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.
It’s worth mentioning that I was as careful as I could be to not be offensive in this piece, and that won’t be the position I take in the future, intend to write a scathing critique of universalism and perennialsm (especially in the church)
You’re right that not all churches or Christian’s interpret the Bible the same. This is actually a huge problem, it leads people into deception.
The short answer as to why is that God *is* a metaphysical being beyond creation. He has a definitive nature. So it would make sense that our idea of who God is determines whether or not we can reach Him — not only this but our idea of what the spiritual life is.
I was one of the many who have been lead into deception by a nondenominational evangelical /charismatic church. Nothing started to make sense until I started to go to an Orthodox Church and realized how deeply heretical my previous church was — especially because they encouraged us to seek out mystical and spiritual experiences and the Orthodox Church explicitly does not.
I think the places where the distinctions are most profound between Christianity and other religions (and other Christian faiths are other religions, thus one must convert when they come into the Orthodox Church) is in orthodoxy.
It’s hard to tell the differences unless you’re familiar with the dogma of the original church, everything else has been corrupted by heresies — deviations from the path protected from corruption by the Orthodox Church, originally followed by the earliest followers of Jesus
If you’re interested, this is a review of one of the teachers of my previous church. I believe the reviewer is Catholic but the point is fundamentally the same: you can see how God becomes a different being through the teacher’s interpretation of the Bible — problematic!
>The short answer as to why is that God *is* a metaphysical being beyond creation. He has a definitive nature. So it would make sense that our idea of who God is determines whether or not we can reach Him — not only this but our idea of what the spiritual life is.
Fully agree on this general concept. Although it's not in relation to God, I stand by the idea of Right View in Buddhism. It's foundational to being able to make any progress on the path (actually, you can't *begin* the path without Right View). Consequently, you can't know what the spiritual life or the Holy Life is without having the right idea of what you're aiming at. This is why I don't agree with perennialism, but I also don't think it's impossible to have the same view described in different words. Hence my sort of agnostic position on it.
>I was one of the many who have been lead into deception by a nondenominational evangelical /charismatic church. Nothing started to make sense until I started to go to an Orthodox Church and realized how deeply heretical my previous church was — especially because they encouraged us to seek out mystical and spiritual experiences and the Orthodox Church explicitly does not.
I have had a similar experience — I didn't gain enough from the sort of loosey-goosey mainstream Buddhism, but found more benefit in the more orthodox forms. I don't know how intentional the word "experiences" is in what you said here, but that was also the defining factor that separated the two: one was focused on mystical experience, one was focused on something beyond experience, beyond the world.
I read the article you linked. I'm not very educated in Christianity, but just by importing my understanding of Buddhism, I was able to pretty much preempt the criticisms made here. Intuitively, Comer seems wrong.
I'm not attempting to argue that Buddhism and Christianity are the same by these comparisons, just sharing my thoughts/reactions on/to what you've said/shared.
Something that I'm very curious about: what drew you to the Orthodox view?
They were the only place that had clear answers to what went wrong in my pursuit of committing myself to Jesus.
I had been exploring Catholicism at the time that I was decieved and had spiritual experiences at Catholic Churches that I later have come to understand as prelest (spiritual delusion)
The Catholic Church also has things like the st. Ignatius prayer which I had learned about through a Catholic retreat. The st. Ignatius prayer is basically a form of transcendental meditation, where you seek to imagine who Jesus is and him talking to you, particularly as if you were in a scene in the Bible. In orthodoxy we understand this type of practice to be very dangerous — not all of our thoughts or what we imagine comes from us, we understand ourselves to be easily deceived. To try to imagine Jesus talking to us directly is asking to be deceived.
God does not talk in this way; everything we need to know is laid out in scripture, this is why he has given us the Bible.
All in all, point is, it became clear that the rigid rules of orthodox Christianity served a really important purpose : to keep people on the straight and narrow path, and keep them far away from being deceived.
Interestingly, what you say about being deceived by spiritual experiences is foundational to my own practice, which involves a sort of "distrust" of any experience. If I were to put that in terms of God for now just for ease of communication, I would frame that as whatever is divine lies outside of the realm of anything that can be directly experienced, and any understanding of God/the divine that is based in an experience of some sort is necessarily a delusion that would lead us away from the nature of God. This would also include experiences of "all" or "nothing".
There is actually a bit of a direct analog in Buddhism: Vajrayana uses lots of visualization techniques, but the Early Buddhist texts don't talk about anything like this. They talk about one thing: stopping. Not adding, but stopping. It's an apophatic approach.
Another parallel in my experience is that later traditions don't seem to emphasize rules as much.
It's these sorts of parallels that make me think there may be a germ of something shared between the two religions. However, there are also differences that seem hard to reconcile, at least on the surface. Specifically, the Messianic parts. The Resurrection sounds fine to me — I'm talking more about judgment and what's supposed to come in the future. That part doesn't seem to be particularly compatible, at least on the surface.
Have you read Meister Eckhart? He is really the one that makes me think that, if his interpretation is correct, then Buddhism and Christianity are pointing at the same thing. I'd be interested to hear what you think of him, his writing, and his views.
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....
Beautiful on steroids... Here lies Genesis 3 to the end of the chapter...Adam ate to forget his first allegiance blaming God...In the last supper Jesus invites us to remember escaping the matrix from delusional to reality in its purerest form ( to sin less not fully sinless YET ) and unto the cross where he challenges us to forgive...an utter lynch pin from tyranny( being deaf
often stupid and blind ) to liberty shaping a new destiny 🙌
I enjoyed this. I have been working on a post about Effective Altruism but it's a big departure from what i usually write about. How much of this idea of Perennialism carries over to EA? If we are just looking at it as this broad universal truth that binds all faiths (which you seem to debunk) than how does that relate to EA which is a secular philosophy? Or maybe it doesn't relate at all but it seems like their are some commonalities.
Not really too sure if it connects, I think most EA people tend to be rationalist - so if they engage in spirituality at all it tends to be from an universalist perspective, but most outright reject it. But that’s a broad generalization based on the small subset of EA people I’ve met. I know there’s a handful of Christian EA’s as well.
That makes sense. I just started reading about EA recently. As a side note, growing up if religion came up in conversation with someone almost automatically they'd quickly respond with : "I am not religious, I'm spiritual". What does that even mean? It was a go to response.
For me the distinction between Christianity and the other religions is found in a book Christ the Eternal Tao. The Tao became flesh and dwelt among us. The om tat sat became flesh and dwelt among us. Yahweh became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word or logos became flesh and dwelt among us. I have experienced the fulfillment of most of the spiritual traditions. By comparison all the others are puny compared the Theosis.
While I agree with your overall assessment here, there is a school of religious/metaphysical thought which, I think, overcomes many of these problems: The Traditionalist School, sometimes also referred to as Perennialism. Its main expositor is Frithjof Schuon. While, on the one hand, Schuon finds that there is an “underlying religion”, of which all the world’s religions are manifestations, on the other hand, each religion is, itself, a separate world, so to speak, from all the others, and are not to be combined or mushed together.
The fine distinction you make between sin and karma does not vitiate the fundamental ‘perennialist’ outlook at all (i.e., that the supernatural stuff is at basis a projection of human psychology, which clearly it is). You simply seem to have parachuted down on one side and opted for the Xtian thing.
Yes! Spot on. And I love that you used the word "flatten"! But lust, greed and the other passions ARE natural — and morality is a social contract that allows such a violent species as us to coexist — not a divine one. If there is a "divine command," I can assure you it's not morality, which has nothing to do with the divine. God should know better than to ask you to act against your own nature, to be something you're not. And maybe God just doesn't care about our petty daily struggles and reactions as much as we imagine he does — we are self-involved narcissists who project our self-obsession onto God. To reduce the divine to a personal relationship with the Son of Man, with the Trinity — that is also a modern deviation.
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.
Thank you for replying so throughly!
It’s worth mentioning that I was as careful as I could be to not be offensive in this piece, and that won’t be the position I take in the future, intend to write a scathing critique of universalism and perennialsm (especially in the church)
You’re right that not all churches or Christian’s interpret the Bible the same. This is actually a huge problem, it leads people into deception.
The short answer as to why is that God *is* a metaphysical being beyond creation. He has a definitive nature. So it would make sense that our idea of who God is determines whether or not we can reach Him — not only this but our idea of what the spiritual life is.
I was one of the many who have been lead into deception by a nondenominational evangelical /charismatic church. Nothing started to make sense until I started to go to an Orthodox Church and realized how deeply heretical my previous church was — especially because they encouraged us to seek out mystical and spiritual experiences and the Orthodox Church explicitly does not.
I think the places where the distinctions are most profound between Christianity and other religions (and other Christian faiths are other religions, thus one must convert when they come into the Orthodox Church) is in orthodoxy.
It’s hard to tell the differences unless you’re familiar with the dogma of the original church, everything else has been corrupted by heresies — deviations from the path protected from corruption by the Orthodox Church, originally followed by the earliest followers of Jesus
https://open.substack.com/pub/wyattgraham/p/how-john-mark-comers-view-of-god?r=wt31t&utm_medium=ios
If you’re interested, this is a review of one of the teachers of my previous church. I believe the reviewer is Catholic but the point is fundamentally the same: you can see how God becomes a different being through the teacher’s interpretation of the Bible — problematic!
>The short answer as to why is that God *is* a metaphysical being beyond creation. He has a definitive nature. So it would make sense that our idea of who God is determines whether or not we can reach Him — not only this but our idea of what the spiritual life is.
Fully agree on this general concept. Although it's not in relation to God, I stand by the idea of Right View in Buddhism. It's foundational to being able to make any progress on the path (actually, you can't *begin* the path without Right View). Consequently, you can't know what the spiritual life or the Holy Life is without having the right idea of what you're aiming at. This is why I don't agree with perennialism, but I also don't think it's impossible to have the same view described in different words. Hence my sort of agnostic position on it.
>I was one of the many who have been lead into deception by a nondenominational evangelical /charismatic church. Nothing started to make sense until I started to go to an Orthodox Church and realized how deeply heretical my previous church was — especially because they encouraged us to seek out mystical and spiritual experiences and the Orthodox Church explicitly does not.
I have had a similar experience — I didn't gain enough from the sort of loosey-goosey mainstream Buddhism, but found more benefit in the more orthodox forms. I don't know how intentional the word "experiences" is in what you said here, but that was also the defining factor that separated the two: one was focused on mystical experience, one was focused on something beyond experience, beyond the world.
I read the article you linked. I'm not very educated in Christianity, but just by importing my understanding of Buddhism, I was able to pretty much preempt the criticisms made here. Intuitively, Comer seems wrong.
I'm not attempting to argue that Buddhism and Christianity are the same by these comparisons, just sharing my thoughts/reactions on/to what you've said/shared.
Something that I'm very curious about: what drew you to the Orthodox view?
They were the only place that had clear answers to what went wrong in my pursuit of committing myself to Jesus.
I had been exploring Catholicism at the time that I was decieved and had spiritual experiences at Catholic Churches that I later have come to understand as prelest (spiritual delusion)
The Catholic Church also has things like the st. Ignatius prayer which I had learned about through a Catholic retreat. The st. Ignatius prayer is basically a form of transcendental meditation, where you seek to imagine who Jesus is and him talking to you, particularly as if you were in a scene in the Bible. In orthodoxy we understand this type of practice to be very dangerous — not all of our thoughts or what we imagine comes from us, we understand ourselves to be easily deceived. To try to imagine Jesus talking to us directly is asking to be deceived.
God does not talk in this way; everything we need to know is laid out in scripture, this is why he has given us the Bible.
All in all, point is, it became clear that the rigid rules of orthodox Christianity served a really important purpose : to keep people on the straight and narrow path, and keep them far away from being deceived.
Interestingly, what you say about being deceived by spiritual experiences is foundational to my own practice, which involves a sort of "distrust" of any experience. If I were to put that in terms of God for now just for ease of communication, I would frame that as whatever is divine lies outside of the realm of anything that can be directly experienced, and any understanding of God/the divine that is based in an experience of some sort is necessarily a delusion that would lead us away from the nature of God. This would also include experiences of "all" or "nothing".
There is actually a bit of a direct analog in Buddhism: Vajrayana uses lots of visualization techniques, but the Early Buddhist texts don't talk about anything like this. They talk about one thing: stopping. Not adding, but stopping. It's an apophatic approach.
Another parallel in my experience is that later traditions don't seem to emphasize rules as much.
It's these sorts of parallels that make me think there may be a germ of something shared between the two religions. However, there are also differences that seem hard to reconcile, at least on the surface. Specifically, the Messianic parts. The Resurrection sounds fine to me — I'm talking more about judgment and what's supposed to come in the future. That part doesn't seem to be particularly compatible, at least on the surface.
Have you read Meister Eckhart? He is really the one that makes me think that, if his interpretation is correct, then Buddhism and Christianity are pointing at the same thing. I'd be interested to hear what you think of him, his writing, and his views.
I invite you to explore eastern Orthodox spirituality. Much different than western Christian spirituality. The Philokalia. Gregory Palomas
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....
Beautiful on steroids... Here lies Genesis 3 to the end of the chapter...Adam ate to forget his first allegiance blaming God...In the last supper Jesus invites us to remember escaping the matrix from delusional to reality in its purerest form ( to sin less not fully sinless YET ) and unto the cross where he challenges us to forgive...an utter lynch pin from tyranny( being deaf
often stupid and blind ) to liberty shaping a new destiny 🙌
I enjoyed this. I have been working on a post about Effective Altruism but it's a big departure from what i usually write about. How much of this idea of Perennialism carries over to EA? If we are just looking at it as this broad universal truth that binds all faiths (which you seem to debunk) than how does that relate to EA which is a secular philosophy? Or maybe it doesn't relate at all but it seems like their are some commonalities.
Not really too sure if it connects, I think most EA people tend to be rationalist - so if they engage in spirituality at all it tends to be from an universalist perspective, but most outright reject it. But that’s a broad generalization based on the small subset of EA people I’ve met. I know there’s a handful of Christian EA’s as well.
That makes sense. I just started reading about EA recently. As a side note, growing up if religion came up in conversation with someone almost automatically they'd quickly respond with : "I am not religious, I'm spiritual". What does that even mean? It was a go to response.
For me the distinction between Christianity and the other religions is found in a book Christ the Eternal Tao. The Tao became flesh and dwelt among us. The om tat sat became flesh and dwelt among us. Yahweh became flesh and dwelt among us. The Word or logos became flesh and dwelt among us. I have experienced the fulfillment of most of the spiritual traditions. By comparison all the others are puny compared the Theosis.
While I agree with your overall assessment here, there is a school of religious/metaphysical thought which, I think, overcomes many of these problems: The Traditionalist School, sometimes also referred to as Perennialism. Its main expositor is Frithjof Schuon. While, on the one hand, Schuon finds that there is an “underlying religion”, of which all the world’s religions are manifestations, on the other hand, each religion is, itself, a separate world, so to speak, from all the others, and are not to be combined or mushed together.
The fine distinction you make between sin and karma does not vitiate the fundamental ‘perennialist’ outlook at all (i.e., that the supernatural stuff is at basis a projection of human psychology, which clearly it is). You simply seem to have parachuted down on one side and opted for the Xtian thing.
Yes! Spot on. And I love that you used the word "flatten"! But lust, greed and the other passions ARE natural — and morality is a social contract that allows such a violent species as us to coexist — not a divine one. If there is a "divine command," I can assure you it's not morality, which has nothing to do with the divine. God should know better than to ask you to act against your own nature, to be something you're not. And maybe God just doesn't care about our petty daily struggles and reactions as much as we imagine he does — we are self-involved narcissists who project our self-obsession onto God. To reduce the divine to a personal relationship with the Son of Man, with the Trinity — that is also a modern deviation.