“When Confucians saw the attractive aspects of metaphysics in Buddhism, they too developed a metaphysics. Neo-Confucian metaphysics in the Sung-hsüeh owed much to Buddhist metaphysics.”
[Professor Hajime Nakamura, “The Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples”]
“St. Augustine transformed the neo-Platonic division between soul and matter into a duality between love of self, the driving force of the earthly city, and love of God, the driving force of the city of God.”
[Dr. Xinzhong Yao, professor of the Department of Philosophy at the People’s University of China, Beijing, and Director of Religion, Ethics and Society at the University of Wales, Lampeter]
A Pattern In Discipleship?
The place of neo-Confucian and post-Christ scholarly discourse in this study may at first seem superfluous to our cause, namely the relevance of Confucius’s philosophy to Christians, but when we consider the similarity between continued Confucian thought and that of Christianity, we see that there is much to be learnt. After Christ’s death, the greatest Christian thinker was Saul of Tarsus, latterly St. Paul. Similarly, after Confucius, it was to be Mencius (Meng Tzu) who continued the Confucian tradition. In the same way that the letters of St. Paul were to be incorporated into the Bible along with the words that had been taken down by Jesus’s disciples, so the Book of Mencius was to become one of the Four Confucian Classics. Just as Christians do not see St. Paul as initiating a new branch of Christianity, so Confucians regard Mencius as continuing in the classic Confucian tradition. It was not until the Sung dynasty, as Professor Nakamura points out, that Confucianism was to be influenced by exterior metaphysics of both the Buddhists and the Taoists. Christian thinkers, like St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were both influenced by the Ancient Greeks, Plato in Augustine’s case and Aristotle in Aquinas’s. In terms of timeframe, neo-Confucianism comes forth at a similar time to the Christian Reformation, and there is much to be compared between these two movements. Just as Protestants splintered into many different groups, so the schools of neo-Confucianism were to become many and varied. When considering the relevance of Confucius’s philosophy, therefore, it would be erroneous to write off Mencius and the neo-Confucians, just as it would be if we were to take Christianity as formed from the Gospels alone.
Neo-Confucian Jen and Post-Christ Agape
As we discovered in the previous chapter, it is over jen and agape that we find some of the greatest similarities and contrasts between these two traditions. It follows suit that of the discourse amongst neo-Confucians and subsequent Christian scholars, jen and agape were to play a very significant part. Before looking closer, one distinction must be made clear in the field of neo-Confucianism, as briefly touched upon in the introduction. Neo-Confucianism, wide and varied as it is, contains two main branches, namely Rationalist and Idealist. The Rationalists were granted their greatest speaker in Chu Hsi, whilst the Idealists enjoyed the powerful wisdom of Wang Yang-ming as their ‘front man’. It was not uncommon for these two schools to conflict with one another over various issues, in much the same way that Roman Catholics and Protestants have done, and, to an extent, still do. This must be borne in mind when we look at the following selection of developments in Confucian thought.
Chu Hsi, the greatest Confucian thinker since Mencius, explored many paths of Chinese thought, including that of tai ch’i (The Great Ultimate) before concluding that of the Four Virtues, jen was the greatest and most significant. He opposed the idea that jen was a state of consciousness or a forming of one body with the universe. For him it was rather a transforming and productive force, where all virtues were seeds and jen made it possible for these seeds to grow. The so-called mind of jen was the mind of love. Jen was the nature of love, and love the function of jen. As Heaven and Earth produce with jen, so humans love with jen. This view of jen has been maintained by the majority of Confucian scholars since Chu Hsi first posited it.
Wang Yang-ming did not contradict the philosophy of Chu Hsi, but rather he built upon it from a metaphysical perspective. Where Chu Hsi saw the mind of jen as the mind of love, Wang saw it as the mind of humans and the mind of the universe. It unified all things, and the unity of the universe lay in the mind of jen. Wang also cited the Confucian principle of the mind-heart, the embodiment of jen within each human being, and that evils like selfishness and greed, the desire to kill or destroy, were singular, and opposed the mind-heart. The reduction of these evil desires comes by jen, and in jen one is re-unified with Heaven, Earth and all things. Jen is not only an essence, but the essence of all things Wang’s analogy helps us understand how Confucians came to see jen as a universal force penetrating everything. He stated that, on seeing a child about to fall into a well, one feels pain; on seeing animals killed, one feels pain; on seeing plants crushed underfoot, one feels pain; and on seeing tiles carelessly smashed, one feels pain – this feeling is derived from jen, since it is what unifies us with all things. True knowledge of jen is not confined to the mind – to truly know jen, one must practise it. No evil desires should even permeate one’s thoughts if one has knowledge of jen – much in the same way that Jesus redefined adultery as looking “at a woman lustfully”[i] – jen must be the regulator of one’s mind just as much as of one’s body.
In Christianity, there come three views of agape, each posited from different perspectives. Augustine’s views combines neo-Platonism to claim that we love others for God’s sake, not theirs. Loving God is a turning away from other loves – these other loves must be made one with love for God. Virtues like temperance, fortitude, justice and prudence are spring forth from the love of God. Human salvation is beholden unto God alone. St. Francis of Assisi saw things slightly differently. He, like Augustine, saw God’s love as paramount – but for him, the only way to fully appreciate this love was by renouncing the world and oneself; possessions became a divide between Man and God’s love. Even knowledge and learning produce pride, which obstructs us from agape. Indeed, in St. Francis’s idea of agape, we see many similarities with Taoists such as Chuang Tzu. The third view of agape comes with the Reformation. Calvin, amongst others, saw the love of God in the light of grace and forgiveness, love through faith. The idea of reformers like Calvin and Luther that Christianity needed to be transformed, transmitted and re-emphasized as a past tradition is very in keeping with the birth of neo-Confucianism.
In conclusion, then, we might say that, from this brief look at the continuation of Confucius’s teaching after his death, Confucianism as developed just as Christianity has also. The point that needs to be emphasized is that when we talk of ‘Confucius’s Philosophy’ we are not always concerned solely with the word of the Lun Yu. Confucius’s philosophy extends through the ages, and, as we will see later, is still alive and well today. If we are to search for relevance amongst neo-Confucian doctrine for the modern Christian, it is perhaps a fruitless search. What we need to understand is that, if we are to appreciate contemporary Confucianism, we must have an understanding also of its development. Just as jen requires a firm rooting before its universal love can flourish, so Christians seeking relevance in Confucianism must first root their understanding of it firmly before what they look for can be realized.
[i] Matthew 5:28