No Secrets

The picture is of the opening to my attic, and yes, that is an authentic Cold War-era sign attached to it. I suppose if I had any secrets, the attic is the place they’d go, but I really don’t have anything I’m at all concerned to hide. I am that boring. That’s why all that are up there right now are lots of file boxes full of stuff I haven’t looked at in years and maybe never will.

I got to thinking about this the other day during my religion course at the Biblical Studies Center. We read the following passage aloud from a very imaginative and insightful book by Peter Kreeft called Between Heaven and Hell.

In it, he describes a conversation between John F. Kennedy, Aldous Huxley, and C. S. Lewis, all of whom died around the same time. The following dialogue has to do with religious beliefs that are secret versus those that are out there in the open for everyone to see.

Lewis: …When I stopped being an atheist and started investigating the claims of the world’s great religions, I came to the conclusion that Hinduism and Christianity were ultimately the only two options.

Huxley: Perceptive of you. But they’re not two. They’re one. There’s your mistake: another example of either/or, black-and-white thinking. You can’t see that all religions are one at their mystical core, just as all reality is one at its mystical core. Which is inevitable, since religion is about reality.

Lewis: I agree that religion is about reality. Whether reality is one is a great question of philosophy, and not easily settled. But whether all religions are one is a question of observation, and it is easily settled: just look at their teachings. They’re not the same. They teach contradictory things.

Huxley: They seem to. But that’s only on the surface level, not at their core. Perhaps you’ve read Fritjof Schuon’s The Transcendent Unity of Religions? Alan Watts made the same point in a more popular and lively style: that there are two levels or dimensions in religion – the exoteric and the esoteric, the outer and the inner, the public and the private, the revealed and the hidden. The outer shell of a religion is its creed, code and cult; its words, works, and worship. But the kernel, the inner essence, is the experience of oneness.

Lewis: It seems to me you are saying that Christianity and Buddhism are very much alike, especially Buddhism.

Huxley: You plagiarized that from Chesterton!

Lewis: Yes, I did. I’m glad you have read him.

Huxley: What does it mean?

Lewis: That you’re using Oriental categories to interpret Christianity; you’re Orientalizing Christianity, synthesizing by annexation – spiritual imperialism.

Huxley: Why do you say that?

Lewis: Because the esoteric/exoteric distinction is itself an esoteric, not an exoteric doctrine. It applies to esoteric Eastern religions but not to exoteric Western religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are public, open, democratic religions, religions of a Book, open for all to read, not religions of hidden experiences known only to the initiated mystics. They are religions of history and of the deeds and words of God in history. Christianity is ultimately the Word of God in history. All public facts, not private mysticism.

Huxley: You’re probably one of those suspicious fellows who think that mysticism begins in mist, centers in “I” and ends in schism.

Lewis: Actually, I had a different quip up my sleeve: Ronald Knox’s remark about “comparative religion.”

Huxley: What’s that?

Lewis: That it makes you comparatively religious.

Huxley: So you’re not sympathetic to ecumenism?

Lewis: Not when it involves fuzzy thinking and ignoring contradictions.

Huxley: Contradictions appear only on the outer level, the exoteric. If you would penetrate to the inner core, you would find all contradictions resolved in The One. But you ignore that deepest level.

Lewis: In Christianity, the deepest level came out in public: “In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.” I’m not ignoring esoteric Christianity; how could I ignore something that doesn’t exist? It’s your invention.

The Gospel means “good news” and it was news that the early Christians proclaimed everywhere they went. It was no secret what they believed. From the beginning, they faced ridicule for insisting that God had come to this world in the flesh. They still do. But even Christianity’s harshest critics knew exactly what it was that they were refuting. It wasn’t hidden or esoteric or available only to the initiated.

Last month, on ABC’s Nightline, Martin Bashir interviewed Tommy Davis, a spokesman for Scientology. They had hardly begun when Bashir asked about Scientology’s teaching that has to do with the evil emperor Xenu. Within minutes of mentioning the name, Davis unclips his microphone and storms off the set. Apparently the deeper secrets invented by science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, including the existence of Xenu, are only intended for those initiated into the higher levels of the cult.

Consider the difference with Christianity. As Kreeft has Lewis saying, the Gospel has to do with “public facts” not private or secret “truths.” Mock it or dismiss it altogether, at least everyone knows (or can find out) exactly what this “exoteric” message has to say.