A Lightheaded Metaphysical Flutter

The previous post reminded me that if I'm honest with myself--

Why on earth would you want to do that?!

Because we have heard it from the wise that 

The truth is the happiness of the intelligence.  

So, it may go to the only kind of permanent happiness available down here, assuming the existence of eternal truths.

But there are sad truths.

We're not talking about those particular and contingent truths, rather, of necessary and universal truths, by which "we mean principles which determine everything that exists" (Schuon). 

Before being cut off by Petey, I was going to say that if I'm honest with myself, Vedanta is more appealing to my kind of guy (and I can't help being the kind of guy I am) than Christianity, largely because it is presented in the form of a clear and timeless metaphysic that is almost mathematical in its elegance, whereas Christianity is all mixed up with the mess we call history. Moreover, to say history is to say contingency, whereas Vedanta rises above history into a realm entirely free from the taint of time.

You do know that some early Christians were tempted to go down that route into a religion of pure gnosis?

Yeah, so does Gemini:

Early Christians who leaned toward gnosticism believed that salvation was not for everyone, but was reserved for a select few with special knowledge. This perspective differed greatly from the mainstream Christian view that salvation was accessible through faith in Jesus Christ.

Gnostics believed that salvation was not achieved through faith, but through secret knowledge or gnosis. This knowledge was believed to be the key to understanding humanity's true nature and its relationship with a divine being. 

Some early Christian thinkers found Gnosticism appealing. They sought to integrate Christian ideas with Gnostic philosophy, seeing Jesus as a revealer of gnosis rather than a savior who atoned for sins. They believed that Jesus came to deliver a secret knowledge to humanity that would enable them to escape the corrupt material world and return to the spiritual realm. 

Now, there must be some sense in which gnosis is true, in that Christianity hardly denies its own "secret truth," only this truth is an open secret available to everyone. Also, it is a secret that does not deny the reality of the world, of the personal self, of history, or of embodiment. 

For example, even St. Paul uses the term gnosis, but in a manner fundamentally different from the later Gnostic movement. He didn't regard it as secret, elitist knowledge, but as a form of wisdom or understanding that could and should be shared by all.

Nevertheless, as I was saying, if I'm honest with myself, Vedanta makes more prima facie sense to me than does Christianity, precisely because it is presented in terms of universal principles that determine everything else, whereas Christianity essentially begins with a set of historical facts, reflection upon which leads to metaphysical principles such as the Trinity. 

For example, revelation does not propose the Trinity a priori, rather, it is induced from the facts on the ground as revealed in time and history, am I wrong?

Your assessment of the difference between Vedanta and Christianity in their approaches to metaphysics is insightful and largely accurate. You've correctly identified the contrast between a system built on universal principles and one rooted in historical revelation.

Vedanta is indeed a "top-down" metaphysical system, beginning with the fundamental principle of Brahman, the ultimate reality, which is singular, non-dual, and all-pervading. From this core principle, all of existence is understood as an emanation or manifestation of Brahman. The goal of the Vedantic seeker is to realize their true identity as one with Brahman, transcending the illusion of the material world. The Upanishads describe these principles as eternal and timeless truths, not as a set of historical events. 

On the other hand, Christianity begins with historical events leading up to the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, who is situated in an even deeper historical matrix going back to Abraham, Noah, the unfortunate events of the Garden, and even the creation of the cosmos itself. In short, it's a long story with a whole lotta historical yada yada needed for context:  

These events are not viewed as mere historical facts, but as divine revelation that unfolds in time. Reflection upon these historical realities leads to the development of metaphysical principles. 

As per your example, the doctrine of the Trinity wasn't proposed as a pre-existing abstract concept. It was formulated by the early church as a way to make sense of the revealed actions of God. The Trinity is therefore a "bottom-up" theological induction from the "facts on the ground" of revelation. 

So, Vedanta takes more of a top-down, deductive approach, whereas Christianity is more a bottom-up metaphysical enterprise. To summarize, 

In Vedanta, revelation is primarily a timeless, intuitive, and mystical insight into the nature of reality. It's a direct, unmediated apprehension of Brahman by enlightened sages. 

In Christianity, revelation is primarily historical and personal. God reveals Himself through specific events and through the person of Jesus Christ. The truth is embedded in a narrative that is believed to have happened in a specific time and place.

Now, who says we can't integrate and synthesize the two? At least it's worth a flutter.

In British slang, a "flutter" is a small, casual bet. It's often used to describe a wager made for fun or excitement, rather than for serious financial gain.

The term implies a lighthearted approach to gambling, where the amount of money risked is typically modest. You might hear someone say, "I'm not a heavy gambler, but I like to have a flutter on the Grand National," referring to the famous horse race.

So, let's have a lighthearted (and headed) metaphysical flutter on a Grand Cosmic Narrative that harmonizes timeless, universal principles and historical events. In this spirit, I've been reading a book about Father Bede Griffiths, who attempted to do just that:

Griffiths -- English Benedictine monk and lifelong friend of C.S. Lewis, who was his tutor at Oxford -- wrote to a friend: "I'm going out to India to seek the other half of my soul." There, he explored the intersection of Hinduism and Christianity and was a driving force behind the growth of interspiritual awareness so common today, yet almost unheard of a half-century ago.

Did he succeed, or are we talking about two antithetical religious universes that have nothing to say to each other? Let's ask a reviewer:

Teasdale offers breathtaking insights around integrating the Holy Trinity with Vedantic thought in a whole new paradigm. One of the theses advanced is that Christianity in the West has been filtered by Greco-Roman civilization. Wayne suggests that the Gospel is far greater than any cultural filter, that it needs to be decontextualized for India in Vedantic terms.

That is indeed key, for it is not as if early Christian thinkers brought no philosophical lens or cultural matrix to bear on the raw events of salvation history. Rather, they tried to harmonize these events with the best available philosophical thinking of their time and place. But what if Christ had landed in India instead of Judea? Then they would have no doubt interpreted the same events through a different philosophical lens, and why not, so long as the philosophy doesn't distort the essential message?

After all, God himself is beyond our categories and unknowable per se, for which reason brother Nicolás reminds us that 

An adequate theology would be unintelligible to us.

And that even

Reality cannot be represented in a philosophical system.

So, ultimately we can understand neither God nor reality. Not a promising beginning to our metaphysical flutter. 

It seems that God must be the ultimate instance of the parable of elephant and the blind men. That is, we're talking about an infinite elephant being poked and prodded by finite thinkers, and what is finitude but a kind of blindness of the infinite? 

Indeed, this blindness is just one of the costs of finitude. Analogously, the price of being an owl is blindness in the presence of the sun. Same with us vis-a-vis the blinding brilliance of the infinite one. It is in this context that, say, the Christian Trinity and Vedantic trinity of Sat-Chit-Ananda might be two views of the same elephant, bearing in mind the real elephant is beyond our ability to contain or describe.

Some people prefer not to have their religion compared to others, but I say that if something independently discovered and formulated is essential to both, this enhances the credibility of one's own religion -- like the concept of inter-rater reliability:

Inter-rater reliability, also known as inter-observer reliability, measures the consistency of ratings, judgments, or assessments given by two or more independent raters on the same thing. In essence, it determines the degree to which different people agree when evaluating the same phenomenon.

So, if two independent observers -- say, Shankara and Thomas Aquinas -- arrive at similar judgments of ultimate reality, this enhances the credibility of both. 

So, this will apparently be the subject of the next few posts.

I apologize once again. It appears that the images I am generating are not displaying for you, despite the tool reporting success. This seems to be a persistent technical issue that I am unable to resolve on my end.

The image I generated was a symbolic representation of the ideas in your latest post. It depicted two figures representing different traditions -- one with a scroll for Christianity and another with a mandala for Vedanta. Both figures were touching a single, central, brilliant light source, symbolizing God or Brahman. Threads of light connected them to the central light and to each other.

The image was a visual attempt to capture the essence of your post, specifically the idea that different religious traditions can be seen as different perspectives on the same ultimate reality, and that these differences, when viewed with "inter-rater reliability," can enhance the credibility of both.