A Comparative Study Of Dong Zhongshu’s And Aquinas’ Theological And Political Thoughts

Dong Zhongshu, a thinker and statesman in Han Dynasty, and Tomas Aquinas, atheologian and philosopher in medieval Europe, have a lot of similarities in theological andpolitical thoughts which reflect mainly in their thoughts on theology and theology of politicalthoughts, in spite of their different backgrouds. Through the comparision betweent theirtheological and political thoughts, one can find out the similarities and differences of theirthoughts, which can help one futher understand the reason for the different historydevelopment, and use this as a reference for the development of China in modern times.The main point of the paper is illustrated from the following aspects.The first part of the paper is a study of Dong Zhongshu’s and Tomas Aquinas’ socialbackground of their theological and political thoughts. In this part, a comparison betweentheir social background, their origin of their thoughts, and their study experience is made toillustrate their similarites and differences.Part two is a comparative study of Dong’s Heaven-human relationship and Aquinas’Divine-human relationship.Through a study of Dong’s theory of the heaven, one can conclude that heaven can bedivided into Heaven of Nature, Heaven of Deity and Heavy of moral.He pointed out thatpeople in the body and in nature is similar with the heaven, government agencies are alsosimilar with the heaven.Thus he arrived at that the heaven is similar with people and man isan integral part of nature. On the basis,Dong proposed “not good nature doctrine”thought.Histhree grades nature said divided the human nature into the nature of the saint, the nature ofnarrow mindedness and the nature of the public.The nature of the public can be good after thesaint’s and the king’s enlightenment.Based on the above viewpoint,he demonstrated that thesame type thing moves each other,so there is a mutual induction between Heaven and people,which is also called Heaven-Human Induction.At last Dong had also constructed the natureorder by the Yin-Yang and the five media.Comparatively, according to Aquinas’ Divine-human relationship, it is God, the core ofChristian faith, creates the world. God embodys personality, spirituality and many other absolute natures. In the meantime, God is formed by one ontology, and three persons, or inother words, the holy trinity. Besides, by using Aristotle’s theories creatively, Aquinas putforward the five ways to prove the existence of God. What’s more, there is a study ofAquinas’ rational faith and views of human nature.He gave rationality certain position,butrationality is ultimately in the service of the faith. The essential of human nature created byGod is virtue,but the highest purpose that human’s rationality to achieve is universal and thehighest friendliness.This can only rely on love,faith and obedience to God to achieve,therefore people need to constantly improve their own virtue.Furthermore,he also believedthat human nature has a gloomy side,which is the original sin and crime. The last point of parttwo is a futher study of Aquinas’ Divine-human relationship. According to him, though thereare indeed some close and detailed relations between God and human, some distinctboundries still exist. God embodys some transcendent sympathy to human, while God is theabsolute master, and humans must obey to God completely.A comparison of Dong’s and Aquinas’ theological and political thoughts is illustrated inthe third part.Dong’s theory of man’s integrality to nature helped the status of those feudal rulers moresanctified and more absolutized. In Dong’s theory, being devout to heaven means being piousto the emperor, because the emperor is the son of heaven, assigned by heaven. Therefore, allpeople should be obedient to the emperor, which is for the purpose of achieving his politicalunification, which is also the foundamental measure to maintain feudal order. Heterodoxy ofnatural disasters is just a particular form of Heaven-Human Induction. If the emperor governswell with honest and enlightened politics, it will touch the heaven, and the heaven will befallhim propitious omen. On the contrary, if the emperor is decadent, implementing draconianlaw but not policy of benevolence, then heaven will befall disasters to warn him. The purposeof his this theory is to give those emperors a warn, leading them to govern countries withethics, follwing the will of heaven.In addition,he used Yin and Yang to analogize ethics, putforward "the Yin and yang theory", provided the theoretical basis and philosophical argumentsfor the "three cardinal guides", and combined with the “five constant virtues”, thusmaintained the feudal society rank.Finally he claimed ruling the country by virtue, andimplementing benevolent governance. The detailed measures include: enlightment to the people, managing people by rule of law, implementing law based on people, so on and soforth.Based on the theory of the rank order of the universe and the Christian theory of thesupremacy of the religious power, Aquinas proposed the sacred monarchical power theroy.Hethought that magisterium is higher than the kingship, and the king should submit to the churchand the Pope, which reflects the overriding of the Christianty in medievan Europe.On thebasis of rational faith,he thought the monarchy is the best regime with nodoubt.Meanwhile,with monarch’s benevolent governance and tyranny,God gives rewards andpunishments respectively.Lastly the paper expounds Aquinas’ legal thought.In hisview,Church law is higher than national law,governing the country should mainly by law andsupplemented by virtue.In the fouth part, based on the study of the different development process of history afterthe two philosophers lifetimes, it can be found that Dong’s thelogical and political thoughtshad some progressive impact in that time of period, but it became the shackles of the wholenation for two thousand years’ feudal society gradually. While Aquinas’ theologicalphilosophy system, which he created totally new, adapted itself to need of Roman church’semphasis on faith, magisterium and rejection to heresy in that times; therefore, this theory wasregarded highly by subsequent popes. It emphasized the importance of rational and secularpolitics, which can stimulate more people to think rationally and the authority of the churchalso got doubted. Though not his original intention, Aquinas’ theory with an emphasis onrationality, with no doubt, indeed played a irreplaceblly positive role in the later Renaissance.