The parallel to the Hebrews and the Greeks is instructive: neither human nephesh nor psyche can be called divine beings. A Christian parallel is also appropriate: Confucians are born with the shen of Tian in the same way that Christians are created in the image of God. Tian gives humans mind (xin), sensibilities, and feelings, and the Christian God gives reason, conscience, and righteousness, but the resultant being is not a deity, either as saint or as sage. (The Christians are closer to Mencius on the presence of conscience in the human soul.) Sages then become "host[s] of a divine manifestation (shenming)" [46] so they can do Tian's work on earth. (Consistent with Xunzi's empiricism, they do this by learning, not by original divine endowment or by grace.) But in neither does the knowledge of God-Tian result in becoming God, especially since in both traditions true knowledge of God is impossible.

　　 A grammatical analysis of the Xunzi also supports my position, and

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Machle himself supplies the data. In Xunzi's usage of shen, it "is often more adjectival in force (eight times) or part of an adjectival or adverbial phrase (eight times); twice, as a noun, it refers to one's vital functionings. The rest of the time it clearly indicates 'supernatural' beings or forces..." [47] We have already discussed Mencius' use of shen as a predicate adjective, so we must use the meanings "wonderful, marvelous, miraculous" -- not "divine" -- for the adjectival uses that Machle finds in the Xunzi. If Tian's natural effects are shen, then that means that its effects and the sage's actions are "spiritual," just as "Tian in us" or the "image of God" might be called our "spiritual" natures. Therefore, the claim that the sage is "the equal of Tian and Earth" is not to say that he is the same as Heaven; rather, it means that each of the members of the cosmic triad are equally valuable, although Heaven and Earth can claim supremacy in the fact that they both produce human beings. On the other hand, Heaven and Earth cannot be truly fulfilled without the sage. "Tian-and-Earth produce the junzi ... (who) is the 'general manager' (ling) of the myriad things." [48]

　　 Although I understand his reasons for using the first two terms, I reject as misleading Machle's characterization of the sage as "unnatural, artificial, and indeed, supernatural." [49] Machle's defense of Xunzi against Mencius and his later Confucian supporters is a compelling one. Mencius believed that the sage was a natural development from innate potentials in human nature. Xunzi rejected this potential goodness, and his critics were justified in asking about how the sage could ever come about. Machle, after presenting the deficiencies of the Mencian position, [50] believes that the answer to this question is implied but obvious: the Confucian sages learned virtue from the great sage-kings. This, then, is the reason for the two misleading terms "unnatural" and "artificial" to describe the sage's education. Machle believes that the sage is "supernatural" in part because "Xun[zi]'s idea of the sage's 'transforming like a god' goes far beyond mere "model-emulation." [51] Machle does not give a reference for "transforming like a god," so I was unable to check the context, but the simile ("as if he were a god" is another unreferenced

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phrase) [52] obviously weakens the attribution of divinity in the same way that it does in the passage from the Doctrine of the Mean discussed above Furthermore, when Machle refers to "nothing is more divine than to be transformed according to the Dao," [53] I suspect that the adjective shen would be better translated as "wonderful, marvelous, or miraculous." Finally, without much more evidence for the divinity of the sage, we must stand by "model-emulation" as the essential foundation of Chinese virtue ethics.

　　 The Confucian sages Yao and Shun were not gods, rather, they were great humans, who ordered themselves according to the seasons, shone like the heavens, and attuned themselves with the cosmic harmonies. They were mighty like Heaven, not Heaven themselves. In the Doctrine of the Mean we read, following Ames' translation, that "the highest integrity is 'god-like'. ... Integrity is not simply completing oneself, it is the means of completing things and events" (§ 24). Again great persons are not gods, but simply leaders who have the wisdom and the perspicacity to get things done and to expand their influence in the world. This is the meaning of Mencius' profound remark that "everything is complete here in me. Can there be any greater joy than in plumbing oneself and finding oneself true?" (7a4, Ames trans.). What Mencius means is that all of us in our original natures have the potential of "completing things and events", we all have the potential of becoming sages, but not gods. Confucius is "cosmic" only in the sense of the extent of his influence, not because of any special divine nature. The lives of the sages are, like nature, expansive and productive, and this is a key to understanding a crucial text in the Analects: "II is man who is capable of broadening the Way. It is not the Way that is capable of broadening man" (15.29, Lau trans.)