The Modern Delusion: Perennial Philosophy and the Erasure of Distinction
Sin, Karma and the Peril of Flattening Truth
I recently came across a tweet by @samswoora. I’ve only had good interactions with him online and respect his earnest curiosity, so my intention here isn’t to criticize him personally. Yet, his tweet resonates as a microcosm of modern Western attitudes toward religion — attitudes shaped by perennialism, which seeks to flatten spiritual distinctions into a universal sameness.
https://x.com/samswoora/status/1877369159266218396
The Roots of Modern Ideas of Religion
Perennialism, the idea that all religions and mythologies ultimately express the same universal truth about humanity and the divine, was born in an age of disruption.
The 19th century saw Darwin’s theory of evolution redraw the boundaries of humanity’s story, pulling it away from divine creation and placing it firmly in the hands of nature. Before Darwin, man was created by God; after Darwin, man became an artifact of nature.
With this shift came thinkers like Ludwig Feuerbach, whose The Essence of Christianity inverted the sacred order. God, Feuerbach proposed, was not the creator but the created—a projection of humanity’s desires, fears, and ideals. He argued that religion was a mirror reflecting human nature rather than a revelation of the divine. This subtle yet seismic shift became a cornerstone of modern thought.
From these upheavals, perennialism emerged as a way to reconcile religion with modernity. It offered an elegant solution: all myths, all gods, all faiths were but different faces of the same universal truth. This perspective, seductive in its false inclusivity, has become so pervasive that it is often taken for granted.
The Problem with Universalism
@Samwoora’s tweet compared two seemingly analogous concepts: the Christian notion of sin and the Hindu idea of karma. On the surface, this might seem like an innocuous observation, but such comparisons rest on the assumption that these concepts are interchangeable—different words for the same idea. This is the perennialist impulse at work, and it reveals its core flaw: the tendency to obscure the very differences that give these concepts meaning.
Karma, in Hindu thought, is action—an impersonal force that binds or liberates the soul. It is not inherently moral but cosmic, a mechanism driving the cycle of birth and rebirth. Karma is thus impersonal and universal, operating according to cosmic principles rather than divine command.
In contrast, sin in Christianity is deeply personal. It is not merely an action but a rupture—a wound inflicted on the relationship between humanity and God. Sin is not impersonal; it is intimate, cutting to the core of love and communion.
By equating these concepts, perennialism erases their specificity. It reduces religion to metaphor, stripping away the lived particularities that give each faith its character. From a Christian perspective, this reduction is especially problematic. The faith asserts that there is an exclusivity to who God is - a Trinitarian being who has revealed Himself in history. This revelation defies perennialism’s homogenizing instinct.
These differences are not trivial. They are foundational. To equate karma with sin is to blur the lines between the cosmic and the personal, between law and love. Christianity’s story is not about balance sheets of deeds but about the God who stepped into history to heal what is broken.
Perennialism is seductive in its inclusivity. It promises a harmonious world where every path converges at the same summit, appealing to modern sensibilities that crave unity over difference. Yet, it fails precisely because it erases what makes those paths meaningful.
It harbors an unmistakable bias. Christianity’s particular claims—the incarnation, the Trinity, the resurrection—are often dismissed within perennialist frameworks as overly specific or incompatible with the universal truths these philosophies seek to distill from all religions. Other traditions are celebrated for their metaphors; Christianity is criticized for its audacity to be specific.
This bias is not merely intellectual; it is moral and spiritual. If God is a human construct, then morality becomes fluid. Lust, greed, and other passions, once seen as distortions of human nature, are reimagined as natural. The moral order shifts from divine command to cultural preference, and with it, the anchor of human life drifts, leaving the soul unmoored.
The spiritual consequences are no less troubling. By denying the reality of good and evil spirits, perennialism leaves us vulnerable to deception. Discernment, the ability to distinguish truth from falsity, is dismissed as unnecessary. Practices like meditation become open doors to forces unseen. Perennialism, in its rush to unify, risks leaving individuals exposed to dark forces that they don’t even attempt to discern.
Conclusion
Perennialism, a product of modern Western thought, elevates humanity above God. It claims to promote universal understanding but often distorts the particularities that make each tradition meaningful. By redefining God as a projection of man, perennialism leads to a worldview that is not only misleading but spiritually perilous.
To resist its influence, we must return to the particular. Christianity’s essence lies in its profound claim: that God entered history as a person, not as an idea or metaphor but as flesh and blood. This incarnation is not a universal truth cloaked in cultural garb; it is a singular event that defies perennialism’s leveling gaze. Christianity does not offer a path up the same mountain as other faiths. It tells of a God who descends to meet us where we are.
It is this distinctiveness that challenges perennialism’s homogenizing instincts and reveals the richness of the Christian faith.
This is what sets Christianity apart. It is not a system but a relationship. It speaks not to humanity in general but to each individual, calling us by name. In an era captivated by the allure of universality, Christianity’s particularity is its strength. It refuses to blur into the background, standing instead as a bold, unmistakable claim: that God is not merely one among many, but the singular and exclusive Creator, who calls humanity into a relationship defined by His will and not by human constructs.
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I agree with this in general, but I think it's a bit too broad. I've personally been thinking about this issue, as I'm a Buddhist who has lately become interested in Christian mysticism (not a totally new thing for me, as I've had a soft spot for Christianity for quite a while, and included Christ in my evening chants when I did them in the past).
There are a few main issues I see with what you're saying here. This shouldn't be taken as an argument against what you're saying (I think you're basically right that perennialism is wrong), but just some thoughts that occurred to me after reading:
1. You seem to be leaning on one specific interpretation of Christianity and using that to define the religion, even though I think some eminent Christians, like Meister Eckhart, would not agree with you on all these points. This is inevitable to some extent (everyone will have a view on what the fundamental truth of a religion is, and that's a necessary part of discourse), but from a detached and analytic perspective, which is how I view your post, I think it's important to acknowledge that there are *a lot* of different interpretations of Christianity. I think the claim you're making here would be stronger if you just narrowed the scope: we shouldn't say that all interpretations are the same. This much seems inarguable: even within a specific religion, there are people who disagree, and it would be disrespectful and intellectually lazy to say "well, they mean the same thing deep down". If we say that, then it's obvious that religions, being composed of interpretations, can't all be the same because the interpretations aren't all the same. From that perspective, perennialism just seems like nonsense.
2. Following that point, just because we can't claim that *all* interpretations are the same (and consequently can't claim that all religions are the same), that doesn't exclude the possibility that *some* interpretations may be the same. From that angle, the perennialist isn't necessarily entirely wrong, at least in spirit if not word, as there may be a unifying seed of truth that underlies at least some seemingly disparate religions. On the other hand, this stance could prove the perennialist's view to be trivially true because we can just say that their interpretation of all religions is a valid interpretation, and since those line up, the religions are the same. But I think there's a way to more reasonably scope this by more clearly defining what a reasonable interpretation is.
3. This may not be an entirely separate point...but in the same way that I'm cautious about defining a religion by one interpretation, I think you can't define perennialism by one interpretation. A lot of what you're saying seems to lean on Feuerbach's specific view that these religions all arise from human projection/expression. But we could broadly agree with the perennialist view and say instead that all these various religions arise from something divine and decidedly non-human, but that they exist through fallible human language, which diversifies them. This isn't a position I would personally take, but if we were to do so, we would sidestep your concern about a reduction from divine origin to human origin. The Buddha says something vaguely to this effect, in that the Dhamma is a timeless truth that is cyclically lost and then rediscovered, but that all sages find it in the same way.
4. Something I would be cautious about here is the potential for denying the perennialist position in general instead of denying specific perennialist positions. In other words, in the same way that a perennialist will see similarities because they want to, it's possible to see differences because we want to. Confirmation bias, basically, but I mean more in the sense of dismissing it in general on sort of a priori grounds without evaluating various specific types. But maybe I'm just misusing the term and misunderstanding what it means. But I say this partly from my own experience trying to argue that Buddhism is so entirely different than x, but now in a more receptive position, seeing that those differences may indeed be superficial or semantic. I'm not saying Buddhism *isn't* different from x, but just that I'm not entirely sure. For example, I believed that Buddhism was quite distinct from Christianity, but after reading Meister Eckhart, I am not so sure — I haven't delved deep enough to say this with confidence, but from what I've read, if you switched some of his words out with Buddhist terms, you would end up with quite literally the exact same teaching. Now, it's possible that Meister Eckhart doesn't have the right interpretation of Christianity, but that's debatable even among Christians. I'm just assuming a bit more of an agnostic approach here — I'm not versed enough in all the various religions (no one is) to exclude the possibility of perennialism being true. But that also would mean that perennialism isn't empirically true as it can't really be evaluated in practice, so it would itself become just a type of faith, ironically seemingly disproving its own position, as if it's its own faith...then it's...distinct from other faiths...I think.
Anyway, I could probably keep rambling on, but I'll stop myself here.
I liked this essay even though I am an atheist who rejects Christianity. I think "perennialism" (thanks for showing me the name for it) is unfair to different religions, which to my mind are all false in their own unique ways....