Muhammad and His Dao 167
The inclusionist tendencies of this thinking are obviously useful
to those who seek to demonstrate that their own thinking is not
alien to mainstream Chinese literati thought. But although Chinese
Christians and Chinese Muslims alike found concepts such as those
expressed by Lu Jiuyuan inviting, they made different use of them.
Standaert explains that Yang Tingyun’s interest in Lu Jiuyuan’s
formulation lies in its emphatic assertion that one can follow “the
Westerners without acting contrary to the Way of [the Sages].”
The Christian use of Lu Jiuyuan is intended first and foremost to
demonstrate the mutual compatibility of Confucian and Christian
thought. Similarly, by Standaert’s interpretation, Chinese Chris-
tians took Lu Jiuyuan’s discussion of the sages as an invitation to
understand their teaching (“the Way of the foreigners”) as being
“the same as the Way of the Ancient Chinese Saints and Sages.”
In the Muslim interpretation of Lu Jiuyuan (and of other writ-
ers who strike an inclusionist tone), however, Islam is not simply a
tradition that is not contrary to or even the same as the tradition
of the ancient sages; rather, it is an essential part of that tradition.
The difference is a matter of degree. Christians aimed to show that
their teaching was not contradictory (and thus not threatening) to
Confucian tradition; Muslims to show that their teaching was a
part of that tradition. Chinese Christians positioned their thought
as the same as the Way of the Sages; Chinese Muslims went one
step further, by portraying their great teachers, Muhammad fore-
most among them, as being sages themselves.
Standaert himself hints at this method of aligning Confucianism
with other traditions in the Chinese Christian context by pointing
out that Chinese Christians may, through such passages as that of
Lu Jiuyuan, come to see Jesus as one link in a chain of sages. Of
Yang Tingyun, he writes: “For [him], Jesus Christ, who was born
to redeem sin, was a revelation of grace by the Master of Heaven,
in succession of the earlier transmitters of the Orthodoxy, such as
other prophets in the West, and Yao, Shun, the Duke of Zhou and
—————
人出焉此心同也此理同也西海有聖人出焉此心同也此理同也; see Standaert,
Yang Tingyun, p. 201 n 59. I have found more than fifteen different versions of these
two passages in Chinese Islamic texts.