Taonomy – Theonomy. Two hierocratic ideological paradigms: confucianist China - Orthodox Byzantium
Taonomy – Theonomy. Two hierocratic ideological paradigms: confucianist China - Orthodox Byzantium

Summary/Abstract: In the rich Christianity-in-China debate, an Orthodox perspective is largely missing. Starting with sinology’s founding fathers—16th century Jesuit missionaries—controversies have focused on the Catholic (Tianzhu jiào 天主教) and Protestant (Jidu jiào 基督教) branches, quasi-unanimously taken to account for practically all of Christianity, while references to Orthodox (Dōngzhèng jiào 東正教) tradition have been rather absent. A possible strategy for placing Orthodoxy (and Byzantium) in a context more culturally attractive to Chinese and Western scholars is to link Chinese with Byzantine studies, providing ample scope for comparative approach, while building on the Ricci-Legge tradition of stressing archaic Chinese monotheism. That is the acknowledged agenda of this paper. In pursuing it, the complex religious- ideological matrix allows for legitimate parallels—including an exploration of ‘iconic thinking’ implicit in Chinese ‘optocracy’, explicit in Byzantium.

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