from THE TRANSCENDENT UNITY OF RELIGIONS, by Frithjof Schuon

True affirmations, being concerned with sacred facts - such as, for example, the person of Christ - that necessarily and by definition manifest universal truths, are liable to become false to a greater or lesser degree when artificially removed from their providential framework. So far as Christianity is concerned, this framework is the Western world, in which Christ is "the Life", with the definite article and without epithet. Modern disorder has destroyed this framework and humanity has outwardly expanded in a quantitative and artificial manner. As a result, some people refuse to admit other "Christs", while others arrive at the opposite conclusion and deny to Jesus the quality of Christ. It is as though certain persons, when faced with the discovery of other solar systems, continued to maintain the view that there is only one sun, our own, while others, perceiving that our sun is not the only one, denied that it was a sun and concluded that there was no such thing, since none was unique. The truth of the matter lies between the two opinions: our sun truly is "the sun", but it is unique solely in relation to the system of which it is the center; just as there are many solar systems, so there are many suns, but this does not prevent each being unique by definition. The sun, the lion, the eagle, the sunflower, honey, amber, gold, are so many natural manifestations of the solar principle, each unique and symbolically absolute in its own domain; the fact that they cease to be unique when detached from the limits which enclose these domains and make of them so many closed systems or microcosms, the relativity of their unicity being then revealed, is in no way inconsistent with the fact that, within their respective domains and for these domains, these manifestations are really identified with the solar principle, clothing it in the modes appropriate to the possibilities of the domain they belong to. To state that Christ is not "the Son of God", but only "a Son of God" would thus be false, for the Word is unique and each of its manifestations essentially reflects this Divine unicity.