42 replies to this topic

[Mok]

i recently read that Confucius was a believer in Heaven, an allegedly monotheistic deity. he also said that he did not have a belief in heaven was poor indeed or something like that.

all this i read from a christian book which sought to prove that Confucius was a believer in the one True God, that is the Christian and Jewish God. It might have a particle of truth because Confucius lived before any organised religion or Taoism and Buddhism. also, his teachings do not go against Christian ones.

so all you scholars, please help me prove or refute this issue. and just for the record, when did COnfucianism become like a religion, with Confucius being deitised and other elements added in?

thanks for any and all info.

[snowybeagle]

I saw that book but I had not read it.

FYI, I am a Christian but I do have some doubts about some of the claims I read in the extracts.

My impression is, much knowledge about the era was lost and the scant that remains is open to interpretation.

Perhaps if you have the book, you could post some excerpts which could be analysed here.

BTW, it's not just the Christian (Chinese) who might confront that issue.

Muslim (Chinese), and just about every person who followed a similarly monotheistic religion, should be aware that it is a question that is hardly satisfactorily answered in the respective holy books.

On the other hand, the realms of faith and the realms of fact is separate, and I suppose most people aren't too interested as too many gaps exist.

[Mok]

I saw that book but I had not read it.

FYI, I am a Christian but I do have some doubts about some of the claims I read in the extracts.

My impression is, much knowledge about the era was lost and the scant that remains is open to interpretation.

Perhaps if you have the book, you could post some excerpts which could be analysed here.

BTW, it's not just the Christian (Chinese) who might confront that issue.

Muslim (Chinese), and just about every person who followed a similarly monotheistic religion, should be aware that it is a question that is hardly satisfactorily answered in the respective holy books.

On the other hand, the realms of faith and the realms of fact is separate, and I suppose most people aren't too interested as too many gaps exist.

uh-oh, got a fact wrong there. the topic title is not the title of a book. the book is The Discovery of Genesis and somewhere in a fengshui book i also read that allegation. but please understand, i'm not trying to crow that the Sage may have believed in Jehovah God but merely want to find out the truth. so if at all possible, that is what i'd like the topic to stick to, not religious disputes, ok?

[snowybeagle]

In CHF, discussions regarding religions are conducted on the understanding that it is not meant to be prostelysing nor insulting, just like other sensitive topics such as TI and Tibet.

Mostly, we discussed religion-related issues within historical and social contexts, how a particular outlook affects behaviour, without passing judgments on the religious texts or teachings.

Your question about the claims made in the books is a valid one.
Unfortunately, not many people seemed to have read those books, so it would be difficult to discuss the claims without any specifics.

I barely glanced at a book with a picture of Jesus and KongZi on the cover, so my recollections were quite sketchy.

I recalled a few things like border sacrifices and the temple of heaven, but not the exact assertions.

Maybe you could post a couple of things to start with.

As for Discovery in Genesis, I think it was mentioned in this forum before, and the notion of some chinese characters having biblical roots was not generally considered creditable by many here who have more etymological knowledge of Chinese characters than me. Personally, I thought it would have been more convincing if they had done a study to include all ancient scripts rather than looking mostly at the modern scripts.

There is a downloadble version for those interested:
http://www.wordoflov..... genesis'
But it is a different book from one which had Jesus and KongZi on the cover.

To examine some of these type of claims, one would need a copy of the 書經/书经 (Shū Jīng), Book of History, to verify if the extracts were copied correctly within the proper context. Unfortunately, I don't have them, but I think other more knowledgable forummers would know.

[snowybeagle]

Just a friendly reminder, when you post a reply, please quote only the relevant parts.

Call it a practice that is strongly encouraged on the internet.

It's not too late, you can still edit your previous posts.

[Yun]

An exiled scholar named Yuan Zhiming is one of the main proponents now of the view that the Chinese of the pre-Xia age believed in the God of the Bible, which they called 'tian' (heaven) or 'shangdi' (the lord on high). He was one of the producers of River Elegy, the famous PRC TV history series criticising the conservativism of Chinese culture in 1988. After the Tiananmen Incident, he fled to the US and became a Christian pastor. If you have not yet seen his series "Shenzhou" 《神州》 (China's Confession) or read the book based on it, you can download it here:
http://chinasoul.com/c-yy.htm

Or read the transcripts of the seven episodes here: http://chinasoul.com/e/e-wk.htm

[Mok]

As for Discovery in Genesis, I think it was mentioned in this forum before, and the notion of some chinese characters having biblical roots was not generally considered creditable by many here who have more etymological knowledge of Chinese characters than me. Personally, I thought it would have been more convincing if they had done a study to include all ancient scripts rather than looking mostly at the modern scripts.

actually that book is in my church library so i'll have to borrow it. anyway there is an updated version concerning the ancient bone script, just to let you know.

and i understand about religion. i am not about proselyting, esp. not in cyberspace.

[MengTzu]

i recently read that Confucius was a believer in Heaven, an allegedly monotheistic deity. he also said that he did not have a belief in heaven was poor indeed or something like that.

all  this i read from a christian book which sought to prove that Confucius was a believer in the one True God, that is the Christian and Jewish God. It might have a particle of truth because Confucius lived before any organised religion or Taoism and Buddhism. also, his teachings do not go against Christian ones.

so all you scholars, please help me prove or refute this issue. and just for the record, when did COnfucianism become like a religion, with Confucius being deitised and other elements added in?

thanks for any and all info.

You might wanna read a book called "Manufacturing Confucianism," by Lionel Jensen. If I understand him correctly, his argument might be that the Jesuits who went to China reinterpreted Confucius' ideology into Monotheism.

I'd refute the theory your posted by the following:

1) Heaven and Earth are often spoken of as counterparts in ancient metaphysics.

2) Confucius believed in honoring spirits.

3) Heaven is not Purely Spiritual like God is.

4) Confucianism ontology, even until now, is quite ambiguous. You can interpret it in various ways, such as the Neo-Confucian interpretation that borrows heavily from Taoism and Buddhism. The Jesuits likewise interpreted it in the context of Christian Theology.

As to Confucianism being a religion -- it's arguably not a religion. It is a form of religiosity -- it certain involves rituals and religious devotion. Confucius is traditionally not very deified -- in the context that ancestors are ritually honored, Confucius is also ritually honorered. I'm not aware of devotion to Confucius that is similar to devotion to Guan Yin or other Chinese deities, so it's difficult to say that Confucius is ever deified in the typical manner.

As to the elements added on: I'm not entirely sure what you're referring to. Confucianism did go through a long history of transformation and adaptation; Taoism and Buddhism in China influenced it, and might have been influenced by it as well.

[TMPikachu]

It seems like a stretch of a claim and too ambiguous. You could use the same argument to claim that greeks were worshipping God, in the form of Zeus, or that Odin was also their God, etc.

As far as I know, Confucius believed that his teachings was for the living world, anything that happens after his death was none of his concern.

Maybe Christians, Jews, and Muslims all just have a warped version of Confucian Heaven?

[MengTzu]

"Confucianism" itself is a rather diluted form of the Zhou religion. It's not itself a religion but a political philosophy inspired by the Zhou cosmology. Similarly, many modern Western political philosophies are inspired by Protestant or Deistic cosmologies. Doesn't mean they are themselves protestantism or deism.

Don't take this personally, but I consider such compartmentalization of Chinese thoughts as archaic Western anthropology. Confucianism is not simply a political philosophy. It contains elements far exceeding politics. Neo-Confucians, for example, place the emphasis on self-cultivation rather than politics.

Note that "Confucianism" and "Neo-Confucianism" are likewise, to some extent, archaic Western terminologies that fail to accurately capture the nature of traditional Kong Ru and Dao Xue.

[TMPikachu]

also, Jenova/God/Allah/Dio/Deus performs miracles, smites people, talks to folks, hands out laws, sends out killer angels, does Heaven also do similiar things? From what I know, Heaven in most Chinese belief is not so much an almighty fellow, but nature/existence itself.

[Mok]

Before i forget, the title of the original book is The Discovery of Genesis by C. H. Kang and Ethel R. Nelson. The updated version is called God's Promise to the Chinese by Ethel R. Nelson and Ginger Chock Tong and another Caucasian guy. you guys might wanna check that out.