Jesus was not a yogi: Bishop refutes syncretist theories of a Spanish priest

The bishop of Orihuela-Aliante (Spain), Mons. José Ignacio Munilla, has warned about the theories disseminated by the priest Pablo d’Ors that involve a “syncretist conception between Christianity and Buddhism” and a “crazy interpretation of the gospel” .

At the request of a group of religion professors, The Spanish prelate has refuted the approaches that the Founding Priest of the Association Desert friends He presented in the opening presentation of the I Ibero -American Meeting for Religion professors, held in Madrid in May 2022 under the title Jesus of Nazareth, master of consciousness.

Mons. Munilla began explaining the central idea of ​​the presentation of D’Ors: “We know Jesus for the Scriptures and for the tradition of the Church, but his thesis is that we have to forget all that, because that knowledge we have of Jesus confuses us more than what illuminates us: we have to deconstruct, how to start from scratch to meet Jesus. ”

The prelate specified that D’Ors advocates that “in the 30 years of hidden life, Jesus most likely did not remain in Nazareth, but went to India or other countries where he learned oriental wisdom”, so that it can be defined as “a yogi.”

For Munilla, this position constitutes “an assumption that is born from the projection in Jesus of an ideology, or of a syncretist theory between Christianity and Buddhism, which, as it has no basis in the gospels, needs to force a crazy interpretation of the gospel.”

“To affirm that the wisdom of Jesus comes from his stay in India or in Tibet before starting his 30 -year public life is a lack of respect for the gospels and also hides other errors, for example a wrong Christological conception,” he added .

In that sense, he pointed out that “it does not seem to be sensible to maintain that this wisdom of Jesus would have learned directly from her Father God” as D’Ors did procure frontally with the Scriptures, as in the Gospel according to St. John (5, 19-20; 7, 16-17 o 12, 49).

For the prelate, the presbyter “makes a projection in Jesus of his claim to melt Christianity and Buddhism, and for that he needs to be true that the wisdom of Jesus does not come from the Father, but from India or Tibet.”

“In no way can it be extracted from the Gospels the nonsense that Jesus was a yogi. Because, in addition to being false, it is a great Christological error, ”he said below.

In a second term regarding D’Ors’ claims, the prelate addressed the idea expressed by the author of the bestseller Biography of silence, that “Jesus is a sage who helps us to meet ourselves since we discover that within us is the whole good and the beauty to which man aspires.”

Mons. Munilla explained in this regard that “the Gospel does not collect a word of Jesus that says ‘who has seen me has seen himself’. The Gospel says: Who has seen me has seen the Father. Jesus is the revealing of the Father. The knowledge of God’s intimacy is a supernatural knowledge revealed by God. ”

This error about revelation leads to a third statement that in the bishop’s judgment is contrary to Catholic doctrine.

Paul d’Ors states that “this metaphor of the kingdom of God calls it unitary consciousness. We are one. May everyone like you and me in you, says Jesus. A unitary consciousness not dual. ”

Given this, Mons. Munilla recalled that “the Christian faith proclaims that our encounter with God is a personal encounter you to you,” which implies a duality.

“If it were unitary, we would be in Buddhism because there is no concept of a personal God with whom you speak, but everything is reduced to reaching a state of Nirvana in which you find yourself and with the whole universe,” he added .

For the prelate, the proposal to overcome the biblical paradigm of the personal God, also defended by authors such as the Jesuit Xavier Melloni, is equivalent to “deny the most specific of the Judeo -Christian revelation”, which implies the alliance of love with a personal God and pretending a reinterpretation of Christianity in an attempt “to melt Christianity and Zen in the parameters of the new era.”

This claim, he added “cannot be carried out without severely betraying the uniqueness of Christianity without emptying it of content without turning its back on the ontology of Jesus Christ.”

The bishop of Orihuela-Aliante encouraged to deepen these issues with reading the Spanish Episcopal Conference Document (CEE) Theology and secularization in Spain and of Jesus Christ Living Water Carrier A Christian Reflection on the New Eraprepared by the Pontifical Council of Culture and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.