glossary of terms used by frithjof schuon - Sophia Perennis

pure and simple, constitute what we may call the “Divine Order.” In the second case –
which alone has been retained by dogmatic theology – the “Father” is situated at the same
level of ontological reality as the other two hypostases; whence the Trinity “Power,”
“Wisdom,” “Love,” if one may express it thus. True, this ontological and “horizontal”
Trinity does not coincide with the “pure Absolute,” but it is absolute from the point of
view of creatures; thus man, when he prays, should not concern himself with the “degrees
of reality” comprised in the principial Order, on pain of speaking into the void.
It may be objected that religion has no reason for including the idea of “Beyond-Being,”
since its aim is the salvation of souls and not metaphysical knowledge, and indeed, as far
as its saving function is concerned, religion can do without the idea in question; but in
another respect, that of its claim to absoluteness, it must include it, on pain of misleading
– or excluding – certain souls or certain intelligences. One is therefore right in thinking
that the word “Father” expresses all that it is capable of expressing, at all levels of
doctrine and degrees of understanding. [THC, “Our Father Who Art in Heaven”]
The question of knowing to which “divine level” man must address himself when praying
never ought to arise, for to pray is to speak to God, independently of any metaphysical
specification; the man who prays, even if he addresses a celestial personification, should
not concern himself with the ontology of the celestial Interlocutor. On the one hand, “the
kingdom of God is within you”; and on the other hand, “he that hath seen me hath seen
the Father.” But also, and above all: “Our Father who art in Heaven.” [RHC, Man in the
Face of the Sovereign Good]
Fideistic / Dialectical: Fideistic: to believe what one considers one has to believe under
the cover of dogmatic data, without asking whether this will convince or “hold water”;
dialectical: to deal with a particular point by isolating it and intensifying it, without
asking whether this is suitable in itself, and compatible with what one previously said, or
with other points that are just as valid. [SVQ, Paradoxes of an Esoterism]
Fire (of hell): Many people today think in such terms as these: “either God exists, or He
does not; if He exists and is what people say He is, then He will recognize that we are
good and do not deserve punishment.” This means that they are prepared to believe in His
existence provided He conforms to their own imaginings and recognizes the value they
attribute to themselves. This is to forget on the one hand that we cannot know the
standards by which the Absolute judges us, and on the other that the “fire” beyond the
tomb is after all nothing but our own intellect which actualizes itself in opposition to our
falseness; in other words, it is the immanent truth breaking forth into the full light of day.
At death man is confronted by the unimaginable expanse of a reality no longer
fragmentary but total and then by the norm of what he has pretended to be, since that
norm is part of Reality. Man therefore condemns himself; according to the Quran, it is his
members themselves which accuse him; once beyond the realm of lies, his violations are
transformed into flames; nature, out of balance and falsified, with all its vain assurance
proves to be a shirt of Nessus. Man burns not only for his sins; he burns for his majesty as
an image of God. It is the preconceived idea of setting up the fallen state as a norm and
ignorance as a pledge of impunity which the Quran stigmatizes with vehemence – one
might almost say by anticipation – by confronting the self-assurance of its contradictors
with the terrors of the end of the world . . . The human state, or any other analogous
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