The Research On The Changes Of Religious Concept In The Late West Zhou Dynasty

Some poets in the late Western Zhou Dynasty created feelings of doubts and resentments to the supreme God. This is known as the "suspect-day trend of thought" for academia. The main cause was the political changes happened in the late Western Zhou, that is, the system of feudalism led to the lack of financial resources of the royal family, and the Co-owner of the world was threatened; "capital common people's rebellion ","republican administration" and the demise of the Western Zhou and other events shattered the destiny theory. The supremacy and justice of the God was absolutely suspected and taken place in an unprecedented suspicion. It was a heavy blow to the religious concept of heaven and sped up the emergence of the natural concept of heaven. These great changes had an important impact on the culture of the time and that of the Spring and Autumn Period.The character of "Heaven" had referred to the God of supremacy and the sky ever since the early Western Zhou Dynasty. But until Western Zhou Dynasty, "Road", with word meaning and abstract justice, had not yet risen to the height of philosophy category. So, the word of "Heaven" was created during the junction of Western Zhou Dynasty and Eastern Zhou Dynasty. As a matter of fact, there had been a long history for the idea of "Heaven", and the factors concerning the God and destiny theory are called "the religious concept of heaven." in the present paper.In the Shang Dynasty, people had faith in God, but it had not yet become a supreme God. With the religious integration and the replacement of the Shang dynasty, the role of god had been turned into a supreme all-powerful God. But people in Zhou Dynasty had come to realize the impermanence of heaven, and they strongly emphasized that the rulers should respect the moral in order to protect the mandate of heaven. The royal family of the late Western Zhou Dynasty, once played the role of representative of the God, encountered a serious challenge, and the image of the Emperor of Heaven also changed with this. For some people, the Emperor of Heaven was associated with malignant, relentless nature, inequality, etc. His virtue of impartiality was vanishing. Although the Royal family tried their best to maintain their destiny theory, but they had no choice but to make the adjustments, such as the emphasis of the relationship between ministers and public with the Emperor of Heaven, the propositions that "People are born of God" and "God will give outstanding talents to Zhou Dynasty ". With the adjustments, ZhouXuan King declared he had obtained the destiny once again. On the other hand, the late dynasty kings even more sincerely believed to the destiny, the title of "Tian King" was created during the reign of ZhouPing King .As a result, the theory of 'decline of the Zhou dynasty, but God is still the order' came up, and the royal court destiny theory was adoptting a conservative attitude day by day. These aristocrats who with traditional ethics were dissatisfied with the political status, but they couldn't find a way out of it, so they still believed that God was the ultimate trial, and the disasters were to warn the oppressive rulers, and they hoped that God had time to stabilize, any person could be overcomed. However, as the demise of the Western Zhou Dynasty and this group of veteran's death, "Heaven" became a bubble of hope.The changes of religious concept in the late Western Zhou have an enormous impact in the area of superstructure. Firstly, the main functions of historian gradually shifted from the religious duties to chronicle. This kind of shift sped up the prosperity of a compilation of historical records. Secondly, the legends of the ancient emperors were recorded by historians. Thirdly, from the time of ZhouPing King , Qin, Chu and other states declared their acceptance of fate, the destiny theory then became a political tool for them. The most important thing is, more and more people had an indifferent attitude toward God in the Spring and Autumn Period. The natural law thought was growing rapidly within the traditional ambit of the historian, and the Taoist philosophy was derived from this; On the other hand, secular nobles and knowledgeable of the people did not trust or talk about Heaven, Kong Zi was affected deeply. We can say that Ya Psalms are the pioneers in pre-Qin philosophers.