Refuting Ken Wilber’s Woodstock ‘69 Theology
Previously I discussed the vanity of a purely philosophical approach to epistemology, followed by a look at ego development theory and its overlap on the formation of religious worldviews. In Ken Wilber’s Integral Spirituality, I expected to find a book skillfully analyzing two of my favorite topics: comparative theology and integral/ego development theory. Unfortunately, what I instead found was a thorough misunderstanding of both from someone claiming to understand both. The result is a very shallow understanding of Christianity from someone purporting himself a worthy critic of ancient tradition, as well as a thorough lack of self-awareness from someone who claims to have found “enlightenment.”
Who Is Ken Wilber?
Ken Wilber is a philosopher and theorist famous for the development of his own “integral theory,” an ambitious project with the aim of creating a synthesized, systematized (in so far as this is possible) “theory of everything.” His personal resume is interesting and perhaps worth a read, but it won’t be necessary for us to elaborate on it in this critique. It’s enough to know he is a baby boomer, as well as a self-proclaimed Buddhist.
His theory of everything purports to encompass “all human knowledge and experience.” Obviously with a proposition like that, you would expect a pretty compelling body of work–and no doubt he is industrious–the man has published some 60+ books related to his theories. Exactly how he manages this is pretty evident within the first few pages of Integral Spirituality–the rigor is scant, and sweeping generalizations are made with very little in terms of demonstration. Of course no one is perfect. All I mean to say is his analysis underwhelmed me, especially having been so primed with zeal for the material of his study.
In this article, I don’t intend to critique his work in general, as enough of this has already been done by other writers; that Ken “should think more and publish less.” Besides, I imagine I’ll end up looking very hypocritical if what we’re judging him on is methodological rigor or precision. It’s easy to be swept away by passion and to retrace one’s steps later, and I’m no stranger to sweeping generalizations. But instead I want to specifically offer a rebuttal to his view of Christianity and certain theistic fallacies in particular.
What is His “Integral” Approach to Spirituality?
In brief, the integral approach as it relates to spirituality is concerned with (what it considers to be) the fact that, in Ken’s words, “the ‘metaphysics’ of the spiritual traditions have been thoroughly critiqued–‘trashed’ is probably the better word–by both modernist and postmodernist epistemologies, and there has yet arisen nothing compelling to take their place.”
What this presupposes is that the modern and post-modern “epistemologies” so-called are themselves capable of a metaphysical critique. This is not obvious, even to their proponents. Ken seems to not understand this, or otherwise doesn’t care. In a previous article I made the case that purely philosophical epistemologies don’t possess what is necessary to justify their claims. What you will routinely find in the realm of “metamodern” spiritualists is the unquestionable assumption that modern critiques are themselves infallibly inspired, and that we somehow have to “integrate” them into a pre-modern interpretation of a given religion.
What does this essentially mean? When modern scholars say that a given text is unreliable based on an evidentialist, empirical worldview, we take that as more authoritative than the body of believers–the historical church or community–from which this book or this claim or this council or this doctrine, along with everything else a believer has to believe–were determined to be canonical and/or dogmatic. Likewise, they say “such and such miracles could not have occurred” or “such and such tales could not have occurred” because the “evidence is lacking.” This presupposes a few things, one of which is that all things are proved in the exact same way, namely via direct observation or the scientific method. Even if we were to grant this (and it is by no means something justified enough to claim), it remains obvious to anyone who has kept up with just the archaeological and scientific developments of the past decade, that time and time again, Christianity and biblical claims are vindicated.
But to stack up evidence is to fall into an evidentialist paradigm in which the “scholars” and their forever-shifting “consensus” built on “evidence” is constantly being revised. And so I would certainly not say “if we just wait on the evidence, we will be vindicated,” because this would be to grant the empiricists their presuppositions, which have not been justified and are always going to shift the goalpost in favor of undermining Christianity.
And so from its first steps, the integral approach to understanding religion takes for granted that modern and post-modern claims are somehow equally valid as those which are pre-modern–an unjustified presumption–and that the pre-modern or “traditional” claims must be made to conform or “synthesize” themselves within our new “scientific” understanding.
Ken’s Pluralism & Perennialist Christianity
As if that weren’t to assume enough, Ken’s project commits a number of fallacies:
For starters, the theistic fallacy, in which one assumes that the term god possesses one and only one referent, and that all religions are essentially expressing in an incomplete way their own perspective on this single referent.
Another is his circular reasoning in favor of pluralism, a topic we have covered in a great deal of depth previously. He believes that in order to reach an approach which integrates the wholeness of all human experience and knowledge of religion, one must commit to a pluralist view.
In short, he states:
Integral Methodological Pluralism… explicitly finds room for premodern truths, modern truths, and postmodern truths, all in an integral framework not of conclusions, but of perspectives and methodologies. Moreover, it doesn't "cheat" by watering down the various truths in such a horrid way that they are hardly recognizable. It takes all of those truths more or less as it finds them. The only thing it alters is their claim to absoluteness, and any scaffolding (and metaphysics) meant to justify that unjustifiable claim.
So, to recap: the way to synthesize all of these truths is to assume they are all true and part of the same system, and not mutually exclusive claims. The way we justify this is by showing their similarity, while ignoring their differences, and explicitly disregarding any aspect of the systems which claim exclusivity and absoluteness of truth possession.
But wait, what happens when possessing truth absolutely is essential to the understanding of a system? We already detailed before that to divorce a religion like Christianity from its exclusive, particularist claims is to necessarily mutilate any proper understanding of it. Not only does Ken fail to see this, but he assumes from the jump that his pluralist view is correct and is proved by… assuming it to be true. Except not only is this claim false by virtue of its circular reasoning–pluralist systems are false by virtue of absolute self-refutation, as outlined in the formerly mentioned essay.
Aside from this, Ken’s claims about what constitutes a “real” Christianity are incredibly patronizing and divorced from any historically attested instantiation of the religion. In his view, these represent the stages of a “proper” understanding of Jesus:
“[A]t the magic stage, Jesus is experienced as a personal savior who can miraculously alter the world in order to satisfy my every desire and whim: Jesus as Magician, turning water into wine, multiplying loaves and fishes, walking on water… This stage is preconventional and egocentric… At the next stage, the mythic, the same kind of subtle-state experience might be interpreted as communion with Jesus the Eternal Truth bringer. This stage is absolutistic in its beliefs, so you will either believe the Word exactly as written, or you will burn in hell forever. This stage is also ethnocentric, so only those who believe in Jesus Christ as their personal savior can be saved. At the next stage, the mental-rational, Jesus Christ becomes a humanized figure, still fully Divine and fully human, but now fully human in a more believable way, as a teacher of the universal love of a deistic God (who has read Principia Mathematica and knows where to draw the line). Because this stage is the beginning of the postconventional and worldcentric stages, this is also the first of the stages of development that can find salvation through Christ Jesus but also allow that others might find equal salvation through a different path. You will be moving in a Vatican Il fashion. Have a series of profound spiritual experiences at the pluralistic stage and you will likely find yourself one of the authors of The Postmodern Bible, a wonderful example–out of thousands that have sprung up–of interpreting Jesus Christ and the Christ-experience through the green-stage of development. The integral stage for Gebser was one stage, but for us is simply the opening to at least 4 higher structure-stages of development… any of which will insist on integrating its experience of Christ-consciousness with other expressions of the Holy Spirit around the world, and if so in your case, you might likely find yourself reading a book like this.”
From this it’s pretty clear what he means; you can have your Jesus, but only insofar as you admit that all other religions are true. In other words, you can have the Jesus that Ken Wilber says you can have. A fair question to ask is, on what basis is Wilber asserting that the pluralist Jesus is the correct interpretation? I’m no proponent of appealing to “plain readings” of the Biblical text, as we have already shown the problem with assuming the interpreter can ever be purely objective, but how exactly can we exegete the verse “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Perhaps Wilber would claim this as a metaphorical phrase in which Jesus is teaching that “Christ-consciousness is the way to Unity with everything” or whatever. But then how do you square that with the very particularist claim made to the Samaritan woman at the well: “You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.” The point made here is to say in no uncertain terms that even if you assert plural worship of the same referent, it does not mean that you are worshipping the same thing.
And how exactly does Ken respond to the well-attested, Orthodox historical witness of the Christian faith which is so resoundingly contrary to his view? After all, it is not merely a stodgy school marm’s interpretation of the religion which would disagree with his interpretation–great, pious, experienced, and learned men, whose lives have been devoted to study, contemplation, and ascetic struggle have attained mystical experiences (which Ken seems to privilege over merely logical approaches to truth) which are contrary to his so-called mystical “non-dual” experiences of being “one with everything.” He presupposes his mystical experience is the umbrella under which all other religious systems must conform, even though there are plenty of practitioners experienced in the contrary. Ought we then pursue enlightenment in the orthodox methods detailed by a given religious system?
No, he says. His answer is to simply handwave it and suggest drug use as a better alternative to actually practicing any one religion seriously:
“Right now, spiritual state-experiences are often disallowed by the dominant mode of discourse of many orthodox religions, and thus are forced elsewhere. For teenagers, this is often the rave scene and drugs. (But frankly, I think the rave scene is healthier than the religions that repress spiritual altered states and force kids to flee in droves to the scene in the first place.)”
Color me shocked: a boomer loves to get loaded.
Conclusion
The main point, of course, is that in his attempt at an “integral” approach to synthesize all religious systems, he necessarily must mutilate Christianity beyond recognition in order to make it fit according to his presuppositions. Not only is this intellectually dishonest, but also incredibly lazy, and borderline malicious. This is to not even consider in what other ways he has mutilated, for the sake of some mealy-mouthed kumbaya founded on false pretenses, the essential doctrines and expressions of other faiths.
It is not in my interest to defend their claim to the truth, as I’m sure at this point you are well aware. Let their proponents decide what approach they think best. Perhaps our rejection of intellectual dishonesty could serve as a foundation for any real interfaith dialogue, if such is to be had.
