Traditionalism with a capital “T”, unlike traditionalism with a lower case “t”, is a specific school of philosophy, fit with a canon and core tenets. Rene Guenon and Frithjof Schuon are two essential reads for any Traditionalist, the former being the founder of the philosophy and the latter being his most famous student. Among the core tenets is a cyclical view of history, with the addendum that modernity is in Kali Yuga/Iron Age/last age, the belief that every person is born into the caste most appropriate to their nature, an understanding that all things in the corporeal world find their meaning in the incorporeal world, and an insistence that there existed a primordial tradition from which all the currently existing traditions derive from and can be groped for by looking at the esoteric core of every religion. For the Christian, the last tenet is the most problematic because it implies that Christianity as such is not the true way, but only some esoteric core that is only accessible to an elite few mystics. In other words: the faith handed down by the Apostles is not the true faith…it only has pieces of the true faith. As both a Christian and a Traditionalist, I have to wrestle with this tension, and I want to explore that here.
Why Resolve the Tension?
It can, and probably should, be asked “if there is a tension between Christianity and Traditionalism, why would you not simply reject Traditionalism and keep to your faith?” Out of the authors I have read, very few have been able to put so succinctly the difference between modernity and traditional (read “pre-Great Schism) society as Guenon, Schuon and Evola, and not only in one aspect but covering the fields of science, religion, coinage, political structures, economics, and mathematics. For an Orthodox Christian, I (try, but fail) to live a pre-modern faith and it is incredibly helpful to have careful articulations of what pre-modernity was like so that I can better live out my faith, hence Traditionalism has a natural appeal. Besides helping me better conceptualize the difference between the world Orthodoxy inhabits and the modern world, the Traditional view of history is identical, though using a different idiom, to the view of history presented in the books of Moses. In the history of Israel, prosperity came when Israel was faithful to God, but as they gradually began to depart from God, conditions got worse and worse until there was a metanoia (Koine Greek for repentance, literally “to turn around” in an act of re-orientation) and the children of Israel were faithful once more. Like the Mosaic account of history, Traditionalists also affirm that when a people are faithful to the Divine they are prosperous (The Golden Age), but as they fall away (Silver Age and Bronze Age) society begins to de-gradate until, having completely fallen away, that society collapses (Iron Age, Kali Yuga) and a new one emerges, or that society is able to make a metanoia. Having the same philosophy of history as Orthodoxy does and providing a powerful articulation of the difference between the modern world and the traditional world, I, as a (very bad) Orthodox Christian, find Traditionalism a valuable conceptual framework.
Sophia Perennis
Before we can think of resolving the tension between Traditionalism and Christianity, we need to ask, “why is Sophia Perennis important to Traditionalism?” Looking back at ancient Greece, Rome, India, and Egypt, the student of history will notice that there are certain beliefs that extend across all ancient civilizations, such as a cyclical view of history, the caste system, and the metaphysical priority of the Eternal. It was hypothesized by the predecessors to Rene Guenon, who made this hypothesis into a dogma, that these various traditions must have had a common ancestor and that this common ancestor, the primordial tradition, can be glimpsed at through the commonalities between ancient religions. When “Tradition” is spoken of by a Traditionalist, they are referring to this primordial tradition from which all traditions spring from. Sophia Perennis is what puts the Tradition in Traditionalism, if it is false then the whole of Traditionalism is false.
Resolving the Tension
If the doctrine of Sophia Perennis is the center of Traditionalism, without which it would collapse, and if the doctrine of Sophia Perennis is unacceptable to the Christian, then it seems that the two are fundamentally incompatible. However, Saint Justin Martyr’s (d. 166 AD) teaching of the Logos Spermatikos might be able to resolve this tension and even strengthen the plausibility of Traditionalism. Justin Martyr taught that there was a seed form of the Logos (Logos Spermatikos) implanted in every religion and every philosophy by the Father’s Providence so that no matter where a person might find himself, he would have a bridge to Christ. Ancient Egyptians, for example, believed that Pharaoh was God-incarnate. Their concept was correct, but their identification was not. Plato taught that the Olympian gods were fairly wicked and that the true object of our devotion should be The Good, which is the source of all being, without sin, and without flesh. All pagan creation myths, to name one more example, begin with a creator god who then creates a number of less deities (what Christians would call angels), and then humans began to worship theses lesser deities as God. Now, there is nothing in these creation myths that says this worship was improper, but the Christian can immediately see that this is a retelling of Satan’s fall and men falling to demon worship. Commonalities between ancient religions can, if we take Justin Martyr seriously, be understood as the seed form of the Logos, so long as they are consistent with the Faith of the Apostles. There is, thus, still a primordial Tradition, but it is to be found in the Logos Who created heaven and earth.
Although this might, at first glance, seem like a subjugation of Traditionalism to Christianity (as though subjugation to Truth is a bad thing), using Christ as a standard by which doctrines are accepted or rejected gives Traditionalism more plausibility. Orthodox Sophia Perennis lacks anyway to determine if a commonality between traditions is the remains of the primordial Tradition, or if these are common failings of humanity. It may be the case that man, having drifted away from the Eternal, developed sins that permeated all societies and that these sinful tendencies (pride, perhaps) led to men developing religious doctrines that would satisfy their sinful desires, something not to dissimilar to how ideology is often a mask for a man’s personal desires. If there is no conception of a straight line, it would be impossible to identify a crooked line. Likewise, if there is no standard for what traditional doctrines are true, then it is impossible to spot a commonly held error. Having a standard by which common participation in truth can be distinguished from common participation in error, with Christ being the standard, gives Traditionalism more plausibility because without these standard perennial falsehoods might be accepted as perennial truths, and if this error is potentially present than the truth of Traditionalism becomes less plausible.
Therefore, it is not only possible to resolve the tension between Christianity and Traditionalism, but in doing so the Christian benefits from Traditionalism and Traditionalism becomes more plausible.