A philosopher friend writes…

There’s a Russian Orthodox monk who wrote a book called something like “Christ the eternal Tao” which basically argues that the tao/dao or “way” is equivalent to the greek logos concept, and was recognised intuitively by some of the great chinese sages.

Trouble is that 99% of westerners who are interested in Chinese philosophy are drawn to it for the appearance of amoral mystery. Basically old drug-damaged hippies I suspect.

Giving such people a Christian interpretation of these philosophies would be like telling the average western boomer-age ‘buddhist’ that much of buddhist practice and teaching can be ‘easily’ understood within the context of Thomistic metaphysics.

Yet, as a priest once pointed out to me, only the elite could ever hope to comprehend or approach the heights of chinese philosophy. Without revelation, it takes distillation upon distillation to produce even the faintest essence of reliigous truth. Besides, thanks to revelation we know that such knowledge can’t really help us or save us…that was a big realisation for me one day – that pelagian intellectual efforts, even in theological and ethical fields, cannot bring me one step closer to the light.

Chinese philosophy, for western dilettantes, is to actual thinking as Kong’s Skull Island is to actual geography. It’s far off and exotic and the less we actually know about the facts of it, the better, because that would spoil the romance.

That’s why the Dalai Lama is always such a shock and disappointment to Western dilettantes when he opens his mouth about things like gay marriage and various other other western lefty trendinesses. Westerners who are “into spirituality n’stuff” think the East is the land where everybody is Keith (d’oh!) David Carradine, offering delphic utterances while a flute plays in the background and the shamed Western boob forsakes his crude bourgeois values and learns Wisdom, Batman Martial Arts, and awesome tantric bedroom moves. It’s the blank area off the edge of the map where fools can project their consequence-free daydreams under the cryptic smile of a Buddha semi-deity who won’t harsh their mellow.

In reality, Chinese philosophy, at its best, leads where all the best pagan human philosophy leads: to earthly frustration and then, if understood rightly under the influence of grace, ultimately to Christ.