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John C. H. Wu’s Baptism of Chinese Philosophy

October 18, 2024

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Few nations have resisted the Catholic Church as firmly as has China. It took the sixteenth-century missionary Matteo Ricci ten years to make fewer than one hundred Chinese converts. Centuries later, Catholics still compose less than 1 percent of China’s population, and the Chinese state effectively prohibits evangelization. 

As such, it might seem implausible to claim a unique through line between Chinese philosophy and the Gospel. Yet in Chinese Humanism and Christian Spirituality (1965), reprinted by Angelico Press in 2017, the Chinese Catholic scholar John C. H. Wu does just that. Each of China’s great philosophical traditions, on this account, is the bearer of “scintillating stars . . . which should lead all peoples to the Divine Logos.”

Wu extols Confucianism, for example, for its intuition that the height of moral virtue “is not compromise, but harmony.” Many Westerners think of Confucianism as rigid devotion to filial piety, but Wu dismisses this “common error.” Instead, he highlights the tradition’s ideal of “humanity,”—i.e., perfected human nature. Confucius himself pursued this ideal not through bland moralism but by orchestrating his life into a “symphony composed of ethical counterpoints”: affability balanced by dignity, mildness balanced by firmness, strength balanced by restraint, courage balanced by rectitude. 

This closely resembles what G.K. Chesterton in Orthodoxy calls the “new balance” of Christianity, according to which the properly extreme “duplex passion” replaces the merely moderate “golden mean” as the new standard of morality. On the basis of this comparison, among others, Wu has a case to aver: “If the Greeks excelled in speculative philosophy, and the Romans excelled in jurisprudence, the Chinese have developed an ethical philosophy which is second to none outside of the Revealed Religion.”

Each of China’s great philosophical traditions, on this account, is the bearer of “scintillating stars . . . which should lead all peoples to the Divine Logos.”

Wu praises Zen Buddhism, meanwhile, for affirming the spiritual significance of the everyday. On the one hand, the Zen masters emphasize the transience of all earthly life. On the other hand, their practice of detachment, by freeing them from disordered desire, enables them to truly appreciate the ordinary. “The notes of a singing bird, the fragrance of a flower, the rippling of a brook,” writes Wu, “all these things have an eternal quality [to the practitioner of Zen], bathed as they are in the ocean of mystery.” 

Wu acknowledges the limits of Zen’s insights. “Compared with the Christian joy,” he admits, “the joys of the philosophers are but crumbs from the real Feast of Life.” This does not mean, though, that they are worthless. Far from it: Wu alleges that the practice of Zen can engender an “awakening” to the authentic value of reality, which in turn can inspire “a sense of universal compassion.” In this, he discerns “the beginning of an approach to the perfection of the Christian saints.”

For all these merits, however, Wu reserves a great veneration for Taoism. This philosophy consists in cryptic paradoxes that are sometimes dismissed as formally illogical and essentially nonsensical. Wu, by contrast, sees these paradoxes as foreshadowing the apparent contradictions Jesus exemplified in his own life. It is hard to disagree when reading his translation of the Tao Teh Ching in light of the Gospel:

Is it not because he [the Sage] is selfless that his self is realized? . . . He does not make a show of himself, hence he shines; does not justify himself, hence he is glorified; does not boast of his ability, hence he gets the credit; does not brandish his success, hence he endures; does not compete with anyone, hence no one can compete with him. . . . To bear the evils of the country is to be the king of all-under-heaven.

Wu particularly connects Taoism to the philosophy of St. Thérèse of Lisieux. He points out that both the “Little Flower” and the arch-Taoist Lao Tzu portray perfection as a gift that is primarily received by humility, not attained by effort. In Thérèse’s words: “Merit does not consist in doing or giving much, but in receiving . . . much.” In Lao Tzu’s: “Play the female [receptive] role. . . . Completely passive, and yet you will be completely active!”

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Such favorable analogies notwithstanding, Wu never elevates Taoism (or Confucianism or Zen Buddhism, for that matter) to the same level as Christianity. He readily admits these philosophies’ “doctrines . . . are not unmixed with errors, and [inadequate] even where they [are] not erroneous.” Rather, Wu’s fundamental purpose is evangelistic. By showing how the best in Chinese thought is fulfilled in Christianity, he hopes to aid the conversion of the Chinese people, and by reinterpreting Chinese thought according to Christian doctrine, he hopes to deepen the conversion of his Western Christian readers.

Specifically, Wu remonstrates with Western Christians for neglecting natural wisdom that even the pagans embraced. He asserts that “those Christians who pass through their lives so joylessly that they have to seek external pleasures and excitements to kill time . . . [ignore] what the Oriental sages knew so well: unless one finds happiness in the interior life, one will not be happy anywhere else.” In Wu’s eyes, then, the West’s movement toward materialism has taken a toll on the Church as well as on broader society.

Wu urges an increase in contemplative mysticism in response. This is ultimately an appeal to the Church’s own mystical tradition. In Wu’s words, the “Little Way” of St. Thérèse, which he considers so “Oriental” in flavor, “is really a timely and fresh rediscovery of Our Lord’s own Way. It is the perennial . . . science of the saints.” Still, assuming Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle retain the ability to enlighten and inspire the faithful, may not their Chinese counterparts do the same?

If Chinese Humanism and Christian Spirituality is any indication, the answer is yes. All of the philosophies Wu examines are worthy of study in their own right, and the author’s faith enhances their power and beauty considerably. Catholics who share his concern for the West may do well by taking up his treatment of the East.