Confucianism and Christianity: A Comparative Study by Julia Ching Review by: Charles D. Orzech Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 103, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1983), pp. 640-641 Published by: American Oriental Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/602056 . Accessed: 19/06/2014 17:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
[email protected]. . American Oriental Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Oriental Society. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 185.2.32.141 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 17:45:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aos http://www.jstor.org/stable/602056?origin=JSTOR-pdf http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp 640 Journal of the American Oriental Society 103.3 (1983) traditional China "at a distance," he seems to have had little regard for or interest in the study of contemporary China "at a distance" as carried out by scholars doing refugee interviews in Hong Kong or analyzing the press. Nevertheless, the need for anthropological attention to post- 1949 developments emerges as a theme in several of the essays in the last section of this volume. Still, Freedman's writings are invaluable for an understand- ing of some aspects of pre-revolutionary Chinese society, particularly in the areas of kinship, marriage, domestic (house- hold) religious worship and supra-domestic ancestral cults with attention to their overt and underlying complimentary rules and structures. His contributions on these questions stand out clearly in the essays, "Ritual Aspects of Chinese Kinship and Marriage," and "Ancestor Worship," both lengthy works reprinted from earlier collections that Freed- man edited. Both of these seminal essays remind us of the importance of library work, the need to build upon the earlier research endeavors of others. Perhaps in time Freed- man would have extended his range to more of the available Chinese and Japanese language sources and given them the same thoroughness of analysis that he has given to English language materials. Freedman's earlier essays in this collection, which deal with his combined field work and library research in South- east Asia, carry an additional important message to anthro- pologists seeking to understand complex societies. They exemplify the need to be engaged with history and with a view of the total society rather than concentrating on the small community at one point in time. Throughout, Freedman is concerned with what he calls "the interplay between the anthropologist as a field-worker and the anthropologist as bookworm," a dualism which he successfully reconciled. The contents of this volume may duplicate a few of the holdings that any China scholar has in his or her own working library, but it is useful to have this thought- provoking and varied collection under one cover. NORMA DIAMOND UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Confucianism and Christianity: A Comparative Study. By JULIA CHING. Pp. xxvi + 234. Tokyo: KODANSHA INTER- NATIONAL. 1977. $12.50. Julia Ching's Confucianism and Christianity is the kind of book few scholars today dare to write. The third in a series which includes Heinrich Dumoulin's Christianity Meets Buddhism, Ching's book is pointedly theological. It is a "study of Confucianism done in the light of a clearly contemporary understanding of Christianity" (xviii). Few scholars are better qualified to carry out such a study. Ching's work on Wang Yang-ming (To Acquire Wisdom, New York, 1976) has been well received and she is a student of modern theology. The thematic approach of this book was encouraged by the Catholic theologian Hans Kung. Even so, the task is not a small one, and we should not then be surprised that Confucianism and ChristianityX is not entirely successful. Western views of Confucianism have generally fallen into two groups, depending upon one's interpretation of the Chinese preoccupation with order. On the one hand are those who see this will to order positively as a concern for harmony (such was the position of Leibniz); on the other are those who see Confucianism as obsessed with order, a stifling and restrictive order. Ching falls into the former camp and her attitude is refreshing. Hoping to provide structures for a religious dialogue, Ching describes her task as "an examination of the internal structure of Confucial thought in view of suggesting ways by which each of the two traditions might be better understood in light of the other" (xix). She "considers Confucianism to be more compatible with Christianity than is Buddhism, because of a more pronounced, shared ethical concern" (xxiii). Ching seeks to define this concern by comparing the two traditions under topical headings which represent the focal points of discourse about human experience. Providing necessary background in a chapter on 'historical encounters" between the two religions and an excellent summary of Chinese and Western critiques of the Confucian tradition, Ching then sets out to discuss the "Problems" of Man, God, Self Transcendance, and Politics and Religion. While she explores some interesting avenues under the headings of "God" and "Politics and Religion," Ching recognizes that the status of revelation in Christianity and the centrality of the claims made for the person of Jesus limit the dialogue on these topics. "Christianity and Confucianism," she notes, "can only engage in a dialogue about man" (p. 30). The book, therefore, is ultimately a comparison of two kinds of humanism, Confucian and contemporary Christian human- ism. Unfortunately, the author's definition of the scope and content of Chistian humanism is too brief, and her discussion of the key concept of Confucian humanism (jen, "human- heartedness') is spread over widely separated pages (pp. 30, 87, 93, 138).' Though in her chapter on "critiques" Ching 1 Due to her brevity, we miss the full impact of the concept of jen. See Boodberg's definition in "The Semasiology of Some Primary Confucian Concepts," Selected Works of This content downloaded from 185.2.32.141 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 17:45:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp Reviews of Books 641 presents an interesting discussion of the post-1962 Chinese debates over the meaning of humanheartedness (based on the passage in Analects, 12:1 which glosses Jen as "self confidence and recovery of propriety," k'o-chi fu-li, pp. 48- 49), the implications of the discussion are not brought to bear on the problem in other chapters. Further, the important distinction between Christian humanism, which has its roots in the Renaissance and which tends to exalt the individual at the expense of other men and the sacred, and the socially oriented relational humanism of the Confucian tradition, which emphasizes man's organic integration with men, could have been more clearly drawn out. The most promising basis for dialogue is the problem of evil and manes attempts to comprehend and curtail it. Ching focuses on evil in early Confucianism but her brief discussion of Mencius and Hsun Tzu (pp. 75-78) glosses over their strong similarity of approach and their prescriptions for moral education.2 Though she makes an oblique reference to it, Ching avoids discussion of the epistemological theory of evil which was at the center of Neo-Confucian arguments about man's nature. The book also raises some methodological questions. In analyzing how each tradition formulates the relationship between man and the transcendant, Ching uses the overly schematic distinction between "prophetic" and "mystic" traditions employed by Friedrich Heiler (Pray'er, 1932). But Heiler's distinction is too simplistic, and the general implica- tion that the Confucian tradition has evolved from a "prophetic" to a "mystic" stance in Neo-Confucianism is misleading (p. 1 13).4 Confucianism and Christianity also contains a number of assertions which have been the subject of heated debate in sinological circles; but Ching repeatedly ignores such critical controversy. In a discussion of the early concept of God, for Peter A. Boodberg, compiled by Alvin P. Cohen (Berkeley, 1979), pp. 36-38. 2 Ching says Hsun Tzu's position is that "man is born evil." Though she earlier cites Donald Monroe's The Concept of Man in Early' China (Stanford, 1969), she ignores his excellent critique of this interpretation of Hsun Tzu on pages 77-81. 3 For the implications of this theory see Thomas A. Metzger, Escape from Predicament (New York, 1977), on the naturally given phases of the mind and the ensuing discussion on pp. 85-112 and pp. 140-153. 4 Frits Staal has made a full reassessment of our methodo- logical approaches to mysticism in Exploring Mysticism (Berkeley, 1975), especially in his chapters on "The Alleged Irrationality of Mysticism," "How Not to Study Mysticism," and "Mysticism and Religion." example, Ching notes that "T'ien appears to have been the God of the Chou people. .. the fusion of the Ti and Tien evidently occured during Chou times" (p. 117), and in note 10 (p. 148) she says that this "appears to be the general consensus of Chinese scholars," citing a 1926 edition of Ku Chieh-kang's Ku-shih pien. This position, championed by Herlee Creel, has been vigorously disputed by Ho Ping-ti (The Cradle of the East, 1975) and the matter is certainly not as simple as was once thought. One might argue that, as a work of comparative theology, Julia Ching's book is not meant for sinologists or Historians or Religions. One cannot help feeling, however, that real religious dialogue must be based on a clear understanding of the traditions concerned. Yet despite its faults, this book sets out an intelligent and important agenda for future efforts. CHARLES D. ORZECH UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT GREENSBORO A Song for One or Two: Music and the Concept of Art in Earlv China. By KENNETH J. DEWOSKIN. Pp. 202. Ann Arbor: CENTER FOR CHINESE STUDIES, THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN. 1982. $6.00, paper. Using Walter Pater's theory that music is the perfect art, Kenneth DeWoskin has defined early Chinese aesthetics through an investigation of Chinese music. He has assembled information from translations of early Chinese texts on music (both "analytic-discursive" and "illustrative-narrative"), and from recent scholarly works on Chinese music. The result is an interesting synthesis of already available material that will appeal generally to China specialists. The most interesting parts of the book are found in Chapters 3, 8 and 9, where DeWoskin discusses the relation- ship between music, hearing and the mind (ch. 3), ch'in ideology (ch. 8), and the Chinese concept of art in relation to Western aesthetics (ch. 9). In Chapter 3, he discusses the diagnostic value of music which enables the sage (but only the sage) to read the public mind and to foretell future events. He also argues that many "important words that relate to mind and intellect are derived from music and sound etymons" (p. 33). One example he gives is from Hsu Shen's (d. 120?) Shuo-wen chieh-tzu: i -t, (intent) is con- structed by placing yin A (tone) over hsin I:, (mind). In Chapter 8, he ties ch'in ideology from the early Han to the Six Dynasties into changes in politics and philosophy. Music changed from a diagnostic or an influential medium, heavily involved with social order, to an intensely personal medium, involved with the order of nature. Soundless music was the ideal of the Six Dynasties aesthete, who would sit in nature This content downloaded from 185.2.32.141 on Thu, 19 Jun 2014 17:45:36 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp