Confucian Theology: Three Models

Abstract If there are still disagreements about whether Confucianism is a religion, there seems to be a consensus that Confucianism does not have a theology. In this article, I attempt to show that there are at least three models of serious god‐talks in the Confucian tradition: (i) heaven is discussed in the Confucian classics of Book of Documents , Books of Poetry , and Analects as something transcendent of the world, similar to Christian God in crucial aspects; (ii) heaven is discussed among contemporary Confucians, represented by Xiong Shili, Mou Zongsan, and Tu Weiming, as something ‘immanently transcendent’, the ultimate reality immanent in the world to transcend the world; and (iii) heaven is discussed by neo‐Confucians, particularly the Cheng brothers of the Song dynasty, as the wonderful life‐giving activity transcending the world within the world.