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AFTER having been put off for many years, finally in 2007 three of my books have been achieved and published: Commentaries on the Three Pillars of Late Ming Catholicism (Daofeng Shushe, Hong Kong), Cross-cultural Interpretation: Encounter between the Study of the Classics and Theology (Xinxing Chubanshe, Beijing) and One Hundred Sentences of the Holy Bible (Fudan University Press, Shanghai). Commentaries on the Three Pillars collects and annotates the theological treatises of China’s first generation of Christians, Xu Guangqi and others; Encounter between the Study of the Classics and Theology attempts to inquire into the relationship between Qing dynasty academic thinking and European “Heavenly Learning”; One Hundred Sentences of the Holy Bible mines the experiences of ordinary Chinese people in order to understand some passages of the Bible. The domain and method of each of these writings are different, but these three books all follow a similar train of thought: in the realm of history, they use comparative religious studies methods, track down modern Chinese intellectuals’ faith experience, and look at how along four hundred years Chinese people have found a spiritual resting place between “Heavenly Learning” and “Confucian Learning”.
Judging from the last twenty years of “Chinese language theological” practice on China Mainland, the generation of humanist intellectuals, men of letters, historians, philosophers and others who grew up in the post-“Cultural Revolution” era have gone through a gradually deepening process that has enhanced their understanding of Christianity, and concurrently of all religious phenomena. Initially young scholars discovered the spiritual value of Christianity in the midst of Sino-foreign literature, and from the perennial and universal culture they affirmed the meaning extant in the Christian church. From this point on, these scholars increasingly focused on Christian philosophy, delved into and explained the peculiar nature of the Christian faith, where from they proceeded and opened one theological door that enabled the possibility of a “Chinese language theology”. Continuing after the Ming dynasty Jesuits who under the name of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas had introduced the theology of the European Middle ages, the China church did not again systematically translate Christian theology, to mention it still hastily: in the last twenty years, what was most often presented is a more recent “modernized” theology. In respect to this, the Institute of Sino-Christian Studies in Hong Kong lent its help to the translation fever that occurred in the Mainland literary, historical, and philosophical world; it had an organizational system, an established scope, scholars gathered for long periods, a most powerful organization, the most numerous publications, and as such claimed the greatest credit. Presently, from Karl Barth to Hans Küng, from Paul Tillich to David Tracy, Chinese academics, regarding these western humanist people, do not necessarily fully yet understand them as theologians, but they are already familiar to their ears, and scholars can discuss them in great detail. This is the great profit brought by the “Chinese language theology” (or “cultural Christians”) movement, and its success naturally should not be underestimated.
It is gratifying that “Chinese language theology”, after its start twenty-years ago, is now on the ascendancy, and varied tendencies to use many kinds of approaches have furthermore emerged. Beijing University, The People’s University of China, Wuhan University, Nanjing University and Fudan University all now have already established a religious studies department within their Philosophy colleges, and the first generation of bachelors degree students specializing in religious studies has already graduated from these comprehensive universities. In the past, according to the normal approach in China’s internal academic world, a scholar in religious studies would normally first go through literary, historical, and philosophical studies in order to obtain religious knowledge, then through various opportunities would enter into and practice research in the realm of theology and religious studies. If one were to say that twenty years ago the “first generation of religious scholars” carried their respective academic background into an expansion, it should be said that the situation of the current “second generation of religious scholars” is different. After twenty years, this new generation of Christian scholars is developing research in “Chinese language theology” in a more penetrating and specialized manner. Consequently they have also put forward new demands in regards to the research methodology and approach used for “Chinese language theology”.
The academic path taken by modern scholars in religion and the one taken by ancient teachers of the Classics are quite different. European Middle Ages theology (and also the Confucian learning and the Buddhist learning of ancient China, Japan, Korea, and South-East Asia) all represented the paramount of scholarship of the time. In those times when theology occupied a dominant status, even the average people had multiple, varied and direct channels through which they could understand theological knowledge. But, theology, after entering into modern times, receded on the second line and human sciences charged on the forefront; people lacked access to religion and even scholars specializing in it had often to go through the heavy curtain of the human sciences before they were able to catch a glimpse of reclusive theology. The great contribution of the Mainland academic world occurred in the last twenty years when, after the “cultural revolution”, scholars on the Mainland “discovered theology in China”, allowing philosophy to find its source, making literature more profound, and also allowing all sorts of historical texts to be more easily understood. To mechanically apply but at the same time remaking an old adage: to “liberate theology from the classroom of the western theologian”, to allow Chinese people to understand religion, this seems something that modern Chinese scholars have nearly achieved. Since the 1950s and tracing back to the translation movement of “Western learning” after the Ming-Qing times, China Mainland has not had such an extensively penetrating movement that introduces theology.
It is definitely a good thing that there is a little of “theology” in the world of human sciences in China. Christian theology is quite beneficial in regard to enlarging Chinese scholars’ field of vision, to understand the roots of Western culture and further a field to catch, in the midst of China’s history and Chinese language’s cultural environment, the social position and spiritual significance that Christianity should have. But at the end of the Ming dynasty the first generation of Catholics, Xu Guangqi and others, already knew that merely having “Western learning” (theology) was not enough. “Western learning”, “Western doctrine” had to be put in the context of Chinese cultural language before it possesses for the catechumens of China some living doctrinal benefit. Xu Guangqi proposed “translation—adaptation—sublimation” as a cultural principle, namely through translation, obtaining “Western learning”, yet this cannot mean fully introducing any foreign theory; for “Western learning” to enter China, it must through a “de-westernisation” process cast off its “westernising colouring” before Christian theology could genuinely merge into the cultural environment of Chinese language. Because of the strictures of the local language, semantics and context, after Chinese countrymen have “adapted”, formulated “sublimation” and entered into “Chinese and Western blending”, “harmony and impartiality”, only then can “Western learning” become the inherent “theology” of the Chinese people as an organic part of their own culture. Within these ideas lies the significance of the “Chinese language theology”.
Since “Chinese language theology” has existed for twenty years, we have now already passed over the first period of “translation”, and have gradually entered the “adaptation—sublimation” phase. That is to say, accumulated through many years the theological resources may already provide scholars with one sort of distinctive Chinese interpretation, gradually forming an authentic “Chinese language theology”...
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Li Tiangang, born in Shanghai in 1957, is presently professor at Fu Dan University’s Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, teacher of doctoral students, and the director of the Religious Studies Society of China. He graduated with a PhD from Fu Dan University’s History department. He served successively as visiting scholar at the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at the University of San Francisco, at the Institut des Sciences de l’Homme in France, at the Harvard Yenching Institute, the Religious Studies department of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, the City University of Hong Kong’s Cross Cultural Research Institute, and the University of British Columbia’s Centre for Asian Studies. He holds concurrent posts as a research fellow at the Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History at the University of San Francisco, the Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Centre for the study of religion and modern Chinese culture, and the Hong Kong Chinese Language Christian Culture Research Institute. He is the author of Cross-cultural Interpretation: Where the Classics and Theology Meet; The Chinese Rites Controversy: History, Literature and Meaning; Cultural Shanghai; Shanghai Humanities; Ma Xiangbo and Modern Chinese Thought (English), etc. |
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| Issue 6.1 |
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The Sorcerer’s
Apprentices
—A Global Tale
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