Christianity – Why Ken’s Wrong

Christianity annoys Ken Wheeler because it contradicts his cherished belief in a perennial philosophy reflecting neoplatonism. Find out why the Angry Photographer doesn’t understand Christianity, perennialism or neoplatonism and how his claims send his viewers on a fool’s errand.

Christianity is the world’s largest religion. It has more than 2 billion followers across the globe, and they make up almost one-third of humanity.

Christianity began around 30 AD with the historical Jesus of Nazareth. He was an itinerant Jewish preacher and healer who spread a message of love, compassion, and repentance.

As his following grew, Jesus ran afoul of religious leaders and Roman authorities, and they crucified him during a passover celebration in Jerusalem. This became Christian theology’s central event, and it’s why the Christian faith uses a cross as its main symbol.

Jesus Movement Spread Like Wildfire

The Jesus movement spread like wildfire after Jesus’s death. With missionary zeal, his apostles travelled throughout the Roman Empire, spreading his teachings as they understood them. 

The early Christians faced persecution from the religious and imperial authorities. This oppression ended up backfiring by scattering the banished Christians even further afield.

The movement’s success was due mainly to its inclusivity. It attracted fairly influential Roman citizens like Paul, while also welcoming both Jews and Gentiles from all social classes, including many slaves.

Apostles Targeted Cities and Communicated in Writing

The apostles targeted major urban centres and communicated with one another in writing. This led to the gospels and epistles, which church leaders eventually compiled into the New Testament.

Ken Wheeler is a harsh critic of Christianity and all other organized religions. His animosity springs from his commitment to a belief system called perennialism.

Perrenialists believe that, beneath the surface of all philosophies and organized religions, there’s a single, unchanging perennial wisdom accessible to us all. Naturally, in the Angry Photographer’s case, he claims that this universal, time-honoured philosophy conforms precisely to his own, idiosyncratic, metaphysical speculations.

Ken Is a Dedicated Follower of Plotinus

Kentucky Ken is also a dedicated follower of Plotinus, who founded a philosophy called neoplatonism. So, to nobody’s surprise, he presumes that the perennial philosophy is also identical to Plotinus’s teachings.

As for Christianity, the Theoria Apophasis host claims that Jesus’s original teachings also resembled his versions of the perennial philosophy and neoplatonism. As he puts it, “All true, serious Christian metaphysics is based upon the works of Plotinus.”

According to Ken Wheeler, Jesus’s followers and the Roman Catholic Church corrupted Jesus’s original, perennial philosophy. As a result, Christianity has strayed from the revealed truth of its pure, platonic doctrine.

Jesus Taught a Radical Version of Judaism

Plotinus introduced the idea of the “Absolute,” the “One” or the “Good.” Despite the Angry Photographer’s claims, this is a novel concept Plotinus invented that doesn’t reach back to Plato, let alone Pythagoras.

Since Plotinus was born about 200 years after Jesus died, it’s hard to understand how Plotinus could have influenced Jesus’s teachings. The consensus among genuine historians is that Jesus taught a radical version of Judaism.

The themes of Jesus’s teachings were love, forgiveness, salvation and the establishment of God’s Kingdom. On the other hand, Plotinus came up with very different philosophical ideas.

Plotinus Introduced the Idea of an Impersonal “One” 

According to Plotinus, this impersonal One is the source of all being. All existence emanates from the Absolute in a series of hierarchical levels.

Our souls can ascend toward the Absolute, according to Plotinus, by developing intellect, or pure thought, as a divine principle. We accomplish this ascent by recognizing beauty and love, and through a practice of philosophy and mystical contemplation.

None of this bears any resemblance to anything Jesus taught. Jesus believed in Jehovah, the traditional Jewish god, whom the Torah depicts in very human terms. 

Jesus Taught God Was Like a Heavenly Father

Jesus told his followers that God was like a Heavenly Father who provided for His children. One of the main themes of his message was personal salvation and a reconciliation with God and not an intellectual, mystical union with an abstract, impersonal absolute.

Some of Plotinus’s ideas did find their way into early Christianity, but this came much later.  Most of it stems from Augustine’s interest in neoplatonism about 200 years after Plotinus died.

It was primarily Augustine who injected neoplatonic concepts into Christian theology. He introduced an idea of God as the highest, transcendent reality.

Augustine Injected Neoplatonic Concepts Into Christianity

Neoplatonism also influenced Augustine’s description of the human soul’s journey toward God. Further, the notion of emanation inspired Augustine to flesh out the Christian doctrine of the Trinity by saying the Father, Son and Holy Ghost were three persons manifested by one godhead.

So, the notion that Jesus experienced a revelation of Kentucky Ken’s perennial philosophy and shared it with his followers is nonsense. We can also show that his claim that Jesus’s immediate followers corrupted Jesus’s supposedly platonic vision is demonstrably false because we have their writings and they disprove that.

As evidence for his hypothesis, Ken Wheeler points to the works of two ancient philosophers, Celsus and Porphyry. The works to which he refers are The True Doctrine and Against the Christians.

Documents From Celsus and Porphyry Are Lost

The trouble with this approach is that neither of these documents exists today. All modern historians have are critiques written about them by Christian authors. 

As we all know from personal experience, trying to understand a person based on what their harshest critics have to say about them is always a mistake. The criticisms we read from Christian authors like Origen, Eusebius and Jerome are neither objective nor complete.

Besides, from what we can gather, neither Celsus nor Porphyry suggested that the historical Jesus taught ideas compatible with their own, nor did the Christians writing against them mention any such views. Further, Celsus and Porphyry didn’t agree with one another.

Objections to the Idea of Jesus’s Divinity

One objection both Celsus and Porphyry raised about Christianity was the idea of Jesus’s divinity. We simply don’t know how this idea evolved within the Jesus movement or who started it. 

We do know that the gospels are ambiguous on this point. We also know that Hellenistic Jewish and gentile Christian thinking were heavily influenced by classical Greek thought.

Most of the justifications for Jesus’s divinity come from later pagan, Greco-Roman sources. Scholars like Philo of Alexandria, Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria applied classical Greek philosophy to earlier Jewish and Christian teachings.

Explanations for Jesus’s Divinity Come From Greek Thought

In Augustine’s book De Trinitate, he draws on several neoplatonic ideas. These include divine emanation, divine unity and multiplicity, and intellectual ascent.

So, Ken Wheeler’s contention that the idea of Jesus’s divinity came from Judaeo-Christian heresies is false. The historical evidence points toward Greco-Roman philosophy and away from Abrahamic sources as the inspiration for this idea.

The Angry Photographer also tries to draw parallels between Christianity and Buddhism. According to him, these faiths only arose because of support from two emperors, Constantine and Ashoka.

Constantine’s Conversion to Christianity

While it’s true that these two rulers converted to Christianity and Buddhism respectively, the two religions were already well established in their cultures at the time. In fact, the only reason these two monarchs adopted them was that they were now mainstream in their domains.

Although the emperors influenced how the two religions spread, they weren’t the reasons why they spread. Christianity had already reached most of the empire by the time of Constantine, and Buddhism was already prevalent in southeast and central Asia when Ashoka converted to it.

The Theoria Apophasis host also takes Christianity to task for valuing mere belief over wisdom. Everyone who remembers the parable of the wise man who built his house on a rock while the foolish man built his house on the sand knows that Jesus placed enormous value on wisdom.

“Who Is Wise and Understanding Among You?”

In the epistles, Jesus’s brother James writes, “Who is wise and understanding among you? Let them show it by their good life, by deeds done in the humility that comes from wisdom.”

Nevertheless, Ken Wheeler cites a quote from the neoplatonist Emperor Julian, who said, “There is nothing in your philosophy beyond the one word ‘belief’.” This was never a valid criticism of the Christian faith.

As we’ve seen, Christianity has traditionally valued wisdom and compassion at least as much as belief or faith. It has always encouraged the integration of faith and reason.

Salvation by Faith Comes From Ken’s Hero, Martin Luther

Ironically, the notion of salvation by faith alone or sola fide, is a much more modern concept. It originated during the Protestant Reformation with one of the Angry Photographer’s biggest heroes, Martin Luther. It’s also highly contentious within Christianity.

Like all world religions, Christianity and Buddhism are internally diverse. As soon as one says, “Christians believe…” they’re about to make an unfounded generalization.

Christians believe a wide range of things about all of these topics. That’s why there are at least 30,000 Christian denominations throughout the world.

Religions Evolve Over Time and as They Spread

Religions also evolve over time and as they spread to other cultures. That makes it impossible to isolate or identify the “true” or “original” version of Christianity or Buddhism or any other major faith tradition.

Finally, as we note under Buddhist Souls – Why Ken’s Wrong, perennialism isn’t as accepted as it was in the past. Philosopher Herman T. Katz published a devastating paper in 1978. It refutes the claim that all religions stem from a common metaphysical root.

‘God’ Can Be ‘God’, ‘Nirvana’ Can Be ‘Nirvana’

Katz made the case for respecting these cultural differences rather than shoehorning them into “perennial philosophy.” He explained the advantages, writing, “One is in a position to respect the richness of the experiential and conceptual data involved in this area of concern: ‘God’ can be ‘God’, ‘Brahman’ can be ‘Brahman’ and ‘Nirvana’ can be ‘Nirvana,’ without any reductionist attempt to equate ‘God’ with Brahman’, or ‘Brahman’ with ‘Nirvana.”‘

Katz’s reductionism is at the heart of the Angry Photographer’s misconceptions of religion, philosophy and metaphysics. There’s no pre-existing, perennial philosophy we can embrace to unlock the secrets of “life, the universe and everything.”

Searching for absolute truth in a perennial philosophy is a fool’s errand. Speaking of which, there’s another Bible verse that seems appropriate. “Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions.” Proverbs 18:2