| Volume 7, Number 2, April 2010 |
Old Testament Studies
From a Literary Text to a Discipline
by 刘平 LIU Ping
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Visible and Invisible
The Spiritual Characteristic of Christian Faith
in the Perspective of the Gospel of John
by 尤西林 You Xilin |
| STARTING from scratch, Old Testament studies in higher learning institutions in mainland China have made great strides in the recent three decades (1978-2008), and their starting point was 1978 when the Central Committee of the CPC held its Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee, a year marking the double end of the Mao Zedong Era (1949-1978) and the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Especially during the decade of catastrophe known as the “Cultural Revolution”, all religious studies and activities, including Old Testament studies, were wiped out and exterminated as they were branded feudal superstition and the opium of the people. In the Deng
Xiaoping Era ushered in in 1978, reform and development had become the theme and common understanding, which provided Old Testament studies with a relatively loose social and historical background. In this macro environment, Old Testament studies gradually, albeit slowly, ascended to the stage of academic arena and history of thought. In a word, this leap-forward change is...
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Christian Supreme God Yahweh is invisible, while God-man Jesus is visible. Nevertheless, human corporeal eyes see Jesus as an ordinary man, which forces Jesus to provide signs. In a series of signs by Jesus, the blind receiving their sight has a typical meaning as a symbol. That the Pharisees refuse to admit the signs, however, shows that the acceptance of faith for humanity can’t merely depend on signs. Jesus emphasizes that the proper way to have faith is to revive the hard selfish heart through love, and that one only can see godhead and obtain faith through spiritual eyes. What Jesus says to the apostle Thomas, who believes in the sign of resurrection only through corporeal eyes, has great significance: those who believe without seeing are more blessed than those who believe only by seeing. This teaching even has more prominent significance for Chinese culture. The Chinese people depend much more on the visible senses, which is so-called “what is real is what is caught in sight”. This viewpoint results in the Christian faith of Chinese depending...
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| Issue 7.2 |
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Priceless Friendship
—Matteo Ricci’s Legacy
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