Schuon on Christianity and Islam

(Revised post)

Frithjof Schuon, James Cutsinger's mentor, is a strange beast: a believer in the essential infallibility of not just one but of all traditional religions. I think he can make enlightening reading—provided that one keeps in mind that he bears a one-sided hatred of all the West stands for, from the thought of ancient Greece to modern science and technology, and that this hatred makes him ready to overlook or excuse obvious failings of the non-Western cultures he admires. In this respect the arch-conservative Schuon seems, oddly enough, to resemble contemporary liberals.

Schuon is illuminating in that he at least gives some clue as to why some Westerners would be attracted to Islam, or at any rate to their idea of esoteric Islam (Sufism). . . . CONTINUE Islam, he says, is "normative" because it "rests on the natural properties of things with a realism which . . . avoids confusing realms and levels" (Stations of Wisdom, John Murray, London, p. 58), namely the level of worldly struggle and the higher realm of of the spirit. So, in Islam "there are certain tribes of noble character who live partly by plunder and [Western] people feel indignant", but in Christianity there is unavoidable hypocrisy while engaging in comparable behaviour, such as the kind of imperialism Europe engaged in a century ago: "Brigandage is the imperialism of nomads, just as imperialism is the brigandage of big nations" (pp 60–61). Denying the Law of the Jungle (or perhaps the Mosaic law of just retribution, the lex talionis, with which Schuon seems to conflate the Law of the Jungle here) would be to "confuse the earth with Heaven" (p. 61). To the Muslim, Schuon suggests, Christianity represents pious sentiment, while Islam represents the intellect. And if no one is allowed to have any new thoughts in this religion of the intellect, that is fine too, because in orthodox religion all the true thinking has already been done. Islam is "universal", because "it seeks to teach only what has been taught from all times." Insofar as Christianity introduced anything truly new, it is clearly wrong, as there is no such thing as spiritual progress in history. Islam deliberately introduced nothing fundamentally new, and can therefore be regarded as closer to the truth.

For Schuon, Christianity is exceptional among religions in that it represents an "externalized esotericism", in other words a mystical religion (an esoteric development of Judaism in fact), best suited to a small number of monastics, that has been made available in diluted form to whole peoples, with ambiguous results.

[The] externalising of an esotericism was for the West the last plank of salvation, the other traditional structures being for it either exhausted or quite inapplicable; but this 'anomaly' . . . alone can explain the multitude and extent of the errors of the West, or certain paradoxical features such as the habit of swearing and blaspheming, which is singularly widespread in Christian lands, but uknown in the East. This was what Islam . . . implicitly foresaw.

(p. 139.) It is difficult to see how those who follow Schuon along such lines of thought can be genuinely loyal to the Christian tradition, even if they have the appearance of being Christian conservatives. Is Christianity likely to flourish if its stewards regard it as essentially an expedient for dealing with the flaws of their own, singularly ugly Western culture, and intrinsically inferior to other major religious traditions?

The half-truth is more dangerous than the lie, as I think Thomas Aquinas said. Christianity does represent an externalized esotericism (something also noted by Rudolf Steiner). This is why it places what seem to be unreasonably high ethical demands on its followers. But insofar as Christians can succeed in meeting those demands, the religion will bring about great cultural achievements: the abolition of the immemorial institution of slavery, to cite one important example. "Religious democracy" contains the potential for great good.

Meanwhile, Schuon is also interesting on the respective views of Islam and Christianity on the Fall of Man. Christianity, exceptionally, believes in an "infinite fissure" between Man and God which can be overcome only by the Intermediary, Christ. This is because it identifies Man with his will, and Adam's turning of his will away from God, his desire to be godlike himself, was a radical, almost irremediable step. For Islam—much as for pagan Greece and Rome—man is instead identified with his mind, and the Fall comes from the subordination of the intelligence to the passions (p. 59). This is a less radical evil, and can be reversed by man's own efforts. I think there is much to be said for the view that Christianity discourages effort towards self-improvement and obedience to ethical principles, and encourages a destructive self-hatred, by claiming that only Christ has the power to save—that we are too far gone for our own efforts to be worth anything. This seems to be a Protestant rather than Catholic belief, but the Protestants may well have succeeded in returning to the original spirit of Christianity in this respect. But does this mean the Catholic viewpoint is necessarily mistaken?—Only if one holds, as an article of faith, that religions cannot develop after they have been revealed.