asked the question about her idea on the progressive thinking of the person like Kwok Pui Lan, contained in her book mentioned above. She only said at that time, that she cannot answer such question because the problem was the problem of the author of the book. Well. I am not quite satisfied with that answer. Anyway, she has tried to answer it.

When I try to talk about such a topic, I was thinking of many things. Among others, I start to think about the book of Karen Armstrong: consist of what? I was thinking also of the book of Wilfred Cantwell Smith, and also the book of Raymundo Panikkar? Once I remember that a certain writer in Times wrote about the so-called On line Bible in the form of parallel texts of all the sacred books of all religion. In the Christian Bible, we know the terminology like Synoptic Gospels, meaning that there are three Gospels which are similar to each other whenever we investigate and look at them generally. We can take some comparison of the texts between those Synoptic texts. I think that due to the help of the modern technology we can also establish such a similar synopsis of all the sacred books. In such a way we can know in which way they are different, and in which way they are similar. We can also trace the whole tradition of the interpretation of those texts. We can also compare those interpretations to one another. This is what I consider and imagine as the tritocanonica.