God for the Chinese - Tian is God
天 Is God
(Photo: a ceremony conducted at the Temple of Heaven - Tiantan - in 2014)
See the related post on The Mandate of Heaven.
Contrary to what many European experts have asserted, the Chinese do believe in God. Tian - 天 - translated as Heaven - is a very close analog to the idea of God in Christianity.
In the Imperial era, Chinese took oaths, swearing to do something and saying: if I do not do as I swear, may Tian strike me down!
Tian was viewed as knowing everything. Tian was real. Tian knew all. Tian had a moral system. Following Tian’s morality was good, disobeying it was bad.
Here are some common Chinese expressions:
Heaven loves life - FM, Book 1, Zhang Daoling Tests Zhao Sheng. The philosophy here is that Heaven - and Earth - created men and loves its creation.
Heaven does not give life to any undeserving human… the Lord on High has a compassion of life. LM, Book 1, A Pauper Keeps Watch over Money
Everyone born into this world is destined for some happiness. FM, Book 3, Du Zichun Goes to Chang’an
Heaven never seals off all exits - Feng Menglong (FM) Book 2, Zhao Chun’er Restores Prosperity.
An evil deed done in the darkest room is seen as clear as lightning by the Gods (agents of Heaven). Ling Mengchu (LM) Book 1, Mr. Hu Corrupts His Friend.
(Heaven requires that) Evil doers must suffer the consequences of their own creating. An evil doer will either be punished in this life or in the Netherworld. LM, Book 1, Mr. Hu Corrupts His Friend.
The net of heaven may be of large mesh, but it lets nothing slip through. With the passage of time, the law of retribution will begin to work.” LM, Book 1, The Monk of the Eastern Hall.
The Sonoma Sage could go on for pages. See: Chinese Religion as Seen Through the Proverb, Chapter 3: Heaven - by C. H. Plopper, 1924.
Tian created mankind
Tian is the creator of mankind. Thus, Tian is our father/creator and knows what is best for us. The parallel to Christianity’s statement about God’s relation to man is direct and unambiguous.
There was an older Chinese belief which claimed that the goddess Nuwa, working with Fuxi, created mankind out of clay. As of 2022, the Sonoma Sage suspects that Nuwa creating man out of clay was actually a story the Chinese borrowed from the Ancient Greeks, but this is just a guess. The other vitally important act Nuwa performed was: she stop a terrible rain which threatened to drown the world. Nuwa did this by patching the sky - a remarkable feat in which she forged a patch for the sky out of the five elements - making Nuwa the world’s first engineer. Note: this appears to be another world-flood story. However, by the end the Han dynasty Nuwa was no longer honored as the creator of mankind and, while she does appear in later stories, she is just one of several important Goddesses.
Once Nuwa disappeared, for the next 2,000 years, Tian is the primary God, creator and enforcer of life, law, and morality. Tian is a singular entity, but he has assistants, in the form of lesser Gods who carry out the will of Tian.
Why Did the Europeans Not See Tian as a God?
The Europeans didn’t view Tian as a God for several reasons (other than sheer bias against non-Christian religions):
No Chinese Bible - There was no book which described Tian and his acts and commandments to mankind. The Chinese never had a document like the Book of Genesis - truly one of the most important stories ever set down by any civilization. No human spoke with Tian. The Chinese believed their founders, such as the Yellow Emperor 黃帝 (not the same characters as the charcters for the Huangdi: 皇帝) must have talked with one of the immortal spirits - who in turn knew the will of heaven - and thus learned something of what heaven wanted.
No Fixed Set of Beliefs - Chinese philosophers asserted they knew the will of heaven based on ancient stories, poems, or from careful reading of the statements by Confucius. This was clearly not true, because none of the sources the Chinese could point to actually laid out a moral framework for making life decisions. Confucius talks about knowing the way but never says exactly what that entails. Instead, the knowledge of heaven’s will seems to have been gained slowly, by trial and error. One story claims that the core ideas in Daoism came from the Yellow Emperor and they first appeared on blocks of jade, with characters written in gold - thus giving the Chinese a mythic origin for both Chinese characters and the knowledge of of the will of Tian. Naturally, these precious tablets of jade returned back to heaven soon after they had been copied down so no one has actually seen what Tian wrote in more than 3,000 years.
No Explanation for Evil - The problem of the existence of evil confounded the Chinese as well as the Europeans. Many times it seemed good men suffered and evil men prospered. If Tian was incredibly powerful, and had a fixed sense of morality, how could it be that bad things happened to good people? How could punny evil humans defy the will of Tian? There were two main answers to this question:
Over the long term, the will of heaven won out. Meaning that yes, in the short term, evil men could sometimes beat and kill good men, but if you took the long view, extending as far as a hundred years, you would see that good won, and evil was destroyed. History showed this to be true. Sadly, the victory of good over evil often occurred after many good men and women had been unjustly killed by evil people. Such a victory was not much use to the dead… or was it?
By 500 CE - thanks to the efforts of King Wudi of Liang, Chinese culture adopted the idea of judgment after death, followed by reincarnation. Wudi of Liang is one of the most men in East Asian history and he should be much better known. The Sage will write more about him later. The Chinese fused these ideas with Confucian philosophy to create what the Sage calls Sino-Buddhism (see that essay here). For the last 1,500 years, the Chinese believed that the souls of the dead are punished or rewarded in the afterlife, based on their deeds in life on Earth. Thus, not only would Tian’s morality win out over the next hundred years on Earth, but after death, the evil doers would be punished and the good men and women would be rewarded - all in accord with Tian’s morality.
When Chinese scholars were confronted by Christians, starting around 650 CE, during the Tang Dynasty, the Chinese had to admit that they didn’t have a coherent cosmology; meaning: they had no explanation for origin of the Earth, the Sun, the Stars, etc. In the face of the Christian Bible, the Chinese remained adamant about Tian’s role in the world, but it was too late for anyone to create a plausible Chinese version of the Book of Genesis. They wanted one, but they didn’t have it.
The lack of a Chinese Bible led to a degree of philosophical slippage over time. For example, some scholars used the idea of Tian to push for a form of democracy, as they argued that the will of heaven was found in the scholar-official class of men. Thus, the Huangdi should listen to the will of the majority of the scholars in his government. Neat trick that. Most Huangdi were not impressed by this idea at all.
Chinese People were Not Allowed to Worship Tian
There was one element to the worship of Tian which - in the Sage’s opinion - was quite detrimental to Chinese society. This was the strange idea that if many people worshiped Tian, then Tian might become confused, and start granting the requests of all manner of people, even requests that went against the Huangdi’s wishes! — The idea that Tian could be so easily confused by humans suggests that either the Chinese didn’t think much of Tian’s powers of understanding or that the Huangdi’s reserved the right to ask Tian for actions which were not in the best interests of the Chinese people.
The result of this strange notion that Tian could be confused by a multitude of different requests, was that worship of Tian was forbidden to all but the Huangdi and his specially designated representatives. Consequently, even though everyone in China was subject to Tian’s power, and everyone should be following Tian’s guidance with regard to life and moral decisions, essentially no Chinese were allowed to worship Tian in ceremonies or in temples.
When the last Manchu Huangdi gave up power in 1911, the Imperial Rites of Worship which had been carried out for more than 2,000 years - since the days of the Shi Huangdi (AKA: Qin Shi Huang) - suddenly ceased, and no one was in a position to continue them. Note: the South Koreans in 1990 have restarted an abbreviated version of the rites of Tian worship which they carried out from at least 1300 to 1905.
The Chinese evaded this prohibition on worship of Tian in several ways. One method was to worship other deities who were like Tian but had a different name. The most common alternative was to pay homage to Yudi (玉皇) - the Jade Emperor. Another strategy was to worship one’s ancestors with the idea that the ancestral spirits had some connection to Tian and could effectively pass on prayers from the family to Tian. Ancestor worship was a very ancient tradition in China, far more ancient than a belief in Tian. Combining the twice yearly worship of one’s ancestors - once at the start of the spring festival, and again at Qingming - with an appeal to Tian via the ancestors, was a relatively easy step to make on a philosophical level.
This restriction on the open worship of Tian is equivalent to not allowing Christians to worship Jesus Christ except in Rome, and in a ceremony which only the Bishops could participate in. To the Sage, it seems crazy, and quite sad.
When one visits temples in modern Taiwan, the statues and images of Yudi (Jade Emperor) are always there, but not always at the center of the temple. Most Chinese pray, both now and in the past, to specific gods who were thought to be effective at solving specific problems (health, safe travel, good luck in business, love, etc.). The Yudi - Jade Emperor - doesn’t actually do anything. He is a figure of respect, but not much more.
The Mandate of Heaven
The Mandate of Heaven (天命) is a complex topic which deserves it’s own essay as it permeates all Chinese political thought and conceptions of morality, even down to the individual level. The Sage wrote an essay on this exact topic and it can be found here.
In short: the Chinese believe that no one is superior to the will of Tian, including the Huangdi (Emperor). If the Huangdi of China ceases to behave in a manner which meets with with Tian’s approval, then Tian will withdraw the Huangdi’s right to remain in power and… the dynasty will fall. Eventually a new man, who does meet with Tian’s approval, will appear - and the nation will once again be ruled by a dynasty who with Tian’s approval. Thus: the Mandate of Heaven. It might take decades before such a man can rise to power, but it will happen.
Quite literally: if you, the Huangdi, didn’t follow Tian’s values, Tian would withdraw it’s approval (mandate) with the following result: you would be killed, your entire family would be killed, and you would go down in history as the man who failed to live up to his ancestors’s obligations. The last Huangdi of every dynasty is an utter failure both as a man, and as a ruler. There is a very old Chinese expression: What heaven has abandoned, no man can prop up (A New account of Tales of the World: Virtuous Conduct). The power of your armies is of no consequence. The size of your palace is irrelevant. Nothing matters more than Tian’s approval of your actions.
The Sage asserts that there is no European parallel to the Mandate of Heaven, although, when a Pope excommunicated a king, that came close.
Tian : Considered as a Functional Set of Beliefs
The Sage now puts on his Anthropologist hat and considers Tian not as a God, but as a set of cultural beliefs which work well for humans. Assume that Tian does not exist, what then?
The Chinese have been the best historians in the world for more than 2,500 years. The Chinese know the life stories of hundreds of thousands of their people, stretching back to 800 BCE. This is an enormous database of knowledge about human behavior. It is the largest database which existed until the modern era.
The Chinese poured over their history, decade after decade, looking for signs, patterns, indications of what Tian wanted, and what Tian disapproved of. What they found was: the life strategies which worked best for people living in a Chinese society.
Here are some things they found:
The people who lived moderate lives, who studied hard, who treated their family with respect, who avoided over-eating, who kept regular hours, who treated their superiors with proper respect and their servants with due care - these people had the best lives and their families prospered over time.
The rulers who spent wildly, who waged war against their neighbors, who brought hundreds of women into their palace and spent much of their time having sex with them - they died young and their kingdoms were soon conquered.
The rulers who carefully listened to their ministers, who took criticism seriously and changed their behavior, who were respectful of other men’s wives and treated their own children with care and fairness - these rulers lived long, and their kingdom prospered. Good men worked hard for them and made good decisions.
Men who associated with criminals tended to die young. Men who associated with learned men and emulated the life of Confucius or his followers over the centuries - they lived long, and had many children.
The Sage could go on. The point being: if Tian doesn’t exist, it’s still a good idea to act as though Tian does exist because the behaviors associated with following the way of heaven have proven to be highly functional. True, nothing is guaranteed. Some good people died young. Some evil people died rich and respected. But over all, the Chinese analysis of their history became a very good guide to leading a successful, long, and happy life.
As one can easily guess, this was a co-evolutionary system. People changed their behavior based on what was learned, thus changing the culture of China as a whole. However, the fact that you can find successful Chinese communities living in many other countries around the world suggests that the functionality of following the way of heaven is not dependent on living inside China.
Note: the astute reader will recognize this search through Chinese history for essential life lessons of mankind, the same idea which Isaac Asimov came up with for answering the vital question - how did Hari Seldon invent the laws of PsychoHistory? Answer: Seldon was given the greatest human database by a demi-god robot. See Prelude to the Foundation (1988). The Sonoma Sage doubts Asimov knew of China’s massive history of its past but the core idea is real. You can’t make a good theory about a complex system - such as human relations - without detailed knowledge of the past.
Conclusion
The Chinese belief in the power and force of Tian’s morality and it’s influence on the world is deeply embedded in Chinese behavior and culture. It is remarkable that despite there being no core book of Tian, nearly all Chinese seem to know what Tian wants. The Chinese see Tian’s working throughout all their history. Tian’s power is undeniable to them.
It is interesting that foreigners have constantly missed Tian’s role in Chinese society - it is both everywhere, and yet nowhere, and, as mentioned above, almost no one has ever worshiped Tian.
The Sage is willing to argue there are other cultures which are functionally as good as Chinese culture. Further, the Sage can point to a number of weaknesses in Chinese culture, both in the past and at the present. What the Sage is claiming is that the way of heaven was a good life strategy. If Tian doesn’t exist, it still makes sense to follow Tian’s guidance.