tldr: "The genuine disagreements across the distilled traditions — the claims that do NOT converge even at the claim level, documented honestly and never forced into false harmony. Theism vs non-theism vs trans-theism; one God vs many vs none; eternal soul vs no-self vs plural-soul; grace vs self-effort; linear vs cyclical time; world-affirming vs world-renouncing; mediation by incarnation vs its explicit rejection; the Bahá'í oneness-of-religion meta-claim that the others reject; (new in Plan 013 Phase 4) anthropology of the human person as a held tension across five mutually-incompatible warrants, and the immanent-vs-transcendent-locus-of-authority axis. R5 sharpening: SN 22.85 Yamaka makes the anattā divergence sharper not softer; Íqán-anchoring deepens the Bahá'í meta-claim. Per 00-architecture.md: divergence is never forced into convergence." status: Phase 5 — Atlas convergence layer (Plan 013 Phase 4 re-attestation against the 179-principle post-retrofit corpus; previously: R5 re-attestation after R3 Stage-B depth) last-revised: 2026-05-30 (Plan 013 Phase 4 retrofit — two new held tensions added: §4a Anthropology of the human person as a sharpened held tension (Mencian xingshan vs Augustinian fallenness vs Buddhist klesha-laden vs Jain karmic-stratification vs Bahá'í dual-nature vs Islamic fiṭra); §13 Immanent vs transcendent locus of authority (kami-presences vs Mandate-of-Heaven vs House-of-Justice institutional vs prophetic-scripture vs textual-Guru vs sola-scriptura); §3 self-divergence refreshed to note Jain plural-jīva as the third-incompatible position alongside anattā and ātman=brahman; §6 world-affirming-vs-renouncing extended with the Jain mendicant-lay two-tier vs Sikh householder one-tier sub-axis; summary table extended from 9 to 11 rows.)

Divergence Map — Where the Traditions Genuinely Disagree

The honest counterweight to the convergence matrix. Per 00-architecture.md, divergence is recorded, never forced: "Different claim → Divergence — recorded in divergence-map.md; never forced." These are not surface convergences (same claim, different warrant — those are in surface-vs-foundation.md). These are places where the claims themselves are incompatible: where one tradition affirms what another denies, on the same question.

The pluralist standpoint of this Atlas treats the traditions as potentially-complementary partial views. This file is where that standpoint is most strained — several of these divergences are not "different facets of one truth" but logical contradictions that the traditions themselves regard as decisive. Owning the pluralist standpoint means also owning that the traditions do not agree it is correct. A union compass is built by complementarity where it exists and honest difference where it does not — never by erasing these rows.

Column key as in convergence-matrix.md: Bud · Isl · Hin · Jud · Chr (Bible) · Sik · Tao · Con · Jai · Bah · Zor · Shi.

§1 — Theism vs non-theism vs trans-theism (the nature of the ultimate)

The deepest fracture. "Is the ultimate reality personal?" gets three incompatible answers.

Position	Traditions	The claim
Personal theism	Isl, Jud, Chr, Sik, Bah, Zor	The ultimate is a personal God who wills, commands, loves, and (most) creates. Isl: a single personal God who "begetteth not." Jud: a covenant-making creator. Sik: one God who "beholds His work with delight."
Impersonal absolute / trans-theism	Hin (brahman + Īśvara), Tao, Con (tian)	Hin: brahman, the impersonal ground, with a personal Īśvara face — both/and. Tao: the Dao is explicitly "not benevolent" (TTC 5) — impersonal, self-so, not a willing person. Con: tian is a silent, non-speaking moral Heaven, neither personal God nor blind nature.
Non-theism	Bud, Jai	No creator God at all. Bud: conditioned arising; the unconditioned (nibbāna) is a state, not a deity. Jai: an eternal universe of souls and matter, no God.
Animism	Shi	Kami pervade nature; no single creator; the cosmos is born, not made.

Not forced. The Taoist "not benevolent" Dao and the Buddhist/Jain no-God directly contradict the personal-loving-God of the six theist columns. This is not "different names for the same God"; the impersonal-source and personal-God claims are mutually exclusive on the question of whether the ultimate wills and loves. Per the Taoist file: "nearly every Taoist claim that converges with a theistic tradition does so on an impersonal, non-commanding warrant."

§2 — One God vs many vs none; incarnation affirmed vs rejected

Even within the theists, the form of the divine diverges, and several rejections are explicit and by design.

Strict unitarian monotheism: Islam (tawḥīd, "begetteth not, is not begotten" — sharpened against the Trinity, Q 112), Judaism (the Shema, ehad), Sikhism (Ik Onkār, and God is "unborn" — a pointed rejection of both Christian incarnation and Hindu avatāra).
Trinitarian monotheism: Christianity (one God in three persons; the incarnate Logos).
The incarnation — affirmed vs explicitly denied: Christianity holds the transcendent God became a finite human (kenōsis, P10) — a WEAK-distinctive of the pool with no parallel, and one Islam, Judaism, and Sikhism reject by name. Hinduism affirms avatāra (divine descent across yugas), which Sikhism also rejects ("unborn"). These are not complementary; they are contradictory claims about whether/how the divine takes form.
Trans-theistic plurality: Hinduism's "one God though His forms are many"; Sikhism resembles this verbally ("His forms are many") but means strict monotheism (the forms are God's, not many gods) — a same-words/different-claim flag.

Not forced. Christian incarnation and the Islamic/Sikh denial of it cannot both be true. The Atlas records both.

§3 — Eternal soul vs no-self vs plural-soul vs identity-with-the-absolute

The metaphysics of the self — the Hinduism file calls ātman "the sharpest single node in the whole pool" and the Buddhism file calls anattā "the sharpest divergence in the whole corpus."

Position	Traditions	The claim
Created soul, distinct from God	Jud, Chr, Isl, Bah (+ Sik, by Hukam)	A real, enduring soul, created by and distinct from God; Chr adds bodily resurrection.
Ātman = brahman	Hin	The innermost Self is deathless and identical with the absolute (tat tvam asi) — not created-distinct.
Plural eternal soul	Jai	Infinitely many uncreated eternal souls (jīva), each the knower — opposing monism, materialism, and no-self simultaneously.
No-self	Bud	Anattā: there is no abiding self. Name-and-form is conditioned process; "do not identify with the transient."
No soul-doctrine	Con, Tao, Shi	A cultivable nature (Con); return to the Dao (Tao); kinship-with-kami (Shi).

Not forced. "There is an eternal soul" (Jud/Chr/Isl/Jai/Bah) and "there is no abiding self" (Bud) are flat contradictories on the same question. "The soul is identical with the absolute" (Hin) contradicts "the soul is created-distinct" (Abrahamic). Surface-level agreement that "the inner life matters" (surface §B) does not touch this.

[R5] The Yamaka clarifier — anattā is not "the self is destroyed at death." SN 22.85 (the Yamaka Sutta) is the R3-anchored canonical guardrail against the easy reading that would dissolve the divergence. The doctrine "the arahant, on the dissolution of the body, is annihilated, perishes, and does not exist after death" is named in SN 22.85 as "wicked heresy." Anattā is therefore neither the annihilationist claim nor the eternalist claim — both are rejected as malformed because both presuppose a referent (an attā) that the analysis has already dissolved. This makes the divergence with the Abrahamic created-soul and the Hindu ātman=brahman sharper, not softer: the Buddhist position is not merely "the soul is impermanent" (which would still recognise a soul-referent) but a refusal of the soul-bearing grammar in which the other traditions formulate their answers. A union compass that tries to smooth the divergence — e.g., by reading anattā as a contemplative emphasis rather than a metaphysical claim — collides directly with the canonical SN 22.85 reading. (Symmetric R5 sharpening on the Hindu side: Bṛh 1.4.10 aham brahmāsmi and Chānd 6 tat tvam asi ×9 make explicit that the Self is brahman in the first and second persons — not "we are deeply connected" but the literal identity claim.)

[Plan 013 Phase 4 — the Jain plural-jīva anthropology is a third-incompatible position.] The Phase-3 Jain retrofit (P14 ratnatraya + P5 jīva anchored more deeply) sharpens this divergence further. The jīva is plural, eternal, uncreated — there are infinitely many eternal souls, each the knower, with karmic matter (pudgala) accreting through endless rebirths. The Jain position is simultaneously incompatible with: the Abrahamic created-distinct-soul (no creator and no single creation event for souls); the Hindu ātman=brahman (souls are plural, not identical with one absolute); and the Buddhist anattā (souls are real and eternal, not analytically dissolved). The Jain self-understanding (per the Jainism distillation) is that plural-eternal-jīva opposes monism, materialism, and no-self at once. The §3 divergence is therefore not a four-way table (Abrahamic / Hindu / Jain / Buddhist) but a four-way mutually-incompatible matrix in which every cell pair contradicts. This is one of the sharpest single-axis divergences in the entire Atlas — three of the four positions are positive metaphysical claims that contradict each other, the fourth is the refusal of the grammar in which the first three are formulated, and the no-soul-doctrine columns (Con, Tao, Shi) sit outside the metaphysical question entirely.

§4 — Origin of evil: privation/sin vs independent principle vs ignorance vs karmic matter vs no-sin

Position	Traditions	The claim
Cosmic ethical dualism	Zor	Evil is an independent primal spirit, not created or permitted by the one God — the Zoroastrian file's "sharpest divergence in the corpus."
Sin against a holy God / the Fall	Chr (+ Jud, Isl with key differences)	Evil as sin; Chr: universal fallenness healed by grace. Jud/Isl reject inherited guilt (each bears own burden) — so they diverge from Christianity here too.
Ignorance / veiling	Hin (avidyā, māyā), Bud (ignorance + craving)	Evil/suffering from mis-knowing the real, not from an evil power or a Fall.
Karmic matter	Jai	"Evil" is literal karmic pudgala accreting to the soul through passion.
*Ego (haumai)*	Sik	The root malady is I-am-ness, dissolved by Hukam + grace.
Loss of the Dao / excess	Tao	"Evil" is forcing, excess, departure from ziran — not a substance or a will.
Innate goodness, mere un-cultivation	Con (Mencius)	Human nature is innately good; wrongdoing is failure to cultivate — a sharp comparison point with original-sin anthropologies.
Pollution, not sin	Shi	Kegare is a state to be washed (by water), not a moral guilt before a judge — there is no doctrine of sin-as-disobedience.

Not forced. Zoroastrian dualism (evil as an independent principle) is incompatible with Abrahamic monotheism's single sovereign will and with the no-evil-power diagnoses of the Indian traditions. Mencian innate goodness contradicts the Christian Fall. Shinto's "pollution ≠ sin" is a same-word/different-referent boundary, not a shared doctrine of sin.

§4a — Anthropology of the human person: the moral starting-point (new in Plan 013 Phase 4)

Closely linked to §4 (origin of evil) but logically prior to it: what kind of thing is the human, morally, at the start? The Phase-3 retrofit makes this newly tractable — the Confucian xingshan (P14) is now explicit; the Bahá'í dual-nature (P11) and Islamic fiṭra (P5) are anchored; the Buddhist kilesa-laden mind grammar (P1 + P2 + deeper corpus) is sharpened; the Jain karmic-stratification anthropology is named via ratnatraya (P14). The result is at least six mutually-incompatible positions on a single axis the prior version of this file only glimpsed.

Position	Traditions	The claim
*Innately good (xingshan)*	Confucianism (Mencius P14)	Every person already bears the Four Sprouts (sìduān: commiseration → ren; shame → yi; deference → li; right-and-wrong → zhi). Cultivation draws out what is already there. No fall, no original sin, no need of redemption.
*Sound primordial nature (fiṭra)*	Islam (P5)	Each human is created on the fiṭra — a sound primordial disposition oriented toward God. No inherited sin, no redeemer needed; sin is deviation from the fiṭra, healed by repentance and raḥma.
Created noble + genuine dual nature	Bahá'í (P11)	Each soul is created noble, bearing God's image; and is dual — bearing both "the Soul of God that pervadeth all His Laws" and "a base and appetitive nature against which the moral life is the lifelong choice." Neither pure innate-goodness nor pure fallenness. (Jewish yetzer ha-ra + yetzer ha-tov mixed-inclination anthropology occupies a structurally similar position.)
Created good, universally fallen, healed by grace	Christianity (Bible, esp. Augustinian Western reading)	Each person is imago Dei, created good, but humanity is universally fallen — sin inherited and structural; healing is by grace, through Christ. Eastern Christian reading softens the inherited-guilt reading but retains structural-disorder.
Kleśa-laden mind, no abiding self, no fall	Buddhism (P1 + P2)	The unliberated mind's default is conditioned by kilesa (Pāli; Skt. kleśa — defilements; canonically lobha greed, dosa hatred, moha delusion). Anattā (P2) rules out the substantialist question "is the self good or bad?" — there is no abiding self to bear that property. Cultivation extinguishes the defilements through the Eightfold Path.
Karmically-stratified plural soul	Jainism (P5 + P14)	The jīva is plural, eternal, uncreated, and karmically stratified — every soul bears karmic matter (pudgala) accumulated through endless rebirths. The starting-point is the karmic ledger. Liberation is by shedding karma through ascetic discipline; the soul's kevala-omniscience is its native state, currently obscured.

Not forced — these are six mutually-incompatible positions on the same axis. Mencian innate-good directly contradicts Augustinian fallenness on whether the starting-point is good or broken; both contradict Buddhist kilesa-default on whether the substantialist question is even well-formed; Jain karmic-stratification contradicts the Abrahamic single-life-no-prior-load framing; Bahá'í dual-nature occupies a third position between Mencian and Augustinian poles; Islamic fiṭra shares Mencian innate-goodness's conclusion but on a creator-grounded warrant, and contradicts the Christian Fall on the inheritance question. Taoism (ziran + pu — no soul-doctrine; the start is natural-and-good, forcing-against-it is the problem) and Shinto (makoto + kami-kinship — no doctrine of fall) sit somewhat outside this axis but more naturally cluster with the innate-goodness pole than the fallenness pole.

The held tension this preserves. A union compass cannot speak from any one anthropology without contradicting the others. This is the load-bearing claim-vs-warrant axis on which §A (dignity), §C (compassion), and §F (grace-vs-self-effort) of surface-vs-foundation.md all rest — see the new surface-vs-foundation.md §K for the full claim-vs-warrant analysis. The Phase-4 retrofit promotes anthropology from a sub-element of the evil-origin row (where it lived in the R5 version) to a first-class held tension in its own right — because the anthropology is the axis on which the other divergences are built, not derivative from them.

For a family compass especially: the choice of anthropology determines pastoral practice. A family that operates on Mencian xingshan draws out innate sprouts (positive-reinforcement of an already-good nature); a family on Augustinian fallenness names brokenness and points to grace; a family on Buddhist kilesa names defilements as conditions to be extinguished through training; a family on Bahá'í dual-nature treats moral life as the lifelong choice between two real orientations. These are not the same pastoral practice, and the union compass should not paper over which one each family has implicitly adopted.

§5 — The ultimate goal: cessation vs union vs omniscience vs communion vs renovation vs this-worldly

(Also a surface convergence on the bare claim "an ultimate peace exists" — see surface §E. At the claim level the goal-states diverge.)

Cessation — Bud (nibbāna: extinguishing of craving; not a heaven).
Union with the absolute — Hin (mokṣa: the soul "as pure water poured into pure water").
The soul's own omniscience — Jai (kevala: self-attained, not communion, not cessation).
Communion with a personal God + resurrection — Chr; paradise — Isl; God's presence / messianic restoration — Jud; absorption into God by grace — Sik; nearness to God — Bah.
Cosmic renovation of this world — Zor (Frashō-kereti).
This-worldly harmony / flourishing, little or no afterlife — Tao, Con, Shi.

Not forced. Cessation, absorption, self-omniscience, personal communion, and world-renovation are mutually exclusive descriptions of the same "highest goal." The Indian "other shore" imagery is shared between Bud and Hin, but means extinction for one and union-with-brahman for the other.

§6 — World-affirming vs world-renouncing; householder vs renunciant

Pole	Traditions	The claim
World-affirming / householder	Con (xiao, family the root), Sik (the householder-saint is the ideal; "a hermit among the family"), Zor (the righteous home; tilling the earth is holy), Jud (creation "very good," Shabbat), Shi (life over death, generativity), Chr (family the fundamental cell), Bah (family the first school)	Ordinary married, working, family life is the locus of the spiritual life; the world is good and to be cultivated.
World-renouncing / renunciant	Bud (the monastic ideal; family ties as attachment), Jai (asceticism up to sallekhanā; non-possession of kin), Hin (one strand: the renunciant saṃnyāsa; family transcended for mokṣa)	The world and its bonds are to be transcended; liberation requires renunciation.
Accord, not renounce	Tao	Neither grasp nor renounce — live small, simple, contented with the world's grain (ziran).

Not forced. The Sikh affirmation of the householder as the ideal and the Buddhist/Jain renunciant ideal are opposite answers to "where is holiness lived?" The Sikhism file flags this as a "sharp divergence… a natural anchor for a family compass." (Note Hinduism contains both poles via its life-stages, so it appears on both sides.)

[Plan 013 Phase 4 — the within-tradition tier-structure axis (two-tier vs one-tier).] The Phase-3 Jain retrofit (P15 mahāvrata/aṇuvrata) makes a second related axis explicit: whether the tradition itself maintains a within-tradition two-tier structure (monastic absolute / lay-graduated) or a one-tier householder structure. Jainism's pañca-mahāvrata (Āk II.15) are the monastic absolute; the Pañca-aṇuvrata are the same five vows at calibrated intensity for śrāvakas (householders; Sūy II.6.6, Jacobi note 3). Buddhism similarly has upāsaka/bhikṣu — the Five Precepts P17 as lay form, the 227-rule Pātimokkha as monastic. Christianity (Catholic / Orthodox monastic theology) has counsels-vs-commandments (the evangelical counsels of poverty, chastity, obedience as monastic intensifications). Sikhism rejects the second tier outright: the spiritual path is fully realized in gṛhastha (householder) life — "a hermit among the family." This two-tier vs one-tier axis runs orthogonally to §6's world-affirming-vs-renouncing axis: Jainism is world-renouncing-with-graduated-lay-tier; Sikhism is world-affirming-no-second-tier; Buddhism is world-renouncing-with-lay-tier; Christianity is mixed (world-affirming for Protestant tradition; world-affirming-with-monastic-counsels for Catholic/Orthodox); the Confucian xiao-rooted family-and-state ethic with no monastic tier resembles the Sikh one-tier structure most closely on this sub-axis. For a family compass specifically: the Sikh one-tier finding is doubly load-bearing (everyday family-and-work life is the locus of holiness, with no monastic alternative needed). See surface-vs-foundation.md §J Plan 013 Phase 4 addition for the same axis worked from the convergence-of-form side.

§7 — Linear vs cyclical time and eschatology

Architecture	Traditions	The claim
*Cyclical / rebirth (saṃsāra)*	Bud, Hin, Jai, Sik	Beings are reborn across vast cyclical time until liberation ends the round; cosmic ages (yugas/kalpas) repeat.
Linear / single life + final judgment	Chr, Isl, Jud, Zor, Bah	One life, then a reckoning; history moves toward a single consummation (resurrection / new creation / Frashō-kereti). Zoroastrian eschatology (judgment + saviour + renewed world) is plausibly a structural source of the Abrahamic version (the Atlas flags this to test, not assume).
This-worldly / reticent	Con, Tao, Shi	Little developed afterlife doctrine; meaning is in the present ordered/harmonious life; death accepted as natural (Tao) or producing kegare (Shi).

Not forced. Cyclical rebirth and linear single-life-plus-judgment are incompatible cosmologies of time. The shared image of a coming saviour-figure (Zor Saoshyant, the Hindu future avatāra, the Abrahamic messiah) does not make the time-structures compatible.

§8 — Grace / mediation vs self-effort

(The convergent grace-cluster is documented in surface §F; the divergence is recorded here.)

Grace / other-power: Chr (charis), Hin (bhakti), Sik (Nadar), Isl (raḥma), Zor, Bah — release is gift.
Self-effort / self-liberation: Bud ("no one can purify another"; "you yourself must make the effort"), Jai ("no savior, no grace"), Con (nobility achieved, not conferred).
Alignment / ritual, not pardon: Tao (the guilty "cleansed by the Dao" = alignment), Shi (misogi water-purification, not forgiveness).

Not forced. Buddhism's "no one can purify another" is the exact negation of Christianity's "salvation is the gift of God, not of works." These are not two emphases; they are a contradiction on whether liberation is received or won. The Atlas keeps the convergent grace-cluster and this divergence on the same axis.

§9 — Received authority/transmission vs independent investigation

Authority through transmission: most traditions ground truth in a received, communal, authoritative line — the Gurū read in sangat (Sik), the Oral-Torah/halakhic community (Jud), the tafsīr/fiqh tradition (Isl), the guru-lineage (Hin: "gained by humble heed of those who see the Truth"), the Magisterium (Chr), the granthī, the sangha.
Independent investigation: Bahá'í P7 — "see with thine own eyes and not through the eyes of others… know of thine own knowledge and not through the knowledge of thy neighbor." This diverges from traditions that prize received authority (flagged in the Bahá'í file as "a likely Atlas divergence point worth tracking, not assumed convergent").

Not forced. This is a genuine claim-level difference about how truth is rightly held.

§10 — Caste/role-fixity vs equality

Equality before the ultimate: Sikhism is the most radical — "the four castes he reduced to one"; langar seats all in one row (P9). Islam ranks honour by taqwā, not lineage (P12). Buddhism redefines the true Brāhmaṇa by attainment, not birth (P11). Christianity: "neither Jew nor Greek… slave nor free." Bahá'í: oneness of humanity, equal education of daughters.
Role/station within an order: Hinduism's sva-dharma is, in the text, bound to the varṇa (caste) order fixed by birth — a warrant the Hindu distillation reports but does not endorse (P7). Confucian zhengming fixes social roles (ruler/minister/father/son), and xiao can rank kin-loyalty above impartial law (P2/P8).

Not forced. The egalitarian claim (worth/standing independent of birth-station) and the role-fixity claim (right order = each fulfilling a fixed station) genuinely differ, even though both can coexist with "human dignity" at the matrix's claim level. Recorded honestly; the caste warrant is not endorsed by the Atlas (consistent with the Hindu file's own stance).

§11 — The Bahá'í oneness-of-religion meta-claim (a claim the others reject)

Atlas-critical, flagged first in the Bahá'í file. Bahá'í P2 (progressive revelation) holds that all the great faiths — Abraham, Moses, Krishna, Zoroaster, Buddha, Christ, Muḥammad, the Báb, Bahá'u'lláh — are chapters of one continuous revealed religion.

The claim "religions share a purpose and should not breed animosity" converges broadly.
The meta-claim "the faiths are one revealed religion" is rejected by name by the others: Christianity's finality of Christ, Islam's seal of the prophets, Buddhism's lack of any revealing God, Hinduism's and Judaism's distinct self-understandings.

[R5 sharpening — Íqán anchoring deepens the meta-position.] The R3 Stage-B addition of the Kitáb-i-Íqán makes Bahá'í P2 a sustained scriptural-hermeneutic argument, not just a stated principle: Bahá'u'lláh's Íqán argues that prophetic symbols (sun, moon, resurrection) refer to the recurring advent of the Manifestations of God — that every prophet foretells His successor, that outward law varies by age while inward purpose is one. The "Suns of Truth / Mirrors of divine Unity" technical metaphor is the Íqán's own. The consequence for the Atlas: with Íqán-anchoring, Bahá'í P2 is no longer "a principle"; it is a fully-developed hermeneutic of the entire prophetic corpus that re-reads every other tradition's revelation-claims as chapters of one revelation. This makes the meta-claim structurally more like the Atlas's pluralist standpoint than before — and therefore more dangerous to confuse with it. The R3 depth makes the rule clearer not looser: the Atlas standpoint is a methodological choice, owned and contestable; Bahá'í P2 is a theological claim from inside one tradition. They occupy structurally similar slots but have opposite epistemic status. The Íqán anchoring strengthens the structural resemblance and therefore the necessity of the discipline.

Two critical cautions (unchanged):

Do not adopt P2 as the Atlas's own ground. It resembles the Atlas's owned pluralist standpoint but is not it: P2 is a theological revelation-claim from inside one tradition; the Atlas standpoint is an explicitly contestable, non-revealed methodological choice. Conflating them would smuggle a Bahá'í doctrine in as neutral ground — exactly what the architecture forbids.
Record P2 as a Bahá'í principle, never as an Atlas finding. It is structurally unique: a claim about the other inputs (see structural-analysis.md on Bahá'í's meta-position).

§12 — Scope of non-harm (a divergence inside a convergence)

Non-harm/compassion is a UNIVERSAL claim (surface §C), but its scope diverges to the point of genuine disagreement:

Jainism extends ahiṃsā to one-sensed elemental and plant life (earth, water, fire, wind bodies) — an animism of innumerable souls absent from every other tradition, including Buddhism — and makes it absolute: no just war, no capital punishment, no animal sacrifice ("the contrary is the doctrine of the unworthy").
Most traditions permit defensive force / just war (the Quran's context-flagged warfare verses; the Tanakh; Confucian acceptance of righteous order; Christian just-war tradition) — though Taoism mourns all killing and treats arms as "instruments of ill omen" (P7), approaching but not reaching Jain absolutism.

Not forced. Jain absolute non-violence and the just-war/defensive-force permission of most of the pool are a genuine claim-level disagreement about the limits of non-harm.

§13 — Immanent vs transcendent locus of moral and political authority (new in Plan 013 Phase 4)

A held tension the Phase-3 retrofits — particularly Confucian P9 (tianming as revocable mandate), Bahá'í P13 (the institutional House of Justice + clergyless community + consultation), and the Shinto + Sikh + Hindu + Christian columns sharpened on the authority-locus question — now make tractable: where does the binding moral and political authority sit? The traditions answer this differently along at least five incompatible structural lines.

Locus	Traditions	The claim
Immanent in named natural / divine presences pervading the world	Shinto	Authority is not concentrated in a transcendent God or a scripture; it is distributed across the kami who inhabit specific places, families, mountains, rivers, shrines, ancestors. The community lives in relation to the kami who are here, not above. Ritual (matsuri) renews the relationship; kegare (pollution) is washed by water-purification (P3), not absolved by a transcendent judge. No transcendent-revelation authority axis at all. Closest cousin: Hindu devas / Indo-European yazatas (Zoroastrianism — see P15) but for Shinto the immanence is constitutive in a way it is not for Hindu brahman-grounded devas or Zoroastrian Ahura-grounded yazatas.
Heaven-grounded but revocable; legitimacy conditional on virtue + people-welfare	Confucianism (P9 tianming)	Authority rests on the Mandate of Heaven (tianming 天命): the junzi "stands in awe of the ordinances of Heaven" (Analects 16:8). But the mandate is conditional on virtue and people-welfare — when ren is cultivated and the people flourish, the mandate holds; when it fails, the mandate is withdrawn (Mencius I.A.7 + the locus classicus Mencius 1B.8 "the fellow Chou"). Legitimacy is earned and revocable, not divine-right and not mere consent. A Heaven-grounded position that rejects divine-right absolutism and social-contract consent in one move.
Institutional + democratically-elected + globally-supranational + clergyless	Bahá'í (P13)	Authority is held by a constituted body — the Universal House of Justice (Aqdas ¶30: "The Lord hath ordained that in every city a House of Justice be established"), elected democratically through a three-tier structure (Local Spiritual Assembly + National Spiritual Assembly + Universal House of Justice since 1963), with no clergy and consultation as the method (Gleanings CXX). The Lesser Covenant (P14, Aqdas ¶121, ¶174) supplies the doctrinal mechanism: post-founder institutional continuity by Bahá'u'lláh's own written designation. The most fully-institutionalized clergyless tradition in the Atlas — and the most explicitly globally-supranational.
Prophetic-scriptural + community-of-interpretation	Islam (Qur'an + Sunnah + fiqh); Judaism (Tanakh + Oral Torah + halakhic community)	Authority rests in the revealed text with a community-of-interpretation: Qur'anic waḥy + Sunnah + tafsīr + fiqh + ʿulamāʾ on the Islamic side; the Tanakh + Mishnah + Talmud + responsa + rabbinic community on the Jewish side. Distinctive features: (a) the text is finally fixed (closing of the canon; khātam al-nabiyyīn sealing the prophets — Isl P2); (b) the interpretation is communal and ongoing (the rabbinate; the ʿulamāʾ); (c) there is no clergy with sacramental authority (the rabbi and the ʿālim are teachers, not priests with mediating sacramental power).
Christological + ecclesial / sacramental	Christianity (Catholic / Orthodox traditions especially; Protestant traditions vary)	Authority rests in Christ mediated through the Church: scripture + tradition + Magisterium (Catholic); scripture + the seven ecumenical councils + the bishops in apostolic succession (Orthodox); sola scriptura (Protestant). The sacramental dimension is distinctive: ordained clergy with the power of orders to confect the Eucharist, absolve sin, ordain successors — an authority-mediation grammar absent from Islam, Judaism, and Bahá'í. Within Christianity, *the Protestant sola scriptura* position** (authority rests in scripture alone, individually interpreted under the Spirit) is a sharp divergence from the Catholic/Orthodox sacramental-magisterial position.
Textual-Guru + sangat	Sikhism	Authority rests in the Gurū Granth Sāhib (the eternal Gurū; the line of ten human Gurūs closed at the Sahib) read in sangat (the holy congregation); no clergy with sacramental power — the granthī reads the text but does not absolve. Hukam (P2) is the divine order each soul understands (not merely obeys); Bhana is loving conformity. The textual-Gurū is uniquely placed: a closed text-as-living-Guru, with no continuing institutional successor in the human-Gurū line.
Self-realized + lineage transmission	Hinduism (most strands); Buddhism (most strands); Jainism	Authority rests less in a fixed institutional locus than in realized teachers in lineage-transmission: the guru-paramparā in Hinduism (lineage from teacher to teacher, "gained by humble heed of those who see the Truth" — Hin P15 frame); the upajjhāya + Theravāda preceptor system in Buddhism (with the Pātimokkha governing the community); the Jain mendicant succession from Mahāvīra. Distinctive: no central institutional body, no global house of justice; authority distributed across many paramparā-lines that may differ.

Not forced — these are six incompatible structural answers to a single question. The Shinto immanent-kami locus cannot be reconciled with the Bahá'í institutionalized-House-of-Justice locus (one denies a transcendent authority-locus altogether; the other constitutes one explicitly); the Confucian revocable-tianming contradicts both the divine-right absolutism that several pre-modern Abrahamic political theologies endorsed and the modern-secular social-contract consent theory; the Sikh closed-text-as-Gurū diverges from the Islamic and Jewish open-text-with-community-of-interpretation; the Catholic sacramental-Magisterium diverges from the Protestant sola scriptura; the paramparā-lineage authority of Hindu/Buddhist/Jain traditions diverges from all the centrally-institutionalized positions.

Why this is a held tension rather than a surface convergence: the form — every tradition has some answer to "where does binding authority sit" — converges trivially (every functioning religious tradition must answer it). The content of the answer is structurally incompatible across positions. This is therefore properly recorded as a divergence-not-surface-convergence: traditions disagree about what kind of thing moral and political authority is, not just which God commands it.

For a family compass. This held tension determines how the family treats authority within itself and in relation to broader institutions. A family operating on the Shinto immanent-kami locus relates to the local shrine and the lineage-kami; a family on the Confucian tianming locus expects rulers to be virtuous and revocable; a family on the Bahá'í institutional locus participates in Local Spiritual Assembly elections; a family on the Catholic locus relates to the parish + diocese + Magisterium; a family on the Protestant sola scriptura locus reads scripture under the Spirit; a family on the Sikh locus reads the Granth in sangat; a family on Hindu/Buddhist/Jain guru-lineage relates to its specific teacher-line. The union compass should not paper over which locus each family operates from — they are not the same authority-structure, and pastoral practice differs accordingly.

Summary of the deepest divergences (warrant- and claim-level)

#	Divergence	The irreducible disagreement
1	The self	anattā (no self, Bud) vs ātman=brahman (self = absolute, Hin) vs created-distinct soul (Abrahamic) vs plural-eternal jīva (Jai)
2	The ultimate	personal God (6 theist columns) vs impersonal "not benevolent" Dao / silent tian (Tao/Con) vs no God (Bud/Jai) vs kami-animism (Shi)
3	The goal	cessation (Bud) vs union-with-brahman (Hin) vs self-omniscience (Jai) vs communion-with-God (Chr/Isl/Jud/Sik/Bah) vs world-renovation (Zor)
4	Grace vs self-effort	"no one can purify another" (Bud/Jai) vs "salvation is the gift of God, not of works" (Chr)
5	The incarnation	God became human (Chr) vs explicitly rejected (Isl/Jud/Sik)
6	Evil	independent dualist principle (Zor) vs the Fall (Chr) vs ignorance/māyā (Hin/Bud) vs karma-matter (Jai) vs innate goodness/un-cultivation (Con) vs pollution-not-sin (Shi)
7	Time	cyclical rebirth (Bud/Hin/Jai/Sik) vs linear single-life + judgment (Chr/Isl/Jud/Zor/Bah)
8	World	renounce it for liberation (Bud/Jai) vs the householder life is the holy life (Sik/Con/Zor/Chr); sub-axis (Phase 4): two-tier monastic-and-lay (Jai/Bud/Catholic-Christian) vs one-tier householder (Sik/Con)
9	Religion itself	one revealed religion in chapters (Bah meta-claim) vs each tradition's claim to distinct/final truth (the rest)
10	Anthropology of the human person (Phase 4 §4a)	innately good (xingshan, Con) vs sound primordial nature (fiṭra, Isl) vs noble + dual nature (Bah / Jewish yetzer mixed) vs created good + fallen + grace-needing (Chr) vs kileśa-laden + no-self (Bud) vs karmically-stratified plural soul (Jai)
11	Locus of moral / political authority (Phase 4 §13)	immanent in kami-presences (Shi) vs revocable Mandate of Heaven (tianming, Con) vs institutionalized House of Justice + clergyless (Bah) vs prophetic-scripture + community-of-interpretation (Isl / Jud) vs Christological-ecclesial / sacramental (Chr) vs textual-Gurū + sangat (Sik) vs paramparā-lineage transmission (Hin / Bud / Jai)

These rows are the boundary of complementarity. The union compass speaks from convergence (the claim-vs-warrant analysis); it must speak about these divergences with honest difference, never resolve them by fiat. The whole point of the proposal's "union, not intersection" is that the WEAK-distinctive jewels on both sides of these lines are preserved, not averaged away.

[Plan 013 Phase 4 — load-bearing additions to the held-tension count.] Two of these rows (10 and 11) are new in Phase 4. Row 10 (anthropology) was previously partially present inside row 6 (evil) as "Mencian innate goodness contradicts the Christian Fall," but the deeper corpus (Confucian xingshan P14, Bahá'í dual-nature P11, Islamic fiṭra P5, Buddhist kilesa grammar made deeper through DN/MN/SN, Jain karmic-stratification anchored through P14 ratnatraya) makes the six-way held tension first-class — and the §4a section makes the case that anthropology is the load-bearing axis under §A dignity, §C compassion, and §F grace-vs-self-effort of the claim-vs-warrant analysis, not derivative from any of them. Row 11 (authority-locus) is genuinely new — the Confucian P9 tianming + the Bahá'í P13 House of Justice + the Phase-3 Shinto + Sikh + Hindu sharpening on the authority-locus question make a previously implicit divergence first-class.

Total held tensions after Phase 4: 11 (was 9 in R5; +2 in Phase 4 = §4a Anthropology + §13 Authority-locus).

References

00-architecture.md — "Divergence — never forced"; owned pluralist standpoint
convergence-matrix.md — the claim-level attestation these rows qualify
surface-vs-foundation.md — same-claim/different-warrant findings (§B, §E, §F also relate here)
structural-analysis.md — Bahá'í meta-position; structural roots of the divergences
The 13 per-tradition principles-distillation.md files