John C. H. Wu and the Evangelization of China

John A. Lindblom

John C. H. Wu and theEvangelization of China

Introduction: China’s Spiritual Crisis

A vast amount of literature has poured forth from academic press-es in recent years concerning China’s rapid and profound changes inalmost every area of economic, social, and political life. These includeanalyses of a variety of pressing crises. Unemployment is widespread,brought about by the liquidation of state-owned enterprises, whichhas led to huge labor riots. The state welfare services are in decline,which has led to the inability of millions of rural citizens to pay forany health care. Consumption patterns are rapidly changing, whichhas led to previously nonexistent problems of obesity among childrenand to a saturation of Chinese markets with American movies, TVprograms, professional sports, clothing, coffee, and popular music.Environmental damage is widespread and estimated to cost billionsof dollars a year. Some political analysts, such as Minxin Pei, havemade a strong case that China now stands on the edge of a severepolitical crisis. He points out, for example, that the government isfailing in several areas essential to maintaining its effectiveness and

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legitimacy. These include providing adequate health care and offer-ing a legitimate channel for people to express their grievances.1

Other important topics being discussed include social problems suchas rising divorce rates, “floating populations” (rural Chinese movingto cities to seek work without having legal residency), the growingdivide between the rich and poor, the harsh economic effects ofChina’s entry into the World Trade Organization, and its continuedfavorable treatment by other nations in spite of the continuation ofserious human rights violations.

Far less academic writing has been done on the philosophicaland spiritual questions faced by Chinese people in the wake of thecomplete collapse of Communist ideology and the resulting lack ofany single strong moral foundation capable of filling the godlike rolethat Communism once claimed for itself. David Aikman, the formerTime magazine Beijing bureau chief and an evangelical Christian,writes in his book Jesus in Beijing that China’s Christians,Catholic and Protestant, may already comprise to percent of the. billion population and predicts that as many as to percentof China’s people could be Christians in the next thirty years, whichin some ways is still an astounding prediction. He reports (as domany others) that China is now more open to embracing Christian-ity as a dominant worldview than at any other time in history, andthat Christians are already known to hold key positions of influencein the government, military, entertainment industry, and otherfields. This dramatic growth, he writes, raises the intriguing possi-bility that Christianity could become the catalyst for profound polit-ical and social change in China in the decades immediately ahead.2

Unlike the three decades from the s to the s, today thegovernment has removed itself from the business of trying to providepeople with an ultimate purpose for their existence. It still attemptsto instill in youth a general secular humanism that teaches that serv-ing and respecting others is good, as well as a strong sense of nation-alism—a goal that is given a tremendous boost when the United

john c. h. wu and the evangelization of china

States bombs a Chinese embassy or lands a wounded spy plane onChinese soil. In schools, the party still teaches students that Marx-ism is scientific, religious belief is foolish, and Western countries canhelp China to modernize but cannot be trusted. Nevertheless, thereis a tacit agreement among teachers and students that as long as thestudents passively take in what they are told and obediently parrotit back as instructed on examinations, no one will try to force themto actually believe things that must be taught but everybody knowsare not true.

What writing has been done on the actual philosophical and spir-itual beliefs of individuals, however, is of great importance for tryingto understand where China, particularly its young people, is headingspiritually and culturally today. Perry Link, a leading authority onChinese intellectual trends and coeditor of the Tiananmen Papers,reported the crisis of faith felt in the late s by many Chineseintellectuals in his highly acclaimed book Evening Chats in Beijing:Probing China’s Predicament. Link’s discussions with intellectualsfocused largely on current discussions of the central question thatdominated Chinese intellectual life for at least the entire twentiethcentury: how to save China from all its problems, both internal andexternal. In , when Evening Chats was published, the problemsdiscussed included China’s inability to carry out real political reform,difficulties in advancing democracy, public incivility, and low morale.All of these issues, of course, contributed to the widespread dissatis-faction that led to the spring demonstrations in TiananmenSquare demanding reform. Other parts of Link’s discussions, how-ever, are not so concerned with political problems as with the per-sonal crises of individuals: the absence of what Link calls a “guidingideology” to give direction and meaning to one’s life and the difficul-ty of living a life of integrity and honesty in a social system steepedin corruption. Some intellectuals who talked with Link describedChina as being awash in a “sea of cynicism,” in which maintaining per-sonal integrity and honesty in one’s dealings with others is exceed-

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ingly difficult. One student complained that while leaders tell youngpeople to help the country, “whatever you try gets you nowhere, andthen you get punished for trying . . . you can’t do anything here,” towhich a friend added, “China is one word—impossible.”3

One intellectual, speaking in words of exceptional honesty andfrankness, admitted to Link that, for all the complaining about thegovernment, China’s problems were much deeper than the corruptpolitical leadership:

The problem isn’t [the government] any more; we can say justabout what we like these days. The problem is bigger andscarier than that. It’s the emptiness inside. We peer inside,where there should be something solid, something that is“us”—and there’s nothing there. This is frightening, and peo-ple don’t want to keep looking. So they turn where everyoneelse does—toward money . . . Even the intellectuals have lostall values except money. Even the good ones . . . are on thegeneral downward curve. People’s characters have changed—that’s our most frightening problem.4

For most of China’s history, people looked to Confucianism as theguiding ideology for the state and for the lives of families and indi-viduals. A very orderly Confucian system of values based on observ-ing proper conduct in the five key social relationships taught thatorder in one’s personal life would lead to order within the family.Order within the family would lead to order within the village, andso on up to the state and the whole world, or the “subcelestial realm”(tian xia). The ancient system of dynastic rule based on Confucianorder, however, proved inadequate to meet the demands of the twen-tieth century. And when the last dynasty, the Qing, fell in , Con-fucianism could no longer maintain its place as a philosophy capableof carrying the Chinese people and the state into an uncertain future.

Taoism, Buddhism, and the many various forms of folk religionhave also helped individuals and families define life’s meaning and


shape their religious beliefs and rituals. The arrival of Communismin brought a violent assault against all religious practice, andany attempt to resist the force-feeding of party ideology, even in theprivacy of one’s own home or even one’s own inner thoughts, usu-ally proved extremely costly.

Communism’s ideological power, however, did not last, doomedin the end by the bitter fruit it produced: endless political propa-ganda and political campaigns guided by faulty economic theories.These included the Great Leap Forward (–), which resultedin starvation for over thirty million peasants as well as the “ten yearsof madness” of the Cultural Revolution (1966–76), which launcheda violent assault against tradition in all forms and against millions ofpeople who were merely accused of opposing Chairman MaoZedong and his supposedly infallible teachings and policies. MostCommunist ideology was readily abandoned after Mao’s death in, as a wearied people eagerly embraced Deng Xiaoping’s“Reform and Open Policy.” For most Chinese, whatever remnants ofCommunist ideology may have remained until the late 1980s werelaid to rest for good by the government’s massacre of students inTiananmen Square on June 4, 1989.

Link succinctly and accurately sums up the search for a meaning-ful ideology by Chinese people in the twentieth century:“the collapseof Confucianism as China’s guiding ideology, followed by a brieflypromising but ultimately disastrous attempt to replace it with Marx-ism-Leninism-Mao Zedong thought, left Chinese groping for a newalternative even as they were trying to rid themselves of remnants offailed ones.”5 His assessment is correct. The remnants of Communismtoday include corruption, nepotism, and the “sea of cynicism” creat-ed by them. People today are indeed groping for a new alternative,often with a great deal of energy. Ideologically and spiritually, Chinatoday is something of a free-for-all, with people trying just about any-thing to find personal fulfillment and ignore the dreary world of pol-itics. Many, as the above-quoted intellectual complains, have jumped

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headlong into the pursuit of money. Other pleasurable pursuits suchas foreign and domestic travel, elegant home renovations, and Hol-lywood-style romance have also become commodities in highdemand. (The glamorous hit film Titanic was probably evenmore popular in China than the United States; in fact, it was aninescapable presence for at least a year after its arrival.)

Most forms of traditional religion have also enjoyed a revival, butmany observers agree that the most spectacular growth in religiousbelief has been among the Christian churches, which have enjoyedmore new adherents in recent years than the Communist Party.Leaders in the government’s Religious Affairs Bureau have expressedtheir concern over the “Christianity fever”6 that has swept up manyyoung people. Among young people in China today, it is generallyagreed, interest in Christianity is stronger than at any other time inhistory. Some intellectuals have looked for philosophical elements inChristianity that can be appropriated to help China build or supportstable and just civic institutions, as it is perceived to have done in theWest, especially the United States. These intellectuals have beencalled “cultural Christians,” pursuing Christianity as an academicsubject but not as a matter of personal belief. It may be the case,however, that some, or many, of them are already secret believers,modern-day counterparts to the biblical Nicodemus or Joseph ofArimathea.

Christian scholars and religious leaders, both Protestants andCatholics, see in this growing curiosity a genuine search for truth,meaning, and purpose in life. A Catholic priest in Beijing, Zhao Jian-min writes, “Chinese people, especially younger people, are obvi-ously searching for new values besides Chinese traditional values. AsChinese people continue to look for values that suit them, they havebecome more and more open, especially prepared to accept new val-ues. They have also become more and more open to Christianity andthe Church.”7

Since the early s, there have been many converts to Chris-


tianity. For some of these, the faith has taken deep root. For others,Christianity was an experiment, but as Jesus predicted in the para-ble of the sower, the attractions of the world (i.e., consumer mate-rialism) have distracted them away from the life of faith. On thewhole, however, it is acknowledged that Christianity has seen spec-tacular growth in the past twenty-five years, greater than ever beforein the approximately , years that Christians have been knownto have had contact with China.

Some moderate estimates state that China likely has aroundtwelve million Catholics and up to twenty million Protestant Chris-tians today. David Aikman cites an official figure of million butsays that the true figure may be closer to million.8 The mere factthat Christianity survived the Cultural Revolution, when the gov-ernment’s Red Guards tried to extinguish religion completely, cameto many as a surprise. That it reemerged with such strength and hasgrown so exceptionally is truly amazing.

John C. H. Wu and Today’s East and West

There is one notable writer who, despite the many indications to thecontrary at the time, would not have been surprised at either thestrength with which Christianity emerged after the worst years ofpersecution or at the demise of Communist ideology. John C. H. Wu(Wu Ching-hsiung, –) received a top legal education in theUnited States and Europe in the s, returning to become afamous and wealthy judge and lawyer in Shanghai. In the late s,still restless after worldly success had failed to satisfy his soul, heunderwent a profound Augustine-like conversion to the Catholicfaith and became probably the most influential Chinese lay Catholicintellectual of the twentieth century. In the late s he lived inRome with his wife, Teresa, and their thirteen children while serv-ing as the Chinese delegate to the Holy See. As an official in theNationalist government, a friend of President Chiang Kai-shek, and

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a Christian, Wu was unable to return to China after the Communistrevolution in . Around the mid-s, at a time when very fewintellectuals would have dared to so confidently predict the end ofCommunism and the conversion of China to Christianity, he wrotethe following words:

During the last fifteen years, I don’t know how many holypriests and good Christians have been martyred in my coun-try and elsewhere, and how many are still waiting for theirturn in jail. Truly this is the worst persecution that our muchpersecuted Church has ever suffered. But just as the persecu-tion has been terrible so the harvest will be terrific. Of theconversion of my country there is absolutely no doubt in mymind.9

Although a brilliant and prolific legal and religious scholar whowas highly praised by such Catholic luminaries of the mid-twentiethcentury as Pope Pius XII, Bishop Fulton Sheen, and lay apologistFrank Sheed, and despite the impressive breadth and outstandingquality of his work, Wu seems to be hardly known today amongWestern Christians. I discovered Wu’s work unexpectedly, not in abook about the Catholic Church in China—a topic I have studied forseveral years—but as the final selection in Father John Hardon’sguide to the great books of the faith, The Catholic Lifetime ReadingPlan. Hardon writes these intriguing words: “Throughout his writ-ings, Wu constantly draws on the basic wisdom of the Orient. Hesees in Christianity the fulfillment of the best in non-Christianthought. It is not too much to see in this Chinese sage the promiseof a glorious future for the Gospel in the East.”10

Since first encountering Wu just three years ago, I have found hisreligious writing to be an immensely rich and delightful treasure-house of spiritual wisdom that not only deserves to enjoy a revivalamong Eastern and Western readers today but, in fact, offers manysignificant insights related to the increasingly important cultural and


religious dialogue between East and West. Wu writes that WesternChristians must make an effort to develop their understanding of thenatural wisdom of the East and to recognize in it the same kinds of“seeds of the Logos” (statements of philosophical truth preparing theworld for Christ) that early and medieval Christian philosophersfound in Plato and Aristotle. His work delves deeply, perhaps morethan any other single writer since Matteo Ricci, into the harmonybetween the various strains of Chinese humanism and Christian spir-ituality. Using an abundance of rich and fascinating examplesthroughout his writing, he shows how specific elements of Chineseand Christian tradition harmonize and complement one another andhow Chinese traditions are fulfilled, and sometimes corrected, by thelight of Divine Revelation, like water changed into wine at the com-mand of Christ. He wrote dozens of books and essays, in English,Chinese, and French, on law, politics, literature, and religion, oftenintertwining these subjects (which, as his youngest son, John Jr., haspointed out, made both the man and his work sometimes difficult toclassify). Regrettably, most of his books are now out of print owingperhaps to the West’s turning its attention away from traditionalCatholic thought since the s.

In his religious work, Wu explores the eternal truths found in theChinese traditions of Confucianism, Taoism, and Zen Buddhism,often comparing them to the great mystics and other Catholic spir-itual writers. In the s he completed highly celebrated transla-tions of the New Testament and Psalms into literary Chinese, and ofthe Taoist classic Tao Teh Ching into English, which is most likely hisonly work still in print in English today.

According to Wu, Westerners often find the mystical and intu-itive elements of Eastern traditions foreign and as a result they havedifficulty understanding the Eastern sages. In order to understandthe Eastern mind, which is accustomed to “moving in circles,” Chris-tians in the West, who are used to “moving in straight lines,” need toexplore the too often neglected mystical side of their own Christian

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tradition. For Westerners, what such an exploration really entails isa deeper conversion to an experience of interior silence and prayer.We may in the modern West have a tendency to separate the morerational approaches to faith, such as the systematic approach to the-ology of St. Thomas Aquinas, from the contemplative or mysticalspirituality of St. John of the Cross, St. Thérèse of Lisieux, orThomas Merton. Part of Wu’s spiritual genius is that like these greatChristian mystics he unites these two approaches. He possessed thelogical powers of a gifted, Western-trained legal scholar, who was anavowed Thomist, yet often spoke of feeling more at home in themonastic cloister than in the world. Thanks to Wu’s son John Jr. wehave a beautiful glimpse into his close friendship with Merton, oneof the last century’s most celebrated contemplative monks. Wu’swork contains many insights about the need for silence, for a con-templative and mystical spirituality in a world where the noise andrush of business now dominates and shapes culture. Such a businessculture is now flooding into mainland China and has already come todominate the rest of East Asia during the past half-century.

Wu understood the cultures of the East and West at a deep level,both through his first-rate education and from his vast personalexperience. He grew up in China during the first two decades of thetwentieth century, when the country was still largely guided by Con-fucian principles. He also became well versed in Taoism and Bud-dhism. Wu studied law in Shanghai, and in his early twenties went tothe United States where he excelled at the University of MichiganLaw School. Here he received a J.D. (Doctor of Law) degree andpublished his first professional article in the Michigan Law Review in. At age twenty-two, he began a friendship with eighty-year-oldU. S. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the twocarried on a close correspondence that lasted eleven years. Wu laterstudied in Paris, and in Berlin he came to know the prominent neo-Kantian philosopher Rudolf Stammler. He later lectured and stud-ied at Harvard and many other U.S. institutions. In , he


returned to Shanghai and became a famous judge and, later, awealthy lawyer. In , he joined the Legislative Yuan at the requestof Sun Fo, son of former president Sun Yat-sen, and wrote the firstdraft of the constitution of the Republic of China. Fame and wealthleft him still unsatisfied, and at the end of , after a chance read-ing of the spiritual classic Story of a Soul by St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Wuconverted and was baptized into the Catholic Church. He relates thedetails of these fascinating events in his humorous and engaging autobiography, Beyond East and West. After leaving China in, he taught at the University of Hawaii, and in , he joinedthe law faculty at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.

After his conversion, Wu became one of the twentieth century’sforemost Chinese Catholic writers, leading one unnamed ChineseCatholic reader to call him the “Chinese Chesterton.”11 Although Wuis not well known among Western Catholics today, it is no exagger-ation to compare him with such great expositors of Christianity asG. K. Chesterton or C. S. Lewis. If Wu’s writings on Christianity andChinese culture, which were published primarily in English, aremade more accessible to the Chinese-speaking world today, espe-cially in mainland China, then over the next few decades his influ-ence on the evangelization of China could be comparable to theeffect that Lewis, Chesterton, or any other single Christian writerhas had on the English-speaking world. Fortunately, several of Wu’sreligious works in English, including Beyond East and West and TheInterior Carmel, have recently been translated and published in Chi-nese, and several others are currently being translated by Catholicscholars in Taiwan. This can be seen as a significant indication of thegrowing interest in Wu’s thought and in Christianity in China today.In fact, Beyond East and West is now available in major Beijing book-stores, something that would have been unthinkable fifteen or twentyyears ago.

Wu combines many exceptional qualities that make him unique-ly suited to evangelize our present age. He had a rare combination

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of brilliant intellect and genuine humility that allowed him to remainfull of joy and humor, even in trying circumstances, including pover-ty, forced separation from his family during war-time, and exilefrom homeland, family, and friends in China. His son John Jr. com-mented beautifully on his father’s outstanding yet paradoxical qual-ities in the following words, presented at a seminar in Taiwan in, commemorating the tenth anniversary of his father’s passing:

In my father, one confronts a living paradox: an outstandingscholar who considered his religious faith—which his pietynever allowed him to regard as other than undeserved gift—far more important than all his intellectual achievements; alegal expert who, by his many interests, seemed to have cher-ished literature and poetry more than the law, and who, writ-ing of the law—even of the common law—wrote like a poetand a mystic; a Catholic convert who, though philosophicallya deeply-committed Thomist, was first attracted to theChurch by the simplicity, playfulness and great universal heartof a young Carmelite nun and th-century saint—St.Thérèse of Lisieux, “The Little Flower” . . . ; a Taoist who wasmore Confucian than the great scholars of Confucianism; adaily church-going Christian who was able to penetrate intothe compassionate heart of Buddha as deeply as many devoteesof Buddhism.12

Wu had the remarkable ability to demonstrate the ultimate unityof all truth, whether originating in Eastern or Western tradition, andthe true universality of Catholic Christianity. He convincingly showshow the best features of Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism findtheir fulfillment in Christ, elevated and transformed, as he says, bythe light of Divine Revelation. He calls the wisdom of the greatancient philosophers of China and the West the “seeds of the Logos”that prepared man for the coming of Christ:

. . . in no part of the world was Our Lord without heraldswho, to speak analogically, sowed the “seeds of the Logos” in


the hearts of men before the Word was made flesh. Unlike

John the Baptist, those heralds were not aware of their mis-

sion, and yet God endowed them with wisdom and the moral

courage to teach other doctrines pointing, nostalgically, as it

were, to the Eternal Word soon to be incarnated, The

Redeemer and Teacher of mankind. Among such heralds were

Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero in the West, and Gauta-

ma Buddha (b. ca. b.c.), Confucius (– b.c.), Lao

Tzu (who was an elder contemporary of Confucius), Mo Ti

(who flourished in the fifth century b.c.), and Mencius

(– b.c.), in the East.

It is no small wonder that these men of exceptional wis-

dom, whose influences on human minds are still alive today,

should all have been born and flourished within six centuries

immediately preceding the Birth of Christ. Their doctrines, it

is true, are not unmixed with errors, and even where they

were not erroneous they were inadequate and left the human

mind at an impasse. But this very impasse underlined the neces-

sity of the Revelation; while the grains of truth that they con-

tained and shared in common were faint imitations of the

Gospel, in whose light alone we can perceive their real signif-

icance. In other words, what the pagan philosophers had

uttered as desiderata are seen as reality in the Person of

Christ.13

Wu had an absolute faith in the integrity of truth that allowed himto make such a bold, St. Thomas-like final statement about thesuperiority of Christ over the pagan philosophers, a statement thatone can imagine might strike many Western intellectuals today asbeing offensive to the adherents of other religions. Wu wouldrespond that he is merely arguing from sound logic and commonsense. Like Confucius himself, Wu would argue that all ideas mustbe measured against the standard of truth; he also had enough

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humility to be grateful for having any erroneous ideas of his owncorrected. Today, by contrast, one often finds people claiming thattruth is relative, or that an individual can hold his or her own “truth”that is in contradiction to another’s “truth.” Far from being offend-ed, I imagine Wu would point out such an absurdity with both gen-tleness and humor.

The following sections will highlight some of Wu’s specific com-parisons between Chinese humanistic thought and Christianity, toshow how he sees them pointing toward and being fulfilled in Chris-tianity. They will focus on Wu’s writings about Confucianism andTaoism. But Wu also expounded on Zen Buddhism in a similar man-ner, especially in his book The Golden Age of Zen. Part of the appealof Wu’s approach is that his writing is informed by what he called thecentral event of all human history—the incarnation of Christ. In afashion that is both typically Chinese and typical of Jesus’ parables,Wu’s writings emphasize particular human experiences that revealman’s yearning for God. Although part of his central theme is thatChrist is the fulfillment of the aspirations of Eastern thought, he doesnot so much set out to prove this by argument as to show it throughreal human experience.

Confucian and Christian Concepts of Heaven

Wu rejected the idea that Confucius’s ideas of “heaven” (Tian) and ofthe “will of heaven” or “mandate of heaven” (Tian ming) were imper-sonal forces, as understood by the concept of “fate.” He argued thatConfucius’s understanding of Tian was that of a deity with a personalnature:

Confucius had a lively faith in T’ien [Tian]14 and that faith wasthe ultimate source of his greatness. For one thing, that faithconvinced him that one’s happiness depends upon theapproval of T’ien rather than the praises of men, upon one’sinterior qualities rather than external things. Once he said, “I


do not murmur against T’ien, nor grumble against men. Mystudies lie low, but my penetration rises high. T’ien aloneknows me.”15

Emphasizing the similarity between Tian and God, Wu later citesan example from Mencius (also written Meng Tzu or Mengzi), thegreat sage and Confucian disciple. In Wu’s view, “‘Heaven,’ as usedby the Confucian disciple Mencius, is just another name for ‘God.’”He illustrates this point with the following passage:

When Heaven is about to bestow a great mission or chargeupon some one, It invariably begins by exercising his mindwith suffering, toughening his sinews and bones with toil,exposing his body to hunger, subjecting him to extreme pover-ty, and frustrating all his plans. All these methods are meant tostimulate his mind, strengthen his nature, and increase hisabilities.16

Wu concludes, “thus, Heaven possesses supreme wisdom and long-range purpose, in other words, Intellect and Will, which are the twocomponents of Personality.”17

Elsewhere, in answering the questions of Chinese inquirers onEastern and Western cultural differences, Wu discusses the impor-tant Confucian concept of Ming as a fundamentally religious idea.Ming can take on such varying meanings as “will,” “mandate,” “fate,”“design,” or “providence,” or, when used in connection with thenature of man, “a specific ‘ordination’ or ‘constitution’ or ‘norm’which Heaven attaches to every class or species of beings as its prop-er essence.”18 In responding to a question from a Chinese studentabout whether China really has “religion,” in the same sense as theWest, Wu returned to the example of the concept of Ming as under-stood in Confucius’s time, answering,

We are religious . . . Every kind of instruction, after all,believes in the “way of heaven” [Tian Dao], rewarding virtue

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and punishing wickedness . . . Confucius . . . used “Heaven”[Tian] as a starting point. Regarding what is called the sense of“the will of Heaven [Tian ming],” in Confucius’ time, “Ming”contains moral significance, approximately the same as God’s“Commandment;” it definitely does not have the meaning of“fate.” . . . Fate’s good and bad dimensions are completelyunrelated to the preserving of (one’s) innate qualities [Tianxing], which is the will of Heaven.19

Confucian and Christian Virtues

Wu wrote that the true ideal of Confucian morality was not filialpiety, or Xiao, but “full humanity,” or Jen. On this high ideal and theinfinite reality it points us to, he writes,

The ideal of full humanity . . . is as high as it is broad. It is likea gigantic pyramid with Heaven for its apex and the earth forits base. As to its volume, it is composed of all the intricaterelationships and activities of man, together with the infinite-ly variable circumstances of life. Evidently, such an ideal is notcompletely attainable in this life, but it is just because of thisthat it furnishes perspective and opens glimpses of the infinite.If Confucius had not such a lofty ideal before him, he wouldnot have been so utterly humble and matter of fact, nor so tol-erant toward the failings of others. In this connection, let mequote one of his sayings which has impressed me most pro-foundly: “There are four things in the moral life of man, notone of which I have been able to carry out in my life. To servemy father as I would expect my son to serve me: that I have notbeen able to do. To serve my superior as I would expect mysubordinate to serve me: that I have not been able to do. To acttowards my elders as I would expect my juniors to do to me:that I have not been able to do. To be the first to behavetowards my friends as I would expect them to behave towardsme: that I have not been able to do.”20


On the humility of Confucius in this admission of his inability tofulfill the ideal of full humanity, Wu adds the comment, “Frankly, Ihave not come across a single Confucian scholar in the long historyof China, who has made such a good confession of his failings as themaster did.”21 Wu saw this kind of humility, found in the master him-self but in so few of his disciples, to be among the highest of humanvirtues. It is a virtue that Wu often displays himself, in his frequentanecdotes about his own foolish thoughts and behaviors.

In Wu’s estimation, the Confucian ideal of humanity is analogousto the Christian virtue of charity, occupying the topmost place in thewhole system of values:

It is evident that the realization of full humanity requires themost conscientious performance of one’s duties toward Heav-en, toward one’s self, and toward others. Such is the ideal thatConfucius set for himself and for all men. If his system iscalled humanism, it is a humanism in all of its plenitude, inwhich no values of civilization are missing. In this system thevirtue of humanity occupies the same position as charity doesin the Christian religion. It is the queen of virtues, the bondof perfection. All other virtues are subordinated to it, and alltalents and accomplishments minister unto it.22

Wu regarded the Confucian virtue of filial piety, of loyalty anddevotion to one’s parents, elder family members, and ancestors, asone instance in which a good virtue had been taken to an extreme bylater Confucian disciples, resulting in something of a perversion ofthe Master’s intentions. For Confucius, says Wu, man’s highest goalwas the cultivation of Jen. He writes, “It is unfortunate that laterConfucians tend to treat the starting point as the central theme, thusnarrowing the broad vision of Confucius and paving the way to a kindof detestable clannishness, from which China has suffered so much.”23

Wu writes that during his childhood in China, filial piety was “thedominating feature of the mental landscape of Chinese scholars in

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general. It furnished the main motive to all their actions; it instilleda meaning to their existence and made life worth living for them.”24

Wu, however, also believed that Christianity brings filial duty backinto balance.

This family-centered philosophy of life has its serious draw-backs, if it is not balanced by the idea of brotherhood of menunder the Fatherhood of God. Catholicism preserves thesound kernel of the idea of family solidarity, but at the sametime it does not make a god of the family head, as Confucian-ism has tended to do. In other words, Christianity, whileemphasizing also the duty of filial piety, does not allow it todegenerate into clannishness. The teachings of Christ and St.Paul subordinate filial piety on the natural plane under thathigher Filial Piety which we owe to the Father of all.25

Enlightened by Christ, the virtue is restored as familial relations areplaced in the proper context, subordinated to the ultimate filial rela-tionship—that of man to God.

Even as he criticizes the excesses of filial piety,Wu shows his appre-ciation for the virtue when it is properly understood. He uses it as oneof the standards by which he criticizes two other twentieth-centuryexcesses, one of which is western individualism. As he writes,

I do not wish to be understood as maintaining that the Chi-nese cultivation of filial piety has nothing to contribute to thelives of many Christians. It does not add anything new toChristianity, but to modern Christians it should serve as areminder of the fourth Commandment, which as St. Paulpointed out in special emphasis, “is the first commandmentwith a promise: That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest belonglived upon the earth.” One wonders if the individualisticphilosophy of the past few centuries in the West has noteclipsed this important commandment in the lives of theChristians.26


Continuing with St. Paul’s affirmation of the filial piety instructed bythe Fourth Commandment as the standard, Wu continues this pas-sage with a confident critique of Communism, saying, “The Com-munists have gone a step further. In the words of a leading ChineseCommunist,‘Filial piety is the first of all evils.’ I know from this thatit will not be well with them, and that their ideology cannot last longupon the earth.”27

Wu offers a rich array of further examples showing the harmo-ny between Confucian teachings and those of Christianity, includingthe following representative examples. First, he compared the virtueof meekness demonstrated by Confucius with the same virtue inSaints Peter and John as they stood accused before the Sanhedrin say-ing, “we must obey God rather than men,” and with St. ThomasAquinas who said, “Meekness is a virtue which supposes a noblesoul; that is, those who possess this virtue are superior to all one maysay or do to them. Though they receive indignities from others inword or action, they preserve their tranquility and lose not theirpeace of soul.”28 Of the meekness of Confucius, he writes,

The meekness of Confucius was rooted in humility, which, inturn, sprang from his self-knowledge. His character repre-sents a balance of strength and tenderness. As his disciplesobserved, “The Master is affable yet dignified, severe withoutbeing harsh, respectful without formality.” This is meekness inthe true sense of the word.

Christian meekness is even higher, because, besides pos-sessing the natural qualities of Confucian meekness, it is orderedto the supernatural love of God, and perfected by grace.29

Another example Wu cites of the similarities between Confu-cianism and Christianity is the high value both place on friendship,with Christianity elevating to a supernatural level the already nobleConfucian concept of friendship, realized in the Christian virtue ofcharity:

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[Friendship] is dynamic and expansive. In the end, friendshipmerges into the Confucian virtue of humanity, which is thenatural counterpart of the Christian charity. Confuciusdescribed the virtue of humanity in these terms: “Being estab-lished yourself in the way of truth, you wish to help others tobe likewise established. . . .”

Now, this comes pretty close to the Christian initiative inthe making of friends . . . A true apostle, whether priestly orlay, offers his friendship to every man. He is everybody’s friendwithout becoming “nobody’s friend.” The secret is in havingthe Friendship of Our Lord, he loves all men as He does, butdoes not rest his happiness upon being understood and lovedby them. . . . What is more, a Christian apostle not only makesfriends for himself but causes others to be friends with eachother.30

It is evident from Wu’s writings and other sources that his highregard for friendship was a reality he experienced in the many deepspiritual friendships he enjoyed throughout his life. His faith in Christgreatly enlarged his already great natural capacity for friendship,demonstrated by the many stories of warm friendships with popesand cardinals, presidents, students, monks (including a long corre-spondance and deep friendship with the famous Trappist ThomasMerton), common people, and above all his wife, Teresa. To use oneof his analogies, his natural capacity was transformed by Christ,turning a merely natural quality into one that was supernatural andhad many lasting effects.

One very memorable passage from among Wu’s many points ofcomparison between Confucianism and Christianity is a descriptionof the reaction of a friend, an “old Confucian scholar,” to the Catholicwedding of Wu’s eldest son:

The marriage ceremony of old China was perhaps the mostsolemn outside of the Catholic Church. But I remember whatan old Confucian scholar said to me after attending my eldest


son’s Nuptial Mass in Shanghai . . . The old Confucian schol-ar was so deeply impressed by the solemnities that heremarked, “This is exactly what our old marital rites had fore-shadowed!” In other words, the seeds that Confucianism hadsown came into flowering in the Sacrament of Marriage.31

In an original analogy, Wu compares the six jars full of waterchanged by Christ into wine during the wedding at Cana to the sixcardinal relations among men taught by Confucian tradition. Therelations are that of father and son, elder brother and younger broth-er, husband and wife, prince and minister, and friend and friend. Thesixth, which is not stated but implicit, is that of teacher and student.He writes,

For the purpose of my present discourse, the six waterpotsstand for the six cardinal relations of men, as the Chinese eth-ical tradition has presented them. Confucius and the othersages of old China have filled them almost to the brim with thewater of natural wisdom, waiting only for us to do the rest andfor Christ to turn it into wine. Today I consider myself as oneof the humble and willing waiters standing at the beck and callof Our Lord.32

After explaining how each of these traditional relations prefiguretheir truest form in Christianity, Wu calls on all Christians to culti-vate our humanity as fully as possible, just as Confucius taught hisdisciples to observe their duties within the six relations in order tocultivate their full humanity. Wu says that like Confucian disciples,we must fully cultivate the natural gifts God gives each of us and pre-sent them to God who will transform them, like water into wine,and use them for his supernatural purposes.

With regard to the task of the evangelization of the Eastern cul-tures, Wu applies the same principle:

Time has come for Christian scholars to explore systemati-cally the rich mine of natural wisdom of life in the culture of

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China and other countries in the Orient, in order to “baptize”them as our medieval predecessors did with the Greek andRoman cultures. As Bishop Fulton Sheen has so well said,“The distance from nature to grace, from sin to salvation,from doubt to Faith, is the same for a Western soul as for theEastern soul, for only Christ’s grace can bridge the distance.From this point of view, Confucius can be just as good a start-ing point for the discovery of Our Divine Lord as Aristotle.It is conceivable that he may even be better, at least to theextent that his ethics were more personal, more intimate andexistential. It would be a great mistake for our Western worldto feel that the East must study Aristotle, before it can cometo the Faith.”33

These words both call us to look back in time to the medievalphilosophers, like St. Thomas Aquinas, who “baptized” Greek andRoman culture, and also, implicitly, to look back to the early Jesuitmissionaries, like Matteo Ricci, who in the sixteenth century sosuperbly began the work of immersing themselves in Chinese learn-ing in exactly the way Wu is asking Christian scholars to do today.Wu’s words also anticipate the call of Pope John Paul II for mission-aries to Asian countries, as part of the Church’s “springtime of evan-gelization” in the third Christian millennium, to study the culturesof the East and find ways of proclaiming Christ that remain true toAsian traditions, a process known as inculturation. As John Paul wrotein Ecclesia in Asia,

Evangelizers can take heart from the experience of Saint Paulwho engaged in dialogue with the philosophical, cultural, andreligious values of his listeners (cf. Acts :; :-) . . .[T]he task of proclaiming Jesus in a way which enables the peo-ples of Asia to identify with him, while remaining faithful bothto the Church’s theological doctrine and to their own Asianorigins is a paramount challenge.34


Wu’s religious work serves as a perfect example of the kind of incul-turation that achieves both of these goals—complete faithfulnessboth to church doctrine and to Chinese tradition—considered byJohn Paul to be essential for the authentic proclamation of the gospelin Asia and other traditionally non-Christian regions.

Other Chinese Catholic leaders and scholars today are, in fact,continuing this work. In summer , overseas (i.e., from outsidemainland China) Chinese Catholics from around the world gath-ered in Los Angeles for the second Worldwide Overseas ChinesePastoral and Evangelization Convention, which took as its theme,“Confucianism—Prelude to the Gospels.” Father Joseph Cheng, theconference host and director of the St. Bridget Chinese Center inLos Angeles said, “Many tenets of Confucianism are ‘very close to theGospel.’”35

Sister Maria Ko (Gao Xiafang), a Chinese theologian who residesin Rome, expounded on this idea in her address to the convention:

For various reasons, the concept most Chinese people have ofChristianity is that it has a tight and systematic doctrine, clearrules, lofty moral standards, a comprehensive structure, high-ly effective services, and great ministries and missionaries.Yet the most important thing, in fact, is that Christianity isfaith of understanding, consideration, and good sense. In thisrespect the way of Confucius most easily serves as a guideleading to the gospel. In face-to-face interpersonal relation-ships, Confucianism is precisely able to realize perfect moral-ity and truth, allowing mutual understanding among heaven,earth, and humanity. . . .36

Sister Ko, like Wu and other Chinese Catholic intellectuals, hasfound perfect compatibility between the high moral and ethical stan-dards of Confucianism and those of Christianity, just as Matteo Ricci,the first Western missionary to successfully synthesize the two sys-tems, did four centuries earlier. Their approach continues to appeal

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to Chinese in modern times who find in Catholic Christianity a faiththat can retain the best in Chinese tradition while still providing,through divine revelation in Christ, the answers to the deepest spir-itual questions—the questions about heaven and salvation that Con-fucius declared himself unable to address.

Finally, says Wu, if Christians cultivate the natural gifts of under-standing Chinese culture in the way he urges in an essay titled “Waterand Wine,” then Christianity can be a force that both fulfills its ownmission of evangelizing and helps to preserve a Chinese culture indecline. He writes,

Although grace does not dispense with nature, nature can ful-fill its destiny only by receiving the blessings of grace and theleavening of the Spirit. Without the supernatural uplift anynatural system of ethics, however high it may be, tendsinevitably to degenerate and decay and die . . . Partly becauseof this tendency of all things human, and partly because of ourcontact with the secularized part of the West, Chinese ethicshas been rapidly decaying for more than a century. In the sagewords of Celso Cardinal Constantini, we can only “conserveand deepen the ancient national Chinese culture by giving itthe rejuvenation of Christianity.” In so doing we are at thesame time helping Christianity to fulfill its historical missionin the whole world.37

Wu died less than twenty years ago, but I believe that were he toevaluate the state of mainland China today he would agree withother Chinese Catholic leaders that the temptation to embrace con-sumer materialism has now replaced political difficulties as the great-est threat to both genuine faith and to those noble elements oftraditional Chinese culture that are most worth preserving. Forexample, one desire commonly expressed by elderly parents inChina today is that their children take the initiative to spend moretime with them. In a shift from the traditional practice of children


living at home until marriage, modernization has fostered the trendamong young people of leaving home to seek jobs in the cities. Itseems likely that Wu today would advocate a recovery of some of thegood Confucian virtues that have been lost in the rush to build amodern China. Filial piety, friendship, meekness, as well as both tra-ditional Confucian and Christian marriage are complementary idealsthat suffer in a society that hastens rather uncritically toward mate-rial gain and unchecked technological advances.

Taoism: Lao Tzu and the Christian Spirit of Childhood

In a thought-provoking assessment of the differences between West-ern and Eastern ways of thinking, Wu wrote that Westerners gen-erally have an easier time “seeing eye to eye” with Confucius in hismoral judgments than in trying to comprehend the mystical ways ofthe Taoists and the Buddhists. “Their seemingly wild and tracklessspeculations are likely to mystify the practical intellect of theWest, . . .” he says. “The truth is that the typically Western mindmoves in straight lines, while the typically Eastern mind moves incircles.”38 He cites a few paradoxical lines from Lao Tzu in the TaoTeh Ching as examples:

Bend and you will be whole.Curl and you will be straight.Keep hollow and you will be filled.Grow old and you will be renewed.

and,

Truly, one may gain by losing;And one may lose by gaining.

He admits the difficulty most Westerners have with the mysticism ofTaoism, saying, “Taoism is not easy to understand. Its emphasis is onthe indefinability of the Supreme Reality. It proceeds by the via remo-

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tionis, while Confucianism proceeds by the via excellentiae. Buddhismreinforced Taoism in its full exploitation of the via remotionis.”39 Wudoes an excellent job of writing about Taoism in a way that makes itaccessible to unfamiliar Western readers. One way he does this mosteffectively is by showing just how close many of Taoism’s paradoxi-cal teachings are to the words of scripture, especially Jesus and St.Paul, which are familiar to many Western readers. Christian phras-es such as “Blessed are the meek,” “He who wishes to save his lifemust lose it,” and “When I am weak, then I am strong,” have almostidentical counterparts in the Tao Teh Ching.

But Wu does much more than this. He allows his own delight indescribing the truth, goodness, and beauty he finds in both Taoismand Christian mysticism to shine through his writing. He is a schol-ar with the heart of a child. My own strong impression is that of allhis religious writing, Wu took a special delight in comparing Taoismand Christianity because it allowed him to enter fully into the “mys-tical wonder” of childhood that he enjoyed so much in the writingsof St. Thérèse and Lao Tzu.

As he points out, Taoism thrives on paradox and detachment:

The central insight of Taoism is that humility or lowliness isthe foundation of all greatness. For this is the Tao or Way ofHeaven. As the Tao Teh Ching puts it: “Therefore, the Sageembraces the One, and becomes a pattern to the world. Hedoes not make a show of himself, hence he shines; does notjustify himself, hence he becomes known; does not boast of hisability, hence he has true merit; does not brandish his success,hence he endures long; does not compete with anyone, henceno one can compete with him.” Indeed the ancient saying,“Bend and you will remain whole,” is no idle word. Nay, if youhave already attained wholeness, all things will flock to you asto their home.40

Wu’s writing on Taoism explores many themes and examples thatradiate from this central point. The relationship between the two


mystical traditions is most evident in his presentation of the themeof lowliness, a virtue that inspired both Wu and his favorite saint,Thérèse.

In his acclaimed English translation of the Tao Teh Ching, Wu ren-ders one section as follows:

Know the masculine,Keep to the feminine,And be the Brook of the World.To be the Brook of the World isTo move constantly in the path of VirtueWithout swerving from it,And to return again to infancy.

Know the white,Keep to the black,And be the Pattern of the World.To be the Pattern of the World isTo move constantly in the path of VirtueWithout erring a single step,And to return again to the Infinite.

Know the glorious,Keep to the lowly,And be the Fountain of the World.To be the Fountain of the World isTo live the abundant life of Virtue,And to return again to Primal Simplicity. 41

In the first stanza of this section, which sets the pattern for thewhole, Lao Tzu articulates preference for the feminine, for water (inthe form of a brook; in other passages, water is praised for alwaysseeking the lowest place, out of which it gives life), and for infancy,which also represents innocence and simplicity.

Of course, Christ is the perfect fulfillment of all these qualities:he was born of a woman and showed typically feminine tenderness

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on many occasions, including his motherly grief over the pitiablecondition of Jerusalem; he used water to baptize and cleanse manfrom sin and provided the “Living Water” that both flows through thedeepest valley of any man or woman’s life and leads to eternal life;and although he was God, he humbled himself by taking on humanflesh, literally becoming an infant (something Lao Tzu could notaccomplish), and even suffering, though he was innocent, a humili-ating criminal execution.

Like Lao Tzu, Christ praised childhood and infancy. He said thatonly those who became like infants, or were “born again,” would seethe Kingdom of Heaven. He also eagerly embraced children andcorrected his disciples when they tried to keep them away fromhim. St. Thérèse is also known as “St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus” andthe “Little Flower” for her contemplation of Jesus in his lowlieststate as a child, and for her desire to be among the smallest flowersin the garden of the Lord.

Wu points out the same Thérèsian quality of childlikeness in LaoTzu:“It is remarkable that this old philosopher should have comparedhimself time and time again to a newborn child. The keynote of hiswhole philosophy is that we must recover the spirit of childhood.”42

In his book The Interior Carmel: The Threefold Way of Love, Wuexpounds on the necessity of having our hearts purged of sinfuldesires so we may enter into a “second spiritual childhood” in orderto ultimately advance to the highest level in the spiritual life, that ofpure love for God:

In order to build such an interior cloister (i.e., place of inte-rior silence where one enjoys God’s “divine friendship”), ourheart must be thoroughly cleansed. “Blessed are the clean ofheart, for they shall see God.” This Beatitude requires that inour love of God there should be no mixed motives, that weshould be so thoroughly inebriated with God as to forget our-selves, that not only the conscious part of our soul but also itsunconscious part should be permeated with the Spirit of Love.


We can never attain this by our own efforts. All that we can dois to open our soul nakedly to the influence of the Divine Sun,and let Him shine into every nook and corner of it so as to killall the germs of self-love and pride lurking in places unknownto ourselves . . . In this stage,you have to enter upon a second child-hood. . . . Here all human prudence and worldly wisdom,which you may have acquired during the preceding stage ofactive life, must be left behind. You must be converted into a lit-tle child—childlike without being childish. Our Lord repeatedlystressed the importance of being a little child. Once “he rejoiced inthe Holy Spirit and said, O Father, who art Lord of heaven andearth, I give thee praise, that thou hast hidden all this from thewise and the prudent, and revealed it to little children. Be itso, Lord, since this finds favour in thy sight (Luke .).43

These virtues of spiritual childhood, lowliness, and being weak inorder to be strong seem to be more foreign to the spirit of the mod-ern world than ever. The West has long been characterized by activ-ity, noise, and ambition, and the cultures of the East, in many ways,are rapidly embracing or, at least, adapting to the Western-stylebusiness culture that shapes the global market economy.

For real conversion to take place today in China, as well as in theWest, Wu’s message of fifty years ago, which is really an adaptationof the teaching of Christ for the modern age, must be heeded morethan ever. As he writes,

In Lao Tzu’s time, as in our own age, people had forgotten theone thing necessary but were troubled with many things. Civ-ilization was developing rapidly at the expense of true wis-dom.“The Court is very clean and garnished, but the fields arevery weedy and wild, and the granaries are very empty! Theywear gorgeous garments, they carry sharp weapons, they sur-feit themselves with food and drinks, they possess more rich-es than they can use. Such persons are a prelude to disastrousdiscords. How contrary to the Tao their ways of life!”44

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The solution needed in the modern age is a return to simplicityand to remembering God. It is a practice that is especially urgent ata time like the present, when people in the world’s developed coun-tries are generally wealthy and well-fed, yet “troubled with manythings” as in the time of Lao Tzu.

The Incarnation: Model for All Evangelization

In Wu’s thought, all wisdom, all love, all fulfillment of the noble aspi-rations of cultures come together in the mystery of the Incarnation,the entry of the Son of God himself into human history. This centralmystery stands at the background of all Wu’s spiritual writing, justas it permeates every aspect of his Catholic faith. What gives Wu’swriting such tremendous spiritual power, in fact, is that for all hisphilosophical erudition, he does not leave his ideas stated in theabstract, detached from real human experience—rather, it has anincarnational quality. It is in the person of Jesus that the sublimeglory of God the Father can be known to a child who sees the humanface of the Son yet remain hidden to the learned religious and polit-ical leaders of the state. It is one of the few mysteries about whichWu admits a loss for words:

In dealing with the depth of Christ’s love, we have to touchupon the mystery of mysteries: the Incarnation. Time doesnot allow nor my ability permit a probing into this great mys-tery. I wish only to say this: the Incarnation of the Word ofGod is the central event of human history. Without it therewould have been no Revelation nor Redemption. The thor-oughgoingness of Christ’s love of God and of us baffles theimagination.45

Not only does the incarnation of Christ fulfill the ancient writtenprophecies of Israel, but Wu says that it is in the arrival of Christ as aman in the Incarnation that the mystery of the Tao, so well articulat-ed by Lao Tzu even while it was unknown to him, is fulfilled:


Now, as we all know, without Jesus a personality like Thérèsewould have been impossible. But the question is, Who couldhave taught Lao Tzu such wonderful aperçus (i. e. glimpses) ofthe truth? The Divine Logos, who enlightens every man com-ing into the world! The same Teacher of teachers, Who taughtThérèse the wisdom of Love and made her “the greatest saintof the modern times,” had, before His incarnation, sown intothe mind of Lao Tzu certain seeds of the same wisdom, andmade in him the greatest philosopher of ancient China. Therevelation has uncovered some of Lao Tzu’s enigmatic sayings,which were utterances of the unspeakable groanings andyearnings of the Spirit in his soul.46

For Wu, the doctrine of the incarnation brought together all theyearnings he had felt and acquired from the Confucian, Taoist, andBuddhist influences of his youth, which had pointed him in a certaindirection, but ultimately left him at an impasse—only Christ, in theIncarnation, could provide the breakthrough he wanted and needed:

Many of [Lao Tzu’s] aperçus into the modes of operation of theTao approximate with remarkable closeness to certain partsof the Gospel, just as the moral teachings of Confucius har-monize with some other parts of it. To me at least, they werepedagogues to lead me to Christ; they served as lamps shin-ing in a dark place, until the day dawned and the morning stararose in my heart. They first led me to Thérèse, for they hadprepared my heart and mind to comprehend her “little way ofspiritual childhood.” And when I came to find that her littleway is but a restoration of Christian spirituality to Christ’sown teaching in its purity, I was convinced that what Confu-cius and Lao Tzu taught about Heaven, Eternal Way, andGoodness (T’ien, Tao, Jen) were but pointers to the BlessedTrinity, Father, Son, and the Spirit of Love. As St. Augustinehas so truly observed, “Even in the time before Christ therewere among people those who belonged to the spiritual

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Jerusalem and lived according to God and were pleasing untoHim.”47

Philip Jenkins has recently written that in the twenty-first centurythe locus of Christianity is shifting from Europe and North Ameri-ca to the countries of the developing world, Africa, Latin America,and East and Southeast Asia.48 Both Catholic and Protestant Chris-tianity are experiencing their greatest growth among the people ofthe world’s poorer nations. It is perhaps even the case that Chris-tianity already has enough inertia in the developing world that it nolonger needs the West. Yet I believe that Wu would say that Chris-tians in the West still have much to contribute to the East, just astoday the East has much to teach the West. People who wish to fol-low Christ today, in both the East and the West, need to combat thesame “monster” of the encroaching spirits of secularism and materi-alism that have already done so much to distract the mind and heartof man away from the interior contemplation of God. Before we canpresent Christ to the world, we must attain this freedom ourselvesand, as Wu says below, be “sanctified” and “progress” in the spirituallife, in “absolute obedience” to the Church. I will conclude with hisown words, as timely today as they were thirty-eight years ago,which present a complete summation of his philosophy that the Eastand the West must meet in Christ, where they will find the unity andfullness of Truth:

In order to convert the East, we must know how to “baptize”the Eastern culture and philosophy of life. But since the mostrepresentative Eastern sages are all mystically inclined, weshall not be able to “baptize” them unless we first delve into theneglected heritage, the inexhaustible mine of Christian mys-ticism. To lead the East to Christ, we have to plunge our-selves into the “cloud of unknowing;” we must pray to theHoly Ghost to set our souls free from bondage to the mater-ial civilization and technical habits of the modern times. With


absolute obedience to our Holy Mother, the Church, as ourultimate safeguard, let us aspire to the liberty of the childrenof God. The work of the apostolate presupposes on our partan earnest desire to be sanctified in the Truth and to progresswithout cease in our own spiritual life. It is providential there-fore that at the present juncture both the East and the West arechallenging us to lead a more interior life: the East, in that wemust show it that the kingdom of God within us is the realityof which all its past philosophies have been but foreshadow-ings; the West, in that only by developing our interior life inproportion to the material civilization can we transmute thedeadening weight of matter into a vessel of the Spirit.49

Notes

1. See Minxin Pei, “China’s Governance Crisis,” Foreign Affairs (September/October).

2. David Aikman, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China Changing the

Global Balance of Power (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, ), –,–.

3. Perry Link, Evening Chats in Beijing: Probing China’s Predicament (New York: Norton,), –.

4. Ibid.5. Ibid., –.6. “Jesus Fever in China,” Media House International. http://www.forerunner.com

/forerunner/X_Jesus_Fever.html (accessed December , ).7. Zhao Jianmin, “Zhongguo shehui yu jiaohui de nianqing yidai” (The Young Genera-

tion in Chinese Society and in the Church), Ding (Tripod) (Summer ).http://www.hsstudyc.org.hk/ (accessed March , ).

8. Aikman, Jesus in Beijing, –.9. John C. H. Wu, “Water and Wine: Chinese Ethics and the Christian Faith,” in Chi-

nese Humanism and Christian Spirituality: Essays of John C. H. Wu, ed. Paul K. T. Sih(Jamaica, N.Y.: St. John’s University Press, ), .

10. John Hardon, The Catholic Lifetime Reading Plan, nd ed. (Royal Oak, Mich.: GrottoPress, ), .

11. John C. H. Wu, Beyond East and West (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1951), vii.12. John Wu, Jr., “In Remembrance of My Father, John C. H. Wu,” paper presented at

the Seminar Commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the Passing of John C. H.

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Wu, Fu Jen Catholic University, Hsinchuang, Taipei, Taiwan, February , , p.

(emphasis in original).13. John C. H. Wu, “Christianity, the Only Synthesis Really Possible between East and

West,” in Chinese Humanism, – (emphasis in original).14. “T’ien” and “Tian” are two alternate Romanized spellings of the same Chinese char-

acter, . “T’ien” is the spelling according to the Wade-Giles system, which is stillcommonly used in Taiwan (and was used by Wu in his writing in English), while“Tian” is the spelling according to Pinyin, a newer system that is used in the PeoplesRepublic of China and, increasingly, in scholarship in the United States andelsewhere.

15. Wu, “Confucius: the Man and His Ideas,” in Chinese Humanism, .16. Mencius, Book , part , chapter , article , quoted in John C. H. Wu, “Mencius’

Philosophy of Human Nature and Natural Law,” in Chinese Humanism, .17. Ibid., –.18. Ibid., .19. Wu Ching-hsiung (John C. H. Wu), Zhongxi Wenhua zhi Bijiao (A cultural compari-

son of the East and West; Taipei: Xin Zhongguo Chubanshe, ), .20. Wu, “Confucius: the Man and His Ideas,” in Chinese Humanism, –.21. Ibid.22. Ibid., .23. Ibid., .24. Wu, “Water and Wine,” in Chinese Humanism, –.

25. Ibid., 177.26. Ibid., .27. Ibid.28. John C. H. Wu, The Interior Carmel: the Threefold Way of Love (New York: Sheed and

Ward, ), .29. Ibid., –.30. Wu, “Water and Wine,” in Chinese Humanism, –.31. Ibid., –.

32. Ibid., .33. Ibid., .34. John Paul II, “Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Asia,” Chapter IV, .35. Paula Doyle, “Archdiocese Hosts International Chinese Pastoral Convention,” Tidings

(Los Angeles), August , . http://www.the-tidings.com///chinese.htm.

36. Maria Ko (Gao Xiafang), “Kong Meng Lijiao: Fuyin Qianzou” (The ethical code ofConfucius and Mencius: prelude to the Gospel), paper presented at the SecondWorldwide Overseas Chinese Pastoral and Evangelization Convention, Los Angeles,Calif., September –, .

37. Wu, “Water and Wine,” .


38. Wu, “Christianity, the Only Synthesis,” in Chinese Humanism, –.39. Ibid., .40. Wu, “Taoism,” in Chinese Humanism, .41. Lao Tzu, Tao Teh Ching, trans. John C. H. Wu, ed. Paul K. T. Sih (New York: St. John’s

University Press, ), .42. Wu,“St. Thérèse and Lao Tzu: a Study in Comparative Mysticism,” in Chinese Human-

ism, –.43. Wu, Interior Carmel, – (emphasis added).44. Wu, “St. Thérèse and Lao Tzu,” in Chinese Humanism, .45. Wu, Interior Carmel, .46. Wu, “St. Thérèse and Lao Tzu,” in Chinese Humanism, .47. Ibid., .48. See Philip Jenkins, The Next Christendom: the Coming of Global Christianity (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2002).49. Wu, “Christianity, the Only Synthesis,” in Chinese Humanism, 170.

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John C. H. Wu and the Evangelization of China

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Transcript of John C. H. Wu and the Evangelization of China