So what does Confucianism say? what's it all about?

Confucius lived during a turbulent and chaotic period of China's history. China was not united, and different states were at war against each other. This meant widespread social instability - and it was this that Confucius sought to deal with.

His answer was to look to the past and revive the rites and rituals of earlier generations. He particularly liked the way the state of Zhou maintained the practices of the previous two dynasties, seeing that this was the best way of maintaining order in a disorderly world. From the Analects of Confucius:


Instead of maintaining social order through external rules and regulations, Confucianism sought to regulate human activity by cultivating an internalised system where one punishes oneself with shame for violating the social order. Here again, from the Analects:


For instance, according to Confucius a ruler was not meant to govern by leadership and making decisions. Instead, he was to remain in his palace and perform the required rituals! The idea behind this is when those around him saw that he was calm and behaved in the way required of him, others would follow - and so calm and order would radiate out from the palace into the nation. From the Analects:


Confucianism was not all about the ruler - the cultivated person, according to Confucianism, was a person who observed the rules of propriety in the five key relationships, or li, of society. They are:

• ruler and subject
• father and son
• older brother and younger brother
• husband and wife
• friend and friend
  

The heart of all these is the concept of filial piety - where the child worries about the father, never travels too far away from the father, and obeys the will of the father - even if the wishes of the father are bad, and even beyond the grave! Again, from the Analects:


The idea behind Confucianism is that by observing the past, they could develop cultured, humane people and bring order to chaos - and following the will of one's parents was the simplest and most concrete way for the common person to do this.

Interestingly, one of the most important practices of Confucianism (apart from reciting the Odes and learning rituals) is actually ... the playing and listening to music! One of the goals of Confucianism is harmony - and music was seen as a means of attaining harmony. From the Analects:


The idea behind this is when the sovereign's court (or even a family) sits down together to listen to music, their individual desires and feelings are regulated and shaped into one, by the one piece of music - they participate in harmony. And so to be a Confucian scholar you had to become proficient in music.

All this created a society where the past is prized, elderly people (especially parents) venerated, social harmony made sacrosanct, and rules of society were deeply ingrained inside people.

In China, Confucianism ceased being taught officialy from the time of the cultural revolution - the Confucian worldview clashed with that of communism, which desired that the state (and not the family) to be the only object of devotion. However, the influence of Confucianism still continued on for many in China, and many who fled from the cultural revolution...

[ PS: filial piety is an important feature - more on it later! ]

Warning! This post is only going to  be understood by very few readers - probably only those who have been to Bible college! But it's an important subject because not everyone who has learnt New Testament Greek has caught on to verbal aspect theory.

In 1989 Stanley Porter produced Verbal Aspect in the Greek of the New Testament, with reference to Tense and Mood - a revolutionary work in the field of New Testament studies!

The New Testament was written in Greek, and verbs are rendered in various tenses such as present, aorist, perfect, imperfect, pluperfect, future. First year Greek is all about learning that this is an aorist verb, this is an imperfect verb and that is a pluperfect. However second year Greek is all about learning the significance of an aorist, an imperfect, and a pluperfect.

And for many years the predominant way that people understood what these verb tenses was about was with a model called Aktionsart.

This argues that verb tenses (particularly in the indicative) are primarily to do with time (past, future or present) just like English, and outside of the indicative have to do with the kind of action of the verb (progressive, simple occurrence, completed). This Aktionsart theory of verb tenses is what you'd find in intermediate Greek grammars. And technical commentaries would employ Aktionsart by describing this verb here as "punctiliar", or another verb there as having "occurred in the past with present results".

Porter's book challenged the whole theory of Aktionsart. He showed that the exceptions outnumber the rule - you could find present indicative verbs that obviously had past, present, future and even non-temporal time references! And so he questioned whether the tenses had anything to do with time at all!

Porter argues that in fact, rather than tenses portraying the objective nature of the action,  its is actually the subjective conception of the action by the writer. The different tenses show us an action through different eyes.

In verbal aspect theory, there are essentially three verbal aspects:

Verbal aspect	Verb tense	The action viewed...
Perfective	Aorist	as a complete, whole act
Imperfective	Present Imperfect	as an act going on
Stative	Perfect Pluperfect Future	in terms of the state or condition of the act

Due to the housing shortage in Sydney, property developers are making billions. They are buying up paddocks on the edges of Sydney, and are transforming them into brand-new suburbs, filled with expensive houses and apartments. These new suburbs are springing up everywhere - just think of Constitution Hill or Blair Athol. Think also of newly redeveloped areas like Newington or Rhodes.

And they are really packing these houses in - observe how small the backyards are, and how tight the streets are! The reason is because these houses make the developers a lot of money - and the more high value housing they can stack on what used to be a paddock, the more money flowing into their pockets.

However you will notice that these new suburbs often don't have any place for a church building. Sure, there will be a generic community centre built into the plans - but no real opportunity for a church to build a building on the land.

And the reason is because it doesn't earn the developers as much money to do that.

Why set aside a double-sized block of land for a church, when you could build six executive apartments on it? There is simply no financial incentive for property developers to set aside land space for church buildings - particularly if their shareholders are expecting them to provide them with maximum value on their investment!

But this is where state and local governments can step in. Unless state and local governments require developers to set aside parcels of land and offer denominations the opportunity to decide whether they want to do a church plant in this new suburb, they will never get a foot into the door.

Sure, there are alternatives to building a church building - a church could set up inside a community centre, or in a local school. There are advantages to this model of church - for instance you don't have as huge a capital investment up-front, and you don't have to pay the upkeep of a building.

But let's be honest that churches that rent halls will also have to compete with other groups wanting to make use of that one community centre - a yoga group will want to use the hall on Friday nights. A charismatic church will have gotten the best Sunday booking first. A Buddhist group will also want to use the school hall on Sunday nights. And let's also be honest that there are advantages in having a building that is permanent and recognisable, where you can put up posters on the walls...

Yes, it's good to have a non-church-like building that isn't threatening to newcomers - but there are also heaps of good reasons in having a building that you control and can use any time or any way you like. And I have known people in ministry whose job it has been to set up a church in new suburb - and without a physical presence, they've found it really hard.

But consider this: why would state and local governments intervene on behalf of churches? Why would they bother to place such restrictions on property developers?

State and local governments would only do so if there are sufficient numbers of people on councils or in government who are aware of the issue and willing to take a stand on it.

This certainly means that first of all Christians should lobby their state and local representatives about these sorts of issues. Get them to make it a condition of rezoning that parcels of land (preferably a corner block) be set aside for churches to build a church building!

However we all know that when money is involved, lobbying will only go a certain distance realistically. Developers will still have the ear of state and local governments, and so this means that secondly, some Christians must be willing to stand for public office in state and local governments. Sure, we want to get on with the job of preaching and teaching the gospel, and standing for public office seems to be a tiresome distraction from that goal. However, unless some Christians are willing to give their time to stand for public office, then there will be no one to stop developers from filling every available area with expensive housing - and leaving no foothold for churches.

With these new suburbs, Sydney is spreading out. In fifty years' time where will our churches be? Will they be concentrated in the old suburbs? Will we find ourselves with stunted opportunities in these new areas? Or will Christians in our day have realised what was at stake?

[ PS: back to Confucianism soon... ]

So Confucianism might be a threat. But how do we know for sure?

In order to look forward, we need to look back. That's the value of history, it tells us what the future holds. And when we look back at the history of Confucianism though, we discover that it's a hard philosophy to suppress, and easily adapts itself to include new ideas.

Confucius himself lived and taught during the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history, and just before the Warring States period. The Warring States period itself was a time when various schools of thought, incluidng Confucianism, vied for ascendancy.

However during the Qin dyntasty the emperor adopted the school of thought of Legalism, one of Confucianism's main competitors. This then led to a period of severe persecution where Confucian texts were outlawed and burnt, and Confucian scholars were killed. Some Confucian texts, such as the Book of Music, seem to have been lost forever during this period of official persecution.

Confucianism however, did not die an easy death. Once persecution relented, Confucian books previously hidden behind walls were recovered, scholars put their minds to recalling passages from memory, and the influence of Confucianism grew.

And its influence grew to such an extent that in the early stages of the Han dynasty, Confucianism took over as the official school of thought. A grand academy was established, and Confucian learning became the cornerstone of public service examinations. If you wanted to enter the public service at any level and get ahead, you had to be well versed in Confucianism!

When Buddhism and Daoism came to China, what we see during the Song dynasty is that Confucianism adapted and survived by incorporating aspects of both Buddhism and Daoism. This formed what scholars now call Neo-Confucianism - a Confucianism that now had a metaphysical element borrowed from these religions.

I've been doing some reading recently about Confucianism. Because whether implicit or explicit, it's the philosophical background in which many pastors of Chinese churches minister. And it's been fascinating - hopefully I can share some insights along the way.

Confucius is the Anglicised form of the Chinese for "Master Kong", the man himself, who was born in what is today the Shandong province in the East of China. He lived and taught around 500 BC.

One of the big debates that has been going on for years is, what exactly is Confucianism? Is Confucianism a philosophy? or is it a religion?

When Roman Catholic missionaries arrived in China, they discovered that some people followed Buddhism - which they easily recognised as a religion. But they also came across Confucianism, which they realised had a much stronger hold of the hearts and minds of the Chinese - and they weren't quite sure whether it was a religion. And so some of the earliest Western records of Confucianism was the reports sent back from Roman Catholic missionaries, detailing this new philosophy.

Confucius himself avoided discussing heaven and the spiritual realm. Here is a passage from The Analects of Confucius:"the subjects on which the Master did not talk, were-extraordinary things, feats of strength, disorder, and spiritual beings."

And many Chinese themselves don't identify Confucianism as a religion. In part, that may be because for many Chinese, 'religion' is a negative term that is associated with superstition and fear - and for them Confucianism isn't about superstition at all - but more about the science of perceiving the Way of Heaven, the Way of Humans, and the Way of the Mean - and thereby living wisely in the world.

This means that when many Chinese don't see there to be a need to repent of Confucianism when they become Christians - because for them, unlike Buddhism, Confucianism isn't a religion. Confucianism is only a very useful philosophy of life that enables them to live well in the world - and Christianity is often thought of as fitting quite well beside (or even under) Confucianism.

However those who know their early Church history will know that, in the West, Aristotle (384 - 322 BC) was described as a "Christian before Christ", so amazingly well did his teachings seem to fit with Christianity. And so early Christians in the Western empire happily allowed Aristotelian thought to coexist with, and assist in their thinking about Christianity. However by the time of the middle ages, the admixture of Christianity and Aristotelian thought had actually led to Scholasticism - which the reformers realised had taken Christianity far away from its roots! And by that time, it required a Luther and a Calvin to tear Christianity out of the bosom of Aristotle.

This should sound a warning to Chinese Christians everywhere. We must take special care lest Confucius becomes the Eastern church's counterpart to the West's Aristotle. While Confucianism may seem a harmless, and even helpful philosophy for us, we must remember that the Western church also thought the same of Aristotelianism. And so as Chinese Christians, we must discipline ourselves to carefully examine our Confucian tendencies - even us ABCs! And where Confucianism and the Bible both seem to us to agree - to move very cautiously.

[ PS: know much about Confucianism? If not, find out more about the philosophical environment in which you minister! ]

John Bunyan was a preacher in 17th century England who was jailed for over ten years for preaching illegally. He is best known for writing Pilgrim's Progress in 1678 (download it for free from here) - and I've been reading it at night.

You've probably heard of it - it's an allegory describing the journey of a man named Christian, from his home in the City of Destruction, through various adventures, all the way to the Celestial City. Along the way he meets a number of characters - some of whom are fellow pilgrims, and others of whom try to waylay him one way or another.

Some examples are Evangelist (from whom he first heard the gospel), as well as Faithful and Hopeful who travel along with him (although Faithful is martyred along the way). In the other corner, there is also Giant Despair, Ignorance, and Talkative. And through his travels he will pass through places such as the Hill of Difficulty, Doubting Castle, and of course Vanity Fair.

It's a brilliant way for John Bunyan to teach both theology and warn against the pitfalls that might befall a Christian, though some of the descriptors he uses as names for some characters are not in common use today (eg. Timorous, Pick-Thank, and Mr. By-Ends).

It's such a shame that things aren't so much simpler in real life.

Imagine if, instead of working in the CBD, you worked in Vanity Fair? The name itself would warn you not to invest your life in the seductions of the business world! Or if that non Christian girl you were thinking of asking out went by the name of Wanton? Or if you could know that one of the deacons standing for election at your church was actually named Formalist? Or if your boss was called Demas, who beckons you to turn aside to work in the silver mine of Hill Lucre?

Unfortunately, people actually go by quite tricky names in real life - like Mary, or Phil, or William - making the job of Christians making their way through life that much harder.

Reading Pilgrim's Progress, however, is good preparation.

[ PS: have you a favourite incident from the Pilgrim's Progress? ]