Sixth Commentary On Peaceable Wisdom as Mediating between Radical Eschatology and Brute Reality

I have suggested that in primitive Christianity there is, as in Buddhism, an acute angle of transcendence compared with other examples of the Axial revolution, especially Islam. In Islam God is certainly transcendent in his power and compassion but the political ethics of Islam accept the stark realities of our personal and political existence with a minimum of tension. The protest in principle against these realities embodied in pacifism or monasticism is virtually absent except maybe on the margins of Sufism.