More Musings on Christ the Tao

The Jesuit (Society of Jesus) translation of the Tao Te Ching (into Latin) has been in England since 1788. The Jesuits wrote that the object of the translation was to show that "the Mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity and of the Incarnate God were anciently known to the Chinese nation." In other words, these Jesuits, after reading the Tao Te Ching, were convinced that the "Tao" Lao Tsu wrote about was what they called the Supreme Reason (Logos) of the Divine Creator and Governor--they too equated Tao with Logos.

Saint Justin Martyr on the ancient Greek philosophers, like Heraclitus and Socrates:
"Those who lived in accordance with the Logos [Tao] are Christians, even though they were called godless, such as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus and others like them.... Those who lived by the Logos [before Christ came], and those who live so now, are Christians, fearless and unperturbed."
"[Each of these ancient philosophers] spoke well in proportion to the share he had of the Logos [Tao] disseminated among people, seeing what was related to it.... For all the writers were able to see realities darkly through the sowing of the implanted Logos that was in them."
"Christ was partially known even by Socrates, for He was and is the Logos [Tao] Who is in every person."
"Whatever either lawgivers or philosophers uttered well, they elaborated by finding and contemplating some part of the Logos [Tao]. But since they did not know the whole of the Logos, which is Christ, they often contradicted themselves.... Whatever things were truly said among people belong to us Christians."

Lactantius, another ancient Catholic, on the same topic:
"The Greeks speak of God as the Logos [Tao]... for Logos signifies both word and reason, inasmuch as He [the Logos, Christ] is both the Speech and Wisdom of God. And of this divine Speech not even the philosophers were ignorant, since Zeno represents the Logos as the arranger of the established order of things, and the framer of the universe: whom he calls [by many names]. But the [names] are no obstacle, since the sentiment is in agreement with the truth."
"People of the highest genius touched upon the truth, and almost grasped it...."

Saint Clement of Alexandria on the Logos [Tao]: "[Christ] Himself... is the supramundane Wisdom, the celestial Logos, is the all-harmonious, melodious, holy instrument of God."
"Since the Logos [Tao] Himself has come to us from heaven, we need not, I reckon, go any more in search of human learning to Athens and the rest of Greece, and to Ionia. For if we have as our teacher Him that filled the universe with His holy energies in creation, salvation, beneficence, legislation, prophecy, teaching, we have the Teacher from whom all instruction comes; and the whole world... has already become the domain of the Logos."

Paul, standing in the middle of the Aeropagus, said: "Men of Athens! I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, 'To an unknown God.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God Who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of Heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by man, nor is He served by human hands, as though He needed anything, since He Himself gives to all men life and breath and everything. And He made from one every nation of men to live on the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their habitation, that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel after Him and find Him. Yet He is not far from each one of us, for 'In Him we live and move and have our being' [Epimenides]; as even some of your poets have said, 'For we indeed are His offspring' [Aratus]. Being then God's offspring, we ought not to think that the Deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, a representation by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now He commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has fixed a day on which He will judge the world in righteousness by a Man [Christ] whom He has appointed, and of this He has given assurance to all men by raising Him [Christ] from the dead."

"God is praised as Logos [Word] by the sacred scriptures not only as the leader of word, mind, and wisdom, but because He also initially carries within His own unity the causes of all things and because He penetrates all things, reaching, as scripture says, to the very end of all things. But the title is also used especially because the divine Logos is simpler than any simplicity and, in its utter transcendence, is independent of everything. This Word is simple total truth. Divine faith revolves around it because it is pure and unwavering knowledge of all. It is the one sure foundation for those who believe, binding them to the truth, building the truth in them as something unshakably firm so that they have an uncomplicated knowledge of the truth of what they believe. If knowledge unites knower and known, while ignorance is always the cause of change and of the inconsistency of the ignorant, then, as scripture tells us, nothing shall separate the one who believes in truth from the ground of true faith and it is there that he will come into the possession of enduring, unchanging identity. The man in union with truth knows clearly that all is well with him, even if everyone else thinks he has gone out of his mind. What they fail to see, naturally, is that he has gone out of the path of error and has in his real faith arrived at truth. He knows that far from being mad, as they imagine him to be, he has been rescued from the instability and the constant changes which bore him along the variety of error and that he has been set free by simple and immutable stable truth. That is why the principle leaders of our divine wisdom die each day for the truth. They bear witness in every word and deed to the single knowledge of the truth possessed by Christians. They prove that truth to be more simple and more divine than every other. Or, rather, what they show is that here is the only true, single, and simple knowledge of God." from The Divine Names by an ancient Catholic writer called Dionysius the Areopagite, a name found in Acts 17:22-34

From earliest times Christians were, like Taoists, known as "followers of the Way" or people "belonging to the Way." Jesus Christ called Himself "the Way," and Christianity - living in Christ - therefore became known as "the Way." (Acts 9:2, 16:17, 18:25-26, 19:9 & 23, 22:4, 24:14 & 22).

Lao Tsu taught "The Tao that can be expressed is not the eternal Tao."

Christians, who believe Christ is the eternal Logos [Tao], also believe this. Saint Gregory of Nyssa said: "The simplicity of the true faith assumes God to be that which He is, namely, incapable of being grasped by any term, or any idea, or any other device of our apprehesion, remaining beyond the reach not only of human but of angelic and all supramundane intelligence, unthinkable, unutterable, above all expression in words, having but one name that can represent His proper nature, the single Name being 'Above Every Name.'" Likewise, Saint Augustine taught that "God transcends even the mind," and Saint Anselm, known for calling God "that than which no greater can be conceived," added that God is "something greater than can be conceived." Saint Thomas Aquinas also echoed this in the words "then only do we know God truly when we believe Him to be above everything that is possible to think about Him" and "by its immensity the divine Essence surpasses every form that our intellect reaches." Saint Nicholas of Cusa explained thus: "As Creator, God is three and one; as infinite, He is neither three nor one nor any of the things which can be spoken. For the names which are attributed to God are taken from creatures, since He in Himself is ineffable and beyond everything that can be named or spoken."

In the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God. He was in the beginning with God; all things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was Life, and the Life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not comprehended it.... The true Light that enlightens every man was coming into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, yet the world knew Him not. He came to His own, and His own received Him not. But to all who received Him, He gave power to become children of God, who were born... of God. And the Tao became flesh and dwelled among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld His glory.

"The Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in [non-Christian] religions. She regards with sincere reverence those ways of conduct and of life, those precepts and teachings which, though differing in many aspects from the ones she holds and sets forth, nonetheless often reflect a ray of that Truth which enlightens all men. Indeed, she proclaims, and ever must proclaim Christ, 'the Way the Truth, and the Life' (John 14:6), in whom men may find the fullness of religious life, in whom God has reconciled all things to Himself.
"The Church therefore, exhorts her sons, that through dialogue and collaboration with the followers of other religions, carried out with prudence and love and in witness to the Christian faith and life, they recognize, preserve and promote the good things, spiritual and moral, as well as the socio-cultural values found among these men." from the Second Vatican Council document Nostra Aetate

"Inseparable as they are from people and their history, cultures share the dynamics which the human experience of life reveals. They change and advance because people meet in new ways and share with each other their ways of life. Cultures are fed by the communication of values, and they survive and flourish insofar as they remain open to assimilating new experiences. How are we to explain these dynamics? All people are part of a culture, depend upon it and shape it. Human beings are both child and parent of the culture in which they are immersed. To everything they do, they bring something which sets them apart from the rest of creation: their unfailing openness to mystery and their boundless desire for knowledge. Lying deep in every culture, there appears this impulse towards a fulfilment. We may say, then, that culture itself has an intrinsic capacity to receive divine Revelation.
"Cultural context permeates the living of Christian faith, which contributes in turn little by little to shaping that context. To every culture Christians bring the unchanging truth of God, which he reveals in the history and culture of a people. Time and again, therefore, in the course of the centuries we have seen repeated the event witnessed by the pilgrims in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Hearing the Apostles, they asked one another: 'Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians, we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God' (Acts 2:7-11). While it demands of all who hear it the adherence of faith, the proclamation of the Gospel in different cultures allows people to preserve their own cultural identity. This in no way creates division, because the community of the baptized is marked by a universality which can embrace every culture and help to foster whatever is implicit in them to the point where it will be fully explicit in the light of truth.
"This means that no one culture can ever become the criterion of judgment, much less the ultimate criterion of truth with regard to God's Revelation. The Gospel is not opposed to any culture, as if in engaging a culture the Gospel would seek to strip it of its native riches and force it to adopt forms which are alien to it. On the contrary, the message which believers bring to the world and to cultures is a genuine liberation from all the disorders caused by sin and is, at the same time, a call to the fullness of truth. Cultures are not only not diminished by this encounter; rather, they are prompted to open themselves to the newness of the Gospel's truth and to be stirred by this truth to develop in new ways.
"In preaching the Gospel, Christianity first encountered Greek philosophy; but this does not mean at all that other approaches are precluded. Today, as the Gospel gradually comes into contact with cultural worlds which once lay beyond Christian influence, there are new tasks of inculturation, which mean that our generation faces problems not unlike those faced by the Church in the first centuries.
"My thoughts turn immediately to the lands of the East, so rich in religious and philosophical traditions of great antiquity. Among these lands, India has a special place. A great spiritual impulse leads Indian thought to seek an experience which would liberate the spirit from the shackles of time and space and would therefore acquire absolute value. The dynamic of this quest for liberation provides the context for great metaphysical systems.
"In India particularly, it is the duty of Christians now to draw from this rich heritage the elements compatible with their faith, in order to enrich Christian thought. In this work of discernment, which finds its inspiration in the Council's Declaration Nostra Aetate, certain criteria will have to be kept in mind. The first of these is the universality of the human spirit, whose basic needs are the same in the most disparate cultures. The second, which derives from the first, is this: in engaging great cultures for the first time, the Church cannot abandon what she has gained from her inculturation in the world of Greco-Latin thought. To reject this heritage would be to deny the providential plan of God who guides his Church down the paths of time and history. This criterion is valid for the Church in every age, even for the Church of the future, who will judge herself enriched by all that comes from today's engagement with Eastern cultures and will find in this inheritance fresh cues for fruitful dialogue with the cultures which will emerge as humanity moves into the future. Thirdly, care will need to be taken lest, contrary to the very nature of the human spirit, the legitimate defense of the uniqueness and originality of Indian thought be confused with the idea that a particular cultural tradition should remain closed in its difference and affirm itself by opposing other traditions.
"What has been said here of India is no less true for the heritage of the great cultures of China, Japan and the other countries of Asia, as also for the riches of the traditional cultures of Africa, which are for the most part orally transmitted." from Pope John Paul II's Fides et Ratio, sections 71-72

Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus, Who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form He humbled Himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted Him and bestowed on Him the Name which is above every other Name, that at the Name of Jesus every knee should bow, in Heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

The Lord said, "My power is made perfect in [your] weakness." For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities; for when I am weak, then I am strong.

Jesus said, "If you continue in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the Truth, and the Truth will make you free."

[Christ] must increase; I must decrease.

Constitution of the Kingdom of Christ
"My Kingdom is not of this world." - Christ
Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on My account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in Heaven, for so men persecuted the prophets who were before you.

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John Augustine
Catholic Taoist