Otche Diakon Nikola,
I just saw the Eternal_Tao review, and I wonder: In Chinese, of course, tao is a very resonant word, suggesting many of the Greek connotations of Logos -- better even than Slovo or Word.
On the other hand, in America I think the novovechniki have taken over the idea and made it a banal as anything in popular American "Christianity." St. Nikolaj Velimirovic thought Lau Zi might be a prophet of some kind, but if is not clear he is right.
The issue seems to be, does the text support an immanent view of nature as a connected whole, to be grasped in principle and manipulated for practical advantage -- as many Taoists think? Or does it point clearly beyond the system of natural relations to suggest or reveal a Divine Being that might adumbrate the Holy Trinity?
St. Paul at Mars Hill could cite Stoics for the purpose of interesting Greeks philosophers, but he did not mean to suggest pantheism. I wonder if Fr. Seraphim's youthful speculations should be trotted out as apologetic material, when the subject is a book so hard to understand even in Chinese that good translators always seem to produce English versions that say exactly what they want them to say. I'm afraid Fr. Seraphim did just that -- like a hundred other equally or more qualified scholars.
These are just thoughts, of course.
In Christ,
Sinful Gleb
