Chapter 18 Theological and Cultural Sociological Commentary on "Tao" and "Word"

one The ultimate word of Chinese culture is called "Tao", which is true of both Confucianism and Taoism; the ultimate word of Christian culture is called "word", "in the beginning there was word, and word was with God, and word is God." (John 1:1 ) However, is "Tao" the same as "word"?Can the two be equal, can they be commensurate?If not, what are the substantive differences? two Since the word of Christ was introduced into China, it is still often regarded as a foreign voice—a voice that is incompatible with the existence of the nation.This is true.However, it is a fundamental misunderstanding to equate the word of Christ with the West.For any national existence and its culture, the words of Christ are originally foreign voices: the Jews deny that Jesus is the Christ, and do not recognize the blood of Calvary as proof of the words of Christ; Paul first came to Athens to preach the words of Christ. His words were ridiculed and rejected by Greek learned men.

If the apostle Paul had been Chinese, he would have been denounced as a "blind doctor" and an "unworthy descendant" of the nation, because this Jew had abandoned the traditional concepts of his nation and accepted "foreign" voices. This "foreign" meaning is properly understood: it did not come from the West - it seems so from historical phenomena, but this is a purely accidental appearance - but from outside this world.The so-called "alien sound" refers to a sound that does not come from this world, but from outside the world, from the divine Other. "There is no priority in hearing the truth", and similarly, there is no priority in hearing the words.The Greek and Roman cultures were the first to accept the words of Christ, and followed the words-speaking, which does not mean that the original words were issued by them.

Jewish culture, Greek culture, and Roman culture, like Chinese culture, are ethnic-regional cultures, and they all have their own ethnic pedigree.Christian culture is not at all a national-regional culture.Therefore, the relationship between Chinese culture and Christian culture is not a relationship between two nationalities and regional cultures, just as the relationship between Jewish, Greek, Roman culture and Christian culture is not a national-regional relationship, but an ontological relationship.The relationship between the Holy Word (Christ) and Chinese culture is only generated in the individual body, not in the overall national concept.

three Because Greek and Roman culture accepted and followed the words of Christ, they gradually emerged as a Christian culture.A certain national culture can spread the words of Christ with its own words, and praise or curse the original words in the flesh and blood of its culture.However, it is inappropriate to equate the Christian culture with the Judah-Greek-Roman culture as a national culture, although the late Greek and Roman cultures and the European national cultures after the Renaissance did have and still have a Christian culture Not only that, it is not appropriate to regard the Christian culture in Western Europe as the only style of Christian culture—for example, after the Russian national culture accepted the words of Christ, it also formed a unique style of Christian culture.

There is a tension between any national culture and Christian culture, not just Chinese culture.From the perspective of historical phenomena, this tension relationship is quite complicated.This not only means that there is a relationship of acceptance and rejection between national existence and Christian culture, but also that national existence can not only display the words of Christ, but also distort and alter the words of Christ.As examples, we can mention the disguise of the words of Christ by national religions in history, the national wars in the history of Europe in defense of Christianity, the complex relationship between Greek ideas and the words of Christ in the history of philosophical thought, and modern colonialism and Christian missionary work. Businesses use each other at certain times.

Karl Barth saw that the word of God in the body of Christ is the sublation and criticism of all religions (including Christianity), and the word of God shows the crisis of all religions.Bonhoeffer and Barthes take a similar position on this point.Christianity and Christianity are not synonymous and synonymous. Christianity belongs to the category of cultural sociology, which refers to the historical social system and its related ideological forms, while the basic intellectuality belongs to the category of existence, indicating a thing that comes from the Holy Spirit. On-body events and related ideas related to the existence of individual existence.Some results of Weber's historical cultural sociology studies also support this view; in history; almost without exception, the teachings of all church organizations are relativized forms of the divine redemptive value idea (Heilswerte).Nietzsche lashed out at Christianity—what he saw as a historical ecclesiastical phenomenon, but with admiration for Christianity.Trolch denies the absoluteness of Christianity from the standpoint of historical sociology, but does not deny the absoluteness of Christianity from the perspective of theological belief.The fact that supports this point of view more clearly is: from ancient times to the present, most of the criticisms of Christianity come from Christians.The basis for Christians to criticize Christianity is Christ-nature.

Four I was therefore asked to explain what a Christian culture is, if it is neither a national-regional culture nor fully equated with Christianity as a historical social institution. The so-called Christian culture refers to the verbal generation of the holy word (Christ event) in the existence of the individual couple, which can be explained by three extended descriptions: the historical occurrence of the word of Christ (the incarnation of the word → the belief in the word of Christ) Happening (meeting of body and speech) → following the word of Christ—speaking (flesh becomes speech or the body generates a person).

The first description: Christ’s birth—crucifixion and death—death and resurrection, as the word of Christ (the original word of Christian culture), is an event in the history of individuality.It is not an event of natural history but of the entry of the Holy Spirit.This event is the breakthrough of God's word into the natural form, which makes it possible for the fundamental reset of the basis of existence of individual couples; although this event specifically occurs in a specific nation and region, it does not mean that it is a specific nation and local events. History and culture are the body of the flesh, and the Word of God incarnated and broke into this place with the help of a certain body of history and culture.What is surprising is that the incarnation of the Word of God chose a fusion of Eastern and Western cultures (the fabric of Hebrew, Greek, and Latin cultures—the New Testament is the historical proof) as the place for incarnation.All history-ethnic cultures (whether Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or Chinese history and culture) originally reject the Holy Word, so the history of the incarnation is the history of suffering and death-resurrection.Nevertheless, the dual conflict between spirit and body has always existed and never disappeared.

The second description: the event of faith in this world is an occurrence of the ontology of individuality, which concerns the dual separation of individuality and the possibility of its reunification.The occurrence of this event appears as a transcendent transformation of the individual's physical presence and place of presence.Let’s go a step further: the duality of the body’s occasional dimension is not demarcated by the history of this world and the thoughts of nationality, but by the occurrence of the Holy Word—the suffering, sacrifice and resurrection of love.Belief as an individual existential event is the affirmation and crossing of this dualistic boundary.As far as the essence of culture is concerned, belief is that the physical body in this world occasionally encounters the unheard and unheard, unseen and unseen original words from another completely different physical dimension, and then cannot be spoken.

The third description: the incarnation of the individual is generated to the person in the loving words of the Word.This kind of generation breaks through all the non-personal limitations of this world (ideal forms of history, nationality, and natural region), and transforms into the dimension of the physical body that loves words.This shift is not an upward, out-of-the-world-out-of-the-body orientation, but an orientation sideways and re-entering the dimension of the body.Man is here forever and can never cross the boundary of duality.However, the Holy Word has broken through this boundary and became flesh, making it possible for the flesh in this world to become a body that manifests love.The presence of the body is not the negation of the physical presence, but the negation of the place of being (historical, national, natural).The reciprocal dwelling of the physical presence of the person and the divine love that occurs despite the occasional presence.The existence of the personal being is not transcending into the other shore, but the vacating place of the presence of the physical body as the divine love word.

Fives From this, two different concepts of culture can be distinguished (Christian culture and historical-national culture): what is generally called culture—including the culture of various historical-nations—is the cultivation, normative and Ritualization—humanitutis cultus, every nation has a historical form of rationalization of the way of existence formed by the historical process.Christian culture is the cultivation, regulation, and ritualization of the physical relationship and manner of man with God (supernatural)—dei cultus.The former is ethnic, national and even historically compulsive, while the latter is individual, supra-national and individual decisive. six The encounter between Chinese culture and Christian culture can be viewed from various perspectives.Let me put forward four perspectives: historical society, historical classics, historical and cultural concepts and theological landscape.This distinction is necessary, otherwise it will inevitably cause confusion in the field of examination. The historical social aspect is a matter of historical-cultural sociology, in which folklore, political science, religion, economics, history and sociological factors play a decisive role.The various forms of Christianity as specific historical phenomena should be distinguished to some extent from the Christianity as the incarnate phenomenon.The encounter and conflict between Chinese culture and society and Christianity in history is suitable for specific research on faith-neutrality at the level of historical-cultural sociology. The aspect of the historical canon concerns issues of historical-cultural hermeneutics.Every national culture has its own historical classics. The events of Christ’s coming to the world and confirmed in the classic form of the “New Testament” all form a tension relationship with the historical classics of all human nations. Even the “Old Testament” and the “New Testament” The tension between the New Testament has been completely eliminated from ancient times to the present.As Weber saw, the Christian spirit—universal love not only makes all social ethics based on regional or national characteristics questioned, but also forms a strong tension with its historical classics. The extension and generalization of typology in Old Testament hermeneutics is questionable.Using the words in the "New Testament" to explain or compare the classics before the "New Testament"-whether it is Greek or Chinese; or to compare the "New Testament" with the historical classics before the "New Testament" provide a The danger is that the transcendental qualities of Christianity are compromised. In the historical classics of all major national cultures—Greek, Jewish, Chinese, and Indian, there are discourses about the early people exploring the relationship between man and God.All these gropings are human gropings, and man's eyes are fundamentally blind to God, and the result is a blind man groping an elephant.God's self-reported words are neither analogous nor continuous in nature to man's groping for God's words. The concept of history and culture is related to the problem of history-cultural philosophy.The situation in this respect is to some extent the same as that of the historical classics.Perhaps the main difference lies in the simultaneous relationship between the spirit of Christian culture and the concept of history-national culture.However, this relationship is still multi-dimensional, for example: there are Greek thoughts or certain Jewish thoughts that combine with Christian culture, and there are Greek thoughts and Jewish thoughts that reject Christian culture.In this regard, the integration of Christian culture and Confucianism and Taoism is not necessary.Moreover, as individual intellectuals, the validity of talking about cultural fusion as a whole is questionable. Theological aspects are concerned with the confession of the individual.Because, as far as Christian theology is concerned, it is essentially a discourse about individual confession—the relationship between the individual and God.When it comes to the encounter with the spiritual concept of history-national culture, discourse is ultimately only an individual expression of belief or rejection.It is invalid to speak for a nation, country, or history and culture as an individual.In this regard, expressions such as "what China should believe in or not believe in" are suspicious.The intellectual as an individual can only use the expression "what I myself believe or do not believe in".Faith is essentially a struggle between the individual and himself. seven Regarding the topic of the encounter between Christian culture and Chinese culture, two different dimensions should be distinguished: history and occurrence.The former is mainly a subject of history-cultural studies, including aspects of historical society, historical classics, and historical and cultural concepts.So far, most of the academic research in these areas is still in the general level and has not yet penetrated into specific and individual subjects, so it is still preliminary. The so-called "occurrence" dimension refers to the individual speech in the present tense (the so-called "individual speech" here is used from the language understanding of existential hermeneutics. In this dimension, it is inevitable to talk about how Chinese culture should be. It is vague and vague. If the themes of Christianity and culture are not directly stated in the context of the individual speech of the Chinese language, the so-called encounters that have occurred will still not have occurred. The thesis of true color theology is empty, because its argument is based on a premise: Christian culture is equal to Western culture.The same is true for the topic of the Sinicization of Christian culture.The problem does not lie in the so-called Sinicization of Christ, but in the individual speech of the Chinese language that inherits and speaks of Christ, making the words of holy love a concrete speech in the Chinese language. Eight Now we can go back to the question raised at the beginning of this article but not answered: Can "Tao" and "yan" be equated and commensurate?The answer is no. The primary difference between "Tao" and "Word": "Tao" is not an individual event of personal formation, and the word of "Holy Word" is the word of "Incarnation" (Person is the key!).The individual and the "Tao" do not have a personal encounter relationship between personalities. The "holy word incarnation" is God's occasional finite individual coming to man as a constant infinite individual. The relationship between human beings and the "holy word" is individual and individual. encounter relationship.The event of encounter is only possible when the two come together as individuals. "Why God becomes man" is therefore one of the basic propositions of Christian theology.In Confucian metaphysics and Taoist metaphysics, the idea of ​​"becoming" is decisive (Yi Zhi Sheng Sheng; Fang Sheng Fang Cheng); similarly, in Christian theology; the idea of ​​"becoming" is also decisive (incarnation, adulthood).However, how and what constitutes a decisive difference. The idea of ​​"becoming" in Christian theology implies an ontological duality difference, which leads to the emergence of almost all theological problems: the ontological break between the eternal individual and the occasional finite individual, and eventually inevitably leads to the The occurrence of the "incarnation" event.The "Tao" concept of Confucianism and Taoism does not contain the binary difference of ontology, so "body and function are not two". This brief analysis is philosophical rather than theological. It focuses on the observation of the form of ideas, and aims to show that the integration of Christian beliefs with Confucianism and Taoism is not only impossible, but also unnecessary.The ideas of Confucianism and Taoism have their own rationale and should evolve along their own path, and the same is true for the idea of ​​Christianity.From a philosophical point of view, the encounter between Christian dogma and Chinese culture is not the fusion of Christian dogma and Confucianism and Daoism, but the encounter between Christian dogma and the individual speech formation of the Chinese body, which is called the Chinese generation of the holy words.Although from the perspective of cultural sociology, the comparative study of Christianity, Confucianism, Taoism and social forms, as well as the analytical study at the level of philosophy and philology, are still feasible and beneficial.As far as the theological landscape is concerned, it is purely a matter of individual freedom to decide whether to believe or not. Berkeley in 1991