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Christianity and Chinese Culture

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Chapter One

Zhao Dunhua

Someone once objected to me that the Christian dogma of original sin was given through the revelation in the Bible, whereas the Confucian theory of the goodness of human nature was founded upon human reason. The two, therefore, cannot be compared since there is no connection between divine revelation and human reason. To this I replied that the comparison is not my innovation. Quite a few Western scholars have drawn particular attention to a comparison of this kind, for example, in such works as The Sixth Volume of the True Meaning of Heavenly Doctrines (Tianxue Shiyi) by Matteo Ricci, the Prolegomena of Mencius's Work by James Legge, Chinese Religion by Max Weber, and, most recently, China and the Christian Impact: A Conflict of Culture by Jacques Gernet.

All of these writers, except for Ricci, emphasized the irreconcilable conflict between the doctrine of original sin and the theory of the goodness of human nature. It is worthwhile noting that there has been a contrary trend among Western scholars, especially among the thinkers of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, who to a certain extent adapted the Confucian idea of the goodness of human nature when rethinking the Christian notion of original sin. In spite of the differences in standpoint and orientation, both parties generally agreed on the divergence of the Christian and Confucian views on human nature. This paper will express a disagreement with this prevalent assumption, pointing out, as its subtitle suggests, the convergence of these two different views on human nature.

From the very beginning, I would like to acknowledge that I do not deny the divergence in question. If it is true that nothing but the reflection of different nations on their own nature can show most clearly the cultural difference between them, then the Confucian and Christian viewpoints on human nature certainly manifest, in a concentrated manner, the divergence between Chinese and Western cultures. The key point is, however, that this divergence has appeared to many scholars as a diametrical opposition and total incompatibility.

For example, Max Weber wrote: "Completely absent in Confucian ethics was any tension between nature and deity, between ethical demand and human short-coming, consciousness of sin and need for salvation, conduct on earth and compensation in the beyond, religious duty and socio-political reality."

James Legge wrote: "Mencius' doctrine of human nature was defective in as much as even his ideal does not cover the whole field of duty.... That he never indicates any wish to penetrate futurity, and ascertain what comes after death, that he never indicates any consciousness of human weakness, nor moves his mind God-ward, longing for more light: these are things which exhibit strongly the contrast between the mind of the East and the West. His self-sufficiency is his great fault. To know oneself is commonly supposed to be an important step to humility, but it is not so with him."

It seems to me that both these conclusions are a little hasty. I often feel that assertions of this kind have perhaps been derived from overgeneralized and superficial impressions and have led to popular yet naïve opinions. The philosophical ideas and argumentation involved in this question have constantly been ignored or underestimated. If we compare the distinctions and clarifications, arguments and inferences, explanations and interpretations made by Chinese and Western philosophers concerning these two views of human nature, we can reveal the similarity in mentality and moral consciousness beneath the appearance of Chinese and Western cultural divergence. On the basis of this line of reasoning, I shall attempt to demonstrate that the doctrine of original sin and the theory of the goodness of human nature are (1) logically noncontradictory, (2) theoretically complementary, and (3) in practice, playing a similar moral role.

Logically Noncontradictory

Logically, the theory of the goodness of human nature contradicts the theory of the evil of human nature. This contradiction was given expression in the historical controversy between Mencius and Xunzi. However, when Mencius spoke of human nature he was not referring to the same notion that Xunzi discussed. The former refers to the moral essence of human beings, that is to say, the four origins of humanity and rightness: namely, the feeling of commiseration as the origin of humanity, the feeling of shame and dislike as that of rightness, the feeling of reverence and respect as that of propriety, and the feeling of right and wrong as that of wisdom.

Xunzi thought of human nature as natural instincts, that is, the sensuous desires originating in the organs of the body. Mencius did not deny these instincts and desires, but made a further distinction between nature and fate. Sensuous instincts and desires are people's fate, in the sense that they are always present, determined, and unavoidable. Moral essence, on the other hand, is what is natural to people in the sense that it awaits realization. Their failure to realize it would result in its absence or even complete loss. Mencius, who was concerned with the realization of human moral nature, comments that a gentleman attributes instincts to fate but not to human nature, and moral essence to human nature but not to fate. Mencius's distinction between fate and nature is decisive in resolving the apparent contradiction between his theory of the goodness of human nature and Xunzi's theory of the evil of human nature.

Some traditional Chinese philosophers disagreed with the theory of the goodness of human nature either individually or collectively. Yang Xiong (53-18 BCE), from the perspective of the individual, spoke of the mixture of good and evil in human nature. Dong Zhongshu (179-104 BCE) and Han Yu (768-824 CE), from the perspective of the collective, spoke of the three degrees of human nature, that is to say, the high degree of pure good, the middle degree of the mixture of good with evil, and the low degree of complete evil. Generally speaking, the mainstream of Confucianism endorses Mencius's theory of the goodness of human nature but incorporates in it the above views of Yang Xiong and Dong Zhongshu, even compromising it with the above-mentioned view of Xunzi on the evil nature.

Most Confucians believed that good and evil are not opposed at the same level. Good, they argued, is fundamentally metaphysical. This is the level to which human moral nature belongs. Evil, on the other hand, is related to the corporeal and as such, physical or physiological. This is the level to which human sensuous elements belong. For example, Li Ao (772-841) differentiated between nature and feeling, saying that "nothing in nature is not good," and "feeling is illusionary and wicked." The Confucian rationalist Zhu Xi (1130-1200), like his predecessors, distinguished between Heavenly nature and material nature. According to his interpretation, the good nature that Mencius spoke of refers to original nature which can be equated with Heavenly Reason, while material nature is derivative due to the fact that any human characteristic is formed together with something corporeal, yet still made out of Heavenly reason. The mixed or hierarchical nature of good and evil as proposed by other Confucians is thus assigned to the derivative position of characteristic nature. His teacher, Hu Hong (1106-61), put it clearly: "good" is the lofty term for praise, to which no evil can be opposed.

I conclude from the above that no theory of human nature in traditional Chinese thought, in the final analysis, is really in conflict with Mencius's theory of the goodness of human nature. I will now look at the doctrine of original sin. This doctrine can by no means be reduced to the simplistic assertion that people are by nature evil, especially, morally evil. On the level of moral metaphysics, Christian theologians shared with Confucians the view that all nature, insofar as it is created by God, is fundamentally good. Human nature in particular is good since people were made according to the image of God. Augustine explained moral evil in terms of aversion (or, more precisely, perversion) of true nature. Evil is not, properly speaking, a nature, and consequently has no real existence; it is only the privation of existence. He thus denied the evil of human nature in the ontological sense of the term.

According to some theologians, even after the Fall, when human nature had become corrupted it had not completely lost the goodness that God created in human beings. In philosophical and theological terms, the unchangeable goodness of human nature consists either in freedom of will, and/or in the truthfulness of reason (ratio), and/or in the innocence of conscience (synderesis). Thomas Aquinas, for example, wrote, "what is natural to man was neither taken away nor added to him by sins" and "since human nature is not so completely corrupted by sin as to be totally lacking in natural goodness, it is possible for him in the state of corrupted nature to do some particular good things by virtue of his nature."

Admittedly, almost all theologians have insisted that the goodness of human nature is so weak in its corrupted state that human beings are incapable of saving themselves; hence, they need grace. Generally speaking, the Christian view on human nature holds that it is a mixture of good and evil (as did the Confucian Yang Xiong). Nevertheless, Christian theologians did not spend as much time, as Confucians did, on clarifying the level, distinction, and interrelationship between good and evil in human nature. The doctrine of original sin often appears ambiguous on the question whether human nature is good or evil. This is probably a partial reason why the struggle of the Catholic Church with Pelagianism on the issue of freedom of will in the Middle Ages became so entangled that even the orthodox position could not extricate itself from the accusation of semi-Pelagianism by Martin Luther. Even so, the ambiguous view on the mixture of good and evil implied in the notion of original sin, in the final analysis, in no way contradicts the clear view on the level and distinction of good and evil in the theory of the goodness of human nature.

Theoretically Complementary

The precondition of sin is free will. This should be judged as one of the most important contributions of Christianity to ethics. One of the general principles of ethics is that a person is responsible only for what he or she freely chooses. Thus, if there were no free choice there would be no moral responsibility.

The Christian doctrine of original sin speaks about will in terms of capacity to make free choices, but it also stresses that the will is not equally free to choose between good and evil. Otherwise, the will would be as perplexed as Buridan's ass, which was unable to decide to which haystack it should turn to eat. There is a tendency inherent in free choice to choose good over evil. According to Augustine, the hierarchy of nature was created in such a way that the lower should obey the higher. Since desire is a faculty lower than reason, the will naturally tends to choose reason, to which desire subordinates itself. Yet, in the dispute with Pelagianism, he stressed that human beings have lost free will and are in need of grace to recover it.

Anselm of Canterbury amended this with his own doctrine of free choice. He insisted that the capacity for free choice can never be lost, no matter what the condition. What was lost after the Fall was the actual tendency toward good. Thomas Aquinas accepted the Aristotelian notion of prudent reason as the deliberative decision in the procedure of choosing good ends and means. He defined will as "rational volition." Later, Martin Luther attacked the Scholastic doctrine of freedom of will, but he did not, as he is unjustly accused of, give up the notion of the freedom of the individual. He declared in a well-known statement, "A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none; a Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all."

In summary, the doctrine of original sin does not content itself with the natural tendency toward good, but emphasizes the difficulty of choosing good and avoiding evil in the state of human corruption. In this way, it intensifies the Christian duty before God, and cultivates the personal consciousness of moral responsibility. Basically, Christianity provides both exterior and interior incentives to morality. The exterior factor is the divine imperative. The interior factor is freedom of will in choosing between good and evil.

Confucian ethics, on the other hand, regards moral prescripts and actions as the autonomous realization of a human nature that is intrinsically good. Confucius said, "seek for humanity and then gain it" and "I wish humanity, and then it reaches to me." Mencius's theory of the goodness of human nature, as has been seen, aims at the a priori origin of morality. All of these entail the notion of the autonomy of morality. Confucians always insisted that ethical norms flow from the heart of people and follow the principle of Heaven. As such, they are based on autonomous self-restraint and not determined by heteronomous imperatives.

Confucians assigned to sages the status of lawgivers. Sages formulated moral rules in accordance with the Heavenly principle. Confucius and Mencius seemed to stress natural inclination rather than artificial formulation. Confucius said, "Establish what I want for myself, then establish it for man. Achieve what I want for myself, then achieve it for man. To be able to judge of others in analogy to what is close to me, this can be said as the rightness of humanity." Mencius said, "The ancient who did not make big mistakes is good at extending what he did for himself." More important, the universal validity and applicability of the moral law were explained by the common good nature shared by sages and ordinary people. In Mencius's words, "sages and I belong to the same species." "Emperor Shun is a man, I am a man, too," and hence, "Everybody can become Emperor Yao and Emperor Shun."

From what has been stated above, it follows that the theory of the goodness of human nature is the foundation of the Confucian idea of the autonomy of morality. This idea was weakened, even ignored, in history in circumstances in which Confucian ethics was used by political rulers as a set of coercive codes and rules. The doctrine of the heart, as presented by Lu Jouyuan (1139-93) and Wang Yangming (1472-1528), made a great effort to revive the Confucian notion of autonomy.

Its ideas include the original heart of humanity and justice, the moral practice as reaching one's own conscience, the natural flowing of original heart, against sophisticated rites and contrived decorum. The historical significance of those ideas can be evaluated on the basis of the relation of the theory of the goodness of human nature to the autonomy of morality. The above analysis reveals the possibility that Confucianism and Christianity can complement each other. The God of Christianity is an absolute lawgiver. His transcendence and the unbridgeable gap between God and humans make it difficult for Christian prescripts to be autonomous. Some theologians, for example, Thomas Aquinas, often appealed to the Stoic notion of natural law to defend moral autonomy. Nevertheless, the autonomous acceptance of natural law can hardly avoid the negative effect of original sin within the framework of religious faith. The Christian theory of natural law is not as successful as that of the Stoics, nor is it as coherent as that of Confucians.

The Confucian theory of the goodness of human nature, on the other hand, attributed the failure to realize the good nature to the unnatural or pervasive conditions and accidental ignorance. This often resulted in a decrease in moral enthusiasm and a reduction in a sense of responsibility. In circumstances unfavorable to moral practice, the theory of the goodness of human nature could be misused to ease the rigorous conflict between good and evil, and it often failed to provide sufficient incentive for good to overcome evil. Due to the lack of moral incentive, the autonomy of morality remained, throughout most of Chinese history, only an unrealized ideal for the majority of ordinary people.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Christianity and Chinese Culture Copyright © 2010 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.. Excerpted by permission of William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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