glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

Theology is a type of thought which, being founded on the necessarily antinomic and
elliptical – but by no means contradictory or insoluble – data of the sacred Scriptures,
interprets these data by means of reason and in accordance with a piety often more
fervent than enlightened. This results in theories which are doubtless opportune and
efficacious in a given psychological or moral connection, but which are restrictive or
even unsound from the point of view of pure and simple truth, and in any case
unacceptable on the plane of metaphysics. [CI, Dilemmas of Moslem Scholasticism]
Theory / Reality: A doctrinal theory can merely offer points of reference, if only for the
simple reason that an expression is necessarily something other than the reality to be
expressed. The identity between theory and reality is moreover as unnecessary as it is
impossible, precisely because a theory is able to furnish perfectly sufficient points of
reference, otherwise there would be no adequate and effectual symbolism, nor
consequently any doctrine; it is this which most profane thinkers are incapable of
understanding, they who wish to exhaust everything in words, and who imagine that one
knows only what one expresses. [CI, Atomism and Creation]
Thought: By “thought” we mean here, not an artificial elaboration but the mental
crystallization of real knowledge. With all due deference to anti-Platonic theologians,
Platonism is not true because it is logical, it is logical because it is true; and as for the
possible or apparent illogicalities of the theologians, these can be explained not by an
alleged right to the mysteries of absurdity, but by the fragmentary character of particular
dogmatic positions and also by the insufficiency of the means of thought and expression.
We may recall in this connection the alternativism and the sublimism proper to the
Semitic mentality, as well as the absence of the crucial notion of Maya – at least at the
ordinary theological level, meaning by this reservation that the boundaries of theology
are not strictly delimited. [EPW, The Primordial Tree]
Thought (exoteric): Theological or, to be more precise, exoteric thought – the two things
do not always coincide exactly – generally shows itself incapable of grasping
simultaneously two divergent aspects of one and the same reality: it works by alternatives
which tend to be moralizing, the more “pious” option being the “truer” one in its eyes, the
type of piety being determined by the perspective which is characteristic of the
Revelation in question, even though this Revelation may not necessarily imply the same
option on the plane of the pure truth. It is not Christ who is anti-Platonic, it is Christians
who are, to the extent that they are: however traditional the anathema pronounced in
certain liturgical practices of the Greek Church against the Platonists may be, it
nonetheless clearly derives from what we may call the “human margin.” Theologically,
the falsity of the Platonic thesis can only amount to a hypothesis, and one which is all the
more senseless in that no theologian can contest that the principles of things necessarily
preexist in the creative Intellect, or Providence, if one so prefers, and that each positive
cosmic possibility is presided over by an angelic power which is its prototype or “idea.”
[LT, Rationalism, Real and Apparent]
Thought (profane): Profane thought is not confined to thought which is ignorant of
metaphysical and mystical truths, but also includes thought which, while knowing these
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