ABSTRACT
Despite the mention of Japanese literature in my subtitle, and the naming of a destination on a specifically Christian horizon, the itinerary I propose to lay before the reader lies strictly within the confines of China. The Japanese section of the road has already been well covered by other scholars dealing with the ultimate salvation of plants and trees as a literary theme in medieval Japan.1 As for the twentieth-century conception of an Omega Point towards which creation yet proceeds, although this, too, was arguably the product of a sojourn in China, my reading so far suggests that no more than coincidence is involved here: the singular, lonely intelligence responsible for fusing Christian doctrine and evolution theory into this splendid, dazzling vision seems to have been if anything completely at odds with the religious sensibilities of its Chinese environment,2 and those who have made it their business to compare Buddhist and Catholic notions of spirituality have (sometimes quite explicitly) kept this particular thinker’s work out of consideration.3
