An 18th-Century Catholic–Daoist Theology: Complementary Non-Being and Being in the Trinitarian Latin Laozi

Abstract

A fundamental question when comparing Western and Chinese traditions is what if any similarities exist between the key metaphysical concepts Being and Non-Being and you 有 and wu 無. We find an inspired solution in the oldest preserved translation of the Laozi, the “Liber Sinicus Táo Tě Kīm inscriptus, in Latinum idioma Versus.” This 18th c. Latin translation by a Jesuit Figurist makes a particularly fascinating argument for the equation of Being and you 有 and Non-Being and wu 無. Essential to this is recognizing Non-Being as a type of Being that more closely matches the Laozi’s term wu 無. From this starting point, the translator fuses the three cosmogonies of chapters 1, 40, and 42 to reveal a Daoism-inflected trinitarian theology where Non-Being (wu) and Being (you) become terms to express the complex relationship of the three divine Persons. This effort to connect Daoism and Catholicism both has great historical value and also may serve as a resource for articulating East Asian forms of theology.

1. Introduction

The topic of a localized Chinese or East Asian Christian theology has been gaining greater attention in recent years. However, in the 18th century there was already a sophisticated but mostly forgotten attempt to articulate Catholic teachings in light of the content of the Daoist classic Laozi 老子 (also called Daodejing 道德經). Jesuit missionaries in China at that time translated and commented on the Laozi. The resulting complete manuscript translation is stored in the British Library and is entitled “Liber Sinicus Táo Tě Kīm inscriptus, in Latinum idioma Versus” (The Chinese Text Daodejing Translated into the Latin Language). This work has recently been transcribed and printed in full for the first time after three centuries (Tadd and Zhang 2024), so such an abundant cultural interaction and theological synthesis can now more readily be engaged.

Translation always necessitates navigating two life-worlds simultaneously, yet in this case the translator—a Jesuit missionary of the early 18th century, who some experts believe is the Figurist Jean-Francois Noëlas (1669–1740)1—clearly aims to demonstrate compatibility between the ideas of the Chinese classic and the theology of the Catholic tradition. The result is a unique synergy between Daoism and Catholicism which preserves the former’s honoring of wu 無 (nothingness/Non-Being) as the original state and origin of the cosmos with the latter’s trinitarian theology. Notably, the Figurist translator, in facing the challenge of wu, does not attempt to interpret away this concept but doubles down and translates it as Non Ens or Non-Being. That would appear to place his synthesis in direct conflict with the Western tradition that generally exalts Being and rejects Non-Being; however, he does his best to argue for compatibility.

In his efforts, the translator works to integrate three separate cosmogonies found in Laozi chapters 1, 40, and 42. The divergences between these three have historically been a puzzle for traditional Chinese commentators, but the translator additionally must incorporate Western ideas of Being and Non-Being, and the Trinity. The first and most difficult effort is to argue that You 有 (something/to have/existence) equates to Being and wu 無 (nothing/to not have/non-existence) to Non-Being. This is challenging because the possibility of even expressing the concept of Being in Chinese is debated, while wu 無 more problematically appears to be radically different from Non-Being because wu 無 actually exists. However, the translator’s connotation of the words used to translate you 有 and wu 無—Ens (Being) and Non Ens (Non-Being)—in the Latin Laozi differs from the common academic understanding of these two Western metaphysical concepts.

The world of Western philosophy or Classics often considers this pair of concepts to be completely opposite, following the theory of the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides. He was the first to pose the problem of Being and asserted that Non-Being cannot produce Being.2 If we simply map his ideas onto China’s you 有 and wu 無, then only you 有 has “existence” and wu 無 should not exist at all. More specifically, this would mean the Laozi’s idea of you 有 would equal Being or “existence,” and wu 無 would equal Non-Being or “non-existence.” Yet, when applied to Laozi Chapter 40, this reading would suggest “existence” arises from that which “completely lacks any existence.” This sounds illogical, so how can it be?

At first glance, the translator of the Latin Laozi appears to imply exactly this by using the two Western metaphysical concepts of Ens and Non Ens to translate you 有 and wu 無. However, when the translator employs these Latin terms for Being and Non-Being, he does not follow the sense of Parmenides. When he translates wu 無 with Non Ens, he explains that it actually means an undifferentiated type of Being. He further emphasizes that Ens (Being) and Non Ens (Non-Being) function as two inseparable aspects of a single “Divine Being,” instead of functioning as radical opposites. Such a reading suggests that the terms Being and Non-Being can, in fact, be suitable to explain the you 有 and wu 無of the Laozi.

This paper begins by investigating you 有 and wu 無 as translated and interpreted in Chapter 1 of the Latin Laozi but also considers content from Chapter 40 that reveals wu creating you. This topic then expands to the challenge posed by Chapter 42’s alternative cosmogony that has the One, Two, and Three creating all things after they emerge from the Dao, which from the perspective of the Jesuit translator confirms the existence of a trinitarian worldview. The combination of this special integration of a dual Being and Non-Being Divine with the Persons of the Trinity results in a creative vision that integrates Catholic theology with the philosophy of the Laozi. It offers a testament and model for serious cross-cultural synthesis and a record of a Chinese or Daoist theology, neglected due to the result of the Chinese Rites Controversy, that may now offer inspiration for contemporary cross-cultural theological efforts.

2. A Cursory Overview of the Latin Laozi

The earliest surviving full translation of the Laozi is a manuscript written in Latin and housed in the British Library under the shelfmark Chin.H.20 (Liber Sinicus n.d.). The nearly two-hundred fifty page document contains particularly rich content that preserves the first exchange between Laozegetics—the Chinese exegetical tradition built around the Laozi text—and Christian theology. The translator, as mentioned above, might be Jean-Francois Noëlas. Yet, whether or not the translation was written by Noëlas, it clearly represents the theological position of Figurism. Figurism refers to an intellectual movement among Jesuits in China that began with Joachim Bouvet (1656–1730) and was developed by others like Joseph-Henri-Marie de Prémare (1666–1735) and Jean-François Foucquet (1665–1741). It argued for the existence of connections between biblical history or Catholic theology and early Chinese classics like the Yijing and the Laozi. In line with this perspective, the translator of the Latin Laozi used the Daoist classic as “proof” that the Chinese originally believed in the Catholic God. This background might lead us to say the translation unquestionably distorts the original intention of the Laozi, but from the perspective of Global Laozegetics3 it can be described as a preliminary dialogue between the Western theological tradition as represented by Figurism and Daoism as represented by the Laozi.

The translator, intending to prove that the Laozi shares similarities with Catholicism, first translated what he considered to be the most critical eleven chapters, namely chapters 1, 14, 4, and 42,4 which he believed relate to the Trinity, and chapters 10, 28, 27, 15, 20, 21, and 25, which he asserted include an awareness of the incarnation of God. While most of the other seventy chapters are only translated, or translated and then commented on line-by-line (paraphrasis), the key eleven chapters are translated, and then accompanied by both paraphrasis and elaborate analyses in longform notes (notae). This manuscript divulges an early interaction between Chinese and Western thought. It also represents an intriguing and important case in the history of Global Laozegetics. The translator appears to rely on as his base texts two closely related traditional commentaries: Jiao Hong’s 焦竑 Laoziyi 老子翼 (Laozi’s Wings)5 and Chen Yidian’s 陳懿典 Laozi jingjie 老子精解 (Essential Interpretations of the Laozi).6 Both of these belong to the category of jizhu 集注 (collected commentaries), and they include many of the same comments by Song and Ming Neo-Confucians.7 These commentarial materials discernibly impacted the translator’s interpretation of the Laozi and his various translation choices.

The few previous mentions and studies of the “Liber Sinicus Táo Tě Kīm” deserve recounting, especially those concerning the interpretation of the word Dao 道, and the claim that yi 夷, xi 希, and wei 微 in chapter 14 (which are transcribed as Y, Hi, Wei) refer to the divine name Yahweh. James Legge was one of the first to read this work, then hidden in the British Museum. Though occasionally citing it in his own translation, he was quite dismissive of the Jesuits’ interpretation (Legge 1891, pp. xiii, 95, 115, 123–24). This critique and other factors led the manuscript to be ignored for over a century. Claudia Von Collani helped rediscover the document, and she along with Harold Holz and Konrad Wegmann transcribed and translated the texts and comments from chapters 1, 14, 4, and 42 of the Latin Laozi into German (Von Collani et al. 2008; Holz 2018). In his introduction, Holz reflected on the translation’s approach to the issue of incarnation, mentioning connections to the theologies of Gregory of Nyssa, John Duns Scotus, and Francisco Suárez (Holz 2018, pp. 473–77). Later, in a 2015 paper, Von Collani summarized the different early missionary translations of the Laozi but still focused on the complete translation. She analyzed the construction of the manuscript and the translator’s special interpretation of Dao 道 that revealed the Figurists‘ Christian Kabbalah position that takes Ain Soph (infinity) as the foundation of the universe. (Von Collani 2015, pp. 65–72). Sophie Wei described another interpretation of Dao 道 found in the “Liber Sinicus Táo Tě Kīm,” which originated with Joseph de Prémare. His method was to analyze the two components of the character Dao 道, shou 首 (head or first) and chuo 辶 (walking or movement), to suggest Dao 道 means the “First Mover” and is equal to God (Wei 2018, p. 15). In addition, Pan Feng-Chuan 潘鳳娟 and Jiang Ryh-shin 江日新 have an article on the Figurists’ interpretation of Y, Hi, and Wei in Laozi chapter 14 as Yahweh, and, in an appendix, they also summarize the content of the first eleven translated chapters in the Latin Laozi (Pan and Jiang 2017). Y, Hi, and Wei, three words that appear separately at the ends of three sequential sentences, being equated to the divine name Yahweh due to their pronunciation is probably the most well-known Figurist interpretation, being mentioned in the famous sinologist Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat’s 1823 partial translation of the Laozi (Pan 2016; Yao and Chen 2018). Although such an explanation cleverly identifies a similarity, this coincidence is philosophically and theologically uninteresting. I consider the original readings of you 有 and wu 無 and their rigorous integration with trinitarian theology as proposed in the Latin version of the Laozi much more meaningful and deserving of study.

3. You 有 and Wu 無 in the Latin Laozi Chapter 1

The translator of the “Liber Sinicus Táo Tě Kīm” began his work with Chapter 1, not just because of its place in the original text, but since it addresses the basic issue of what is Dao and is where he finds a foundational articulation of cosmogony that involves both you 有 and wu 無. As our interest in Chapter 1 relates to these later two terms, I will translate the relevant lines from Latin into English.

3. Non-Being [Non-Ens] is designated the Beginning of Heaven and Earth.

4. Being [Ens] is called the mother of all things.

5. Therefore, eternal Non-Being is excited to [motion] through contemplating its perfections.

6. Eternal Being is excited [to motion] through considering its definiteness.

7. These two (Non-Being and Being) arise simultaneously but are named differently.

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 15)8

These five lines, numbered as they are by the translator, all relate to wu 無 and you 有, which are consistently translated with Non Ens (Non-Being) and Ens (Being). In sentence 7, the translator also interprets ci liang zhe 此兩者 (These two) as referring to wu 無 and you 有, i.e., Non-Being and Being. Immediately apparent in these few lines is how Non-Being both plays an essential role in creation and has a surprisingly intimate relationship with Being.

Although the basic translation of Chapter 1 itself is worth discussing in detail, the line-by-line explanation (paraphrasis) that follows it more explicitly reveals the translator’s understanding of the original text. Therefore, to fully comprehend the interpretive stance the translator takes when reflecting on the role of you 有 and wu 無 in the cosmos, we must extensively investigate the relevant comments.

The translator’s commentary on sentence 3 provides a foundational and nuanced explanation of his reading of wu 無. There he contradicts the more common Western view of Non-Being as nothing, instead stating that the Non-Being of wu is “Being that has no form, neither Invisible nor Transcendent, nor anything, even analogously, in common with or similar to created things, and therefore is neither a Thing nor Being” (Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 17). The translator inverts the literal meaning of Non-Being to claim it as a type of Being. What makes this Being different that it deserves the title Non-Being? This type of Being contrasts with Plato’s “Ideas” or “Forms” (eîdos), as it is a “Being that has no form” and has no symbolic or analogous relation to the sensory world we inhabit.

The paraphrasis continues:

It can neither be touched in itself nor known by any effect; certainly, it cannot be called by its unique or categorizing name, in that primary tranquil wu 無 state; in that primary state, it is the Root and first Beginning of that which is the Invisible Heaven, the Invisible Earth; something preceding the going forth to motion, it generates all.

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 19)

So having no form, it also has no name; unformed, it is in the stage of quiescence; it is a kind of Being from which differentiation emerges. However, in this conception of cosmogony that follows directly from the third line of the Laozi, what Non-Being initiates is Heaven and Earth. This passage is one place where the translator becomes quite creative. As we will see later, the relationship between Non-Being and Being, and how the Trinity is mapped onto these two, necessitates a special interpretation of the meaning of Heaven and Earth in this passage. That is why both are referred to as “invisible.”

Essential to understanding this conception of wu as a unique type of Non-Being is the translation and analysis of line 5’s changwu yu yi guan qi miao 常無欲以觀其妙 “eternal Non-Being is excited to [motion] through contemplating its perfections.” Here I added “motion” to the translation because the Latin word used, concupiscit (he is excited, desires, longs for), is revealed in the interpretation as pertaining to the emergence of motion. This follows the translator’s comment on this line that explains this as “the Eternal Motion by which the chaos of the First Beginning is distinguished” (Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 19). This clarifies how Being comes from the so-called Non-Being. The indistinct Non-Being “moves itself within itself from eternity, and through that ineffable movement generates an Image distinct from itself, through which appearing to itself pleases itself and beholding itself produces Divine love” (Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 19). Thus, the Chinese original yu 欲 “desire” becomes understood as the creative force of love.

Once the movement that produced an image occurs, there exists you 有 as Being that contrasts with wu 無 as the Being of imageless Non-Being. In the comments on line 4 about you, the translator says, “it is the First Beginning already distinct through movement within the Essence, and the generation of its Invisible Image, having a transcendent form, which although not a created form, nevertheless allows it to be a Thing and Being” (Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 19). The key contrast between the so-called Non-Being and Being thus centers on whether or not there exists a distinguished form within them. The former includes no form, not even a transcendent or invisible one, while the latter has a form both transcendent and invisible. It is the First Beginning produced by the movement of Non-Being; it is a type of Being transcendent in a way akin to the Platonic “Form” (eîdos). This Being is even called a “Thing,” but its emergence from the movement cannot be called creation. It is not a created thing. It is a transcendent thing that has an invisible form. Furthermore, this you 有 or Being by virtue of having form is able to “repeatedly move itself by an ineffable movement from eternity so that within time it produces outside itself, and through having been moved it has the virtue to be and be called the Mother of All Things” (Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 19). As the “Mother of All Things,” Being is the “First Beginning” that already exists due to “differentiation” occurring from “ineffable movement from eternity.” Especially important to note, this form of Being is able to produce outside of itself. Non-Being cannot do this. It only “moves itself within itself.”

In the analysis of line 6, we find a further clarification of the movement connected to you (Being):

that eternal Principle, already distinct within itself by a previous movement, and Having its great Image (always unmoved and immutable), moves itself again by a partial ineffable movement to consider in the great Image its definiteness, or to create the individual Images of its perfections, which, thus considering, it loves itself in them, and by the force of that love produces them in time.

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 21)

This reveals that Being, here with the more literal translation of you as “Having” in the sense of “having an image,” involves a second-order motion connected to considering how the Image already has distinction or definiteness. This enables this Being to create individualized “images” or ideal forms which then through the power of love are created as things in time.

Having considered the commentary on the four lines about wu 無 and you 有 we have a much clearer sense of how these two are conceptualized to equal Non-Being and Being. They appear to have a causal connection as the internal motion of wu leads to you, and that in turn leads to the creation of all things. However, the commentary on sentence 7 illustrates a different aspect of their special relationship:

From this you see that these two, wu 無 and you 有, Non-Being and Being, Not having and having, etc., arise together from the eternal without any distinction between prior or posterior. They are not two different Beings, but different aspects of the same Divine Being which give to him different denominations.

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 21)

Here the translator makes evident that he does not regard “wu as the origin” (yi wu wei ben 以無為本) like Wang Bi 王弼, but that wu 無 and you 有 both emerge from “the eternal” at the same time and are “different aspects of the same Divine Being.” In this way, wu 無 (Non-Being/Non-Ens) and you 有 (Being/Ens) both belong to God and are manifestations of a more fundamental Being (Ens). It is a cosmology where Being has two faces.

4. The Dynamic Relationship of Wu 無 (Non-Being) and You 有 (Being)

To make sense of the translation and analysis of Chapter 1 that results in Being and Non-Being both participating in creation but also representing two aspects of Divine Being, we must understand how the translator enters into dialogue with the Laozegetics tradition represented by Chinese classical commentaries. This will also reveal how and why the translator incorporates content from Laozi chapter 40 to solidify and develop his presentation.

The translator, having studied the commentarial tradition, knew that there were different ways to segment the sentences in Chapter 1 that did not always identify wu and you as individual concepts that would make the chapter a cosmogony involving these two. For example, wu ming tiandi zhi shi 無名天地之始 can be read as wuming, tiandi zhi shi 無名，天地之始 (The Nameless is the beginning of Heaven and Earth) or wu, ming tiandi zhi shi 無，名天地之始 (Wu is named the beginning of Heaven and Earth). In fact, the ancient and medieval commentators all accepted the first version of the sentence, and only during the Northern Song Dynasty did Wang Anshi 王安石, Sima Guang 司馬光, Su Zhe 蘇轍, and others begin to use the second version of the sentence (Yin 2004, pp. 95–97). The translator explains in detail why he chose the second version of the sentence, which is an essential prerequisite for him to assert that the cosmology of Being and Non-Being exists in Chapter 1. Since the translator takes the Laoziyi and the similar Laozi jingjie as his base texts, which both include a discussion on this Chapter 1 sentence segmentation problem, he is able to engage the traditional debate and identify the parts that help prove his own point of view.

First, the translator notes a commentator who uses Dao chang wuming 道常無名 (The Dao is eternally nameless) in Chapter 32 to prove that Chapter 1 is about the Dao having the characteristic of “namelessness” instead of being about wu 無; however, he does not accept this argument. While not denying that the Dao is “nameless,” he rather argues the following:

There, no distinction is made between Dao chang 道常 [The Dao eternal] and Dao shi zhi 道始制 [The Dao creating in the beginning] in the sense that the Divine Being before the creation of the world would be opposed to the same Divine Being producing the world. Then in this way before the creation of the world he is called wuming 無名 [nameless], [and] after creation he is called youming 有名 [named]. I say that is not the sense here … In his own nature, he is incomprehensible, therefore unnamable, as Mr. Su 蘇氏 [Su Zhe] rightly says: Dao chang wuming 道常無名 [The Dao is eternally nameless].

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, pp. 27–29)

The translator’s argument here is quite unusual, asserting the reason one cannot segment the sentences to have the subjects wuming 無名 (nameless) and youming 有名 (named) is because he believes that “the beginning of Heaven and Earth” and “the mother of all things” cannot represent two distinct phases of the divine. As “the Dao is eternally nameless” (Dao chang wuming), it should still be “nameless” even after the creation of all things. It cannot be said to have changed and entered a youming 有名 (named) state after the creation of the world. Therefore, “the beginning of Heaven and Earth” or “the mother of all things” cannot be identified with the “nameless” or “named”; they can only be descriptions of wu as Non-Being and you as Being.

The translator also discusses in detail why in lines 5 and 6 chang wu yu 常無欲 (eternally desireless) and chang you yu 常有欲 (eternally desiring) can only be read so that the wu 無 (Non-Being) and you 有 (Being) are separated as metaphysical concepts from the word yu 欲 (desire/excited). He quotes the Chinese original of Ding Yidong’s 丁易東 commentary recorded in the Laoziyi to explain this and the wider issue. Ding first summarizes the different views concerning the issue of segmentation for lines 3, 4, 5, and 6. He then quotes from the Zhuangzi as offering a possible argument for why lines 5 and 6 should be read as taking wu and you as their subjects. “The Zhuangzi says, ‘They established it on the chang wu you 常無有 [eternally non-existent and existent].’ If this correctly refers to the Laozi statement, then it resembles the sentence segmentation of chang wu 常無 and chang you 常有” (Jiao [1588] 1782, fasc. 1 p. 1b; Tadd and Zhang 2024, pp. 27–29). Interestingly, Ding rejects Zhuangzi as a source for how to read the lines. He concludes instead that if we use the Laozi to interpret the Laozi, the Chapter 34 line “eternally desireless (chang wuyu 常無欲), it can be named small” should lead us to read the Chapter 1 sentences as discussing wuyu 無欲 (desireless) and youyu 有欲 (desiring) and thus also wuming 無名 (nameless) and youming 有名 (named) (Jiao [1588] 1782, fasc. 1 p. 1b; Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 29). The translator ignores Ding’s final conclusion, instead focusing on the rejected content sourced from the Zhuangzi. He also mentions Mr. Chen 陳氏 (apparently Chen Yidian 陳懿典) as a support for his interpretation, though the translator never quotes him directly (Tadd and Zhang 2024, pp. 29–31). Still, Chen’s comments fit the argument, as he says that wu in the phrase chang wu yu refers to the wu (Non-Being) from which emerged you (Being) (Chen [1596] 1695, vol. 1, p. 1r). This makes a connection between chapters 1 and 40, which the translator likewise highlights by citing Jiao Hong.

He explains that Jiao Hong, author of Laoziyi, works to integrate the cosmogonies of those two chapters thusly:

The commentator Jiao Bicheng 焦筆乘 [Jiao Hong] says about these words that tiandi wanwu sheng yu you 天地萬物生於有 [Heaven, Earth, and all things are generated by you] has the same meaning as the Chapter 1 you ming wanwu zhi mu 有名萬物之母 [You is the mother of all things], and likewise the line you sheng yu wu 有生於無 [You is generated by wu] has the same meaning as wu ming tiandi zhi shi 無名天地之始 [Wu is the beginning of Heaven and Earth].9

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 33)

The translator follows Jiao Hong’s stance that Chapter 40’s depiction of the cosmogonical relationship of wu 無 and you 有 parallels sentences 3 and 4 in Chapter 1. Thus, the translator confirms his segmentation that isolates wu 無 and you 有 in Chapter 1 has its basis in the Chinese commentarial tradition, and that this segmentation question cannot be disentangled from the larger issue of finding a coherent cosmogony in the text.

This connection of chapter 1 and 40 is important, but a key issue remains. If we read Chapter 40 very literally, it depicts a two-stage process of creation from wu to you and then from you to all created things. However, this conflicts with the translator’s view that there is no priority or posteriority to Non-Being and Being. To deal with this, the translator draws on another famous commentator Su Zhe 蘇轍 from the Northern Song to support his point, citing his explanation of the Chapter 14 lines 其上不曒，其下不昧，繩繩兮不可名 (Above it is not bright; below it is not dark; continuous, it is unnamable):

Mr. Su here says 道雖在上而不皦雖在下而不昧不可以形数推也繩繩運而不絕也人見其運而不絕則以為有物矣不知其卒歸於無也10 Whether the Dao is considered in a higher state or in a lower one, it is not to be judged in the same way as about visible things and in the divisions that are counted. It is continually turned from one state to another. Some pay attention only to the continuous revolution (in Dao) and therefore consider it to be a thing and a being; They ignore that the revolution always returns to Non-Being and ends in Non-Being.

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, pp. 75–77)

The above English follows the Latin translator’s interpretation of the original Chinese. While there is some space to debate his reading, like taking yun 運 to mean a cycle between different states, this passage does offer some Laozegeticial support to the understanding of you and wu as having a mutual entanglement. I instead might read the final contrast between yi wei you wu 以為有物 (become something) and zu gui yu wu 卒歸於無 (return to nothing in death) as criticizing the idea that the process of creation is only from nothing to something (things) and ignores that things die and return to their origin, i.e., nothing. Of course, generally, this idea of a wu and you type alternating cycle should not be a surprise to discover in the writings of a Northern Song thinker. That was the common reading of wu and you in the Laoizi at that time (Yin 2004, p. 78). The translator’s understanding of the relationship of wu and you to things in the world is quite different. You is transcendent Being and not the manifest world of things. Therefore, the cycle is internal to God himself. In this we see the translator both drawing on traditional commentary and reimagining its significance in a theological context.

While the terms shang 上 and xia 下 are interpreted in the Chapter 14 comments both as “above” and “below” and as “prior” and “posterior,” the translator emphasizes their cycles are not temporal. The anterior and posterior relationship is conceptual and not actual. He says:

(Nevertheless, do not think that there is any priority of time between the two states.) Ineffable and without interruption, continuous from eternity, was the revolution of the Divine Being within itself, always going forth from wu 無 into you 有 and from you 有 always returning to wu 無. From rest always going forth to movement and action, and always returning to rest and non-action: From Unity always distinguishing itself into the Triad. And from the distinction of the Trinity always returning to the Unity of Essence and Non-Being, in which it has its Root.

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, pp. 75–77)

By following the complementary interpretation of Northern Song commentaries that reject the priority given to wu by people like Wang Bi, the translator can argue for reading wu and you as two aspects of Divine Being emerging together without prior or posterior. As the cycle is endless and only conceptual, these two aspects of the Divine called Non-Being and Being also become mapped onto the most important topic the translator seeks to find in the Laozi. Non-Being becomes identified with undifferentiated Unity and Being with the Trinity. The dynamic between these two is then another way to articulate the unity and plurality of the nature of God embodied in the complexity of trinitarian theology.

5. Integrating the Complementary Non-Being and Being with the Trinity

In addition to combining the two cosmogonies of chapters 1 and 40 to depict a dynamically complementary Non-Being and Being, the translator also draws on Chapter 42 to explain how this transcendent world includes the Trinity. In so doing, he ends up asserting two types of Tian Di 天地 “Heaven and Earth” that help clarify a division between the transcendent and immanent realms.

From the Figurist perspective that believes Catholic theology can be found in Chinese classics, the cosmogony in Chapter 42 is obviously trinitarian. The Dao produces all things mediated by the One, Two, and Three. The translator explains how this accords with the alternative cosmogony in Chapter 40 as follows:

Now, if we ask what wu and you are in themselves? It is more clearly excavated from Chapter 42 which has: Dao sheng yi; yi sheng er; er sheng san; san sheng wan wu [Dao produces One; One produces Two; Two produces Three; Three produces the myriad things] … From this chapter you have the point that this beginning, which produced all things, are Divine Beings, three Persons … But from the Chapter [40] cited above, the beginning which produced Heaven, and Earth, and all created things is called you: Therefore the three Persons of the Divine Being are that which is called you, or which is called the Mother of all things.

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, pp. 33–35)

Here the translator begins to construct his unique syncretic cosmology where the three Persons of the Trinity are associated with Being, and in line with Chapter 42 are what create all things in the world. This fuses the you of chapters 1 and 40 to the One, Two, and Three of Chapter 42, as they are both identified as the creator of things. Aside from the complexity of interpreting this as trinitarian theology, the basic analysis of the relationship of these three Laozi chapters is not so radical. This is especially true if we consider the commentators cited to support certain aspects of this reading.

However, the full articulation of this theory reveals its unique nature as a Catholic Laozegetics, particularly in how the relationship of wu and you is conceived:

You sheng yu wu [Being is produced by Non-Being] says Chapter 40; Chapter 42 says Dao sheng yi; yi sheng er; er sheng san: Therefore that from which the Divine Persons proceed is that which is called wu … in the Divine Being we conceive it to exist before it moves itself even within itself. But the internal movement of the Divine Beginning, what is it but the movement or action which distinguishes itself into Persons?

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 37)

This means that Non-Being producing Being and Dao producing One, etc. are different ways of describing the internal movement of Divine Being. That is the process of stillness to motion, undifferentiated to differentiated, Non-Being to Being, unified Being to multiple Beings.

That movement, or Transition, makes the Persons who before did not appear in the Divine Essence taken naked and alone in themselves, now appear distinct: but because between them there is a dependence of origin, the Third from the First and Second, and indeed only the First is independent, therefore it alone is said to immediately go forth by movement, or as it were to arise from the chaos of the Divine Essence and thus not indeed formally, but virtually by movement to be produced:

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 37)

The translator here is attempting to work out the complex nature of this internal relationship. There are two important distinctions to note. Divine Essence is still and alone, but how does movement appear? The First Person (God the Father) arises not formally but virtually. This is a technical distinction drawn from Catholic theology that is emphasized by Aquinas to show an aspect of priority between the three Persons without allowing a causal or formal priority or distinction (Legge 2017, p. 149). The contrast of virtual and casual to clarify the difference between the undifferentiated and differentiated is also used by Meister Eckhart, though I cannot claim that is the direct source for this case (King 2011, p. 114). Thus, the cycles of movement and alternation of Non-Being and Being, Unity and Trinity are non-temporal and non-causal, only representing the virtual dynamics of the divine.

The contrast of this virtual production with actual production is further connected to the difference between the First Person and the Second and Third Persons. One way that the translator describes the latter two, as a way to merge chapters 1 and 42, is as Heaven and Earth. As we might recall, when commenting on Chapter 1 line 3, he says “[wu] is the Root and first Beginning of that which is the Invisible Heaven, the Invisible Earth.” Invisible is interpolated into the notion of Tian Di to clarify that what Non-Being produces is not anything in the created world, but internal production related to the emergence of the three Persons. Elsewhere he states in the notes:

By Heaven and Earth only the two Second and Third Persons are signified, namely because only those two Persons are really produced, the First is only virtually produced by the Non-Being wu …The First, which is the beginning of both, is not indicated by any other name except wu. In the 6th verse, it is called by the generic name you, to signify that the same Divine nature, which was distinguished by the precision of the mind in the 3rd verse, never really existed in the First Person and that this First Person had through that nature its own power so that it is the beginning of the internal and latent production of chang wu, and the Beginning of the external and apparent production of chang you. From which it follows that the First Person is not Tian Di, but the beginning of Tian Di.

(Tadd and Zhang 2024, p. 55)11

While the translator does not explicitly cite traditional commentators to defend this special reading of transcendent versions of Heaven and Earth, we could argue this is like the contrast within the Chinese tradition that either takes these two as deities (transcendent) or just as natural phenomena (immanent); or the Yijing’s division xiantian (pre-Heaven) and houtian (Post-Heaven) versions of Qian (Heaven) and Kun (Earth).

The effort to match the emergence of Heaven and Earth from wu (Non-Being) in Chapter 1 line 3 with the relationship between wu and the Trinity in the translator’s readings of chapters 40 and 42 result in a distinction between the way in which the First Person (God the Father) and the other two (God the Son and God the Holy Spirit) emerge. The First Person exists as the One within wu and so its production is virtual. Yet, Tian Di (Heaven and Earth), as the Second and Third Persons, are produced by it. This trinitarian reading offers a novel solution to the tension in the Laozi over the relationship of the Dao/wu and the One. Sometimes they appear equatable but like in Chapter 42 Dao is prior to One. By making the production of the One only virtual, the translator resolves this tension. This approach also preserves both the unique vision of Non-Being and Being as complementary, while integrating it with the Trinity. Lastly, by identifying the Second Person with Tian (Heaven), the translator opens further interpretive space for when he argues for the existence of an awareness of the Incarnation in the Laozi. That topic, unfortunately, is beyond the scope of the current paper.

6. Conclusions

The complete Latin Laozi preserves a rigorous effort to interpret the text through the lens of Catholic theology while also respecting and relying on the native Laozegetical or commentarial tradition. I have attempted to demonstrate how this results in a creative way to understand the relationship between the Chinese ideas of you 有 and wu 無 and the Western concepts of Being and Non-Being. While at first the presentation of a complementary Being and Non-Being appears shocking, the integration of this vision with trinitarian theology unveils a background logic. If Non-Being refers to a kind of undifferentiated Being that equates to the One and Being represents the differentiated existence of the three Persons, then Non-Being and Being by necessity are related in a very subtle and complex way.

A few points stand out. Through the desire to explain the continuity of chapters 1, 40, and 42, the translator constructs a cosmology in the Laozi that respects the cyclical and mutually existing aspects of wu and you in line with certain, especially Song dynasty, commentators. However, while this cyclical movement from you to wu and wu to you, from potential to manifestation and back to potential in the Neo-Confucian worldview most often depicts the process of transformation in the world and in time, the translator employs it to reflect on the movement of the divine. This divergence in conception most obviously appears in regard to Tian Di (Heaven and Earth). The translator does not concern himself with the immanent or visible Tian Di. For him the world of created things, including Tian Di, is separate from the transcendent world of both you and wu, Being and Non-Being. Thus, the relationship of you and wu only concerns the internal process of the divine. This presentation of trinitarian theology rooted in the Laozi text offers a new way to articulate the internal structure of God using the language of that core Daoist classic. The result is a localized Daoist form of Catholic theology and a Catholic form of Laozegetics.

Due to the result of the Chinese Rites controversy, the complete Latin Laozi and its Daoism-informed theology remained unpublished until this year. The Figurist translator’s meticulous and imaginative effort can now gain greater attention. This paper hopefully will inspire the first Laozi translation to be brought more fully into the study of comparative thought and also function as a resource for building theologies adapted to the East Asian context.