I returned a few days ago from traveling with a group of students during USC's "Maymester". As described in a post early this year, the topic of this off-campus course was Christian monasticism. The students and I spent four days in each of three monasteries: Christ...

I'm not altogether sure what you in mind. Kaula marga could mean a number of things: Kashmiri Shaivism, the Shri Vidya tradition, or one of the forms of "left-handed" Tantra. Regarding the last of these possibilities, I can certainly say that Westerners would do very...

What do I think is the best solution to the problem of evil? As it happens, I've just finished directing an honors seminar on that very topic, with readings drawn from Aeschylus's Oresteia, Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, Shakespeare's King Lear, Hume's...

Needless to say, the issue you raise is a controversial (and potentially volatile) one, and the position Orthodox Christians take can easily be misperceived as anti-Semitic. The problem is brought into rather stark relief by the text you cite from Hebrews 8: "Behold,...

I don't know your friend, nor her theology, and I wouldn't wish to guess what she means in saying that your misadventure was "all in God's plan". Perhaps she's a Calvinist, in which case you may be right that she's envisioning God as a "puppet master". On the other...

I agree, of course, that there is simply no way to make Christianity, or any other Semitic tradition, as "direct" as Vedānta: the doctrine of the Self must remain largely hidden in such a context. As Schuon notes, "The Vedantic perspective finds its equivalents in all...

You ask what Schuon may have meant (in Logic and Transcendence) when he distinguished between "the traditional theory of emanation" and "the emanationist heresy, which has nothing metaphysical about it and which reduces the Principle to the level of manifestation or...

I'm glad you've been reading Owen Barfield's Worlds Apart; it's a wonderful book. You're rather worried, however, about Barfield's "anthroposophical leanings"—and rightly so, I might add!—and you therefore write to ask, "speaking as one Christian to...

This coming Maymester I'm once again planning to offer a short (three-week) course, 13-31 May 2013. "Monastic Spirit: A Journey to the Heart of Ancient Christianity" expands on my previous USC Maymester explorations of the "Mysteries of the Christian East". This time...

You ask whether there is anything in the Christian tradition that justifies going beyond the idea that the Jews would be forgiven for crucifying Jesus ("for they know not what they do") and saying that they would actually be rewarded by God for their actions. And you...