Confucius’ notion of “Heaven” (Tian) was not necessarily religious. Rather than “a religion,” traditional Confucianism may be regarded as a “religious tradition.”
by Massimo Introvigne
Article 3 of 5. Read article 1 and article 2.
Confucius presented himself as one who “transmits but does not innovate.” He claimed to transmit “the way of the Ru,” the early sages who knew their classic books. Among the Ru, he greatly venerated the Duke of Zhou, who may (or may not) have lived in the century before the year 1000 BCE. Besides being regarded as the main author of the I Ching, the Duke reportedly created the theory of the Mandate of Heaven. It is Heaven that bestows the right to rule China on a dynasty. It can also withdraw this right if the dynasty is no longer virtuous.
Through the Mandate of Heaven, the Duke of Zhou—or whoever wrote the texts attributed to him—wanted to justify the fact that the Zhou dynasty, whose founder happened to be his brother, had defeated and replaced the previous dynasty, Shang. Confucius, however, interpreted the Mandate of Heaven in a much broader sense. How can we be sure that what the Duke of Zhou taught about the Mandate of Heaven is correct? Confucius answered that the Duke’s teachings were guaranteed by the fact that he had received a mandate from Heaven himself. Heaven also bestows its mandate on authorized scholars.
But what is Heaven (Tian) exactly? Of course, the question is crucial for any assessment of “Confucianism” as a religion or otherwise. What is certain is that for Confucius Heaven is not a personal god. According to the Analects, the canonical record of his teachings, Confucius taught both that Heaven is silent and that he preferred to remain silent about Heaven. The texts attributed to the Duke of Zhou took a similar position. Wasn’t this contradictory with the claims by both the Duke and Confucius that they were speaking on behalf of Heaven? They were, but they did not claim Heaven was speaking to them. That is, not personally. Heaven speaks through the history of the world (which for Confucius meant the history of China) to those who are capable of interpreting it.
When the Jesuit Catholic missionaries encountered Confucius in the 17th century, they translated “Tian” (Heaven) as “God,” and used it as an alternative to “Shangdi” (Supreme God). The current Chinese campaign proclaiming Confucius the father of Chinese, if not of global, atheism, is aware of this tradition, but claims it is wrong. It relies on Mozi (470–391 BCE), an influential Chinese philosopher who was born a few years after Confucius’ death. Mozi, who was undoubtedly a religious spirit, believed that Heaven is a force separated from the physical universe and with its own independent will, which rules through ghosts and spirits, who act as Heaven’s enforcers. He accused Confucius and the whole Ru tradition of denying the existence of spirits and ghosts and of making Tian indistinguishable from the physical universe. What for Mozi was an indictment of Confucius, for the contemporary Chinese propagandists of atheism becomes a compliment he paid to the sage.
It is true that, while he maintained that he spoke on behalf of Tian, Confucius did not say much about Tian itself. But something he did say, that Tian reveals itself through human nature (Xing). So, to know Xing is a valid way to know Tian. Those who really know human nature find there benevolence or humaneness (Ren). Not that all humans are benevolent: Ren should be cultivated. It is also the case that humans may be misled by false teachings.
While we are accustomed to defining the Chinese culture by the “Three Teachings”—Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism—rarely did the respective teachers and practitioners cooperate harmoniously. Sometimes, they hated each other, and asked the emperors to eradicate the rivals. Confucians, in particular, accused Buddhism and Taoism to teach an ascetic withdrawal from society as the preferred way to enlightenment. Not so, they countered. Ren is achieved by cherishing and cultivating relations, between parents and children, husband and wives, the Emperor and his subjects—and all these relations were hierarchical, making Confucianism a pillar of the status quo.
Another of Confucius’ teachings, perhaps the main one, that Father Joseph Shih, who introduced me to Confucianism in the 1970s, never failed to emphasize was that reverence to Heaven and to human nature should be expressed through rituals (Li). Shih was a Jesuit, and Jesuits were fascinated by Confucian rituals since the times of Matteo Ricci (1552–1610)—so much so that Ricci and his missionary companions actively participated in these rites. They were denounced to the Vatican by rival religious orders, who claimed they had fallen into apostasy and the worship of pagan gods. Although the Jesuits lost the Chinese rites controversy in the 18th century, when the Popes repeatedly forbid their participation in Confucian rituals, they are now somewhat rehabilitated as forerunners of an intelligent “Sinicization” of Catholicism, not to be confused with its adaptation to the principles of the CCP.
The Jesuits’ enemies pointed out that Confucian rituals ostensibly adored ancestors and spirits, which was not permissible for a Catholic. The Jesuits countered that these were not religious ceremonies. They were much more similar to civil events, they said, where people may honor flags or symbols of the state and the king, or commemorate deceased heroes or sages, which also took place in Christian countries without being seen as usurping the role of religion.
Most Western scholars in the 20th century tended to side with the Jesuits. Offering sacrifices to Heaven and Earth, some of them quite spectacular, and honoring kings and sages, including Confucius himself, did not construct the object of the honor as divine. The Confucian “spirits” were at best symbolic representations of impersonal forces.
By the 21st century, scholars were no longer so sure. Joseph Adler, an eminent scholar of East Asian religions, was among those who warned that Confucianism or, more precisely, the Way of the Ru is not a monolithic phenomenon. There is a rich variety of Ru or “Confucian” schools and scholars, who have expressed different ideas on several topics through some 2,500 years of history of “Confucianism.” Some obviously did not believe that spirits existed. They taught that this did not really matter. The rituals honoring them were for the self-cultivation of the living. That the spirits of the ancestors or the sages existed in a separate dimension or not was not important. The living derived benefits from the rituals, and this was good reason enough to perform them.
Other eminent Confucian masters clearly taught that spirits had an independent existence, and not merely a symbolic one. However, they were careful to add that the question was difficult, was after all of secondary importance, and was not one respectable Ru should quarrel about among themselves.
And yet, this was always only part of the story. Those who visited temples of Confucius, from the Jesuits to 20th century travelers and scholars, could not avoid noticing that they had several features in common with Buddhist and Taoist places of worship, and that devotees prayed Confucius fully believing he was able to help them. Popular Confucian religious movements and a “folk Confucianism” where the worship of Confucius coexisted with occult practices always existed, and continue to this day.
As we will see in the next article, throughout the centuries debates were introduced about “Principle,” which some interpreted as an immanent divine reality. The story of “Confucianism” will allow us to introduce additional elements. However, we can already provisionally conclude that when discussing “Confucianism,” the alternative between being a religion and an early form of atheism creates intractable dilemmas. Perhaps the question itself is not formulated correctly. Contemporary scholars believe a third possibility exists, that without being a religion in the sense of the word we use for Christianity or Islam, “Confucianism” is nonetheless what Adler and Swain call a “religious tradition”: not organized religion, but a tradition with deep religious concerns—which is certainly different from atheism. And a living tradition, one that perhaps is evolving towards becoming a full-fledged religion, a question we will ask in the next articles of the series.
