The Asian Mind/The Western Mind

[aron]

Following post #592, more from the same source:

Neo-Confucianism as a syncretic product of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. Neo-Confucianism is a diffused religion, and its values will have impacts on people who live in the culture. Nee received traditional Chinese education and was influenced by Neo-Confucianism as the common people at his time.

Nee’s ecclesiology is very similar to Neo-Confucian political philosophy in the following ways: (1) focusing on the legitimacy of authority; (2) demanding restoring golden age order; (3) emphasising “reality corresponding to the name” and “unity”; (4) maintaining the idea that the metaphysical principle presenting in human community; (5) believing human beings knowing the higher principle through intuition; (6) having the same ideas on transforming community through self-negation and personal influence; and (7) maintaining the idea that morality/spirituality determining the authority.

From the analysis in this chapter, Neo-Confucianism has had a great impact on Nee’s ecclesiology, and the paradox of its political ideology explains the existing of Nee’s two opposite models of ecclesiology. The Antioch Model challenged the existing authority through demanding the purity of the church and of the clergy, while the Jerusalem Model emphasises submission to the Nee’s authority because he was the deputy authority, revealing God’s will.

Tien, H. E. (2020). Spirituality and Authority of the Corporate Christ: An analysis and critique of Watchman Nee’s ecclesiology (Doctoral dissertation).

It probably cannot be overstressed that Nee was converted to Christianity and began immediately to write and publish, unconsciously drawing on previous exposures and experiences to make sense of Christianity and to diffuse it outward. He literally made it up as he went along. Is it any wonder, then, that he seized upon Paul's "Spiritual Man" as his initial manifesto, overlapping so closely with the Confucian ideal?