Abstract
This article presents an analysis of the Sino-Christian philosophy of history created by Archbishop Stanislaus Lo Kuang (1911–2004), whose comprehensive view of historiography and the historical process situates him amongst very few contemporary thinkers interested in developing a distinctively Christian yet strictly philosophical outlook of human history. It is shown that for Lo, an inquiry into the structure of historical facts leads to uncovering their meaning, which is identical with the meaning of human life, namely the search for happiness. Humans, driven by their nature and led by heroes, move freely towards what they consider greater happiness, realizing that this requires ever greater freedom and equality. God is introduced in this approach only as a guarantee of the fulfillment of the deepest desires and the One who inscribed them into human hearts. Importantly, in his discussion of God’s relation to history, Lo Kuang refers to the Confucian conceptions of human nature, Heaven, and destiny, offering a cross-cultural synthesis at the intersection of the theology and philosophy of history. It is argued that despite its inconsistencies, Lo Kuang’s contribution is original and could still be relevant for global society today.
Highlights
On Stanislaus Lo Kuang’sThe belief that God has already come into history is central to the Christian teaching, yet God’s relation to history has always caused challenging theological puzzles
But He became a part of human history through Incarnation; the future is unpredictable and humans are free, but God is omniscient and He preordained certain events beforehand; history is primarily an area of conflicts and corruption, and this has to be reconciled with God’s omniscience, and His goodness and omnipotence
Augustine (O’Daly 2020, pp. 189–91), which translated into the fact that the theology of history was never considered a classical branch of theological reflection and rarely attracted the attention of medieval and early modern theologians
Summary
The belief that God has already come into history is central to the Christian teaching, yet God’s relation to history has always caused challenging theological puzzles. As a systematic answer to the question about the possibility of a “bridge” between Christian eschatology and Confucian secular view of history, Lishi zhexue occupies a unique, if not critical place in the philosophical oeuvre of Archbishop Lo Kuang. This notwithstanding, Lo Kuang’s contribution to the philosophy of history goes unrecognized even in the Chinese-language academia, while to date, no academic papers that discuss any aspect of his thought have been published in English. The following article fills this striking and underserved gap, providing a critical analysis of Stanislaus Lo Kuang’s conception of history and evaluating its originality and contemporary relevance
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