FROM PAGAN TO CHRISTIAN

by Lin Yutang ‧ RELEASE DATE: N/A

This is the thoughtful analysis of a philosopher's passage from Christianity- in which he was raised as a boy- to the Eastern heritage of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, the three great spiritual forces in the Orient- and back to Christianity, Lin Yutang has captured the essential problem confronting thinking people everywhere. Actually, he sees the various systems are rarely mutually exclusive, and in presenting them successively, he has conveyed the essence of each. Confucius the man and the teacher viewed the problem of man and the problem of society as a silent revolution-social reform to be based on individual reform... Laotse and Chuangtse felt a great active principle -- Tao- behind all phenomena, and not the degeneration to the occultism of ""popular"" Taoism...Buddhism- he claims- is the only foreign intellectual influence on Chinese thought in ancient China, a freedom from mental bondage to sentiment existence. European philosophies and doctrinal forms brought materialism into focus, and Lin Yutang proclaims himself against any religion submerged in other worldliness and feels the tools of reasoning irrelevant in the moral realm, despite Descartes and the scholastics. He defines himself at this point a pagan, believing in the principle of God, accepting the fact that the realm of knowledge and moral values can never be scientifically proved. The residual area of knowledge lies in the will to believe, a primordial racial urge. We live now in a world without belief, a world of moral cynicism, of collapse of valid human ideals. He came full round to the conviction that only the basic doctrine of Jesus will change it, the revolution of man from within. Jesus, he says, taught a principle, not a dogma, a creed, a rite, a ritual, but the spiritual principle behind freedom and democracy. Christians, he says, breed Christianity, but Christian theology does not. Worship is of less importance than service. In the teachings of Jesus is the power and clarity of light without the self-limitations of Confucious, the intellectual analysis of Buddha, the mysticism of Chaungtse.... Not a book to be read all at once,but a book to be savored and digested. Lin Yutang's Importance of Living found its market; this should appeal in even greater measure.

Pub Date: N/A

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: World

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1959

Categories: NONFICTION