Chinese theology

Chinese theology, which comes in different interpretations according to the canonical texts and the common religion, and specifically Confucian, Taoist and other philosophical formulations, is fundamentally monistic, that is to say it sees the world and the gods of its phenomena as an organic whole, or cosmos.

[In contrast to the God of Western and Buddhist religions who is outside known space and time] the God of Fuxi, Xuanyuan and Wang Yangming is in our space and time. [...] To Chinese thought, ancestor is creator.

The universal principle that gives origin to the world is conceived as transcendent and immanent to his creation, at the same time. The Chinese idea of the universal God is expressed in different ways; there are many names of God from the different sources of Chinese tradition.

Chinese scholars emphasise that the Chinese tradition contains two facets of the idea of God: one is the personified God of popular devotion, and the other one is the impersonal God of philosophical inquiry. They express an "integrated definition of the monistic world".

The radical Chinese terms for the universal God are Tiān 天 and Shàngdì 上帝 (the "Highest Deity") or simply Dì 帝 ("Deity"). There is also the concept of Tàidì 太帝 (the "Great Deity"). These names are articulated and combined in different ways in Chinese theological literature. One of the combinations is the name of God used at the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, which is the 皇天上帝 Huángtiān Shàngdì—"Highest Deity the Heavenly King".

Dì is literally a title expressing dominance over the all-under-Heaven, that is all created things. It is etymologically and figuratively analogous to the concept of di as the base of a fruit, which falls and produces other fruits. This analogy is attested in the Shuowen jiezi explaining "deity" as "what faces the base of a melon fruit".Tiān is usually translated as "Heaven", but by graphical etymology it means "Great One" and a number of scholars relate it to the same Dì through phonetic etymology and trace their common root, through their archaic forms respectively *Teeŋ and *Tees, to the symbols of the squared celestial pole (dīng 口). Zhou (2005) furtherly connects Dì, through Old Chinese *Tees, to the Indo-European Deus. Medhurst (1847) also shows affinities in the usage of "deity", Chinese di, Greek theos and Latin deus, for incarnate powers resembling the supreme God.

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