As the world turned along its cosmic path, Daoists would suffer from not having in their midst a Thomas Aquinas (1225-1271) who would benefit intellectually from his exposure to translations of works of Aristotle from Greek into Latin by Arabic scholars. Aquinas would also profit intellectually from the rise of universities in Europe during 12th and 13th centuries, notably University of Bologna (1088), known for its studies in law, University of Padua (founded by dissidents from Bologna), University of Paris and Oxford University, all founded as centers of learning in theology. In this new intellectual milieu in Europe some 10 centuries after the birth of Daoism, Aquinas would apply Aristotelian methods of logic to medieval mysticism of revelation. His Summa Theologica (1267-1273) would be a systematic exposition of theology on rational philosophical principles. Up to that time, while Scholasticism, as advanced by St Augustine (354-430), would vindicate reason in theology, it would carefully differentiate between theology and philosophy. It would do so by confining theology, proceeding from faith, to investigations of revealed truths, while it would limit philosophy, based on reason, from concern with truths that transcended reason. Revealed truth would be proclaimed as discoverable only through faith. The 13th century would be a critical point in Christian thought regarding the relationship between faith and reason. The intellectual community in Christendom at that time would be torn between claims of followers of Averroes (1126-1198), Arabian philosopher from Cordoba in Spain, and claims of followers of St Augustine (354-430), troubled youth turned zealous convert, founder of Christian theology and spokesman for Christian mysticism. Efforts of followers of Averroes in the 13th century to separate absolutely faith from truth, would clash with the traditional claim that truth being exclusively a matter of faith. Such claim has been made for the past nine centuries by followers of St Augustine whose contribution to the evolution of Christianity would be considered second only to that of St Paul, apostle to Gentiles and the greatest missionary apostle. Averroes, Latin name for Abu-al-Walid Ibn Rushd, whose commentaries on Aristotle would remain influential for four centuries, until the Renaissance, would attempt to circumscribe the separate limits of faith and reason, asserting that both could process truths and that the two separate realms need not be reconciled because they are not in conflict.
Siger de Brabant of University of Paris, leader of Averroists, would claim in 1260 that it should be possible, as a matter of veracity, and tolerable, as a license in intellectual soundness, for a concept to be true in reason but false in faith or visa versa. The doctrines of Averroists, which include denying the immortality of the individual soul and upholding the eternity of matter, would end up being officially condemned by the Catholic Church. St Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), nicknamed Dumb Ox because of his slow and deliberate manner of speech, brilliant father of Neo-Scholasticism, aiming to resolve the dispute between Averroists and Augustinians, would hold that reason and faith constitute 2 harmonious realms in which the truth of faith complements that of reason, both being gifts of God, but reason having an autonomy of its own. The existence of God could therefore be discovered through reason, with the grace of God. The theological significance of this momentous claim by Thomas Aquinas cannot be over-emphasized. It would save Christianity from falling into irrelevance in the Age of Reason, sometimes referred to as the Enlightenment, and preserve tolerance for faith among rational thinkers in the scientific world. The Thomist claim would remain unchallenged for five centuries until David Hume (1711-1786) who would point out in his Inquiry into Human Understanding that since the conclusion of a valid inference could contain no information not found in the premise, there could be no valid conclusion from observed to unobserved phenomena. Hume would let the logic air out of the Thomist natural theology balloon, and in the process would show that even general laws of science could not be logically justified beyond their own limits, perhaps even including his own sweeping conclusion. Hume, the empiricist, would logically determine that logic is circular and goes nowhere: a classic position of Daoist skepticism. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) would emancipate man's command of knowledge from Humean skepticism. In his Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Kant would emphasize the contribution of the knower to knowledge. While acknowledging that the 3 great issues of metaphysics: God, freedom and immortality, could not be logically determined, he would assert that their essence is a necessary presupposition. In his subsequent publications: Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and Critique of Judgement (1790), Kant would assert as a moral law his famous categorical imperative, which would require moral actions to be unconditionally and universally binding to absolute good will. Notwithstanding the enlightened breakthroughs of English Protestant empiricists like Hobbes, Locke and Hume, and perhaps in reaction to them, Pope Leo XIII would issue the encyclical Aeterni Patris in 1879. It would declare Scholasticism, as modified by Thomas Aquinas, to be official Catholic philosophy. Unwittingly, Scholasticism would legitimize the independence of secular politics from Church control. If reason and faith constitute 2 harmonious realms in which the truth of faith complements that of reason, both being gifts of God, but reason having an autonomy of its own, then politics and religion can also belong to separate realms in which morality of religion complements virtue in politics, but politics having an autonomy of its own. It would provide the theological rationalization for the separation of Church and State. Unlike Christian theology, Daoism (Dao Jia), lacking the logic footing of Scholasticism, would remain unable to penetrate the primordial soup of its mysticism with a big bang of logic. Consequently, it would fail to advance systematically as time goes on. Consistent with its basic paradoxical outlook, Daoism with it's already long history of 26 centuries by Tang time (618-907), contents itself with circular insights on the mystery of life, the ultimate disclosure of which tends to recede with each flash of new insight, as if repelled by a fear that the final revelation of life's secret would announce Daoism's own death knell.
The intellectual role of Buddhist institutions had been growing increasingly significant and pervasive in the three centuries preceeding Tang China. Sengs (Buddhist monks) of various sects had taken to routinely writing philosophy, conducting schools and keeping libraries, in addition to their normal religious undertakings. The independence of Buddhist teaching from repressive Confucian scholasticism is an important factor in Buddhism's popular flowering in China. Buddhist curricula were admittedly overburdened with time-consuming, mind-boggling theological studies, but the discipline acquired from such study methods more than compensates for its heavy investment in time and effort. Excellence in exegesis requires sound scholarship, systematic research methodology, creative logic and persistent secular evidential verification, qualities that learned sengs cultivate. Buddhist seng-scholars soon dominated the fields of mathematics, alchemy, medicine, astronomy and engineering. Buddhist impact on Chinese philosophy was fundamental, introducing new concepts, abstract terms and new words for the description and manipulation of previously unfathomable ideas. Buddhism's influence in Chinese art, architecture and literature had been undeniably crucial. Such influence in Tang time helped liberate Chinese culture from Confucianism's stultifying intellectual repression, particularly on new and creative ideas, much the same way Western scientific methods would twelve centuries later.
Henry C.K. Liu