On the deification of Confucius

In contrast to Krishna, Gautama, and Jesus, who were deified early by their devotees, the elevation of Confucius came much later in the development of Confucianism. Even here, as Section I of the paper demonstrates, most Confucian philosophers saw him only as a great sage. In their recent book Thinking Through Confucius, Roger Ames and David Hall make the claim that tradition and specific texts demand that Confucius be considered a deity. The two texts, neither from Confucius himself, involve, as I show in Section II, a mistranslation in the first and a misreading of figurative language in the second. Ames and Hall's case is not only weak, but also puzzling, because they argue vigorously for a fully naturalised interpretation of T'ien that makes a traditional concept of God impossible. Section III contains a discussion of the Confucian triad of heaven, humans, and earth, in which humans are not deified and gods are not humanised. I contend that Christian and Indian incarnational theologies upset the balance of this cosmic harmony.