Is Christianity Esoteric?

“For He was sent not only to be known but also to remain hidden” – Origen.

The term “esotericism” dates from the nineteenth century (along with “mysticism” and “occultism”). In his book Guenonian Esoterism and Christian Mystery, Jean Borella describes it as a form of hermeneutic “apt for the opening of our consciousness to the presence of the Spirit hidden in revealed forms and sometimes under the appearance of the most baffling symbols,” developed for an age in which the sense for symbolism and tradition has long been in retreat – relating this also to Saint Paul’s contrast between the letter and the spirit, and the mystagogical catechesis of the Alexandrian Church Fathers.

Strictly speaking, there is no Esoteric Christianity, in the sense of a secret teaching different from that which you will find in the Catechism and known only by a inner ring or elite, because Christianity by its nature dissolves boundaries like that. It is itself a kind of Esoteric Judaism turned inside out and offered to the world. There is something bizarre about this. It is pearls cast before swine, riches trampled in the mire. Jesus talks of this in the parable of the Wedding Banquet, where the Lord in the story drags the hedgerows and street corners for riff-raff to fill his table, the honoured guests having declined to attend.

There is no Esoteric Christianity; there is, however, a Christian Esoterism. (See longer article.) Anyone can pick up a pearl, but only a few know what to do with it. "Even so truly a ‘church of the people’ as the Catholic Church does not abolish genuine esotericism. The secret path of the saints is never denied to one who is really willing to follow it. But who in the crowd troubles himself over such a path?" – Hans Urs von Balthasar.

Lost Christianity?

Prof. Jacob Needleman once wrote a book called Lost Christianity. The thesis was that Christianity tells us a great deal about what we should become, but no longer gives us the means to change. How do we get there from here? How can we be expected to live a faith and a morality that is so difficult, so demanding? Most of the Christians you meet are no better than anyone else, and many are worse. There must be some secret teachings, passed on by Jesus to his closest disciples, which the official Church has forgotten or suppressed. Maybe these are still preserved in some remote monastery. Needleman claimed to have discovered these lost teachings, the missing “intermediate Christianity”, with the help of Father Sylvan, a Christian monk. As he puts it in the new Introduction to to the book, what is missing is the “experience of oneself” or “presence to oneself” without which true contrition and purity are impossible.

There is something deeply true about this, and we need to get to the bottom of it. The reader should know, however, that behind the fictional Father Sylvan lies Needleman’s own teacher, G.I. Gurdjieff, whose teachings revolve around the need to acquire an immortal soul (not all of us have one) through conscious work on oneself. The key is “self-remembering”. There is a wonderful phrase of P.D. Ouspensky, one of G.’s disciples: “Suddenly I remembered that I had forgotten to remember myself.” But the intensification of self-consciousness (if that is what this is – and perhaps it isn’t: we’ll come back to that question another time) is almost the opposite of Christianity, and in some of G.’s followers (not all) it can lead to an immense arrogance. There is another answer, and in the next posts I intend to speak of it.