The history of Christendom is in fundamental difference to that of Confucian Empire. Though many have tried to put the two great philosophy systems in juxtaposition, actually it’s hard to do so. The Words of God and the Words of Confucius are two sets of collections bearing essentially distinctions. One is from someone spiritual while the other is from someone totally secular. One is to decree the human beings the laws of the almighty one. One is to teach ordinary people the rules of life in order to breed the spirit of gentlemanship. However, when one tried to look retrospectively, the unification of a uniform and prevailing philosophy is the basis of a stable and prosperous society, while the breakdown produces exactly the opposite outcome.
The history of Christendom is full of bloody massacres and wars. Dark Age is a piece of long-term misery in the history of Europe. The split of West Rome Catholic Church and the setup of East Constantinople Orthodox Church swept the whole continent of Europe while the stabilizing of both gave certain period of tranquility to the people as the subjects of both. Then you can see the invasions of Crusaders for hundreds of years. Also the split of England from the Rome Church and established the Kings of England as the heads of English Church brought another war fire into the field of Europe. The conflicts between different sects of Christian would drag the Kings and Kingdoms into endless dark times. The idea of prevalence and dominance always obsessed the heads of Church and then implicated the Kings of States to follow.
The history of Confucian is a different story. First of all, Confucius himself is a humble man who sought the hands of royal family for support. Unlike the God who is an omnipotent mystical character possessing supernatural powers above the understanding of human beings, Confucius is just one of the people and his teaching is all about life and the training of a gentleman. Though some of Confucius words touched the topic of a supernatural power that dominates the fate of earthling, he never put an idol in place. He didn’t create some figure for people to worship. He mainly tried to set up a model of perfect gentleman that is in the reach of everyone’s endeavor. He said, “I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.”
Second, it’s until the Han Dynasty, which is several hundred years after the death of Confucius, that the teaching of Confucian begun to step into the political stage of China history. When Confucius preached his thinking during the ZhanGuo period which is sometime before the formation of Qing Dynasty, the first empire to unify the territory of China, Confucius was facing competitions from other intellectuals of his time. Several doctrines championed by other intellectuals gained supports from different heads of states. Though Confucius himself never picked up big favor during his life, his students did follow up his teaching and manage to penetrate to the Emperor’s side during Han Dynasty. It’s until the Emperor of Wu that the influence of Confucian prevailed. Four emperors of Han Dynasty died, and Emperor of Wu decided to adopt the Confucian as the instrument to manage his empire. And ever since then the dominance of Confucian in Chinese culture had been established. So, Confucian is under the Emperor, not vice versa, on the contrary to the relation between Church and State.
Third, the two trains of teaching bear fundamentally different basis. The Bible, the Words of God, starts off from the beginning chapter to assert that man is born with sin. The original sin is the main pillar of Bible. When Adam ate the fruit from the tree of wisdom, he brought his fellows the original sin and from then the mankind has to bear the mark of sin. In believing so, there is a book of law in the Bible that dedicates to explain the laws given by God and for the government of mankind for their sins. However, Confucius thought differently. Another book written by one of Confucian scholar in Song Dynasty, San Zi Jing, which is the collection of a children’s song preaching the Confucian, taught from the beginning paragraph that man is born with innocence. So there is no original sin in the Confucian, then there is no law book in the teaching of Confucius.
God teaches people to pray to God during time of suffering; while Confucius teaches people to stand up and fight for oneself during such a bad time. God teaches people there is only one teacher, who is God himself; while Confucius teaches that among the companion of three there must be one qualified to be a teacher. God performs magical stunts to demonstrate His superiority; while Confucius instills every bit of his thought into the hearts of his followers and waits for the natural growth out of the seed.
One thing can be certain, that both philosophies have been used to govern and manipulate the subjects of the kings or emperors. However, Confucian provides the infrastructure and pull of unification under one great empire while Christian produces more conflicts and smaller-sized separate kingdoms. An interesting finding would be that none of the great empires once appeared on the lands of Europe survived to today.
Given more study to Christendom and Confucian Empire would yield more interesting and inspiring discoveries.
Astin Page 