Chapter 1

Tao Te Ching — Refutation Edition

Taoism — Lao-tzu and the Unnameable Way · text: Translated by James Legge (Sacred Books of the East, 1891) — Project Gutenberg eBook #216, 'The Tao Teh King' (public domain). Highlighted passages are answered beneath the text.

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1The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Tao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name. ★ REFUTED

★ REFUTATION — “The Tao that can be trodden is not the enduring Tao”

Contradicts the Bible

The book begins in fog: the true Tao cannot be named, spoken, or walked. Whatever truth hides here (God is indeed beyond our full comprehension), its fruit is agnosticism — a first principle that can never be known or trusted. The Bible opens the opposite way: God speaks, names Himself (Exodus 3:14), and in Christ the Word becomes flesh and is seen, heard, and handled (1 John 1:1). Christianity's claim is not that God is small enough to master, but that He has made Himself known.

Exodus 3:14And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.

John 1:14And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.

1 John 1:1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;

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