When Panikkar writes, “neither the name Father nor the name God is the proper name of the Absolute.  They are simply the names by which we designate him. . . . independently of us, in himself and for himself, what is He? Ultimately such a question does not even make sense. . . . God’s re-flection is no longer the Father” – he has taken leave of any recognizable Christian Trinitarianism.

But the argument has the virtue of clarifying the fact that we are faced with two choices: Either a God who is related and re-flected in Himself, a God who is eternally God of, or we a god of whom we can know or say nothing.  Trinity is the only alternative to nihil.