Debate perrenialism vs orthodogry :D

Why does he constantly act like he's got a stick up his ass? A lot of his content is good but his tone is always grating.

Nice try Jay, you didnt let him talk

I'll paste my post from the toll houses thread where I spoke against perennialism.

I am referring to the teachings of Guénon, Schuon, Burckhardt, Pallis, Valsan and Coomaraswamy. I will not address Evola, since, unlike the others, he had a strong antichristian prejudice and this is obviously unnaceptable.

-The idea of Primordial/perennial tradition

The main claim of perennialism/guenonian traditionalism is that there is a core spiritual tradition from the beginning of humanity and that all religions are adaptation of it, created by inspired prophets to preserve truth in different ways to different people and cultures in history. Basically google Sanatana Dharma in Hinduism and that's where it is from.

This implies that all religions are equally true and equivalent.

The only thing we can accept as Christians is that existed a certain primordial knowledge of God, but it was lost in idolatry and superstition after the Babel tower. Certain wise men like Socrates or Zoroaster were able to learn a certain amount of truth, but this can never be equal to the religion revealed from God.

Christianity is above other religions, the nice things in other religions are at best incomplete fragments or prefigurations of Christian truths written by their wise men.

-The content of this perennial religion

Basically Advaita Vedanta, the most abstract and less pagan of hindu doctrines.

This imply, for example, that Shiva and Krishna are equally acceptable as forms and interpretation of the same divine as Christ is. That politheism is just a way of seeing divine energies, different but not less true than monotheism.

The final goal of man is to reach union into the divine in an impersonal way: to become a drop of water into the ocean.

God as a personal being with a will is accepted but as a lesser truth, God in itself is pure Being outside of being.

-Esotericism/Essotericism

This part about the impersonal absolute is usually part of the most advanced and reserved systems, as opposed to the devotion for God, intended for average people.

Since Sufi muslims and Hindus, among others, show traces of this distinction the perennialists try desperately to project it upon christianity.

Since Christian theology obviously do not teach these things they are lead to believe Christianity was esoteric but turned into a mass religion and there are some unknown groups inside it still teaching the esoteric doctrine to those who are qualified.

Among these groups the authors of the Graal cycle, the knights templar, Rosicrucians and freemasons. Unfortunately all these group are dead or were corrupted (like the freemasons).

This would imply Christ had a secret teachings that was unwritten; the revelation would thus split in two different doctrines and so would the hierarchy because it follows that an esoteric initatic hierarchy must exist, separated from that of bishops.

-Hermeneutics

They constantly try to read Christianity in light of other traditions.

They do not read Christian scriptures or the saints in light of Christianity itself but they project hindu or muslim ideas on it.

For example the esoteric/essoteric split is from the muslims, it is unknown in Christianity but they project it.

-The fruits of perennialism

Since they believed all religions are equally true and equivalent, and since Christianity has no more initiatic esoteric groups to be used to reach union into the Absolute, the perennialists left Christianity, all of them.

The great majority of them became sufi muslims.

I don't need to explain why this is wrong.

-Sacraments

Ever since the imaginary moment when Christianity turned essoteric the sacraments have no value. To the perennialist they were once initatic rituals but now they no longer give initiation into the mysteries.

Not all of them agree on this, the main issue is that they constantly minimize and ignore the core of Christianity because they are too interested into molding it to fit with their Hindu/Sufi theories.

The death and resurrection of Christ is not really that important to them, only the fact that Christianity is compatible with the doctrines of Sanatana Dharma and sufi mysticism.

sorry for reddit spacing, the paste did that.

I watched this 'debate' the other day, it was crap, Jay just talked over him, I've never watched his videos before he's clearly a well read guy but there was zero dialogue between the two, it was Jay just talking at him which the other guy kinda just gave into and in the end it just turned into him essentially interviewing Jay. Jay himself acknowledged he gets passionate and excited when talking about this stuff but my, he needs to apply some self restraint in order to enable a good dialogue between the two participants to make a fruitful video enjoyable and enriching for viewers. His conclusion of thanking the other guy who he said came to the table with some great ideas and thoughtprovoking stuff seemed very disingenuous given how he'd interacted with him over the two hours previous. Don't suppose any other of his vids worth watching?

Thing is as someone who isn't really sure where he is in terms of faith etc. I have been looking into perrenialism (along with lots of other stuff) a bit over the past month or so just to understand a bit more what it would be that I'm rejecting when I take the leap of faith into Christianity. So was really looking forward to some fruitful engaging discussion in this. What someone said in the comments, we need more discussion of this stuff as it's got the potential to draw in so many people into false ways - discussions with atheists/or on atheist objections seems to get the most attention but gets pretty boring once you're convinced of how ridiculous it is, which isn't hard to do. O well.

Thanks for posting this before, as I said due to having looked into both perennialism and eastern approaches a bit over the past few months this was a very helpful piece of info.

I've been listening to a bit of David Bently Hart (Ordodox :DDD), too, who holds to classical theism (and some people say Thomism but he apparently says he doesn't and I don't know enough to understand what the distinction between the two is) but critics (brodesdands :DDD William Lain Craig, Alvin Plantinger, Richard Swinborne, for e.g.) who by contrast have a theology of what Hart calls theistic personalism (a name which Bill Craig dislikes) argue that the logical conclusions of Thomism lead to this impersonal absolute, who isn't ultimately knowable and by extension isn't biblical.

These are the two vids I'm thinking of - first is a reading of an extract of Hart's 'Experience of God: Knowledge, Conciousness, Bliss' book and the second is Bill Craig's take on Hart's theology and his own. There's also an Ed Feser (Catholic philosopher for those who don't know) response linked in the vid description which I've yet to listen to.

youtu.be/ZJv40SOaNzA

youtu.be/xU2WLZ9mO8o

Thoughts?

Keep in mind, he's been deeply involved with the "blood sports" community for the last few months and it probably rubbed off on him.

Pardon my ignorance but what is that? Hunting?

You're triggering me. DBH is Orthodox like Origen was Orthodox. He believes in his own special snowflake Christianity.

Fair m8 but he call's himself Orthodox so assumed he was

He's a rabid ecumenist and universalist. I've heard that some of his books are good, though.

fatherjohn.blogspot.com/2015/05/the-strange-theology-of-david-bentley.html

Internet Bloodsports is when people go into a group chat, stream it, and 'debate' whatever topic they are talking about. It's called bloodsports because 90% of the time it devolves into a shitposting contest for the amusement of the audience.

I understood he was a universalist, but was also under the impression that Orthodoxy allows room for that to a limited, despite it being a uncommonly held view that is looked downupon (what is it called theologoumenon). But I don't know much about orthodoxy either, compared to things from a prot side.

O rite I had no idea, lol I was wondering a) why he would take up hunting as a sport and a Christian and b) why that would rub off on internet debates