Confucian Theology Three Models PDF

Religion Compass 1/4 (2007): 455–478, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2007.00032.
Confucian Theology: Three Models

Yong Huang
Kutztown, Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
If there are still disagreements about whether Confucianism is a religion, there
seems to be a consensus that Confucianism does not have a theology. In this article,
I attempt to show that there are at least three models of serious god-talks in the
Confucian tradition: (i) heaven is discussed in the Confucian classics of Book of
Documents, Books of Poetry, and Analects as something transcendent of the world,
similar to Christian God in crucial aspects; (ii) heaven is discussed among contem-
porary Confucians, represented by Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan, and Tu Weiming,
as something ‘immanently transcendent’, the ultimate reality immanent in the
world to transcend the world; and (iii) heaven is discussed by neo-Confucians,
particularly the Cheng brothers of the Song dynasty, as the wonderful life-giving
activity transcending the world within the world.
I. Introduction
The title of this essay seems somewhat presumptuous: does Confucianism
have a theology? This is indeed a legitimate question, as the title presup-
poses a positive answer to the prior question: is Confucianism a religion?
It is true that, while we are still far from reaching a definitive answer to
this prior question, many scholars do regard Confucianism as a religion.
However, for most people to say that Confucianism is a religion does not
© 2007 The Author
Journal Compilation © 2007 Blackwell Publishing Ltd
456 Yong Huang
imply that it must have a theology. For example, Joel Kuppermann claims
that ‘there are important religions in which a theistic element is negligible
or entirely missing (e.g., early Buddhism and Taoism, as well as Confu-
cianism)’ (Kupperman 1971, p. 189).
So, instead of god, scholars have often searched for other religious
dimensions in Confucianism. For example, Mary Evelyn Tucker focuses
on self-transformation. In her view,
[R]eligion in its broadest sense is a means whereby human beings, recognizing
the limitations of phenomenal reality, undertake specific practices to effect self-
transformation within a cosmological context. This is not simply a passing or
superficial enterprise but one that is all encompassing. In these general terms,
Confucianism can certainly be regarded as religious in the sense that the
primary activity of Confucians is the establishing of moral reflection and spiritual
awareness within the changes of cosmological processes. (Tucker 1998, p. 14)
Herbert Fingarette thinks that Confucian religiosity comes primarily from
its emphasis on ritual or ceremony, li . In his view,
[U]nlike the way he appears in the Christian view, man is not holy by virtue
of his absolute possession, within himself and independently of other men, of
a ‘piece’ of the divine and immortal soul. Nor is flowering of the individual
the central theme; instead it is the flowering of humanity in the ceremonial
acts of men. (Fingarette 1972, p. 78)
While claiming that Confucianism is atheistic, Roger Ames argues that

Confucianism is nevertheless profoundly religious in John Dewey’s ‘sense
of the connection of man, in the way of both dependence and support, with
the enveloping world that the imagination feels is a universe’ (2007,
p. 10). Paul Rule argues that Confucianism, particularly neo-Confucianism,
is religious because of its emphasis on jing , reverence. In his view, when
we talk about neo-Confucianism, we should focus ‘on behaviour, practices,
not systems; on faith, not theology’ (Rule 1986, p. 143). He claims that
there is faith or jing in neo-Confucianism, which is not faith in a person
but ‘in a way of life and action, the Confucian tao’ or ‘seriousness’
about living (Rule 1986, pp. 143–4; see also Thompson 1990). There
are many other attempts to approach Confucianism as religious without
appealing to any idea of transcendent god.
Rodney L. Taylor argues against any of these non-theistic interpretations
of Confucian religiosity. According to him,
[W]ithout a concept of the Absolute, we are not dealing with the subject
matter of religion. On the other hand, when the Absolute is present, the
capacity for religion is also present. Notions of the Absolute within religion can
appear in different forms – transcendent or immanent, theistic or monistic, or
any of a variety of other forms. (Taylor 1998, p. 82)
In his view, there is such an Absolute in Confucian tradition, which

© 2007 The Author Religion Compass 1/4 (2007): 455– 478, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2007.00032.x
Confucian Theology: Three Models 457
is Tian, translated most frequently as Heaven, in the early or classical Confucian

tradition, and Tianli, Principle of Heaven in the later or Neo-Confucian
tradition. Throughout twenty-five hundred years of Confucian history, either
Tian or Tianli has been the center of Confucian thought. (Taylor 1998, p. 88)
For Taylor, it is in this sense that we can regard Confucianism as religious.
While I do not necessarily want to go so far as to say that a concept of
the Absolute is the necessary and sufficient condition for a tradition to be
religious, I do attempt to show, in this essay, that there are some serious
Confucian ‘god-talks’.
II. Theology of the Transcendent

Karl Jaspers argues that there was a breakthrough of transcendence in all
cultures of the axial age (Jaspers 1954, p. 100). Many scholars have thus
argued that in early Confucianism, particularly in the Analects, and pre-
Confucius Confucianism, particularly in the Confucian classics The Book
of Poetry and The Book of Documents,1 there are serious discussions of a
transcendent god, shangdi , Lord-on-High, or tian , heaven,
although such a theism has been gradually replaced by secular humanism
in the later development of Confucianism. This of course is not something
new. Some Christian missionaries had brought this to our attention long
time ago. For example, writing in 1603, Matteo Ricci, a Catholic missionary
in China, already claimed that ‘our Lord of Heaven is the Sovereign on
High [Shangdi ] in the Ancient Chinese canonical writings’ (Ricci
1985, p. 123). After citing from The Doctrine of the Mean, The Book of
Poetry, The Book of Documents, The Book of Change, and The Book of Rites,
he confidently claimed that ‘the Sovereign on High and the Lord of
Heaven are different only in name’ (Ricci 1985, p. 125). Speaking in
1880, James Legge, a Protestant Christian missionary, made the same
claim: the two Chinese characters, tian and di , in The Book of Poetry
and The Book of Documents ‘show us the religion of ancient Chinese as
Monotheism’ (Legge 1880, p. 11). In the following, however, I show
focus on some more recent scholarly works.
Benjamin Schwartz, a renowned sinologist, is one of those who apply
Jasper’s idea of the ‘breakthrough of transcendence of the axial age’ to
early Confucianism. In his view, the two pre-Confucius Confucian classics,
The Book of Documents and The Book of Poetry, present ‘the eagerness of
dynastic founders [of Zhou , 1111–249 bc] to conflate tian, who is clearly
associated with the physical heavens, with shangdi’ (Schwartz 1985, p. 44),
the high god of their predecessor Shang [1751–1112 bc] people. By
using the word ‘who’, it is clear that for Schwartz, despite its obvious
association with the physical sky and so its apparent impersonal nature,
tian for the Zhou people is the same personal god as shangdi for the Shang
people. For Schwartz, while we can find in these two books ‘the grouping
toward the identification of Heaven with the ultimate order of things, we
458 Yong Huang
also find passages which lend support to the seventeenth-century Jesuit

missionaries’ interpretation of Heaven in theistic terms’ (Schwartz 1985,
p. 50). In either case, however, ‘heaven’ is clearly in a category that sets
‘him’ far beyond the ancestral and natural spirits. The message the dynastic
founders of Zhou tried to send, in Schwartz’s view, is that the high god,
whether called shangdi or tian, is ‘in no way bound to any royal lineage’
(Schwartz 1985, p. 50). In other words, these dynastic founders were
eager to provide a divine justification of the new dynasty and regard the
succession of Shang by Zhou as the mandate of heaven or shangdi. Thus,
Zhou founders had a clear pragmatic agenda in their appeal to heaven/
shangdi as the personal God on high. However, Schwartz also points out
that this does not mean that they do not have an intrinsic religious faith,
as they are also cautious about preserving the mandate of heaven to avoid
their own dynasty ending in misfortune.
Benjamin Schwartz believes that ‘heaven’ is also the central religious
idea later in the Confucian Analects. As Confucius himself claims that he
is a transmitter rather than a renovator, Schwartz argues that ‘heaven’ in
the Analects is consistent with ‘heaven’ in these two pre-Confucius classics.
Schwartz argues that ‘heaven’ in the Analects is often ‘treated as a conscious
being concerned not only with the human order in general, but even
with the Master’s own mission in particular’ (Schwartz 1985, p. 122).
Here he particularly alerts us to a few Analects passages, where Confucius
tells us that it is heaven that knows him (Analects 14.37) and produces the
courage in him when he is in danger (Analects 7.22); that people cannot
destroy a pattern that heaven does not intend to destroy (Analects 9.5); and
that he is puzzled by the inscrutable ways of heaven (Analects 3.24).
On this basis, Schwartz argues against those who intend to see Confucius’
‘heaven’ as an impersonal order of nature. On the one hand, such an
interpretation cannot do justice with the above Analects passages. On the
other hand, the passage, Analects 3.24, that seems to provide support for
such a naturalistic interpretation can also be interpreted differently. In the
passage in question, Confucius asks rhetorically, ‘What does Heaven say?
Yet the four seasons run their course through it and the hundred creatures
are born through it. What does Heaven say?’ In appearance, the passage
‘seems to suggest that nature is, as it were, an “emanation” of Heaven.
Unlike the God of the Hebrew Bible, Heaven does not speak’ (Schwartz
1985, p. 123). However, in Schwartz’s view, first, here Confucius is replying
to his student’s question why he prefers not to speak, and so ‘it is not
fundamentally focused on Heaven but on Confucius himself ’ (Schwartz
1985, p. 123); second, a world, both natural and human, governed by the
unspoken routines, regularities, generative processes of nature, rituals, and
habits of good behavior ‘would decidedly not be a mindless or spiritless
world,’ even though heaven does not speak (Schwartz 1985, pp. 124 – 5);
and third, it is not true that the transcendent god of the Bible ‘must
constantly “speak” to maintain the regular course of nature. God is also
praised as the author of the ordered and regular aspects of the world’
(Schwartz 1985, p. 125).
This is also an approach taken by Julia Ching. Recognizing that there
is a gradual transition in the Confucian tradition from the earlier theistic
belief to the later philosophical interpretation of the Absolute, Ching
claims that the early Confucianism is clearly theistic. In examining the
theism in early Confucianism, Ching focuses on the similar texts as
Schwartz does. However, with her Christian background, Ching is more
interested in comparing and contrasting the Confucian shangdi and heaven
with Christian God. In Ching’s view, just like Christian God, Confucian
shangdi or heaven is also regarded as the Creator. Acknowledging that
Confucianism does not have a doctrine of creation, Ching claims that ‘the
Confucian Classics clearly enunciate a belief in God as the source and
principle of all things, the giver of life and the protector of the human
race’ (Ching 1977, p. 118). To substantiate her claim, Ching cites a speech
attributed to King Wu, the founder of Zhou dynasty, in the Book of
Documents: ‘Heaven-and-Earth is the Father-and-Mother of the Myriad
creatures’; as well as a verse of the Book of Poetry: ‘Heaven gave birth to
the multitude of the people’ (Ching 1977, p. 118).
More similar to Christian God, Ching claims, is the Confucian shangdi/
heaven regarded as the lord of history. In Confucianism, ‘God has not
created man in order to neglect him. God is always with man – especially
with the good ruler, who is repeatedly told to “have no doubt nor
anxiety, because the Lord-on-High is with you” ’ (Ching 1977, p. 120).
Ching argues that, on the one hand, the rulership itself is derived from
heaven, as the following passage in the Book of Documents attests: ‘Heaven,
to protect the inferior people, made for them rulers, made for them
teachers, that they may be able to assist the Lord-on-High, to secure the
peace of the four quarters [of the Earth]’ (Ching 1977, p. 120); on the
other hand, Heaven gives rulers instructions to rule, as the following verse
the lord said to King Wen in the Book of Poetry makes clear: ‘Be not like
those who reject this and cling to that; Be not like those who are ruled
by their likings and desires’ (Ching 1977, p. 120).
The third similarity is between Confucian Mandate of Heaven and
Christian Will of God. For Ching, it is true that Confucius, in the
Analects, does not invoke heaven, unless ‘in moment of distress and crisis,
such as at the death of his favorite disciple (11:8), as a source and principle
of his own virtue and mission (9:5), and witness to the integrity of his
life and actions (7:22)’ (Ching 1977, p. 121). However, Ching argues that
Mandate of Heaven is an important idea in the Analects, which, where
Confucius is concerned, ‘connotes the meaning of “God’s Will” – the will
of a personal God. Confucius speaks it with reverence. Unless one knows
the Will (ming), he says, one cannot be a gentleman, that is, a person of
high moral character (20.3)’ (Ching 1977, p. 122). It is sometimes claimed
that the Confucian heaven is nothing but the will of the people. In
460 Yong Huang
Ching’s view, however, while there is no contradiction between the will

of heaven and the will of people, the difference between the two is made
clear by the following verse in the Book of Documents: ‘Heaven hears
and sees as our people hear and see; Heaven approves and manifests its
awesomeness as our people approve and manifest their awesomeness. The
above and the below reach each other: how reverent must the masters of
the earth be!’ (Ching 1977, p. 121).
However, Ching also notices some significant differences between
Confucian shangdi/heaven and Christian God. First, while also regarding
shangdi/heaven as creator, ‘the Confucian tradition has never developed a
theory of creation ex nihilo’ (Ching 1977, p. 143). Second, while still
clearly referring to the personal god, the word ‘heaven’, which was later
substituted for shangdi, ‘lacks inherently a notion of personality’ (Ching
1977). Third, while the Mandate of Heaven resembles the covenant
between Yahweh and his people, none of the legendary sage kings were
personally deified and claimed ‘to the uniqueness of revelation of the
divine, as did Jesus Christ’ (Ching 1977).
Of such a theistic interpretation of early Confucianism, Roger Ames
and David Hall are staunchest critics. In their view, it is inappropriate to
translate tian as heaven. It is true that di or shangdi was conceived as a
personal deity in the Shang dynasty. However, even di or shangdi rules
‘over the human and natural worlds in a manner analogous to the earthly
ruler’ and therefore is largely this-worldly (Hall & Ames 1987, p. 202). In
contrast, while tian has some religious significance for Zhou people who
conquered the Shang, Ames and Hall claim that ‘there is no written basis
for determining whether or not, or to what extent, tian was held to be a
personal deity’ (Hall & Ames 1987, p. 203) for Zhou people before their
conquering of Shang. They acknowledge that tian later does acquire some
personal features in the attempt of the Zhou people in imitating the
personal relationship of di to the royal houses of Shang. Yet, Hall and
Ames argue that there are two features of tian that make it difficulty to
become a personal deity: (i) tian can also mean ‘sky’; and (ii) it is often
used together with di , earth. In any case, they claim that, from Zhou
to early Confucianism, ‘there is a gradual depersonalization of tian, first
in the relatively early identification of the will of tian with popular con-
sensus, and further in a gradual redefinition of tian as a designation for
the regular pattern discernible in the unfolding processes of existence,’
with the former culminating in the Mencius and the latter in the Xunzi
(Hall & Ames 1987, p. 203).
However, the main concern of Hall and Ames is not about whether
tian is anthropomorphic (personal) or not but whether it is transcendent
or not. On this more crucial issue, they claim that even di or shangdi of
Shang people, to say nothing of tian of Zhou people, is not presented as
a transcendent deity, and so whether tian is personal or not is really not
an important question. Hall and Ames acknowledge that ‘in the Analects,
tian is unquestionably anthropomorphic,’ even though there is a gradual

depersonalization (Hall & Ames 1987, p. 205). However, they argue that
this does not mean that the Confucian tian can be equated with the
Western conception of the deity. The significant difference between the
two is that, while the latter is transcendent, the former is immanent. To
justify their position, they appeal to Analects 17.19, discussed above. In
their view, this passages shows that
[T]ian is not a preexisting creative principle which gives birth to and nurtures
a world independent of itself. Tian is rather a general designation for the
phenomenal world as it emerges of its own accord. Tian is wholly immanent,
having no existence independent of the calculus of phenomena that constitute
it. There is as much validity in asserting that phenomena ‘create’ tian as in
saying that tian creates phenomena; the relationship between tian and phenomena,
therefore, is one of interdependence. (Hall & Ames 1987, p. 207)
In this relation, Hall and Ames argue that tianming, which others trans-
late as the mandate of heaven, for Confucius is not an imperative (ming)
coming from an external and independent source (tian). Rather, ‘ming
constitutes the causal conditions that sponsor the emergence of a particular
human being, or any other phenomenon, and that these conditions are
neither predetermined nor inexorable’ (Hall & Ames 1987, p. 207). 2
In his two recent articles, Kelly James Clark defends the theistic inter-
pretation of the early Confucianism against Ames and Hall’s criticism.
He acknowledges that he makes few pretensions to originality in his
interpretation. Nevertheless, he states that ‘it is worth considering because
of the increasing tendency among sinologists, especially philosophers, to
claim that ancient China had no concept of a personal deity. Hall and
Ames are representative and influential proponents of this view’ (Clark
2005, p. 119). In an article focusing on the theology of Zhou people as
evidenced in The Book of Documents, Clark argues against the naturalistic
interpretation of tian, claiming that ‘Tian functions in precisely the personal
and providential way of Di’ (Clark 2005, p. 124), the supreme personal
god of Shang people. After some detailed comparisons between this
Confucian conception of tian and the Hebrew notion of god, he con-
cludes that there are striking similarities between the two: ‘both traditions
affirmed, or came to affirm, a single, ultimate, and personal source of
both value and power, both beings were deemed worthy of worship’
(Clark 2005, p. 129). In an article focusing on Confucius, Clark argues
that Confucius self-consciously aligns himself with the golden traditions
of the Shang and Zhou dynasties. Thus, Confucius believes in an anthro-
pomorphic Heavenly Emperor, tian. Clark cites Analects 2.4 where Con-
fucius claims that he understood heaven’s mandate at the age of 50 and
thereafter he was able to follow his heart’s desire that is to accord with
heaven’s mandate. Clark argues that Confucius’ belief in heaven as some-
thing transcendent is further supported by many other Analects passages,
462 Yong Huang
such as 7.23, where Confucius claims that heaven itself has endowed him
with virtue; 6.28, where Confucius requests that heaven punish him if he
does anything wrong; 9.6, where Confucius says that if heaven does not
intend that a culture perish, then no one can do anything with it; and
8.18, where Confucius claims that Yao is great because he models himself
on the great heaven. Thus, Clark concludes that Confucius’ heaven is
‘god-like, perhaps in a way that invites comparison to the Western sense’
(Clark 2007).
III. Theology of the Immanently Transcendent

In contrast to the above approach that attempts to find the similarity, parti-
cularly in terms of their transcendent nature, between Confucian heaven and
Christian God, many contemporary Confucians emphasize the difference
between the two. At the same time, however, they also reject a purely
naturalistic interpretation of Confucianism. The result is the now well-
known conception of Confucian tian as ‘immanently transcendent’
(neizai chaoyue ) rather than ‘externally transcendent’ (waizai
chaoyue ). On the one hand, while the Christian God is transcend-
ent of the world (outside of the world), Confucian heaven is immanent
in the world; on the other hand, against those who think that Confucianism
is therefore complicit with the status quo (see Weber 1951, p. 152),
Confucian heaven for contemporary Confucians calls for the transcendence
from what is actual. While the idea of ‘immanent transcendence’ is almost
common to all contemporary Confucians, I shall focus my discussion in
this section on Xiong Shili , Mou Zongsan , and Tu Weiming
, the respective representatives of the three generations of contem-
porary Confucians.
Xiong Shili is perhaps the first contemporary Confucian who develops
the idea of immanent transcendence as an alternative to Western metaphysics
and Christian theology of external transcendence. He complains that,
[W]hen talking about noumenon, many philosophers often regard it as the
opposite of phenomenon. In other words, they see phenomenon as actual and
noumenon as something behind or beyond phenomenon, as the origin of the
phenomenon. This is a mistaken conception originating from some religious
idea, as religion acknowledges that there are both the world with everything
in it and God beyond the world and everything. (Xiong 1985, p. 297)
Against such a dualism of noumenon and phenomenon, Xiong argues

that noumenon, ti , and phenomenon, yong , while different, are not
separate. Noumenon is right within phenomenon, and in this sense it is
immanent. At the same time, however, it is also transcendent, ‘not in the
sense that it can have independent existence in separation from ten thousand
things, but in the sense that it is the substance of these ten thousand
things’ (Xiong 1985, p. 554). As the substance of ten thousand things, it
is transcendent because it is not transformed by the ten thousand things

but is their master: it ‘transcends the surface of things’ (Xiong 1985,
p. 554). In other words, the noumenon as the true nature of things and
human beings, while not outside things and human beings, is not what
things and human beings actually are. It is important for human beings
to transcend the surface, their small selves, to reach the innermost nature,
their great selves.
While using philosophical vocabulary most of the time, Xiong claims
that the noumenon can also be regarded as god, shen , although it is
very different from Christian God. In his view, it is important to distinguish
between two types of god: ‘On the one hand, there is God as the creator
of things. This is a personal God, the God that religious people talk about.
On the other hand, there is God in the sense used in The Doctrine of the
Mean as the substance of everything’ (Xiong 1988, p. 20). In his view,
Confucian heaven is god in the second sense. Since everything has god
as its substance, for any particular thing, including any human being, such
a god is the god as the self-nature of everything (zi xing shen ).
However, to the extent that a thing has not fully realized its own self-
nature, such a god is also the god upon which any particular thing or
human being depends (yi ta shen ).
The idea of Confucian heaven as both transcendent and immanent,
however, is more clearly developed by Xiong’s student, Mou Zongsan.
Commenting on tian in the Book of Poetry, Mou claims that
[T]he Dao of Tian is high above and in this sense it is transcendent. When it
pervades in human beings, it is also internal to human beings as their nature
and in this sense it is also immanent. . . . The Dao of Tian is both transcendent
and immanent and so is of both religious and moral implications: religion
emphasizes the transcendence, while morality the immanence. (Mou 1997, p. 21)
It is not entirely clear what Mou precisely means here. One possible
interpretation is that the transcendent tian, being ‘high above’, is outside
human beings and other things. However, it can be manifested in human
beings and so is also immanent. Thus, by saying that tian is both tran-
scendent and immanent, Mou says nothing but that the transcendent tian
is also involved in human affairs. If this is the case, then such a view is
not much different from Christian conception of god. As pointed out by
Benedict Hung-biu Kwok, even the most radical Christian understanding
of transcendence of god does not ‘reject the possibility of the involvement
of God in the world. The aim of their radical understanding of transcendence
is to interpret God as not one of the beings in the world’ (Kwok 1999,
pp. 25–36). However, Mou himself claims that the Confucian conception
of tian as both transcendent and immanent is radically different from
Christian conception of god as totally transcendent.
So either Mou has misunderstood the Christian conception of god, as implied
by Kwok in his response to Liu Shuxian , another contemporary
464 Yong Huang
Confucian who has also written extensively about immanent transcendence;

or Mou means something different by the immanent transcendence of
tian. My view is that the latter is true. Tian for Mou, obviously, does not
mean sky and so, just like Christian God, is not one of the beings in the
world. However, unlike Christian God, tian is not something outside the
world either. It is within human beings (which is the particular Confucian
concern) and other beings in the world. So it is truly immanent. At the
same time, although tian, as the ontological substance or reality, is immanent
in every human being as the human nature, a human being on the
phenomenal level is not identical with its metaphysical nature. In Mou’s
view, this immanent transcendence of tian is made most clear by Mencius’
statement that ‘the one who can fully realize one’s heart/mind can understand
one’s nature, and the one who can understand one’s own nature can know
Tian’ (Mencius 7a1; see Mou 1997, p. 6). The fact that one can acquire
knowledge of tian by fulfilling one’s heart/mind and knowing about one’s
nature shows that tian is right within each of us. However, before we fulfil
our heart/mind and know our nature, tian still appears transcendent to us.
When citing Max Müller’s statement that ‘a human being itself is potentially
a God, a God one presently ought to become,’ Mou comments that ‘this
is particularly true. It reflects the idea of humans as God in Eastern
religions (in Confucianism, it is the idea that “everyone can become a
sage”; and in Buddhism, it is notion that “everyone can become Buddha”)’
(Mou 1996, p. 184). So what is important for everyone is to transcend
the phenomenal level to reach his/her inner nature: tian.3
It is here that Mou makes an important distinction between Christianity
and Confucianism. Christianity does not ask one to become a Christ but
only a Christian, a follower of Jesus, as the nature of Christ is not only
fully human but also entirely divine, while the nature of human beings
lacks the divinity. In contrast, ‘Confucian sages teach people how to
become sages and worthy people and not merely their followers’ (Mou
1997, p. 29). The reason is that the sage is the one in whom tian is fully
manifested as his nature. However, tian is inherent in everyone and so
everyone can become a sage. Thus, for Mou, Confucianism as a religion
is primarily a religion of morality, ‘a religion of fulfillment of virtues’
(cheng de zhi jiao ), the highest goal of which ‘is to become a
sage, a person of ren, and a great person. Its true meaning lies in seeking
the infinite and complete meaning in a finite life. This is at once morality
and religion’ (Mou 1996, p. 6). Similarly, for Mou, Confucian theology
is primarily a moral theology (see Mou 1996, p. 10). Here, the individual
life is finite. However, the reality or substance in virtue of which one
becomes moral is infinite. This infinite reality is nothing but tian, the
Confucian god. Thus, in order to become a sage, a person of ren, or a great
person, one need transcend one’s finiteness to reach the infinite, the Dao
of Tian, which is the transcendent ground of moral life as well as the
ground of cosmic processes. It is in this sense that the Dao of Tian is
transcendent. Of course, it is not outside the finite human lives and other
finite beings but lies right within them. It is in this sense that it is also
immanent.
Tu Weiming, a student of Mou, further develops this type of god-talk.
He argues against the interpretation of Confucianism as atheism on the
one hand and as a religion of externally transcendent god on the other.
In his view, ‘the former significantly limits Confucian thought and ignores
its many vital sources, while the latter unilaterally transplants the religiosity
of one particular culture to Confucianism’ (Tu 1999, p. 43). The unique
Confucian religiosity for Tu is its immanent transcendence in contrast to
external transcendence in Christian theology. Tu believes that tian for
Confucius ‘is not an objective and external God’; it is rather the ‘tran-
scendent substance’ immanent in human (as well as natural) world (Tu
2002, p. 343). For this reason, he argues that
[A] person is in this world and yet does not belong to this world. He regards
this secular world as divine only because he realizes the divine value in this
secular world. Here the secular world in which the divinity is manifested is
not a world separate from the divinity, and the divinity manifested in the
secular is not some Ideal externally transcendent of the secular world. (Tu
1999, p. 45)
Since the Confucian divinity is right within humanity, Tu makes the

seemingly paradoxical but actually profound claim: ‘the more you can
penetrate into your own inner sources, the more you can transcend yourself.
This is what Mencius means by “digging a well to reach the source of
water” [Mencius 7a29]’ (Tu 2002, p. 345). This inner source for Tu is
nothing but tian as divinity. Therefore a person who reached the inner
source has transcended its phenomenal self.
As the phenomenal self is not the true self and the true self can be
reached only by transcending the phenomenal self, the true self, the true
humanity, is not different from divinity that resides in every human being.
It is in this sense that Tu defines Confucian religiosity as the ‘ultimate
self-transformation as a communal act and as a faithful dialogical response to the
transcendent’ and claims that ‘this is also Confucian prescription for learning
to be human’ (Tu 1989, p. 94). As true humanity is identical to divinity,
Tu emphasizes that this ultimate self-transformation does not aim to go
beyond humanity but to realize it as completely as possible. Here, Tu
argues that ‘the general diagnosis and prognosis that the Confucian offers
is deceptively simple: we are not what we ought to be but what we ought
to be is inherent in the structure of what we are’ (Tu 1989, p. 98). 4 To
use the Mencian analogy again, the entire source of water, the transcendent
tian, is within us, and it is up to us to dig deep into this source. Here, Tu
argues that it is indeed blasphemous ‘to suggest that the full meaning of
Heaven can be embodied in our humanity’ and so it is also blasphemous
to claim that we can embody our humanity in its all embracing fullness.
466 Yong Huang
However, what he means is not that the divinity only partially resides
within; we cannot fully embody heaven, just as we cannot fully touch
the source of water, although the heaven is fully within us, just as the
whole source of water is under our foot. However, even though we
cannot fully embody heaven in our humanity, Tu claims that ‘our inborn
ability to respond to the bidding of Heaven impels us to extend our
human horizon continuously so that the immanent in our nature assumes
a transcendent dimension’ and we can become increasingly human (Tu
1989, p. 97). By emphasizing the ‘faithful dialogical response to the tran-
scendent’ and ‘response to the bidding of Heaven’, Tu attempts to show
that this human self that undertakes cultivation and transformation is at
the same time the transcendent Heaven. Without the bidding of this
transcendent heaven, human self is merely a phenomenal self and will be
unwilling ‘to open up to the dimension of reality,’ which is ‘a fulfillment
of humanity as well as an answer to the Mandate of Heaven’ (Tu 1989,
p. 97).
In this connection, Tu also makes a contrast between Confucianism and
Christianity in terms of their respective religious experiences with the
Ultimate. In Tu’s view, as Christian God is an externally transcendent
being, ‘there is a huge and unsurmountable gap between humans and
God. Therefore one has to rely upon faith’ in order to know God (Tu
1999, p. 57). In contrast, as the transcendent divinity is immanent within
humans, one can obtain knowledge of divinity through one’s inner
experience, tizhi , one of Tu’s favorite ideas. Tu’s notion of tizhi is
fundamentally related to Zhang Zai’s (1020 –1077) knowledge of/as
virtue (de xing zhi zhi ) in contrast to knowledge from hearing
and seeing (wen jian zhi zhi ). While the latter is merely intel-
lectual, the former is also affectional: the one who has knowledge of/as
virtue is committed to act according to such knowledge. Using tizhi to
characterize the knowledge of/as virtue, Tu explains why there is such a
difference between these two types of knowledge:
The Confucian tizhi is not empirical knowledge commonly understood. It is
something known and justified by oneself, similar to the Chan Buddhist idea.
We can obtain such knowledge because we are both affectional and rational
animals. It is the knowledge upon which human religiosity ultimately depends.
(Tu 1999, pp. 57–8)
In other words, the inner experience through which one obtains such
knowledge is not merely experience of mind (rational) but also experience
of heart (affectional).
This conception of immanent transcendence has been under some
severe criticisms, particularly from Roger Ames and David Hall in the
English-speaking world and Feng Yaoming in the Chinese-speaking
world.5 Hall and Ames’s criticism starts from a definition of strict tran-
scendence. In their view,
[S]trict transcendence may be understood as follows: a principle, A, is tran-

scendent with respect to that, B, which it serves as principle if the meaning or
import of B cannot be fully analyzed and explained without recourse to A, but
the reverse is not true. (Hall & Ames 1987, p. 13)
With this strict sense of transcendence, the idea of ‘immanent transcendence’
becomes self-contradictory. In their view, this idea makes some sense only
if we use ‘transcendence’ in a weak and informal sense, ‘meaning simply
the ideal that functions in relation to actual affairs,’ with no ‘ontological
claim to the effect that the ideal is an existent independent of and
unaffected by the actual’ (Hall & Ames 1998, p. 226). For this reason,
they argue that, for Mou Zongsan, ‘there must be an explicit rejection of
any notion of radical otherness or ontological disparity between what he
calls the immanent and transcendent or the moral and religious aspects of
that process’ (Hall & Ames 1998, p. 224).
Feng makes a similar criticism of the notion of immanent transcend-
ence. Feng argues that this notion cannot serve to disclose the unique
feature of Chinese philosophy in general and Confucian philosophy in
particular, as it is also common to the pantheistic and mystic traditions in
both India and the West (Feng 2003, pp. 195, 234). More importantly,
however, Feng argues that the notion of immanent transcendence itself is
problematic:
When a substance is regarded as something transcendent, it should be non-spatial
and non-temporal; it should be without generation and destruction. However,
when it is regarded as immanent, it seems unlikely that it is not limited by
space and time or not subject to generation and destruction. (Feng 2003,
p. 235)
If the transcendent heaven is immanent in humans as their nature, then
what happens when a particular human being dies? Does the Heaven
immanent in that person as his/her nature still exist? If it no longer exists,
then it is entirely immanent and not transcendent at all; if it still exists,
then it becomes difficult to understand how human nature can exist
without human beings (see Feng 2003, p. 238). So in Feng’s view, ‘imma-
nent transcendence’ as a theological or metaphysical substance, as it is the
case with Xiong Shili, is inherently problematic. Contemporary Confucians
can avoid this problem only if it is either used as an a priori concept or as
a tool of moral cultivation. While immanent transcendence may serve as
a tool of moral cultivation in Tu Weimin, it is an epistemological idea in
Mou Zongsan. In Feng’s view, as transcendence for Mou means universality
and necessity, more appropriately understood, it is something not transcendent
but transcendental in Kant’s sense. In other words, just like Kant’s time
and space and the twelve categories, ‘immanent transcendence’ is merely
the a priori condition for us to experience the phenomenal world.6 However,
understood either epistemologically or morally, the idea of immanent
transcendence, as it has lost its original meaning, cannot be used to
468 Yong Huang
characterize the Confucian heaven in contrast to Christian God, which is

supposed to be externally transcendent.
These two criticisms share the view that ‘immanent transcendence’ as
an ontological, metaphysical, or theological idea is self-contradictory.
However, it is clear that, not only in Xiong, but also in Mou and Tu, it
does have such a meaning, in addition to their possible epistemological and
moral meanings. For this reason, some other contemporary Confucians
have responded to these criticisms. Li Minghui , for example,
points out that it is true that in Hall and Ames’s strict sense, transcendence
and immanence are mutually exclusive and the notion of ‘immanent
transcendence’ is self-contradictory. However, the question is whether
contemporary Confucians use these two terms in such a strict sense. Li’s
answer is of course negative. Li acknowledges that, ‘when contemporary
new Confucians regard Heaven or Dao as transcendent principle and
reality, by transcendence, they also mean “going beyond the status quo”
or “idealness” ’ (Li 2001, p. 130). In other words, transcendence refers to
what is ideal and infinite, while immanence refers to the actual and
finite. However, Li emphasizes that this moral dimension of ‘immanent
transcendence’ is inseparable from its religious dimension, which is
ontological, metaphysical, or theological. Robert Neville, a self-claimed
Boston Confucian, also argues against Hall and Ames’s notion of strict
transcendence. In his view, in this strict sense of transcendence, nothing,
including those Hall and Ames use as examples of strict transcendence,
such as god, a Platonic form, the unmoved mover, a classical atom, a
decisive will, can be regarded as transcendent, as none of them can be
‘explained in itself ’, but ‘only in its explanatory function’ (Neville 2000,
p. 150), since ‘one can say nothing about them apart from their functions
in founding the cosmos’ (Neville 2000, p. 149).
In response to Feng Yaoming’s criticism, Liu Shuxian, another repre-
sentative of the third generation of contemporary Confucians, argues that
the notion of ‘immanent transcendence’, while not unique to Confucianism,
can at least disclose the difference between Confucianism and Christianity:
as ‘Christian God creates the world and is not part of this world and so
it is an “external transcendence,” while Confucian Dao of Heaven is
metaphysical and in this sense is transcendent, but it also pervades the
world and so it is “immanent transcendence” ’ (Liu 1996, p. 102). In Liu’s
view, such an understanding of transcendence and immanence can also
avoid what Feng regards as the inherent problem of the notion of immanent
transcendence, as it seems perfectly right to say that the Dao of Heaven,
as metaphysical reality pervading the world, is both immanent in and
transcendent of the world. Liu acknowledges that this is a complicated
notion, but he argues that so is the Christian notion of God as externally
transcendent: ‘if God is indeed “the wholly other” and has nothing similar
to the world, how can people in the world have any knowledge of it?’
(Liu 1996, p. 103).
IV. Theology of Creativity
In recent years, I have tried to provide an alternative approach to Con-

fucian theology, based on my interpretation of Neo-Confucianism in
Song and Ming periods, particularly its founding brothers, Cheng
Hao (1032–1085) and Cheng Yi (1033 –1107) (Huang 2004,
2005). Instead of regarding the divinity in Confucianism as some thing,
some entity, some substance, that acts and gives birth to everything in the
universe, whether immanent in or transcendent of the world, I argue that
the Confucian god is the activity, the life-giving activity (sheng ), the
creativity, of the world to transcend itself. In other words, like the above
approach undertaken by many contemporary Confucians, I also argue that
the ultimate reality in Confucianism is both transcendent and immanent;
unlike that approach, however, I argue that the ultimate reality in Con-
fucianism is not a reified thing (whatever thing it may be regarded as),
but is a de-reified activity.
Neo-Confucianism refers to what Chinese call the learning of li ,
which has been variously translated as ‘form’, ‘law’, ‘reason’, ‘pattern’,
‘organism’, and most commonly ‘principle’. Of course, the term li is not
a creation of the Cheng brothers. However, it is in the Chengs that li not
only obtains, for the first time, the central place in Confucianism but is
also regarded as the ultimate reality of the universe. Cheng Yi, for example,
claims that ‘only because there actually is li can there actually be a thing;
only because there actually is a thing can there actually be a function’
(Cheng & Cheng, p. 1160; hereafter references to this work will be
indicated with page numbers only); and ‘all ten thousand things under
heaven can be explained by li’ (p. 193). So for the Chengs, li is ontologically
prior to things. It explains not only how a thing exists but also why a
thing is such a particular thing instead of something else. If there is no li,
there can be no things; things can exist because of li. It is in this sense
that the Chengs uses li interchangeably with many other terms that have
been commonly used to refer to the ultimate reality in the Confucian
tradition. For example, Cheng Hao claims that the ultimate reality, which
does not have any sensible quality, ‘is called change (yi ) with respect
to its reality; is called dao with respect to its li ; is called divinity
(shen ) with respect to its function; and is called nature (xing ) with
respect to it as the destiny in a person’ (p. 4). Cheng Yi also states that
‘with respect to li it is called heaven (tian ); with the respect to endow-
ment, it is called nature, and with the respect to its being in a person, it
is called heart/mind (xin)’ (p. 296). In these passages the Chengs regard
li as identical to dao, nature, heart/mind, divinity, change, and heaven
among others.
In terms of the relationship between li and ten thousand things, it is
sometimes claimed that there is some similarity between the Cheng
brothers’ li and Plato’s ‘form’. It is true that in the sense that both ‘form’
470 Yong Huang
and li are ontologically prior to things, they are indeed similar. However,
it is important to not ignore a fundamental difference between the two.
In Plato, while everything must partake in a form, a form does not have
to exist in a thing. This is made most clear in his analogy of image or
reflection. A shadow of a tree cannot exist without a tree of which it is
a shadow; yet a tree can exist without any shadows. However, for the
Chengs, while li is indeed ontologically prior to things, it does not exist
outside things. To use the language in the previous section, we may say
that Plato’s ‘form’ is externally transcendent, while the Chengs’ li is
immanently transcendent. This is better understood through their view
about the relationship between li and vital force (qi ), of which actual
things are made. In Chengs’ view, li or dao cannot be outside qi. Com-
menting on the statement in the Book of Change that ‘the unceasing
transition between yin and yang is dao,’ Cheng Yi claims that ‘dao is
not yin and yang. Dao is the unceasing transition between yin and yang’
(p. 67). Here, although he says that li or dao is not the qi of yin and yang,
he also states that li is the unceasing transition between yin and yang. It is
then clear that li cannot be outside these vital forces. Cheng Yi further
argues that ‘there is no dao if there is no yin and yang. The becoming so of
qi is dao. Yin and yang are qi and so is physical, while dao is metaphysical’
(p. 162). Such an interpretation is confirmed by the Chengs’ view on the
relationship of a related pair of concepts: dao and qi (instrument or a
concrete thing). Regarding the distinction between the two, Cheng Hao
quotes the Book of Change: ‘what is metaphysical or above the form (xing
er shang ) is called dao, while what is physical or below the form
(xing er xia ) is called concrete thing’ (p. 119). Although it is
important, for the Chengs, to make the distinction between dao as the
metaphysical and qi as physical and emphasize the ontological priority of
the former over the latter, they also emphasized their inseparability:
‘outside dao there are no things and outside things there is no dao’ (p. 73).
What is then li that ontologically determines qi and qi and yet
is temporally and spatially inseparable from them? Li in the Cheng brothers
is primarily not some thing, but the activity of things. According to Xu
Heng’s Explanation of Script and Elucidation of Characters (Shuo wen jie
zi ), li originally is a verb, meaning to work on jade. As jade is
a gemstone with veins and clouds of varying colors, a carver has to be
adept at following the veining. Chen Rongjie (Wing-tsit Chan),
noticing this original meaning, argues that the meaning of li has since
undergone through a transition from the physical (xing er xia) meaning of
‘governing’ in ancient classics to its metaphysical meaning of ‘pattern’ in
Neo-Confucianism, a transition from its use as a verb to its use as a noun
(Chen 1991, p. 57). However, the transition of its use from a verb to a
noun, if there is indeed such a transition, really indicates the reification
of li as some thing, as it is originally not a thing but an activity. From the
Heideggerian point of view, nothing reified can be regarded as metaphysical
in its true sense. Even god conceived as the absolute being, however
different it is from any other beings, is still some thing, and in this sense
is still xing er xia (below the form), whose ontological or metaphysical
being still needs to be explained. It is my contention that the unique
contribution of the Cheng brothers is precisely to de-reify the Confucian
idea of the ultimate reality by their unique interpretation of the term li.
In other words, li used in the Cheng brothers is still a verb meaning some
activity, not a noun referring to some thing. For example, illustrating what
he means by ‘nowhere between heaven and earth is there no dao’ (p. 73),
Cheng points out that
[I]n the relation of father and son, to be father and son lies in affection; in the
relation of king and minister, to be king and minister lies in seriousness
(reverence). From these to being husband and wife, being elder and younger,
being friends, there is no activity that is not dao. That is why we cannot be
separated from dao even for a second. (Chen 1991, pp. 73–4)
It is in this sense that in his commentary on the Book of Change, Cheng
Yi complains that ‘Confucians in the past have all seen the heart/mind of
the heaven and earth as something quiet. They did not know that it is the
origin of activity that is the heart/mind of heaven and earth’ (p. 819).
Yet what exactly do the Chengs mean by activity? It is the life-giving
activity (sheng ). Cheng Hao, for example, claims that ‘the reason we
say that ten thousand things form one body is that they all have this li. It
all comes from this fact. “The unceasing life-giving activity is called
change.” It is right in this life-giving activity that li is complete’ (p. 33).
His brother Cheng Yi concurs: ‘li as the life-giving activity is natural and
ceaseless’ (p. 167). The Chengs believe that the existence of ten thousand
things is due to li precisely because the life-giving activity of ten thousand
things is ontologically prior to the ten thousand things that have the
life-giving activity. Without the life-giving activity, the ten thousand
things will be nothing, as they would lack the act of ‘to be’. Of course,
for the Chengs the life-giving activity is always the life-giving activity of
ten thousand things, and the ten thousand things are always things that
have the life-giving activity. As we have seen, the Chengs idenitified li
with many other things that have traditionally been regarded as the
ultimate reality of the world. In their view, this is also because all these
terms have the same meaning of the life-giving activity. Regarding dao
and tian, Cheng Hao, commenting on the statement from the Book of
Change that ‘the unceasing life-giving activity is called change,’ makes it
clear that ‘this [the unceasing life-giving activity] is how tian can be dao.
Tian is dao only because it is the life-giving activity’ (p. 29). With this,
his brother Cheng Yi completely agrees: ‘dao is the natural life-giving
activity of ten thousand things. A thing’s coming into being in the spring
and its growing in the summer are both dao as the life-giving activity. . . .
Dao is the unceasing natural life-giving activity’ (p. 149). Regarding the
472 Yong Huang
heart/mind, both of humans and of heaven and earth, they claim that ‘the
heart/mind is nothing but the dao of the life-giving activity. Because of
this heart/mind, one’s body is born. The heart/mind of commiseration
is the human Dao as the life-giving activity’ (p. 274); and ‘the heart/
mind resembles the seed of grain. Its li as life-giving activity is ren’
(p. 184). Cheng Hao explains xing (human nature) also in terms of
life-giving activity, particularly in his interpretation of Gaozi’s
sheng zhi wei xing in the Mencius. This phrase of four Chinese
characters originally means ‘what one is born with is the human nature.’
However, Cheng Hao, relating it to the statement from the Book of Change
that ‘the greatest virtue of heaven and earth is the life-giving activity,’
explains: ‘the most spectacular aspect of things is their atmosphere of
life-giving activity’ (p. 120). Therefore, this phrase, to Cheng Hao, no
longer means ‘what one is born with is human nature’ but ‘one’s life-giving
activity (sheng) is the human nature.’
My claim is that Chengs’ doctrine of li can be properly regarded as a
Neo-Confucian theology. To make this claim, it is important to examine
the role of another important idea of the Chengs’: shen , which can be
literally translated as divinity or god. It is true that sometimes shen,
particularly in Cheng Yi, means spirit and so often goes together with
ghost as in the phrase guishen . Yet, as we have seen earlier, the
Chengs do also use shen in a different sense to refer to the same ultimate
reality referred to by such terms as heaven, li, dao, and nature. For example,
talking about heaven, Cheng Hao claims that ‘its reality (ti ) is change,
its li is dao, and its appearance is shen . . .’ (p. 4). Cheng Yi relates shen
to human nature and argues that ‘shen and human nature are always
together’ (p. 64). In this sense, shen is obviously not the physical vital force
but is the metaphysical reality: the life-giving activity. In their view, ‘the
reason that it is cold in the winter and it is hot in the summer is yin and
yang; the reason of change and movement is shen. So shen does not have
a location and change does not have a body’ (p. 121). Here shen is clearly
distinguished from qi. Shen does not have a location, as change does not
have a body, because both refer to the life-giving activity. While things
that act have locations and bodies, the act of things does not.
However, if shen is indeed a metaphysical and ontological idea, in what
sense can we regard it as theological? The reason that the Chengs use
‘shen’ to refer to the Confucian ultimate reality is to illustrate the two
related aspects of the life-giving activity: the mysterious wonderfulness
(miao) and the unpredictability or incomprehensibility. For example,
Cheng Hao states that ‘tian is nothing but li. We call it shen to refer to the
wonderful mystery of li in ten thousand things, just as we call it lord (di )
to emphasize its being the ruler of events’ (p. 132); and ‘the mysterious
wonderfulness of transformation is what is meant by shen’ (p. 121). With
this Cheng Yi agrees: ‘when the qi is complete, the li is straight; and when
the li is straight, there will be impartiality, and when the impartiality is
complete, it is shen’ (p. 597), as ‘shen means the extreme mysterious

wonderfulness’ (p. 64). It appears mysterious and wonderful to us, because
it is beyond our comprehension and anticipation. Cheng Hao, for example,
claims that ‘the unceasing life-giving activity is called change, and the
unpredictability of the change is called shen’ (p. 133). To illustrate the
life-giving activity as mysteriously wonderful, the Chengs provide us with
some examples: ‘being swift without hurrying and reaching destiny
without moving is what one has to ponder deeply in order to understand
and for this reason we use shen to describe it’ (p. 121). It is natural for us
to think that we have to hurry in order to be fast and we have to travel
in order to arrive somewhere. When the life-giving activity is fast without
hurrying and reaches destiny without moving, it is beyond our under-
standing, and it becomes something mysterious and wonderful at the same
time. Similarly, in Cheng’s view, ‘the heaven-li is to have things done
without action and to reach a goal without walking’ (p. 215). From our
human point view, we need to do something in order to get something
done, and so when we see things getting done without any efforts of
doing them observed, we regard it as mysteriously wonderful.
Of course, the life-giving activity appears to be mysterious and incom-
prehensible only to common people but not to sages, because sages, or
rather the activities of sages, are identical to the life-giving activity itself.
Cheng Hao, for example, states that ‘sages are no different from heaven
and earth’ (p. 17); and Cheng Yi also claims that ‘the shen of sages is the
same as tian. How can they be different? That is why they can hit the
mean without trying hard and understand things without thinking. Their
heart/mind is no different from heaven and earth’ (p. 22). In other words,
when one becomes a sage, one can understand the life-giving activity of
ten thousand things and so can act naturally in light of this cosmic life-giving
activity. It is for this reason that Cheng Hao argues that ‘sages are selfless’
(p. 126) and Cheng Yi concurs that ‘sages are faultless’ (p. 364). Of course,
sages do have emotions as common people do, but
[T]hey are happy with things that one should be happy with, and are angry at
things that one should be angry at. Thus, a sage’s being happy or angry does
not depend upon his own mind but upon the things he is happy with or angry
at. (p. 461)
Because of this, not only the life-giving activity as the ultimate reality is
not mysterious to sages, but the activities of sages appear mysteriously
wonderful and incomprehensible to us common people. For example, we
common people cannot understand how ‘sages never try to memorize anything
and yet can remember everything’ (p. 64). So when explaining Mencius’
statement that, ‘when beyond one’s understanding, sages are shen,’ Cheng
Yi points out that ‘this does not mean that shen is above sages. Shen is
merely sages beyond our understanding. This means that sages’ behaviors
are so mysteriously wonderful that we cannot anticipate’ (p. 177).
474 Yong Huang
If shen does have this meaning of mysterious wonderfulness and unpre-

dictability, can we appropriately regard it as divinity or even god in the
Western sense? It is true that this conception of shen is very different from
the traditional Judea-Christian conception of god as some thing that is
beyond, beneath, or behind ten thousand things in this world. However,
some contemporary Christian theologians have questioned the plausibility
of such a deified conception of god and the resultant two-story world
picture. For example, the Harvard theologian Gordon Kaufman points
out that
[T]here do not seem to be any compelling reasons any longer which can be
cited in its favor. . . . Indeed, it is not clear just what counts as a reason for
speaking of the existence and nature of some being – a cosmic agent – who
exists on the other side of a metaphysical divide as absolute as that supposed
to obtain between the creator and creation. (Kaufman 1993, p. 272)7
Thus, instead of conceiving god as creator, Kaufman suggests that we
should conceive god as creativity, that is, ‘the evolutionary and historical
processes which produces us’, as well as the cosmic processes in which the
evolutional and historical processes take place (Kaufman 1993, p. 330). By
such a reconception, Kaufman aims to underscore this important fact:
‘change is more fundamental than structure: all structures come into being
in the course of time and eventually pass away again in time’ (Kaufman
1993, p. 252).8
It is interesting to see that Kaufman here also focuses on the idea of
change that the Cheng brothers borrow from the Book of Change in their
discussion of li. As these cosmic, evolutionary, and historical processes or
the creativity exhibited in them is something that cannot be completely
understood by us, Kaufman regards it as a serendipitous creativity. To
illustrate the serendipitous creativity, Kaufman talks about its being in
history:
The tendency in history to produce more than was intended by the women
and men acting in and through them, the tendency to outrun human expectations
and purposes. Although the movements of history are shaped in many ways by
human decisions and actions, much more is going on in them than simply the
realization of deliberate human intentions. (Kaufman 1993, p. 273)
To illustrate this serendipitous creativity, Kaufman uses such examples:
Columbus intended to find an easier way to India but unexpectedly
discovered America; a group of Dutch settlers intended to found New
Amsterdam, which, beyond their expectation, developed into the modern
New York City; King John signed the Magna Charta to guarantee certain
feudal rights but, without his anticipation, it became the foundation of
constitutional liberties and modern democracy. Because god as creativity
is serendipitous, Kaufman claims that god is ultimately a mystery (see
Kaufman 1993, p. 312). Understood as such a serendipitous creativity,
we can see why the life-giving activity in the Chengs is nothing but the
life-giving activity of ten thousand things including us human beings and

yet appears to us mysteriously wonderful and incomprehensible.
V. Concluding Remarks
In the above, I have presented three models of theological interpretation
of Confucian tradition, particular its conception of heaven. In presenting
these three models, no claim is made as to whether such theological
interpretations are any more authentically Confucian than other interpre-
tations of the Confucian tradition, religious or non-religious. It does
show, I believe, that there is at least some legitimacy in talking about
‘Confucian theology’. Also, in presenting these three models, no claim is
made as to which of the three is the best candidate for Confucian
theology. Perhaps Confucian theology itself is pluralistic. From the
perspective of comparative theology, however, the first model, which
emphasizes the Confucian heaven as something more or less similar to the
Judea-Christian God: both personal and (externally) transcendent, has less
to contribute and may suffer the same problem that Kaufman claims the
traditional Christian theology suffers.7 In contrast, the second and third
models can provide a viable alternative to this traditional thinking by
reconciling the transcendental and the immanent dimensions of the
ultimate reality, the heaven. As we have seen, the second model regards
Confucian heaven as something that is immanent in the world as its
ultimate reality and yet has the ability to transcend the world, thus
forming a contrast with Christian God. The third model is similar to the
second one in the sense that it also regards the Confucian heaven as both
immanent in and transcendent of the world, but it becomes different as
it regards the Confucian heaven, not as a reality that has the transcending
activity, but as the activity, the life-giving activity, the creativity itself. In
other words, in the second model, the transcendent heaven is regarded as
the nature or essence of the ten thousand things, including, human
beings; in this sense, we can say that it is essentialist. In the second model,
however, the transcendent heaven is seen as the life-giving activity of the
ten thousand things, including human beings; in this sense, it is existentialist.9
Short Biography
Yong Huang is a Professor of Philosophy at Kutztown University of
Pennsylvania. He is editor of Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy and
serves as Co-chair of Columbia University Seminar on Neo-Confucian
Studies. His research interests include philosophy of religion, philosophical
and religious ethics, and Chinese and comparative philosophy. As author
of Religious Goodness and Political Rightness: Beyond the Liberal and Commu-
nitarian Debate in the Harvard Theological Studies series (2001), he has
also published in Philosophy Today, Philosophy and Social Criticism, Religious
476 Yong Huang
Studies, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Journal of Law and

Religion, Journal of Chinese Philosophy, Philosophy East and West, Asian Philosophy,
etc., as well as a number of anthologies. He is completing a book
manuscript on the Cheng brothers. He received his BA (1982) from East
China Normal University, MA (1985) and PhD (1988) from Fudan University,
and ThD (1997) from Harvard University.
Notes
*Correspondence address: Dr Yong Huang, Department of Philosophy, Kutztown University,
Kutztown, PA 19530, USA. Email: yhuang@kutztown.edu.
1
As Benjamin Schwartz points out, ‘these texts are not simply pre-Confucian; they might in
fact be called proto-Confucian. While they may have not been selected and edited by Confucius
himself, as tradition would have it, they do seem to represent a vision of the world which may
have been characteristic of the scribal circles from which Confucius himself emerged’ (Schwartz
1975, p. 57; see also Schwartz 1985, p. 41).
2
In rejecting this ‘familiar Heaven (tian) centered “Christianized” interpretation of classical
Confucianism’, however, Ames also challenges the interpretation of it as merely a secular
humanism. In Ames’ view, ‘classical Confucianism is at once atheistic and profoundly religious’
(Ames 2003, p. 165). By ‘religious’, of course, Ames does not mean Schleiermacher’s feeling of
absolute dependence. Rather it refers to ‘a person’s attainment of a focused appreciation of the
complex meaning and value of the total field of existing things through a reflexive awakening
to the awesomeness of one’s own participatory role as co-creator’ (Ames 2003, p. 177), or to
‘the sense of the connection of man, in the way of both dependence and support, with the
enveloping world that the imagination feels is a universe’ (Ames 2007).
3
Philip H. Huang makes a good point in this connection: Confucius’ ‘true teaching is that
man is both rational and magical, natural and supernatural, empirical and superempirical,
humanistic and divine, secular and sacred, this-worldly and other-worldly, utilitarian and inten-
tional’ (Huang 1989, p. 56).
4
Commenting on the Mencian passage on heart/mind, human nature, and heaven discussed
above, Tu makes a similar claim: ‘existentially we cannot fully realize our heart-and-mind. Thus,
in practical terms, it is unlikely that we will ever know our nature in itself and, by inference,
it is unlikely that we will ever know Heaven in its entirety. But, in theory and to a certain
extent in practice, we can be attuned to the Way of Heaven; specifically a sympathetic resonance
with the cosmic process is realizable through our persistent self-cultivation’ (Tu 2007).
5
Some other scholars argue that this whole issue of transcendence and immanence is misguided
in the exploration of Confucianism as a religious tradition (Tucker 1998, p. 11; Taylor 1998, p. 89).
6
Zheng Jiadong , through a careful examination of Mou’s translation and exposition
of Kant’s philosophy, reaches the same conclusion that the transcendent in Mou’s ‘immanent
transcendence’ really corresponds to ‘transcendental’ in Kant’s sense (see Zheng 2001).
7
Moreover, Kaufman believes that such a reified conception of god is politically dangerous, as
it ‘can easily become, for example, a notion of an essentially authoritarian tyrant, one who is
arbitrary and unjust in the exercise of omnipotence’ (Kaufman 1993, p. 270); it is metaphysically
unintelligible, as ‘the world-picture generated in connection with it is fundamentally dualistic
and is thus difficult to reconcile with major strands of contemporary thinking’ (Kaufman 1993,
p. 271); and it is theologically naïve, as ‘this model presupposes that selfhood or agency can be
conceived as freestanding, as metaphysically self-subsistent and self-explanatory; but everything
we know today about persons suggests that they could neither come into being, nor continue
to exist, independently of long and complex cosmic, biological, and historical processes’
(Kaufman 1993, p. 271).
8
Robert Neville, an influential Christian theologian who is seasoned with the Confucian
tradition, also calls Christians to abandon the view that ‘God is a being apart from the world’;
instead of creator, Christian God should be understood as the act of creativity. In his view, ‘the
act depends on nothing and the world depends on the act. The world has no separate being
from the act, although the ontologically creative act is not itself another thing within the world.
Its nature is part of the created world, but its creativity is not. In the West, the ontological
creative act is called God’ (Neville 2007).
9
While we can make such a clear distinction between these two models, it is sometimes
difficult to determine whether a particular Confucian theologian advocates this or that model.
For example, in this essay, we discuss Tu Weiming’s theology in the second model. However,
in a recent article, he sometimes seems to advocate a Confucian theology of the third model,
as he de-reifies heaven and regards it as creativity itself: ‘Heaven as a life-generating creativity
may have been present all along’; ‘Heaven is creativity in itself and human beings learn to be
creative through self-effort’; and ‘there is an explicit way that the Confucians understand
Heaven as creativity in itself ’ (Tu 2007). Still, even in the same article, Tu sometimes also speaks
in a way that reifies heaven as some thing (entity) that is creative: ‘there is nothing in the world
that is not a demonstration of Heaven’s creativity’; ‘Heaven emerged as the result of billions of
years’; Heaven ‘is the generative force that has created all modalities of being’; and there is an
‘interplay between Heaven’s creativity as expressed in the cosmological process and humans’
creativity as embodied in Heaven’s life-generating transformation’ (Tu 2007).
Works Cited
Ames, RT, 2003, ‘Li and the A-theistic Religiousness of Classical Confucianism’, in Tu Weiming
and ME Tucker (eds.), Confucian Spirituality, vol. 1, The Crossroad Publishing Company,
New York.
——, 2007, ‘Becoming Practically Religious: A Dewey and Confucian Context for Rortian
Religiousness’, in Y Huang (ed.), Morality, Human Nature, and Metaphysics: Rorty Responds to
Confucian Critics, State University, New York Press, Albany, NY.
Chen, R, (Wing-tsit Chan) 1991, ‘The Evolution of the Neo-Confucian Concept
of Li as Principle’, in Essays on Chinese Philosophical Thoughts: Song and Ming Periods
. Shuiniu Chubanshe, Taibei.
Cheng, H, & Cheng, Y, 1988, Complete Collections of the Two Chengs , Zhonghua Shuju,
Beijing.
Ching, J, 1977, Confucianism and Christianity: A Comparative Study, Kodansha International,
Tokyo, Japan.
Clark, JK, 2005. ‘The God of Abraham, Isaiah, and Confucius’, Dao: A Journal of Comparative
Philosophy, vol. 1, pp. 109 –136.
——, 2007, ‘Tradition and Transcendence in Masters Kong and Rorty’, in Yong Huang (ed.),
Morality, Human Nature, and Metaphysics: Rorty Responds to Confucian Critics, State University,
New York Press, Albany, NY.
Feng, Y, 2003, The Myth of ‘Transcendent Immanence’: Contemporary New Confucianism from
the Perspective of Analytic Philosophy ,
The Chinese University Press, Hong Kong.
Fingarette, H, 1972, Confucius: The Secular as Sacred, Harper & Row, New York.
Hall, DL, & Ames, RT, 1987, Thinking Through Confucius, SUNY Press, Albany, NY.
——, 1998, Thinking from the Han: Self, Truth, and Transcendence in Chinese and Western Cutlure,
SUNY Press, Albany, NY.
Huang, PH, 1989, ‘Confucianism and Theism’, in HO Thompson (ed.), The Wisdom of Faith:
Essays in Honor of Dr. Sebastian Alexander Matczak, University Press of American, Lanham, MD.
Huang, Y, 2004, ‘Translator’s Introduction’, in the Chinese translation of G Kaufman, In Face
of Mystery: A Constructive Theology , The Logos and Pneuma Press,
Hong Kong.
——, 2005, ‘Cheng Brothers’ Onto-theology’, Philosophy Gate , vol. 6, no. 2, pp. 145 –
74.
Jaspers, K, 1954, Way to Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy, Yale University Press, New
Haven, CT.
Kaufman, G, 1993. In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge, MA.
478 Yong Huang
Kupperman, J J, 1971, ‘Confucius and the Nature of Religious Ethics’, Philosophy East and West,
vol. 21, no. 2, pp. 189 – 94.
Kwok, BH, 1999, ‘The Christian Understanding of God as Transcendence and Immanence: A
Response to Liu Shu-hsien’s Understanding of the “Pure Transcendence of God” ’, Ching
Feng, vol. 42, nos. 1– 2, pp. 25 – 57.
Legge, J, 1880, The Religion of China: Confucianism and Taoism Described and Compared with
Christianity, Hodder and Stoughton, London.
Li, M, 2001, ‘The Transcendence and Immanence in Confucian Thought’, in The
Self-transformation of Contemporary Confucianism , Chinese Social Sciences
Press, Beijing.
Liu, S, (Shu-hsien) 1996, ‘Reflection on the Issue of “Transcendent Immanence” ’, in
Essays on Contemporary Chinese Philosophy , Global Publishing Co,
Inc., River Ridge, N J.
Mou, Z, 1996. The Substance of Heart/Mind and the Substance of Human Nature
, vol. 1, Zhengzhong Shuju, Taipei.
——, 1997, The Unique Features of Chinese Philosophy , Shanghai Guji Chubanshe,
Shanghai.
Neville, RC, 2000, Boston Confucianism: Portable Tradition in the Late-Modern World, State University
of New York Press, Albany, NY.
——, 2007, ‘A Comparison of Confucian and Christian Conceptions of Creativity’, Dao: A
Journal of Comparative Philosophy, vol. 6, no. 2, forthcoming.
Ricci, M, 1985, The True Meaning of the Lord of Heaven, The Ricci Institute, Taipei.
Rule, P, 1986, ‘Neo-Confucianism: Theism, Atheism or Neither?’, in VC Haynes (ed.), Identity
Issues and World Religions, Wakefield Press, Netley, Australia.
Schwartz, B, 1975, ‘Transcendence in Ancient China’, Dadelus, no. 104, pp. 57 – 68.
——, 1985, The World of Thought in Ancient China, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Taylor, RL, 1998, ‘The Religious Character of the Confucian Tradition’, Philosophy East and
West, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 80 –107.
Thompson, K, 1990. ‘The Religious in Neo-Confucianism’, Asian Culture Quarterly, vol. 15,
no. 4, pp. 44 – 57.
Tu, W, 1989, Centrality and Commonality: An Essay on Confucian Religiousness, State University
of New York Press, Albany, NY.
——, 1999, Looking forward to Confucianism in Ten Years , Oxford University
Press (China), Hong Kong.
——, 2002, ‘Transcendent and Yet Immanent: The Unique Features of Confucian Spirituality’,
in Collected Works of Tu Weiming , vol. 1, Wuhan Press, Wuhan, China.
——, 2007, ‘Creativity’, Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy, vol. 6, no. 2, forthcoming.
Tucker, ME, 1998, ‘Religious Dimensions of Confucianism: Cosmology and Cultivation’,
Philosophy East and West, vol. 48, no. 1, pp. 5 – 45.
Weber, M, 1951, The Religion of China, The Free Press, London.
Xiong, S, 1988, Removing Doubts and Manifesting the Root , Xuesheng Shuju,
Taibei.
——, 1985, A New Essay on Consciousness Only , Zhonghua Shuju, Beijing.
Zheng, J, 2001, ‘Transcendence and Immanent Transcendence’, in Breaking Tradition:
Between Belief and Rationality , Chinese Social Sciences
Press, Beijing.

Confucian Theology Three Models PDF

Enviado por

Dados do documento

Título original

Direitos autorais

Formatos disponíveis

Compartilhar este documento

Compartilhar ou incorporar documento

Opções de compartilhamento

Você considera este documento útil?

Este conteúdo é inapropriado?

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Confucian Theology Three Models PDF

Enviado por

Direitos autorais:

Formatos disponíveis

Religion Compass 1/4 (2007): 455–478, 10.1111/j.1749-8171.2007.00032.

Confucian Theology: Three Models

While claiming that Confucianism is atheistic, Roger Ames argues that

In his view, there is such an Absolute in Confucian tradition, which

is Tian, translated most frequently as Heaven, in the early or classical Confucian

II. Theology of the Transcendent

also find passages which lend support to the seventeenth-century Jesuit

Ching’s view, however, while there is no contradiction between the will

tian is unquestionably anthropomorphic,’ even though there is a gradual

III. Theology of the Immanently Transcendent

Against such a dualism of noumenon and phenomenon, Xiong argues

is transcendent because it is not transformed by the ten thousand things

Confucian who has also written extensively about immanent transcendence;

Since the Confucian divinity is right within humanity, Tu makes the

[S]trict transcendence may be understood as follows: a principle, A, is tran-

characterize the Confucian heaven in contrast to Christian God, which is

IV. Theology of Creativity

In recent years, I have tried to provide an alternative approach to Con-

complete, it is shen’ (p. 597), as ‘shen means the extreme mysterious

If shen does have this meaning of mysterious wonderfulness and unpre-

life-giving activity of ten thousand things including us human beings and

Studies, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Journal of Law and

Você também pode gostar