FRITHJOF Schuon’s The Transcendent Unity of Religions also discusses the nature of monotheism, arguing that whilst the world’s three great monotheistic faiths – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – cannot be reconciled in a theological regard they can nonetheless teach us something about the importance of unity at a more supreme level.

As a way of emphasising this point, Schuon tries to draw a contrast between what he terms “symbolical truth” and “objective truth”:

To illustrate this distinction we may take as an example the arguments of Christianity and Buddhism with regard to the religious forms from which they may be said to have respectively issued, namely, Judaism in the first case and Hinduism in the second. These arguments are “symbolically true,” in the sense that the rejected forms are considered not in themselves and from the standpoint of their intrinsic truth but solely in certain contingent and negative aspects that are due to a partial decadence; the rejection of the Veda therefore corresponds to a truth insofar as this Scripture is viewed exclusively as the symbol of a sterile erudition that was widespread in the time of Buddha, and the rejection by St. Paul of the Jewish Law was justified insofar as the latter corresponded to a Pharisaic formalism lacking spiritual life. If a new Revelation may thus justifiably depreciate religious values of an earlier origin, it is because it is independent of these values and has no need of them, since it possesses equivalent values of its own and is therefore entirely self-sufficient. (pp.95-96)

Even when there is a breach within the same religion, such as between Catholic and Eastern Orthodox or Sunni and Shi’a, the schism in question is a “contingency” which cannot threaten the “intrinsic and essential” nature of the branches concerned. Outwardly, there is division, but inwardly the esoteric unity remains. As the author continues:

Owing to ethnic and other contingencies, the spirit of the religion may require different though always orthodox, adaptations. The same considerations do not of course, apply in the case of heresies, which divide the religion both inwardly and outwardly—though unable to effect a real division, since error is not a part of truth—and which instead of merely being incompatible on the formal plane with other aspects of a self-same truth, are false in themselves. (p.96)

These monotheistic religions also bear a spiritual and cyclical similitude, in the sense that each has a dogmatic interpretation of “Divine Unity”. This is the point at which their usual adherence to theological dualism ends, of course, but the dogmatism is to be found in the way they continue to promulgate their own particular viewpoints. The unity arises when one takes into consideration the metaphysical aspects, especially as they become manifest in an initiatory context.

Judaism is rather special in that it was the first form of monotheism to provide its belief-system with a decidedly historical character:

The monotheistic religion belonged originally to the entire nomadic branch of the Semitic group, a branch that having issued from Abraham, was subdivided into two secondary branches, one issuing from Isaac and the other from Ishmael and it was not until the time of Moses that monotheism took a Judaic form; it was Moses who, at a time when the religion of Abraham was growing dim among the Ishmaelites, was called upon to give monotheism a powerful support by linking it in a certain manner with the people of Israel, who thus became its guardians; but this adaptation, however necessary and providential it may have been, was also bound to lead to a restriction of the outward form, owing to the “particularist” tendency inherent in each people. It may thus be said that Judaism annexed monotheism and made it the possession of Israel, with the result that under this form the heritage of Abraham was henceforth inseparable from all the secondary adaptations and all the ritual and social consequences implicit in the Mosaic Law. (pp.97-98)

As we have seen over the last century, this aggressively nationalistic tendency – which has since evolved into a more secularised global imperialism in the hands of a powerful clique of Zionist financiers – has caused endless problems in a more geographical and territorial regard.

Turning now to Christianity, which progressed beyond the foundational stage of Judaism into a popular new religion, its protagonists managed to silence those who viewed the faith as a purely secondary stage of Jewish spirituality by presenting the world with its own Messiah. This revelatory propensity, itself a fulfilment of Judaic scripture, was built into the religion from the very beginning:

In order that He might effect this dissolution of a transitory form, it was necessary, as we have just indicated, that as Messiah, He should possess to an eminent degree the authority inherent in the Tradition whose ultimate word He was, and it is for this reason that He had to be “greater” than Moses and “before” Abraham. These affirmations clearly indicate a direct identity between the Messiah and God, and show that a Christianity that denies the Divinity of Christ denies the reason for its own existence. (pp.98-99)

Christianity therefore became a major threat to Jewish spirituality as a result of transcending both its ethnocentrism and the accompanying historicity of the Hebrews themselves.

Schuon even suggests that at the moment of Christ’s death, when “the Temple was rent in twain,” the religion of Moses was seen to come to an abrupt end. However, this was merely symbolic and remains impossible from the perspective of Jewish prophecy. Indeed, it

may well be objected that the Mosaic religion, insofar as it is the Word of God, cannot by any means be annulled, since “our Torah is for all eternity, nothing can be added to it and nothing taken away from it” (Maimonides); how, therefore, is one to reconcile the abrogation of the religion of Moses, or rather of the “glorious” cycle of its terrestrial existence, with the “eternity” of the Mosaic Revelation? (p.100)

What seems like a theological anomaly, however, becomes a paradox in the sense that it is merely relative. The exoteric dimension is forced to operate within the temporality of earthly affairs, whilst the esoteric significance infers that Judaism is itself absolute and divine. For Schuon, the symbolic overcoming of Jewish spirituality by the arrival of the Messiah does not render it obsolete:

The abrogation of the Mosaic religion by Christ springs from a Divine Volition but the intangible permanence of that same religion is of a still profounder order, since it derives from the Divine Essence itself, of which this Volition is simply a particular manifestation, just as a wave is a particular manifestation of water, the nature of which it cannot modify. The Divine Volition manifested by Christ could affect only a particular mode of the religion of Moses and not its “eternal” quality; consequently, although the Real Presence—the Shekhinah—had left the Holy of Holies in the Temple of Jerusalem, this Divine Presence has always continued to dwell in Israel, no longer, it is true, like an unquenchable fire localized in a sanctuary, but like a flint that though not permanently manifesting fire, nevertheless contains it virtually, with the possibility of manifesting it from time to time. (pp.100-101)

As for the role of Islam, the youngest of the three monotheistic religions, Schuon believes that it helped to stabilise the hostility between its Jewish and Christian rivals. This, he says, was achieved as a consequence of presenting the world with the “pure monotheism” of Abraham. In other words, it is as though Judaism had not rejected Christianity and that Christianity had not triumphed over Judaism. By arriving late on the scene, therefore, Islam managed to avoid getting caught up in this antagonistic relationship and returned the focus of monotheism to “the Unity of God”:

As a condition of being able thus to transcend Messianism, it was necessary for Islam to place itself at a point of view that was different from that of [Christianity], and to reduce the latter to its own point of view in order to integrate it within itself; hence the integration of Christ in the line of Prophets, which extends from Adam to Mohammed. It goes without saying that Islam, like the two preceding religions, came into being through a direct intervention of the Divine Will from which monotheism issued, and that the Prophet had to reflect, according to a special possibility and with a corresponding mode of realisation, the essential Messianic truth inherent in the original or Abrahamic monotheism. (p.102)

Schuon also contends that Islam remedies the damage that was caused by Judaism’s tribal appropriation of the monotheistic principle and Christianity’s reformulation of it by way of a fulfilled messianism. Both developments, it can be argued, are secondary factors within the field of monotheistic religion.

Islamic Revelation bears a twofold character based on the Divine attributes of Justice and Mercy, qualities that helped to formulate a purer form of monotheism. Christian Revelation, meanwhile, is considered superior to the Hebrew-centred narrative one finds in Mosaic Revelation by maintaining the spirit of universality. Here we can witness the full beauty of the Primordial Tradition as it operates between the three Semitic worldviews:

With Moses exoterism, so to speak, became the religion, in the sense that it determined the form of the latter without however, affecting its essence; with Christ the reverse happened, and it was esoterism that in a certain manner became the religion in its turn; finally, with Mohammed the initial equilibrium is re-established and the cycle of the monotheistic religion is closed. These alternations in the integral Revelation of monotheism proceeded from the very nature of the latter and are not therefore imputable to contingent circumstances alone. Since both the “letter” and the “spirit” were synthetically comprised in the primordial or Abrahamic monotheism, they were bound to become crystallized in some fashion, by differentiation and successively, during the course of the cycle of the monotheistic Revelation; thus the religion of Abraham manifested the undifferentiated equilibrium of “letter” and “spirit” the religion of Moses the “letter,” Christianity the “spirit,” and Islam the differentiated equilibrium of these two aspects of the Revelation. (pp.103-104)

Just as each monotheistic religion may be seen as a theological modification of its predecessor, so too must it be limited in the way that all forms of exoteric spirituality must retain their external independence.

Heterodox faiths, considered nonconformist in the relative manner in which they seek to differentiate themselves from preceding orthodoxies, are a shining example of how transcendence can still function within the dissolution of forms. When something appears to be one step removed from the original, therefore, we must remember that the Divine fragments of that same essence nonetheless radiate through them.