Criticism, Engagement, and the Question of Gurdjieff’s Christianity

Two reviews of my book disagree about more than the book. They disagree about what the Fourth Way is.

My book, Gurdjieff’s Christianity: The Fourth Way’s Prehistoric Teachings of Christ, has two Amazon reviews that could hardly differ more. O.G. Rose, whom I know personally, gives an appreciative account of its argument. Michel de Languedoc is sharply critical, questioning its originality, depth, practical value and my standing to write at all.

I welcome criticism, and I’d rather answer it with substance than procedure. Rose’s review is an endorsement from someone I know, and I don’t offer it as proof of anything. A favourable review doesn’t show an argument is correct, and the same standard applies to hostile ones.

I reproduce both reviews below, followed by my response to the principal issues raised.

Review by O.G. Rose: “Creating the Conditions that Allow Sacred Conscience to Surface”

Reviewed in the United States, 15 September 2025. Verified purchase.

"Luke Behncke has given us an eloquent and important book that makes the case for why to think Gurdjieff outside of Christianity is to miss the fullness of Gurdjieff. ‘[T]he heart of Gurdjieff’s vision is the idea of developing a soul to serve the divine purpose,’ Luke writes, and in Christ we find a unique and invaluable model for that development which is ‘not merely a lofty ideal [but] a real, practical endeavor’ (pg 19).For Gurdjieff, if ‘just 200’ people followed this model and became ‘truly conscious,’ we ‘could change the world, even ending wars’ (52)—a notion which suggests why we should take this book seriously. Luke offers not just invaluable thoughts in this book but also practices, and he invites us to seek a ‘a change in one’s ‘state of being,’ which, in scientific terms, is similar to the different states of matter—liquid, solid, gas, and plasma. The transition from one state of being to another represents a change in the ‘degree of freedom’ within the system, and in this case, within the individual’s consciousness’ (89).To take up Gurdjieff is to take up work that makes us more human in a way that makes it seem like we might not have even been human in the first place—it is the work of ‘creat[ing] the conditions that allow sacred conscience to surface’ (140). This is critical and invaluable work, and thanks to Luke we have guidance for how we can go about it. Pick up a copy today!"

Review by Michel de Languedoc: “Who Says Such Things?”

Reviewed in the United States, 9 September 2026. Verified purchase.

"Anyone who has attentively read 'In Search of the Miraculous' knows that Gurdjieff hinted that the Fourth Way is essentially "esoteric Christianity." Behncke's book offers nothing of real value concerning that foundational statement. In fact, it founders in imagination and speculation as to what it might mean.Maurice Nicoll understood the implications of Gurdjieff's not easily grasped intimations about the ancient sources of the teaching, and presented a fully worked out practical science of transformation consonant with what his teachers (Gurdjieff and Ouspensky) taught and inculcated. Behncke's book is theoretical in an unsophisticated manner, and presents nothing more than several personal, rather idiosyncratic discussions arising out of interactions among several online participants.The book is advertised as "A deep and practical study of Gurdjieff's writings, understood on their own terms, [and] reveals a profound vision." The book is neither deep nor practical, and the "vision" presented is simply pedestrian. It is not even of value for beginners, as it would only set them at the outset on a wrong path.Just think: who makes such extravagant public claims about the Work which has always been, and always will be, and can only be oral and secret? Who declares, "I am a Fourth Way teacher," and here is a deep and practical study? Who or what says such things?"

What kind of book is it?

The book began as an online course and was written from its transcripts. As the "Notes to the Reader" in the front of the book say, it is an accessible work, not an academic monograph. By implication, it is also not a replacement for the practical instruction given in established groups, where I spent over two decades.

I should also be candid about the gap de Languedoc is reacting to. A subtitle like "Prehistoric Teachings of Christ" and a blurb promising a "deep and practical study" set expectations no book can fully meet. That is a fair criticism of the packaging.

The fuller textual arguments of the book are on this site, beginning with Gurdjieff's Fourth Way as Esoteric Christianity, The Origins of the Fourth Way and The Most Fatal Spiritual Error: Confusing Metaphysics and Method.

Isn't this already in Nicoll?

De Languedoc's central claim is that anyone who has read In Search of the Miraculous knows the Fourth Way is esoteric Christianity, and that Maurice Nicoll worked out the implications. I take Nicoll seriously. The New Man, The Mark and the Psychological Commentaries are major achievements, and I have learned from them. But two things separate my approach from his.

The direction of reading. Nicoll, in the main, reads the Gospels through the Work. I ask what follows if we read the Work through Christ, treating Gurdjieff's own statements about Christianity as primary evidence for what the teaching is for.

The sources. Nicoll died in 1953, and much of Gurdjieff's own writing reached the public around or after his death. For example, Beelzebub's Tales appeared in English in 1950, Meetings with Remarkable Men in 1963, Views from the Real World in 1973, and Life Is Real Only Then, When "I Am" was first privately printed in 1974 and later commercially published in 1981. A reading that works systematically through Gurdjieff's whole corpus is not a repetition of Nicoll.

Here is what that looks like in practice, with three examples.

The Law of Three and the Trinity. The claim that the Fourth Way is "essentially esoteric Christianity" is a hint. The text goes further.

In Beelzebub's Tales (pp. 751-752), Gurdjieff introduces the three forces of the Sacred Triamazikamno and then says that sane-minded beings of an earlier epoch named them God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. He gives prayers expressing their understanding, including one in the shape of the Orthodox Trisagion ("Holy God, Holy Firm, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us"). In Views from the Real World (pp. 195-196) he again places the Father, Son and Holy Ghost at the top of the Ray of Creation as the Law of Three operating in the Absolute (see this BLOG for further details, and Jesus Christ was the "Son of God" for Gurdjieff - Part II).

This matters because Gurdjieff coins new terms for nearly everything else in the book, precisely to avoid inherited associations. Here he did the opposite. He took the Christian names, and he presented them as correct perception, not as human error. That is more than a hint. It is a direct identification of his foundational law with the Trinity, and it raises the question of what follows for how the Work should be understood.

The mission of Christ. In the same book (pp. 733-736), Gurdjieff, through Beelzebub, describes Jesus's teaching as one the highest cosmic individuals placed great hopes in (see this BLOG for further details). He says that genuine faith in it was destroyed by what he calls "criminal wiseacring" by later generations. Later (p. 1,183) he proposes a new, and sole means of rescuing humanity, an organ producing constant awareness of one's own death. My reading is that he presents this as the continuation of the same "rescue effort" and not as a rival to it. A reader may dispute that inference. If so, I'd like to see the alternative reading of those passages.

The ranking of Christ's teaching. On p. 1,009, Beelzebub says that if the teaching of "the Divine Jesus Christ" were carried out in full conformity with its original, the religion founded on it would be "the best of all existing religions", and would surpass even any religion that may arise in the future.

The words are spoken by Beelzebub, but Beelzebub's Tales is Gurdjieff's own written work, and he never qualifies or ironises this statement. He makes no comparable claim anywhere in the book for another Messenger, or for his own teaching.

This is not how a man writes who regards Christ as one inspired figure among equals. It places Christ's original teaching above every other path, including by implication the Fourth Way itself, and it frames Gurdjieff's own work as serving that teaching, not superseding it. If the Christian dimension were incidental, it is hard to see why the book's most emphatic statement of religious value is about Christ.

I don't claim to be the first to notice Christian elements in Gurdjieff or write about them. "It's obvious" and "it's been done" are different claims, and the second needs the comparison to be made.

Speculation and evidence

De Languedoc calls the book speculative. Interpretation always involves inference, so the useful distinction is between what Gurdjieff states, what can reasonably be inferred, and what is theological extension. The passages above are examples of the first kind. The claim that Gurdjieff continues Christ's mission is an inference from them. Where I cross from one to the other, a reader is entitled to say so, and to say which alternative reading better fits the text.

Is it practical?

Having spent over two decades in traditional Gurdjieff groups, everything in the Fourth Way depends on practice: self-observation, attention, sensation, the study of identification. Theory can't replace it. But what a practice is for shapes how it is done.

A Work understood as psychological self-improvement will be approached differently from one understood as the development of soul and conscience in service of a divine purpose. Similar methods can appear in traditions with different metaphysics, which is why I distinguish method from metaphysics. As examples, refer to my arguments against the Fourth Way being identified as esoteric Buddhism and Sufism.

"Oral and secret"

De Languedoc says the Work "can only be oral and secret." But Gurdjieff himself published (shortly after his death in 1949) Beelzebub's Tales, and, before that, had published The Herald of Coming Good in 1933. After his death, on his approval, Meetings with Remarkable Men and Life Is Real Only Then, When "I Am" were also eventually published and he treated all his writings as central to his task. Whatever role oral transmission plays, the written texts are fair material for open discussion, and they are what I am discussing.

Who says such things?

I have never called myself a Fourth Way teacher. I am a student of Gurdjieff and a follower of Christ. I claim no institutional authority and no lineage. I am making an argument about texts. Questions of transmission are serious ones in this milieu, but they don't answer whether the argument is right.

The deeper disagreement

The reviews point to a real divide. For some, the Christian dimension of the Fourth Way is settled and incidental. For me, Gurdjieff's statements about Christ and the Trinity are central evidence for what the Work is for.

The p. 1,009 passage of Beelzebub's Tales is the clearest case: if it is taken at face value, the Christian question can't be treated as a side issue. That reading must stay accountable to the texts. It can't assume every Gurdjieffian idea maps neatly onto Christian doctrine. It is work in progress.

Conclusion

I don't need the book to be beyond criticism. The question is whether the Fourth Way can be fully understood without taking its Christian claims seriously. That won't be settled by praise, dismissal or appeals to authority. It takes sustained attention to everything Gurdjieff wrote, careful theological reasoning, and a willingness to test one's own interpretation against the evidence. I invite anyone, including Mr de Languedoc, to show me where it fails.