The Fullness of God: Frithjof Schuon on Christianity
Frithjof Schuon on Christianity
(World Wisdom, 2004)
is a collection of remarkable essays on Christianity by the great 20th century writer on religions, Frithjof Schuon.
World Wisdom thanks reader Graeme Castleman of Latrobe University, Bendigo, for writing the text of the slideshow.
It is a curious fact in the history of religions that Christianity, which took the form of a spiritual “way” (Acts 24:22) from its very beginning, and which continues to offer its initiates the means of seeing “the glory of God” (John 11:40) and of becoming “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4), should have become so adept at concealing the significance of its deepest and most transformative truths, “kept secret since the world began” (Romans 16:25), that serious Christian seekers in our day often forsake their religion in favor of such traditions as Yoga and Zen, where the promises of realization can be more easily discerned and where methods of spiritual development are often more accessible.…Most Christians…seem altogether unaware of the fact that such things are still possible and that the attainment of so exalted a station of knowledge and union is precisely the purpose of their tradition.
With these words Professor James Cutsinger begins his introduction to The Fullness of God: Frithjof Schuon on Christianity. In this volume, Professor Cutsinger presents 15 of Schuon’s essays that are most pertinent to the Christian tradition. He has mapped a current within Schuon’s work that is indispensable to anyone wishing to understand Christianity as a system of religious thought and an authentic path for the spiritual wayfarer. Christians will find here both support and challenges essential to strengthening and understanding their faith and, alongside non-Christian readers, will find a sustained depth of insight into the faith that is, unfortunately, increasingly rare. The common ground between Christianity and other faiths and the unique ‘perfume’ of the Christian form are both considered here, in a manner both profound and rigorous.
Of great interest to those familiar with Schuon’s work is the selection of previously unpublished material–and for the reader unfamiliar with certain details of the Christian tradition, Professor Cutsinger’s editorial notes will be indispensable.
This slideshow will explore and attempt to highlight a few of the very profound insights found in The Fullness of God. Almost all of the block quotations in this slideshow are from the writings of Frithjof Schuon and are taken from The Fullness of God (chapter titles and page citations are given in parentheses).
For the Christian, salvific union, Redemption, is effected by the Incarnation of God:
God became man that man might become God. The first mystery is the Incarnation and the second is the Redemption. (from “Christic and Virginal Mysteries”, p. 155)
The Fallen condition perceives ‘concrete’ Existence and ‘abstract’ God. In the Incarnation, the Absolute is re-revealed as concretely and solely Real.
What is “abstraction” in the case of the logician becomes as it were corporeal in the case of the Word made flesh.
[The centurion Longinus, who pierced Christ’s side with his spear and cried “Truly this was the Son of God”] …has…been reborn, not because he has “understood” the Truth, but because the Truth has seized him existentially and torn him, with a “concrete” gesture, from this world. The Word made flesh is the Truth that has in a way become matter, but at the same time a matter transfigured and new-minted, a matter that is burning light, transforming and delivering. (from “The Cross”, p. 165)
The Absolute manifested in the human world is at once Truth and Presence, or one or the other of these two elements, but without being able to exclude its complement. The element “Presence” takes precedence in Christianity, hence the sacraments and the emphasis on the volitive aspect of man.… (from “The Mystery of the Two Natures”, p. 153.)
The Incarnation, by His immanent and transfiguring Presence reaffirms the judgement of God as He surveyed His creation: “And God saw that is was good.”
…the “avataric” marvel of Christ retraces, or humanizes, the cosmic marvel of creation or of “emanation”. (from “The Dialogue Between Hellenists and Christians”, p. 65)
Hellenists deemed the Incarnation to be unworthy of God owing to the frailty and impurity of earthly bodies;…Saint Gregory answers that sin alone, not fleshly materiality, is unworthy of God.…A proof of the compatibility between the human body and a divine inherence is provided by the inherence of the Intellect, which is of a heavenly order.…(from “The Mystery of the Two Natures”, p. 147)
The Incarnate Christ is the archetype in divinis, in which all Christians are called to partake (2 Peter 1:4) and by whose light Existence is transfigured or re-centred in that which alone is Real.
If Salvation is accomplished by the Incarnation of Christ, the impetus for the Incarnation is Divine Mercy, which is manifested as Love: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son…” (John 3:16). Reciprocally, what God asks of us is Love—hence the Great Commandment—rather than obedience, although Love is necessarily manifested in obedience: “Ye shall know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:16).
…Christianity is a “way of Grace” or “a way of Love” (the bhakti-mârga of the Hindus)…The most pronounced difference between the New Covenant and the Old is that in the latter the divine aspect of Rigor predominated, whereas in the former it is on the contrary the aspect of Mercy which prevails. Now the way of Mercy is in a certain sense easier than the way of Rigor because, while corresponding to a more profound reality, it also benefits from a special Grace: this is the “justification by Faith”, whose “yoke is easy and burden light”.… (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, pp. 18-20)
If God demands our Love it is for our sake not His: while we are utterly dependent upon Him, He is in no way contingent upon us. God’s Love, or Mercy, outweighs the demands of Rigour (the principle of Justice) and overcomes human disobedience—as is demonstrated by the conversion of Paul on the road to Damascus. This must be the case, for human beings by their fallen and contingent nature cannot but betray God; thus Peter, who denied Christ, is the foundation of the Church.
In methods like these…the distinction between an outer and an inner aspect is attenuated and sometimes even ignored, in the sense that ‘Grace’, which is initiatic in its kernel or essence, tends to bestow itself in the largest measure possible.… (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, p. 15)
Mercy and Rigour, Love and Justice are inseparable. Mercy without Rigour is not Mercy and Justice is not Justice without Love.
Perhaps the most profound dimensions of Schuon’s writings on Christianity relate directly, or indirectly, to the Virgin Mary. She is intercessor:
…It is necessary to speak to God and ask for His help; this can be done through a celestial intermediary, in particular the Blessed Virgin. (from “Appendix: A Sampling of Letters and other Unpublished Materials”, p. 170)
But the Blessed Virgin is more than mediator; or to put in another way, she is mediator due to the profound Reality of her nature.
…How can one refuse to admit that the Holy Virgin has her prototype in God, not only as regards her humanity, but also as regards her femininity?…The Virgin is an aspect of Christ: she personifies the passive and receptive qualities of the divine Substance—she is the “soul” if Christ is the “spirit”—and this means that man cannot be integrated into Christ without first being integrated into the Virgin.… (from “Evidence and Mystery”, pp. 108, 127)
It is because she personifies, purely, the divine quality of Mercy that she is Intercessor (between us and Christ—Himself Intercessor to the Father) and also Co-Redemptress. She is indispensable to the Incarnation:
“God become man”: this is the mystery of Jesus, but it is also, and thereby, that of Mary; for humanly, Jesus is nothing that he did not inherit from his Mother… Thus the name of Mary is a prolongation of that of Jesus… If Christ is “the Way, the Truth and the Life”, the Blessed Virgin, who is made of the same substance, holds graces which facilitate access to these mysteries.… (from “Outline of the Christic Message”, p. 4)
“God became man so that man might become God”…This means in Vedantic terminology: Atma became Maya so that Maya might become Atma. This is the universal, hence esoteric, meaning of the saying. …Concerning the Blessed Virgin, it could be said on the contrary: Maya (Mary) became Atma (through the Immaculate Conception) so that Atma (the Word) might become Maya (through Christ’s human nature).…She too is an avataric phenomenon, in the sense that she embodies the feminine aspect of the Logos. (from “Appendix: A Sampling of Letters and other Unpublished Materials”, pp. 167, 170)
In her feminine hiddenness she eludes us. We can only, with her, make obeisance to what has been revealed.
…It can be said that the word Amen is a name of the Virgin… The whole soul of the Virgin is one great Amen; there is nothing in it which is not an acquiescence in the Will of God. (from “Some Observations”, p. 40)
The Christian understanding of the Incarnation is itself based on the Trinity. Schuon’s teachings on this subject are complex and it is impossible to survey them adequately here. From one perspective, the hypostases of the Trinity are Relative:
God is the Absolute; He is the single Essence, whereas the three Persons are the first Relativities…they actualize the indivisible characteristics of the Essence. (from “Evidence and Mystery”, p. 117)
But from another perspective, the Father is Absolute and the Son and Spirit Relative:
The Father is Beyond-Being, the Son is Being, and the Spirit is Beatitude and Manifestation.…(from “Some Observations”, p. 39)
From a certain perspective, they are Absolute:
The Persons are eminently present in pure Atma; otherwise they could not actualize themselves within Maya. In this sense the hypostatic Persons are above Relativity; they are intrinsic aspects of the Absolute.… (from “Appendix: A Sampling of Letters and Other Unpublished Materials”, p. 168)
Hence the ambiguity of the relationship of the Father to the Son: the Son is both equal and subordinate, depending on perspective:
The Gospels show…that the Son is at once subordinate and equal to the Father, and it is precisely this antinomy that opens up for us in an indicative manner the mystery of Relativity in divinis. (from “Evidence and Mystery”, p. 122)
The hypostases are not “relative” inasmuch as they are “contained” in the Essence…they are relative inasmuch as they “emanate” from Him; if they were not “contained” in Him, they could not “emanate”.…At the level of essentiality…they coincide with the Absolute purely and simply. (from “Appendix: A Sampling of Letters and Other Unpublished Materials”, p. 176)
At the highest plane of understanding the Trinity is multiplicity in divinis—multiplicity that is not other than the Absolute unity from which nothing is absent. The Absolute transcends the distinction between simplex and complex; it is neither and both. The doctrine of the Trinity is esoteric and metaphysical:
Any normal man can conceive of the divine Unity to some extent…[but] the Trinity can be understood only by those who…are able…to move…in the metaphysical dimension.… (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, p. 13)
Schuon approaches the issue of the Trinity from several perspectives, but even this does not exhaust this mystery, as he remarks,
We are here at the limit of what can be expressed; it is no one’s fault if…there remain questions without an answer, and perhaps without any possible answer, at least at the dialectical level.…The science of the heart is not subject to discussion. (from “Appendix: A Sampling of Letters and Other Unpublished Materials”, p. 176)
It is not uncommon for Christians to have recourse to the term ‘mystery’ to justify what should rightly be considered absurdity. This is done to ‘defend the faith’ but ignores the fact that there is nothing absurd about the Mysteries. A Mystery is an esoteric formulation which, when applied exoterically:
…seems to attempt to justify or conceal the fact that Christian dogmas carry with them no direct intellectual proof.… (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, p. 13)
If one insists on maintaining that there are truths which are inherently supralogical, it ought to be made clear that this does not mean that they are intrinsically absurd de jure.…The logical absurdity of certain spiritual pronouncements is merely dialectical and elliptical; every formulation that is illogical for motives of profundity can be reduced to logical formulations of a subtle and complex character.…The inexpressible does not necessarily affirm itself in an illogical manner; silence is not an illogicality. (from “Evidence and Mystery”, p. 129)
Schuon rehabilitates the term ‘mystery’ and insists on reconnecting it with the esoteric, or initiatic, heart of Christianity.
Despite what one may observe of modern Christianity, it is, in its very nature, an esoteric path.
Christianity…presents itself as an exoterism in fact rather than as one existing in principle. Moreover, even without referring to Scriptural passages, the essentially initiatic character of Christianity is apparent from certain features…such as the Doctrine of the Trinity, the Sacrament of the Eucharist…or again from the use of purely esoteric expressions such as “Son of God” and especially “Mother of God”. (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, p. 12)
It cannot be asserted that claims of Christianity’s esoteric nature are contrary to Christ’s intent or revisionistic.
The existence of a Christian esoterism…appears not only from the New Testament texts, those in which certain of Christ’s words possess no exoteric meaning, or from the nature of Christian rites…but also from the explicit testimony of ancient authors. Thus…Saint Basil speaks of a “tacit and mystical tradition maintained down to our own times and of a secret instruction that our fathers observed without discussion.…” (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, p. 17)
So did Christ err in proclaiming esoteric truths publicly? Certainly not! For:
The inward and esoteric truth must of necessity sometimes manifest itself in broad daylight…by virtue of a definite possibility of spiritual manifestation and without regard to the shortcomings of a particular human environment.… (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, p. 14)
Christian esoterism does not differ from its exoteric prolongation except hermeneutically:
It is obvious that esoterism does not consist in denying the facts on which the exoteric religion is founded; it lies in their interpretation.… (from “Appendix: A Sampling of Letters and other Unpublished Materials”, p. 175)
As a result, esoterism, or jnâna, can be ‘reconstituted’ in a Christian environment.
It can be said that Christian esoterism is “dead” in fact, but not in principle—de facto, but not de jure. It is “dead” because no one knows how to find it and not because it is absent.…
It is enough to be a jnânin while practicing the Christian religion, and this will give us a Christian jnâna.… (from “Appendix: A Sampling of Letters and other Unpublished Materials”, p. 171)
Here it must be remembered that the rite of Baptism preserves the initiatic character of Christianity, at least formally, and is a prerequisite for participation in the Eucharist.
For the impious, Existence is a world of passion that man justifies by a philosophy “after the flesh”; for the elect, it is a world of trial transpierced by grace, faith, gnosis. (from “The Cross”, p. 161)
In the eyes of the Christians the attitude of the Greeks consisted in taking thought for an end in itself, outside of any personal relation to God; consequently it was a “wisdom according to the flesh”, since it cannot by itself regenerate the fallen and impotent will, but on the contrary by its self-sufficiency draws men away from the thirst for God and for salvation. (from “The Dialogue Between Hellenists and Christians”, p. 63)
‘Wisdom of the Flesh’ is a charge laid by Christians against thinkers or traditions that appear, at least superficially, incompatible with the Christian vision. It has also been used to defend absurdity, forgetting that:
An irreducible opposition between intellection and grace is as artificial as it could be, for intellection is also a grace, but it is a static and innate grace.… (from “The Dialogue Between Hellenists and Christians”, p. 71)
This is not to say that the ‘wisdom of the flesh’ does not exist, but that this charge cannot be automatically hurled at all non-Christian wisdom.
For the “wisdom after the flesh”…does not embrace every form of metaphysics that does not know the Gospels, nor is it logic as such, for the Apostle was logical; what it denotes is the reasonings whereby worldly men seek to prop up their passions and pride, such as the teaching of the Sophists and Epicureans and…the current philosophy of the world. “Wisdom after the flesh” is also the gratuitous philosophy that does not lead us inwards and that contains no door opening to spiritual realization; it is philosophy of the type “art for art’s sake”, which commits one to nothing and is vain and pernicious…. (from “Evidence and Mystery”, p. 108)
Christianity has more in common with the other great forms of Traditional Wisdom—Islam, Hinduism, Platonism and so on—than with atheistic scientism, to which, in the West, it has generally aligned itself.
Religion has accepted and almost “Christianized” the machine, and it is dying from this, whether through absurdity and hypocrisy, as in the past, or through capitulation and suicide, as today. It is as if there were only two sins, unbelief and unchastity; the machine is neither an unbeliever nor is it unchaste; therefore one may sprinkle it with holy water in good conscience. (from “Christian Divergences”, p. 95)
Many Christians find it difficult to accept the ‘transcendent unity of religions’, especially in light of the Gospel message that “no one cometh unto the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Others find it impossible to perceive how a plurality of religions can be upheld without this weakening the value of their own faith. For Schuon, this is a false dilemma.
Strictly speaking, one can say that antinomies between religions are situated “beyond logic”—since the logic of each dogmatism is impeccable, though in practice inoperative outside its own framework—but this is pure convenience, for…these antinomies are but complementary opposites arising from an identical substance. (from “Evidence and Mystery”, p. 130)
…Although a religious perspective may be contested ab extra…in the light of another religious perspective deriving from a different aspect of the same truth, it remains incontestable ab intra inasmuch as its capacity to serve as a means of expressing the total truth makes it a key to that truth. (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, p. 10)
Further, this approach is itself attested to by some of the greatest Christian thinkers, such as Origen, St. Justin Martyr, and St. Augustine (quoted below), arguably the most influential thinker in the Western Christian tradition:
In the…words of St. Augustine: “That which today is called the Christian religion existed among the ancients and has never ceased to exist from the origin of the human race until the time when Christ himself came and men began to call Christianity the true religion which already existed beforehand”
(Reconsiderations I.13.3). This passage has been commented upon as follows by the Abbé P.-J. Jallabert…“The Catholic religion is but a continuation of the primitive religion restored and generously enriched by Him who knew His work from the beginning. This explains why Saint Paul the Apostle did not claim to be superior to the Gentiles save in his knowledge of Jesus crucified. In fact, all the Gentiles needed to acquire was the knowledge of the Incarnation and the Redemption considered as an accomplished fact; for they had already received the deposit of all the remaining truths.…This “knowledge of the Incarnation and the Redemption” implies before all else a knowledge of the renewal effected by Christ of a means of grace that in itself is eternal.…This means of grace is essentially always the same and the only means that exists, although its modes may vary.… (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, pp 9-10)
And so the words of Christ: “Before Abraham was, I am” (John 8:58).
The ‘Fall from Grace’ determines the conditions from which the Christian adherent seeks salvation. In “Delineations of Original Sin” Schuon undertakes to describe the nature of the fallen condition and original sin—one of the most important but frequently distorted teachings of Christianity—which one must understand in order to escape that condition and which cannot be ‘cured’, so to speak, by an exclusively mechanical morality, imposed from without.
If we wish to give the word “sin” its broadest and deepest meaning, we would say that it expresses above all an attitude of the heart; hence a “being” and not simply a “doing” or “not doing”.… (from “Delineations of Original Sin”, p. 56)
…Horizontality is to sin against transcendence, thus to forget God and consequently the meaning of life; and outwardness is to sin against immanence, thus to forget our immortal soul and consequently its vocation. In assuming that the original sin was an act—whatever the form given it by a particular mythology—we shall say, on the one hand, that this act had as its effect the two kinds of neglect just mentioned and, on the other hand, that this neglect predisposes to the indefinite repetition of the original transgression; every sinful action repeats the drama of the forbidden fruit. (from “Delineations of Original Sin”, p. 57)
As to The Fall itself:
Eve and Adam succumbed to the temptation to wish to be more than they could be.…The builders of the Tower of Babel, as well as the Titans, Prometheus, and Icarus, wished to put themselves improperly in God’s place; they too suffered the humiliating chastisement of a fall. According to the Bible, the forbidden tree was one of discernment between “good” and “evil”…its source could not be in the creature; to claim it for oneself is to wish to be equal to the Creator, and that is the very essence of sin—of all sin. (from “Delineations of Original Sin”, p. 58)
The Fall, however, does not describe an actual separation of our “being” from God, but rather one of our ready ability to “know” Him, and this which manifests itself in our will:
Indeed, the sinner decides what is good, counter to the objective nature of things; he willingly deludes himself about things and about himself; whence the fall, which is nothing other than the reaction of reality.…The fall was, precisely, the rupture between reason and Intellect, the ego and the Self.… (from “Delineations of Original Sin”, p. 58-9)
In the Person of the Holy Spirit, God is present— immanent— in all things: hence the possibility of Transfiguration and Return.
Like all orthodox religions Christianity provides a spiritual anthropology, an understanding of which is essential to salvation. Like Christ, the human being is ambiguous, or two-fold, and further:
…the ambiguity of man is that of the world: everything manifests God—directly or indirectly, or in both ways at the same time—but nothing is God; thus everything can either bring us closer to Him or take us further from Him. Each religion, or each confession, intends to offer its solution to this problem in conformity with a particular psychological, moral, and spiritual economy. (from “Christian Divergences”, p. 98)
This is reflected in the two-fold human response to the confrontation between man and God: metanoia, which is the realisation of the utter reliance of all things on God and the rejection of all thoughts and action that do not honour this—the opposite state to illusory self-sufficiency; and deification, or theosis, which recognises, alongside Islam, that ‘there is no Reality but the Reality’. The human being is, to use the Arabic terms, ‘abd and khalifah, slave and vice-regent, horizontal and vertical.
Inwardness and verticality, outwardness and horizontality: these are the dimensions that constitute man in all his greatness and all his littleness. To say transcendence is to say both metaphysical Truth and saving Divinity; and to say immanence is to say transpersonal Intellect and divine Selfhood: verticality in the face of “our Father who art in heaven”, and inwardness in virtue of the “kingdom of God which is within you”, whence a certitude and a serenity that no stratagem of the powers of darkness can take away from us. (from “Delineations of Original Sin”, pp. 57-8)
The human being images, in a virtual state, Christ:
…Humanity, and with it the individual human, is an image of Christ.…Man is “incarnation” by his Intellect and Freedom, and “crucifixion” by his miseries. (from “Some Observations”, p. 39)
It is this imaging that makes possible salvation, which is not other than union with God—the turning back of the Fall—in which we become by Grace what Christ is by nature. This salvific, and gnostic, truth is proclaimed by the Church Fathers: “For He was made man that we might be made God” (St. Athanasius, On the Incarnation, 54.3) and Christianity today needs to recall this.
For he is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us; Having abolished in his flesh the enmity…that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross.… (Ephesians 2:14-16)
The Cross is the pre-eminent Christian symbol and the focal point of Christian contemplation; it describes the perichoresis—or interpenetration—of two natures in the Person of Christ and by extension the universal human state. It expresses that salvation which was wrought upon it on the hill of Golgotha and it describes Existence itself.
“Existence or “manifestation” has two aspects: the tree and the cross; the joyous tree, which bears the serpent, and the sorrowful cross, which bears the Word made flesh. For the impious, Existence is a world of passion that man justifies by a philosophy “after the flesh”; for the elect, it is a world of trial transpierced by grace, faith, gnosis. (from “The Cross”, p. 161)
We can no more escape the cross than we can escape Existence. At the root of all that exists, there is the cross. The ego is a downward path drawing man away from God; the cross is a halting of that path. (from “The Cross”, p. 162)
The cross is everywhere because creation is of necessity separated from God… (from “The Cross”, p. 161)
Indeed, all Christian thought can be ‘gathered in’ to the symbol of the Cross and the profundity of this symbol is universal. It is keel and mast, poles and equator, trunk and branches, sacrifice and victory, transcendence and immanence. In the Cross, Heaven and Earth meet; in the Cross, Heaven and Earth are One, indistinguishable: the unbridgeable abyss between Creator and creature is transcended on the Cross.
The cross is the divine fissure through which Mercy flows from the Infinite. The center of the cross, where the two dimensions intersect, is the mystery of forsakenness: it is the “spiritual moment” when the soul loses itself, when it “is no more” and when it “is not yet”. (from “The Cross”, p. 164)
The sacrifice on the Cross is Victory.
…On the cross, the annihilation of Christ attains its culminating point in the state of abandonment between Heaven and earth. It is thus that the ego must be annihilated, in a perfect void, before the exclusive Reality of God. (from “Christic and Virginal Mysteries”, p. 159)
The Christian emphasis on faith is of a piece with the emphasis on Mercy. But faith is not opposed to knowledge, nor can it justify absurdity—as though faith in an absurdity demonstrates piety.
Faith is in fact nothing else than the “bhaktic” mode of Knowledge and of intellectual certitude, which means that Faith is a passive act of the intelligence, its immediate object being not the truth as such, but a symbol of the truth. This symbol will yield up its secrets in proportion to the greatness of the Faith, which in its turn will be determined by an attitude of trust or emotional certitude, that is, by an element of bhakti or love. Insofar as Faith is a contemplative attitude, its subject is the intelligence; it can therefore be said to constitute a virtual Knowledge.… (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, pp. 20-22)
In its highest manifestation, Faith is certitude based in a Truth not empirically demonstrable. From this perspective it is indistinguishable from Knowledge. It is “essentially an intuition of the supernatural brought about by Grace, which is actualized by means of the attitude of fervent trust.”
In the case of man there is a distinction—or a complementarism—between love and knowledge, but in God their polarity is surpassed and unified. (from “The Dialogue Between Hellenists and Christians”, p. 64)
…Faith is, to say the least, not contrary to gnosis; doubtless not all faith is metaphysical knowledge, but all metaphysical knowledge, being an “evidence of things not seen”, is of the domain of faith. Gnosis is the perfection of faith in the sense that it combines this knowledge with the corresponding realization…The most external expression of…[which] is works…without which it is “dead, being alone” (James 2:17). (from “Some Observations”, p. 39)
The perceived tension between faith and works is illusory—for the fruit of sincere faith is works: salvation is not achieved through mechanical technique: this is the error of Simon Magus.
…It is only sincere faith—proven precisely by moral effort and works—which is faith as such in the eyes of God. In other words, sincerity necessarily manifests itself through our desire to please Heaven, which, having saved us from evil, obviously expects us to practice good.…The ancient Churches and the Reformation both make use…of the idea of our fundamental helplessness as the springboard of a method founded upon saving faith. (from “Christian Divergences”, p. 82-3)
n the Introduction to The Fullness of God, Professor Cutsinger writes of Schuon that:
…He was above all a man of prayer, whose fundamental message…was always linked to the importance of faith and spiritual practice. “Even if our writings had on average no other result than the restitution for some of the saving barque that is prayer,” he once wrote, “we would owe it to God to consider ourselves profoundly satisfied.”
Prayer is the core of the spiritual life, and centres the human being on their immutable and divine core through remembrance of God.
Prayer culminates in a constant recalling of divine Names, insofar as it is a question of an articulated “remembrance”. (from “Some Observations”, p. 44)
…Prayer takes precedence over everything, consequently…it contains communion in its own way and does so necessarily, since in principle we bear within ourselves all that we can obtain from without; “the kingdom of God is within you”. (from “Outline of the Christic Message”, pp. 2-3)
Schuon’s statements regarding prayer provide crucial guidance to the practitioner.
And this is crucial: “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father, which is in secret”; according to the Hesychasts, this secret chamber is the heart, whose door open to the world, must be closed. This is quite characteristic of the Christian message, which is a message of contemplative inwardness and sacrificial love.… (from “Our Father Who Art in Heaven”, p. 35)
Prayer is essential but how are we to pray?
The chief content of a prayer is a petition; one cannot, however, ask for something without giving thanks for something.…One must express to God any cares or difficulties one may have and through this bring about a living relationship with Him.…One may also turn to the Blessed Virgin and confide everything to her.…It is necessary to speak to God and ask for His help; this can be done through a celestial intermediary, in particular the Blessed Virgin. (from “Appendix: A Sampling of Letters and Other Unpublished Materials”, pp. 184, 170)
Prayer is inseparable from commitment: one’s entire life must be in conformity with one’s prayer life.
Before entering upon a way of prayer—before committing oneself to invoke God three times a day and, insofar as one can, in every available moment—one must promise Heaven to persevere in this way until death; such a promise is equivalent to monastic vows. (from “Appendix: A Sampling of Letters and Other Unpublished Materials”, p 170)
And all of this is to say nothing (at least directly) of Schuon’s teachings on the Jesus Prayer, the Ave Maria and the Our Father!
Until modern times the Christian Scriptures—Old and New Testaments—have been closed off to the majority of Christian adherents. Access to the texts has been restricted through both physical and linguistic impediments. While modern critics of religious traditions interpret this as a ploy to preserve patriarchal and oppressive authority, this could not be further from the truth, regardless of certain human abuses perpetrated over time. Instead, access to the Scriptures was restricted to those trained to interpret them, and who in turn provided these interpretations to the majority.
The role of the orthodox and inspired commentators is to intercalate in sentences, when too elliptic, the implied and unexpressed clauses, or to indicate in what way or in what sense a certain statement should be taken, besides explaining the different symbolisms, and so forth. It is the orthodox commentary and not the word-for-word meaning of the Torah that acts as law. The Torah is said to be “closed”, and the sages “open” it.… (from “Keys to the Bible”, pp. 102-103)
This is the case because the Scriptures are by their very nature esoteric and potentially dangerous to those not prepared to understand them, those who do not have “ears to hear”. This pitfall is evidenced by damage being done to the Christian tradition by literalistic fundamentalism, which—masquerading as primordial Christianity—is one of the greatest dangers currently facing that faith.
In order to understand the nature of the Bible and its meaning, it is essential to have recourse to the ideas of both symbolism and revelation; without an exact and, in the measure necessary, sufficiently profound understanding of these key ideas, the approach to the Bible remains hazardous and risks engendering grave doctrinal, psychological, and historical errors. (from “Keys to the Bible”, p. 101)
In the short essay “Keys to the Bible” Schuon provides, in outline, the hermeneutic ‘equipment’ required to plumb the esoteric depths of Scripture.
…The word-for-word meaning practically never suffices by itself and…apparent naïveties, inconsistencies, and contradictions resolve themselves in a dimension of profundity for which one must possess the key. The literal meaning is frequently a cryptic language that more often veils than reveals and that is only meant to furnish clues to truths of a cosmological, metaphysical, and mystical order.… (from “Keys to the Bible”, p. 101)
Christian charity neither has nor can have any interest in “well-being” for its own sake, because true Christianity, like every orthodox religion, considers that the only true happiness human society can enjoy is its spiritual wellbeing.… (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, p 25)
At a time when the demands of secular modernity have pressed the churches to emphasise charitable works at the expense of their pontifical and sacramental duties, Schuon provides a salutary reminder of the true meaning of charity.
…When a work of charity is accomplished through love of God, or in virtue of the knowledge that “I” am the “neighbor” and that the “neighbor” is “myself”—a knowledge that implies this love—the work in question has for the neighbor not only the value of an outward benefit, but also that of a benediction. On the other hand, when charity is exercised neither from love of God nor by virtue of the aforesaid knowledge, but solely with a view to human “well-being” considered as an end in itself, the benediction inherent in true charity does not accompany the apparent benefaction, either for the giver or for the receiver. (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, p 25)
This Christian Charity is an esoteric element of the Christian tradition that:
…corresponds to the Hindu ahimsa, “non-harming”, which can go so far as to renounce our legitimate rights, hence deliberately to step out of the mesh of human interests and social justice; it is to offer the left cheek to him who has struck the right and always to give more than one has to. (from “Outline of the Christic Message”, p. 2)
According to Schuon, “Charity is the most important of the three theological virtues”, for:
…The Love of God, or the Charity that has as its object the divine Perfections and not our own well-being, is Knowledge of the one and only divine Reality, in which the apparent reality of the created is dissolved—a knowledge that implies the identification of the soul with its uncreated Essence, which is yet another aspect of the symbolism of Love—so the love of one’s neighbor is basically nothing else than knowledge of the indifferentiation before God of all that is created. (from “The Particular Nature and Universality of the Christian Tradition”, p 24)
The Protestant Reformation sought to correct certain abuses and excesses, as well as certain omissions, that had manifested themselves in the Church of Rome. Rome, in turn, saw to its own affairs in the Counter-Reformation. The history of Western Christianity since these movements has been replete with schismatic hostility, manifesting itself socially, politically, and doctrinally.
According to Catholic logic, the Lutheran Communion is invalid, not only because the rite has been changed, but also because the officiant is not a priest; whereas from the Lutheran—or general Protestant—point of view, the officiant is a priest thanks to the sacerdotal virtuality that man as such possesses by his deiform nature; Christ actualized this virtuality through the “mandate of Heaven”…Heaven permits this Mandate to descend upon the officiant by virtue of his election by the Community, or by those whom the Community delegates, exactly as is the case—technically speaking—with the Roman pontiff…Doubtless, the Western Church never went so far as to deny the laity a kind of indirect sacerdotal function, but it has not granted it the same degree of recognition as has the Eastern Church; on the contrary, it too much neglected it, the celibacy of priests helping to widen the gap between the tonsured and the laity, which, precisely, was avoided by the Orthodox. (from “Christian Divergences”, pp. 89-90)
That Catholicism and Protestantism each express a certain perspective of truth has meant that neither is capable of submitting to the other. This does not mean that an ecumenical relationship is not possible but that any such reconciliation must be based upon both recognition and appreciation of divergences rather than a destruction of valid perspectives.
In the framework of Christianity as a whole, the Reformation, while appearing logically and technically as a heresy…possesses in itself a justification and hence an efficacy, which it draws from a spiritual archetype that was, if not entirely ignored by Rome, at least certainly “restrained”. (from “Christian Divergences”, pp. 81-2)
It is possible that Heaven could will a phenomenon such as the Lutheran Communion; but it is impossible that it could will the Lutheranization of the Catholic Mass, for God cannot contradict Himself on one and the same plane, the very one that would imply an intrinsic contradiction; the fact that God brings about the manifestation of the Islamic possibility in no way means that He wishes Christianity to be Islamized, any more than He desires that Islam be Christianized. (from “Christian Divergences”, pp. 89)
