On Universalism | Jonathan Pageau (Anagoge podcast)

[@starwarcam3581]

When someone only selects aspects of a religion that they like, they are simply worshipping their own desires

[@panokostouros7609]

Ad Hoc

[@jovelard]

@@bramreeuwijk8269 no

[@elektrotehnik94]

Great explanation of it all... It's not evil in itself, but it can lead you astray. It can lead you astray, if you let yourself be your ultimate judge of which parts of which religions you choose to follow & which you judge you can ignore.

[@gabrielparent]

@@Whats_in_a_name_1 I don't think so. We will always hit some elements in a religion that we have difficulties to accept, like Immaculate Conception or the existence of Hell for many Catholics. It's in part by overcoming these problems and by accepting the mysteries that we progress. In an 'a la carte' spirituality, when we hit a wall we turn left or right or get back, but we rarely continue forward.

[@joegibbskins]

@@gabrielparent unless people aren’t the caricatures of your argument but are exactly other human beings and are constantly rethinking things anyway

[@MattisWell.20]

Not every path leads to truth, but truth will meet us on every path.

[@beyond0077]

I seen many beautiful quotes throughout my life, this is one of the best.

[@ninjason57]

and some people ignore that truth along their path

[@joachim847]

We ought to distinguish carefully between the eventual reconciliation of everyone to God in Christ, and "everyone is okay, do what you want".

[@michelfingado202]

I agree. I think Jonathan paints a very unjust picture of (Christian) Universalists here.

[@joachim847]

​@@michelfingado202 Yeah, it seems like he should have been saying "unitarian" instead.

[@Tyler_W]

@@michelfingado202 i think more people are drawing the distinction between unitarian univwrsalists and Christian restorationists, that such Christians are moving awat from the use of the word "universalist" because of the bad baggage from the misguided relativist crowd that most popularly uses it. Upon reflection and study, I too have come to a restorationist position, and I also understamd the plethora of misconceptions about what people think I actually mean if the word "universalist" is ever used. Christ is the only path to the father. It's just that everyone gets there in their appointed time. (Although I'm still not certain if it eventually will be everyone, most everyone with exception to a few, or simply a lot more than those who think it's just a miniscule few whem all is said and done, whatever "a lot more means," but I'm inclined more and more to say that it will be everyome that will eventually enter the fold, at least when it comes to humans anyway.)

[@MattisWell.20]

Amen🙏

[@gaiaisabitch6833]

@@Tyler_W hell is a prison locked from the inside, God won’t force anyone to do anything, why would God force everyone into heaven, a lot more than a few willingly reject the Holy Spirit, like a child that could come back out to eat cake and play with friends if only they apologized but they instead choose to snicker and storm off to the bedroom. C S Lewis illustrates this beautifully in the great divorce.

[@JoeSinopoli]

Pageau's wisdom continues to awe me.

[@SkimboardSteve]

Appreciate beauty, truth and goodness no matter where it is found. Reject ugliness, lies, and evil, no matter where it's found.

[@Ark_bleu]

5:00 “I can look at other traditions and I can learn some things from them, I always do it from the inside of where I am.” So simple but this helped a lot. Very glad I found this today. 👍

[@ArthurMPena]

Loving one's neighbor involves engaging with his faith as well. Any honest, heartfelt conversation with a person from another faith tradition brings one face to face (and heart to heart) with the difficulty of judging other faith traditions. Clearly....clearly....there is genuine spiritual experience in every major faith tradition. I think a lot of the "pressure" to "respect all traditions" (a pressure spoken of somewhat disparagingly in this video) can sometimes arise from an experience of that genuineness that cuts across all faith traditions. Does that put one "above" all traditions? Again, I think that is a disparaging way of looking at it. One can, instead, simply say that it puts one in a very humble place where one cannot judge other faith traditions.

[@hellomate639]

I think the tough part of the second Greatest Commandment for people is loving oneself. He phrases it perfectly, and its a perfect mirror of previous scripture, but elevated. Love your neighbor as yourself. People are afraid that loving oneself is narcissism. In fact, narcissists hate themselves and they hate the reality of who they are. They hate their limitations, and conditionally love themselves for their gifts and status. Loving oneself is like loving oneself as though you're responsible for yourself as you would be your own child. There is tough love. And, if you cannot love yourself, you cannot love your neighbor. And, if you cannot love your neighbor, you cannot love yourself. In a way, it's like there's no distinction between loving your neighbor and loving yourself, hence why it is phrased as "love your neighbor as yourself."

[@goblinsdammit]

And Jonathan is under pressure to not say something that would upset the orthodox faith

[@bullphrogva1804]

Its interesting how 'humility' has became such a strong hammer for liberalism and universalism. As if its a virtue to doubt what God has clearly told us, but we must make room for the other.

[@Erthradar]

The best way to understand the distribution (I think this was Justin Martyr's idea?) of logos among the different religions and philosophies is through Christ's own parable. "A sower went out to sow..." Any truth they have is Christ's truth. JP is right though that anyone who challenges you about other paths is your enemy. I wouldn't have thought of it that way but that person is basically trying to tell you to start over and try those other paths, or blindly give the okay towards people to try those paths when you don't believe they really lead to the same place.

[@Countcordeaux]

This applies to people of all religions

[@ruslpit2615]

“..let every man abide in the calling by which he was called..” -Saint Paul

[@peterrosqvist2480]

5:01 Excellent words! Universalism isn’t above all the paths. You don't get transformation from Universalism.

[@Jordan-hz1wr]

Mack: "Do all roads lead to God?" Papa: "Most roads don't lead anywhere. But I will travel down every road until I find you" -- William Paul Young: The Shack

[@petri5404]

Oh. This was good.

[@thewholemessprinciple]

My main issue with most universalist approaches is just what Jonathan says here at 7:57. It's not universal if it doesn't include the bad & the ugly! “Modern people can't see God because they won't look low enough”... "Christians often ask why God does not speak to them, as he is believed to have done in former days. When I hear such questions, it always makes me think of the rabbi who was asked how it could be that God often showed himself to people in the olden days while nowadays nobody ever sees him. The rabbi replied: “Nowadays there is no longer anybody who can bow low enough.” This answer hits the nail on the head. We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions. The Buddhist discards the world of unconscious fantasies as useless illusions; the Christian puts his Church and his Bible between himself and his unconscious; and the rational intellectual does not yet know that his consciousness is not his total psyche. This ignorance persists today in spite of the fact that for more than 70 years the unconscious has been a basic scientific concept that is indispensable to any serious psychological investigation." -Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols

[@chrisc7265]

I sorta disagree with this, it was more true in Jung's day these days we only look down. Everything is dark, monstrous, marginal. When we look up, it's sort of like looking up at a mirror that is reflecting the floor. In some senses you are correct, we don't look down far enough. But I'd argue we don't look up at all.

[@thewholemessprinciple]

@@chrisc7265 I agree! Very eloquent reply.

[@JimBillyRayBob]

You have to stand for something or you'll fall for anything

[@marybrewer2203]

Seeing the world through the eyes of Christ…this can be a lonely road, but for me, it has to be the way I walk. I walk, I observe and act as I walk. I continue walking. I attend church meetings at a place where the folks come from many different Christian denominations. Our weekly “Bible study” Wednesday evenings are lively discussions, but they are good, as we seek to grow.

[@thevanbeard]

There is truth to remaining in one “path” and approaching the world from that path. Johnathan Vervaeke speaks about how cognitive science is beginning to show that. From my personal experience, when I have blown out my “belief map” I feel like a boat with no anchor. I do appreciate Johnathan Pageau talking about how he sees all things as part of the “great pattern”. I am very used to the Evangelical approach to this which would be to say all religions are false. I do think there is a difference between Universalism (as Johnathan describes it in this video)/wanting to appease the Liberal worldview and people genuinely noticing patterns amongst world religions/myth. Say in the vain of Jordan Peterson, Johnathan Vervaeke, Carl Jung, and Joseph Campbell (I am not familiar with Huxley’s work though I may lump him in here as well). I am by no means arguing these thinkers are Christian, but I wouldn’t lump them in with Universalism or the Liberal dogma either. Just a thought. Again I came from a very Evangelical form of Christianity and after splitting from it found Jordan Peterson and then many others (including Johnathan Pageau). Jordan Peterson challenged me and my behavior more then the bizarre form of Christianity I was in where hypocrisy ran rampant. I do consider myself a Christian still. Just trying to figure out a frame work as my old one collapsed. (My church literally closed and split.)

[@2b-coeur]

awww i grew up very fundamentalist too & have recently had to deconstruct and reconstruct my entiiiire worldview. some resources that helped me put things in place: the Bible Project (KZbin & podcast) has an excellent, cohesive, synoptic view of scripture "That All Shall be Saved" by David Bentley Hart on universal reconciliation "Notes From the Tilt-a-Whirl" by N.D. Wilson on approaching this created world as God's art, with wonder and joy

[@TheMorning_Son]

Interesting...

[@UniversalistSon9]

The problem with thinking rigidly with just one religion is that you can’t grow that far, because of some fear about hell you’ll stay stunted, but universalism can allow someone to allow themselves to grow and discover the wisdom that is found in other paths and in time discovering that all paths come from one God beyond names, eternal.

[@mjr2451]

I think the interviewer was trying to ask “what happens to people of other faiths.“ A lot of Christians have taking the “everyone who isn’t Christian will suffer” path. I don’t think the question was asked clearly enough.

[@mannytps9986]

I think it was asked really well.

[@Ben-Y]

A lot of so-called Christianity has strayed far from the first 500 years of church history which was universalist and explicitly non-violent, and has more recently turned to fear-based ideas such as eternal conscious torment (ECT) and penal substitutionary atonement (PSA) theory. The beautiful gospel is one in which Jesus gets everything he paid for. If nothing is bigger than God, then nothing can separate us forever from God.

[@Tou-Immanuel]

@@Ben-YThat’s a lot of modern bull. Not one church that has ties to the first ancient church agree with anything you said, neither Roman, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian nor Coptic churches have that belief. The closest thing you can get to that sort of thinking is like St Isaac the Syrian and even he would say you are on the wrong track. That being said the parable of the Good Samaritan comes to mind when speaking about judgment.

[@Dhavroch]

I’m a many paths to the divine kind of guy, but you’ve got to choose a path, otherwise you’ll keep going back to the start.

[@owenkelly2567]

Agreed, David. It's just difficult living wholeheartedly within a mythological narrative, no matter how "true" that myth is. How do you make it work?

[@MrHwaynefair]

Please read Ilaria L. E. Ramelli’s A Larger Hope for an eminent scholar’s “proof” of the prevalence of **Christian** Universalism in the first centuries... NOT to be confused with the (Unitarian) Universalism discussed here. There’s a strong division in the Eastern church about this subject- not a monolithic perspective. Among the Orthodox, those who lean towards Christian Universalism include Kallistos Ware, John Behr, Brad Jersak etc.

[@MrHwaynefair]

@@cbogue418 Yes- they will feel God’s love, perhaps first as a consuming fire, but ultimately in the person of Jesus Christ, before whom every knee will bow, and every tongue gladly swear allegiance to the Lord of Love!

[@Ben-Y]

Yes, this video could have been more explicit that it was addressing Unitarian Universalism and not Christian Universalism, in which Jesus is Lord and Liberator of All.

[@Jordan-hz1wr]

We need to distinguish between this version of "universalism" Jonathan is talking about here, and the universalist soteriological model of salvation of all in Christ.

[@Ben-Y]

Agreed. Jonathan isn't really addressing Christian Orthodox Universalists like Bradley Jersak, and Hopeful Universalist leaning top Orthodox theologians like Kalistos Ware. Christian Universalism doesn't need to assert itself as sperior or exclusive.

[@ElasticGiraffe]

This video is about religious pluralism and perennialism, not Christian universalism.

[@Ben-Y]

Jesus is the universal Way, the universal Truth, and the universal Life. The first 500 years of the church were universalist, in a Universal Reconciliation sense. I'd love to hear Pageau talk with David Bentley Hart on his book "That All will Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation" or with Bradley Jersak, also a Canadian Orthodox theologian, on his book "Her Gates will Never be Shut: Hope, Hell, and the New Jerusalem".

[@Countcordeaux]

Every Traditionalist insisted that you need to dedicate yourself to a particular path.

[@bradleyheissmann4538]

it's impossible to dedicate yourself to any path if you think any path would do the job

[@panokostouros7609]

0:04 *cough* Yes, good answer Jonathan. Other religions make us sick 🤣🤣🤣

[@gaiaisabitch6833]

Weak

[@Ben-Y]

We're just allergic to other religions. We have weak stomachs, and can't handle the forgiveness and enemy love that Jesus demanded of his followers.

[@steveelliott77]

Just be straightforward. There is one path. The rest are dead ends.

[@F--B]

Problem is the muslims also think that, and they live in your country and you have to form some sort of coherent collective with them. Discuss.

[@csongorarpad4670]

@@F--B no coherent collective can be achieved with people who worship another God than yours. Muslims seek conflict because their goal is to have the entire world serving their god.

[@YusoufAtalla]

@@csongorarpad4670 it’s the same god though

[@annekoch2834]

@@YusoufAtalla no it's not the same "god". Islam does not believe in the Christian God, Father, Son (Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit. The Incarnation of Christ is what changed everything for humanity.

[@mcnallyaar]

There are two points he makes that are really salient. 1.) If you let yourself get hung up on whether or not your on the right path, you will not be moving forward. I love how he defines the questioner as the Scatterer and firmly says, effectively, "Get Behind Me!" 2.) If you go "a la Carte" with your Religion, you are so likely to choose things that are pleasant and convenient things for you -- not things which sufficiently challenge your ego to provoke growth. I was especially happy with his assessment of the self-divinizing aspect of Universalist attempts to "empirically" judge faiths -- a position that sets one small group above millennia of traditions. But I *especially* appreciated that it was all couched in the following, which makes it a little easier to commit to the struggle: "I believe that everything that exists is, in its proper place and in its proper light, a manifestation of the Divine Logos (and it has to be -- or else it wouldn't exist). ... In that light, I can look at other traditions, and I can learn some things from them -- but I always do it from the inside of where I am."

[@Ben-Y]

It's easy to speak from the privileged position of somehow being born into the right tradition. However, God is bigger than Christianity. God alone gets to choose where each person Is born. But, do we trust that God knows what God is doing in having each person born into whichever tradition they get born into? What right do we have in condemning (to where? To eternal conscious torment?) other great faiths into which God allowed millions or even billions of people to be born?

[@cyprokka]

So what about syncretic religions like Taoism combined with Buddhism? I think some religions mix well like those two and others make no sense together like christianity and Islam or Zoroastrianism and Hinduism.

[@tai9391]

Insinuating that other beliefs that ring true to you or align with Christian beliefs and feel good to ponder does not allow one to challenge themselves derails the idea that one can be aware of their own flaws and be able to work on them, I think. It's a challenge sometimes to embody the fruits of the spirit, which are also virtues of other belief systems. It is a challenge to look at a Rumi quote, feel its wisdom, and know that you don't embody it yourself. I'm personally of the belief that there are unalienable spiritual truths, and that sometimes the way another belief system describes them is more palatable or more comprehensive and comprehensible than the way we Christians have described it. Taken out of context, Psalm 7:16 does describe what could be considered karma, but the concept of "what goes around comes around" is present in many of this world's belief systems, and the way that another religion may describe it may make more sense to even a Christians sensibilities than the way they read it in the Bible. Among these truths we find things like spiritual cleansing through ritualistic bathing and things like great flood stories. Personally, as a Christian, I would think that our personal desire not to know our kind, Wiccan neighbor will be burning in Hell for all of eternity even after they respectfully reject our proselytizing, would be virtuous in and of itself. Perhaps this is hubris, but I would expect a kind and loving God might believe our love for our lost neighbor, and our meeting them where they are, would be less of an offense than we've previously thought it would be-- that perhaps their performance of the same works we do as part of OUR beliefs, might save them too, or so those of us who love our neighbor and wish not to know they suffer nor contribute to that suffering want to believe is possible from God who loves us all.

[@SmiteTVnet]

Where Art is being done, the Artist grows. Some forms of Art value making Peace of two ideas. Other forms of Art lean into their core idea and contemplate from there.

[@christophermihaly7029]

oh man that frieze of saints in the universalist church analogy was spot on.

[@timothypeden3516]

I see universalism as a path made of many cobbles, a few stones here a few stones there, each one different, each one still helps make the path.

[@johnhernandez284]

I think the issue here is that all religions have some aspect of truth and from what I've found, none of them have the entirety of it. And what you like isn't necessarily a bad thing if you ask yourself why you like it. If you're to or of your comfort zone and choosing the things that may seem hard but you want because it can lead to a greater than I think that you should choose what did best for you. The pragmatic with that is that most people do not have the discipline to follow that whole heartedly if any. Also on the side note it's always dangerous to follow the authority of specific religion because of the factor of institutionalization that so easily overwhelms any individual who chooses a specific religion.

[@M-i-k-a-e-l]

There's a positive and negative side to anything. Pageau pointed out the negative side of universalism well.

[@formspodcast]

Makes a basic conflation of perennialism and universalism.

[@Ben-Y]

There's a difference between Unitarian Universalism and Trinitarian Universalism, in which Jesus Christ is the Only Way, and he draws ALL men to Himself.

[@xiloeteknowledgiesllc1973]

8:36 LOL good point

[@NaturalStateWingChun]

In the martial arts world, Universalism sounds a lot like JKD Concepts. Most people pick and choose from different styles and try to mash it all together, but it's incoherent.

[@gcummings88]

Things overlap, but the Holy Mass is beyond all comparison.

[@yeet3718]

I'm a Sunni-Sufi Muslim, and I believe that the Orthodox Church is the closest to Islam. I believe that everyone is eventually reconciled to God as well through His Love and Mercy (if they want it). This is a minority view, but there numerous indications in the Qur'an and some big scholars held this view. I believe the metaphysics of the Orthodox are very close to Reality, but I believe they get it wrong when it comes to Christ's divinity. He represents the created Logos via the Muhammadan Light, which is a perfect representation of God in the Created realm, rather than the eternally begotten Logos.

[@Cyrus_II]

Good

[@07bmarshall]

That ‘Universalists don’t really get anywhere’ is an opinion. To seek the Truth you have to keep your mind open. There is one Divine pattern, yes, and Christianity is one path that will align you with, and nurture syncopation; albeit, not the only path. The death and resurrection is represented in various belief systems, and great literature such as Dante; It is the same mechanism, Christianity being one that demonstrates it. It is best to choose a singular practice, but don’t allow anyone, including the church (which they do very well), burden you with guilt because the path you have chosen isn’t Christianity.

[@GaliscesGaming]

The universalism he described is only one kind, the faulty liberal universalism. I'm sure he's aware of this, he's really well versed on church history, that there is a Christian universalism which says "Christ is the only way to the Father, it just so happens that no matter the path you take, Christ intends to eventually reconcile you to God"

[@chrisc7265]

I've been reading Joseph Campbell, and what really strikes me is --- how does this guy not get more hate from conservatives and anti-woke types :D His brand of comparative mythology strikes me as a precedent to woke looniness far more than some of the commonly crapped upon bogeyman (Foucault, Marx) EDIT --- I ended up elaborating in a comment. Here's what I'm getting at: Materialism --- he is the post enlightenment nail in the coffin to Christianity as a participative structure that is both lived inside of and taken for granted in the west. Campbell was pivotal in providing western liberal democracies a niche for Christianity as a respected but inconsequential "cult" (his words) among many other cults of the world. Christianity is no longer the frame --- now it is one of many mythologies of the world that exist within a materialist frame. Sure there are clever ideas built into this mythology, but it is a butterfly pinned to a board in the enlightenment scholar's workshop. Universalism --- his most enduring contribution to culture is the monomyth: the idea that all religion and mythology boils down to the same low resolution structure. In other words, if you apply that low resolution structure to any religion, you can filter out the extraneous bits, and get the real truth, which is the same real truth you get from any other religion. Add to that a second pitfall of comparative mythology outlined by Jonathan in this video: the universalist ends up taking piecemeal the bits he likes from many different sources, resulting in a mixed up and confusing soup. Woo --- as another commentor mentioned, Campbell simplified Jung in a way that both crippled and made dangerous Jung's original ideas. "Follow your bliss" is some hippy BS that puts one's "lived experience" above reality. Follow your blisters adds some much needed edge and is a better heuristic, but it is still missing the mark. Ultimately you shouldn't follow "your" anything. Campbell may not have had as many academic citations as Foucault, but his influence on mainstream culture was much greater (especially when amplified by Hollywood). So how does it relate to woke? All religions are mere tools of the enlightenment scholar, so we need not pay attention to the bits we don't like. We need something to believe in, so let's grab a little bit of compassion for the lowest here (but forget about the responsibility to serve those above). Let's grab a little bit of welcome to the outsider (but forget about responsibility to one's own tribe). Let's grab a little bit of original sin (but forget about forgiveness). On top of all that, we know that all cultures of the world are equal and ultimately amount to the same thing, so where is the arbiter of moral truth? Of course, it is in looking inward to our lived experience: "follow your". From here it's only fair to say that we need to respect other's lived experiences equal to our own. One's own culture and traditions are ultimately arbitrary. It would be foolish not to look outwards to foreign cultures and traditions with open arms. We are all one globe under same monomyth. To be clear this is an argument of effect --- I'm certain Campbell (like Foucault) would have many criticism of woke. Also, there are elements of woke that clash with Campbell. He is more old school hyper-open hippy 60s left. Where woke has redrawn conservative borders (me too, racial segregation, etc), it is at odds with Campbell. Furthermore, Campbell's monomyth does point to a kind of universal truth that wokester's might have issue with. All that said, my point is he specifically had an outsized influence on the culture that would become woke, moreso than common scapegoats like Marx and Foucault. Also I do find him interesting, I'm not crapping on him. If you're aware enough to avoid the pitfalls he's worth reading.

[@thecannibalrobot]

Yeah, Campbell inspired gulags make Marx look like an amateur.

[@north6417]

I wonder what would happen if a Joseph Campbell fan was confronted with Rene Girard's ideas about Christianity

[@nektulosnewbie]

"Follow your bliss" has always annoyed me for the sentiment Pageau expresses around 7:40.

[@chrisc7265]

@@thecannibalrobot I didn't say Joseph Campbell was an influence on Stalin :D I mean this latest round of "woke" I'm up on the threads of Marx in woke as illustrated by James Lindsey and others, but Joseph Campbell strikes me as more explicitly causal

[@thecannibalrobot]

@@chrisc7265 Joseph Campbell has literally nothing to do with postmodernism/wokeism. You're banging on about something that makes absolutely no sense.

[@wonderpeter5231]

I dosagree with this video so much. I've been raised atheist but am very much a spiritual seeker. In my belief and practice I take a lot of things from Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. I can see the beauty in each, but absolute truth or goodness in none. If I can't take what I think is good and ignore what I think is bad, what am I supposed to do? I have no native path, so what specific one should I follow?

[@cicerogsuphoesdown7723]

Humility is recognizing that from your incredibly limited subjectivity YOU can’t possibly fully understand or embody what is good on your own. There are great intellectual defenses for Christianity but a strange part of the path is the more you walk it the more you resign your will to it. The more it becomes your hermeneutic and you recognize that you don’t know what’s best for yourself. You are infinitely flawed but god is infinitely merciful and true and good. Transformation comes from submission. Fallible as you are can you really trust your own incredibly worldly and biased evaluations? Becoming truly faithful is having your own Identity subsumed into the tradition itself. A grander identity. THATS faith. Not your hodge podge cherry pickings. Think about it rationally. If something truly is the radical transforming word of god and if god is earth shatteringly omniscient, how can you possibly trust yourself, limited as you are, to pick and choose the parts of theology that ‘work’. How would you even know. God is unchanging. The maxims of the times are incredibly unreliable. Dust in the wind. The whole point of spirituality is to ascend the ontological ladder towards something fixed and eternal. To think you’re the arbiter of the ultimately true and eternal is spiritually infantile. You need a large dose of humility.

[@wonderpeter5231]

@@cicerogsuphoesdown7723 I agree with almost everything you just said. My question to you is then: What path should I follow? I do not know what religion you belong to. Everything you just said could be an argument for faith in Islam, any of the Christian denominations, any of the thousands of different strands of what we call Hinduism, or any other faith based practiced. Do you see what I mean? Do you really feel it? If you truly understand me and have honest answers to my question, please provide me with it. But please refrain from wasting my time by saying that I think I'm the arbiter of truth and need more humility. What do you think I'm doing, looking for wisdom throughout all great spiritual traditions? So if you can genuinely help me in my quest, I'll gladly make use of it, but please don't play around with me about this topic, because to me this is as important as life itself.

[@cicerogsuphoesdown7723]

Pick one path. In the same way that you hamper your own growth if you spread yourselves too thin in several skill groups vs. applying all of your time love and care into one. I’m not a perennialist but I’d read rene guenon for insight onto this matter. And then I’d read seraphim rose. A man greatly inspired by guenon who became an orthodox Christian (I don’t recommend exclusively because he’s Christian. More because he was inspired by guenon and perennialism. Had some great criticisms of jung and other sort of universalists and ultimately full heartedly committed to the path of orthodox Christianity. Not because it was ‘one’ of the paths. But ultimately the path of paths. His defense is far better than I could ever pen. But what I would say is god is a non local atemporal being. All of our experience is local and temporal. That means all of our thinking (save for the transcendentals we use as tools like morality and mathematics etc.) is a collage of our temporal and local experience. That means almost everything we’ve ever thought or seen or interacted with is not god. There may be imminence sure. But the point is we cannot approach him logically. You’re never gonna catch god with the mind. I heard someone say once the best defense of Christianity is the lives of the saints. It’s also the greatest blow to Protestantism. Something about the TRADITION itself transforms those who participate in it. So my only advice would be to stop jumping around. At least for a long time. If you’re an earnest seeker you have to stop holding up and tinkering and reading and thinking and you actually have to suck it up and go to church or temple or whatever and participate in the rites and rituals and ceremonies. Ingratiate yourself into the community and truly live your one path. You have to be an ‘orthodox’ person whatever that means to you. If you’re willing to believe in divine revelation you have to take the risk of truly practicing the divinely revealed. And if you do that in a full blooded way you won’t have to wonder if it’s the right thing or not. Because you’ll be transformed in the doing and your doubts and fears will be silenced. But that will not happen as long as you continue to try and ‘figure it out’.

[@wonderpeter5231]

@@cicerogsuphoesdown7723 Thanks for the geruine response. It makes me think a lot. If I may, some questions I have are these: 1: Which mental faculties did you use to pick your path? And which ones would you advice I use? Did you pick your path using logic? Best arguments? Intuition? Familiarity? Or just somewhat random, like a dice roll? 2: In your decision making process in life, what is the ultimate priority? (For me, for example, this is God as I experience him in my being. The highest/deepest self in the Hundistic and Jungian senses) The reason I ask this is: What decision making process is going to save you when tradition alone stands on top of your decision hierarchy, and your tradition ends up being corrupted? If you put all your faith in a tradition that the real God actually DOESN'T want you to practice, how will God reach you if you put tradition above your divine intuition? 3: (Kinda follows from the 2nd one) What would it take for you to convert to another faith (within or outside Christianity)? Or have you completely ruled out that possibility?

[@cicerogsuphoesdown7723]

We’ll ultimately I don’t use mental faculties to evaluate. The experience grabs you and acts upon you. Not the other way around. What I would say (again based upon seraphim rose who I believed learned thai and Cantonese as a means of interacting with teachers directly. Also Thomas Merton had a similar experience) in the way a tree grows in particular soil people grow out of different traditions. Ultimately he found that his teachers or mentors like Watts or Jung projected their westernism and biases all over the traditions they fetishized or lumped into some universalist pattern. This is disingenuous to do as Rose found out once he attempted to go the extra step and learn the languages to approach said tradition on its own terms. A western person is a Christian person. Or Abrahamic person. It doesn’t matter whether they attend or subscribe to a faith practice in order for this to be so. Religion is do deeply embedded so central to history and politics and trade and EXPERIENCE itself. We’re so thoroughly versed in a sort of moral realism we can’t appreciate how all consuming it is. Like the ‘this is water’ speech. I would say religion is the highest identity available. It’s highest crystallization and the more fully we participate the more fully ‘real’ we become. I don’t wanna be disrespectful towards great western teachers or interpreters of eastern experience- but I feel a lot of the exoticism and romanticism behind eastern or Vedic wisdom in the ways can be payed at the failures of Protestantism and the Protestant revolution. I think it was once more generally understood that religion is a vehicle for mysticism and mystical transformation. That by participating in the tradition it has the power to transform and trigger these experiences. (Also as per what you mentioned I’ll respond with a platonic example. A city is greater than a person in the way a collection of souls is greater than a soul. You can examine the themes and structure of the world more fully in the macro. A great artist can only accomplish so much with his own hands in a lifetime. A fleet of people can build a cathedral over the course of many the tradition IS greater than your highest self. Because it encompasses potential thousands of years of great ‘selves’. It’s like Throwing on an ancient over soul. Any honest person who obsessively reads will eventually come to the conclusion that every brilliant thought they’ve ever had has been had a thousand times over by more brilliant people in more brilliant epochs. The font of wisdom the tradition supplies has the ability to answer every question and weather any and every possible experience or fear or doubt. It is the difference between living as a brick embedded in a grand cathedral. And being alone and useless. Again I think the fetishization of eastern wisdom is because people unconsciously recognize ‘true’ spirituality in the monastic tradition. The archetype of the old master in the ashram is pretty commonly understood. What westerners have forgotten is their own spirituality has the same tradition. And it still exists. The monasteries on mt. Athos rival any ashram anywhere in the world in grace and beauty and ancient legacy and mystical power. Again the STRIPPING AWAY of tradition due to the Protestant reformation and the thousand of years of amnesia led to people forgetting WHY we do these rituals rites and ceremonies. What they are for. What they are supposed to lead to. This is what orthodoxy provides. And in some circles or parts specifically with regards to Latin mass- Catholicism. I think the idea of ‘conversion’ makes no sense. The only choice for a western person is to become more thoroughly what you are. And what you are is an abrahamic person. There’s no ‘choice’ really. Only and admission of self. The farthest I went as far as conversion was from an empty atheism and agnosticism (born Catholic) to orthodox. I hope that helps. I’ll leave it with this. Have you ever walked into a room and seen someone speaking very animatedly about say baseball and then an ACTUAL baseball player walks in and the person becomes embarrassed and ashamed and deflecting and quiet? It’s because I’m the end they are speaking about something they are not. It’s an identity question. Again I mean no offense to great western interpreters. But I can’t wrap my mind around how. Someone can abandon their own tradition especially when it’s so overwhelmingly rich. The only conclusion I come to (as someone who was also once very interested in eastern spirituality academically) is an incredibly superficial understanding of their own tradition- and in some ways by extension- themselves. I could never be a Buddhist. Or a hindu. Not because I don’t ‘want’ to be one. But because, I am not. It’s not what I am. I have to be about the business of who and what I actually am. And a tradition several thousands of years old with a track record for creating saints isn’t a bad place to start so long as it’s explored in its most potent and pure and ancient incarnation. That would be my advice.

[@Chupie77777]

How is "Everything that exists in its proper place and in its proper light is a manifestation of the Divine Logos," not a golden calf situation where the Israelites called their idol Yaweh? Forgive me, I'm kinda slow lol

[@Countcordeaux]

This is why I believe in ethnic religions

[@paxnorth7304]

They were explicitly confusing matter and a product of their hands and minds with God the Creator.

[@ThomasCYallouris]

I will continue to follow Orthodox Christianity, but I will also implement more Buddhist practises of stretching, yoga, breathing, and meditation in my life. I see no contradtion on how practising healthy habits from other cultures trumps the truth of Christianity.

[@alphabeta8284]

Go ahead and worship demons then

[@stephenbrannen]

Jonathan, with respect brother, you're describing unitarianism not Christian (or especially, Orthodox) universalism. The latter conceptualizes the eventual salvation of all people precisely by their becoming Christians and committing to the only path there is: the Way, Jesus Christ.

[@WarInHeaven]

❤️✝️

[@apowave]

What about the facts that disprove your beliefs or go against the doctrine you were brought up in. Shouldn’t we care about what’s actually true.

[@csongorarpad4670]

If you read doctrine as a scientific paper then you're just playing yourself. Science cannot be a universal truth because it cannot account for itself. The only all-encompassing meta-story is Christianity (Catholicism and Orthodoxy)

[@Ben-Y]

Omnipresent God has always been everywhere, and anyone who has been seeking truth has been recording that truth, often in religious forms that have gotten handed down through the millennia. Do we not trust that God has been drawing ALL people to Himself? Why would God be smaller than one religion, or controlled or ruled or only perfectly understood by one singular religion if God is everywhere? Jesus said, "Seek, and you will find." If Jesus speaks eternal truth, then is it not the case that throughout ALL history, anyone who truly sought persistently, found Him?

[@hunivan7672]

I think you should actually talk to David Bentley Hart if you can get him on. That guy wrote the most powerful, steelmanned, and rock solid defense of universalism. He walks through the most powerful counterarguments to universalism and confronts them all in his book "That All Shall Be Saved". Keep in mind that the does NOT deny the existence of a Hell. It exists and people go there. David Bentley Hart is also an eastern orthodox religious scholar himself, so that would already be common ground between the two of you.

[@processrauwill7922]

There’s actually a distinction between the universalism that Jonathan means here and universalism that you and Hart are talking about. Jonathan is critiquing universalism in a more perennialist sense I.e. trying to stand above all paths, whereas I think you’re talking about apocatastasis which is universal reconciliation not universalism. I plan on asking him about this in his next Q/A if he’s pro or anti apocatastasis

[@Tyler_W]

Yes what this other commenter said. Universalism here seems to imply the pluralistic unitarian universalism, not the Christ-centered universal reconciliation as advocated by certain Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant Christians.

[@MrSofuskroghlarsen]

@@processrauwill7922 did you ask him?

[@processrauwill7922]

@@MrSofuskroghlarsen yeah I did no response. He said he didn’t want to answer it

[@MrSofuskroghlarsen]

@@processrauwill7922 Oh okay. On the live today? I really Wonder his stance on it.

[@tookie36]

Sri RamaKrishna embodied this

[@TheRationalCarpenter]

I clicked so hard hoping to hear a symbolic exposition of universal salvation. "Everything is in its place", stop flirting! I think any careful review of religious tradition will reveal a lot of similarities to Christianity in that every Grand philosophy is attempting to approach the same reality. All truth is God's truth.

[@apowave]

Constructivism

[@gaiaisabitch6833]

They make very different claims and have differnt presuppositions. I wouldn’t be so liberal

[@TheRationalCarpenter]

Of course they make different claims. They are different perspectives. But they are talking about the same reality. The correlation and crossover isn't a freak accident.

[@gaiaisabitch6833]

@@TheRationalCarpenter we could talk about the same reality in two different ways, one could say we’re using iPads others might say we have magic talking light boxes…. Who is right? Having different presuppositions is significant…

[@TheRationalCarpenter]

@Ameretat010 that's entirely irrelevant to everything I've said. What people believe does not change what reality is.

[@Parsons4Geist]

Don't try to eat spaghetti with chopsticks

[@thepath964]

Pageau is wonderful, but when he talks about perennialism his logic falls apart. He starts analytically and then gives that up and becomes illogical and emotional. There are a few videos of him doing the same with the same topic. Still really enjoy his thoughts, though.

[@roselotusmystic]

'Dualistic' 'Rationalist' DeBait 😹 'About' a Paradoxical . . . TransRational . . . TransDual . . . TransClusive . . . PERENNIAL Individual, Subjective StateOfConsciousness . . . Experience 😻 🙏 - TransChristianBuddhistTAOistPagan . . .

[@CC-zc6cv]

Gandhi is overhyped personality

[@ENOC772]

If you are a human, you are gonna have bias, the bias of universalism of the bias of dogmatism or of one religion oor of science, arte, there is no way of not having bias.

[@cullanfritts4499]

I like a lot of what was said, but why not say all the gods of the world are idols and demonic? “For all the gods of the peoples are worthless idols, but the Lord made the heavens.” ‭‭1 Chronicles‬ ‭16‬:‭26‬ ‭

[@Klimakos333]

Pick a lane dude! I like porridge 😂

[@user-hf1ot1wg5g]

Universalist does not mean relativist. He is conflating the two. This is a fundamental flaw. Universalist do not believe they stand above all the other paths, they acknowledge a universal objective path and other religions so happen to use different symbols to describe this path. A universalist stands behind a universal truth and that truth is not themselves. Yes, Jesus can literally save you when you act like him both physically and psychologically in much the same way you would emulate any other eastern demigods that teach the same principles, but Jesus does not literally save your supposed spiritual substance from entering another realm. Unfortunately too many Christians believe in the later as a vital truth and this is where universalist departs from Christianity.

[@aosidh]

Isn't it important to discern the shortcomings of faith practices before you commit to them? Why do you have to swallow everything? Why aren't you a muslim or a mormon or a fundamentalist?

[@bianco215]

The desire for social acceptance never motivated my univeralism. In fact that exclusivist infernalist Christianity I was raised in alienated me so much from God that I BECAME more of a pariah because it pushed me away from Christianity to, for a time, atheism. So Jonathan is completely wrong here and this is a bad faith presentation of Univeralism.

[@alphabeta8284]

Grow up

[@bianco215]

@@alphabeta8284 I will pray for you

[@user-hf1ot1wg5g]

That was a very pessimistic interpretation of Universalism. Jonathan is obviously mixing up “I want to be lazy vs. this different story helps me understand a principal better. Jonathan is guilty of this logical contradiction where he will share a story in the Bible and then begin to use other modern symbols to help us understand the deeper meaning behind the symbols. That is literally what he’s arguing against. It really is amazing he does not see this logical contradiction seeing how smart and articulate he is. Jonathan does so well to understand the symbols of the Bible, but somehow says other symbols are wrong that point to the same principles and truth. Jonathan is very dogmatic when it comes to what symbols are the correct symbols to discover higher principle and truth. Some analogies don’t work for me others resonate with me better. Jesus knew this, this is why he gave multiple different stories to teach the same principal.

[@isaacwebber704]

But religions/perspectives don't all have the same point. Buddhism says reality is an illusion, which blatantly contradicts Christianity. Islam and Judaism say God does not need to reconcile man to Himself by His own death and that He cannot be incarnate, which blatantly contradicts Christianity. Atheism, if it even posits goodness at all, rejects that goodness is a Person. I could go on, but this sample should be enough to show that what he was saying is that these perspectives blatantly contradict each other in their ultimate claims, so pretending otherwise is naive.

[@user-hf1ot1wg5g]

@@isaacwebber704 I don’t disagree with your points. If Jonathan’s definition of universalism means relativism, then I disagree with his definition of a universalists in that sense.