Christ the Eternal Tao

[JM]

I'm reading Christ the Eternal Tao by Hieromonk Damascene. The author is writing from an Eastern Orthodox perspective and assumes that pagan faiths have universal Gospel truths. For example he states that "Socrates was the Apostle to the Pagans," that Lao Tzu had even more truth than the Greek pagan philosophers. Damascene goes even further and writes a quasi-Gospel using Taoist terms, concepts and style! This teaching has lead Eastern Orthodox to claim that even pagans, those seeking truth, would be "saved" by Christ because of their intent. To me this idea is completely foreign and reeks of syncretism even if the author rejects that idea.

Any thoughts on this idea that you can be saved if you seek truth but have never heard the Gospel? What have Reformed authors to say on the subject?

For me it pretty clear - all non-Christian religious may contain elements of truth, but "go stray from the womb" and are "by nature creatures of wrath." Our natural disposition is one of sin, therefore any seeking of "truth" is really just one seeking after sensual pleasure and sinful desire. None of which are pleasing to God.

Am I being too sectarian?

Yours in the Lord,

jm

 

[Chesterton]

This teaching has lead Eastern Orthodox to claim that even pagans, those seeking truth, would be "saved" by Christ because of their intent.

Am I allowed to post in here? The sentence above is a bit over-broad you know. Plus, Orthodoxy is old and the book is relatively young.

Anyway, doesn't the message at bottom just echo what St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans about men (pagans/gentiles) being "judged according to their own light" and being "a law unto themselves"?

 

[Tree of Life]

Any thoughts on this idea that you can be saved if you seek truth but have never heard the Gospel? What have Reformed authors to say on the subject?

Sounds Pelagian to me. No man seeks truth. Left to ourselves we are all seeking what we want to hear. All who are saved are saved by God through Christ as he graciously reaches into our lives and gives us illumination to the truth.

Is it possible that some are saved who have not heard the Gospel? It depends on what you mean. Abraham was saved and he did not hear the name of Christ, yet he did hear "the Gospel" in its infant stages and embraced God by faith in the light that was available to him.

I personally would not suppose that those living today who have not heard the gospel can be saved. If I were concerned about them I would let this concern drive me to do all I could to make sure that they did hear the gospel. It's the only means of salvation that I'm aware of.

 

[Tree of Life]

Am I allowed to post in here? The sentence above is a bit over-broad you know. Plus, Orthodoxy is old and the book is relatively young.

Anyway, doesn't the message at bottom just echo what St. Paul said in his letter to the Romans about men (pagans/gentiles) being "judged according to their own light" and being "a law unto themselves"?

Paul mentions these things but his point is that the gentiles are condemned apart from the Law. They don't need knowledge of the Law in order to stand condemned before God.

 

[Chesterton]

No man seeks truth.

I clicked on the Semper Formanda title and from the sub-threads I see this is probably a pretty Calvinist place. Nothing I could say here would matter, so never mind. Have a nice day.

 

[GreekOrthodox]

For example he states that "Socrates was the Apostle to the Pagans," that Lao Tzu had even more truth than the Greek pagan philosophers. Damascene goes even further and writes a quasi-Gospel using Taoist terms, concepts and style!

In John 1:1, "Logos" is translated as "Tao" in Chinese Bibles, so that it carries the essence of the philosophical meaning of Logos into Chinese. As for Socrates being the Apostle to the Pagans, other Christians did reference some pre-Christian philosophers as being reflective of Christian thought, Seneca the Younger is the main one I can think of.

 

[tulipbee]

If one goes deeper and listen to discussions between a student and a master, you see that the student explained the tao and the master sent him back out into the meditation hall to meditate another 5 years til he is able to see the master again. Student talked too much cause man can't explain the
Tao. Can a totally depraved man explain God? No!

 

[bsd058]

Interesting that you are reading this and I'm re-reading CS Lewis' "The Abolition of Man" which uses the same terminology of "the Tao."

 

[hedrick]

For me it pretty clear - all non-Christian religious may contain elements of truth, but "go stray from the womb" and are "by nature creatures of wrath." Our natural disposition is one of sin, therefore any seeking of "truth" is really just one seeking after sensual pleasure and sinful desire. None of which are pleasing to God.

Am I being too sectarian?

Maybe a little. But I do think the NT shows that Jesus is the way to God. John 14:6 doesn’t seem consistent with Jesus being just one of many ways.

But the specific argument you give doesn’t seem all that helpful. Sure, we need God’s grace. But God can give his grace wherever he wants. So I don’t think that particularly settles anything. It seems to me that in principle at least TULIP can coexist with the typical Rahner-style “Christ comes to people in their hearts.” Indeed TULIP doesn’t even need justification by faith (which is probably its weakness).

Of course that’s not the way traditional Reformed have viewed things. I’m sure you know that Westminster rejects inclusivism, as all traditional Reformed writers of which I’m aware do as well. But I think I’d stick with NT arguments rather than deductions from total depravity. (Indeed Acts 17:23 is pretty strong evidence against the concept that pagans have no true desire for God. I realize Paul was trying to be sympathetic for missionary reasons, but presumably he didn't actually lie.)

Just how strong are those? As you probably know, I’m sort of mid-way between hardcore traditional Reformed and a real liberal. That’s true here as well. I think passages like John 14:6 make it obvious that Jesus isn’t just one religious leader among others. He is the Word made flesh, and no one else is. So I reject pluralism. Also, universalism seems hard, given Jesus’ many teachings about judgement.

But it’s also not clear to me that passage Jesus answered the question people want to use John 14:6 to answer. He was talking about the way to the Father, how we get to know him. I see no indication that he was talking about the salvation of people who never heard about Jesus. He did say, in John 3:16, etc, that those who reject him because their deeds are evil and they can’t stand the light, are doomed. But I’m not convinced that Jesus said anything about those that hadn’t met him or understood what he really was.

But I’m pretty skeptical about any view that Socrates was a kind of Christian. He may be saved. But he didn’t understand Christ, and had a number of ideas that aren’t really consistent with Jesus’ teachings. The early apologists were probably taking this position at least partly as a missionary approach. Like Act 17:23, in which Paul seems to have accepted that the Greek altar was in some sense about the true God. The apologists wanted to say that Christianity fulfilled all the legitimate longings that pagans had always had, and took up the best parts of their philosophies. I think there’s a lot to be said for that. But like the glimpses of Christ in the OT, the parts of Greek religion that pointed to Christ were just hints. They weren’t the real thing.

 

[Calvinist Dark Lord]

Interesting that you are reading this and I'm re-reading CS Lewis' "The Abolition of Man" which uses the same terminology of "the Tao."

A bit of a difference. The OP is claiming --probably correctly-- that the Chinese Translation of the Bible, and specifically the First Chapter of John, translates the Logos as the Tao.

Of course this ignores the semantic overlap in both languages and the limitations therof.

On the other hand, Lewis defined the Tao as "The Way" or as the Latin puts it: the Sine Qua Non --Without Which Not. Quite a bit less personal than saying "The Tao became flesh and dwelt amongst us."

The two concepts aren't nearly the same.

 

[JM]

The Tao is viewed in the classical sense like Brahman, the impersonal God of the universal, but the book tries Christianize the Tao by claiming it is personal. The issue I have with this is pretty simple, the Tao is given human attributes so we can understand how "it works" out in the world and not because the being/Tao is personal.

 

[Calvinist Dark Lord]

The Tao is viewed in the classical sense like Brahman, the impersonal God of the universal, but the book tries Christianize the Tao by claiming it is personal. The issue I have with this is pretty simple, the Tao is given human attributes so we can understand how "it works" out in the world and not because the being/Tao is personal.

Old friend, when one says "The Tao is viewed..." that person has already gotten his or herself into trouble. The problem is that 'defining' the Tao is a bit analogous to "nailing Jello to the wall"...you make a mess of your walls, and the Jello still ends up dripping onto the floor.

What is probably in effect is that there would be in Mandarin (i assume that it is not Cantonese) there would be what is known as a "semantic overlap" in the word Tao, such that in SOME circumstances, a personal principle or even personification is in the mind of the writer.

An analog in New Testament Greek would be the word Archo (verb, first person singular active indicative) which means i rule, verses Archomai (Verb, first person singular middle voice indicative) which is so different from the active voice form that the English uses another verb...i begin.

Archomai is the cognate of the noun form. As the first verse of John shows us. en arche In the beginning.

So how does one get rule from beginning just by changing the voice?

This is probably the same thing that is going on with the Chinese rendering of Logos as Tao. We do not know what form we are looking at as i gather that neither of us are familiar with either Mandarin or Cantonese.

 

[JM]

Old friend, when one says "The Tao is viewed..." that person has already gotten his or herself into trouble.

I do understand what you mean but I was simply explaining the meaning gathered from reading the book and not the Chinese meaning. In religion we have three aspects for understanding and all must be used to discuss these ideas; 1) causation - a link between the religious idea and things found in creation 2) apophatic - God or Tao is not like etc. etc. 3) anthropomorphisms - where we say God or even the Tao is like etc. etc.

If we deny any of the above we are restoring to mysticism and irrationality.

Yours in the Lord,

jm

 

[Bluesh1ft]

Interesting question. I tend to think that God saves people primarily through the Word as manifested in the Bible. But God's Word Transcends beyond Paper and Ink and the Human narration of Paper and Ink. The Apostle Paul was saved through Direct contact with Jesus. This to me shows that Gods salvation manifests itself in multiples ways.

Christ is the only way for salvation, but how many ways are there to Christ? Preaching and Proclaiming the Gospel is what we are called to do, so if there is an aspect of salvation where Christ saves someone outside of what we would call normal conditions.. Its beyond understanding and that we will just have to see what is revealed to us sometime after Christ's return.

Also, you might be able to answer some of those questions on a case by case basis, seeing how they react when the Gospel is preached to them.

Now as for aspects of Christianity that might not necessarily be salvific, there might be such things found outside of Biblical teachings. We know that men are Depraved beyond saving themselves but that doesn't mean God has not enabled some amount of good from teachings that agree with Biblical ideas, but are not part of scripture.......This makes me think about the scope ... the wideness of the concept of Scripture. When thinking about God's sovereignty and Omnipotence, wouldn't scripture found outside of the bible with the same concept and understanding... still be scripture? when someone says something in the secular realm maybe without being a Christian or knowing Bible verses at all, can't their words possibly be scripture?

 

[JM]

According to some former Muslims Christ saves them in their dreams...

 

[tulipbee]

According to some former Muslims Christ saves them in their dreams...

Can God's people choose Jesus in thief dreams?