JUST AS COMPARING BIBLE TRANSLATIONS HELPS US UNDERSTAND both specific passages and the Bible as a whole, so comparing religious traditions helps us understand both specific traditions and religious phenomena more broadly. Comparative study brings witnesses with differing points of view into play, in the hope they’ll clarify one another. Last week, while re-reading The …
Into the Cloud, Whereabouts Unknown
WHILE I AM NOT A MYSTIC, I HAVE SPENT MOST OF MY ADULT LIFE STUDYING (directly and indirectly) both religious experience in general and mysticism in particular. Right now, I’m re-reading, for at least the fourth time, The Cloud of Unknowing, a classic 14th century English manual of Christian contemplative prayer. This will be the …
Different Roads, One Path
AS THE WAR AGAINST FASCIST IMPERIALISM REACHED ITS CLIMAX around the world in 1944-45, Aldous Huxley was in southern California publishing The Perennial Philosophy. The book, still in print and now a popular classic in the comparative study of religion, spells out what Huxley called the “highest common factor” in the world’s religions. While differences …
Soul Spirit Wisdom 