Zen-Existentialism (Studies in Chinese Christianity)

Modern man has found that material achievements are failing him but in his escape from despair he has become an easy prey for the deceptive cult of Zen-Existentialism. There has emerged a mode of radical New Humanism with its emphasis on human autonomy. In place of the God-man appears the man-god. There is a search for the world within the limitless inner space the expansion of consciousness and the transcendental experience of Satori. First published in 1969 this book prophetically anticipated the growth of New Age developments in the decades to follow. Lit-sen Chang directly spoke to the Hippie movement of his day which was then seeking various means of transcendence through drugs and eastern mysticism. This book also reflects fifty years of bitter experiences of the authors spiritual pilgrimage and shows how he was miraculously delivered by the grace and power of God from his cul-de-sac. Chang writes of the utter futility of the fantasy of the East analyzes the root causes of the crises in the West and points out the doom of auto-soterism after his careful diagnosis of the human problem in cultural philosophical religious and theological terms. Chang makes his judgment by cultural and Scriptural criteria tempered by a background in the Orient and a vast experience in the West . . . He speaks of his own experience of Zen and this gives his words the authoritative power of witness. Dr. James Forrester Former President Gordon College and Divinity School The finest work from a Christian standpoint on the subject of Zen-Buddhism . . . Chang has performed a real service for evangelical Christianity by analyzing Zen from the inside. Dr. Walter Martin The Christian Research Institute Lit-sen Chang (1904-1996) was an ardent Chinese Buddhist on his way to India to promote a renaissance of Asian religions when he met Christ. He had been a talented legislator and a brilliant young author on law and land policy. He now committed himself to serve Christ and graduated summa cum laude at Gordon Divinity School in 1959 and then served as special lecturer on missions and world religions. He wrote twenty volumes on the field of Christian apologetics against Chinese culture and the contemporary West. Wheaton College honored him with the Doctor of Letters in 1984.