PERENNIALISM: OBJECTIONS AND RESPONSES
If there is one thing I dislike when having a conversation, it is straw men, and I encounter them so much when my acceptance of both perennialism and universalism is questioned that I have been thinking of writing this since before the last post. I don’t want to cover universalism because there is a veritable wealth of conversation in many places, especially Fr. Aidan Kimmel’s blog. You can check it out yourself. They make a far better case than I ever could. You could also check out D. B. Hart’s book, if you can handle rhetoric, follow the arguments, and not think he has to be “nice” like all the failed reviews I’ve read so far. For perennialism however, there is barely a conversation. I want to lay out all the objections I’ve encountered to it so far, and chip in my thoughts on what perennialism has helped me see these past two or so months I’ve delved into it. The late James Cutsinger already addressed a lot of this before, and I’ll be quoting him here, especially since I’m coming into this from my Christian upbringing. So, here we go.
Objection 1: Perennialism is not “Christian”
This first objection seems to be based on the error that perennialism must be an explicitly “Christian” idea, that is, must be given by whatever relevant Christian authorities, to be valid for Christian. This is false. It is not required that the Pope (God bless him), scripture, or whatever Christian hierarch or council or authority, explicitly endorses a philosophy before I should adopt it. No one told Origen to use Neoplatonic philosophy for apologetics and theology, yet he used it to great success, and the Christian theological language has never remained the same. Some are Thomists, others are Neoplatonists, etc. The modern appropriation of the Perennial philosophy itself has its own language, with the distinct claim and aim to show the unity of the other ancient philosophical schools with it. Schuon calls it a “symbolist and contemplative metaphysics” [1]. It is a philosophy that does not claim to be new, nor does it claim to be an independent school of thought excluding other philosophies and religions. It claims to use their common language to show their unity and source in God, and it has many adherents in many religions, similar to how there are Aristotelians in several religions.
Objection 2: Perennialism is heretical
This one strikes me as odd, because I wonder where any of the three main fathers of the modern perennialist movement (Guenon, Schuon, and Coomaraswamy) made heretical statements concerning the core meaning of the philosophy. So far, it is only Guenon that I find controversial on some topics, such as the “initiatic” effectiveness of the Catholic Church’s mysteries. Even then, he does not deny their salvific effectiveness, just their effectiveness in initiating someone into “higher knowledge”, or “gnosis”. Schuon himself challenges Guenon on his logic here. However, it is not heretical, since it does not deny any core doctrines; nor is it “Gnosticism”, since even the very revered “church fathers” spoke of knowledge that should not be common, but should be reserved for a few mature ones (like St. Maximus concerning universalism). If anything, perennialists are the first to defend a core doctrine of a valid faith. Some see that as a shortcoming, but I’ll address that later. The point here is that there is nothing in perennial philosophy as understood by those who follow the three pioneers that is heretical. Concerning Christianity, we do not deny the incarnation, the Trinity, salvation through Christ, or any of the ecumenical councils that are binding for all Christians. Schuon in particular was very keen on using Christian language to explain perennial truths. Dictums of his, such as “Atma became Maya that Maya might become Atma” [2], are dictums based on Christian sayings (God became man that man might become God). What strikes me here is that people don’t seem to practice what they preach, and assume the worst of anything that seems remotely suspect to them. For example, many perennialists are well read in eastern philosophy, and many (particularly western) Christians see eastern religions and philosophies like another form of “new age” religion, when in fact many perennialists rejects “new age” philosophy as an aberration; a heretical, and a misguided western misappropriation of eastern truths. These eastern truths, when probed deeply, are not very different from western philosophical and religious wisdom. For example, the beautiful paper by Jordan Daniel Wood, called “Creation is Incarnation”, which I have written on several times, is a Christian theological explanation of an idea that I dare say eastern philosophy has been talking about for millennia, and the author of the paper is not even a perennialist. One of the best parts about David Bentley Hart’s book, “The Experience of God”, was that, even though he is not a perennialist (at least not explicitly), he knew how to write about eastern understandings of “Classical Theism” in a way as to show how they agree with the west. In fact, Hart is well steeped in eastern philosophy due to his interest in philosophy of mind. You wouldn’t call Hart heretical (although some have tried). You simply have no grounds to.
Objection 3: Jesus said “I am the way”
This is the most common and, in my opinion, second most lazy objection (Objection 1 takes the cake). It has an (annoying) assumption that "Jesus is the way" = "Christianity is the way". It’s an exclusivist assumption that has no basis in Christianity itself. It also assumes that perennialist Christians suddenly forgot the scripture exists, or dismiss it.
Jesus Christ, the Son of Mary, the Logos of God and the creator of the universe is not reducible to the historical church and its practices. It is true that “outside the church there is no salvation”, but “the church” is the name of “the body of Christ”, which, first of all, transcends the historical manifestation of the earthly Christian Church (this is true even according to the Orthodox Church), and second of all embraces all humanity and the entire Cosmos. No human is “outside the church” in the ultimate sense. All are made in the image, and God is to be “all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28). This can lead to an exclusivism of another type, namely that people have to join our church, even if all be saved, but this does not necessarily follow. Christ says “I have sheep not of this fold” (John 10:16), and at least one perennialist takes this to mean Christ has followers who are not in Christianity [3]. They (adherents of other valid religions) follow him according to how he revealed himself to them in their social and religious universe. The scripture this objection uses turn out to be the strongest case for perennialism in a Christian setting. Schuon writes:
“In the sapiential perspective divine Redemption is always present; it pre-exists all terrestrial alchemy and is its celestial model, so that it is always thanks to this eternal Redemption—whatever may be its vehicle on earth—that man is freed from the weight of his vagaries and even, Deo volente, from that of his separative existence; if “my words shall not pass away” it is because they have always been. The Christ of the gnostics is he who is “before Abraham was” and from whom arise all the ancient wisdoms; a consciousness of this, far from diminishing a participation in the treasures of the historical Redemption, confers on them a scope that touches the very roots of Existence.” [2]
Just to be clear, before it is brought up, “gnostic” here refers to those with hidden knowledge (such as Christ’s disciples, from whom Christ did not hide anything), and not the heretical sect.
Cutsinger, an Orthodox Christian worthy of the name, ends his paper with:
“…whatever a man’s traditional path toward salvation might be, it is one and the same Logos that is the true Savior of all. His scope is unlimited, extending far beyond the boundaries of the Christian religion to “other sheep which are not of this fold” (Jn 10:16), and His treasures are bequeathed to us all.” [3]
Christ the God-man, the "Word and words", "Logos and logoi", "One and Many", who is both creator (Eternal word) and created (whether man, Torah, Quran, or even the entire cosmos) has always manifested where he is needed the most, revealing himself in appropriate ways and providing everything needed for salvation. This brings us to the next objection.
Objection 4: Perennialism is Universalist
This assumes that Universalism isn’t a valid option for a professing Christian, and this is the most recent objection I’ve encountered. It brings together the two disagreements religious people have with me: Universalism and Perennialism. Like I wrote the beginning of this post, there are a lot of articles and quite a few books giving the philosophical, theological, scriptural, and historical case for a Christian universalism. If you disagree, too bad, it is still not a valid objection. You’ll have to join the line of those writing objections to it, most of them very badly. I don’t even call this one lazy, it’s just irrelevant.
Objection 5: Perennialism is Syncretistic
If someone mentions this objection to me, I assume the person has either not read actual perennialists, perhaps reading syncretists co-opting the name; or the person has read them, but not well or with a unhelpful bias, which seems to be common nowadays when people read viewpoints they don’t agree with. Schuon specifically says:
We have mentioned the notion of “syncretism”, which has been applied arbitrarily to all spiritual knowledge that is in any way based on concepts belonging to diverse traditions and considered in light of a directly apprehended truth; now it is one thing to manufacture a doctrine by assembling scattered ideas as best one can and quite another to recognize, on the basis of what we willingly call the Sophia Perennis, the single Truth contained in various doctrines. Closely related to the imputation of syncretism is the criticism leveled against those who interpret foreign and seemingly unfamiliar ideas in light of familiar ones— for example, by placing Far Eastern concepts into European or Semitic molds; in certain instances this criticism may of course be legitimate, but it is not necessarily so just because a foreign concept is interpreted by means of a familiar one, for Truth is one and so is mankind. To concede that a given Mongol idea has no exact equivalent in the thought of white people is not at all the same thing as asserting that it is inaccessible to them or that, when there is an equivalent, the idea cannot also be expressed in Sanskrit, Greek, or Semitic terms; no doubt there is no European word corresponding exactly to the North American idea of wakan, manito, or orenda, but this does not mean that a European is unable to grasp it or that it is beyond the descriptive resources of his language: however mysterious this notion may seem at first—like the Japanese kami, its near equivalent—one needs no more than a series of concordant examples to see that wakan is a more or less indirect theophany and that it consists in the manifestation of a particular “spirit”, which is at once cosmic and metacosmic; when adopting this metaphysically “pantheistic” viewpoint—the term is understood here in a positive sense—one tends to see within phenomena the “spirit” that goes beyond their accidentality and thereby constitutes a witness of Heaven. No one can tell us that white men’s brains are of no help when it comes to understanding North American Indians or Japanese; for mankind is extremely close-knit, and if modes of thinking nonetheless diverge—though never absolutely—passions and weaknesses exhibit a depressing monotony.[4]
In other words, that they use the languages of one philosophy to explain another is not syncretistic any more than Christians adopting Neoplatonism are syncretists. The Sophia Perennis is not a religion alongside and against other religions, that destroy and put them together in some sort of unholy mixture. It is the metaphysical “content” of the religions themselves, however they are expressed. Schuon, his contemporaries, and their students, rejected syncretism outright. There is no mixing of Christianity with Islam, or Hinduism, or Shinto. We don’t serve the Eucharist in a Mosque. God gave those practices to those religions for a reason, and mixing them is against his commands. One may certainly learn from other religions, and see the truths of your religion in a different light in another religion, but that doesn’t entail syncretism. One of the advices Cutsinger gave his students was to study their own religions deeply, because that’s where they are most likely to find the Sophia Perennis first, before seeing it in others, and even then, “mixing” religions is not allowed, as it is an unholy marriage, akin to trying to achieve unity by uniformity, which is a false unity. The unity of religions is beyond their forms and practices. It is in God himself.
Objection 6: Perennialism is Relativist
I don’t know where this objection comes from, since those who accept the Sophia Perennis are among the strictest people on the “absoluteness of truth” I’ve ever read, including (on moral relativism) the truth of what many people call “traditional morality”. Schuon in particular, and many of his disciples, were very much against many things in today’s world, things I disagree with them on, like homosexuality. Even in heterosexuality, I confess that I am so far off the mark compared to many of them advocate for. I know of the accusations against Schuon on things like the treatment of his wives, but that doesn’t take away my point. Schuon’s failings doesn’t mean what he advocated for is relativist. Same with Cutsinger, who is far more “Trad” than any online Trad, and without many of the corresponding slurs that have been associated with the name, like anti-semitism, which would be hypocritical for a perennialist. Schuon even addresses relativism directly:
Relativism reduces every element of absoluteness to relativity while making a completely illogical exception in favor of this reduction itself. Fundamentally it consists in propounding the claim that there is no truth as if this were truth or in declaring it to be absolutely true that there is nothing but the relatively true; one might just as well say that there is no language or write that there is no writing. In short, every idea is reduced to a relativity of some sort, whether psychological, historical, or social; but the assertion nullifies itself by the fact that it too presents itself as a psychological, historical, or social relativity. The assertion nullifies itself if it is true and by nullifying itself logically proves thereby that it is false; its initial absurdity lies in the implicit claim to be unique in escaping, as if by enchantment, from a relativity that is declared to be the only possibility. [4]
I don’t think I need to say more here, it is plain to see.
Objection 7: It makes the religions irrelevant
This is related to the previous objection, and to the syncretism objection. This is also the last objection I will address, making it a sort of conclusion.
Someone may ask “If there are several valid religions, what about their exclusive claims? Doesn’t it make their truths irrelevant if they contradict while being valid?”
One of the facts of life is that the world is itself made of contradictions. In the world of forms, what works for one may not for another. It would be ridiculous for the gospel story to occur as written in Confucian China. God is infinite as he is absolute, and his infinity is manifest in the world of forms as its diverse forms, which, when seen for the transparent lenses or reflective mirrors that they are, show different perspectives on the One God. Because he is infinite, containing in himself all possibilities (and indeed, one of Guenon’s names for God was “All Possibility”), he can manifest in diverse ways, and these ways will contradict on the “flat plain”, on the level of simple comparison. Muslims don’t confess the Trinity, Hindus don’t know Muhammad, Ifa adherents don’t know Metatron. These differences, however, don’t mean they converge in meaning. In Yoruba language, the word for “God” does not denote a singular entity, and it is not exactly “plural” either, hinting at how Classical theism understands God as the “All” that is not a collection or plurality, and as the “Unity” that is not mere unicity. The aforementioned book “The Experience of God” has a subtitle that is the name of a Hindu description of God that is practically identical to many Christian descriptions of the Trinity. Cutsinger has written a paper explaining how the perennialist reconciles the “horizontal” impasse between Christian Trinitarianism and Muslim Unitarianism. By definition, a form is exclusive to other forms, no contest there. It is a necessary fact that ensures their integrity. It also breeds conflict between religions, but that is a price for God’s condescension to our level. Religions are primarily for saving souls, not inter-religious dialogue, as Schuon would say. We shouldn’t expect there to not be contradictions, it is a fact of life. However, God transcends contradictions. Far from making them irrelevant, by showing the core of the religions, and showing them to be the same God in that centre, it makes religion far more important. It makes the problem of inter-religious dialogue much easier without advocating syncretism, and it has (in my case at least) given me a deeper appreciation of my own religion, and even my own race with its ancient religious history. I’m as determined to stay a Christian as ever, God willing.
The aim of perennialism is simply for one to grow in faith, and I pray for all of us to grow even deeper in our faith, that even if we stumble, he won’t allow us fall. Amen.
[1] Schuon, F. Form and Substance in the Religions
[2] Schuon, F., & Cutsinger, J. S. (2017). The Fullness of God: Frithjof Schuon on Christianity. In World Wisdom. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt1rfss2f.13
[3] Cutsinger, J. S. (2002). The Mystery of the Two Natures © 2002. 2(1998).
[4] Schuon, F. Logic and Transcendence.