Philosopher · Antiquity
Laozi (Lao Tzu)
6th century BC (traditional) · Taoism
The Tao Te Ching's author by tradition. The Chinese Bible renders the Logos of John 1 as Tao; Nostra Aetate 2 commends what is true and holy in the traditions he represents.
The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao: the Way that gives all things their course is nameless, empty, and prior to heaven and earth, and the sage lives by non-striving (wu wei), lowliness, water-like yielding and return to the root. The eighty-one short chapters of the Tao Te Ching are the most translated book after the Bible.
Why he matters: The purest non-Christian apophatic theology, and a vision of the Way that Christian readers from Ricci to Hieromonk Damascene have read as a shadow of the Word. The Beatitudes and the Tao Te Ching agree about the humble and the meek.
Where to be careful
The Tao is impersonal and immanent, and there is no Creator, no sin and no grace; later religious Taoism sought immortality by alchemy and ritual. The Church holds that the Way is a Person who became flesh.
Documented positions
Where this thinker stands on each dispute the test covers.