Christian 'Vocation' and Confucian 'Tianming' Negotiating the Boundaries of Transcendence and Immanence in International Business Ethics

Abstract

Because the topic of transcendence and immanence and their relationship is so vast and highly abstract, I have chosen to make a comparison of two terms, Christian “vocation” and Confucian “tianming,” both of which seem to illuminate concretely how transcendence and immanence are related in their respective contexts. While Christian vocation discourse may seem to represent one extreme of Divine transcendence, and Confucian tianming discourse may seem equally extreme in conveying the logic of immanence, there is considerable overlap between the two – or so I will argue in this paper. There are significant patterns of immanence in Christian vocation discourse and conversely significant indications of transcendence in Confucian tianming. Furthermore in their respective intellectual traditions, the two terms have been progressively universalized, so that Christian vocation no longer symbolizes a religious life withdrawn from the world, and Confucian tianming no longer can be regarded as exclusive to the Emperor as “tianzi” or Son of Heaven. To be sure, the ultimate meaning of each term depends on the reality of God in Biblical religion, on the one hand, and the significance of Heaven in Chinese culture, and there are irreducible,
non-negotiable differences between these two.