Christ the Original Mystery: Esoterism and the Mystical Way, With Special Reference to the Works of René Guénon

by Jean Borella, G. John Champoux (Translation)

In Christ the Original Mystery (a republication of the work issued in 2004 as Guénonian Esoterism and Christian Mystery), René Guénon's insights into the problems of the modern world, symbolism, and metaphysics are masterfully situated by Jean Borella within the horizons of the Christian Mystery, the sacraments, and the mystical way.

Genres: Religion

522 pages, Hardcover

Published May 4, 2018

About the author

Jean Borella is a Christian philosopher and theologian. Borella's works are deeply inspired by Ancient and Christian Neoplatonism, but also by the Traditionalist School of René Guénon and Frithjof Schuon.

Reviews

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

A better title would have been: Against Esoterism, a Critique of Guenon's Christians. + Mysticism and Esoterism in Traditional Christianity. Borella is an amazing scholar and is exhaustively detailed across many fields. The main concern of the book's first part is providing a critique of Rene Guenon, who didn't seem to know much about Christianity despite being a widely popular scholar on religions. Borella's work is thus important for anyone familiar with Guenon's work, the man didn't even bother reading Christian history or the Church fathers, rather, he fancied some secret occult alternative Christianity that lived hidden within an ignorant church. Borella destroys that vision that today unfortunately still prevails in many spiritualist believers.

The second part of the book analyses what mysticism and esoterism mean in Christianity, again Borella uses the actual Christian Tradition and concludes that what the church says about itself is true. The literary richness of the Christian mystics and theologians are beautifully illustrated and one concludes there is no need for any alternative theories or secrecy.

The book is a must-read for anyone who has read even one book of Guenon and is interested in the True Tradition of the Christian religion. It is however a difficult book sometimes with many philosophical arguments, philology, and theological disputes.

[Mason Fraley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Probably the best treatment of the phenomenology of faith as a metaphysic, if you’re into that sort of thing